“You mean on account of you’re the only white woman on this whole street, dead or alive?”

“Yeah.”

“I see your point, but I’m not going in there. I hate funeral parlors, and I hate dead people even more. I get the creepy crawlies just sitting here thinking about it.”

“Okay, we’ll do this later. Let’s take a look at the apartment building.”

The apartment building was half a block away and looked like the Tower of Terror. It was four stories tall, black with grime, and slightly lopsided.

“Holy bejeezus,” Lula said, eyes bugged out, looking at the building. “This is scaring the crap out of me. This is like where Dracula would live if he didn’t have any money and was a crack head. I bet it’s filled with rabid bats and killer snakes and hairy spiders as big as dinner plates.”

I thought it looked like it would be filled with despair and craziness and broken plumbing. Either way, it wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go. Unfortunately, it was also a good place to stash Vinnie.

“How bad do we want to find Vinnie?” I asked Lula, unable to take my eyes off the hellish building.

“The way I see it, either we find Vinnie, or I’m gonna be working the fry basket at Cluck-in-a-Bucket. Not that there’s anything wrong with the fry basket, but all that grease floatin’ in the air isn’t gonna be good for my hairdo. And what if they already got someone working the fry basket? What if I can’t get another job and they come repossess my Via Spigas?”

And what if I don’t come through, and they kill Vinnie? How could I live with that? I thought.

I speed-dialed Ranger’s cell phone.

Ranger picked up and there was a moment of silence as if he was sensing me at the other end, taking my body temperature and heart rate long distance. “Babe,” he finally said.

“Do you know the slum apartment building Bobby Sunflower owns on Stark?”