Mauritia’s was a hole in the wall that sold clothes and beauty products for Negro women. They carried hair irons and skin lighteners, fake fingernails and different brands of makeup designed for various hues of dark skin. I had only been in there once. I remembered that it smelled of coconut and rubbing alcohol.

“So you went to Mauritia’s?” I asked, trying to urge him on.

“Maynard said that early one morning a week before, Kit had three boxes and that he had Maynard help him drop them off at Mauritia’s front door. So I went over there to see maybe if he worked for them part-time or somethin’ like that.”

Fearless sat up, took his coffee cup from the floor, and brought it to his lips. He made a loud smacking sound and grunted his approval.

“It’s after three, Fearless. What did they say at Mauritia’s?”

“They said that they remembered a man looked like Kit come over to their place a couple’a times but that’s all they knew. He was just droppin’ off for the man usually bring ’em their Madame Ethel’s supplies. A guy name of Henry T. Orkan.”

My eyes were sore. I had been up until midnight reading To the Finland Station by Edmund Wilson. I had just gotten to the end of the section on Fourier and Owen when I fell asleep.

“Orkan lives out past Compton at the end of a lane that didn’t have no other houses on it. I called up a cabbie I knew and had him drive me out over there for a favor yesterday.”

“You mean Sunday,” I said.

“Yeah. Orkan is a crazy old guy. He come outta his house with a shotgun cradled in his arm, askin’ me what I wanted on his property. It was nutty, Paris, like he was some kinda moonshiner in the back country instead of a man livin’ in the middle of a big city.”