“Oh. Oh, sure. He turned and winked at me. ‘No need to spray me with that thing,’ he says, meaning the extinguisher, of course, ‘’cause I’ve got plenty of money. Least, I will have pretty soon. Pretty soon.’ ”

“Did he turn left or right at the bottom of the stairs?”

She puckered her forehead up to her wispy yellow hair in an effort to remember, but she couldn’t call it back; her mind had been on the kids down below, not on one more desiccated lodger.

“I’d like to look at his room before I go.”

“You got a warrant for that, hon?”

I pulled out a twenty from my purse. “No warrant. But how about a refill for your gizmo there?”

She eyed me, then the money, then the kids down below. “You cops can’t come barging into someone’s house without a warrant. That’s in the Constitution, in case you didn’t know. But just this once, seeing as how you’re a female, and dressed neat, I’ll let you in, but you come back with any men, they’d better have a warrant. Go up to the second floor. He’s two doors down from the bathroom on your left.” She turned her head abruptly to the street as I opened the screen door.

Her house had the sharp, sour smell of rank dishcloths. It was a dark place, built deep and narrow with windows only on the front and back walls. By the smell, they hadn’t been opened for some time. The stairs rose steeply in front of me. I mounted them cautiously. Even so, I caught my feet several times on pieces of loose linoleum.

I fumbled my way down the second-floor hall to the bathroom, then found the second door on the left. The room was standing open, the bed made with a careless hand, waiting for Kruger’s return. No individual locks or much privacy in Mrs. Polter’s domain, but Kruger didn’t have much to be private about. I rummaged in his vinyl suitcase, but such papers as he had related to his union membership, his union pension, and a form to send to the Social Security Administration to let them know his change of address. He’d also kept some old newspaper clips, apparently about Diamond Head. Maybe the company stood in for his vanished family as a source of human connection.

His only possession of any possible value was a portable black-and-white TV. Its rabbit ears were bent and one of the knobs was broken off, but when I flipped it on, the picture came with respectable clarity.

Mitch’s clothes were sufficiently greasy to make me stop in the bathroom on my way out to wash my hands. A look at the towels convinced me that air-drying was healthier.

A middle-aged man in a frayed undershirt and shorts was waiting outside the bathroom door. He looked me over hungrily.