Quintin shrugged again.
“Do you know her?”
“What her name?”
“Devona,” Erin said. “Devona Jefferson.”
“Ain’t down with the Silks,” Quintin said. “What they shoot her with?”
“A nine millimeter,” I said.
“Use a fresh pipe anyway,” Quintin said.
“You don’t know her?” I said.
“Hell, no,” Quintin said. “Anybody know her?” The other five all said no they didn’t know her. Erin said thank you and we got back in the car. We drove around in the rain talking with people for the rest of the day, not finding anything out.
CHAPTER 28
It was still raining the next morning when I checked in with Hawk at Double Deuce. There was no sign of life in the project. The rain made Hawk’s dark green Jaguar look black as it beaded and slid off the finish. I parked next to him and got out and Lyot in his car. Jackie was sitting in the front seat with him.
“We been renewed?” I said.
She smiled.
“Marge has forgiven you.”
“Thank God,” I said, “She finds me irrresistible?”
“We’d already hyped the thing too much informally. We didn’t want some columnist to question why we’d said we were going to do this feature and then backed off.”
“Almost like finding you irresistible,” Hawk said. “How ‘bout the detection?”
“I’m seeing a lot of the ghetto.”
Hawk nodded.
“Nobody has confessed,” I said.
“Only a matter of time,” Hawk said. “Nothing folks in the ghetto want to do more than to find some big honkie and confess to him. Been wanting to myself.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “It would take too long.”
“What are you detecting?” Jackie said.
“Who killed Devona and Crystal Jefferson.”
“Really?”
“Un huh.”
“Well, I mean I knew that was part of what you, we’re, ah, supposed to do. But, I mean what about the police?”
“Police have hung it up,” I said.
“And what about here?”
“You and Hawk have that covered,” I said.
“And we got Marge Eagen,” Hawk said, “for backup.”
“Can you move around in the black community?”
“I have a guide,” I said.
“And you think you can do what the police have given up on?”
“You bet,” I said.
“I don’t want to sound either naive or cynical, I don’t know which,” Jackie said, “but why?”
“Why do I think I can find him?”
“No, why are you willing to try?”
“Somebody ought to,” I said.
Jackie stared at me. The rain came down on the car roof in its pleasant way. The sound of rain on a car roof always made me feel comfortable.
“That’s it?” Jackie said.
“Yeah.”
“Why should somebody ought to?”
“Fourteen-year-old kid got murdered, and three-month-old kid got murdered, and as far as anyone can see they had nothing to do with it. That shouldn’t go unremarked.”
