“You got no call to break in here and attack me. I oughtta call the cops.”

“Do, Mrs. Polter. Be my guest. There’s nothing I’d like better than for you and me to talk to the cops. In fact, I’m kind of expecting one of them to call you. You hear from a Detective Finchley over at Area One?”

“He the nigger cop? Yeah, he was by. I got nothing to say to any of ’em.”

“Niggers or cops?” I tried to get the words out lightly, but a picture of Conrad Rawlings’s copper torso against my own flashed through my head and made me choke. I tried to push my anger back—she wouldn’t share information more readily for a lecture on the evils of racism.

“Either of ’em. I told him he wants to talk to me he oughtta get himself a search warrant. I know my rights, I says to him, and he can’t come pushing me around.”

“So which is it? You don’t want to call the local station to complain about my being here? Or you want me to get Finchley back here with a warrant?” My teeth were starting to chatter from cold. This made it harder to focus on the conversation, which didn’t seem to be going anywhere anyway.

With one of her abrupt turnarounds Mrs. Polter said, “Why don’t you go upstairs and change, honey. You got something dry up there you can put on. Then you and me can have a bit of a talk. Without dragging the cops into it.”

I was still holding the fire extinguisher. Before going into the dark stairwell I handed it to her. I didn’t think she was going to attack me at this point.

Under the forty-watt bulb in Mitch’s old room I took off my wet clothes and rubbed myself warm with a towel out of my suitcase. From the disarray in the case it was apparent my landlady had indeed gone rummaging.

I pulled on the clean T-shirt and sweatpants and wondered what to do with my gun. The jacket that had concealed my shoulder holster was too wet to put back on. In the end I strapped the gun next to my bare skin, where it rubbed uncomfortably.

The floor creaked outside my door. I whirled and opened it. One of my fellow boarders had been drooling at me through the keyhole.

“Yes, I’ve got breasts. Now you’ve had a chance to look at them, go someplace else and play.”

He blinked at me nervously and scuttled backward up the hall. I shut the door, but didn’t bother to try to block the view—what I really didn’t want people staring at was the gun, but it was too late now to try to hide that.