Silence.
“Mr. Laney?” I knocked again and the door creaked open a half-inch under my fist. I poked my head into the house, then recoiled. “Holy crap,” I whispered to Alex.
Alex brushed up against me, his lips at my ear, his eyes wide as he stared over my shoulder into the house. “Now we know how he knows everything,” he said. “He has everything.”
“Laney, we’re coming in.”
The door only opened about twelve inches and I had to suck in my stomach and shimmy to get myself through it. When I did, I ended up at the bulbous end of a makeshift walkway, lined with eyebrow-high stacks of newspapers, a mountain of dusty National Geographics, and a precarious stack of water-less fish tanks filled with lightbulbs and naked Barbie dolls.
I took a tentative step, my sneaker crashing down on an army of food wrappers. I leaned back against Alex and dropped my voice to a low whisper. “Are you packing?”
“Packing?”
“Your gun!” I hissed.
“Yes, Cagney, I’m packing. But what the hell good is it going to do in here? One shot’ll ricochet off the tower of 1970s Tupperware and get me straight between the eyes. Or do you think his collection of Princess Diana commemorative plates will block a bullet?”
I thought back to my own apartment that was likely being swallowed by cardboard boxes, packing peanuts, and whatever was on the QVC Power Hour as we spoke. “You don’t have to be so snarky.”
Note to self: Cut up Nina’s credit cards ASAP.
“Don’t you touch my Princess Diana plates! You chip even one of them and I’m suing!” Laney yelled.
“Because the only thing better than a hoarder is a litigious hoarder,” Alex whispered.
“Mr. Laney, we—we come in peace. We just want to ask you some questions,” I said, doing my best to skirt a suitcase stuffed with dusty VHS tapes. “I’m from the Underworld Detection Agency. You know, in San Francisco? I was told you might have some information on Feng and Xian Du. Or on a murder.” My shoulder brushed against what was either a wig or a dip-dyed possum. My skin started to crawl. I paused and tucked my hands into my pockets, feeling Mort Laney’s National Park of Shit closing in on me. “A murderer.”
Alex and I paused when we heard the slight shuffle of movement coming from the back end of the house. “What did you say your name was?”
I sighed. “Sophie Lawson.”
More shuffling. More crinkling. Then a bad, white-blond comb-over appeared between twin towers of molding books.
Mort Laney.
He had the roundest head I’d ever seen, despite the oblong comb-over, and ears that stuck out like doorknobs on either side of his skull. I felt my hand slyly smooth my own hair, tug at my ears in an attempt to make certain I hadn’t sprouted what could only be an unholy combination of demon and human. Mort pushed up a pair of heavy, black-rimmed Coke-bottle glasses that immediately slid right back down his bulbous red nose as he squinted at us. I saw his eyes flit to Alex, sweep over his mountain of junk, and then come to rest on me.
He licked paper-thin lips and stared at me for an uncomfortably long time.
“You look just like him,” he whispered.
“Mr. Laney?” I asked.
“Mort. Please call me Mort.” Mort pushed a liver-spotted hand through a fort of floral foam and pointed. “Come through there, please. And be careful! You break anything and I’m—”
“Suing, right,” Alex finished.
I looked over my shoulder at Alex, who shrugged, then followed me along the narrow pathway that Mort pointed to.
I paused when Mort’s wormhole of stuff opened up to a surprisingly pristine—and open—kitchen.
“Whoa,” Alex whispered, peering over my shoulder, then back over his at the army of crap. “It’s like we hoarded our way back in time.”
Mort’s pristine kitchen may have been free of additional matter, but it was firmly entrenched in 1973. I blinked at the avocado-colored appliances, at the chrome-and-Formica dining table where Mort sat, fingers laced together, glasses pushed up high on his nose.
“Hello, Mr.—Mort,” I said, when I was finally able to see the man. “My name is Sophie and this is Alex.”
Mort stood, stepped forward, and shook my hand, nodding. The smile on his face was serene, but his eyes were darting, carefully examining my face and hair. I felt the immediate need to check myself for boogers or broccoli teeth—or to hide my private bits behind the laundry basket filled with beheaded Cabbage Patch Kids.
“It’s uncanny, really.” Mort was still shaking my hand and I yanked it back, keeping my smile kind and fixed.
“Thanks so much for seeing us,” I said, sitting down quickly.
“And you are?” Mort looked up at Alex as if seeing him for the first time.