“Four.”

“By how many men?”

She glared at him and said nothing.

“Where are your two older sons?”

“They gone to get take-out. I don’t feel like cooking again tonight, not after eight hours on the PCB line.”

Fernandez looked at his clipboard. “Keenan and Kelvin. We need to see their rooms.”

The youngsters scattered as the four men started up the stairs. A door slammed and there was laughter behind it. The room shared by the older boys was hot and cramped and smelled like bleach and cigarette smoke. There was a twin bed along one wall and a sleeping pad and bag along another. A closet stood open, mounds of clothing piled on the floor, more hanging. An old Zenith TV sat on the floor in a corner, with labyrinths of wires leading to a DVD player and a satellite receiver and an Xbox. The carpet was dirty and strewn with games on CD. From amid the sea of plastic game boxes rose a push-up bench with two hundred pounds on the barbell. Strong boys, thought Hood. The walls had posters of Suge Knight and Tupac, Mary Blige and Ludacris, Snipes as Blade, Smith as Ali, and the old Death Row Records logo with the masked guy strapped into the electric chair.

Fernandez went to the closet, leaned in and sniffed at something. Jacquilla stared at him.

“Keenan and Kelvin drive to get the take-out?” asked Strummer. “Or did they walk?”

“They took my car, soon as I got home.”

“An hour and a half to get take-out?”

She tried to glare again at Strummer, but Hood saw something go out of her. “It might be late.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet it might be,” said Strummer. “You don’t even know where they are, do you?”

“Out there. In the wind.”

Strummer shook his head and sighed. “We’ll be in touch. Come on, Al. I’ve seen enough.”

Laws and Hood thanked Jacquilla on their way out and she slammed the door behind them. Strummer gunned the van down Storybook.