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“Not unless Jesus Christ gave you the phone.”

Two blocks away I found a coffee shop that served glazed meat loaf and sour mash. I got the taste for the whiskey at Miranda’s apartment and wanted to follow it down a ways.

“Hello?” Andre Tourneau said.

“Hey, brother.”

“Joe. How are you?”

“Feel like I went to sleep on the ground and woke up in a coffin.”

“I get that way every time I go home to Port-au-Prince. What can I do for you, my friend?”

“Call Henri and tell him to call this number from a pay phone.”

“You’re not gonna get my boy in trouble, now, are you, Joe?”

“I remember why you bought that pistol, Mr. Tourneau, don’t you worry about that.”

The meat loaf tasted better with every sip of whiskey. I was feeling almost jocular when the cell phone sounded.

“Hello?”

“Joe,” Henri Tourneau said. “You still hiding?”

“I called Natches.”

“And what did he have to say?”

I told him as much as was necessary and added, “I think he might be able to figure out our connection so I wanted to ask you if you had some friend who could look up a street name for me.”

“Anything, Uncle.”

The familial endearment touched me. I don’t think it was just the whiskey. The days I followed down my expulsion from the police and the Man conviction I was also learning that I had a multifaceted life with many planes of beauty to it.

An hour later I received a text that said a junkie called Burns was a regular at the Bread and Bees Homeless Shelter on Avenue C in the East Village.

When I got that message I was already on Seventh Avenue at Christopher in the West Village. There I was waiting outside a nameless fortune-telling parlor.

Through the glass wall facade was a shallow room done all in reds. There were various crystals and two plush chairs, a calico cat, and the framed photograph of a large-nosed man with a receding hairline.

I walked in and was assailed by a sweet brand of incense that I recognized but could not name. The electronic announcement of my entrance was the sound of a solitary lark calling out for an old friend or a new love.

Through red curtains came a plump woman with pale skin dressed in a green wraparound that was festooned with tiny round mirrors.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Lackey,” I said.

The woman’s face didn’t have far to go for the glower she gave me.

“Tell him it’s Seamus from the Southside.”

She sneered but went back through the curtains.

I waited there wondering what kind of prison time I could expect after I’d finished with my investigations.

The woman opened the curtains without entering the spiritual consultation room, saying, “Come.”