The kitchen opened to the dining room. There were pans and dishes in the sink and cut flowers on the counter and big boxes of kids’ cereal and a jar of instant coffee under the cupboards. A pile of newspapers by a red trash can. A stainless steel bowl of dry cat food and a matching one of water. Hood saw that things were messy but not dirty.

Strummer was using a blue pen to poke around in a big red glass ashtray on the counter by the flowers.

Fernandez was looking down into a big fake-snakeskin purse that sat slumped and open on the dining room table. He pulled a hardpack of Kools from the purse, tilted open the top and looked inside as he shook it. “We heard some boys broke in one block over, on Shady Lane, and ripped off a big-screen and put this dog-”

“You heard bullshit, mister.”

“Good weed isn’t cheap,” announced Strummer. “Maybe these boys-whoever they were-broke in, looking for some money to buy more of this.”

He held up the pen, which wasn’t a pen at all but a mechanical pencil, the kind with the clamp at the end to hold the lead. Or to grasp something. In this case, a small black roach.

Jacquilla looked at Hood, then at Strummer. “It ain’t mine.”

“But it’s here,” said Strummer. “And our drug policy is zero tolerance. That really does mean zero. This is enough to get you evicted. Fifty percent of our investigations result in evictions, Ms. Roberts. Fifty.”

“It ain’t mine. Mister, I got friends come here, maybe party sometimes. I got two older ones that might get into some trouble now and then. I admit. But that ain’t mine and I’m who signed the Section Eight papers to live here and I am not going back to South Central on account of what is not mine.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Laws. “There’s no profit in this.”

The wind kicked up and flailed at the walls.

“How many kids you have?” asked Strummer.