“Booze to lower inhibitions, young sexy girls parading in and out. It’s a lovely combination.”

* * *

We drove to Reynold Peaty’s place on Guthrie Avenue, clocking the route from the dump site along the way. In moderate traffic, only a seven-minute traverse of Beverlywood’s impeccable, tree-lined streets. After dark, even shorter.

On the first block east of Roberston the neighborhood was apartments and the maintenance was sketchier. Peaty’s second-floor unit was one of ten in an ash-colored two-story box. The live-in manager was a woman in her seventies named Ertha Stadlbraun. Tall, thin, angular, with skin the color of bittersweet chocolate and marcelled gray hair, she said, “The crazy white fellow.”

She invited us into her ground-floor flat for tea and sat us on a lemon-colored, pressed-velvet, camelback couch. The living room was compulsively ordered, with olive carpeting, ceramic lamps, bric-a-brac on open shelves. A suite of what used to be called Mediterranean furniture crowded the space. An airbrushed portrait of Martin Luther King dominated the wall over the couch, flanked by school photos of a dozen or so smiling children.

Ertha Stadlbraun had come to the door wearing a housecoat. Excusing herself, she disappeared into a bedroom and came back wearing a blue shift patterned with clocks, matching pumps with chunky heels. Her cologne evoked the cosmetics counter at some midsized department store from my Midwest childhood. What my mother used to call “toilet water.”

“Thanks for the tea, ma’am,” said Milo.

“Hot enough, gentlemen?”

“Perfect,” said Milo, sipping orange pekoe to demonstrate. He eyed the school pictures. “Grandchildren?”

“Grandchildren and godchildren,” said Ertha Stadlbraun. “And two neighbor children I raised after their mother died young. Sure you don’t want sugar? Or fruit or cookies?”

“No, thanks, Mrs. Stadlbraun. Nice of you.”

“What is?”

“Taking in a neighbor’s kids.”

Ertha Stadlbraun waved away the praise and reached for the sugar bowl. “My glucose level, I shouldn’t do this, but I’m going to, anyway.” Two heaping teaspoons of white powder snowed into her cup. “So what is it you want to know about the crazy fellow?”

“How crazy is he, ma’am?”

Stadlbraun sat back, smoothed the shift over her knees. “Let me explain why I pointed out he was white. It’s not because I resent him for that. It’s because he’s the only white person here.”

“Is that unusual?” said Milo.

“Are you familiar with this neighborhood?”

Milo nodded.

Ertha Stadlbraun said, “Then you know. Some of the single houses are going white again but the rentals are Mexican. Once in a while you get a hippie type with no credit rating wanting to rent. Mostly we’ve got the Mexicans coming in. Waves of them. Our building is me and Mrs. Lowery and Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, who’re really old, on the black side. The rest are Mexican. Except for him.”

“Does that pose problems?”