Pina came into the condo with two-dozen oysters and a big smile on her face. “What’s going on, Charlie? All this talk about Jesus. Have you gone and found religion?”

I didn’t have the heart to reveal what Augie Boyer had told me and, surprisingly, Pina didn’t press me about our phone conversation and what she called my freneticism. She knew something was up, knew that I had an upsetting thing to tell her, but we left it there, glowing between us like a steady campfire. I watched Pina at the sink. Her attention shifted to the oysters. She’d collected ice from the freezer and layered the bottom of a beer platter with it, and then spilled the oysters from their sack, crackling into a tin colander. My desire for her was tremendous; I wanted to bite her neck, to ravage her, really, as if her presence was endangered and I needed to act quickly. I watched her fetch a pair of oyster knives from the junk drawer and wave them at me. The specter of knives, even dull ones like these, sent a chill through me.

“Are you going to help with the shucking?” she asked in her flirty voice, her head turning to watch me watching her. I grabbed her by the waist and turned her toward me. After I kissed the corner of her lips and took a nibble of her neck, she aimed an oyster knife at me. “What’s on your mind, Mister? Hmm, maybe religion is a good idea for you.”

We shucked oysters together and my distress, at least momentarily, shifted to the fact that Pina opened them so much more quickly than I did. When I was halfway through my dozen, she said, “I’ll make a mignonette, while you finish up with those.”

I pulled out a bottle of Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs that I was saving for the next night, New Year’s Eve, and Pina asked if she could saber the bottle. It was a trick I’d showed her. She took a chef’s knife from the block and we went out on the deck. With macho force she swung the blade, achieved a clean break, and sent the top of the bottle soaring over the railing and into a hedge below. I stood by with a couple of champagne flutes to catch what I could of the bubbly gusher. Pina nodded her head smugly like a combatant who had conquered a difficult opponent.

After we toasted each other, I told Pina, for no reason but to avoid what I should be telling her, that Schramsburg was the California champagne that Nixon brought on his trip to China.

“And that’s supposed to endear me to it?” Pina asked.

“It was just an interesting factoid,” I said.

“Oh, Charlie, you are so full of interesting factoids.” Pina was still holding the chef’s knife, swinging it at her side; she looked ready to saber another bottle. Knives out were clearly the theme of the day.

After eating the sumptuous oysters we went to bed with the idea that we’d have an omelet after we enjoyed each other.

I don’t know how to say this nicely, but I fucked Pina especially hard, my afternoon of fear coalesced into carnal force. Pina didn’t seem to mind; she screamed with pleasure, her nails carving jagged lines into my back.

After love, I propped myself up on an elbow and faced Pina. It seemed as good a time as any. “You know, I had that meeting with Augie Boyer, the detective.”

Pina, facing me now, grinned as if my encounter with a detective was among the silliest things she ever heard. “Yeah, that’s what you were trying to tell me about on the phone.”

“He’s working on the case of The Girl and the Fig waiter that got killed in Boyes Hot Springs. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“It happened a month or so ago. A guy named Jesus.”

“Oh, that’s the Jesus you were talking about.”

The distance between Pina’s indifference to the killing and the fact that her name was carved on the victim’s back was too great for me to bridge. There’s no other way of saying it: I chickened out. I’d given the detective Pina’s number. He’d be calling her in the next days. Let him spill the beans. I did mention Augie Boyer’s idea that the killer might have been a disgruntled customer.”

Pina laughed. “The guy really didn’t like the service. What was he expecting—Jesus to multiply the fishes and loaves?”

I felt ashamed of myself for withholding the pertinent facts and went further astray by talking about how the detective had allowed his wife to give him a makeover, which I described with all the particularities I recalled. As I mentioned Augie Boyer’s spiked red hair and pirate hoop earrings, my tale turned into a farce.

“So is that what you want from me?” Pina asked. “To give you a makeover? Actually, I kind of like you as you are, Charlie.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“Don’t get too comfortable.”

