'I don't know,' Daryl said.
'Did you meet him?'
'Yes, but I don't know what his name was. I don't know anything about him. I hated him.'
'Can you describe him?'
'No.'
I nodded.
'When I was fifteen,' Paul said, 'my mother was bopping a guy named Stephen, with a ph. He was about six- one, slim, short hair, close-cropped beard, and mustache, always wore aviator glasses with pink lenses.'
'So you remember, and I don't,' Daryl said.
'I remember them all,' Paul said. 'Clearly.'
'Well, I don't,' Daryl said.
Neither of us said anything. Daryl looked out my window. The rain was just getting under way, a few spatters making isolated trickle paths down the pane.
'He was a black man,' she said.
I waited.
'Not too big. I think he was only a little taller than my mother. He had a big afro.'
'You remember his name?' I said.
She was quiet, watching the evolving rain through my window. Paul and I watched it, too. It was very dark outside.
'My mother called him Leon,' she said.
'Last name?' I said.
She shook her head.
'Just Leon,' she said. 'I assume it was his first name.'
I tried to get as much as I could while the faucet was on.
'Any gray in the afro?'
'No.'
'Beard?'
'Mustache,' she said. 'A big Fu Manchu thing.'
'You know what he did for a living?'
'No.'
'You ever hear from him after she died?'
'No.'
'You know where he is now?'
'No.'
'You know anything else about him?'
'No.'
'He treat you okay?'
'I didn't see much of him. My mother sort of kept him to herself.'
'He didn't mistreat you,' Paul said.
'No.'
The rain arrived like an explosion against the window, flooding the window pane. There was some lightning and commensurate thunder.
I said, 'After your mother died, you went to live with your father?'
'Yes.'
'How was that?'
She shrugged. 'He tried,' she said. 'But he wasn't much good at anything but rolling a joint. Mostly we were on welfare.'
'How'd you get to be an actress?' I said.
'I always wanted to. From as long back as I can remember. I don't know why. I got in the drama club in high school, and the drama club teacher helped me get into an apprentice program at the La Jolla Playhouse and. ' she spread her hands.
'So why are you so dead set on finding your mother's murderer?' I said.
'Well. I. she was my mother, for God's sake.'
