After another quarter hour Craig was moved from the sofa to a gurney. They laid him out all stiff and dead. One of the paramedics whispered something in Nelson’s ear, causing the lead officer to look closely at the corpse and then at me.

Sammy the dog had curled up behind my ankles. He didn’t like all the commotion.

“You say you were here to make some kind of report?” Nelson asked me.

“Mr. Kilian hired me to find a woman that he only knew as Dee Dee,” I lied, for the third time. “I came here to tell him that he was wasting his money.”

“Have you ever been here before?” There was a gleam of anticipation in the detective’s eye.

“A couple of days ago.”

Gleam came to grin.

Nelson turned to a uniform and said, “Put some cuffs on this man.”

Dutifully the twenty-something officer pulled the cuffs from a holster on his belt. The young cop was my height and build.

He looked me in the eye and said, “Turn around.”

“Who’s in charge here?” a beautiful baritone brogue inquired.

Anatole McCourt was at least a head taller than any other man in ninety-nine percent of the rooms he entered. His skin was almost true white and his red hair was brighter and healthier than a human’s hair should be. His suit was the color green that an artist would assign to a primordial forest. The emerald of his eyes belonged to the deity whose duty it was to oversee that domain.

“Lieutenant,” Detective Nelson said as the uniform grabbed my right biceps and tried to twirl me around.

“What are you doing?” Anatole asked my would-be jailer.

The unnamed officer released me.

“I’m arresting him,” Nelson replied.

“Arresting him? This is the man who called in the death.”

“But he was here two days ago. The medic says that’s probably how long the victim’s been dead.”

“And that makes enough sense for you to arrest the man?” Anatole asked. “Did the attendant give you an exact time of death?”

Nelson had no reply. Most likely he had never been questioned about the arrest of a black man. He could have murdered him was excuse enough to put me in jail for months, if not ever.

“What were you doing here?” Anatole asked me point-blank.

“Mr. Kilian had hired me to find a woman named Dee Dee. He had a description and a place, the Dragon’s Eye. I looked but didn’t find anything. After that I followed up on some leads of my own but they didn’t work out. I came here to tell him that.”

“The Eye is where you heard about Alonzo Griggs.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a connection?”

“Not that I’m aware of, Lieutenant.”

Anatole stared sabers at me. He would have never treated me the way Detective Nelson would—but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to.