Walter Mosley

A dying gangster's plea sends Joe King Oliver on a quest for a missing woman across America's coasts, unraveling a dark and violent family history along the way. Joe King Oliver is the big man you call to solve the most delicate and dangerous of problems. Fresh off unraveling the mystery of his own parents' fates, King finds himself accepting (again at his grandmother's request) a case from Arman Babylon, a powerful Los Angeles gangster now dying from cancer.
  Babylon's granddaughter, Twyla Mann, has been missing for years, and he's desperate to find her before he passes. The search pulls King into the Babylons' stained past and the cold case of Dalia Shorts, a torch singer who vanished without a trace and whom Arman was once suspected of killing.   As King follows her trail from L. A. to New York and back, he'll realize nothing is what it seems as he uncovers a pattern of violence that has targeted the women around Babylon for decades.
How much will King be willing to risk to finally set things right?