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Disclaimer: If you are a member of the law enforcement community, or otherwise inclined to take action against minor crimes of curiosity, it would be in my best interest if you did not read the following story. Tantalizing, no?

Disclaimer 2: Contents highly tangential.

Monday

Like all good stories, this one begins with a surly female cop banging on my door. This is pretty typical for a Monday, so I responded without hesitation, but a strangeness began to permeate the experience almost immediately – the navy blue winter police garb was extraordinarily unflattering to this woman’s plum-like body shape, giving her the appearance of a Roger Hargreaves creation. The color of her outfit only accentuated the image of fruit that was quickly taking shape in my mind. By the time simple pleasantries had been exchanged, I was convinced that I was speaking to Veruca Salt in her worst moments.

The interesting thing about being approached by police officers, especially when they simply show up at your door, is that you immediately begin retracing your steps over the previous few days. The legality of even the most mundane events is called into question. Maybe searching the internet for a bootleg of Pasolini’s The 120 Days of Sodom was a bad idea. I assumed it would get my name on some sort of watch list, but having a cop show up at my door seemed extreme. At the same time though, it was kind of disappointing – if I am going to get taken away, I want to go down in spectacular fashion. You know, twenty feds clogging the hallways, all with mustaches and sunglasses, ripping open couch cushions, some sort of chase down a slippery fire escape resulting in a standoff on the roof of the Starbucks next to my building. Compared to that, one cop seems just plain lazy. I blame the Bush administration.

It turned out that her inquiry concerned my neighbor - let’s call him Murray. I told her the two things I have learned about Murray over the past year of living next to him -

A) He is very secretive, or at least prefers to be left to his own devices.
B) He has a very unfortunate last name (which I will not state for reasons that should be fairly obvious. Let’s just say it is up there with “ Dick Butkus” and “Dr. Reinhardt Adolfo Fuck”.)

Not much to go on, but she agreed with me on the last name. She asked us if we had seen Murray recently, which we had not, and then informed us that his mom and brother had not been able to reach him for a couple of weeks. This immediately piqued my interest – my computer is set up right next to the front door of our apartment, so I hear him come and go all the time. But once the cop told me that he is considered missing, I realized I had not heard any of those sounds in at least two or three weeks.

I can of course empathize with his family and the worry they must have been experiencing. I am all too familiar with the disturbing scenarios one concocts in their mind during situations with too many unknowns. That being said, I must confess to an overwhelming sense of excitement when she told me they were going to bust the door down. Hearing a cop say this is something that everyone should experience.

My girlfriend (who has requested the pseudonym “Grace”) and I just kind of looked at each other, knowing exactly what the other was thinking. I turned back to the cop, trying to stop an inappropriate smile from claiming my face, and quietly asked, “…can we watch?”

Her response was surprisingly positive – clearly she was not expecting the maggot-infested corpse that I was. I suspect that years of police work taught her that these situations are rarely as dramatic as people expect, her imaginative potential irrevocably jaded by experience. This would explain her nonchalant manner when I began sniffing the air in the hallway, searching for the scent of death. If movies can be believed, the smell A) is terrible, which seems reasonable, as I can’t imagine it would be pleasant, and B) causes at least one person to vomit, usually the over-confident rookie. It was this olfactory ipecac that I sought, but I found no trace of such a thing.

Some firemen arrived after a short time, as did Murray’s brother, who had originally reported this situation to the police. The firemen began to bash the door down, a process they call “forced entry”. I dislike this terminology for a number of reasons, but mostly because I find it highly unsavory. Those words combined with the phallic battering ram they use to violate someone’s private space suggests something different to me than I think they intended. But this is an observation made in retrospect – at the time this was actually happening I was enthralled. My morbid curiosities were functioning at a level I rarely experience.

Every time they smashed the door, my heart contracted hard and caused a surge of fluid through my circulatory system. A rhythm built up, my body anticipating the smashing of the door and synchronizing the push of blood with the hits. This pulse continued just long enough for me to entertain the thought that these firemen were not particularly apt at breaking doors down.

Then it stopped. My heart, not receiving its cue, paused for a moment before remembering its autonomous capabilities.

The door was chained, a function that can only be engaged from inside the apartment. While this delayed the payoff to the anticipation I was still in the throes of, it also added another layer of intrigue to an already intriguing situation. I can understand the desire for isolation, but when it gets to the point where the police are breaking your door down, I would think you might make your presence known, if for nothing else than to preserve the integrity of the door that makes said isolation possible. No such thing happened. The firemen proceeded to break through the doorframe, literally smashing it into a jagged mess of splinters.

