out in the open.” She was smiling widely, her affection for the old man beaming through. “The first floors of these buildings are all boarded up. There are only two entrances, one on each end of the block, and Terry keeps them guarded. It’s his own medieval castle, you see. Only here, no one’s trying to storm the gates.”
The next building on this side of the block was much taller than the one we were standing on. In fact, it was the tallest building in sight, stretching at least ten stories tall, an imposing brick edifice, each side a dark red face stubbled with tiny windows. Taylor stepped to the edge of the roof and gestured up toward the building’s top floors. A lot of the windows up there had been covered over, and I could see the glint of aluminum foil in those recessed squares, glimmering like silver teeth between narrowed lips. “The tower,” she said. “I used to live up there … for a while.”
The buildings here were not quite even, and the bridge over to the tower was skewed, slanted down at a fifteen-degree angle. Thankfully, somebody had set up a handrail, though it didn’t feel much sturdier than the planks bouncing beneath my feet. Once again, I held my breath, not letting it out until Taylor grabbed my arm and helped me down on the far side.
We ended up in a stairwell. Taylor pulled a flashlight from her pocket and led the way down, casting shadows back and forth across each riser as I struggled to keep up. She didn’t pause when we reached the bottom. She shouldered her way through a heavy fire door into a cold and musty basement.
It was like stepping into a long-abandoned crypt: the penetrating cold, the touch of moisture, a slight hint of rot floating in the thick, stale air. There was a dim light at one end of the main corridor. Taylor touched my arm—a brief, tentative touch—and started toward the light.
The corridor ended in a large industrial kitchen. There were stainless steel tables running along all four walls, and a cooking station stretched down its middle, complete with stove tops and a wide ventilating hood. The floor was dark red tile, and it dipped down toward a drain in each of the room’s four corners. The smell of rot was stronger here.
The light was coming from a pantry on the far side of the room. Taylor gestured with her flashlight, then led the way over to its entrance.
There were three people in the pantry, and all three lay stretched out on the floor. At first, I thought they were dead, then one of them—a large black man wearing a bright red knit cap—groaned and turned over, burying his sweaty face in a blanket on the floor. The other two—a girl sporting wild black dreadlocks and a stick-thin man with a scraggly, unkempt beard—remained still. The girl had her face pressed up against the man’s chest. She was shivering, despite the sheen of sweat glistening on her cheeks.
There were lit candles scattered around the room and a single battery-powered lantern burned in the corner. The batteries must have been dying, as the lantern gave off only the dimmest orange glow. There was a candle and a charred spoon at the girl’s feet, and she had a pair of panty hose cinched tight around her bicep. The smell of ozone, sweat, and cooking heroin lay thick in the air.
“Shit,” Taylor muttered. “Motherfucker!” She crouched down next to the bearded man and began slapping his cheeks, first softly, then with increasing strength. After the sixth slap, the man’s head snapped up off the floor.
“Fuck, man,” he said, wearing a distant, shit-eating grin. “What the fuck …?
“Yeah, Johnny,” Taylor said. “You’re a motherfucking piece of work, aren’t you?”
“I try,” Johnny said, still wearing that lunatic smile. He let his head drop back down to the floor. “I’m a work of art … always in progress.”
“Just tell me where Weasel is,” Taylor said, shaking her head. “Tell me where he’s staying.”
Johnny was silent for a handful of seconds. His eyelids began to droop, and then, abruptly, they fell shut.
“Motherfucker!” Taylor growled. She clamped her hands over both of Johnny’s ears and started to shake his head back and forth. His eyes snapped open, and there was a look of fear there as he tried to get a fix on Taylor’s angry eyes. “Where’s Weasel, Johnny?” Taylor continued to growl. “Just fucking tell me!”
The violence jolted the dreadlocked girl out of her stupor. She pushed away from Johnny and frantically rolled across the room, finally coming to rest against her other roommate. She pressed herself tight against his sleeping body and curled into a fetal ball. Her eyes remained open. She watched Taylor and Johnny from beneath drooping, heavy lids.
“Fuck,” Johnny groaned as Taylor continued to shake him. “Just stop! Stop! I’m going to be sick.”
Taylor grabbed the collar of Johnny’s shirt and pulled him up into a sitting position. A ribbon of spit poured from his lips, and I thought he really was going to be sick. “The other … the other end of the hall,” he said, trying to prop himself up with a shaking arm. “He emptied out a broom closet. Won’t fucking come out.”
Taylor put her hand against Johnny’s face and pushed, hard, sending him tumbling back to the floor. Johnny let out a loud groan and grasped his head between his palms. He closed his eyes and started rocking back and forth.
“Leave Weasel alone, Johnny,” Taylor said. “Terry might be letting your shit slide, but I won’t let it go. I’ll fuck you up—absolutely
Johnny let out another groan. I took that as a sign of agreement.
“We’ve got to get him out of here, Dean,” Taylor said as we crossed back through the kitchen. She paused and looked back at me over her shoulder. There was a hint of fear in her eyes, a glimmer of trepidation fighting its way past all of that seething anger. “He’s going to die here if we don’t do something. We’ve got to get him home.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s fine. I understand.”
After seeing Johnny, I really couldn’t argue with her logic. I wouldn’t wish that kind of punishment on anyone.
A grateful smile flickered across her lips. And then she was gone. She barreled out of the kitchen and back down the main corridor, quickly making her way to the other end of the floor.
There were a half dozen storage rooms at this end of the basement, but Taylor barely paused as she darted past, sending a brief flicker of light across each open door. I struggled to keep up. Finally, at the end of the corridor, she pulled to a stop. There was a jumble of debris strewn across the floor, here—a mop, several brooms, rags, a bucket filled with dirty gray water—and it barely left enough space to let open the broom closet door.
Taylor stepped up to the closet and knocked. “Weasel?” she said. Her voice was tentative, weak, a stark contrast to all the energy she’d unleashed against Johnny. She knocked again, this time a little bit harder. “Let me in. I want to help.”
There was no response.
“Please, Wendell,” she said, her voice cracking. She continued in a low whisper: “I’m sorry. I forgive you.”
Then she opened the door.
There was no one inside. The closet was a tiny space, barely large enough to house a sleeping man. There were blankets layered in a stack on the floor, the top blanket turned down in a neat triangle. It looked like a child’s bed, prepped and ready for a good night’s sleep.
“Fuck,” Taylor said, letting out a nervous laugh. In the backwash of her flashlight, I could see tears glistening on her cheeks. “All of this work … I thought we’d find him dead, and the fucker’s not even here.”
She played her flashlight across the floor of the closet. The blankets took up most of the space, but there was more of Weasel’s stuff inside. There was a stack of flannel shirts folded into a pillow at the head of the bed and, lying next to it, Weasel’s fedora. I remembered it from my first day in the city. He’d doffed it like a gentleman as he greeted me.
Taylor once again panned the flashlight across the small room, finally settling on a stack of notebooks tucked into the corner. They were cheap notebooks. I recognized the style: black-and-white marbled covers, the words
