We all sat still as statues. Hard to tell if it was worse to stay with the car or go into the building.
“Okay, I’m going in,” I said. “And I’ll take Briggs with me.”
“Hunh,” Lula said. “How come I have to be the one to stay behind?”
“You’re the one with the gun.”
Lula looked at Briggs. “He don’t have a gun?”
“It got blown up in my apartment,” Briggs said.
I got out of the Explorer, and Briggs hopped out after me. We crossed the street and went into the small entrance hall of Poletti’s building.
“I knew it was a slum, but this is worse than I imagined,” Briggs said. “It smells like a warthog died in here.”
There were two doors on the ground floor. One had MANAGER written on it. I knocked on that door, and it was answered by a small Hispanic woman who was somewhere between fifty and ninety.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Jimmy Poletti.”
“Don’t know him.”
“He owns this building.”
“Good for him. Tell him my toilet don’t work.”
She attempted to close the door, but I shoved my messenger bag between the door and the frame.
“I’m legal,” she said. “I got a driver’s license.”
“Are you the building manager?” I asked her.
“The what?”
“It says ‘manager’ on your door.”
“No manager here. It must be wrong.” And she slammed the door shut.
I turned and hammered on the door across the hall. I heard a lot of scrambling going on in the apartment, and finally a crazy-eyed, emaciated woman answered the door. “There’s no butterflies here,” she said. “You got the wrong place.”
“I’m not looking for butterflies,” I told her. “I’m looking for Jimmy Poletti.”
“Poletti confetti,” she said. “Poletti confetti.” She spied Briggs standing behind me and leaned forward for a closer look. “Nice doggy,” she said, patting him on the head.
Briggs growled at her, and she jumped back into the apartment and slammed the door shut.
There were four doors at the next level. Two of them were open, and the apartments were trashed. Soiled, lumpy mattresses on the floor. Garbage everywhere. Used drug paraphernalia. A bunch of giant roaches lying sneakers up. Probably overdosed. It looked like someone had had a bonfire in one of the units.
“They weren’t cooking hotdogs and marshmallows here,” Briggs said.
I knocked on one of the closed doors, and a moment later a shotgun blast blew the top half of the door apart.
“Holy crap,” Briggs said, diving to the floor.
The door opened and a totally tattooed guy looked out. Hard to tell his age. Somewhere in his twenties, maybe. I was flattened against the wall with my heart beating hard in my throat.
“Did Jiggy send you?” he asked.