“Hello?” she said after seven or eight rings. Her voice was what I can only call voluptuous. It also sounded as if I had interrupted her nap.

“Am I speaking to Ms. Lola Thigman-Kilian?” I asked, reading Craig’s scrawl.

“When is it?”

“Say what?”

“When is it?”

“It’s a little after six,” I said.

“No, no, no. What day is it? Tuesday?”

“No, ma’am. It’s Monday.”

“Oh. So this is Mr. Ezekiel Rawlins?” Her clarity was shocking after the fuzzy start to our conversation.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“CK told me you were calling but then I fell asleep and I thought it was tomorrow already.”

“Well, ma’am—”

“You have my address, right?”

I read the numbers and street name aloud.

“Bring some coffee, will you? I’ll be waiting.”

Driving a bright yellow Rolls-Royce Phantom VI while wearing black skin in the late light of summer—all that through a working-class, mostly white neighborhood—is an experience not meant for the faint of heart.

I parked by the curb next to the three-story, twenty-seven-unit, pink-plaster-coated apartment building. In order to get to apartment 2G I had to go around back and climb a flight of external stairs. People had been watching since I pulled up. As I passed apartments along the way, curtains swayed open and heads appeared behind screens to witness the black man who had pulled up in a Rolls.

I got to 2G and knocked.

A woman of great beauty and shimmering gold hair pulled the door open and said, “Come in, Mr. Rawlins. Come in.”

It was a relief to be away from the gawkers, though I thought that I might be safer with them than with the forty-something bombshell named Lola.

Five eight or nine, she was swathed in a red-and-black wrap that was something more, and less, than a housecoat. Her face, both heart-shaped and handsome, had reached a level of perfection that had spelled trouble for her since childhood; trouble for her and anyone else she happened upon.

“Come have a seat in the nook,” she offered.

We were standing in one of those modern all-purpose rooms. It was a kitchen, a dinette, and a sitting room all in one. The dinette, which she called the nook, was a small round table set next to the refrigerator with two bright chrome and blue vinyl chairs.

There were two bottles of beer set out for company. I handed her the brown paper bag containing a paper cup of coffee and then sat down.

“Ms. Kilian?” I said.

“Mr. Rawlins,” she replied, rummaging through the small bag. “Didn’t you bring some coffee for yourself?”

“I thought I’d stick with beer.”

She smiled while lowering onto the utility chair with as much grace as any princess or lady-in-waiting. I think I might have been a little too obvious noting this style.

“I used to be a dancer,” she explained.