if Alf never existed. Like this wonderful man had been wiped away by bureaucrats of a heartless metropolis that had no time to mourn the death of its citizen.
In twenty-four hours, Alf went from human being to crime victim; tabloid folly to complete eradication. The speed of erasing a person in this town was too unsettling to contemplate—and anyway, I promised myself, I’m not going to forget him.
“What did you say, boss?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
We moved through the dim alley and into the darkened courtyard, where the second metal Dumpster stood beside the line of blue plastic recycling bins.
From one of my hoodie’s deep pockets, I fished out a small flashlight, one more powerful than the keychain light I’d had the night before. I flipped it on and scanned the fire escape above the trash bins. Then I moved to those crates I’d seen, stacked against a far wall. I hauled one off the top of the pile and dragged it over to the blue recycling bin to act as a step—exactly the way I was sure Alf had.
“You’re really going up there?” Esther whispered.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Just watch my back and warn me if someone comes.” I turned to start climbing.
“Wait!” she rasped. “How can I warn you if you’re all the way up there and I’m down here? I’ll have to shout.”
“You’re right.” I thought it over. “We’ll use our cell phones like walkie-talkies.”
We made the connection a moment later. “Keep the line open the whole time I’m up there,” I whispered. Then I pocketed the open phone and boosted myself to the top of one of the blue bins, bruising an elbow in the process.
“Ouch.”
“You okay?”
“I’ll live.”
I climbed to my feet, boots thumping dully on the frigid plastic lid, and made sure my footing was secure before I reached into my pocket to check the connection.
“Still there, Esther?”
“Affirmative. What next?”
“I’m going to climb the fire escape ladder up to the second-floor landing.”
“But those ladders are always locked in place for security,” she warned.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, eyeballing my Everest.
The wrought-iron framework appeared pretty typical for an apartment building of this age and type: metal stair-cases connecting narrow grilled balconies that sat parallel to each story. In an emergency, a simple sliding ladder allowed tenants to move from the second-floor balcony to the ground. When not in use, the ladder was locked high off the ground—to keep people like me from trespassing.
“I’m going to pull myself up,” I told Esther, my focus on the ladder’s bottom rung, just above my head. “Stand by; I may need help.”
Okay, I thought, so I haven’t done a pull-up since high school gym class, but my job has its daily physical demands and I swim laps semiregularly in the local Y’s pool. I’m in passable shape. How hard can one stupid pull-up be?
Taking a deep breath, I jumped up to grip the wrought-iron rung and heaved with all my might. But my body didn’t lift up. Instead, the freezing black bar shot out of my hands as the heavy metal structure rolled down its runner with a wince-inducing grinding. Then the bottom of the ladder slammed the ground with an explosive clang!
I froze.
“Crap,” Esther said over the phone. “That was loud!”
“The ladder wasn’t locked!” I rasped into the cell. “If anyone comes out, just tell them you’re a new tenant and you were emptying your trash!”
We waited nearly five minutes, just to be safe, but no one came to investigate. Then on a deep breath of bracing winter air, I gripped a cold metal rung and began to climb. At the top of the ladder, I stepped onto the second-floor balcony. That’s when I noticed that the security release hook had rusted through—
It wasn’t unlocked, I realized. It was broken.
There was still snow and ice on the grillwork. My gloved fingers grabbed the guardrail, and I knocked free an entire row of tiny icicles. With a crystalline tinkling, they rained down on Esther.
“Watch the shrapnel, boss!” she complained over the cell. “And keep the noise down, too.”
“Sorry.”
Using the tiny beam from my pocket flashlight, I searched for anything out of the ordinary. Two windows faced the second-floor balcony—presumably different apartments. Both were curtained and dark, and the glass on each window appeared intact and undisturbed.
On my way to the third floor, a blast of arctic wind swept through the courtyard. The fire escape bucked under my feet like trick stairs in an amusement park fun house. Freaked a little, I clung to the rocking