“My mother sent me to the American school in the mornings in Saigon. My father taught me auto mechanics in the afternoons.”

“Oh. Anything else I need to know?” I asked.

“Don’t let Lester try to charge you. Everything I did was part of the maintenance fee we got from Mr. Zuma.”

I wandered around the car imagining kicking the tires. Then I jumped in behind the wheel, moving my butt around to get comfortable.

“You sure you can manage a right-side drive?” Lihn asked through the open window.

“I once drove an ice delivery truck that had the same setup.”

This explanation made the mechanic smile.

“You talk to Raymond?” she asked me.

When I took delivery on the car I had to bring it down to the garage. My good friend Raymond Alexander followed so he could give me a ride home. When he and Lihn looked at each other, something happened—something deep; kindred souls meeting for the first time. Mouse, that’s Raymond’s nickname, told me I could take his car because he’d be getting a ride with the lady mechanic.

“He was fine the last time I saw him,” I said. “As a matter of fact I can only remember about five times in the forty-two years I’ve known him that he wasn’t glad and happy.”

“God doesn’t make many like him,” she said with forceful objectivity.

“And he only made one Ray,” I furthered.

She smiled again and I was a little bit jealous of my perfect, murderous, maybe even psychopathic friend.

Driving my little piece of heaven up to the front gate, I told Lester that Lihn said I did not owe the three hundred and fifty dollars he demanded. He frowned and chomped on the cigar but I managed to drive away without him swinging a crowbar at the best car I ever had.

I decided to take La Cienega up toward Sunset before heading west for my new home. The car felt like driving a yacht down the street—it was that smooth. The secret ecstasy of finally having arrived at success filled the cab of that Rolls.

I passed Pico and Olympic, finally crossing Wilshire into Beverly Hills. I had even made it a block or two past that when the flashing red lights appeared in the extra-wide rearview mirror. It was one of those wake-up calls that happen in the lives of black men and women in America when they mistakenly believe they have crossed over to freedom.

I pulled to the curb, put both hands on the steering wheel, and sat patiently awaiting the rendering of the calculation of my situation. That equation was a matter of simple addition: Rolls-Royce + black man without driver’s cap + any day of the century = stop and frisk, question and dominate—and, like the solution of pi, that process had the potential of going on forever.