He walked up the front path, through what passed for the gardens. These front grounds, which set the building itself back from the street, had once been landscaped with flower beds and shrubbery, and there were even trellises made from black wrought iron that enclosed metal benches, spaced along the sides of the front walk. But the flowers had wilted and decayed, the shrubbery was bristling into chaos with dead leaves snagged in its branches like the husks of flies in a spider-web, and the vines interwoven through the iron trellises were brittle and leafless. The grass was in need of trimming, but looked matted down and yellow, except where the flotsam and jetsam of colorful trash had blown onto the lawn.
Still, for Brat, whose neighborhood of Folger Street's B Level was lucky to see a weed teased from a crack in the sidewalk by the artificial lighting, this aspect of Steward Gardens alone was enough to capture his attention. It was even a little disorienting, like venturing into a verdant jungle with a mysterious ruined temple secreted in its depths.
The wide front walk branched off into little strolling paths, and in the center of the walk, not far from the front doors, was a circular pool that had once been a fountain. Now the water was oily looking and black in the spaces that showed through its epidermis of fallen leaves. With its vile stink, he figured the water was probably full of algae. He knew about algae from VT, too.
From the edge of this basin, prodding the water with a gnarled stick he'd picked up, Brat again lifted his eyes to the structure itself.
Two wings of three floors each flanked a lower central section, no doubt a lobby, though he couldn't see through the opaque black glass of the front doors (or were they clear, and the lobby unlit?). What it lacked in height it made up for in its sprawl. Along the fronts and sides of the two wings ran three levels of covered balconies that gave access to rows of black metal doors. The surface material of the building proper was the same dark slate-gray color as the plaque that had told him the place's name.
Maybe a hotel, but more likely an apartment complex, he guessed. Its three areas of roof were flat, and likely provided parking spaces for heli-cars, though from here he couldn't see any. There was a parking lot to the right of the building, which curved around behind it, but this was vacant as far as he could tell.
Intending to break off onto one of the branching lesser paths, Brat first tossed the remnant of his cone into the fountain pool. The disturbance caused the water to bob and he noticed an object floating on the surface. He poked it with the stick he still held. It was a decomposing bird, its remaining metallic blue feathers identifying it as a species nicknamed a pig-hen, which made itself a pest in the city, speckling statues and tripping up pedestrians, snuffling about for morsels of food with little tapir-like snouts. Now he understood the source of the fountain's stench.
Brat skirted close to the edge of the building, but he still couldn't see through its windows. He figured they had all been adjusted to an opaque tint or else they were one-way, protecting the privacy of the apartment-dwellers. He glanced over his shoulder at the hovercars riding low along the road in front of the building, but they were safely distant and traveling quickly, so he squeezed between two hedges to vault over the wall of the ground floor walkway, which corresponded with the two balconies above it. As he passed them, he saw that the black metal doors spaced along the smooth gray wall (was it concrete? ceramic?) were marked with silver numbers.
He moved toward the rear of the building, and as he had suspected he found this arm of the parking lot empty, too. So this building had been abandoned, then. Shut down. After all, it certainly didn't look brand new, yet to be opened, from the condition of the grounds. What had happened? Another bankruptcy? Even with the depression over, businesses and stores folded in great numbers yearly and half the factories of the city had closed shop over the past two decades, so he supposed it must be the same with apartment complexes, too. Wherever there was money to be made, there was money to be lost.
An abandoned building would be a great place for a kidnapper to bring a girl. But it might also be a great place for a girl to send her boyfriend, if she were playing games with him. She was definitely a bit of a devil, this Smirk. Could her disappearance only be that? And she had left her phone behind on purpose, so that she might spook him by calling him on it? Making him think that she was kidnapped or, worse, already dead-it being one of those Ouija phone gadgets? Not that he knew much about them.
If she wasn't dead, and this turned out to be a game, he'd make sure she wished she was dead by the time he was done with her.
There was one unique feature about the building, after all, but from a distance its bland general shape and sullen color had detracted from the effect. Now Brat was right on top of this detail, could reach out and touch it. Between each and every black door, on all three stories of both wings, there was a niche recessed in the exterior wall. A niche with a bullet-shaped top. And standing in each niche was a statue of that same slate-gray hue. They were stylized human figures with barely defined features and rudimentary limbs, standing straight like soldiers ranked at attention. They reminded Brat of pictures he had seen of the outdated motion picture award called the Oscar, minus the sword. They might have been considered Art Deco in style, but that term he wasn't familiar with.
He wondered how many there were, but since there was one between every apartment door, he assumed there was one figure to every apartment.
Had the former occupants felt safe at night with these nearly faceless sentinels standing guard outside, like cold suits of armor? Now, they resembled nothing so much as an army of men fossilized right into the structure's hide.
Brat imagined that these statues were the former inhabitants. That unwelcome little fancy gave him a shiver.
At the back of the building-the middle section, with its lower roof-he saw a very large trash zap-per unit, its sides caked with streaks of corrosion and refuse. Its mechanized arms were retracted and folded in repose, and the red bulb glowing on its side indicated that it was not currently digesting a meal; it might not even be functional anymore. There were a few doors back here at ground level, no doubt for maintenance crews to use. The litter about was dense, as were the piles of leaves. This was where the wind deposited most its treasures.
Brat returned his attention to the wall beside him, at the end of the walkway. The balconies did not extend to the rear of the building; there were no rear windows either, no doors other than those for apparent service access. This last apartment door beside him had some unfamiliar insignia spray-painted on it in glowing green pigment. It resembled the warning sign for radioactivity, with three Ts in its center. A local gang? If so, he wasn't familiar with it. He made that snorting amused sound again. Some Beaumonde Square gang. The kids of wealthy families, emulating the kids of poor and struggling families. Healthy kids emulating junkies and muggers. That old disdain arose in Brat, and he dug inside his white leather jacket.
Not for the gun he always carried, of course, but for his own tube of highly concentrated spray paint. Except that his color was red-an angry, fiery, blood red.
Over that luminous green insignia he sprayed the insignia of the Folger Street Snarlers. Then, for good measure, he sprayed an erect red penis on the gray statue that stood between the last two doors on this side. It made him snicker. Looking up into its eyeless face, for the first time he noticed a number was etched into the forehead. 12-B. It corresponded with the last door's number.
Let Smirk see his handiwork and guess that he'd been here. If she wasn't already watching him from inside. He was more convinced by the second that she was toying with him. He was glad now that his friends hadn't helped him check this place out. And he had to concede that he'd often had the same doubts about Smirk that they held. Sooner or later she had been bound to tire of her feral pet. Had that time come now?