“Stick it,” the woman said. She started to close the door, but he held it open. The woman said, “Now look, I didn’t send for no police. Christ’s sake, I don’t know why it is, you lizards always come walkin’ in when you ain’t needed.”

“Come on, move aside.” He stepped forward, but she blocked the doorway.

She said, “I’m tellin’ you, I don’t need no police in here. I’m not gonna press charges, that’s why. If I press charges, then he’ll press charges. And you oughta see what I done to him.”

“This don’t concern you and him,” Corey said. “It’s just that I wanna get to the alley. We’re lookin’ for someone.”

He pushed past her and went through a dimly lit room where a very small, slim, youthful Filipino was sitting up in bed, his face crisscrossed with shiny ribbons of clotted blood where fingernails had clawed. His mouth was out of line, as though his jaw was dislocated. His left eye was closed and puffed out and plum colored. He said something very fast in Spanish and continued chattering as Corey walked into the kitchen. In the kitchen Corey headed for the back door, opened it and crossed the backyard to the fence gate. He opened the fence gate very slowly, leaned his head out and scanned the alley.

It looks all right, he told himself. Except I wish there were some lampposts. It’s awfully dark in this alley.

In the alley, he walked slowly, his arms loosely swinging at his sides, his right arm swinging in a smaller arc, ready to go for the gun. He was listening for the slightest sound other than his own footsteps. There was no other sound, and he kept moving along. He emerged from the alley where it intersected with Addison Avenue.

On Addison the streetlamps showed some dogs partying and a boozed-up drifter stretched out, facedown on a doorstep. A slight breeze was coming in from the river and there were no doorstep sitters. They’re all in bed now, he thought. The breeze gave them a chance to get some sleep, which makes it nice and quiet. It’s really very nice, this quiet, it’s very good for the nerves.

You really nervous? Now come on, don’t tell me you’re nervous. You ain’t the nervous type. If you were downright jittery, you’d be heading east for the river and thinking in terms of the piers, the docked freighters, one of them ready to sail in a few or so hours. You’d be thinking that’s a sure enough way to preserve this meat; just put it aboard that freighter and get it hauled across the ocean, to someplace where there ain’t no Kingsley and company.