“So much for that theory,” said Fang.
“Do you want to swear this time or do you want me to?” I asked.
“You can,” said Fang, stuffing the page back into his pocket.
“Well, crap,” I said. “Okay. Let’s try the next one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
And we did get lucky—in that the next address was actually a house.
Unfortunately, it was an abandoned apartment house in the middle of a hellhole block inhabited by some of the more scum-sucking members of society—many of whom were conducting “business” right now, at two in the morning.
“Let’s check it out anyway,” I said, drawing farther back into the shadows.
We had landed on the tarry roof of the building next door. Half an hour of waiting and watching had shown us that at least two guys, and maybe more, seemed to be squatting in this bombed-out wreck of a building.
Twenty minutes after the second guy left and didn’t come back, I stood up. “Ready?”
“Ready,” said Fang, and we jumped across to the other roof.
27
“Least favorite place,” I whispered to Fang. “Sewer tunnels of New York? Or abandoned home of squatting crackheads?”
Fang thought about it, moving silently across the room, staying out of the squares of moonlight coming through the gaping windows.
“I’d have to go with sewer tunnels of New York,” he whispered back.
We started on the second floor and moved down, opening doors, looking up fireplaces, tapping walls for hidden compartments.
Two hours later, I rubbed my forehead with a filthy hand. “We got nothing. This stinks.”
“Yeah.” Fang breathed out. “Well, get this last closet and we’ll split.”
I nodded and opened the hallway coat closet. It was empty, its walls nothing but broken plaster, showing the bare laths within.
I was about to close the door when a thin strip of white caught my eye. I shone the penlight on it, frowning, then reached down to pick at it. Something was wedged in back of a lath.
“What?” Fang asked quietly.
“Nothing, I’m sure,” I whispered back. “But I’ll just get it. . . .”
I pried it out with my fingernails, and it turned out to be a square of paper, about four inches across. I turned it over, and my breath caught.
It was a photograph.
Fang leaned over my shoulder while I focused the light on the photo. It was a picture of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The baby was plump, blond, blue-eyed . . . the spitting image of the baby Gasman—cowlick and everything.
28
“Holy moly,” I breathed. Just then we heard heavy footsteps coming up to the front door.
“They’re back,” Fang whispered. “Upstairs!”
We whirled and ran up the steps. But the moonlight streaming through the windows cast our shadows down the stairs.
I heard the front door shut, and then a voice bellowed, “Hey!”
Heavy, uncoordinated footsteps pounded up behind us, and it sounded like someone swung a baseball bat against a wall. We heard a heavy thunk and then the sound of breaking plaster.