to the warehouse didn’t take long enough for the heater to generate more than cold, then merely cool, air. We were on a street that whoever built it had forgotten to finish. South of 9th Avenue a couple of blocks, then left. A sign told us it was Garry Street. Looking east, we could see that it just kind of stopped. Dead-ended up against a hill that probably shouldn’t have been there. I pictured a gaggle of 1930s engineers working on their drawings and noticing the hill after the street was started. Saying screw it and moving on to another project.
We parked under a sign that said, VEHICLES TOWED TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. I wondered why the sign was there. It wasn’t like the curb in front of the warehouse was a prime parking spot. Cobb must have thought the same thing.
We walked to the front door of the building. A faded sign above the doorway told us that this had once been the home of Mainwaring Tool and Dye. Beneath it a smaller sign, even more faded, announced “De iver es At Re r.”
We tried both sides of a set of double doors — they were either locked or had simply sealed themselves shut with years of disuse. Cobb stepped back, looked up at the front of the building. Some of the windows were gone completely, others were broken, a few were intact. I followed Cobb’s eyes to one particularly dirty but intact window. Third floor.
A man in an undershirt sat smoking and staring down at us. Cobb motioned to him that the door was locked and tried to indicate to the man that we could use his help getting in. The man behind the filthy pane of glass took a drag on the cigarette and continued looking at us. Didn’t move.
“Let’s try the back. Unless that’s a robot up there, there has to be a way into this place.”
I found myself hoping that maybe the smoker was a robot and we wouldn’t get in. To no avail. The back door was not only open, it was gone.
We stepped over broken chunks of cinder block, two-by-fours and bricks, remnants of the unfinished construction, into the building. Cobb pulled out the kind of flashlight you see in cop shows and aimed it at the hole that had once been a door.
Straight ahead was a large open area where I guessed that back in the day people did whatever you do in a tool and dye plant. To the left was a set of stairs leading up to where the lofts would have been located, had they been completed. Beyond the stairs was an elevator, the door carved, scratched, and painted with graffiti. There was a hole in the wall where the buttons for the elevator should have been.
“Think I’ll take the stairs,” Cobb said.
I followed him. We moved slowly, not because we were trying to sneak around but because the stairs appeared to have been there from the building’s first life and hadn’t received much if any attention during the short-lived renovation.
We came out on a second floor that looked and smelled like it was the building’s garbage dump and communal toilet. As Cobb directed the beam of light first left, then right, I stared down at the mounds of garbage and human filth.
“How is something like this not condemned?”
Cobb didn’t answer. I was hoping he wouldn’t suggest we try to navigate our way through the refuse and he didn’t, opting instead to follow the stairs up to the next floor.
When we reached the top of the stairs we entered a narrow, dark hall that led off in both directions, like the hallway in a hotel. And like a hotel, doors stood on both sides at regular intervals leading into who knew what. My guess was that this part of the renovation had begun and what were to be lofts had at least been framed in.
A small generator hummed away about halfway down the hall to the right and a lone light bulb hanging from a protruding board offered what light there was. Cobb stowed his flashlight and we started off in the direction of the light. As we walked, it became clear that some of the doors were hanging by their hinges; others were missing altogether.
The first door we came to had no handle but was closed. Cobb studied the door for a while as if trying to figure something out. He didn’t say what and finally knocked. No answer. He knocked again, waited maybe thirty seconds, then pushed on the door. It offered no resistance.
Flashlight out again. We were looking at a room about the size of my own, framed and drywalled but not painted. Holes in several places in the drywall. A couple of rooms led off of the big room; they were intended to be a kitchen and bathroom maybe. The main room was empty but for a sleeping bag piled in a heap on the floor, a few cases of empty beer bottles, and a discarded cereal box — Honey Nut Cheerios — in one corner. A large grey and white cat, surprisingly healthy looking, watched us, unconcerned.
“Anybody home?” Still no answer.
We stepped into the room. Several candles and a box of wooden matches lay next to the beer bottles. I lit the longest of the candles and moved to one of the rooms leading off of the main room. I peered into what I guessed was to be the bathroom, though nothing was plumbed. Part of a newspaper lay on the floor and I bent down to note the date. November 17. Less than a week old.
I stepped back into the main room at the same time that Cobb returned from the other room. “Kitchen,” he said, “but all that’s in there is a wooden crate, two empty wine bottles, a used syringe, and half a Coke can.”
“Stove,” I said. Heroin users had taken to using half a soft drink can to heat their smack. Better availability. Easy to use.
“Uh-huh.”
“Someone’s been here not that long ago.” I told him about the newspaper.
We stopped at the door and looked back into the place.
“The cat looks like he’s doing okay,” I said.
“Maybe he likes Cheerios.”
Cobb stepped out into the hall. I followed him and we moved on to the next place. This one had no door but a stained and tattered makeshift curtain hung limply from a couple of nails. Again Cobb called and again received no response. He pushed the curtain aside and we stepped in, did the tour — same layout as the last one. This one looked a little more lived in. Rumpled clothes on the floor, another sleeping bag, this one rolled up, lay next to a makeshift ashtray that was overflowing, mostly cigarette butts, a few roaches.
Several bricks supported a length of board that served as a counter or cupboard or maybe both. Two tins of cat food, a large jar of peanut butter, a plastic-wrapped half loaf of bread, a deck of cards, and one bottled water container, half full, occupied space on the board.
“Must eat out a lot,” I said.
Back in the hallway we continued down the hall, past the generator, still humming, a couple of black extension cords leading away from it. The third door in the hallway was closed and had a handle. Upscale. Cobb knocked once, then again, louder.
A male voice from inside said, “Yeah.”
“All right if we come in?”
“What d’ya want?”
“We’re looking for someone, wondered if he might live in the building.”
“Shit.”
Cobb looked at me. I shrugged.
“All right if we come in?” Cobb repeated.
A pause, then, “Yeah.”
Cobb
