Hermione Something said in the voice of one who’s been asked the same question many times. “Tall and thin and black. He looked like a big black cigarette.”“He was black?” I asked, remembering the blond driver of the Mazda.“Stupid,” Hermione Something said to herself. “Cops are stupid.”“I’m not a cop,” I said. Behind me, Hammond muttered something that might or might not have been a blanket defense of cops.“He is,” Hermione said, scratching a grimy leg. “You’re with him, aren’t you? What does that make you, a Girl Guide?”I tried to reconcile Hermione with the vision I’d had of her when I first heard her name. At the time I’d thought of an aged lady, a distinguishedly aged lady whose contemporaries might have been called Ora or Blossom or Mayme. With a Y. Hermione was a name that conjured up screened porches and soft evenings and silk fans fluttering like cabbage moths over white wicker furniture, something from the summertimes of long ago, when the hills didn’t catch fire and the eucalyptus trees imported from Australia hadn’t taken hold to spike the California horizon.
