Quentin opens the minibar, takes out a small bottle of bourbon, unscrews the top, and swallows half the contents. ” Hell,yeah,“ he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ”Doris would fry my ass if she saw that.“

”Why is Drew the worst kind of chump, Quentin?“

The lawyer walks to the plush sofa, ponders it for a moment, then turns and lets himself fall into it. ”Because that fool has decided he wants to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.“

”And that surprised you?“

”He’s a fucking Boy Scout!“

”An Eagle Scout, actually.“

Quentin drains the rest of the bourbon. ”Drew Elliott is a chump because he thinks the rules are different for him. Because he’s done the right thing for ninety-nine percent of his life, he thinks all he has to do now is get up on the stand to explain to everybody how it really was. And what I can not make that boy understand is that if he does that, he’s going to destroy himself. I mean, this guy has been lying to his wife every day for almost a year. He’s been fucking his babysitter! And now the girl is dead! Dead and pregnant! So why the hell should a jury believe anything he has to say now?“

”You’re preaching to the choir, Quentin.“

”There’s no way in hell I’m letting this guy get up and tell the jury he found Kate’s body and didn’t report it.“

”How can you stop him?“

”I can’t. But maybe you can.“

I don’t want to have this discussion right now. ”What about getting me into Brightside Manor?“

”What’s in there that’s so all-fired important?“

”A snitch who knows where Cyrus White is.“

Something tugs at the corner of Quentin’s mouth, something disagreeable. ”How about another bottle of bourbon?“

I go to the minibar and retrieve another bottle. Quentin sips slowly from it, his eyes still smoldering. ”I can get you in and out, all right. But if I do, every black man and woman in that complex is going to know I did it. And that’s going to cost me down the road. You understand? That may not be the noble thing to say, but it’s the truth.“

”What’s it going to cost you?“

”Cases. Business. Reputation.“

The question I left unasked on the day I met Quentin at my father’s office returns to haunt me now. Why did he stop taking civil rights cases to pursue personal injury and class action suits? But at this point, I feel the answer is self-evident.

”What the hell am I supposed to do?“

”I’m not saying I won’t do it. I’m just saying it would be better if you could find another way.“

”Such as?“

”Lure the guy you need out of there.“

”With what? He’s scared shitless.“

”Then find somebody else to get you in.“

”Such as?“

As Quentin ruminates over his whiskey, anger rises into my throat. Drew’s life is on the line, and his lawyer is worried about some personal injury case five years down the road? I get up without a word and walk to the door of the suite.

”Where are you going?“ Quentin asks.

”To do my job. You need to start thinking about whether you’ve got what it takes to do yours.“

”Hey, don’t-“

I slam the door and hurry down the hall.

The Brightside Manor Apartments stand like a visual reprimand to every liberal fantasy of government-subsidized housing. The dilapidated buildings look like sets built for a Blaxploitation flick from the seventies, like you could walk up and push them down with your foot. Thirteen big saltboxes grouped on the edge of St. Catherine’s Creek, all centered around a massive square of asphalt crowded with one of the strangest collections of motor transportation in the nation.

At least fifty people are sitting or standing within sight of me. The oldest ones sit on their stoops beneath dented metal awnings. The middle-aged stand in little knots, the men sharing bottles wrapped in paper sacks, the women holding babies. I don’t see any teenagers-it’s as though they’ve been drafted for some special war-but several toddlers walk unsupervised through the parking lot. Three of them are naked.

”How long has he been gone?“ asks my father.

Dad is referring to James Ervin, a retired black police officer he has treated since the 1960s, when he was the doctor for the Natchez police department. After Dad agreed to help me get into Brightside Manor, he recruited Ervin to make the initial foray into Jaderious Huntley’s building. Ervin graciously agreed, and also volunteered his beat-up pickup truck for the mission.

”Eleven minutes,“ I answer.

Dad clicks his tongue against his teeth. ”I don’t like it.“

”Let’s give it a little longer. Ervin sounded calm before he went in.“

Dad nods thoughtfully.

When I called him from the lobby of the Eola, he and my mother were only minutes from leaving for Jackson with Annie. He told me he’d visited Brightside Manor many times in the old days, which to him means the era when he made frequent house calls. Back then, he carried a spotlight and a pistol in his black medical bag. He rarely makes house calls these days, but he still has patients who live at Brightside Manor. He understood my anxiety about visiting the place uninvited, but he felt confident that with him along for the ride, we could do it. I was inclined to believe him. No white doctor in this town has treated more black patients than Tom Cage. More important, he’s treated them exactly as he treats his white patients, and the black community knows that.

Today could be the acid test of that goodwill.

Our plan was to send James Ervin up to Jaderious’s apartment to verify that the informant was inside. Then we would go up ourselves, pretending to make an emergency medical call at number 28. This subterfuge was primarily designed to protect us, not Jaderious; that it might also give the snitch some cover is incidental.

The ring of my cell phone makes us both jump in the seat.

”Hello?“ I say, putting my cell on speakerphone.

”Your boy’s up here,“ says James Ervin. ”He tried to rabbit. I’m holding a gun on him now.“

”Damn,“ says Dad. ”I didn’t know James took a gun up there.“

”Bring your black bag,“ Ervin says. ”He’s more likely to talk if we give him an out with Cyrus’s people.“

”We’re on our way,“ I promise.

Any hopes that we might make a covert approach to Jaderious’s building were dashed when we arrived. Our white faces began to draw attention as soon as James Ervin left the truck. A lot of people have pointed at our truck, but no one has yet confronted us. If we weren’t sitting in such a junky vehicle, they’d probably think we were cops. They may think that anyway.

Dad and I are both armed, but something tells me we should leave our guns behind. Dad doesn’t agree, so we compromise. I leave the Browning behind, but he brings his small Smith amp; Wesson.38-the ”Lady Smith“-in his bag. We cross the parking lot with purposeful strides, but not too fast. People sense fear the same way animals do. We’re just two guys with a job to do.

Two white guys.

I’m glad one of us is over seventy. The people milling around the buildings don’t know what to make of that.

Like most apartments in the South, the staircases at Brightside Manor are outside the buildings. We climb to the door that James Ervin entered fifteen minutes ago, give a perfunctory knock, and walk inside.

The stink of burnt grease and garbage hits me like a sucker punch. Jaderious Huntley is sitting on his hands in a wooden chair at the center of the front room. James Ervin stands eight feet away, a nickel-plated pistol in his hand. Sonny’s notes said Huntley is twenty-eight years old, but he looks forty. He’s wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, and his torso is so gaunt that I wonder if he’s eaten in weeks. His face is hollow, his eyes set deep in their sockets. If he’s a drug courier, he’s been using the product he carries for a long time.