'I don't believe you.'
'Why you talk to me like that?'
'Because none of this will go away of its accord. You played in the band at Shorty's. You knew the same people Roseanne knew. But you don't give me any help.'
He swallowed. His palms were cupped on his knees.
'I grew up in the West End. I don't like those kind of guys.'
'Good. So give me the names of the other boys she went out with.'
He fingered the denim on top of his thigh, his knees jiggling up and down, his eyes fixed on the floor.
'Anybody. When she was loaded. It didn't matter to her. Three or four guys at once. Same guys who'd write her name on the washroom wall,' he said. He blinked and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.
We drove into Deaf Smith and parked on the square and walked down a side street toward a brick church with a white steeple and a green lawn and a glassed-in sign announcing Sunday and Wednesday night services.
'Why we going to the Baptist church?' Lucas asked.
'We're not,' I replied.
Next door to the church was the church's secondhand store. An alley ran along one wall of the store, and at the end of the alley was an overflowing donation bin. The pavement around it was littered with pieces of mattresses and mildewed clothing that had been run over by automobile tires. As soon as the store closed at night, street people sorted through the bin and the overflow like a collection of rag pickers.
Lucas's eyes fixed on a waxed, cherry-red chopped-down 1932 Ford with a white rolled leather interior and an exposed chromed engine parked in front of the store.
'You know the owner of that car?' I asked.
'It's Darl Vanzandt's.'
'That's right,' I said, and pointed through the glass.
Darl was sorting a box of donated books by pitching them one at a time onto a display table. When the box was empty, he opened the back door and flung it end over end into the alley.
'We need to have a talk with him,' I said.
'What for? I ain't got no interest in Darl.' The rims of his nostrils whitened as though the temperature had dropped seventy degrees.
'It'll just take a minute.'
'Not me. No, sir.'
He backed away from me, then turned and walked back to the car.
I got in beside him.
'What's the problem?' I asked.
'I don't fool with East Enders, that's all.'
He twisted at a callus on his palm.
'All of them, or just Darl?'
'You don't know how it is.'
'I grew up here.'
'They look down on you. Darl knows how to make people feel bad about themselves.'