Every few days, I clock another strange detail about my next-door neighbor. For example: All these brick tenements in the Tri-Cities metro area were constructed the same way a century ago. Instead of iron fire escapes, the buildings have flights of carpenter’s stairs, built along the unfaced bricks at the rear. On every floor, there is a good-sized landing outside the kitchen door of each apartment. Some of my neighbors even park lawn chairs out there to take the air on summer evenings. For reasons I have yet to understand, both the stairways and the porches throughout Kindle County and the nearby towns are always painted in this heavy gray enamel, the color of pigeons.
Since our apartments were carved from what was once one home, TWO and I share the rear porch. Not long after he moved in, I heard the boards out there squeaking around two a.m. and realized, even in my sleep, that there was a human weight behind the sound. I bolted up. Peering around my shade, I saw a man and was already heading for the biometric gun safe under my bed when I realized who it was. My cell service has recently gone completely to shit—it was never great to start—and my first thought was that he was awake to call someone in Asia and was outside looking for a signal. Then I saw the orange ember: He was sneaking a cigarette.
Our whole building is no-smoking, including the porches, where I suspect the goal is to keep people from barbecuing on the landings and maybe burning the whole place down. I was a smoker for years and still will bum a cigarette sometimes when I’m hammered.
Having been there, I knew that this had to be a bitch for TWO—waiting until the middle of the night to get his little fix, just to be sure Arturo, the janitor, doesn’t see him and the neighbors can’t tell where the smell is coming from. But as I wrote in my notes, ‘There are still rentals in Highland Isle with smoking wings or first-floor smoking lounges. Why move in here?’
I also realized eventually that it was strange I could see so little when he was out there. I checked the light fixture between our back doors that’s supposed to stay on all night in case of fire. The bulb had been loosened. I screwed it back in. But by the end of the week, the fixture seemed to have shorted out.
I’m frequently in my apartment during the day. Even before COVID, Rik was okay with me doing my written stuff—interview reports or document summaries—at home, where there are fewer distractions. Given a choice, I always prefer to be alone anyway.
That means I’m often around when TWO heads out with his gym bag. That gives me a couple hours to snoop. Several times I’ve gone to the back porch to try to sneak a peek through his kitchen window, but he seems to have installed a shade, which I slowly recognized is always drawn. Each week, I paw through his trash and recycling but learn nothing.
A few days after my drink with Tonya, while I’m at home in the late afternoon doing some Internet research about the three guys who are going to testify against the Chief, I hear El Weirdo moving around inside his place. This doesn’t happen much, and I freeze. Then his front door slams. I hustle to my own door and make out his footfalls as he heads downstairs. About ten minutes later, I hear him coming back up.
The following day it’s the same deal, and I creep out about thirty seconds behind him. I wonder if maybe he’s visiting another tenant, but as I peer down between the railings, I catch sight of him using his key to enter the first-floor door to the basement. I go down there myself sometimes to talk to Arturo, but I can hear the janitor working outside now, hauling the trash cans to the alley for garbage pickup tomorrow. Eventually, I realize TWO must be visiting the little storage coop which each tenant has.
The next afternoon, as soon as he has departed with his gym bag, I scurry down. TWO’s cage, like his apartment, is next to mine, and he’s secured it with a heavy-duty padlock. Inside the chain link, he’s stored only a single item, a kind of trunk that I think is called an ATA case, used by roadies to haul around expensive musical equipment like amps. It’s black vinyl with riveted aluminum on the seams, thick stainless-steel handles on two sides, and small casters that allow it to roll.
I open my own coop and step in to get a closer look. Even though the coop is padlocked, he’s applied another lock to secure the center latch on the case, meaning he’s taking a lot of precautions to protect what’s in there. Without a car, TWO had to ship the case here, but he’s removed any baggage or freight tags. I store my skis in my cage—I still go every winter with my dad for a day or two—and now I extend an aluminum pole between the openings in the chain link and prod TWO’s trunk. It won’t budge, meaning he’s got something pretty heavy stored inside.
