Night Film

67

We crossed the street to get a better view. It was dim on that side, with just a streetlamp and a high-rise apartment building, its entrance around the corner on Park, so it afforded some privacy to watch the townhouse.

It was after eleven o’clock, the neighborhood deserted. New York might be the city that never slept, but the well-heeled residents of the Upper East Side got tucked into their bespoke sheets around ten.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s lived there for years,” I noted.

I noticed Hopper was staring intently at the place, the expression on his face unreadable, though I sensed a sort of deep-seated hostility, as if within its hulking grandeur he saw something he detested.

It was unapologetic in its opulence, five stories, a garden on the roof — tree branches could be seen reaching over the top cornice. Every window was dark, a few adorned with heavy curtains, the panes dirty. A narrow covered balcony extended outside the windows on the second floor, detailed with an oxidized copper roof, black iron latticework along the sides and railing. And yet in spite of its lavishness, or because of it, the townhouse had a cold, lonely demeanor.

“Are we going to knock?” whispered Nora.

“You two stay here,” I said.

I headed across the street and skipped up the marble steps strewn with leaves and bits of trash, a deli napkin, a cigarette butt. I rang the bell, noting the black bubble of a security camera above the intercom. I heard it ring inside — a strident clanging straight out of nineteenth-century England — but there was no response.

I pulled out the papers wedged through the mail slot, a Burger Heaven menu and two ads for a twenty-four-hour locksmith. They were faded, warped from the rain. They’d been there for months.

“Some loaded European probably owns it,” I said, moving back to Hopper and Nora. “He uses it two days a year.”

“Only one way to find out,” said Hopper. He took a last drag of his cigarette, chucked it to the ground, and, pulling up the collar of his coat, crossed the street.

“What’s he doing?” whispered Nora.

Hopper stepped right up to the townhouse, grabbed the black iron grating over the arched window on the ground floor, and began to climb. Within seconds, Hopper was twelve feet off the ground. He paused for a minute, looking down, then stepped on top of one of the old lanterns flanking the front doors and, straddling about five feet of space, grabbed ahold of the concrete ledge of the second-floor balcony.

He hoisted himself higher, dangling there for a few seconds, his gray coat floating around him like a cape. He hooked his right leg over the railing and fell sideways onto the balcony. Immediately, he scrambled to his feet and, with another furtive glance down at the sidewalk, crept along the narrow veranda to the window on the farthest right. Crouching, he shielded his eyes to look through the glass, then fumbled inside his coat for what appeared to be his wallet. He cracked the casement, probably using a credit card, slid the window open, and without the slightest hesitation, he crawled inside.

There was a moment of stillness. He reappeared as a silhouette, slid the window closed, and disappeared.

I was stunned, expecting at any moment now a maid’s bloodcurdling scream or sirens. But the street remained silent.

“What the hell?” whispered Nora, clamping a hand over her chest. “What do we do?”

“Nothing. We wait.”

As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait long.

Hopper had been inside not ten minutes when a lone taxi coasted down the street toward us, slowing and stopping directly in front of the townhouse.

“Oh, no,” whispered Nora.

The backseat door opened and a heavyset woman emerged.

“Text Hopper,” I said. “Tell him to get the hell out of there.”

As Nora fumbled for her phone, I slipped between the parked cars, aiming for the woman who was moving up the townhouse steps, digging through her purse, trying to find her keys.