“But you don’t know everything. You don’t know shit.”
“Whatever you say, Miles.”
“How would you like to have a real bookstore?” he asked me. “New books on finished oak shelves with a real cash register, not just some cigar box with the lid ripped off?”
“Sure.” My pulse quickened in spite of common sense.
“Winifred L. Fine can do that for you. She can take a hole in the wall like you got and make it into a co- orporation.”
“What you sayin’, Milo?”
“Like I said—Miss Fine asked me to find Bartholomew.”
“He jump bail or sumpin’?”
“No.”
“Then how did Miss Fine get to your door?”
“You might not know it, but I got a reputation for finding people, Paris. Most the times it’s bail jumpers, but I do other kinds of searches too. I can be discreet.”
“Discreet about what?”
“Miss Fine needs to have a private talk with her nephew. I didn’t ask her why.”
“So you agreed to find a man for somebody and you don’t even know what for?”
“She wants to talk to him. That’s all I need to know.”
“And what’s she gonna pay you for that?” I asked.
“This ain’t about no fee,” Milo said. He shrugged just as if he had already made it rich. “This is gettin’ in good with the richest black woman in Los Angeles, maybe even the whole country. A man could become a millionaire behind a woman like that.”
“Listen, Milo. A missin’ nephew ain’t no million dollars unless there’s somethin’ serious goin’ on.”
“There isn’t,” he said.
I sat back in my spindly chair. The joints creaked and the backrest sagged, but I started to get the feeling that that little chair would hold up under a man Milo’s size, or bigger.
What I had to figure was how much to tell Milo. How much could I trust him?
We were friends—after a fashion. I had done some work for his bail bonds business when men awaiting trial went on the run. Usually I’d just find out where they were hiding and tell Milo. Nothing dangerous.
We played chess now and then and had political and philosophical debates. But we didn’t share the life-and- death kind of friendship that Fearless and I had.
“What does BB have to do with Kit Mitchell?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Milo said. “I hired Timmerman to find BB and he came up with Kit and BB hangin’ out together a few months ago. I think they were doin’ some kinda business.”
“What kind of business?”
Milo pursed his lips and rubbed his thumbs and forefingers together.
“BB might’a crossed the line a li’l bit, but that don’t have nuthin’ to do with Miss Fine and why she wants to talk to him,” the bail bondsman said.
“What kind of business?” I asked again.
“Kit needed some trucks for his melon business and BB knew how to get ’em on the cheap.”
“Hot?”
“There ain’t no proof of that one way or t’other,” the lawyer turned skip chaser said.
“Is that why the police are lookin’ for Kit?” I asked.
Milo shrugged. “Kit’s a businessman and black. You know all businessmen cross the line now and then. But when a black one do it the cops on him like white on rice.”
What Milo said was true but it didn’t explain the dead man nicknamed after a Greek demigod.
“You know a woman named Leora?”
“Never heard of her.”
“She has a young boy-child named Son. Says she’s Kit’s wife.”
“I don’t have any personal information on Mr. Mitchell. He could have five wives as far as I know, and two heads for all I care.”
As Milo sat back in the red leather I wondered if he knew anything more. I couldn’t ask him about Wexler because I shouldn’t have known anything about a murdered man. As far as I knew, Lance Wexler was still decomposing in secret, his foot holding open the door.
“Where does this Winifred L. Fine live?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you?” Milo said.
“All I can say is that you have to trust me. Fearless might be in some trouble around Kit and I agreed to help
