A Home Invasion
by Philip Goutell

© 2023 Philip Goutell

After my place got robbed the first time I changed the lock on the front door. It was just a business matter, the robbery, but I was hoping I could avoid getting robbed again. I was almost certain the robber wasn't really a robber. He was probably just an investigator looking for documents. I was in some legal tussles at the time and the person on the opposite side had accused me of breaking into his office. This, I suspected, was payback. But he did take some stuff: overlooking the Nikons, he took my favorite Pentax, some cuff links that may or may not have been worth much, and some old pocket watches that had belonged to my grandfather. The watches might have had sentimental value had been sentimental. What was taken didn't amount to much.

The lock that got changed was for the front door. That was the only door into the apartment. The thief had come in from the terrace by the patio door, having scaled the eight foot high chain link fence that separated my upper terrace from a much larger public terrace, then down the iron ladder to my lower terrace, and then on into the apartment through the French door that was rarely closed and never locked. After the robbery, in addition to the new lock I had razor wire strung along the top of the chain link fence on the upper terrace.

The new lock was not a legal lock. Once the door was locked, it could not be unlocked from inside the apartment without the key. Fire regulations seriously forbade this; remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire? But my thinking was, "now if someone scales the eight foot high chain link fence topped with razor wire, and comes in the terrace door, they'll have to re-scale it with their loot to get out." The front door, locked, was a very solid barrier.

Some things in life we just can't anticipate, like an intruder who is not deterred by an eight foot fence topped with razor wire, and who then gets trapped inside an apartment that's set up like a Have-A-Heart people trap. One day I came home and, before putting my key in the lock, sensed that the lock had been tampered with. I sensed that someone was inside the apartment. I sensed that, if I opened the door, I would be confronting the intruder.

Prudence told me I should call the police but that seemed too much bother. I'm not fearless but I am a bit naive. I couldn't picture the burglar, even a trapped burglar, wanting to harm me. And the police? If I was wrong I would look and feel a bit foolish. And how would I explain the illegal lock? (Would they even notice or care?) It was the end of the day and I was feeling tired, lazy and "oh, what the hell," so I unlocked the door and cautiously opened it.

Standing ten feet in front of me was a tall, attractive Japanese women. I froze. Was this a trick? If I stepped into the apartment would an 800 pound sumo wrestler jump out of the shadows and bonk me on the head? But I hesitated only for a second. The woman was bleeding. She wasn't bleeding badly but badly enough to demonstrate the effectiveness of razor wire. Haltingly we talked. She was a model and she explained in her limited English how she had found her way into my apartment.

She had been sent on a go-see to a penthouse address in my building, to my neighbor's studio across the hall. Getting off the elevator at the "P" mark, she saw the stairs to the roof and assumed they led to the penthouse. Climbing these stairs and stepping out the door onto the roof, the door locked behind her. It was a crime prevention measure the condo board had initiated. If a burglar somehow got up to the roof, he couldn't come down the stairs to burgle people's apartments. I guess they hadn't thought about visitors going onto the roof through that door.

So now she was trapped on the roof of a thirteen story building. The locked door was the only exit but there was the eight foot high fence topped with razor wire and another section of terrace on the other side. Maybe she could even see the iron ladder. Razor wire be damned, there was no other solution. She went over the fence.

From there on my upper terrace it was just a matter of climbing down the iron ladder to the lower terrace and then into the apartment through the open French door. But, inside the apartment, she was trapped. The front door couldn't be opened. All she could do now was wait for someone, like myself, to come along, open the front door, and free her. I have no idea how long she had been waiting.

What do you do say when you come home to what you expect to be an empty apartment and find a beautiful woman inside? Yes, there was a serious language barrier, but sometimes a polite invitation can break through that barrier. That night she joined me for dinner.