I wasn’t exactly surprised to see an ounce or so of what looked like partially dried blood on the top stair of the entrance to my house. There wasn’t enough to assume that someone had died, at least not then and there. The dollop had a bright red eye at the very center and had dried to black around the edges. I was confounded when my key didn’t fit the lock. For a moment I wondered if, in my tired state, I had come to the wrong house. But then Martin Martins came to mind. He must have changed the locks as he promised to do. I reached up into the brass lanternlike light fixture above the door and found the right key. It was silver and quite long. I used the new key and pushed the door open, going in before Evander. On the first step into the house a man rushed out from the kitchen. He was a crazy-looking gray-brown Negro with dark topaz eyes and curly, not kinky hair. Only five-ten and a hundred and seventy tops, he had huge fists that rivaled those of Sonny Liston. “Niggah …”
