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.“When do I want you?” he asked, glancing at her with another flash of sapphire.Then he shrugged.“Always.”“Well, what do you know?” Sam said as he and Ana stepped through the metal detector.“Jim Slater and Jack Smith are here.”She spotted the two men at a distance.“Maybe they’re asking Flora about Honduras.”He peered into the far corner.“Nope, she’s not there.”“She’s not?” The huddled figure in the tight green skirt and pink plastic sandals was absent from her usual spot.Ana’s stomach constricted.“Doesn’t Flora come on Sundays?”“I don’t think she’s missed a day.Sunday afternoon would be a busy time for her young friend.”Horrified at the thought, Ana saw Sam lift a hand in greeting as Terell strode out of the office and headed in their direction.As usual, the man was laden with children who clung to him like barnacles to the sides of a fishing boat.“What’s up, T-Rex?” Sam asked.“I see Slater’s here.”“He and that other guy showed up a while back.Maybe an hour ago…Just a sec, Sam.” The towering man set down one little boy who had been riding on his shoulders and another who hung on his back.Then he pried little golden-haired Brandy loose from her stranglehold on his leg.He gave each of the children a pat on the back and a dime and sent them off to get popcorn.“Anyhow,” Terell continued.“I figured Slater and his pal were here to deliver that check, so I took them on a tour and explained about our lead paint problem.”“Someone actually got to see this infamous lead paint?” Ana piped up.“How nice for them.”Terell ignored her.“Slater never got around to giving me the money.About halfway through the tour, when we’re up on the third floor, he tells me to go ahead and get back to what I was doing.He says they’ll finish looking around the building by themselves.So, I leave, thinking that’s cool.Okay, so I go back downstairs to work on next week’s schedule—which is all messed up, by the way, because Granny’s got a head cold, and no way can she come tomorrow or Tuesday—and I get to remembering that place where the rain’s been coming through the roof upstairs.You know what I’m talking about?”“Where the floor is rotted out.”“You’re with me, man.So, I double-time it back up there to warn those dudes against falling through the floor, and guess what they’re doing? They’ve been down to the second floor where one of the volunteer groups is rehabbing Lulu’s new dance studio, and they found themselves a hammer.And now they’re pounding away, trying to break the padlock off that fire escape door.”“Break the lock? I paid good money for that padlock.”“I know, and I said to them, ‘Hey, what’re you guys doing?’ And Slater looks shocked that I caught him, like a crack dealer just been spotted by the police, you know.So then he says, well, it’s a fire escape, so the door ought to be unlocked.”“Did you tell him we keep the key in the office?”“I told him everything, man.I said the third floor isn’t in public use yet, and we don’t need that fire escape.I explained how the fire inspector came over and looked at the building and said we ought to keep a padlock on that door until we can get one of those self-locking handles installed.And you know what Slater did? He just turned around and gave that lock one more whack, and busted it clean off the door!”“No way!”“I was so mad, I could have punched him.I started yelling at him, man, just letting him have it.I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help it.You know all we’ve done to get this place going, and we don’t have two dollars to spare, and then he up and smashes our lock! And those vandals are probably gonna get back in, and spray-paint gang signs on everything we did.”“What did Slater say?” Sam demanded.“How did he justify that?”“He tells me, well, a little girl came running up the stairs past them, right up to the third floor, and they were worried about her.They didn’t know where she went.They figured maybe she jumped out a window or something, so they decided they’d climb down the fire escape and look for her.But when they found it locked—”“Which little girl?” Ana cut in.“Who was it?”“How should I know? I never saw anything but the usual activities we’ve got going on, and all the regular kids [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]