“I won’t be caught. Not with you watching my back.”
“ ‘ Esther Best, accessory to felony trespass.’ ” She framed her words like a headline. “Boris would love that. I mean, talk about gangsta chic—”
“Look, if you want to back out—”
“No way, boss. You know I like to live on the edge.”
“Uh-huh.”
Five minutes later, we were standing on the sidewalk just outside the alley where Alf died. “Are you sure this is the right place?” Esther asked. “I don’t see any police tape.”
I suppressed a shiver. “This is the place.”
“Then let’s go—”
I stopped Esther and gestured toward an elderly couple heading right for us along the narrow sidewalk. “We can’t go into the alley yet,” I whispered. “We have to let these people pass so they don’t notice us and get suspicious.”
“We can’t just loiter here,” Esther whispered back. “That’s suspicious, too. Maybe we should walk on, then double back. There’s no one coming from that direction.”
Just then, two young men entered the block from the opposite direction and across the street.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“Quick, pretend to tie your boot,” Esther suggested.
I glanced over my shoulder. The older people were still moving toward us, but at a glacial pace. “I could tie my laces three times and those folks still wouldn’t be here.”
Esther nervously shifted from foot to foot. “What do we do then? Maybe we should just leave—”
“Spill your bag,” I said.
“What?”
“Spill your bag. I don’t have one. You do.”
“No way, I—”
I pulled the purse from Esther’s shoulder and dumped it onto the frozen concrete. Esther tried to catch it, and slipped on a patch of ice for her trouble. She grabbed my arm to steady herself, and we both went down.
Now I felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry, Esther,” I said, taking my time scooping up change, makeup, and a pen off the ground. Across the street, I heard the two men snicker.
Esther smirked. “They think we had a girl fight.”
The elderly couple finally reached us. The woman inquired about our safety.
“Just slipped in the snow!” I chirped. “Have a nice day!”
Esther watched the couple pass. “Good thing nobody noticed us, right, boss?”
“I think I’ve had enough irony for one night.”
I opened Esther’s bag to dump her stuff back inside and was surprised at how heavy it was. So I took a closer look.
“My God, Esther! You have half a brick at the bottom of your purse.”
“It’s protection,” she said.
“Protection? From what?”
“Those fashion mags with their anorexic models are a crock, you know? It’s Rubenesque girls like me who bring out the worst in the guys with real testosterone. The home-boys in Air Jordans I can handle; even construction workers aren’t so bad. But when some of these Middle Eastern dudes and south-of-the-border guys spot curves like mine, they go bonkers. Their tongues loll and their eyes bulge like the wolf in that old Tex Avery cartoon.” Esther sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes, to dissuade them, I have to resort to the brick. That’s how I roll.”
“Okay,” I replied, refilling the purse.
Esther scanned the street. “The coast looks clear, boss.”
“Good,” I said, rising. “Then let’s get rolling.”
Ten
As we slipped into the private alley, I stared at the infamous gray Dumpster. It stood in the shadows, lid open, contents emptied.
“This is where I found Alf,” I said softly.
“Oh.” Esther blinked at the trash container. “Weird.”
“What?”
“I guess I expected something more ominous. It looks so... normal.”
Esther was right. The police tape was gone by now, and so was most of the snow. There were no traces of blood on the concrete, no chalk outline, no sign that a violent crime had taken place here.
From my talks with Quinn, I knew this was the work of the crime-scene unit. In their search for a murder weapon or forensic evidence, crime technicians would have meticulously combed through every garbage and recycling bin, then had the trash carted away and stored in case they’d missed anything during the initial search.
I understood the procedures on an intellectual level, but the emotional effect was unsettling. It felt as if Alf never existed. Like this wonderful man had been wiped away by bureaucrats of a heartless metropolis that had no time to mourn the death of its citizen.
In twenty-four hours, Alf went from human being to crime victim; tabloid folly to complete eradication. The speed of erasing a person in this town was too unsettling to contemplate—and anyway, I promised myself, I’m not going to forget him.
“What did you say, boss?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
We moved through the dim alley and into the darkened courtyard, where the second metal Dumpster stood beside the line of blue plastic recycling bins.
From one of my hoodie’s deep pockets, I fished out a small flashlight, one more powerful than the keychain light I’d had the night before. I flipped it on and scanned the fire escape above the trash bins. Then I moved to those crates I’d seen, stacked against a far wall. I hauled one off the top of the pile and dragged it over to the blue recycling bin to act as a step—exactly the way I was sure Alf had.
“You’re really going up there?” Esther whispered.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Just watch my back and warn me if someone comes.” I turned to start climbing.
“Wait!” she rasped. “How can I warn you if you’re all the way up there and I’m down here? I’ll have to shout.”
“You’re right.” I thought it over. “We’ll use our cell phones like walkie-talkies.”
We made the connection a moment later. “Keep the line open the whole time I’m up there,” I whispered. Then I pocketed the open phone and boosted myself to the top of one of the blue bins, bruising an elbow in the process.
“Ouch.”
“You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
I climbed to my feet, boots thumping dully on the frigid plastic lid, and made sure my footing was secure before I reached into my pocket to check the connection.
“Still there, Esther?”
“Affirmative. What next?”
“I’m going to climb the fire escape ladder up to the second-floor landing.”
“But those ladders are always locked in place for security,” she warned.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, eyeballing my Everest.
The wrought-iron framework appeared pretty typical for an apartment building of this age and type: metal stair-cases connecting narrow grilled balconies that sat parallel to each story. In an emergency, a simple sliding ladder allowed tenants to move from the second-floor balcony to the ground. When not in use, the ladder was locked high off the ground—to keep people like me from trespassing.
“I’m going to pull myself up,” I told Esther, my focus on the ladder’s bottom rung, just above my head. “Stand by; I may need help.”
Okay, I thought, so I haven’t done a pull-up since high school gym class, but my job has its daily physical demands and I swim laps semiregularly in the local Y’s pool. I’m in passable shape. How hard can one stupid pull-up be?
Taking a deep breath, I jumped up to grip the wrought-iron rung and heaved with all my might. But my body didn’t lift up. Instead, the freezing black bar shot out of my hands as the heavy metal structure rolled down its runner with a wince-inducing grinding. Then the bottom of the ladder slammed the ground with an explosive clang!
I froze.
“Crap,” Esther said over the phone. “That was loud!”
“The ladder wasn’t locked!” I rasped into the cell. “If anyone comes out, just tell them you’re a new tenant and you were emptying your trash!”
We waited nearly five minutes, just to be safe, but no one came to investigate. Then on a deep breath of bracing winter air, I gripped a cold metal rung and began to climb. At the top of the ladder, I stepped onto the second-floor balcony. That’s when I noticed that the security release hook had rusted through—