LITMIR.BIZ

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an old man.”

      “Someday you won’t think seventy-two is so old.”

      Marvia looked at the two boys. Each was on his third slice of pizza, and neither of them carried an ounce of fat on his body. She shook her head.

      “I think you’re right, Mom.”

      After dinner Gloria retired to the living room couch. Marvia made coffee and carried a cup and saucer for herself and one for her mother. Gloria dipped her head toward the table and Marvia set the coffee down. Gloria had turned on the TV but muted the sound so she could concentrate on the telephone.

      Jamie and Hakeem were putting away the few dishes that had been used at the meal. Marvia asked if they had homework to do. They boys exchanged a look and Jamie, the spokesman, dipped his head a millimeter.

      “Do you need help?” Marvia prayed they wouldn’t.

      “No, Mom.”

      “No, Ms. Plum.”

      “Then you’d better get to it. Hakeem, what time is your mother expecting you home?”

      “It’s just around the corner, Ms. Plum.”

      “The DA would call that unresponsive to the question.”

      “Ten o’clock.”

      “Then you’d better get to work.”

      The boys disappeared upstairs, headed for Jamie’s room. Marvia took her own cup of coffee upstairs and set it on the night table. She was careful not to spill it on the telephone. She’d put in a second line, she had to be available for emergencies. It was an unlisted number but the dispatchers could reach her at any time.

      Marvia realized that she hadn’t eaten a bit of the pizza. She pulled up her sweatshirt and looked at her belly. She sucked it in. She shouldn’t have to do that. She could do without pizza. Besides, being a cop didn’t mean you had to live on cop food.

      She turned on her tuner and found the KRED signal. Lon Dayton’s OTR Heaven had ended for the night and somebody was playing a scratchy record of an early Louis Armstrong Hot Seven performing “Shit Out o’ Luck Blues.” When the music ended a peculiar voice, both scratchy and whispery, announced the full personnel on the track. He made no mention of Bob Bjorner’s death, but that didn’t strike Marvia as strange. It was a long programming day and KRED announcers couldn’t talk about Bjorner constantly.

      Marvia hoped that the man with the scratchy-whispery voice would identify himself, and he did, at least in part. “This is your master wax-miner, Little Bix, bringing the music of the past into the night of the present. Don’t you wish you’d been in the studio with Louis and Lil and Baby Dodds and the rest of the folks when they laid that down? Long ago and far away, my friends, long ago and far away. Now for a change we’ll hear the queen of the blues, Ma Rainey herself.”

      The music started, and the voice began singing “Toad Frog Blues,” and Marvia put her head on her pillow and closed her eyes, listening to Ma Rainey’s voice and listening for the piano that she knew was there, Fletcher Henderson’s piano.

      Little Bix.

      She thought of her training at the academy. That too was long ago if not far away. Always know where you are, that was the first rule for the patrol officer, and every cop was a patrol officer, whatever else she was. In the army, Marvia remembered, every soldier was an infantry grunt, whatever else he was. And every cop was a patrol officer.

      One of KRED’s neighbors was Bix’s Wax Cylinder, and the whispery-scratchy man called himself Little Bix. Jessie Loman had talked about how many volunteers and part-timers KRED used. People who had other jobs, other lives to live.

      Little Bix might have appropriated the name from Leon Beiderbecke, the original Bix. The store, the station, the whispery-scratchy man. Was he one of Bjorner’s faithful or one of the sellout gang? If there was internecine war at KRED, would it go so far that a disc jockey murdered a political commentator? That seemed absurd, but people had killed people over political disputes before.

      What else was war?

      She fell asleep, or at least managed to lapse into a doze, and when she woke up she blinked at the digital clock beside her bed; it was after eleven. A thumping sound was going on but after a few seconds she was able to decode it and identify it as music.

      She sat up and rubbed her scalp with her knuckles to make the blood flow to her brain. She stood on the carpet. She was still wearing her sweatshirt and jeans, woolen socks and no shoes. She opened her door. The thumping was louder.

      Her first thought was about her mother. Gloria went to bed early on week-nights. She had a responsible job with the Social Security Administration and she commuted every day to Richmond, a dozen miles up the freeway. If Jamie’s music disturbed her sleep there would be an explosion.

      Marvia knew she had to move out of this house and take her son with her. She loved this house but that didn’t matter. She stood at her bedroom window and peered at the old California blue oak in the backyard. Her father had built a tree-house there for Marvia and Tyrone. Rather, they had built it together. The children had each had a chance to hammer a nail in place, or to wield a saw once or twice. They felt as if they had built their own tree-house, with help from Dad. That made it all the more precious.

      They had played pirate games there, and turned the tree-house into a spaceship and a castle and an Eskimo igloo and an Indian tepee and an African fortress where they fought off Arab slavers to the last drop of blood.

      The tree-house was still there, silhouetted against the night sky. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed the ladder of two-by-fours Marcus had nailed to the tree-trunk, but she could remember the feel of the wood under her hands and her bare feet.

      She blinked and returned to the present. Gloria had been generous about keeping Jamie when Marvia moved to Nevada. He’d lived with her and Marcus while Marvia was single and living on Oxford Street, and he’d stayed on when she remarried. And Gloria had been generous about Marvia’s moving into Bonita Street when she returned to Berkeley, but there was no domestic tranquility here, and the sooner Marvia and Jamie got out the better.

      Padding silently down the hall to Jamie’s room, Marvia tapped at the door and turned the knob. Jamie and Hakeem were almost men, but they weren’t men yet. They were still boys, and they needed supervision.

      There was a frantic scrambling inside the room. Even before Marvia could get the door open the volume of the music dropped dramatically and she heard a window being opened. She stepped into the room and with her first breath recognized the familiar odor of cannabis.

      Jamie was shoving something under the mattress of his bed and Hakeem was closing a dresser drawer.

      Marvia shut the door behind her.

      The two boys faced her. Their faces were identical studies in terror.

      Marvia said nothing, waiting for one of them to make the first move.

      It was Hakeem who made it, taking a tentative step toward the door. He realized that he couldn’t get past Marvia, and she was obviously not going to step aside. He turned around and looked out the window.

      Marvia said, “Won’t do you any good.”

      Hakeem stood still.

      Jamie dropped his gaze. He murmured a few words.

      Marvia said, “Speak up, young man. And look me in the eye when you speak to me.”

      Jamie raised his eyes and said, “I guess we’re busted.”

      Marvia nodded. “No guesses about it. You’d better take that out from under your mattress before you start a fire.”

      Jamie bent over and lifted the edge of his mattress. He came back up with a makeshift ashtray, a soup bowl with a roach in a roach clip shaped like three intertwined human figures, and a disposable butane lighter.

      Marvia nodded. She turned to Hakeem.

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