“Dozens of complaints over the years.” He shook his head at me, his mouth twisted in a grimace. He wasn’t faking his disgust. “And they always went away before we could get around to investigating.”

I swallowed. I tried to look casually over my shoulder, check down the hall. If Escobar was nearby, he was sure being quiet about it.

“I see worse all the time. I’ve got kids burned to death in an apartment building where the landlord didn’t want to shell out cash to keep the place up to code. I’ve got a guy killed his wife cuz she mouthed off. All those people, I’m sorry they’re dead. Hiram Klein is one more body to me.”

“Why are you telling me—”

“Now, Ellen Howard,” MacLeish went on, as if I hadn’t spoken. “What bothers me, how did she end up asphyxiated? You hear about people choking on their own guilt, but usually it takes a little longer. And it’s a little less . . . on the nose.” He shook his head. “It’s a shame about that money of hers. She’d be so forgettable, otherwise.”

I forced myself to lift my chin so I was looking down on him and calculated my odds of pushing past him to the sliver of open door behind me. But MacLeish seemed to be making a point of letting me keep my personal space.

“This is how it works?” I said. “You get the money back, you look the other way?”

“It’s funny what people remember,” MacLeish said, still not moving toward me, holding his ground as though he knew what I was thinking. “Not an hour ago, I got a call from a woman, said she saw Klein’s car leave the Alto Nido the night of the murder. Recognized the plates right off, he was a man who liked to be recognized. Said she could see two heads in the car, but crime scene says Klein was killed at Ms. Howard’s apartment. So who else could be in the car?”

Lou used to tell me my biggest tells were what I did with my hair and my hands. “You toss your head when you’re nervous,” she told me once, sliding her fingers through my hair and shaking it out, mimicking the motion. “And you drum your fingers when you’re scared.” Eventually, she took to cupping her hands softly over my own until I learned to stop.

My fingers were twitching against my blouse like pinned butterflies. I slid my hands into my armpits to hide it. “Give me two days,” I said, my voice not steady. “I promise. Then the money’s all yours.”

MacLeish’s mouth twitched. “Here’s the thing, kid,” he said. “The money that’s missing, it’s good for the usual. But we’ve got too many people crawling around, asking questions.”

My stomach sank. “Let me guess, squeaky wheels need greasing. How much?”