'It's not but a couple blocks.'
I sipped my flat Coke and gave her the head start she'd asked for.
Then I picked up my change and left a buck on the bar. I went out the door, up the stairs to the street.
The cold air was bracing after the warm fug inside the Garden Grill. I took a good look around before I walked to the corner of Stanton and looked east toward Attorney. She had covered half the block already, walking in that hip-rolling stroll that's as good as a neon sign. I picked up my own pace and caught her a few yards before the corner.
She didn't look at me. 'We turn here,' she said, and hung a left at Attorney. It looked a lot like Ridge Street, the same crumbling tenements, the same air of unquiet desperation. Under a streetlamp, a Ford a few years old sat low on the ground, all four of its wheels removed. The streetlamp across the way was out, and so was another further down the block.
I said, 'I haven't got much money with me. Under fifty dollars.'
'I said you could pay me later.'
'I know. But if this was a setup, there's not enough money to make it worthwhile.'
She looked at me, a pained expression on her face. 'You think that's what this is about? Man, I make more in a half hour than I could ever roll you for, and the men I make it from are all smiles when they give
it to me.'
'Whatever you say. Where are we going?'
'Next block. You'll see. Say, that picture of him? Somebody drew it, right?'
'That's right.'
'Looks just like him. Got the eyes just right, too. Man, he looks at you, those eyes just go right on through you, you know what I mean?'
I didn't like it. Something felt wrong, something hadn't felt right since I walked down the dark stairwell and into the bar. I didn't know how much of it was my own cop instinct and how much was contagious anxiety that I'd picked up from Candy. Whatever it was, I didn't like it.
'This way,' she said, reaching for my arm. I jerked my arm free and she drew back and stared at me.
'What's the matter, you can't stand to be touched?'
'Where are we going?'
'Right through there.'
We were at the mouth of an empty lot where a tenement had once stood. Now cyclone fence barred the way, topped with concertina wire, but someone had cut a gate into the fence. Beyond it I could see some discarded furniture, a burned-out sofa and some cast-off mattresses.
'There's a back house to one of the buildings on the next block,'
she said, her voice little more than a whisper. 'Except it's sealed off, you can't get in from the other street. The only way's through the lot here.
You could live on this block and never know about it.'
'And that's where he is?'
'That's where he stays. Look, man, just come with me to where you can see the entrance. You'd never find it if I don't point it out to you.'
I stood still for a moment, listening. I don't know what I expected to hear. Candy stepped through the opening in the fence, not even looking back at me, and when she was a few yards ahead I started in after her. I knew better, but it didn't seem to matter. I felt like Elaine.
He'd told her to pick up the phone and turn off the answering machine, and knowing better didn't help. She did what he told her.
I walked slowly, picking my way through the debris underfoot.
The street had been dark to begin with, and it got darker with every step I took into the lot. I couldn't have been more than ten yards in when I heard footsteps.
Before I could turn a voice said, 'That's just fine, Scudder. Hold it right there.'
I started to pivot around to my right. Before I'd moved any distance, before I'd even begun to move, his hand fastened on my left arm just above the elbow. His grip tightened and his fingers had found something— a nerve, a pressure point— because pain knifed through me and my arm went dead from the elbow on down. His other hand moved to grasp my right arm, but higher up, close to the shoulder, with his thumb probing the armpit. He bore down and I felt another stab of pain, along with a wave of nausea rolling up from the pit of my stomach.
I didn't make a sound, or move a muscle. I heard more footsteps, and broken glass crunched underfoot as Candy returned to appear a few feet in front of me. A stray shaft of light glinted off one of her gold hoop earrings.
'Sorry,' she said. There was no mockery in her tone, but no apology either.
'Pat him down,' Motley said.
'He hasn't got a gun, silly. He's just glad to see me.'
'Pat him down.'
Her hands fluttered like little birds, patting at my chest and sides, circling my waist to grope for a gun tucked beneath my belt. She dropped to her knees before me to trace the outside of my legs to the ankle, then ran her