They all charged in and quickly surveyed the small apartment. They used flashlights instead of turning on the lights, so Grace and I had a very limited view of what was inside. We strained our necks to get a better look without entering, but could see nothing of significance. Waiting there for news from inside was excruciating, and the excitement was almost too much to handle – I wanted to run in there and look around for myself. Like most intense feelings, this was very short-lived. The confirmation came within seconds. The apartment was empty.

While this disappointed the part of me that really wanted to see a neophyte law enforcement agent run out and violently throw up in the hallway, which would be funny to me, I was also completely fascinated. How and why was the door chained from the inside if no one was there? A quick survey from outside revealed that there is a small drop to a fire escape through a couple of his windows, but what would compel someone to leave their apartment in this fashion?

The authorities were strangely unconcerned about this development. Maybe people leave their apartments through their windows more regularly than I have been led to believe. It seems inefficient to me. Plus, if your front door is chained up, the window is also the only way back into the apartment. The whole idea struck me as undesirable.

Anyway, everyone left pretty soon after that. The door to his apartment was completely fucked, the wooden spikes sticking out of the frame preventing any movement beyond a twenty-degree angle from the hinge. The plum-shaped police officer asked us to call the landlord and let her know that not only would the locks need to be fixed, but the entire frame as well. This request seemed somewhat irresponsible to me - for all she knew, Murray could be tied up in our coat closet, unconscious from the pain of us shaving strips of flesh off his thighs and cooking them on a skillet like thick-sliced bacon. But then again, this is a woman who thinks that chaining up your front door and escaping through your window is nothing peculiar. Her assumptions about the world around her are clearly different from mine.

Grace decided we should put some tape on the door to at least keep it from opening completely, which was both courteous and questionably motivated. It just so happens that the light in our hallway is out, which meant we might need flashlights to ensure a precision job of taping the door. If, by some unknown means, the door were to accidentally open during this procedure, and our flashlights just happened to be pointing into the apartment and we caught a glimpse of what was in there, well, I don’t see how that could be construed as criminally negligent behavior. Needless to say, I agreed without hesitation.

I grabbed the tape and we walked out into the hall. The rationale seemed sound - our carefully constructed accident would sate our desire to look around his place while still being a morally acceptable breach of privacy. However, like Communism and Superman Returns before it, the idea sounded good on paper but failed completely when put into practice. We pretty much walked right in the door without pausing.

We should have thought about it – what was going to stop us? There was obviously no one inside, and if any of the other tenants were going to come out and investigate, they probably would have done so when the floor was shaking from the forced entry. It’s not like we were going to steal anything - we just wanted to look around. There would be no trace of our activities, so how could we get caught? It’s not like either of us was going to write a confession and post it on the internet.

Besides, I’m not exactly sure what the charge would be. “Breaking and entering” would be the logical choice, but we weren’t the ones who did the breaking. That shit was broken, and as far as I know, “entering” isn’t a crime.

Even though the apartment was empty, the possibility of Murray being dead had not been completely ruled out, so we entered under the assumption that this was the final home of a recently deceased man. It certainly looked, felt and smelled like the kind of place dead things might like to take up residence. Specifically, homosexual dead things looking for a secluded place to masturbate – gay porn was in ample supply. It sat in a stack next to a small TV on an old wood stand, a single chair resting directly across from it. These items constituted the entirety of the living room’s furnishing.

Further inspection exposed a thin layer of dust that covered everything. Clearly no one had been here for some time, that or Murray’s routine was such that the few things he owned went undisturbed for long periods of time. The setup in the living room suggested a very depressing answer to the question of what that routine could be, and nothing else in the place did anything to lift the dismal atmosphere. Usually there are clear indicators inside people’s homes of what they do for a living and what their hobbies are, but not here. The only desires evidenced by his apartment were pornography and detachment.

We only stuck around for a couple of minutes total – it was hard to see, and there wasn’t really a whole lot to see anyway. It went from exciting to sad pretty quickly, and the more depressing it got, the more I thought I should be feeling like an asshole. I didn’t actually feel like an asshole, not at first anyway, but it seemed like the appropriate response. The irony is that the realization that I should feel like an asshole but didn’t was what genuinely made me feel like an asshole. It’s comforting to know that I can replicate the feelings I know my emotional numbness is preventing me from experiencing by tapping into good old-fashioned self-loathing.

Tuesday

Early the next day our landlord called us to assure us we were not in danger of being murdered. “That’s nice of her,” I thought, even though it seemed like a pretty simple thing to assure someone of. Reinforcing things I already believe, such as the low potential of my being murdered this particular Tuesday, is not something I actively dissuade. But I suppose there are people who wake up each day, thinking, “Shit, I might get murdered today. Better watch out.” To them, this would be an ideal phone call, and as a landlord I guess she needs to cover all of her bases.

