“Man. What a dump. Your uncle must not pay shit.”

“He pays in shit, the way that stairwell smells.”

“You could fix a place like this up, though.” Ray ran a finger along the edge of a door frame. “All this woodwork. Built-in bookcases, hardwood floors? That’s leaded glass, too. You could fix this up.”

“In this neighborhood?” Tony snorted. “Why?”

“You think like a yuppie.”

“You dress like one.”

Ray jerked a thumb toward the television sitting on milk crates between the main windows. “Think your uncle knows about that?”

“Hey,” Tony said. Besides the big, ugly plastic Halloween pumpkin in the corner, the television was the first thing you saw coming in. Tony walked around the coffee table to take a closer look. “That’s the same as mine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, man. Samsung. High-def. Eddie gave it to me for Christmas last year.”

Ray Salcedo started chuckling.

“Son of a bitch,” Tony Briggs said. The slick bastard had probably fudged an invoice or something.

“Your uncle gave you a hot TV,” Ray said. He was laughing now. “I love it.”

“Man, who cares about that? This has to be a fiftyincher.”

“So?”

“That son of a bitch only gave me a forty-two.”

Ray Salcedo laughed even harder. He actually dabbed at his eyes.

“Think that’s pretty funny?”

“Man, check the phone.” Ray headed across the creaky bare floor toward the hallway to the back, unzipping his black leather jacket, the whole time still chuckling to himself. “I’ll go see if there’s anything left in the closets.”

Tony took a last look at the Samsung. He finally turned the bill of his cap around backward and went to work, thinking: That shit is irksome.

The phone sat atop one of the built-in bookcases Ray thought were so cool. They went about rib-high and divided the main room from a smaller dining area that led back to the kitchen. There were schoolbooks and papers stacked on one shelf, old issues of Entertainment Weekly on another. A few picture frames, a couple half-dead plants, a half-burned candle. Nothing much there, but nothing looked missing.

He paged through the screen on the base unit of the phone, wrote down the last five outgoing numbers and the last five coming in. He was just about to play the messages when he heard Salcedo’s voice from down the hall.

“Ho, baby.”

“What’s up?”

“Dude.”

Tony headed that way, past the tiny bathroom, to the doorway at the end of the short hall. Ray stepped aside for him.

“Holy shit.”

The top half of the bed looked like a used maxi pad. Tony scanned the small room. He saw a glass lamp on the floor, tucked away in a corner. It looked like it had been dipped in a bucket of blood.

Ray said, “Thoughts?”

“Just out of curiosity,” Tony said, “what’s that closet look like?”

Ray wedged past, around the end of the bed, and pulled open the slatted folding doors. There was a bar full of clothes still on hangers. Shoes piled up in the bottom. A half-zipped suitcase spilling underwear shoved up against the back.

Ray pulled the sleeves of his turtleneck sweater past his cuffs. He used them to pull the doors shut again, then wiped off the knobs.

Tony said, “The fuck you figure happened here?”

Before Ray Salcedo could respond, they both heard the sound of a key sliding into the dead bolt on the front door.

“Shit,” Tony said.

They looked at each other. Ray moved first.

Tony followed his lead, back down the hall, both of them pigeon-stepping past the ugly pumpkin, through the gap in the bookcases, toward the doorway on the other side of the dining space.

A short, cramped pantry led to a kitchen the size of a postage stamp. Ray was slipping out the back door to the fire escape just as the front door rattled open behind them.

Tony Briggs followed right on his heels. They made the landing outside; Tony eased the back door shut without clicking the latch. They each took a side, backs up against the cold brick, breath billowing in the frosty morning air.

“Now what?” Ray whispered.

Tony put a finger to his lips.

The door had a window. From his angle, he had a sliver of a sight line through the curtain still rippling on the inside.

Footsteps. Creaking boards. In a minute, a guy in jeans and a brown suede jacket appeared in the kitchen. Tony couldn’t quite catch his face.

The guy dropped two bulging plastic sacks on the counter. Tony saw a spray nozzle poking from the top of one of the sacks. He saw a white bottle with a blue cap.

The guy knelt and pulled a roll of garbage bags out from under the sink. Then he stood and grabbed the sacks from the counter. Headed back the other way.

Ray motioned with his hand. What’s happening?

Tony ducked under the window, tiptoed over to Ray’s side, and whispered, “I think the janitor’s here.”

“How do you want to play it?”

“I dunno. You?”

“It’s your uncle, man.”

“Shit,” Tony said. “Let’s bust in. Shock and awe his ass.” He paused, thought about it, and said, “Shit.”

He tilted his head toward the stairs and took the lead. Together, they made their way as quietly as they could down the rickety fire escape to the parking lot below.

On their way toward the nearest corner of the building, Ray glanced back the other direction and said, “That Ranger wasn’t there before.”

He was right. Dark red Ford, engine still ticking under the hood. Without speaking, they reversed course, went over.

Nebraska plates. Tony wrote down the tag number.

Ray went around to the passenger door. He jiggled the handle. Tony took a look around in the empty bed. Ray went around the front and said, “Hey.”

Tony looked over his shoulder, then right and left. He headed over.

“Whatcha got?”

Salcedo pointed, and Tony saw what he was talking about.

Inside bottom of the windshield on the passenger side: one of those plastic contact decals. Blue circle with a buffalo head on a red center.

Omaha Police Union, Local 101.

He looked at Ray and said, “The cleanup guy’s a cop?”

They sat around the corner in Ray’s Expedition for a solid three hours, watching the trashy lot behind the building. No vehicles came in or went out. Just the Ranger and a rusty little Tercel that had been there all morning. Tony had already written down both tag numbers.

Other cars drove by. Leaves blew along the sidewalks. Eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and the whole street was like a ghost town.

This was bullshit. By the time anything happened, Tony Briggs was cold and ready for a cheeseburger and about bored out of his skull.

“Here we go,” Ray said.

Down the fire escape came a guy hauling a load of bulging garbage bags over his shoulder. White, mid-thirties, dark hair. He went maybe five ten, one seventy-five. Same brown jacket Tony had seen before.

The guy looked all around, then headed across the lot toward the Ranger. He tossed the bags in the bed and got in behind the wheel. The reverse lights came on. Exhaust rolled from the pipes in a cloud.

“Finally,” Tony said. “I’m about starved.”

“Maybe he’ll stop at McDonald’s.”

“I wanted Bronco’s.”

Ray started the Expedition. He waited for the Ranger to corner out of the alley onto Jackson, then pulled away from the curb and tailed along.

6

It was almost noon by the time Worth finally pulled into the detached garage behind his grandmother’s little house on Martha Street.

In the adjacent stall, beneath a heavy blue tarp, sat a 1971 Pontiac GTO, the owner’s garbage-bagged, rug-rolled corpse still in the trunk.