They went at it pretty good.”
“Any idea what about?”
Arrua shook his head. “I’d hear him yelling and banging stuff around, but I don’t know what he was saying.”
I drank some coffee and thought about that for a while. “Did you complain?” Arrua nodded. “And?”
“I knock on the door and she says she’s sorry and things quiet down for a while- but sometimes not for long.”
“You never went to the super or anything?”
Arrua colored a little. “I’m seventy-nine years old, for God’s sake. I don’t want to get into that kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing, George?”
He shifted in his seat and ran a thin finger around the rim of his mug. “The last time I went over there, the boyfriend answered. He tells me to mind my own fucking business, and if I don’t he’ll…” Arrua colored more deeply and looked down at his cat, asleep on his foot. “I don’t know…he talked some trash about what he’d do to Diego here.” He shook his head. “She tried to stop him but he pushed her away. After that, I quit complaining. Like I said, I’m too old.”
I let out a long breath. “You know this guy’s name?” Arrua shook his head. “What does he look like?”
“White guy with dark hair, in his thirties, I guess. Tall- taller than you, I think.”
“When did he stop coming around?”
“I don’t know, maybe in July or August.”
I thought for a while. “You said the fighting was mainly with the old boyfriend,” I said. “Does that mean she has other noisy visitors?”
“A month back there was a guy banging at her door pretty loud.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if he ever got to see her.”
“You see him before, or since?”
Arrua chuckled and shook his head. “He wasn’t the type that hangs around here usually.”
“What type was he?”
“Looked like a banker to me, or maybe a lawyer- white hair, dark suit, white shirt, wore a tie. Not somebody I see at the community center.”
I nodded. “Anybody else come around?”
“There was a woman here a couple weeks ago, did her share of crying and yelling. Dark hair, thirty-five, forty maybe- I didn’t get a good look.”
“Anybody else?”
“There’s the new boyfriend.”
“How new?”
“A few months, maybe.”
“Do they fight too?”
“Not that I hear.”
“You know his name?” Arrua shook his head. “You know what he looks like?”
“Sure- and so do you.” I raised an eyebrow and he smiled. “He’s the guy who kicked your ass in the hall.”
I had no other questions for Jorge Arrua, so I finished my coffee and thanked him and listened to him lock his door behind me. Then I took the stairs up.
There was a sign on the metal door to the roof that warned of an alarm, but the wires dangling from the push bar made it less than convincing. It opened only to the brief creak of hinges. Outside, the sleet had turned to snow and the air was white with it.
“Great,” I whispered. I walked to the edge of the roof and looked down the narrow passage between Holly’s building and its neighbor.
The fire escape was crusted in ice and slush and decades of rust underneath. The little gate where it met the roofline shrieked like a subway when I pulled on it, but no windows opened below, and no heads peered out. I slipped and slid a half-dozen times on the way down, and I crouched by Holly’s windows with bruised elbows and sodden knees.
Her windows were locked tight and, like her neighbor’s, guarded by a metal gate. I peered through the lattice into the apartment beyond. It was even smaller than Arrua’s, a single square room with a pocket kitchen at one end, bath at the other, futon in the corner, and what looked like all of the apartment’s contents scattered across the floor. I put away my pry bar. Someone had beaten me to it.
15
“Burglary?” Mike Metz asked.
“I doubt it,” I said. I propped the phone on my shoulder and spooned some yogurt into a bowl. “At least, not the traditional kind. The windows were intact and so was the door, so whoever it was had a key- and no interest in the television or the iPod or three fairly expensive flat-screen monitors.”
“You saw all that?”
“The apartment’s not big. What I didn’t see, though, were her computers or any video equipment.”
“You think that stuff was there to begin with?”
“There was a table with a modem and a printer and all the monitors on it, and lots of loose cabling hanging off the side. And there were factory boxes on the floor- three of them- for digital video cameras. Two of them were opened and empty. I couldn’t see into the third one.”
Mike made a clicking sound. “Anything else not there?”
“There was a file cabinet tipped on its side. The drawers looked empty from where I was, but I didn’t see any file folders around. I didn’t see any disks around, either, or video cassettes.”
“So, someone looking for…what?”
“Her work would be my guess.”
Mike swore under his breath. “Someone interested in her work and someone with a key.”
“I suppose she could’ve let whoever it was in- but either way it implies someone she knew.”
“Like the new boyfriend. Or maybe the old one.”
“That’s the hopeful answer,” I said. “Talking to them is way up there on my list.”
“The neighbor didn’t know their names?”
“No, but I’m hoping the sister or the brother-in-law will. I’m going again tomorrow morning.”
Mike made a noise of vague assent. “How about her other visitorsthe woman, and the guy in the suit- did the neighbor know anything about them?”
“Just the vague descriptions.”
“They ring any bells?”
“The suit could’ve been the lawyer Krug’s assistant told me about. Or not. The woman could be anyone.”
Mike was quiet for a while, and I could almost hear the gears turning. “You didn’t go inside?” he asked finally.
“I would’ve had to force the window and the window gate, and that would mean nothing but heartache with the cops. B and E is bad enough, but screwing up a possible crime scene is worse, and if they find out you’ve done both it makes it that much harder to convince them you haven’t tampered with evidence. And speaking of cops, how are you doing with your contacts?”
“I’m taking a guy to lunch tomorrow,” Mike said.
“Rough work.”
“You haven’t seen him eat.”
Mike rang off and I ate some yogurt. Outside, the slush had frozen over, and the night sky was streaked with
