“Not that angry.” Arlington checked his watch again. “I gotta go.”

Marge lowered her voice until it was at a silken pitch. “Yeah, you can go, Darnell. We can’t stop you. But this has haunted you for fifteen years. And I’ll guarantee you that it’s going to keep haunting you until you get it off your chest.”

“Nothin’ on my chest.”

“You have two little girls, Darnell. Could you imagine your girls growing up without their daddy? What do you think happened to Ben’s little boys? Don’t they have a right to know?”

“I wasn’t there!”

“I know you weren’t there. You were right here in Ohio playing basketball. And you can keep on insisting that you don’t know anything about it. Maybe I’ll even believe you. But you can’t lie to your conscience.”

No one spoke. Darnell continued to look out the window, at his boys going through their workout. Suddenly his eyes moistened. “Leroy Josephson…he called me about six months after Dr. Ben died. I hadn’t heard from him since I left L.A. so his call was unexpected. Nana wasn’t home and I answered the phone.” His face began to unfurl. “I shoulda hung up. I knew he was bad news. Leroy was always gettin’ himself into one kind of fix or another…but Leroy was Leroy and we had a history.” Arlington flinched. “You must know some friends like that—all take but no give. You like the dudes, but deep down you know that they’re bums.”

“I know about twenty guys like that,” Oliver said. “In fact, some people might say I’m that kind of friend.”

Arlington raised his eyebrows. “So Leroy’s on the phone, and suddenly I’m back in L.A. and I’m all ghetto. Yo, bro, whaddup…shit like that. Leroy’s crowing about some recording deal that he got for A-Tack…Jervis Wenderhole.”

“I know Jervis is A-Tack, and I know he cut a CD for Primo Ekerling.”

“Yeah, exactly. Leroy’s goin’ on that Jervis cut a CD and is gonna be a big pimp and Leroy was gonna be Jervis’s manager and they already got gigs opening for bigger pimps and shit like that. And that I should get my ass over to L.A. and Leroy would make me a pimp and that if I didn’t have no money to come out, Leroy would give me some because he was flush.”

“Did he say how he earned the money?”

“Nah, he didn’t say. I assumed he scored big on some B and E.”

“Not drugs?”