"I have a guy who says he doesn't know Singh, but I don't believe him." And I have horrific photos of a dead woman. Best to wait until I'm alone with Ranger to tell him about the horrific photos. Lula isn't always great at keeping a secret and Morelli asked me not to share the details.

"Later," Ranger said.

I called Connie next. "I need an address for a guy named Howie P. He works at the McDonald's on Lincoln Avenue. See if you can get his address out of the manager."

Five minutes later Connie got back to me with the address.

"This is the deal," I said to Lula. "We're going to check out Howie's apartment. We are not going to break in. You accidentally smash a window or bust down a door, and I swear I'll never take you on a case with me again."

"Hunh," Lula said. "When did I ever bust down a door?" "Two days ago. And it was the wrong door." "I didn't bust that door. I just tapped it open."

Howie lived in a hard times neighborhood a short distance from his job. He rented two rooms in a house that was originally designed to contain one family and now was home to seven. Paint peeled off the clapboard siding, and window ledges rotted in the sun. The small yard was hard-packed dirt, the perimeter marked by chain-link fencing. A fringe of weed clung to life at the base of the fence.

Lula and I stood in the dark, musty foyer and ran through the names on the mailboxes. Howie was 3B. Sonji Kluchari was 3A.

"Hey, I know her," Lula said. "Back when I was a ho. She worked the corner across from me. If she's living in three A you can bet there's eight other people in there with her. She's a scabby ol' crackhead, doing whatever she has to so she can get her next fix."

"How old is she?"

"She's my age," Lula said. "And I'm not saying how old I am, but it's twenty-something."

We climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing, which was illuminated by a bare twenty-watt bulb hanging from a ceiling cord, and then we went to the third floor, which clearly had been the attic. The third-floor landing was small and dark and smelled like rot. There were two doors. Someone had scrawled 3A and 3B on the doors with black magic marker.

We knocked on 3B. No answer. I tried the door. Locked.

"Hunh," Lula said. "Looks flimsy. Too bad you got all these rules about breaking things. I bet I could lean on this door and it'd fall down."

That was a good possibility. Lula wasn't a small woman.

I turned and knocked on 3A. I knocked louder the second time and the door opened and Sonji peered out at us. She was bloodless white with red-rimmed eyes and yellow straw hair. She was rail thin and I would have put her age closer to fifty than twenty. Not easy being a crackhead ho.

Sonji stared at Lula, recognition struggling through the dope haze.

"Girl," Lula said. "You look like shit."

"Oh yeah," Sonji said, flat-voiced, dull-eyed. "Now I remember. Lula. How you doin', you big ugly ho."

"I'm not a ho anymore," Lula said. "I'm working for a bail bondsman and we're looking for a scrawny little Indian guy. His name's Samuel Singh and he might know Howie."

"Howie?"

"The guy across the hall from you."

I showed Sonji a photo of Singh.

"I don't know," she said. "These guys all look the same to me."

"Anybody living over there besides Howie?" I asked her.

"Not that I know. From what I can tell, Howie's not exactly Mr. Social. Maybe Singh came over once ... or somebody who looked like him. Don't think anybody but Howie s living there. But hell, what do I know?"

I gave Sonji my card and a twenty. "Give me a call if you see Singh."

Sonji disappeared behind her closed door and Lula and I trudged down the stairs. We went outside, walked around the building to the backyard, and looked up at Howie s single window.

"Could be me living here," Lula said. "I still got some pain from what that maniac Ramirez did to me, but turned out it was a favor. He stopped me from being a ho. When I got out of the hospital I knew I had to change my life. God works in strange ways."

Benito Ramirez was an insane boxer who loved inflicting pain. He'd beaten Lula to within an inch of her life and tied her to my fire escape. I found her body, bloody and battered. Ramirez wanted the beating to serve as a lesson for Lula and for me.

I thought getting brutalized like that was a pretty harsh wake-up call.

"So what do you think?" Lula asked. "You think Singh could be hiding out up there?"

It was possible. But it was a long shot. There were a million reasons why Singh could have been looking for Howie. And for that matter, I wasn't even sure I had the right guy. There were a lot of McDonald's around. Singh could have been calling McDonald's in Hong Kong for all I knew.

I'd been keeping watch for the gray Sentra, but it hadn't surfaced. It could be in a nearby garage. Or it could be in Mexico. A rusted fire escape precariously clung to the back of the building. The ladder had been dropped and hung just a few inches from the ground. "I could go up the fire escape," I said. "Then I could look in the window."

"Now you're the nut. That things falling apart. No way I'm going up that rusted-out piece of junk."

I grabbed a rail and pulled. The rail held tight. "It's in better shape than it looks," I said. "It'll hold me."

"Maybe. But it sure as hell won't hold me."

Only one of us needed to go anyway. I'd be up and down in a couple minutes. And I'd be able to see if there was any indication of Singh or the dog. "You need to stay on the ground and do lookout anyway," I told Lula.

Chapter Five

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I went hand over hand up the ladder and pulled myself onto the first level. I climbed the second ladder, steadied myself on the third-floor platform, and looked into Howie's window. Howie lived directly under the roof. There were rafters where the ceiling should be and the floor was chipped linoleum. Howie had a sofa that was lumpy and faded, but looked comfy in a dilapidated sort of way. He had a small television and a card table and two metal folding chairs. That was the extent of his furniture. A sink hung on a far wall. A half refrigerator had been placed beside the sink. There were two wood shelves over the refrigerator. Howie had stacked two plates, two bowls, and two mugs on one of the shelves. The other shelf held condiments, a couple boxes of cereal, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of chips.

