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“You know all about it, I see.”

“All right, Woody, don’t blow your top over this. I only meant that . . . that lots of people are into smoking marijuana. Respectable people. Wilton probably gave away as much as he sold. I mean, it’s not the same as heroin. I mean, there are some places where it isn’t even illegal.”

No way to back out now. Oh, what a pile of shit I had stepped into. I might just as well have come out and said I smoke dope on a regular basis.

“You see what I’m talking about, Cass? You didn’t know this fella near as well as you thought you did. Just like you didn’t know the white girl he lived with had been with that boy who’s missing.”

“I see Jack Klaus has been bending your ear.”

“Yes. Isn’t that what you want? Somebody on the inside who can tell us the straight story?”

“Straight? You think he’s giving me the straight anything? I don’t trust him, Woody.”

“That’s too bad. Because you need him.”

“I don’t know if that’s the kind of help I need.”

“Well, I do. If you think you’ll get anywhere without him, you’re crazy. It’s only because of Jack that the homicide man didn’t pull you in for being uncooperative. This Norris fella thinks maybe you haven’t told him everything you could.”

To put it mildly.

I sat tight. Norris was going to have calico kittens when he got to the apartment and heard the third-hand account of the break-in and assault on me. Most likely he was looking for me now. Cliff was the only one I’d told where I was going. I knew he wouldn’t fink on me.

Uncle Woody wasn’t going to be thrilled that I was holding back that information from him, too. I’d tell him about the break-in, but in my own good time. If I spilled it now, he’d stop at nothing to get me out of the commune and back to Hyde Park.

“All right, Woody. Klaus or no Klaus, everybody seems to be looking for a way to blame Wilton for what happened to him and Mia. Which is insane. I don’t care if he was Al Capone. That doesn’t make it okay for somebody to murder him. Or do you think that’s a childish notion, too?”

“No” was what he said. Why can’t you be eleven years old again? was what I saw in his face.

“Let’s back up here for a minute, Cass. There’s something we didn’t finish talking about.”

“Dope, you mean. Look, Woody—”

“No. Not that. I asked you about his friends outside of your roommates.”

“Honest, I didn’t know about his old friends. Except somebody named Alvin.”

“All right. Who was this fella Alvin?”

“I couldn’t say. Wilt used to talk about him when he was kind of putting himself down. Almost like he idolized him. ‘Alvin was tough.’ ‘Alvin was a real black man.’ ‘Alvin knew what was really going on in this country.’ Things like that.”

“But you never met the boy?”

“No.”

“So this Alvin is a tough young nigger who knows everything, huh? Sounds like he could have been showing your friend the ropes in the dope trade.”

“Stop making things up. The guy isn’t a pusher. He was in Vietnam.”

“So maybe he’s not caught up in drugs. But he still could be one of them.”

Them. I knew what that meant. “God, Woody. Don’t go off on one of your raps about the black nationalists. Please.”

He looked at me grimly. But he didn’t say any more. Maybe he was following Ivy’s old advice to me: When you feel like you’re losing your temper, take some deep breaths and don’t say a word until you calm down. “No last name on Alvin?” he said evenly.

“I don’t think Wilt mentioned it. He might have, but I’ve forgotten it.”

“Okay, young woman.” He started to clear the table. “You realize, don’t you,” he said, “you’ve got a duty to perform. It won’t be pleasant, but it’s the decent thing to do. If you felt like you say you did about Wilton Mobley.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You should pay a call on his people. When were you planning to do that?”

He was right. He was absolutely right. “I’ll do it now.”

“The boy was angry at his father, you said.”

“The other way around. They were angry at him. They were trying to make him go back