That was a laugh—I felt so far from comfortable that I thought I might crack. That’s when the pounding on the front door started. I dressed in a hurry. The thoughts racing through my head were dizzying. Was this the killer at the door making the racket? Don’t open it. Was it the sheriff, or Augie Boyer having connected more threads to the web of the murder? The pounding stopped and I listened for footsteps. Whoever was at the door hadn’t yet descended the stairs. Pina had put on her kimono and was crouched behind me at the door. We’d become a pair of farcical figures, awaiting doom.

The pounding began again. “Open the door, Dad! I have a mask on.”

I exhaled deeply before screaming at the door: “Why all the racket, Sally?” I didn’t want to open it, but I put on a mask. I turned to look at Pina who shrugged, as if to say it’s your call.

“What’s on your mind, Sally?”

“Your dereliction of duty, Dad.”

“Stand back from the door, Sally, and I’ll come outside.” I opened the door gingerly. How had my daughter become a threat to me?

Sally stood against the railing at the top of the stairs and I could tell she was high. Very high. Her eyes shot to the right and then to the left as if the only vision she had was peripheral.

“What are you on, Sally?”

“’What am I on?’ That sounds so Fifties, Dad, like ‘Marijuana Confidential’ or something.”

“Except you’re not high on weed.”

“You’re very perceptive, Dad.”

I reminded myself of my Al-anon lessons. It was inappropriate to ask anything about Sally’s intoxication. I had another question for her. “Did you know Jesus from The Girl and the Fig?”

“The guy who got killed?”

“Did you know him?”

Sally’s response was not verbal. She did something she used to do when she was a kid, hiding her eyes behind her forehead in an if-I-can’t-see-you, you-can’t- see-me ploy. It was no longer cute as it had been when she was a child.

“Did you know him?” I repeated.

Sally glared at me, if such a thing is possible, with absent eyes. “What’s with the interrogation, bitch?”

“Do not talk to me like that.” It distressed me profoundly to see Sally like this. The fact that I couldn’t do anything about it disturbed me all the more. ”Tell me about Jesus.”

“The son of God or the dude from The Girl and the Fig?”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

Sally sat down on the top step. “Jesus had his share of enemies.”

“How do you know that?”

My daughter sighed unpleasantly. “Dude not only sold drugs, he had a mouth on him.”

“What does that mean—he had a mouth on him?”

“What’s up with your curiosity, Dad? I came here to talk about how you’re wasting your Roscoe capital, and I end up getting ambushed with all this Jesus crap.”

“Tell me about his mouth.”

“What? You want to know about his mustache, for crying out loud.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Sally.”

“I don’t know—he just went off on people. He had no patience for stupid white people, which essentially means all white people.”

“Then how could he work at The Fig?”

“He needed the job for his parole.”

“So you bought drugs from him?”

Sally shrugged, which I took for a yes.

“Were you using when you first got down to Sonoma?”

She turned her head to the side and I chided myself for the interrogation of her personally. It was a complete no-no in the Al-anon playbook.

“What can I help you with, Sal?”

“I need money.”

So her visit had little to do with Roscoe. “I can’t give you money. I can give you food.”

Sally stood up. “If I don’t get money I’m going to have to sell my soul, Dad.”

“Your soul or your body?”

“You sell one you sell the other. Just give me a hundred bucks, Dad.”

I shook my head.

“Come on, Dad. It’ll be the last time.”

“It’s not going to happen, Sal.”

“I got some guys I got to pay.”

“I can help you get into rehab.”

“I need cash, Dad. That’s all I need.”

“We can drive to the county detox.”

“It doesn’t sound like you talking, Dad. What’s the matter, fucking Pina get into your head?” With that Sally turned and, like a pony, gamboled down the stairs.”

“Take care of yourself, Sally,” I called after her.

“Sure thing,” she shouted, and then after a beat, added, “Bitch.”

I walked down the steps slowly, without any intention of following Sally, my heart riven. It’s difficult not to blame yourself for you child’s waywardness, but it’s not a useful response. It was much easier with Sally living on the Lost Coast. Out of sight, out of mind. Of course I always had the suspicion that Sally was lost on the Lost Coast. I’d lost my family to addiction—first my wife to alcohol and another man, now my daughter. Where does my culpability lie?

