To get onto Roosevelt Island itself you board small enclosed tram cars at their elevated Second Avenue station in Manhattan. On your five-minute trip you’ll soar twenty stories high alongside the bridge’s fairytale skyline. Those afraid of heights can take the F-Line subway that stops on the island ten stories below ground. There’s also a small bridge for pedestrians and motor vehicles that connects the island with Queens.

Having just taken the tram, thirty year-old Michael Warren hikes the several streets up to Roosevelt Island’s exclusive River-Walk Apartments. Upon reaching the doorman-attended lobby he takes the building’s elevator to the third floor and enters the condominium leased to him by an absentee owner he’s never met. As he takes off his coat the living room phone rings.

“Put Yang on!” a woman demands as if speaking to someone’s aide.


“Who?” Mike asks defensively.


Then as if speaking to a dimwit the caller rattles off the phone number she’s just dialed.

“Yes that’s the number here!”


“Is this his driver?


“No.”


“You got a pen?” she asks in a quieter voice.


“Yes.”

She dictates a phone number, which he jots down on a phone table pad.

The newcomer to New York complains, “I still don’t know a Mr. Yang or his driver.”

She hangs up.

Well, Mike is now living in The Big Apple where these things happen. So he takes a reassuring repeat tour of his new apartment.

It has stainless steel appliances, Mocha quartzite counter-tops, white oak plank flooring, Grigio Aloni marble bath, and a bridge view. River-Walk’s residents share a modern fitness center, landscaped gardens with an outdoor sun deck, dining terrace, and barbecue grills. His digs are more than you’d expect for a man of limited means with a new job as assistant professor at New York University. The school subsidizes his rent by special arrangement.

Later someone presses his apartment door-buzzer. It’s a slim woman of about twenty-six holding a package. Indifferently she says, “Someone left this in front of my door, with your number on it, 3B.”


Mike accepts the brown envelope, saying, “Thank you,” more with affectionate brown eyes than words.

“Happy to help.”

Now back in his apartment, the five-foot eleven, fit-and-trim professor opens the envelope and finds several pages from an issue of the New York Times. It’s a scissors-cut-out story titled, “The First World Hacker War.” He goes out to the hallway and presses her apartment buzzer.

The door opens the three inches the inside door-chain allows.
“Hi I’m Mike Warren. Did you see the person who left the package?”

She now opens the door fully and says with a college-educated accent, “I’m Cory Aldrich. No someone just left it on my doormat. Is there something missing?”

“It’s just a folded up newspaper story about computer hackers.” “That’s interesting. I’m a reporter with the New York Post.”

Mike perks up. “Do you think it was for you, but with the wrong apartment number?”

“Can I see it?” asks the attractive woman with short sandy-colored hair who stands five feet six in bare feet.

Mike reenters his apartment, fetches the package and returns.

She scans the story and says, “There’s no reason why anyone would send me this!”

Mike then mentions the strange phone call.

Cory laughs. “Sounds like a prank detective story with blackmailers and espionage.”

“It does.”

Cory flashes an ‘I don’t know what else to say’ expression. She has to interview a story-source across town.

That night a second person knocks on Mike’s front door. It’s a frail young Asian woman wearing a plastic black raincoat with a hood partly covering her forehead.

She blurts out, “Tell Mr. Yang they’re onto him!”

Without another word she heads to the stairwell and disappears beyond its metallic dark green door. A minute later the elevator opens and Cory now back from her interview steps into the hallway.

Still standing in the hallway Mike seems perplexed.
 She ignores this and says, “Hi.”

He asks, “Did you see a girl of about twenty in the lobby?”

“No.”

“She told me to tell a Mr. Yang that they’re onto him.”

“Who’s onto him?” Cory asks.

“She didn’t say.”

The newspaper reporter volunteers to come over later perhaps thinking there’s a story here. In half an hour she and Mike sit on his sofa chatting. The land line phone left behind by the previous tenant rings.

A male voice says, “Hello this is Yang were there any messages?”

“Yes, someone demanded to speak with you, asking if I was your driver; someone else sent a box with a newspaper story about a computer hackers war; and a girl came to my door to warn that they’re onto you.”

“Who is this?”

“Mike Warren; I just moved in.”

“Mr. Warren, I apologize. Can you forget this?”

With a sarcastic tone Mike says, “I’d be happy to.”

Yang hangs up.

Mike repeats what the caller said and Cory smiles in mild disbelief. Twenty minutes later she returns to her apartment to finish a story, leaving Mike to get ready for bed.

Before opening her laptop Cory prepares a snack for her rambunctious calico cat Ginger, who of course approves. She then finishes the story and also goes to bed.

William T. Rogers © TXu 1-769-268