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hour later, Zack got out of the car and opened the passenger door for Brian. He took Brian’s crutches when he handed them over, stowing them in the back seat.
    Tyler, the street where the building was located, held a mixture of older, dilapidated apartment buildings and rooming houses, as well as two bars, a small family-owned grocery store, a thrift shop and a liquor store. Teens and older people were walking down the street, sitting on stoops, or lolling against the walls of the various establishments.
    “Not exactly Shangri La,” Brian commented once they were parked and standing on the sidewalk. “Be sure to lock the car.”
    “Of course.” Zack had shed his suit coat and tie then rolled up his sleeves so, while he didn’t exactly fit into the neighborhood, he didn’t stand out either. Brian, as was his wont, wore an older pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
    After taking out the keys his client had given him, Zack opened the front door of the derelict building that, he hoped, would meet with Brian’s approval as a new home for the shelter.
    The place had been a print shop in its last life. The front room was large with a counter cutting it in half. What was left of the counter now stood—or lay—in pieces in the front of the room. Wallpaper hung in tatters on one wall, obviously the victim of water damage. Two doors at the back of the room opened onto equally large rooms that ran the depth of the rest of the building. They were now empty except for a few heavy, broken tables. Stairs along the back wall of the front room led to the second floor with another set behind a locked door, going down to a basement.
    “Do you think you can make it up?” Zack asked bluntly. He took in the fact the stair railing was almost non-existent and two of the steps were only partially there.
    “For damned sure going to try,” Brian replied, carefully setting his crutches on the bottom stair.
    Cautiously, testing each step first, he worked his way to the second floor with Zack right behind him to catch him if something went wrong. When he got to the top, Brian let out a deep breath.
    “That was not fun.” He chuckled dryly. “And I have to go back down them, sooner or later.”
    “I’ll toss you over my shoulder and carry you down,” Zack said with a grin as he opened the first door off the hallway where they now stood. “Seems like someone partied hard up here.”
    Beer cans and beer and whiskey bottles lay strewn around the room, along with fast-food wrappers and, Zack noted, some syringes. The room behind it was equally as messy, while a third one at the back of the building held a few rotting blankets and sleeping bags. Across from them, along the hallway that traversed the building from front to back, were five more smaller rooms that had also, from the look of them, been sleeping areas for homeless kids—or adults.
    “Used to be someone’s squat, I’d say,” Brian commented. “Wonder why they moved out?”
    Zack pointed to some faded gang tags on the walls. “Competition.”
    “It’s been a while, though, since anyone’s been up here, if the dust and dirt are any indication.”
    “Yes. My client hired a security company to keep an eye on the place once he realized what was going on,” Zack told him
    “Too bad he didn’t hire a cleaning company too,” Brian muttered. “How the hell did he plan on selling it the way it is?”
    “That, according to him, is why he’s willing to let you have it so cheap. He figures it’s less expensive than his doing anything to the building.”
    “How pragmatic of him.” Brian pounded his fist on one wall. “Sturdy.”
    “Yep. Physically the building is all right. Well, if you don’t count the stairs. There was an elevator but the city red-tagged it, he said.”
    “Where?”
    They went into the hallway again, and Zack pointed to the end where there was an open shaft with a gate across the front.
    “I’ll have to do something about that, for sure,” Brian