“Why don’t you calm down,” Theo said, and Niki saw the fire jump like lightning in Daria’s eyes.

“Why don’t you keep the hell out of this?” she said, almost snarled, and Niki wished again that she had stayed back at the apartment with Claude and his Ella Fitzgerald tapes, his comforting coffee and conversation.

“Hey, will the both of you just shut the hell up and let me drive?” Mort growled, no patience infinite and Niki could tell he’d had enough.

She had just stepped out of the shower when the phone rang, was still standing naked and dripping in the steam, drying herself with a thin, not-quite-white towel that had once belonged to a Holiday Inn. Someone who’d heard from someone else that Daria’s boyfriend had been in a fight, had gotten himself cut up and might be dead. Dying, at the very least.

A minute or two later, the towel wrapped tightly around her, and “It might just be a false alarm,” she’d said, trying her best to sound hopeful, reassuring, starting to feel awkward and misplaced.

“You don’t know Keith,” Daria had said, pulling her boots on and not bothering with the ratty laces.

“Which makes you a very lucky girl,” Claude said and had turned quickly away, shielding himself from the hot recrimination in Daria’s eyes.

“Put on some clothes if you’re coming,” Daria had said, and Niki thought maybe it would be rude to say no thank you, I’ll stay right here. Rude, or dangerous.

“Okay, look, you can turn left at the next light, on Seventeenth, and circle back around…”

Niki tried to shut out Daria’s frantic commands, shut her eyes and then immediately opened them again, not wanting to make car sickness any more likely than it already was; puking would do absolutely nothing to improve the van’s all but palpable funk, the reek of ancient sweat and cigarette smoke, oil and the sweet and sour hint of rotting food. She hung on to the edges of her plywood raft and rode the wave.

After they’d checked two titty bars and a park full of bums and monuments to dead civil rights leaders, Daria had finally thought to call the hospitals. Niki and Theo sat in the van while Daria and Mort fed precious quarters into a pay phone and argued with emergency room nurses.

“God, I hate that asshole,” Theo said.

Niki, who’d decided she was better off just staying in the floor after having been twice bounced off the milk crate, shifted her stiff and aching butt, rubbed her freezing hands together. Obviously, the van had no heater.

“You mean Daria?” she asked.

“No, not Dar. Keith-fucking-Barry,” Theo answered too quickly, pulled the cheesy flamingo-pink polyester and velvet tux jacket she was wearing tighter around her shoulders. “Dar’s a doll, when she’s not chasing after that fucker’s junky prick.”

“Oh,” Niki said, knowing nothing else to say.

An uncomfortable and silent five minutes later, and Mort and Daria were climbing back inside, driver’s door popping open and banging closed again, the sliding side door complaining viciously on its rusted tracks. Night rushed into the van, soaking Niki in chill air and the colder glare of the streetlights.

“So?”

“‘So’ what, Theo?” Daria said, reclaiming her seat on the tool chest.

“So is he dead or what?”

Mort sighed, pulled off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his hair.

“No one named Keith Barry has been admitted to any of the ERs tonight,” he said and put his cap back on, the bill turned around backwards so Niki could read the red, white, and blue STP patch stitched on the front. He slapped his big hands together loudly. “And there are no John Does that fit his description. We checked the city morgue, too.”

“This is bullshit,” Theo muttered and lit a cigarette.

“We should check out that house in Ensley,” Daria said, ignoring her. “The one with all the windows painted yellow.”

“Christ, Daria,” Mort hissed and slumped over the steering wheel, already defeated before he’d even begun to object. “I do not want to go wandering around that part of town after dark.”

“I wouldn’t want to go wandering around that part of town in broad fucking daylight, Mort, but what’s your fucking point? I’m not just gonna sit around on my ass and wait for the cops to call.”

“I’ve had enough of this crap,” Theo said and blew a cloud of smoke against the cracked inside of the windshield. “You guys can let me out downtown. And Niki, I’d advise you to come with me.”

Niki felt helpless, lost. None of this had anything to do with her, but she felt caught anyway, stretched suddenly between Daria and Theo like the rope in a particularly nasty tug-of-war match. And of course the advantage went to Daria, Daria who had taken her in and given her a place to sleep, a bath.

“Uh, I guess I’ll just stay with you guys,” she said, speaking to Daria, who frowned and stared down at the bare metal floor between her boots.

“Yeah, well, whatever,” Theo said. “It’s your ass.”

“What’s the deal with this place, anyway?” Niki asked, certain that she didn’t really want to know. “What sort of house is it?”

“A crackhouse,” Mort said and started the van. “It’s just a goddamned crackhouse.”

After they’d left Theo, after she’d asked Niki if she was absolutely sure she didn’t want to come back to her place, Mort drove west and Daria took Theo’s seat; Niki sat on the floor and watched the streetlights become dimmer and farther apart, wider pools of night between them. Downtown surrendering to the first belt of decay, neighborhoods wilted and gone to ugly, cancerous fallow. She didn’t know this city, was becoming increasingly disoriented as the oasis of tall buildings slipped behind them. Daria had stopped talking, had stopped pointing, and now she sat smoking, staring intently out her window at things Niki couldn’t see.

Niki glimpsed the incongruously bright facade of a Burger King over Mort’s shoulder, and then he turned, pulling the Ford Econoline up to the curb.

“Man, I can’t believe the cops haven’t shut this fucker down,” he said, reaching beneath his seat for something Niki couldn’t quite make out, something black and heavy slipped quickly inside his coat.

Daria slid the side door open for Niki, and she stepped out onto the sickly brown patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk. The house had once been something grand, Victorian gingerbread and dormer windows, a disintegrating cupola perched on the high gabled roof. And every window hidden behind irregular sheets of plywood, all painted the same neon shade of canary yellow.

“It certainly isn’t inconspicuous, is it?” Niki said as Daria slammed the sliding door shut behind her.

“It doesn’t have to be,” she said, stepping past Niki, heading up the walk to the long front porch. “The cops are all too busy hassling hookers and queers. They don’t get out this way very often.” Daria was walking fast, purposeful steps and words more purposeful; Mort had to jog to catch up with her.

“Might be bad for their health,” she said.

Up the crumbling stoop, five steps, and now Niki could see the swirling graffiti tangle laid thick across almost every available surface, tags and gang warnings, spray-can pasta, the universal language of urban tribes. She recognized some of the stuff from the Quarter, crude 8-ball placa and dollar signs to show all this territory was controlled by Crips and Disciples.

Daria hammered on the front door, hard fist against flaking wood; Mort stood just behind her, struggling to look calm and cool, obviously neither, trying to keep an eye on every corner and shadow. The only response from the darkened house was the steady, muffled thump-thump-thump of rap, and Daria pounded the door again, using both fists this time.

“Hey!” she shouted, howled, hands cupped around her mouth to make a megaphone. “Open the goddamn door, or I’m gonna call the cops!”