Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber Page B

was usually careful with reports, and he prided himself on being the more literate member of the team. Florida education had not been up to much when Barlow finished high school, and the man had trouble with reports. On the other hand, Barlow kept a lot close to his vest, so maybe that was an act, too, like the cracker slowness.
    “Oh, so he burned some stuff and she breathed it,” snapped Paz. “What does it matter?”
    “Him wearing his gas mask while he done it. And it all matters, Jimmy, every little thing.” He got up and walked toward the door. “Let’s see him and ask him how he done it. Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Luke 13:23.”
    Julius Youghans lived in a frame house on one of the better streets in Overtown. It had trees, now dripping from the recent rain, and the lawns were cut and watered and the newish large cars parked out in front, Caddys and Chryslers and giant SUVs, indicated that the people in the houses had jobs and could probably have afforded better housing had they not been black and dwelling in one of the most viciously segregated and redlined housing markets in the United States. A lot of the houses had bars on the windows. Mr. Youghans’s did not. When the two cops got out of their car a dog started to bark somewhere in the back and did not cease barking during the time they remained. Cheaper and better than bars, a bad dog.
    Push the front doorbell. They heard it ringing in the house. There was a late-model red Dodge Ram pickup in the driveway, rain-speckled and steaming vapors in the returned sunlight. The two cops exchanged a look. Barlow pushed the bell again and Paz went down the driveway around the side of the house. The dog was a pit bull, white with a big black spot over one side of his head. It was leaping up and down like a toy in a nightmare, crashing against the chain-link fence that confined it to the backyard, spraying slaver past its bared fangs. Paz ignored it and stood on tiptoe to look through the window. A kitchen. Crusted dishes in the sink, a single twelve-ounce can of malt liquor on the table still wearing six-pack plastic rings in memory of its vanished brothers. He went back to the front of the house.
    “Checked the back door, did you?” asked Barlow.
    “No, I’d thought you’d want to do that, Cletis. You’re the one with the special gift for animals.”
    ” ‘Fraid of a little old dog, huh?”
    “Yes, I am. So. Julius must be a heavy sleeper, you think?”
    “That, or he could be in some trouble,” said Barlow, withdrawing a set of picks wrapped in soft leather from his breast pocket. “Maybe fell out of bed and bust his hip. I believe it’s our Christian duty to try and help him if we can.”
    The door opened on a living room, which was furnished with the sort of heavy furniture, cheaply made but expensive to buy, available in local marts. Youghans had gone for the red velvet and, his lust for velvet unslaked, had sought it as the matrix for the paintings hanging on the walls: African beauties in undress, a Zulu with spear and shield, and Jesus preaching were the themes. Some care and expense had been taken with the decoration, but the room had a neglected air. There were dust bunnies in the corners and cobwebs on the ceiling. A bottle of expensive cognac, empty, stood on a coffee table with a couple of dirty glasses. Picture: a man with some disposable income, proud, but recently distracted. The walls of the hall they entered next were hung with several examples of the same sort of wooden Africana they had found in the dead woman’s apartment, of a somewhat better quality, real ebony rather than stained softwood. Kitchen to the right, two doors to the left: bathroom, a small bedroom clearly used as an office, and at the end of the hall a closed door through which issued interesting sounds: bouncing bedsprings, squeals in a high register and groans in a low one.
    In a loud, stagy voice, Barlow said, “They must be