I grimaced at Lula. She grimaced back. We entered the building and slowly climbed the stairs, listening for the shotgun ratchet.
When we got to the third floor, Shirlene was in the dingy hall, staring at her ruined door. Shirlene was medium height, lean and sinewy. Her age would be somewhere between twenty and fifty. She was wearing pink terry cloth bedroom slippers, faded pink warm-up pants that were a size too small and a matching sweatshirt that was dotted with various-hued food stains, none of which looked recent. Her hair was short and chopped. Her mouth turned down at the corners. Her eyes were expressionless. She held a piece of cardboard box in one hand and a hammer in the other.
“Not gonna be able to hammer anything into that cheapskate door,” Lula told her. “You need mollies. Only thing gonna hold that cardboard in place is mollies.”
“Haven’t got any mollies,” Shirlene said.
“Where’s Leroy?” Lula asked. “He isn’t gonna shoot at us again, is he?”
“Leroy’s gone,” Shirlene said.
“Gone? What do you mean gone?”
“Gone is gone,” Shirlene said.
“Where’d he go?”
“Don’t know,” Shirlene said.
“When will he be back?”
“Don’t know that either.”
Lula stuffed her fists onto her hips. “Well, what
“I know I gotta get this door fixed,” Shirlene said. “And you’re standing here taking up my time.”
Lula walked into the front room. “You don’t mind if I look around, do you?”
Shirlene didn’t say anything. We both knew nothing short of that twelve-gauge pump was going to stop Lula from looking around.
Lula disappeared into the back room for a moment. “You’re right,” she said to Shirlene. “He’s gone. He take any clothes with him? He look like he gonna be gone a long time?”
“He took his gym bag, and you know what he got in there.”
I looked over at Lula, eyebrows raised in silent question.
Lula made her hand into a gun shape and aimed it at me.
“Oh,” I said.
“My time is valuable,” Lula said to Shirlene. “What’s the matter with that man, doggin’ me like this? He think I haven’t got anything better to do than to hike up those stairs?”
I gave Shirlene my card, and Lula and I trudged down the stairs with Lula grumbling the whole way.
“Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs. Walk up the stairs, walk down the stairs,” she said. “Leroy better hope I never catch up with him.”
Now that I was back on the street I wasn’t all that sad not to have made an apprehension. An apprehension would have meant a trip to the police station. And the police station was the last place I wanted to visit right now.
“I guess we could try some bars,” I said with no enthusiasm.
“Snake’s not gonna be in a bar at this time of day,” Lula said. “Snake’s more likely to be hanging around a schoolyard, checking up on his sales force.”
That gave me some incentive. “Okay. Let’s drive by some schools.”
An hour later we were out of schools and still hadn’t found Snake.
“Any other ideas?” I asked Lula.
“Who’s listed on his bail ticket?”
“Shirlene.”
“No one else? No mama?”
“Nope. Just Shirlene.”
“I don’t know,” Lula said. “Usually a man like Snake is out on the street. Even in weather like this he could be on the street.” She slowly drove down Stark. “Not nobody out here today. Don’t even see anybody we can ask on.”
We drove by Jackie’s corner, and it was empty too.
“Maybe she’s with a client,” I said.
Lula shook her head. “Nuh-uh, she isn’t with no client. She’s in that snooty parking lot, waiting for her man. Bet my life on it.”
Lula cruised the block around my apartment building while I checked for Morelli. I didn’t see his car, or anything that resembled a cop or a copmobile, so I had Lula drop me at the front door. I entered the lobby cautiously, not completely convinced of Morelli’s departure. I did a fast survey and crossed to the stairs. So far, so good. I crept up the stairs, cracked the door at the second floor, peeked out to an empty hallway and sighed in relief. No Morelli.
