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The apartment consisted of a modern kitchen, rarely used, that led into a large living room cum dining room, and Angel’s workshop, all on the lower floor. On the upper floor, there was a luxurious bathroom that Louis had appropriated for himself, leaving the en-suite shower room to his partner; Louis’s office; a smaller guest bedroom, with a small shower room, neither of which had ever been used; and the main bedroom, which was lined with closet space and, apart from the odd book, remained, by mutual effort and consent, in a state of interior design catalog neatness. There was a gun safe behind the mirror in the guest shower room. Whenever they were in the apartment, the safe remained open. At night, they each kept a weapon close at hand in the main bedroom. When the apartment was empty, the gun safe was kept locked and the mirror carefully put back in its original position using a hinge-and-lock mechanism operated by a small click switch a finger’s length behind the glass. They took care of the cleaning and maintenance of the apartment themselves. No strangers were ever admitted, nor friends or acquaintances, of which there were few in any case.
They hid in plain sight, these men. They used prepaid cell-phones, switching them regularly, but they never paid for the devices themselves: instead, homeless men and women were given money to make the purchases in stores scattered over four states, and a middleman was used to collect and pass on the phones. Even then, the cells were used only when absolutely necessary. Most of their calls were made from pay phones.
There was no internet co
Wherever possible, they used cash, not credit cards. They were part of no loyalty programs, and they bought Metrocards for the subway as they needed them, disposing of them when they were exhausted and replacing them with new ones instead of recharging the originals. Utilities were paid for through a lawyer’s office. They had learned the best routes to take on foot and by car to avoid security cameras, and the lights that illuminated the license plates on the vehicles they used all contained infrared bulbs designed to flood video cameras operating at near infrared frequency.
There were also other, more unusual, protections in place. The basement and first floor of their building were rented by an elderly lady named Mrs. Evelyn Bondarchuk, who kept Pomeranians and appeared to have cornered the market in chintz and bone china. There had once been a Mr. Bondarchuk, but he was taken from his young bride at a tragically early age, a consequence of a misunderstanding between Mr. Bondarchuk and a passing train, Mr. Bondarchuk being drunk at the time and having mistaken the track for a public urinal. Mrs. Bondarchuk had never married again, in part because no one could ever have taken the place of her much-loved, if dissolute, husband, but also because anyone who did would, by definition, have been equally or significantly more dissolute than his predecessor, and Mrs. Bondarchuk did not need such aggravation in her life. Thus a corner of her living room remained a slightly dusty shrine to the memory of her departed husband, and Mrs. Bondarchuk lavished her affection instead on generations of Pomeranians, who are not generally considered to be dissolute animals.
Mrs. Bondarchuk’s apartment was rent controlled. She paid a laughably small monthly sum to a company called Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., that appeared to be little more than a box number in Lower Manhattan. Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., had bought the building in the early eighties, and Mrs. Bondarchuk had feared for a time that her tenancy might be affected by the sale, but instead she was assured, by letter, that all would remain as it had been and she was welcome to see out her days, surrounded by Pomeranians, in the apartment in which she had dwelt for the best part of thirty years. In fact, she was even permitted to expand her fiefdom into the basement below as well, which had been unoccupied since its previous tenant died some years earlier. Such things were unheard of in the city, Mrs. Bondarchuk knew, and she did her best to ensure that, as far as she was concerned, they remained so. She did not tell anyone of her good fortune, apart from her good friend Mrs. Naughtie, and then only after swearing her to silence. Mrs. Bondarchuk was a clever woman. She understood that something unusual was happening in her building, but as it did not appear to be hampering her existence and was instead improving it significantly, she behaved sensibly and allowed matters to take their course.
The only significant change occurred when the couple upstairs, who were both accountants, eventually retired and moved to a house in Vermont, and their place was taken by a quiet, beautifully dressed black man and a smaller, noticeably less well-dressed individual who looked like he might have come to steal her jewelry, which, had fate not introduced him to his current partner, might well have been the case. Still, they were very polite gentlemen. Mrs. Bondarchuk suspected that they were gay. It gave her quite a frisson for, by the standards of the city, she led a very sheltered life.
If any problems arose with her apartment, Mrs. Bondarchuk left a message with a delightful young woman named Amy, who answered the phone for Leroy Frank Properties, Inc. Actually, Amy answered the phone for a great many businesses, none of which needed or wanted an actual physical presence in the city. Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., owned a number of premises in New York, of which the one on the Upper West Side was the sole residential property. Amy was under explicit instructions to deal with Mrs. Bondarchuk’s problems promptly, at the very latest by close of business on the day the call was received. A premium was to be paid to the relevant plumber, electrician, carpenter, or other professional to ensure that this was the case. A list of approved individuals was kept in a file in Amy’s desk, all of whom were aware of the particular needs of Leroy Frank Properties, Inc., in relation to this building.
Mrs. Bondarchuk knew the first names of the two men who lived above her, and referred to them, respectively, as “Mr. Louis” and “Mr. Angel,” but she had never co