“If I wasn't up, I am now, ” I said into the phone receiver. “Tell me something good.”

“There's been another murder. Looks like our boy again,” Sampson said. "They're waitin' on us. Half the free world's there already.

“It's too early in the morning to see the meat wagon,” I muttered. I could feel my stomach rolling. This wasn't the way I wanted the day to start. "Shit. Fuck me.

Nana Mama looked up from her steaming tea and runny eggs. She shot me one of her sanctimonious, lady-of-the-house looks. She was already dressed for school, where she still does volunteer work at seventy-nine. Sampson continued to give me gory details about the day's first homicides.

“Watch your language, Alex,” Nana said. “Please watch your language so long as you're planning to live in this house.”

“I'll be there in about ten minutes,” I told Sampson. “I own this house,” I said to Nana. She groaned as if she were hearing that terrible news for the first time.

“There's been another bad murder over in Langley Terrace. It looks like that killer. I'm afraid that it is,” I told her.

“That's too bad,” Nana Mama said to me. Her soft brown eyes grabbed mine and held. Her white hair looked like one of the doilies she puts on all our livingroom chairs. “That's such a bad part of what the politicians have let become a deplorable city. Sometimes I think we ought to move out of Washington, Alex.”

“Sometimes I think the same thing,” I said, “but we'll probably tough it out.”

“Yes, black people always do. We -persevere. We always suffer in silence.”

“Not always in silence,” I said to her.

I had already decided to wear my old Harris Tweed jacket. It was a murder day, and that meant I'd be seeing white people. Over the sport coat, I put on my Georgetown warm-up jacket. It goes better with the neighborhood.