There were no tenants on the broad porch. The front door wasn’t locked. Along the hallways and staircases children and mothers laughed, shouted, and yawped. I smelled hamburgers frying and spaghetti sauces simmering along with sweet concoctions and bread baking. There were all types of music from Dean Martin to Bob Dylan playing on phonographs. Many doors were open but Christmas and I had little interest in the lives therein.

We reached Craig’s door in the big vacant space and stopped. Colonel Black made a hand gesture telling me that it was my choice. So I knocked and waited, then knocked again.

“Should we look for the super?” my by-the-book friend asked.

I tried the doorknob. It didn’t surprise me that it wasn’t locked.

The black dog, Sammy, leaped at me, battering my knees with his paws and licking at my hands. Sixteen paces in we found Craig. He’d been shot at least five times. Once in the right eye and the rest in his chest. He hadn’t bled as much as Alonzo because death came quickly. He was lying on his side on a short sofa. I thought that he’d probably been moved because his back pocket was turned out, likely to get at his wallet.

Sammy started whimpering. I suppose the fact that his master didn’t engage us proved to the creature that he was abandoned once again.

I lifted Sammy in my arms while Christmas swiveled his head, studying the room, exercising his expert scouting skills.

“What you need, Easy?”

“Not this,” I said.

23

23

I don’t remember what, if anything else, Christmas and I said. Craig Kilian was dead; had been that way for a while. There was a white phone on a tall side table against the far wall. I dialed Anatole McCourt’s number and he answered. Within fifteen minutes the same number of men were swarming throughout the four-room apartment.

There was a Detective Nelson who wore a cinnamon-and-black checkered jacket, pale green trousers, and rose-colored sunglasses. He had a partner who I think was a sergeant but I don’t recall the name. He wore a sports jacket that was light blue. Ten of the rest were in uniform and there were a couple of paramedics too, all of them male and some shade of so-called white.

Before Anatole arrived the gendarmes’ attitudes were unpleasant.

“What were you doing in this neighborhood?” Nelson asked me.

“Waiting for you.”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Detective, we’re the ones that called Lieutenant McCourt.”

“And how would you know to call him?”

“I’m a PI. I work for the LAPD now and again.”

Sergeant Whatshisname was interrogating Christmas. I didn’t hear what he asked, but my friend never uttered more than a short burst of three or four words to answer.