“Ma'am?”
For an old lady, she's fast.
She and the dog run out a door and up what I guess is a hall.
Right now, they have the advantage. They've been here before; we haven't. We're first-time guests and they appear to be long-term residents. So they know where the hell they're running. We don't.
“Danny?”
“Right behind you, boss.”
We both pull out our flashlights and tear up the tiered terraces to the exit she used.
On the other side of the door, I bang into this rickety old grocery cart loaded down with trash bags, nickel- deposit bottles, an old moving pad, books, and an eyeless stuffed panda bear with dirt on its nose.
We hear the dog barking somewhere up the corridor.
“Leave it, Henry! Leave the fucking rat alone!”
Now that she mentions it, I can hear the scratchy-toed devils scurrying around inside what's left of the plaster walls.
“Put him down!”
Wonderful. Henry's a “ratter.” But his assorted barks and snarls act like a homing beacon, helping us figure out which way they're running.
Ceepak leads us up a long, dark corridor lined with rooms. Like most hotel hallways, there are no windows. That means there's also no light. No moonlight, no nothing. Our tiny flashlights shoot jittery spotlights across the walls as we run. I half expect a rat in a top hat to jump out and tap-dance like that frog on the WB.
The carpet squishes under our feet as we run. Guess the roof leaks. Or the toilets.
After about fifty yards, we come to a landing where the grand staircase swoops up from the lobby. Tall casement windows in the stairwell let in just enough light for us to see a few shadows and dim outlines.
I smell gasoline.
So does Ceepak. He goes to the staircase. Most of the planks have been ripped out and all that's left are the stringers on the sides and the support joists in between. Guess the floorboards, the treads, were mahogany or oak or something worth stealing.
“C-4,” Ceepak says, looking at what appears to be a brick wrapped in black plastic and duct-taped to a crossbeam. His finger traces the red and white and green wires snaking from the plastic explosive up and down the steps to, I guess, more wads of C-4. There's a gas can sitting in the windowsill.
“Arson?” I say.
“Looks like.”
“Why? There's not much left to burn.”
“More like a demolition.”
The dog barks.
“Come on,” Ceepak says.
There's another bark. And another. A whole series.
“Henry? Shush!”
Now Henry tosses in a couple of howls, like he's singing opera. All the noise comes from below.
“Come on! Down the steps!”
We head down the grand staircase, stepping on the crossbeams and stringers because, like I said, there aren't any actual stairs any more. Once again, I have a really good chance of slipping through a gaping hole and landing on my butt.
We make it to the second floor and hear a long, slow dog yawn.
Downstairs.
I grab hold of the banister and try not to look down where the floorboards used to be. It's like running down a steep railroad track, stepping only on the ties. The boards bang my arches and sting like hell. Before this is over, I know I'm going to make some bone doctor a very rich man.
“Henry? Come on! Henry!”
Now she sounds like she's right below us.
“Henry?”
Sounds like he isn't cooperating.
We reach the lobby. She's tugging on that twine leash, but Henry is lying like a lump in the middle of the floor, all flopped out, breathing hard.
“You need a nap? Now?”
“Ma’am?” Ceepak moves toward what I'm guessing is a crazy homeless person. His hand never goes anywhere near his gun. “Ma'am?”
“Shhhh! Henry's napping. Can the noise, would ya?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Jesus,” she huffs. “Some people. Yak, yak, yak. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am.”
In the lobby, I get a better look at our quarry. She's tiny. Not even five feet tall. She has on Converse basketball shoes with the canvas toes ripped out and, like I saw earlier, brown paper bags for socks. She's wearing about three different skirts, plaid and denim, with a petticoat underneath. There's a tie-dyed shirt up top over what I figure, from all the bumps circling her like spare tires, is a goose-down vest. Her silver hair is wiry and dirty and wild and curls around her head like a worn-out scrubbing pad.
“You're not going to shoot me, are you, fuzz?”
“No, ma'am.”
“Good.”
“Is that your dog?”
“No. That's Henry.”
“Yes, ma'am. That's a pretty shirt,” Ceepak says. It's tie-dyed all kinds of colors-just like the one Ashley said Squeegee was wearing when he shot her father.
“My boyfriend loaned it to me. I was cold.”
“Does your boyfriend have a name?” he asks. He's made the tie-dye connection, too.
“Jerry. His name is Jerry.”
Ceepak nods, the way you nod when you're visiting the mental ward and a patient tells you the ashtrays have been saying mean things about them lately.
“Jerry Garcia?” Ceepak says, playing along.
“From the Grateful Dead?” the bag lady says.
“That's right. He wears a lot of tie-dye shirts.”
“Jerry Garcia?” she says again.
“That's right. Did Jerry Garcia loan you his T-shirt?”
The bag lady stares at Ceepak like he's an idiot.
“Jesus. Jerry Garcia died like, what? Ten years ago. Don't you read the papers? Watch TV?”
“I thought, perhaps….”
“You need to stay better informed. Especially in your line of work….”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Jesus. My friend's name is Jerry Shapiro. You know….”
She reaches into what I can only imagine is a dirty brassiere rigged up under that T-shirt and down vest and who knows what else she has piled on top of her sagging cleavage.
“Jerry Shapiro!” She pulls out a folded piece of newspaper. “He's famous.”
She unfolds the newspaper and of course it's the sketch of Squeegee.
“You know Squeegee?” I blurt out.
Now it's my time to get the look.
“Squeegee? How fucking insulting. Jerry is a man, not a tool one uses for washing windows. What do they teach you kids in school? To demean those who labor with their hands? Nobody calls him Squeegee except the fuzz and the goons and bulls who run the capitalist car wash.”
“Red calls him Squeegee,” Ceepak says.
