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“You start to feel like a glass bowling pin, hoping the ball don’t roll down on you.”

Oliya was better than a good friend. She saw the world in much the same way that I did. She was willing to take a chance and to stand up to anyone.

“What do you need from me?” she asked.

“Nothing just yet. Anything for you?”

“Not right now. Talk to ya later, boss.”

I didn’t really like being called boss, but somehow I knew it had less to do with me than it did with Olo structuring the world in her mind.

Oliya was right to change her address, and I knew that it would be wise for me to take the same steps. Between Antonucci, Lamming, and Rouche I felt like a white pincushion with a dozen red laser dots all over me.

Over the years I had created a few false identities for myself. One of these was Tristan La Deux.

Tristan was from Louisiana originally but had been raised in Brooklyn. He had a New York driver’s license, three credit cards, and an exemplary credit rating. He was a commercial plumbing salesman and had once been married to a woman named Hilda Cork.

Tristan arranged for an Airbnb cottage situated two blocks from the ocean on Venice Beach. I moved in the next morning. It was a dowdy place, with mosaics made from seashells that were pretending to be paintings hung on all the walls. The subjects of the paintings were the Virgin, Fritz the Cat, an interesting landscape, and two lovers sliding over each other on an abalone-shell bed.

Olo had told me that she was staying at an unregistered hotel in the barrio that knew her quite well. She always surprised me.

28.

THE PHONE SOUNDED in my shirt pocket at eleven twenty-one the next morning. I had climbed up to the crow’s-nest-like turret that was situated above the second-floor bedroom of my beach cottage. From there I could see the sunbathers, surfers, beachcombers, meth heads, and homeless wanderers who populated Venice Beach.

I reached for the phone after the third ring. “Hello.”

“You awake, baby?” Leaf asked, with a voice as fragile and quavery as her namesake.

“What’s wrong?”

“Luwanda passed.”

“What? Uh, I mean, when?”

“Four—four minutes ago.”

She wasn’t crying and I was no longer plotting. It was as if everything had just stopped. No motors, electric hums, or children crying and laughing. There was no more music being played. Nothing moved. Nothing transpired—nothing, at least, in my periphery.

“What happened?” I asked in an attempt to start the world moving again.

“When they finished the operation—”

“The laser thing?” I said.

“Uh-uh. That went okay. But after a few days she had this pain, and they did a X-ray and decided that they had to cut her open… It was like her life escaped right out the wound, that’s what Mercedes told me.”

“Who’s Mercedes?”

Ignoring or maybe not hearing the question, Leaf continued, “It was this big, bright red growth that come up outta nowhere. Mercedes said that it was like the devil hisself comin’ outta there, takin’ Luwanda with him.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” I said softly. “I only met her once, but she was such a strong woman, you couldn’t imagine anything bringin’ her down.”

After a painful beat, Leaf said, “Mercedes is what they call a nurse-anesthetist for Dr. Klieg. She was there for every operation, and at the meetin’s before ’em too. Mercedes, me, and Mom—I mean Luwanda—would sit and talk a little while before any time the doctors did anything.”

“What can I do for you, baby?” I asked.

“Um. You could tell me sumpin’.”