“I knowed it was him. He ate in our kitchen for mebbe two months.”

“Did he ever talk to anyone?”

“Now, how would I know that? He never talked to me. Just ate his food and crawled back under the cracks. That’s where all these people are from, Miss Cop. The cracks.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“Into another crack.”

“Any other shelters around here?”

“I thought you said you had a list.”

I pulled the slip of paper out of my purse and showed it to her, pointing to a specific address about five miles away. “This was going to be my next stop.”

She shrugged. “It’s as good as anything I can help you with.” She stood up again. “I got business. You can let yourselves out.”

As she walked back to the kitchen, I saw her shaking her head. I took Koby’s hand and laced his stiff fingers with mine. “C’mon, big boy. Let’s get out of here.”

He didn’t answer me, and that was always a bad sign. Something ugly was brewing inside his brain, and if it was going to erupt, I felt we should be in a safe environment. I pulled him back to the car—still there and still intact.

“Uh, you have the keys,” I told him.

He reached into his pocket and unlocked the doors. We got in and his autopilot took over, turning on the motor, pulling out of the space, finding the freeway on-ramp. I gave him directions to the next shelter. He barely seemed to process the information.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he had “dark moods.” I’d gone through this before, and as requested, I had left him alone and let him work them away. But today we were together and neither of us had an escape valve.

I said, “It’s over, Koby. Let’s move on—”

“Pigs!” he spat out.

“That’s why none of them are worth a second thought.”

“They call me a nigger?” He pointed to himself. “I am black. They are niggers!”

I blew out air. “I know it’s okay for you to use the N-word, but please don’t. We whites have a problem with it.”

“It is what they are! Ignorant swine!”

“At least, Cerise was helpful.”

“If she’d been white, you would have called her a bitch!”

“I’m trying to be charitable.”

“Your knee-jerk liberal roots are showing,” he growled out.

“Okay. She was a bitch! And the two boys were punks. But punks come in all colors.”

“But it has to be my own people to hurl such insults.”

“Not at all. Look, Koby, we’re spoiled. We hang out in Hollywood, where anything goes. I mean, just yesterday night when we went to the Twenty-four/seven café at two in the morning, at one table there was that bull dyke pouring her heart out to a drag queen. Then there was that Asian girl with blue hair talking to her leather-clad, pincushion white boyfriend with around a zillion pierces. Then there was that Chasidic guy doing a deal with that porno producer—”