dogs or pushing strollers. No one here lived in one location under one name, got their mail somewhere else under another name, picked up and moved out in the middle of the night.
A stooped elderly woman with a tall white poodle emerged from the Lowell building. Both she and the dog were wearing clear plastic rain hats tied under their chins. They came down the sidewalk at a snail’s pace, the dog dropping turds behind it as it walked, like a horse would. The woman didn’t seem to notice, not that she could have bent over to pick up the mess if she had. The pair crossed the street, in Jace’s direction.
It took them about a year to get past the Mini Cooper. Jace watched in the rearview mirror until woman and dog, still dumping shit as it went, were far enough down the block. Maybe the trail of turds was necessary for them to be able to find their way home. Like a trail of bread crumbs.
It was time to do something, plan or no. He got out of the car and casually walked across the street to the building. He was going to visit someone. No reason to act nervous or secretive.
The tenants’ names were each listed next to a call button on the wall beside the front door, but it didn’t matter, because the old lady hadn’t opened the door with enough force to make it latch when it closed behind her. Jace checked the apartment numbers and went in.
A central staircase led to the second floor, where there was one apartment on either side of the hall. Jace went to the neighbor’s door first, to listen for anyone home. The only sound was some kind of bird squawking and clucking to itself.
Jace knocked softly on the door to the Lowell apartment a couple of times. No one answered. He checked behind him, then tried the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it turned easily. He checked over his shoulder again, then went inside, wiped the knob off with the sleeve of his sweater, and closed the door behind him.
The apartment looked like the neighborhood had suffered an earthquake of huge magnitude. Everything that had been on shelves or in cabinets was on the floor, chairs were overturned. Someone had slashed the upholstery on the couch and an armchair, and pulled the stuffing out. Cereal boxes had been opened and dumped on the floor.
Jace took it all in, trying so hard to process everything that he forgot to breathe. Someone had been looking for something. He wondered if that something was taped to his belly.
Even trying to step carefully, he crunched something under his boot as he made his way past the kitchen and down the hall. The small bathroom was in the same shape, but someone had taken red lipstick and written on the mirrored medicine cabinet: NEXT YOU DIE.
“Holy crap,” he murmured. “This is a fucking movie. I’m living in a fucking movie.”
Only, in this movie the bullets were real, the bad guys were real, and people actually died.
Now he was breathing shallow, quick breaths. He had begun to sweat. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to gather himself, trying to think what to do.
He had to get out. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that he should find Lenny’s daughter and warn her. But how was he supposed to find her? Go sit in the hall of the Bullocks Wilshire Building at Southwestern Law and wait for her to happen past? Go wait in the car until she showed up here, then run up to her to tell her someone was threatening to kill her? She would probably think that someone was him.
He put his hands over his closed eyes and rubbed at the tension in his forehead.
The blow to his back was so unexpected, it took a second to register what was happening. Without his permission, Jace’s body hurtled forward. The sink hit him in the groin. His head bounced off the mirror. Stars of swirling color bursting before his eyes, he tried to shove backward. The assailant grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head against the medicine cabinet again and again. He heard the glass crack, felt a shard slice his cheek.
Maybe this was the part of the movie where he died in a surprise twist. This idiotic thought swam through his head as his assailant let him fall. His chin hit the porcelain sink with the force of a hammer. Then he was on the floor, waiting to be kicked at the least, shot at the worst, torn between wanting to fight back and wanting to lapse into unconsciousness, though he didn’t really have a choice.
Jace wasn’t sure how long he lay there, drifting in and out. Gradually, his vision came into sharper focus. The floor was a sea of old one-inch octagonal white tile with dingy grout. He could see the lines of the old white bathtub, and, nearer, the base of the pedestal sink, the rusty water lines that came out of the wall and snaked up under the sink to the faucets.
He couldn’t seem to pass the message from his brain to his body.
Slowly, he became aware of something wet beneath his cheek. He brought himself to his hands and knees and saw the pool of blood smeared on the floor where his face had been. Head swimming, arms and legs trembling and rubbery, he grabbed the edge of the sink and slowly pulled himself to his feet.
His mouth and chin hurt like someone had hit him in the face with a bat. Blood dripped, bright red, into the bowl of the sink. The reflection looking back at him in the broken mirror was from a horror show. His right cheekbone and eyebrow were swollen from being slammed into the medicine cabinet. His cheek was cut and bleeding, his nose was bleeding. Some of the lipstick from the message on the mirror was smeared on his cheek like war paint.
Gingerly, he felt his nose to see if it was broken. The left side of his chin had a knot on it, already turning black and blue from bouncing off the sink. Wincing, he felt along the jawbone for a break. He’d split his lip and chipped a tooth.
The apartment was quiet. Jace hoped that meant his attacker had gone, rather than that he was waiting until Jace came around so he could beat on him again.
Still feeling weak, still trembling, he turned on the faucets, washed his face, washed his hands, found a towel, dried himself, and wiped the sink out. Bending over to mop up his blood from the floor, he went down on one knee as everything tilted around him. Somehow he ended up sitting on the floor with his back against the bathtub.
He had to get out of there. He wanted to go slowly, casually, so as not to draw attention to himself, but his face was going to attract plenty of attention if someone came near him, passed him on his way out, passed him on the street, saw him from a window as he got into the Mini and drove away.
The apartment door opened and closed. Jace sat up straighter, straining to listen. Someone going out or someone coming in?
He waited for some exclamation of surprise, but he heard nothing for a moment. If Abby Lowell had walked in to see the mess, to see that her home had been violated, she would have gasped or made some sound of being shocked. Maybe she would have gone back out to find a neighbor and get help. Call the cops.
He could hear someone moving through the front rooms slowly, as if trying to take it all in, or trying to find something. Objects being moved.
Maybe the guy had panicked when Jace came in, and bolted without whatever it was he had come here to find. Maybe he’d come back to get it. Maybe he’d come back with a weapon.
A weapon. He needed a weapon.
A long triangular shard of glass stuck out from the broken mirror. Jace wrapped the bloody towel around his hand and plucked it free. He stepped behind the bathroom door and waited.
Maybe a neighbor had already called the cops, and there were two uniforms picking their way toward the back of the apartment with guns drawn.
The shattered mirror gave a distorted, surreal reflection of the person stepping cautiously into the room—an eye here, a nose there, a live Picasso painting.
Jace dropped his weapon, kicked the door shut, and grabbed Abby Lowell, clamping his hand over her mouth to muffle her scream. She tried to jab him with her elbow, kicked backward, connecting a boot heel to his shin. Jace tightened his arm around the middle of her, kept his palm flat over her mouth as she tried to bite him. She was strong and athletic and determined to get away from him. Jace shoved her forward, as his assailant had done to him, trapping her up against the sink.
“Don’t scream,” he ordered quietly, his mouth brushing the shell of her ear. “I’m not here to hurt you. I want to help. I knew your father. He was a good guy.”
She was watching him in the mirror, her brown eyes round with fear and distrust.
“I came here to see you, to talk to you,” Jace explained. “Someone had ransacked the place. He beat the shit out of me and left.”
