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him.
    He opened the door to Wilt and Mia’s room with a gloved hand. “This where they slept?” he demanded.
    “You never even showed your badge,” I said.
    “What?”
    “This isn’t the crime scene. This is a private home. You’re supposed to show ID when you’re in a person’s home—not to mention a little respect.”
    He stared at me for a moment, as if he was thinking about backslapping me. “My name is Norris. James Norris. Happy now?”
    I didn’t answer.
    “How do you know the victim?”
    “Which one? There’re two victims.”
    “The girl.”
    “I met her this summer. Mia was a nice person. I mean, a good person.”
    He grunted. “And him? Who was he to you?”
    “My friend.”
    “You sleeping with him?”
    “No. He was with Mia.”
    “So what? Everybody sleeps with everybody. Isn’t that the idea? Free love.”
    Mia and I had been arrested a couple of months before at a housing rally. We were thrown in the women’s lockup at Cook County Jail until Nat raised bail money. Most of our companions in the cell were prostitutes. According to them, the Chicago cops were no strangers to free love. I didn’t point that out to Norris, though. I just said, quietly, “Wilton was my friend.”
    “You jealous?”
    “What did you say?”
    “You saying you weren’t jealous? He was putting it to the white girl, wasn’t he? Stud like him. He had a regular harem in here. But he wasn’t putting it to you. You mean to say that didn’t make you mad?”
    “Somebody killed my friends. I’m pretty mad about that.”
    “Yeah, you’re jealous all right. Why don’t you tell me what happened?” He flipped out his notepad then, suddenly, brandishing it like a saber.
    “I can account for every minute of my time since one o’clock yesterday.”
    “Save it. The other colored girl—was she having sex with him?”
    “Wow. You’re unbelievable. I thought they made you take some sort of intelligence test before they promoted you to detective.”
    He came close to laying hands on me at that. But he didn’t. He ordered me out of the room.
    The crowd of cops and technicians pushed us farther and farther away from the center of the apartment. Cliff and Taylor were flanking Clea, who was shaking.
    There was some kind of stir about where Norris was going to set up an interrogation room. He settled on the sunporch where Taylor and Barry Mayhew slept.
    “Fuck,” Taylor muttered.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “Barry stashes in there. What if they go snooping in his stuff?”
    “Don’t they have to have a warrant to do that?” Cliff asked.
    “Yeah, Cliff,” Taylor said. “They care a lot about that kind of thing.”
    Jesus. That was all we needed. Getting busted on the same day two friends get slaughtered.
    “Barry’s probably going to walk in here any minute,” I said. “No telling what he’ll do.”
    Taylor answered, “He’ll rat us out in about two seconds, probably tell them the dope is mine.”
    One by one, Norris called us in. When Cliff came out of the room, he looked all caved in, on the verge of tears.
    I looked away from him, willing myself to keep it together.
    The cops had been in the apartment for hours. It was dark now, but when I glanced out of the window, blinding lights were shining up at me. The local news station had sent a van and equipment. The sidewalk below was alive with people. Reporters, neighbors, onlookers, medics, uniformed police.
    “Oh, God, Cliff. Jordan’s down there. Look.”
    “He must be scared out of his mind. I’m going down to get him.”
    He didn’t, though. The cops wouldn’t let him leave. Cliff stalked the living room like a crazed horse. He must have been thinking, as I was, that those junkie skanks who called themselves Jordan’s parents had no business letting him roam around at night. I wished they would both overdose and let Cliff raise him.
    The cops were allowing Clea to go home. As she pulled into her coat, she could barely look at me.
    “You