I shook my head. Dana pushed my cup gently down on the saucer and filled it again. It was time we left. I pointed to the wicker table and the draped figurine. “I didn’t know you were hoodoo.”

She raised her eyebrows again. “Sugar, we’re all hoodoo, aren’t we? Or whatever works.”

“What makes you think it works?”

“That it does, I suppose. I mean, you turn the fire on under the pot and it boils, doesn’t it?”

“Does it? What are you asking for?”

She smiled. “None of your damn business.”

This time she didn’t refill my teacup.

There was a car in front of the building when we got there: long as the course of history, black as a killer’s thoughts, and damnably familiar. “Wait,” I said, reaching for Dana’s arm. I missed it.

“They’re here. That’s the car.”

I watched her cross the street to the front door, and followed slowly after. Someone who’d been looking for Mick Skinner was about to find him. Or maybe Mick Skinner had successfully avoided someone he didn’t want to see. It all depended on your point of reference. Mine, I decided with a sinking feeling, was too close to the action. But there wasn’t much I could do now.

Two figures commanded the ruined grandeur of the lobby. One was a teak-brown man, nearly seven feet tall, carved with muscle and shining bald. He wore narrow trousers and a sleeveless double-breasted tunic with silver buttons; tunic and pants were black, and suggested a uniform without insisting on it. He had a baroque pearl hanging from his right earlobe. His arms hung loose at his sides, his hands open; he looked as if he was thinking about matters several miles away. On the floor at his feet was a leather case with a handle, like an old salesman’s catalog case.

The woman next to him seemed small only in contrast. She had to be the owner of the car — she belonged in something that long, that black, that silent. She was black herself; I’d never seen skin so dark. She wore a long dress, almost to her ankles, of dull dark blue chiffon over a dark blue slip. Her hair was hidden under a sheenless black scarf wrapped close around her head. Her long, angular face was interrupted by sunglasses with dark lenses and matte-black frames. Even her lipstick was black, and didn’t shine. I was afraid to look at her fingernails.

“Cherie,” she said to Dana with regal near-warmth. Her voice was low and hoarse. Against all that darkness, Dana, in a hyacinth-blue dress, looked like a faded print.

“Bonjour, Mattresse,” said Dana, in a startling schoolgirl voice. I glanced at her face and found an expression there to match. “This is Sparrow, who… has the problem.”

I was about to say something snappy — mostly to banish the urge to bob or tug my forelock — when I realized that the black woman had gone very still. I couldn’t tell what held her attention because of the sunglasses. I shot a look over my shoulder.