“This one’s noticeable too, for being so damned ugly.”
Lucky grinned, recalling his own first meeting with the car he’d underestimated. “This is nothing. You should’ve seen it when it still had spinner rims.”
Cruz groused to himself in Spanish. Lucky tried not to be too smug.
For about a minute.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
They parked across the street from the building. Time hadn’t sweetened the image. Damned place wasn’t fit for anyone to live in. Someone ought to take a wrecking ball to the eight-floor stucco and pigeon shit fire trap. No fire escapes even.
Lights shone from the windows, with an occasional shadow marking someone’s passing. Poor souls.
“Wait here.” Cruz patted Lucky’s shoulder and climbed out of the car, guaranteeing Lucky wouldn’t stay put. Cruz didn’t complain when Lucky followed him to the front entrance.
Four young toughs sat outside, though they didn’t look like the same men on the morning shift. Three feet from the steps Cruz yelled in Spanish, brandishing his phone. The two guys who’d stepped forward to stop him jumped back.
Yep, best defense, good offense and all.
Cruz charged toward the front door. All four men formed a barrier, chest to chest. Cruz screamed, looking up at the windows and calling, “Maria? Maria!” acting all the world like a man dying of a broken heart.
With no warning, he slammed a fist into one guy’s mouth. The man shrieked, clutching his face. Blood spurted between his fingers. Cruz kicked another guy.
The other two ran. Chicken shits. The two injured followed their friends into the night. Not gangbangers, and they didn’t appear armed. They’d have put up more of a fight.
“Ain’t you afraid they’ll go tell their bosses?” Lucky would’ve snuck around and tried the back door.
“No, my friend. They won’t tell anyone they got their asses beat down by a single man.”
Probably true. Lucky wouldn’t want to admit such.
Cruz grinned and jerked on the door handle. Nothing happened. Locked.
“I got this.” Lucky jogged back to the car and returned with a kit he hadn’t used much lately. Fifteen seconds to open the door. The lock must’ve been forty years old. Spiderweb cracks covered one glass door panel, while plywood covered the other. It might’ve been easier to break the door down, but why have mad lockpicking skills and not use them?
“They keep them locked in,” Cruz observed.
Lucky’d noticed, the bastards. One lit match and the place would go up like kindling. What would happen to the tenants then? He drew his gun, holding his current best friend close to his chest, standing a few feet behind Cruz. Unlike in the alleyway training session, he didn’t need to lead with his gun.
Paper, cans, cigarette butts and broken bits of plaster littered the floor. Bare boards peeked out from some areas of the walls. Chips in the faded linoleum floor invited unsuspecting shoe heels to throw somebody.
The first door had no numbers, but a faded outline declared the apartment to be 1A. The dent in the panel appeared the right height and shape to be the work of a fist.
Cruz knocked. The door cracked open and a scared face peered out. “Si?”
Cruz showed the image on the phone and chattered away.
The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty. She pointed up. Lucky made out “third floor, apartment B.”
Cruz thanked the woman. She slammed the door. A chain rattled a moment later.
Together Lucky and his convenient interpreter took the stairs two at a time. The whole place reeked of mold, onions, cigarette smoke, and other things he blocked from his mind. The handrail nearly gave way. Most of the lights were out in the stairwell, leaving them in a gray gloom.
Coming from a poor background, Lucky’d stayed in some pretty low-rent apartments before moving into Victor Mangiardi’s mansion. None of his came close to this run-down hellhole.
The third-floor hall lights were all out. Voices came from behind some doors, but no sounds of televisions, video games, or much else. That poor girl had to waddle up all those stairs?
Cruz knocked on a door with a sideways B, the impression of the letter permanently etched into the door. Another scared face peered out.
