'It looks deserted.'
'Lots of these buildings look like this. Some are even condemned, but people still live in them. If you look at the windows on the second and third floors you can see signs that the units are being used. A sheet tacked up for privacy. A couple empty beer bottles on the window sill.'
Friday morning was a quiet time on Stark Street. Everyone was sleeping off something… drink, drugs, desperation. In another hour the bars would open, and the hookers would start to stake out corners. Traffic would pick up and security cages would get rolled back on local groceries, adult videos, pawnshops, hash shops, and liquor stores. And little by little the bedraggled, angry, lost souls of Stark Street would roll out of their sweat-soaked beds and make their way to cement stoops and street-side folding chairs and discarded sofas to enjoy the first smoke of this steamy summer day.
There was a new black Cadillac Escalade with temporary plates parked in the alley next to Johnson's building. So there was a slim chance Johnson was inside.
I had no idea how this would play out. I was with a man who floated in and out of varying degrees of insanity. He wanted to take over Ranger's life, but there was a corner of his brain that always knew it was a sham. He didn't mind shooting people, but I doubted he was much of a match for Lonnie Johnson. Scrog was nuts. Lonnie Johnson was bad. My real concern was that Johnson would unload a clip into Scrog, and Scrog would fall on the detonator and I'd be dust.
I suspected Scrog hadn't any idea what to do next, but I didn't think he'd want me running the show, so I sat back and let him wing it. He circled the block and parked in front of Johnson's building. He sat there for a minute, and I swear I could see him calling up his Ranger personality.
'Let's do it,' he finally said, and I had to look closely because the change was striking. He wasn't Ranger, but he wasn't Edward Scrog either. 'Do you know which unit this guy is in?'
'No,' I said. 'He just gave the address.'
We got out of the car and entered the building. It was dark and musty. No bulb in the overhead foyer light. The stairwell smelled like urine and fast-food burgers. Paint peeling off the wall. A dead roach, feet up, on the third step.
'You go first,' Scrog said. 'I want to keep an eye on you. Sniff this guy out.'
It wasn't a big building. Three floors. Two units on each floor. No one in the two ground-floor apartments. The doors were missing. It looked like they were using 1B to dump garbage. A stained mattress and a bunch of fast-food wrappers on the floor in 1A. A rat as big as a beaver rustled through the wrappers.
I hurried up the stairs. Doors were closed to 2A and 2B. I listened at the doors. Spanish coming out of 2A. I didn't have Lonnie Johnson pegged as bilingual. Nothing in 2B. I knocked, and no one answered. I was losing patience. I put my boot to the door, and the door crashed open. I was totall
y impressed with myself. I'd never kicked a door open before.
'Nice,' Scrog said. 'Now go in and look around.'
Someone was living there, but it was hard to tell who it was. Junkyard furniture. Mattresses on the floor. Empty beer bottles filling the sink. Didn't feel like Lonnie Johnson.
I went to floor three and did the same routine, listening at doors. A woman answered my knock on 3A. She was hollow eyed and rail thin. I looked beyond her to a man on a mattress. He was equally wasted. No Lonnie there. She didn't know who was across the hall. No one answered 3B, so I crashed that door open, too. The apartment was empty but neat. This felt more like Johnson. A pair of men's sneakers had been placed on the floor beside a small stack of clothes.
'If I had $32,000 I wouldn't be living in this dump,' Scrog said.
'I'm not the only one after him. Someone shot up his house and then burned it down. That was when he disappeared. Something brought him back, but this is probably just a short visit before he moves on.'
We went back down the stairs and out of the building. A man was walking our way, carrying a brown grocery bag. I looked him in the eye and I knew. 'Lonnie Johnson?' I asked.
'Yeah?'
'We'd like to talk to you, if you wouldn't mind stepping inside.'
Johnson was big. Late thirties and about 250 pounds. Lots of those pounds were fried dough and beer, but there was some muscle, too. His eyes were small and close set and radiated mean.
'Fuck off,' Johnson said.
I took two steps back and left Scrog standing face-to-face with Godzilla.
'We have a business proposition,' Scrog said.
'What kinda proposition? You look like that stupid bounty hunter on television.'
Scrog glanced over at me and smiled as if to say, See? Now we look like bounty hunters!
'We need to go upstairs to talk about it,' Scrog said. 'I don't want to talk about it here on the street.'
I heard the staccato tap of heels on the sidewalk behind me. I turned and saw Joyce Barnhardt striding toward us.
'What the hell's going on?' she wanted to know. 'This guy belongs to me. I was here first. I've had this building under surveillance since yesterday. You think I'm sitting in this shit-hole neighborhood for my health? Back off.'