apartment window. Obvious signs of illegal entry. And it’s not the dead of night. Stop saying that.”
“But haven’t the police been all over that place?”
“All over the alley, yes, certainly the courtyard, too, because the policemen chased the mugger through there, but Franco shrugged off my concerns about the fire escape.”
“The fire escape.” Esther stared at me a second. “You’re not going to climb it, are you?”
I nodded.
“What if you’re caught? That’s trespassing, isn’t it?”
“I won’t be caught. Not with you watching my back.”
“ ‘ Esther Best, accessory to felony trespass.’ ” She framed her words like a headline. “Boris would love that. I mean, talk about gangsta chic—”
“Look, if you want to back out—”
“No way, boss. You know I like to live on the edge.”
“Uh-huh.”
Five minutes later, we were standing on the sidewalk just outside the alley where Alf died. “Are you sure this is the right place?” Esther asked. “I don’t see any police tape.”
I suppressed a shiver. “This is the place.”
“Then let’s go—”
I stopped Esther and gestured toward an elderly couple heading right for us along the narrow sidewalk. “We can’t go into the alley yet,” I whispered. “We have to let these people pass so they don’t notice us and get suspicious.”
“We can’t just loiter here,” Esther whispered back. “That’s suspicious, too. Maybe we should walk on, then double back. There’s no one coming from that direction.”
Just then, two young men entered the block from the opposite direction and across the street.
“Crap,” I muttered.
“Quick, pretend to tie your boot,” Esther suggested.
I glanced over my shoulder. The older people were still moving toward us, but at a glacial pace. “I could tie my laces three times and those folks still wouldn’t be here.”
Esther nervously shifted from foot to foot. “What do we do then? Maybe we should just leave—”
“Spill your bag,” I said.
“What?”
“Spill your bag. I don’t have one. You do.”
“No way, I—”
I pulled the purse from Esther’s shoulder and dumped it onto the frozen concrete. Esther tried to catch it, and slipped on a patch of ice for her trouble. She grabbed my arm to steady herself, and we both went down.
Now I felt like an idiot. “I’m sorry, Esther,” I said, taking my time scooping up change, makeup, and a pen off the ground. Across the street, I heard the two men snicker.
Esther smirked. “They think we had a girl fight.”
The elderly couple finally reached us. The woman inquired about our safety.
“Just slipped in the snow!” I chirped. “Have a nice day!”
Esther watched the couple pass. “Good thing nobody noticed us, right, boss?”
“I think I’ve had enough irony for one night.”
I opened Esther’s bag to dump her stuff back inside and was surprised at how heavy it was. So I took a closer look.
“My God, Esther! You have half a brick at the bottom of your purse.”
“It’s protection,” she said.
“Protection? From what?”
“Those fashion mags with their anorexic models are a crock, you know? It’s Rubenesque girls like me who bring out the worst in the guys with real testosterone. The home-boys in Air Jordans I can handle; even construction workers aren’t so bad. But when some of these Middle Eastern dudes and south-of-the-border guys spot curves like mine, they go bonkers. Their tongues loll and their eyes bulge like the wolf in that old Tex Avery cartoon.” Esther sighed and shook her head. “Sometimes, to dissuade them, I have to resort to the brick. That’s how I roll.”
“Okay,” I replied, refilling the purse.
Esther scanned the street. “The coast looks clear, boss.”
“Good,” I said, rising. “Then let’s get rolling.”
TEN
AS we slipped into the private alley, I stared at the infamous gray Dumpster. It stood in the shadows, lid open, contents emptied.
“This is where I found Alf,” I said softly.
“Oh.” Esther blinked at the trash container. “Weird.”
“What?”
“I guess I expected something more ominous. It looks so . . . normal.”
Esther was right. The police tape was gone by now, and so was most of the snow. There were no traces of blood on the concrete, no chalk outline, no sign that a violent crime had taken place here.
From my talks with Quinn, I knew this was the work of the crime-scene unit. In their search for a murder weapon or forensic evidence, crime technicians would have meticulously combed through every garbage and recycling bin, then had the trash carted away and stored in case they’d missed anything during the initial search.
I understood the procedures on an intellectual level, but the emotional effect was unsettling. It felt as