Clement stooped down to get the guy’s billfold, holding the guy’s coat open with the tips of two fingers. There were three one-hundred-dollar bills and two twenties inside, credit cards, a couple of checks, ticket stubs from the track and a thin little 2 by 3 spiral notebook. Clement took the money and notebook. He leaned into the Continental again, bracing his forearm against the steering wheel, pulled the keys from the ignition and said to the girl giving him the dazed look, “Come on. Show me where your boyfriend lives.”

They drove over Eight Mile to Woodward and turned south, Clement glancing at the girl sitting rigidly against the door as he gave her a little free advice.

“You take up with colored you become one of them. Don’t you know that? Whether it’s a white girl with a jig or a white guy with a colored girl, you’re with them, you go to their places. You don’t see the white guy taking the little colored chickie home or the white girl neither. He ever come to your place?”

The girl didn’t answer, one hand on her purse, the other still holding onto her gold chains. Hell, he didn’t want her chains, even if they were real. You start fooling around trying to fence shit like that…

“I asked you a question. He ever come to your place?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, that’s unusual. What was he in, numbers, dope? He’s too old to be a pimp. He looked like a pimp, though. You know it? I can’t say much for your taste, Jesus, a guy like that-Where you from? You live in Detroit all your life?”

She said yes, not sounding too sure about it. Then asked him, “What’re you gonna do to me?”

“I ain’t gonna do nothing you show me where the man lives. He married?”

“No.”

“But he lives in Palmer Woods? Those’re big houses.”

Clement waited. It was like talking to a child.