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. Malone said: "Well, I--" "You want to ask me stupid questions," she said. "That is what you want to do. I'm right?" "I only--" "I know nothing," she said. "Nothing of any kind." She closed her mouth and stood regarding him as if he were a particularly repulsive statue. Malone looked past her into the living room beyond the door.