I said, “You know any of his other ladies?”

“Just to see. You know, out on the street, walkin’ around. We’d be on the corner, we’d talk about him.” She brushed at her mouth, past the big scar. “It’s pretty easy to tell who he been with.”

“You know who he’s with, now?”

Her eyes flashed hot. “How I know that? You think we stay in touch? You think Mr. Charlie send me love letters?”

“It’s important, Sarah. Could you find out?”

She crossed her arms again and stared at me, maybe thinking she’d had enough of this, but then maybe thinking she’d come this far. She uncrossed the arms and went behind the little counter and used the phone. While she spoke, the older woman sneaked glances at me between a spray of lilacs.

Sarah Lewis put down the phone, then came back and said, “He seeing some gal named Gloria Uribe. She lives over on 136th, up above a bar called Clyde’s.”

“Thanks, Sarah. I appreciate the help.”

“Won’t do no good, you talkin’ with her, though. She’ll be too scared to say anything, even if she knows more than me. Any girl with Charlie is that way.” Sarah brushed at the lip again, as if it itched. It was a bad scar, the kind that comes from a deep cut. When Charlie hit her, he had hit her hard, and probably more than once.

I went to the door.

“You really think you gonna find a way to put the hurt on Charlie DeLuca?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

She squinted at me from the hurt eye, then made one of the nods to herself again and opened the door. “All right. You find a way to hurt him, you hurt him a little bit extra. You hurt him for Angelette Silver, you hear?”

The older woman had stopped pretending to work and was staring at me. I nodded at her, then looked back at Sarah Lewis.

“I was planning to.”

The older woman smiled and turned away, and I left.

Chapter Twenty-four

Twenty-four

Clyde’s was a knothole of a bar in the bottom of a four-story building that was mostly fire escapes and clotheslines. Three or four women in tiny red dresses and rabbit coats sat listlessly at the bar while a couple of guys in long coats leaned against a Pontiac out front laughing about something. One of the guys had a gap in his teeth like Mike Tyson.

I put the Taurus across the street in a bus stop, then walked back. The two guys kept laughing but watched me come. There were no more white guys up here than there were down on 122nd Street. If I were them, I’d probably watch me, too.

I went into a little open stairwell next to Clyde’s and found the apartment-house mailboxes. G. Uribe was on box 304.