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grunted and we walked up a path of flagstones with dewy grass grown up all around them to the front door of a house on the Hamtramck side, kitty-cornered from the one he had pointed out. This one was a square frame affair with white tile siding that looked blue in the light of a porch fixture fashioned after a carriage lamp. A recent addition on the left did nothing to relieve the boxy look of the turn-of-the-century construction. Mayk pushed the bell. The ratchety ringing sheared a hole through the stitching noises crickets made in the yard, but after a pause they started in again.
    A face came to the diamond-shaped window in the door, then vanished before I could fix on the features. The door came open and a small man in a sleeveless undershirt and workpants with knobby muscles in his skinny arms pointed a small automatic pistol at our feet.
    “Yes?”
    The word hung in the air between us like an angry bee. Mayk said, “Mr. Stanislaus?”
    “Yes?”
    No change in inflection. Mayk said, “I’m Howard Mayk, a former detective sergeant with the Hamtramck police, and this is Amos Walker, a Detroit investigator. We’d like to talk to you about the shooting that took place here nineteen years ago.”
    “I don’t know nothing about that.”
    “I believe you. Mr. Walker —”
    “You wouldn’t believe the burnouts I boot out of here a couple times a year, wanting to get their pictures taken in front of a murder house, tromp all over the wife’s roses and spoil my new grass.”
    “We don’t want to do anything like that. Mr. Walker just wants a look inside if it’s all right. Just to see where it happened. It has to do with a case he’s working on.”
    Stanislaus thought that over. He was in his late thirties, with dark wiry hair arcing over his forehead but cropped very close at the temples so that his ears seemed to stick out, small bright eyes like new nailheads on either side of a substantial nose, and a heavy dark moustache that turned up at the ends. The gun in his hand was a .25. Its bore was no bigger around than a pencil, but like the man said, no one really wants to get shot with anything. “You got ID?”
    “Thought you’d ask.” Mayk produced a worn leather folder from his hip pocket with his picture on a card behind a window and RETIRED stamped diagonally across the card in purple ink. There was a place on the other half of the folder where a badge should be. I flashed my photostat and the honorary sheriff’s star. Stanislaus’ little eyes spent a lot of time on each item. Then he stepped back and lowered the automatic until the barrel was in line with the seam of his trousers.
    “Sorry,” he said, as we stepped inside. “There’s been a lot of vandalism around here lately.”
    “So I heard.” Mayk closed the door behind and pointed at the pistol. “I hope that’s registered.”
    “It’s one of about three in this city that are.” He set the weapon down on a table near the door. “At least we got some police protection on this side of the line. Punks set fire to a place across the street last week and the cops and fire department was a half hour getting there. They rode the family over to the Perpetual Mission on account of they didn’t have a house no more. Sometimes they don’t show up at all. You hear the police commissioner on TV the other day when the reporters pumped him about that?” He looked at me.
    “He said it was the homeowners’ fault for not vacating when they were told.”
    “Bullshit. Their time ain’t up yet.”
    “How long you got?” Mayk asked.
    “Till the end of the month. We’re moving in with my wife’s folks till I find a place near work. Know what the city’s paying me for this place? Fifteen thousand. It’s worth forty. I paid twenty-two for it twelve years ago. It’s worse in Detroit. Those people won’t be able to buy a trailer for what they’re getting.”
    Mayk said, “Government’s required to offer full market value.”
    “The assessors