Her intention was clear and genuine, but I have to say, she did a pretty bad job of pulling it off. Not only that, she actually managed to convince me of the exact opposite. The thought that this situation might result in harm to Grace or myself had not even crossed my mind – it was never anything more to me than some crazy shit going on across the hall. But by the time I got off the phone, some threat to our safety seemed entirely plausible. She told us Murray “has been having some problems lately”, but that we “don’t need to worry about him chopping anyone up.” Isn’t that generally implied just by not mentioning it? This kind of comment insinuates that there is some unknown precedent for its inclusion in the conversation. I began to suspect there was an uncomfortable context to this situation that I was still unaware of.

Later in the day two detectives arrived with Murray’s brother and after looking around the apartment, they knocked on our door. Grace answered the door and an awkward silence hung for a few seconds as she took in the walking stereotype standing in front of her. A trench coat, mustache, and sunglasses with a thick Chicago accent introduced himself, but it was unnecessary. This guy was obviously a detective.

Murray’s brother insisted there was a backpack in the apartment when they entered on Monday night that was now missing, so the detective asked us if we saw or heard anyone go in there. Simultaneously, and probably a little too quickly, Grace and I both said no. I didn’t even recall seeing a backpack in there, but I kept that information to myself.

Murray’s brother left to make a phone call about this time. The detectives decided to ask us a few more questions, including whether or not we knew if Murray was of an “alternate lifestyle” (a term proving once again that in trying to be P.C., people have missed the point at best and caused further offense at worst. These words just represent a difference between us rather than an honest attempt at understanding). I told him that if his DVD collection was any indication (the obelisk of porn clearly visible from the doorway, which was currently open), then yes, that is a reasonable assertion. It was at precisely this moment that I remembered the copy of Brokeback Mountain sitting in my DVD collection. I mentioned this to him. What I thought was just a light-hearted comment turned out to be so much more.

Me: “I do own a copy of Brokeback Mountain though, so I guess that’s not an entirely accurate indicator.”

Him: “That’s not gay porn though.”

Me: “Have you seen it?”

Him: (Pauses, looks around) “…yes.”

Me: “Well… there’s that scene in the te-“

Him: “Yeah, I remember.”

Me: “Great movie, but I am prepared to call the tent scene the closest thing to gay porn outside of actual gay porn. That, or any scene from Nightmare on Elm Street 2.”

Him: (clearly not an 80’s horror movie fan) “Fair enough. Anyway…”

And it got significantly less interesting from there. I have to say though, I am not what you might call a skilled conversationalist, but I have my moments.

The rest of their questions were typical. Grace wanted to know more about the AWOL backpack and took a stab at asking the detectives for information. It paid off – they told us that they were somewhat suspicious about that claim. Apparently none of the officers or firemen present on Monday night remembered seeing a backpack either.

Wednesday

Ahhhhh, Wednesday. Wednesday is when this situation got so strange that I knew it needed to be documented.

At this point, there had still been no new information about Murray’s whereabouts. I am still uncertain as to how this happened, but some woman, her identity a continual mystery, became utterly convinced that he was in his apartment at about 4:30pm. The door had been fixed at this point, so her only recourse was to pound on his door, yell through the door, and jiggle the handle. Something told her that he was inside even though nobody answered or made a sound. So she persisted. For three hours.

During this time, Grace and I could only sit in amazement at the things we were hearing. At first we did not pay much attention – we were watching Lost (appropriately) in the living room when the voice began penetrating into our apartment. Sound carries pretty well through the hub of our building, so this was nothing of note. Then the banging started, and we thought this might warrant closer observation. After all, our landlord had put the fear of death in us, so someone hammering on Murray’s door was suddenly our business. We did not want to get directly involved, but the situation needed to be monitored. So we sat, and listened.

This woman started with the angry approach, commanding Murray to come out and confront her. It lacked tact – even I knew this guy would not respond to that. He was making a concerted effort to alienate himself from the people that care for him. Aggression was not going to get him out of it. Most likely some sort of perceived aggression toward him was what caused this behavior. This approach would only cause him to burrow further. And that’s assuming Murray was even inside the apartment, which seemed like a baseless assumption to me. I think she was trying to answer some sort of Zen question – how do you get a man to leave his apartment if he is not there?

I don’t think she found the answer, but what follows are some of the things we heard her say during Phase One of her multi-pronged approach. It started out with relatively simple requests, but quickly escalated.

- “Open the door Murray. Pretty Please?”
- “Nothing ever comes between us.”
- “I’m gonna pull out the big guns.”
- “I’m gonna kick the door down.”
- “I’ll play nice.” (mixed messages?)
- (Random grunting/hyperventilating, like a panting bull)
- “I’m a big girl, I could probably break this door down!”

