I gnawed on my lower lip and held my breath, not sure whether I should push her through or pull her out. She looked like Pooh when he was stuck in the rabbit hole.

She gave a grunt and suddenly the back half of her disappeared behind Spiro’s curtain. A moment later the patio door clicked open and Lula poked her head out. “You gonna stand out there all day, or what?”

“We could get arrested for this!”

“Hah, like you never did any illegal entry shit?”

“I never broke anything.”

“You didn’t this time neither. I did the breaking. You just gonna do the entering.”

I supposed it was okay since she put it that way.

I slipped behind the patio curtain and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. “Do you know what Spiro looks like?”

“Ratty-faced little guy?”

“Yeah. You do lookout on the front porch. Knock three times if you see Spiro drive up.”

Lula opened the front door and peeked out. “Everything clear,” she said. Then she let herself out and closed the door.

I locked both doors and flipped the dining room light on, turning the dimmer until the light was low. I started in the kitchen, methodically going through cabinets. I checked the refrigerator for phony jars and did a cursory search of the kitchen trash.

I made my way through the dining room and living room without discovering anything worthwhile. Breakfast dishes were still in the sink, the morning paper was strewn across the table. A pair of black dress shoes had been kicked off and left in front of the TV. Other than that the apartment was clean. No guns, no keys, no threatening notes. No addresses hastily scribbled on a pad beside the kitchen wall phone.

I flicked on the light in the bathroom. Dirty clothes lay in a heap on the bathroom floor. There wasn’t enough money in the world to get me to touch Spiro’s dirty clothes. If there was a clue in his pocket, it was safe from me. I went through the medicine chest and glanced at the wastebasket. Nothing.

His bedroom door was closed. I held my breath, opened the door, and almost fainted with the relief of finding the room empty. The furniture was Danish modern, the bedspread was black satin. The ceiling over the bed had been covered with paste-on mirror tiles. Porn magazines were stacked on a chair beside the bed. A used condom was stuck to one of the covers.

Soon as I got home I was going to take a shower in boiling water.

A desk hugged the wall in front of his window. I thought this looked promising. I sat in the black leather chair and carefully rifled through the junk mail, bills, and personal correspondence that lay scattered across the polished desk top. The bills all seemed within reason, and most of the correspondence related to the funeral home. Thank-you notes from the recently bereaved. “Dear Spiro, thank you for overcharging me in my time of sorrow.” Phone messages had been recorded on whatever was handy … backs of envelopes and letter margins. None of the messages were labeled “death threats from Kenny.” I made a list of unexplained phone numbers and stuffed it into my pocketbook for future investigation.