“What can I do for you, Tina?”

She coughed into her fist. “If I give you a name, you’ve got to promise you didn’t hear it from me.”

I hadn’t taken Tina Dillon for a potential ally, the way she’d sneered at me inside Grambo’s living room.

“Do you mean the man who found the life vest?”

“You’re not going to find the guy from his fucking aura.”

“Who is he?”

“Promise first.”

“All right.”

“His name is Vic Bazinet. He lives down at number two. He drives one of those septic trucks. If he’s home, you can’t miss it. Otherwise look for a blue Corolla. It belongs to his cunt daughter, Felice.”

I had never appreciated that word used for a woman but wasn’t about to lecture her on profanity.

“Bibi told me she had a friend named Felice,” I said.

“A friend! That’s one way to put it.” She scissored the fingers of both her hands together. “You understand what I’m saying? Felice lives with her dad and her two brats, Levi and Noah.”

I recognized the name of Levi. He had been the rude boy playing with Tina’s daughter, Treasure.

“No offense, Tina, but you don’t strike me as the neighborhood watch type. Why are you telling me this?”

Laughter brought on another coughing fit. “Felice took my man,” she said, hoarsely. “It sounds like a cheesy country song, don’t it? Anyway, he’s not in the picture anymore.”

“I thought you said—”

“That girl swings every which way. Jamal turned her lez again, is my guess.”

“You’re referring to the man Felice ‘stole’ from you?”

“Jamal Marquess.”

“He’s dead?”

She widened her tired eyes. “How the hell did you guess that?”

“You said this Jamal was out of the picture. You said that dog, Waffles, used to belong to someone who died. What happened to Mr. Marquess?”

She shook a Kool out of the pack. She brought up a lighter, sparked a flame, and took a long drag on the cigarette so that the end sizzled. Her gaze remained focused on mine the entire time. The calculation was plain for me to see.

“Jamal fell asleep with a bottle of Bombay gin and a blunt,” she said, exhaling smoke. “He managed to light his carpet on fire, but he was too drunk to wake up. Waffles got out somehow. Now that dog sort of belongs to everyone—we feed him scraps. But sooner or later, someone’s going to run over the little shit, probably on purpose. It might even be me.”

The pitiless way she told the story made me question the accidental nature of Jamal’s tragic end. I was under the impression that Tina Dillon had no problem with me jumping to a more nefarious conclusion. She enjoyed arousing my suspicions, in fact.