And my personal favorite,

- “I will bang on this door ‘til I’m right!”

What the hell does that even mean?

Comments like this comprised the first hour or so of this ordeal. The entire time, she kept jiggling the door handle as though it might open if she turned it at precisely the right moment. Interesting theory, but it didn’t pan out.

Even though I ridicule the irrationality of her actions, I also understand that in her mind, that door was Murray, or at least represented the separation between the two of them. The desperation that had been building within her over the past weeks became more and more apparent as her anger was used up. She spent all the hatred she had by saying and doing to that door everything she wanted to say and do to Murray. When this ran out though, the tough armor cracked open, all she had left was her own vulnerability. If Murray was inside, he knew full well that he had all the power in this situation long before her resilient façade dissolved, and he played his hand appropriately.

As mentioned before, the light in our hallway is out, so we could not see anything that was going on through our peephole when the pounding and jiggling died out. I can only guess that the visceral behavior displayed during Phase One was replaced with a more intimate treatment of the door during Phase Two – Pleading.

The ineffectiveness of her anger brought about some realization of helplessness, and she seemed to accept that she was a prisoner of Murray’s whims. So she begged. There was no plan or even direction at this point – anything that came to mind was fair game for her attempts to coax Murray out of his seclusion. At one point, she even appealed to him by pointing out that she was wearing her reading glasses, just like him. I don’t know what the deeper connotations of this comment are, if any, but it illustrates the point that her leverage in this scenario was non-existent.

After some time pleading, she decided to give him some time to think over he offer. “I will leave for ten minutes,” she said, “but the then you better let me in.” The woman then descended the stairs, but instead of going out the front door, we heard the door to the apartment directly beneath Murray’s open. She entered.

A little background – Grace and I do not know the woman who lives directly beneath Murray, but the things we have gleaned about her are…disquieting. As soon as she moved in earlier this year, she painted her apartment door dark red and placed a little toy on her doormat that looked like a clown made out of surgical tubing. The look on its face always seemed incongruent with the condition of the thing, like it was smiling when someone threw acid on its face, burning this melting expression into its visage. There was also a small, hand-painted banner, written horizontally but hung on the door vertically, that read “Roost”. As a whole, these elements immediately informed me that she had some sort of artistic aspirations, but I could already tell she was the kind of artist that I hate – the pretentious type who takes every opportunity to shove it in your face that she is an artist and therefore better than you. If her entryway is one of her pieces, then this problem was compounded by a severe lack of talent. It looked like the entrance to an art school dorm room.

While this was a constant annoyance that offended my eyes every time I come up or down the stairs, it was hardly cause for any concern. That came later, when a note from her psychiatrist was found crumpled up and jammed underneath the front door of our building. It was some sort of reminder, resembling a UPS “Sorry we missed you” note, that had several small boxes on it next to phrases like, “Missed Appointment”, “Urgent”, “Please Call Immediately”, and “Highly Confidential”. On this particular note, every single one of these boxes was checked.

I also walked past the windows of her apartment one day when her blinds were open. Something caught my eye as I passed, so I looked a little closer. There were pages from a book, at least a hundred, torn out and spread across the floor of her place in neat rows and columns.

In this context, the erratic behavior we had been listening to for the past hour and a half made slightly more sense – we were merely surrounded by crazy people. I still cannot help but think of movies like Rosemary’s Baby and Blue Velvet, and that Murray’s disappearance is the catalyst for our entanglement with some clandestine cabal functioning within our building. Our entering Murray’s apartment was no different than Kyle MacLachlan hiding in Isabella Rossellini’s closet, and has set in motion events that will irrevocably change our lives and our perceptions of the world. At least now I know that my voyeuristic tendencies will by my downfall.

Another ninety minutes of desperate pleading followed the woman’s re-emergence from the apartment below. Like being in Murray’s apartment, the longer this went on, the more disgusted I felt with myself, but something deeper and more persuasive compelled me to continue listening. No signs of life on the other side of that door ever manifested, and eventually she gave up. “I’ll be back,” she said before departing.

I couldn’t help but think that her delivery lacked the brilliance Schwarzenegger brought to those words.

Two hours later, we heard the door to Murray’s apartment open, and someone walked in. Apparently he is alive and has returned home. It makes me happy to know this, but at the same time, seeing him around the building is going to be really awkward. I mean, what do you say to someone after you have secretly invaded his inner sanctum?

Grace called the landlord to inform her of this, who in turn passed this information onto the family, and that’s the story so far. Murray’s brother sent us a Christmas card, thanking us for reporting Murray’s return. If only he knew our true involvement.

I obviously do not know all of the answers, and quite probably never will. All I really learned from all of this is that we live in a building full of insane people, which begs the question – why did they accept my application?