I pushed inside. “That’s right, I do. The apartment below me is vacant. You’ll stay there. You don’t tell anyone where you are, and you do not leave until I tell you it’s okay.” We trudged up to the second floor and I unlocked the Kallishes’ door and led him inside. The place smelled of drying paint. “Lights work, bathroom’s back there. No furniture, but I’ve got a fairly comfortable air mattress you can use. I don’t think you’ll need to be here more than a day or two.”

“So I’m just supposed to hang around here, cowering in a corner like a rat?”

I padded to the front windows, checked the street, then pulled the blinds down. “How you hang around is up to you.”

“What about food? People? My life?”

“You won’t starve. No people. Your life will resume when this is over.” I padded down the hall toward the back of the apartment, Jung behind me. “You have the run of the apartment. Just don’t do anything weird in here. This is my home, respect it.”

I flicked on the light switch in the master bedroom. “I’ll get you that mattress, and bring blankets and stuff to make you comfortable. Maybe a radio or something.”

Jung didn’t look overly impressed. “What’ll you be doing while I’m locked up here?”

I stared at him, giving him all kinds of slack. “I’ll be doing the work you paid me for.”

I headed back up the hall, toward the front door.

“I sleep in the nude. Is that going to be a problem?”

He was trying to needle me. He was a petulant child denied a privilege and trying to get a rise. “If I see you nude, yes, that’s going to be a problem for you.”

He let out an aggrieved breath. “I’m a prisoner then. What happened to my civil liberties?”

I opened the door, my hand on the knob. “You lost them when you stepped inside my house. You’ll get them back when you leave.”

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

I pulled the baseball cap down low, flipped my jacket collar up, and slid into the backseat of a dark Chrysler with a missing tailpipe, easing into the seat as it pulled away from the curb. At the corner two blocks up, the car turned left and ducked into a dark alley and stopped. The driver switched off the ignition, turned to face me.

“Whassup?”

“Hey, Dobie.”

He shot me a toothy grin, his leather Kangol cap topping a dark, thin face and a graying soul patch. “Look at me driving and you sitting back there. You live long enough you see everything, huh?”