The building was just off Amsterdam, in the Eighties. It had been a
shining new development once, but it was beginning to slide downhill
now. The metal on the windowframes was beginning to look worn, and the
brickwork hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Where chain fences had
once protected lonely blades of grass, children, mothers and baby
carriages held sway now, and the grass was gone. Instead, the building
was pretty well surrounded by a moat of sick-looking brown dirt.
Malone went into the first building and checked the name against the
mailboxes there, trying to ignore the combined smells of sour milk, red
pepper and here and there a whiff of unwashed humanity.
It was on the tenth floor: _Fueyo, J._ That, he supposed, would be
Mike's widowed mother; Lynch had told him that much about the boy and
his family. He found the elevator, which was covered with scribbles
ranging from JANEY LOVES MIGUEL to startling obscenities, and rode it
upstairs.
Apartment 1004 looked like every other apartment in the building, at
least from the outside. Malone pressed the button and waited a second to
hear the faint buzzing at the other side of the door. After a minute, he
pressed it again.
The door swung open very suddenly and Malone stepped back.
A short, wrinkled, dark-eyed woman in a print housedress was eying him
with deep suspicion. "My daughter is not home," she announced at once.
"I'm not looking for your daughter," Malone said. "I'd like to talk to
Mike."
"Mike?" Her expression grew even more suspicious. "You want to talk to
Mike?"
"That's right," Malone said.
"Ah," the woman said. "You one of those hoodlum friends he has. I'm
right? You can talk to Mike when I am dead and have no control over him.
For now, you can just--"
"Wait a minute," Malone said. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it
open to show his badge, being very careful that he made the right flip
this time. He didn't know exactly how this woman would react to The
Queen's Own FBI, but he didn't especially want to find out.
She looked down at the badge without taking the wallet from him. "Hah,"
she said. "You're cop, eh?" Her eyes left the wallet and examined Malone
from head to foot. It was perfectly plain that they didn't like what
they saw. "Cop," she said again, as if to herself. It sounded like a
curse.