I considered stopping at Mr. Contreras’s place to pick up Mitch so I had a little backup, but then I remembered the dead Rottweiler at the meth house in Palfry. Besides, if I told Mr. Contreras what I was going to do, he’d insist on picking up a pipe wrench and joining me.
“‘She travels the fastest who travels alone,’” I announced grandly to myself. Although she shouldn’t travel so fast she plunges over the edge of a cliff.
As I got on the expressway, I tried to estimate times. Say Ferret Downey read Conrad’s message right away and took it seriously. Applied for a search warrant. Or overlooked that formality—the Supreme Court has been giving the police alarming latitude in breaking into people’s homes, cars, and even our brassieres merely on suspicion.
I was guessing that even if everyone cared enough to move at warp speed, it would take at least four hours for the police to arrive at Freddie Walker’s building. My worry was that no one would bother to check for a day or two. Police are stretched thin, they have a routine, a missing junkie wasn’t likely to generate heavy interest, either in the district or with the state’s attorney.
When I reached the stretch of Lorel where Walker operated, there were no signs of blue-and-whites, or of much else. The street had the exhausted air of too much of Chicago’s West Side. Weed-filled vacant lots, boarded-over doors and windows, a handful of emaciated men sitting on curbs, staring profoundly at nothing.
Walker’s six-flat looked as run-down as the rest of the block, the brickwork badly in need of remortaring, the paint on the window frames peeling, chunks of the concrete sills crumbling. The windows were intact, though, and had thick bars across them. The front door was solid. A camera in the lintel surveyed the front walk. The intercom by the door held only one button; no names or numbers were listed.
I stared at the entrance, trying to imagine what kind of sales pitch would not only get me inside, but back out again as well. I pressed the buzzer. No answer. I pressed again.
One of the men on the curb was watching me. “You buyin’ or sellin’?”
“Does that affect whether I can get in?”
He blinked, slowly, like a tortoise. The whites of his eyes were yellow, streaked with red—he’d been buying for far too long.
“Don’t make no difference. Nobody been answering all day. But if you’re selling, I might could arrange a buyer.”
I looked over the heavy front door. It had two locks, dead bolts of the kind that take a certain amount of effort to undo.
“Camera’s a fancy unit,” I said to my companion. “Wireless. Freddie must do a good business.”
“I guess he does okay,” the man agreed.
I don’t usually perform for an audience, but I didn’t think this yellow-eyed man would be able to describe me to anyone who asked. I went back to my car for my picklocks and a roll of duct tape.
My new friend followed me back up the walk, offering to hold the tape or my picklocks or do anything I needed. After tearing off a small piece of tape, I handed the roll to him. His hands shook badly; he kept dropping it, but watched with keen interest as I covered the camera eye.
As if he’d sent out a wireless signal himself, a few more people trailed up the walk behind us, a couple of guys and a heavyset woman about my age who was gasping for air by the time she reached us.
“What she doing, Shaq?” the woman asked. The harsh rasp in her lungs sounded painfully like my father, who’d ended his smoking life with emphysema.
“Don’t know, Ladonna,” Shaq grunted. “She breaking in, I guess. Look how she cover up the camera, simple as pie.”
Not only did I not want an audience, I didn’t want an escort, but I couldn’t think of any way to hint to my quartet to leave. I lugged over an abandoned car battery to use as a stool and started work on the top lock.
“Freddie ain’t gonna like this,” one of the other men said.
“Freddie ain’t gonna like what, Terrell?” Someone had come around the corner of the building so fast and silent he took everyone, including me, by surprise. The .45 in his hand made my entourage back away.
“Told her she shouldn’t be doin’ this, Bullet,” Shaq said, nervously sticking the roll of duct tape into a trouser pocket. “She’s like, I gotta get into this place, and I’m telling her, ‘Worth your life. White girl like you got no business here,’ but she in—”
“Yeah, Shaq, you’re a hero,” Bullet growled. “We been watching your parade of losers coming up to the door all day, but you know Freddie’s policy, man, no credit! We know when you get your Social, so you fuck off until the first of the month. You, too, Ladonna, Terrell. And you, white girl, you better explain to Freddie what you’re doing, messing with his camera and all.”
He waved the gun at me. I stepped down from the car battery. Impulse control. When would I ever learn?
Bullet pushed the buzzer, once short, twice long, and someone inside released the lock. He poked the gun into my back, the spot where the T-1 vertebra connects the neck to the torso. The hairs stood up on my neck. Fear—another impulse I couldn’t control.