NINETEENTHE DOOR LED TO A SMALL alleyway that separated the main building from a wall that separated this property from the next. It was just over three feet wide—the municipal minimum allowable space. Two steps down I turned left.
I wanted to get to the wall directly in front of me, a wall that separated this property with the empty construction lot. From the opposite side of the building, from where I parked the now-destroyed SUV, loud sirens wafted over into the cold air.
I carried Cheng the twenty yards to the other wall, stepping over boxes and crates and rubbish and other neglected junk. And then, almost exactly at the three-minute mark as instructed, the pickup’s engine growled from the other side of the concrete wall in front. I had asked Jason to bring some muscle with him. The