I walked east on the bike trail and texted Pina that I’d be back soon. A runner, hyperventilating without a mask, dashed past me and I shouted after him: “What’s the matter with you? Are you too Republican to wear a mask?” He turned and flipped me off. Of course, my anger was misplaced. I sat on one of the benches facing north and called Augie Boyer. I hoped I could just leave a message, but the detective answered: “Charlie, what you got for me?”

“I was going to ask you if you had any breaks.”

“Breaks? No, I’m just plotzing along with my magnifying glass. What’s on your mind, Charlie?”

“I spoke with my daughter Sally, who, it seems, knew Jesus from the street.”

“She bought drugs from him.”

I took a long gulping breath. “Yes. She says he had a mouth on him and had it in for white people.”

“So was it a white person or gaggle of white peeps that had issues with Jesus? I’m going to want to talk to your daughter as well as your girlfriend, Charlie. From what I’ve ascertained, it appears like your daughter has been candy-flipping.”

“Candy-flipping?”

“In her case a combo of Fentanyl and crack cocaine. They used to call it a speedball back in the glory days of Chet Baker and the like. I’m sorry to tell you this, Charlie.”

“You’ve been tracking her?”

“Just watching the street.”

“It’s heartbreaking.”

“I can only imagine. I don’t know what I’d do if my eight-year-old Buson went astray. Tell me this, Charlie—does Sally get along with Pina? Is there any animus there?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a simple question, Charlie.”

I thought of Sally saying fucking Pina, not a half hour ago. Again, I gulped for breath. “You don’t think . . .”

“I don’t think anything, Charlie. I’m not paid to think. Take a look next time you see me—do I look like a thinker? No, I’m not paid to think; I’m paid for the pudding, as the proof is in.”

Augie Boyer, as is his way, left me with a haiku:

 The tooth of the crime

Is sharpened with grievances.

Save us from ourselves.

When I got back from my walk I sat Pina down and told her about Augie Boyer and about her name being written in multiples on the back of a restaurant check, but also carved into the dead waiter’s back. Pina’s mouth dropped open slowly, and stayed open. She began to shake and, sitting beside her on the sofa, I held her close. She mouthed why several times, an existential query she couldn’t manage to say out loud. The word hung on her lips. Of course, we both felt the terror—her name carved on a dead man’s back. I hoped against hope that there was another Pina out there and that this horror had nothing to do with the woman in my arms.

When she was able to speak, Pina asked about the victim; I reminded her of the news item we’d read in the Index Tribune about Jesus, and told her what I’d learned from Sal and Augie Boyer. Then I posed obvious questions: Was she aware of anybody that might be obsessed with her? Did she and Sally have bad blood between them? Was Vince using again? If so, might the dead Jesus have been his dealer? Noting that the waiter was killed a month ago, I asked when Vince moved up here from the city.

Pina responded in the negative to the first questions, but went silent when it came to Vince. She wiped her watery eyes with the handkerchief I handed her, and then licked her lips like somebody who was parched. “I think Vince is using again,” she said, finally.

“What makes you say that?”

“A hunch. I can find out.”

“What are you going to do, go undercover with Vince? Last time you ended up under the covers with him.”

“Don’t you trust me, Charlie?”

“Should I?”

“That’s for you to decide,” she said, and wiped what was left of the tears from her eyes.

“I’m worried about your safety.” That was partly true. I also imagined her coupling with Vince again.”

“Are you concerned that he might kill me?” she asked with a bit of dare in her eyes, “or seduce me?”

“I won’t dignify that with an answer,” I said, feeling disingenuous as soon as I uttered those words.

Pina smirked. “Whose dignity is it that’s at stake here?”

That struck me as a clever question, but I didn’t give a damn about the answer. I got up and walked to the far end of the room. When I looked back, I noticed Pina, again, mouthing the word why.