The succeeding day, it’s the same, he makes two trips down and up. ‘Best guess, he’s got something in that case that he’s using and then storing again. But what kind of shit can’t you keep in your own apartment?’ I decide I’ve got to get a look inside.
One piece of PIBOT know-how I’ve had in mind to learn is lock picking, and TWO’s storage cage presents a teachable moment. Believe it or not, there are several instructional videos on YouTube. The one I like best is from England and makes the whole operation look pretty simple. Two tiny tools are required. One is a little L-shaped piece of metal called a tension wrench that goes through the opening for the key and then relieves the pressure of the springs that normally fix the pins in place to keep the barrel from turning. The second thing you need is a pick, which functions more or less the way your key does, slowly lifting the pins to the heights that open the mechanism.
I order the tools online and take cell phone photos of TWO’s padlocks. Both are a brand called Superlock. I locate those online, too. Everything arrives in a day, and I practice that night until I can open each lock in less than thirty seconds.
By definition, what I’m going to do—picking my way into TWO’s cage and opening his trunk—is illegal, trespassing at best, probably breaking and entering, which is a felony. If someone—Arturo or another tenant or even, God forbid, TWO—sees me in there, I’ll say I saw the padlocks hanging open and curiosity got the best of me. Lame, but probably good enough not to get busted.
My plan requires occupying Arturo, who has an office of sorts in what is basically a closet in the basement. A heavyset guy with a bad leg he’s always dragging behind him, Arturo is probably the only thing about this building that is genuinely superior. He is one of those people who does his supposedly menial job like he’s handling the nuclear codes. The common areas gleam. I barely put the phone down after telling him something’s broken, when he’s at my door. The basement smells strongly of the disinfectant he uses to conduct his ongoing campaign against mold.
I find him in his office, just finishing lunch—I’m always touched by the tender way he unwraps the tortillas his wife packs. I tell him I’m on my way out but ask if he would mind checking my apartment, because I think I heard squirrels in the walls. This conversation, like most I have with Arturo, is conducted in my broken Spanish, but I blank on the word for squirrels and have to do a little pantomime to explain what I mean by “como una rata con cola peluda.” (Like a rat with a bushy tail.) Once he gets it, though, his heavy face with his thick black mustache assumes an indignant look. He gets right to it and heads up with his toolbox. With his bad leg, it will take him a bit longer to get upstairs, and then he’ll go around knocking on the walls while he listens. Overall, I should get at least ten minutes.
Once I’m alone, I have the heavy-duty padlock on TWO’s cage door open in less than thirty seconds, and I quietly move inside. I grab the trunk’s handle, hoping to nudge it a little so I can get to the other lock, which is up against the concrete wall. At that point, I recognize a mistake, which worries me immediately that I’ve made others. The reason the case wouldn’t move when I poked it was because the casters are locked. Once I turn the switches, the trunk slides around like it’s on ice.
I grab hold of the second padlock and fit the tension wrench inside easily, but I have to apply more force to the pick this time. The lock clicks open. But at the same instant, the pick breaks in my hand. It happens so quickly that it seems as if the tool was designed to snap. A jagged little piece of black metal protrudes from the key slot.
“Oh, fuck me,” I say under my breath. I can’t just leave it there, because TWO will know someone has been in here. Same problem if I steal the lock outright. And if I run back to my apartment for a pair of pliers, Arturo’s going to expect me to hang out while he finishes his inspection. Having no other choice, I get down on my knees and lift the padlock to my mouth.
We are now at a quintessential Pinky moment. I have done something really stupid, ignoring the possible consequences, and have been forced into a maneuver destined by some eternal law worse than Murphy’s to go completely to shit. I’ll cut my gum and bleed all over, or break a tooth. My worthless ass will get arrested, I’ll lose my PI license and my job, and to top it all, I’ll have to endure that old look on my mother’s face. But there is no retreating now. I catch the edge of what’s left of the pick between my front teeth and bite hard. To my amazement the piece slides out smoothly on the first try.
