A group of shaved-head Latino teenagers who might’ve been Stompy or Topo or Sleepy slouched away when we got out of the car. Women with Rivera-mural faces pushed babies in strollers as if nothing but motherhood mattered. A shrunken old man in gray work clothes sat on a bus bench in front of the building, watching the traffic on Pico. The vehicular roar waxed Wagnerian on both sides of the boulevard.

Milo scanned the wall art. “Why exclude Dopey and Sneezy?” He rang the shabby building’s bell.

No bell or buzzer sounded and when he nudged the button, it fell to the sidewalk. “Let’s check out the back.”

As we headed toward the corner the old man on the bench craned. A voluminous white mustache spread wider than his face. “Hey, police.”

Milo said, “Hi there.”

“You looking for someone in that dump?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir. I like that.” The mustache was waxed, curlicued at the ends. His skin was the well-worn brown leather of a scholar’s desktop, his eyes black and avian. Rough but clean hands. Same for the work clothes. An oval over the left pocket said Jose.

“You ain’t gonna find anyone.”

A double-long bus rumbled up to the bench. The man sat there. The bus cleared phlegm from its craw, lurched forward just as the light turned red, crossed the intersection to a blare of horns and obscenities.

Milo said, “Why’s that, sir?”

“No one lives there, it’s condemned.”

“For how long?”

“Few months ago, maybe three. There was a fire, some immigrant cooking on a illegal hot plate. They put it out but it wrecked the foundation. Building and Safety came and closed the place up.”

“You live around here?”

“Not around. There.” A callused finger jabbed at a building two lots east.

“There’s no notice posted,” said Milo.

“How ’bout that,” said the man, chuckling. “Maybe someone needed scratch paper.”

“Anyone hurt in the fire?”

“The immigrant’s two kids died and I heard she got turned into something you don’t wanna look at. Couple neighbors got sick from smoke and one of them died, too. Go call the fire department, they’ll tell you. You wanna go back there see for yourself, go ’head. It’s all black and hollow and you can’t get in unless you get through the fences of the other buildings. They say they’re gonna demolish but they don’t do it. Can’t figure out why it just don’t fall down.”

“Who owns the building?”

“The kind of folk own buildings. Who you looking for?”

Milo said, “A woman named Maude Grundy. Forty-four years old but she looks older.”

“Dead,” said the man.

“You knew her?”