“Homicide.” She said the word as easily as one might have said dishwater.

“You think there was a murder?”

“Maybe not murder. If Craig is lucky maybe not even a killing. But my son is not a lucky man and something happened; something that even if you have to use the word attempted—homicide will follow.”

“Craig’s got a lot of problems,” I agreed. “Loud noises put him in a completely different state of mind. I talked to him less than half an hour and found that out.”

Lola studied me a little closer. If I was a dog I would have either bit or submitted.

The decision made, she stood abruptly and went through a door that revealed a small section of what might have been the bathroom. She rummaged around in there and came out with a wadded-up cloth. Coming back to her chair, she dropped the lump on the table between us.

I knew what I was looking at. I didn’t want to touch it, but that was not the time to be squeamish.

The yellow-and-red tie-dyed T-shirt was about six ounces heavier than it should have been—because of the blood it had soaked up. It was still a little damp and also crusted black from the drying bodily fluid. There was that faint metallic smell mixed with the equally strong odor of some kind of incense oil. I had to concentrate to keep from gagging on the contradiction.

“This is your son’s?”

“He came to me the morning after it happened.”

“Why didn’t you influence him to go to the police?”

“You know what it’s like, blood.” She said blood just like one of my soul brothers hanging out on the corner at Florence and Central, 138th and Broadway, or any of a thousand other places from the Southside of Chicago to Selma, Alabama. “Craig was the kind of kid that always got into trouble. At school, after school, before school started in the morning. The only time he wasn’t in trouble was when he was asleep.”

I imagined that the young man she was describing would have had turmoil in his dreams too.

“What kind of trouble, Mrs. Kilian?”

“Call me Lola, Ezekiel.”

“They call me Easy,” I said. “What kind of trouble did Craig get into, Lola?”