I am about to pop the latches when it dawns on me that TWO might have set some kind of alarm. I use the flashlight on my phone to see if there’s anything visible, like a tiny wire. There isn’t, but I’m not completely convinced. I take a deep breath and can feel my heart beating all the way to my fingertips as I lift the stainless-steel catches and then the lid. I am so freaked by what I’m doing that it takes a second or two to believe what I see.
There is nothing.
The inside of TWO’s case is lined in heavy black rubber, roughly an inch thick. He had something fragile in here. But the trunk is empty now. No dust, not even a stray thread or a screw left behind. Completely fucking empty.
‘I cannot figure this out. I must have gotten to the trunk on the wrong side of the cycle. He must be removing something from his apartment for about ten minutes and storing it downstairs. But what is it he can’t keep around? The next time I hear him leave, I’ll rush out to see what he’s carrying.’
Two mornings later, around 10:30, I hear him striding out and the thump of his door. I throw open my own door and charge to the stairs.
That’s when I see him from the corner of my eye as I rush past. I revolve in panic. TWO is standing in the recess for his front door with a hard look that can’t fully conceal his amusement.
“Clarence,” he says.
My heart is slamming. With some effort, I manufacture a cheery smile.
“I was trying to catch you,” I say.
“Oh yes? Why?”
“I’ve been thinking we should get coffee sometime. You know, just the neighbor thing.”
I can see immediately that like so often I have said the wrong thing. The amused look is still skating around in his eyes, but now he’s actually showing a little wrinkle of a hipped-up smile. He thinks he’s on to me: When I sat down with him at the diner I was tuning him, and now I’m taking the next step. Lonely girl next door seeks convenient dick. It’s all I can do to keep from laughing and saying, ‘No, not sex, I have no trouble finding that.’
“Sometime maybe,” he answers and turns back to his door, key in hand. Even though I’m pretty close to busted, I can’t resist edging forward another couple inches in the hope of glimpsing something inside, but he’s like a mouse and seems to slip through an impossibly narrow opening.
Before he’s completely across the threshold, I blurt, “And what’s your name?”
He stops, looks back, takes a beat, then says, “Clarence,” before shutting the door.
Afterwards, I am so depleted by fright and frustration that I have to lie down on my bed. This guy is way, way better than me. Clearly a pro. But what kind? A hit man or a bounty hunter or even someone in law enforcement working undercover?
What am I missing? The question circulates like a mantra as I lie there staring out the windows beside my bed with their view of my porch and the unfaced bricks of the buildings across the alley.
And then I swing up to a sitting position so quickly that it seems as if some outside force propelled me. I know.
I can barely stand to wait the additional hour until TWO takes off with his red gym bag a little before noon. From my front window, I watch him amble down the walk in the courtyard and then disappear around the corner. I’m already holding another item from the PIBOT, my binoculars—a nice pair, Nikon Monarchs, 10×42, which offer an incredible field of view, even at a thousand yards.
I rush out to the porch. The mistake I made when I was trying to peek around his back shade is obvious now—I was facing the wrong direction. About three weeks ago the trees in the yards went from naked sticks to fully leafed in a matter of days. Yet even with the sight lines partially blocked by foliage, what remains visible from our back landing is Anglia and the Tech Park—and Northern Direct, the defense manufacturer mentioned in the Wall Street Journal TWO was studying at Ruben’s. When I crouch with the binoculars, I can see Direct’s facility straight on and a maintenance guy in overalls working on the equipment on the building’s roof. The white shells beside him look like satellite dishes but with a triangular arrangement of tubing mounted over the center of the concave. They are microwave transmission towers whose signals, from what I’ve read, are more secure than cellular or landlines. Direct communicates this way with their clientele in the military or the Department of Defense and the messages going back and forth have to be highly classified.
That’s what TWO is doing. The smoking is just a cover to explain why he’s outside at that hour. In the darkness, he’s using some device that’s normally hidden in the trunk, a piece of equipment that allows him to intercept signals from Direct or monitor something else that’s going on inside the installation.
I have no idea who he’s working for—the Russians or the Chinese or just one of Direct’s competitors. But I’ve finally tumbled to his gig.
TWO is a fucking spy.