When you come right down to it, this is really all anyone needs, isn't it? A television and a bag of chips.

I could see the front door and a doorway leading to another room, but the second room wasn't visible. The bedroom, obviously. I tried the window, but it was either locked or painted shut.

"Coming down," I said to Lula. "No dog biscuits on the kitchen shelf." I put my foot on the ladder and it disintegrated in a shower of rust flakes and chunks of broken metal. The chunks of metal crashed onto the second-floor platform and the whole thing pulled away from the building, and with more of a sigh than a screech the entire bottom half of the fire escape landed on the ground in front of Lula.

"Hunh," Lula said.

I looked down at Lula. Too far to jump. The only way off the platform was through Howie's apartment.

"Are you coming down soon?" Lula asked. "I'm getting hungry."

"I don't want to break his window."

"You got any other choices?"

I dialed Ranger on my cell phone.

"I'm sort of stuck," I told Ranger.

Ten minutes later, Ranger opened Howie's apartment door, crossed the room, unlocked and raised the window, and looked out at the mangled mess of metal on the ground. He raised his eyes to mine and the almost smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. "Good job, Destructo."

"It wasn't my fault."

He dragged me through the window, into the apartment. "It never is."

"I wanted to see if there were any signs that Singh or the dog had been here. I don't have much to tie Howie to Singh, but once I get past Howie I have nothing."

Ranger closed and locked the window. "I don't see any boxes of dog biscuits."

"Poor little Boo." The instant I said it I knew it was a mistake. I clapped my hand over my mouth and looked at Ranger.

"I could help you with these maternal urges," Ranger said.

"Get me pregnant?"

"I was going to suggest a visit to the animal shelter." He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me close. "But I could get you pregnant if that's what you really want."

"Nice of you to want to help," I said, "but I think I'll pass on both offers."

"Good decision." He released my shirt. "Let's take a look at the rest of the apartment."

We moved from the living room to the bedroom and found more clutter, but no evidence of Singh or Boo. Howie had placed a double mattress on the floor and covered it with an inexpensive quilt. There were two cardboard boxes filled with neatly folded pants and shirts and underwear. The poor man's dresser. No closet in the room. A bare bulb hung from the ceiling. It was the only light source. A laptop computer with a cracked screen was on the floor near the only outlet.

I looked around. "No bathroom."

"There's a common bathroom on the second floor."

Yikes. Howie shares a bathroom with the scabby ho and her crackhead friends. I tried to remember if he used gloves when he handled my food.

"Spartan," I said to Ranger.

"Adequate," Ranger said. He looked down at the mattress.

"I don't think Howie's been sharing his apartment with anyone lately."

I was feeling a little panicky about being alone in a room with a mattress and Ranger, so I scooted out of the room and out of Howie's apartment. Ranger followed and closed and locked Howie's door. We descended the stairs in silence.

Ranger was smiling when we got to the front foyer. Not the half smile, either. This was a full-on smile.

I narrowed my eyes at the smile. "What?"

"It's always fun to see you get worried about a mattress."

Lula hustled over. "So what's going on?" Lula asked. "You find anything up there? Any dog hairs in the bedroom?"

"Nothing. It was clean," I told her.

Lula turned her attention to Ranger. "I didn't hear you breaking any doors down."

"It wasn't necessary to break the door down."

"How'd you do it then? You use a pick? You use some electronic gizmo? I wish I could open doors like you."

"I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Ranger said.

It was an old line, but it was worrisome when Ranger said it.

"Hunh," Lula said.

"Tell me about Boo and Singh," I said to Ranger. "Who saw them. Where were they?"

"A kid working the drive-through window at Cluck in a Bucket saw him. He remembered Singh and the dog because the dog was barking and jumping around. He said Singh got a bucket of chicken and two strawberry shakes and the dog ate two pieces of chicken before Singh got the window rolled up to drive off."

"Guess he was hungry."

"Speaking of hungry," Lula said. "We haven't had lunch yet."

"We just had a cheeseburger," I told her.

"We shared it. That don't count. If you share, it's a snack."

"I want to go back to talk to Howie at one o'clock. Can you wait until then?"

"I guess. What are we going to do in the meantime?"

"I want to wander around the neighborhood. Maybe snoop in a few garages."

Lula looked up and down the street. "You're going to snoop in this neighborhood? You got a gun on you?"

Ranger reached behind him, under his shirt, and pulled out a .38. He pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans and he shoved the .38 under my waistband and draped my shirt over the gun. The gun was warm with his body heat and his fingers had been even warmer sliding across my belly.

"Thanks," I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking.

He curled his hand around my neck and kissed me lightly on the lips. "Be careful." And he was gone. Off to make the world a better place in his shiny new black Porsche.

"He had his hand in your pants and he kissed you," Lula said. "I'm wetting myself."

"It wasn't like that. He gave me a gun."

"Girl, he gave you more than a gun. I tell you, he ever put his hand in my pants I'll stop breathing and faint dead away. He is so hot." Lula did some fanning motions with her hand. "I'm getting flashes. I think I'm sweating. Look at me. Am I sweating?"