"When are you coming back from the country?" Mike asked as I walked toward his desk. I looked at his calendar. This was Tuesday and tomorrow was Christmas Day. "I'll be back on Thursday unless you want me to change our plans."
"Don't bother. Nobody's here to work with. Just figure we'll be scrambling all next weekend on this, if Foote rounds up her troops and if the lab is good with any test results." He picked up the phone that was ringing on his desk. "It's Laura, for you."
"The superintendent of your building just called, Alex. There's a problem."
"What kind of problem?"
"Seems like there are two workmen who were found in your apartment. The super needs you to come home right away and see if anything's missing."
I slammed down the phone and told Mike I had to go home.
"Not without me. I'm driving."
"You've got things to do. I'll grab a cab."
"Not with that chubby little whackjob whose ID you glommed running around looking for you. You live twenty floors up, with two doormen on every shift. How the hell did anyone fly into your little love nest? I can't get there on my best day, best behavior."
We drove downtown and parked in the garage in my building. The woman from the apartment below me was standing in the lobby, with her Boston terrier, when we walked in.
"The management's security guys are upstairs, along with a detective from the precinct," Jesse said, following us into the elevator.
"What happened?"
"You know the guys who've been working on the scaffolding? Well, you don't see them much, 'cause you're at work all day. But once my kids leave for school, I'm around the house in the morning, and then I'm in and out all day. It's been really creepy to have them around. They seem to be looking in the windows all the time."
For the past six weeks, scaffolding had been erected around the entire high-rise apartment building as it was undergoing repairs to the brickwork and the replacement of some of the windows. Workmen arrived early and spent most of their days hanging off the roof, being raised up and down by a series of pulleys as they went about their business.
"This morning," Jesse continued, "I left about an hour ago to do some errands. Got all the way up to the avenue and realized I had forgotten something, so I turned and went back. When I got inside, the first thing I noticed was that the windows in the living room were wide open and my dog was barking. Then I could see the scaffolding platform rising on the ropes. I grabbed the dog and ran down to the door.
"I told one of the guys on duty what had happened, and Vinny took a run up to check your apartment, since it's right above mine. He must have your passkey." "He does."
"He opened the door, and the two workmen were standing in the middle of your living room."
We stopped on twenty and got off. My apartment door was ajar and I could hear the loud arguing between the detective and one of the workmen as the three of us walked in.
"Not the traditional way to enter someone's home, but thanks for having us, Alex." The guys from the Nineteenth greeted us as they sat in my living room, trying to talk to the two interlopers. "You heard the story?" one asked, looking over at Jesse. "Yeah. What's their version?"
"They say the wind was so bad that they had to get inside, or they were afraid they'd be blown off." It was the first thing I had heard that seemed logical. "They kicked the window in and came through that way," Detective Powell said, pointing to the marble-topped counter on my cabinets behind the dining table. "Looks like they broke some of your china."
I glanced over to see that several of the decorative antique plates that were displayed on the sideboard had fallen to the floor splintered into pieces.
"So how come, if they were so terrified, they broke the window downstairs but didn't go in?" Mike asked. "Doesn't make sense if all they were worried about was saving their asses."
"The story they're giving us is that when the dog started barking, they backed out."
Jesse wasn't buying it. "They were more frightened of a weeny terrier than of being blown off the side of the building? That one's hard to swallow. I think they saw me returning and just panicked. Why'd they go up and not down?"
Powell answered again. "Their boss says that when it's windy, it's actually more dangerous to be lowered than to go up higher. If they drop, it means they have to let out more rope, and that causes them to swing more, and that makes it riskier for them."
He put his arm around my shoulders and guided me off into the den. "I don't want to make a scene in front of your neighbor, but you gotta know that since the scaffolding went up, there have been three burglaries in the building."
I turned to look at Powell, surprised by the news. "Nobody's mentioned it to me."
"Needless to say, management would rather not have it known. There's no forced entry, so we've been looking at them as inside jobs. We actually started with the house staff as suspects-"
"Hey, I'd start with these guys on the outside. I'd go to the mat for the men who work in the building. Every single one of them." "Well, today seems to prove the point. You want to look around for me and tell us if anything's missing? I patted them down, and they've got nothing on them. Of course, since your neighbor was so quick to act, these guys never got out of your apartment. So if they didn't drop stuff out the window, they probably didn't have a chance to take anything.
"And you might want to know, just for your comfort level, that these mopes who've been staring in everyone's window the past few weeks? They've both got sheets a mile long. The short one standing near the kitchen door, he's on parole in the Bronx for armed robbery. The taller one, who pretends he don't understand English? He's had four collars for larceny.
"One of your neighbors in the C line moved in on a Monday night, and woke up the next morning to see him standing in her bedroom doorway. She screamed her guts out."
"And he's still working here?"
"The guy backed right out. Said he thought the apartment was still empty, didn't know she'd moved in. He'd been using the bathroom as his Porta Potti all month. Apologized and left. Hard to know what to do about him."
"Would you mind getting these guys out of here while I check around for you?"
"We're taking 'em over to the precinct. Gonna print both of them, to compare against the other cases. I won't charge 'em with anything here unless you tell me something's gone, okay?"
The two detectives walked the men out of the apartment while Mike, the super, and I surveyed the damage. Broken glass was everywhere, mixed in with the shattered china.
"Is Powell locking them up?"
"I can't see it, for this. What if their lives really were at risk and they had to come inside? I'm not going to second-guess anybody on that. They don't seem to have gotten out of here with anything. All they did was make a mess." We were standing by the window, and even though there didn't seem to be much wind today, the frigid air streamed into the room.
"Yeah, well, I think it's bullshit and they're lucky they landed where they did. Nice to know you're so forgiving about guys who crash into your pad. I may bank on that. What are you gonna do about this mess?" In one corner of the room stood my cheerful little Christmas tree, while here at my feet was a pile of debris.
The super spoke. "We'll take care of it for you, Ms. Cooper. We'll clean all this up by the end of the day. Just make a list for us of the things that were broken and we'll submit it to the insurance company."
He looked at the giant hole in the glass. "I doubt I can get the window replaced before tonight. Were you planning on being here for Christmas?"
I shook my head.
"Then you'll have a new one by Thursday, I promise."
When everyone left, Mike and I knelt on the floor to pick up some of the porcelain pieces. "Now I've got something new to worry about. I can't think of many places I've felt safer than behind the doors of this apartment, once I get inside at night and turn the locks. No fire escape, no back entrance, no way in unless I open the dead bolt." I tried to laugh. "Now I've got to worry about men climbing in off scaffolding twenty stories above the street?"