“Rats!” Lula yelled. “Rats!”

I was frozen to the spot, too horrified to move. Lula was dancing, arms in the air, shrieking. The rats were wall to wall, scrambling around in a pack, filling the foyer.

“Kill ’em. Kick ’em,” Lula said. “Help! Police! Call 911.”

I snatched the bakery bag out of her hand and pitched a doughnut out the front door. The rats ran after the doughnut, and I slammed the door shut behind them.

Lula collapsed against the wall. “Do I look like I’m having a heart attack? Did I get bit? Do I have fleas?” She took the bag back from me and looked inside. “At least you didn’t throw the jelly doughnut. I was saving that one for last.”

I closed the cellar door and took to the stairs. There were three doors on the second floor. Two were nailed shut with crisscrossed boards. No sound from inside. The third was open, and the one-room apartment was empty of people and furniture but filled with garbage.

“I’m going home and taking a shower when we’re done here,” Lula said. “I feel like I got cooties.”

The third floor had three doors, and all were closed. “We need a plan,” I said to Lula.

“You mean like I be the Girl Scout cookie girl?”

“Yeah.”

“What if Vinnie’s in there and he’s with some of Sunflower’s stooges? We shoot them, right?”

“Only if we have to.”

Lula took her Glock out of her bag and stuffed it into her pants, snug to her backbone. She looked at me. “Don’t you want to get your gun ready to go?”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“What have you got?”

“Hairspray.”

“Is it firm hold? I might need some when we’re done here, depending on what we do for lunch.”

I crept down a couple stairs and pressed myself against the wall, hairspray at the ready should Lula need backup. Lula knocked on the first door, the door opened, and a fat, sloppy, bleary-eyed guy answered. He was maybe fifty years old, needed a shave, needed a shower, needed less alcohol.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I’m sellin’ Girl Scout cookies,” Lula said, looking past the fat guy into his room.

“Aren’t you sorta old to be a Girl Scout?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m doing this for my niece,” Lula said. “She got a intestinal disturbance and couldn’t make her quota, so I’m helping out.”

“What’s in the bakery bag?”

“That’s none of your business, either. Are you gonna buy cookies, or what?”

The guy snatched Lula’s doughnut bag, slammed the door closed, and locked it.

“Hey!” Lula said. “You give me back my bag.” She put her ear to the door. “I hear the bag rustling! He better not be fingering my doughnut.” Lula pounded on the door. “Give me my doughnut back or else.”

“Too late,” he said through the door. “I ate it.”

“Oh yeah, well, eat this,” Lula said. And she hauled her Glock out and drilled a bunch of rounds into the door.