“Yes, oh yes. I drive the van on Sundays and collect our people who can’t walk to church anymore, so I bring Sister Ella and some of the other folks from Lionsgate. And I try to visit with Sister Claudia, but she’s so weak, I can’t tell if she even knows who I am some days, so strangers are hard on her.” Ms. Hebert was blocking the doorway to the house. Loud voices drifted down the dark hall.

I tried to peer behind her. “And your father? Is he strong enough that I can talk to him?”

“Oh. Yes, of course, that’s why you’re here … But my father, he isn’t easy … You mustn’t mind … He’s not always …” She kept murmuring flustered comments as she backed away from the door and let me into the house.

A table at the entrance was piled with papers. As I walked past, I saw church bulletins mixed with bills and magazines—sort of like my own entryway except for the bulletins. We followed the loud voices to the living room. They came from a television, where a minister was exhorting us to send him money for letting us know how very sinful we are. The light from the screen flickered on the bald head of a man in a wheelchair. He didn’t turn his head when we came in nor move when his daughter took the controls from his fingers and pressed the MUTE button.

“Daddy, this lady here is the one I told you about, the one Sister Ella and Sister Claudia sent. They want her to find Lamont.”

I knelt next to the chair and put my hand next to his on the armrest. “I’m V. I. Warshawski, Pastor Hebert. I’m trying to find people who knew Lamont, people who might know what happened to him.”

A thread of saliva dribbled from the side of his mouth. “ Lamont. Trouble.”

“He means Lamont was a troubled young man,” Rose said softly.

“Made.” The pastor mouthed the word with difficulty.

“Daddy, he didn’t make trouble,” Rose cried. “He had good reason to be angry, when you think of the terrible injustices we suffer.”

Pastor Hebert tried to speak but only produced a kind of gargling. Finally he choked out the word, “Snake.”

“Snake?” I repeated doubtfully, wondering if he meant Lamont was a snake in the grass.

“He didn’t belong to the Anacondas, Daddy! He helped them protect Dr. King!”

Father and daughter had clearly had this argument many times. His face didn’t move, but her lips were trembling, as if she were six, not sixty, and finding it hard to stand up to an unyielding parent.