To the Nines (Stephanie Plum 9)

I gave Sonji my card and a twenty. “Give me a call if you see Singh.”

Sonji disappeared behind her closed door and Lula and I trudged down the stairs. We went outside, walked around the building to the backyard, and looked up at Howie s single window.

“Could be me living here,” Lula said. “I still got some pain from what that maniac Ramirez did to me, but turned out it was a favor. He stopped me from being a ho. When I got out of the hospital I knew I had to change my life. God works in strange ways.”

Benito Ramirez was an insane boxer who loved inflicting pain. He'd beaten Lula to within an inch of her life and tied her to my fire escape. I found her body, bloody and battered. Ramirez wanted the beating to serve as a lesson for Lula and for me.

I thought getting brutalized like that was a pretty harsh wake-?up call.

“So what do you think?” Lula asked. “You think Singh could be hiding out up there?”

It was possible. But it was a long shot. There were a million reasons why Singh could have been looking for Howie. And for that matter, I wasn't even sure I had the right guy. There were a lot of McDonald's around. Singh could have been calling McDonald's in Hong Kong for all I knew.

I'd been keeping watch for the gray Sentra, but it hadn't surfaced. It could be in a nearby garage. Or it could be in Mexico. A rusted fire escape precariously clung to the back of the building. The ladder had been dropped and hung just a few inches from the ground. “I could go up the fire escape,” I said. “Then I could look in the window.”

“Now you're the nut. That things falling apart. No way I'm going up that rusted-?out piece of junk.”

I grabbed a rail and pulled. The rail held tight. “It's in better shape than it looks,” I said. “It'll hold me.”

“Maybe. But it sure as hell won't hold me.”

Only one of us needed to go anyway. I'd be up and down in a couple minutes. And I'd be able to see if there was any indication of Singh or the dog. “You need to stay on the ground and do lookout anyway,” I told Lula.

Stephanie Plum 9 - To The Nines

Chapter Five

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I went hand over hand up the ladder and pulled myself onto the first level. I climbed the second ladder, steadied myself on the third-?floor platform, and looked into Howie's window. Howie lived directly under the roof. There were rafters where the ceiling should be and the floor was chipped linoleum. Howie had a sofa that was lumpy and faded, but looked comfy in a dilapidated sort of way. He had a small television and a card table and two metal folding chairs. That was the extent of his furniture. A sink hung on a far wall. A half refrigerator had been placed beside the sink. There were two wood shelves over the refrigerator. Howie had stacked two plates, two bowls, and two mugs on one of the shelves. The other shelf held condiments, a couple boxes of cereal, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of chips.

When you come right down to it, this is really all anyone needs, isn't it? A television and a bag of chips.

I could see the front door and a doorway leading to another room, but the second room wasn't visible. The bedroom, obviously. I tried the window, but it was either locked or painted shut.

“Coming down,” I said to Lula. “No dog biscuits on the kitchen shelf.” I put my foot on the ladder and it disintegrated in a shower of rust flakes and chunks of broken metal. The chunks of metal crashed onto the second-?floor platform and the whole thing pulled away from the building, and with more of a sigh than a screech the entire bottom half of the fire escape landed on the ground in front of Lula.

“Hunh,” Lula said.

I looked down at Lula. Too far to jump. The only way off the platform was through Howie's apartment.

“Are you coming down soon?” Lula asked. “I'm getting hungry.”

“I don't want to break his window.”

“You got any other choices?”

I dialed Ranger on my cell phone.

“I'm sort of stuck,” I told Ranger.

Ten minutes later, Ranger opened Howie's apartment door, crossed the room, unlocked and raised the window, and looked out at the mangled mess of metal on the ground. He raised his eyes to mine and the almost smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Good job, Destructo.”

“It wasn't my fault.”

He dragged me through the window, into the apartment. “It never is.”

“I wanted to see if there were any signs that Singh or the dog had been here. I don't have much to tie Howie to Singh, but once I get past Howie I have nothing.”

Ranger closed and locked the window. “I don't see any boxes of dog biscuits.”