The Detective
Prologue: The Detective
Do you know what I think about most often while hanging forty stories up? It's not about the safety harness or whether the cable will hold. I think about birds. Have you ever wondered why they die mid-flight?
I've read dozens of articles and watched those tedious documentaries late at night when I couldn't sleep. The reasons vary: some disease, predators in the sky, or more often, airplanes. But in the city, it's the glass. They simply don't see it. To them, the sky continues in the reflection of the skyscraper, and they fly into it at full speed. One dull thud—and that's it. A clump of feathers falls into a trash can on the sidewalk.
Today, I stand here, my forehead pressed against the cold panoramic glass, watching the man on the other side. He, too, is certain that there's nothing in front of him, that the path is clear.
But unlike the birds, he should have noticed the glass.
And you know what?
I'm not the one dying right now.
He is.
PART ONE: THE DETECTIVE PITIES HER
—•—
Zack winked at me—sly and rat-like, the way only those who are used to trading under the counter can.
"Marco, you'll pay me back every cent tomorrow, deal?" he tossed out, already pulling the door of his shop shut.
I stepped onto the street, clutching two crumpled scraps of paper in my pocket. Tickets. Real ones—for The Rock 'n' Roll Hounds. Zack is a hustler; he flips them on the black market and foists them on saps like me. But for Julio, I was ready to sink into any amount of debt. The kid is obsessed with that band, and to me, he's everything I have left of my family. Like a son. Just so he can graduate and never know what it feels like to hang from a wire in a freezing wind, I'm ready to eat plain macaroni until the end of the month. My window-washer's salary barely covers the college bills, so these tickets are my personal triumph for the year.
"I'll pay you back, where else would I go?" I grumbled.
I reached my old wreck of a van a few blocks away. Buckets, scrapers, and canisters of chemicals rattled in the back. The scent of lemon was baked into my skin like the stench of a public restroom. Today's plan: "The Big Red," its spire piercing the clouds. That's where my "clean-livers" reside. Fifth Avenue was a mess of traffic, and to kill time, I pulled an old photo of Julio from the glovebox: a little runt with a scraped knee and a plywood guitar. Fate is unfair, but I promised—he'd have a chance to escape the grayness. Finally, I pulled into the parking lot. The clock flashed—I was late. The van was empty. The crew was already up top. Everyone is running somewhere, and I'm no exception. But I'm not running for millions; I'm running for a spot on the right wing of the roof. If I make it, I'll finish an hour early, and Julio and I won't miss the first chord.
I grabbed my buckets, threw the ropes over my shoulder, and bolted for the service elevator. In "The Big Red," there are separate shafts for us—the climbers and the trash-men—massive, clanking cages smelling of grease and metal.
I hit the button for the roof. The elevator crawled upward, making my ears pop. I leaned against the vibrating wall, remembering my first four years: back then, I felt like a mountaineer on a glass Everest. Now, I only look down to make sure there are no pedestrians under the rig. The romance has evaporated—only calluses and the habit of checking my carabiners remain.
The doors slid open, and a vicious high-altitude wind slapped me in the face. My seven guys were already clinging to the parapet.
"And we thought you'd flaked," Jack yelled, without looking up from tensioning his safety line. Jack was the foreman, a man with a face like a dried plum and hands that could bend rebar.
"Shut it, Jack. I was just giving you a head start so you wouldn't feel so bad," I snapped back, throwing my gear bag onto the concrete.
"Marco, back to your old ways?" Sarah shouted, checking the rig. "If you want the right wing again, forget it. Leo's already moved in there."
Leo, a young kid with perpetually messy hair, gave me the middle finger without turning around.
"Sorry, Marco!"
"Hilarious, kid," I grunted, approaching my section. "Just try not to wet yourself when you see your reflection in the glass."
"Hey, Marco," Sammy slapped me on the shoulder with a dusty palm. "Heard you're headed to a concert today? Blew it all on your boy again?"
"What's it to you?" I said, fastening my harness and checking the knots. "My boy's gonna be in the front row, while yours are stuck in front of the TV."
"Yeah, yeah," he chuckled. "You look like you've been run over by a van yourself."
"Cool it, old man."
I stepped to the edge. The roof of "The Red" dropped away into a bottomless abyss. The city below was a gray mass, and the people were tiny dots running through their lives. We exchanged crude jokes, laughed; someone smoked a final cigarette before the descent, shielding the flame from the wind in a clenched fist. This was our ritual. A normal morning. Just us—the dead-men-on-ropes, cleaning someone else's sky.
"Alright, heroes," Jack's bass voice cut through the whistling wind. "Let's go before the rain starts."
I swung my leg over the parapet. My heart gave a jolt—an old instinct that can't be strangled even after years. Below was nothing but wind and a bucket of soapy water.
I kicked the rig downward. Gravity is the only thing that works without a bribe. The rope pulled taut, the carabiner clicked, and I froze at the level of the sixty-seventh floor. It was a strange feeling: not the fear of falling—you get used to that—but the realization of how defenseless people are behind the glass. They apply film, they close the curtains—they think they're protected. But they forget about us—those who clean their fake sky.
I pressed against the glass, applying the first layer of foam. The work went on autopilot. Sometimes it feels like I'm watching a silent movie. Most often, the frames catch cats—my honest fans, trying to catch me with a paw through the glass. And the people behind the windows are different. A woman in an expensive robe fanatically wipes an already clean shelf, as if scrubbing away someone else's scent. Someone is having sex right by the window. I used to turn away, feeling like a voyeur. Now, I don't give a damn—I just change the angle of the scraper. To them, I'm just like a construction crane or an antenna.
I descended to sixty-six—"Mrs. Coffee Lover." Always the same ritual: turn on the coffee maker, don't wait for the cup, the lid is open, steam rising, news about stock market quotes. She vanishes into the bedroom, forgetting why she was in the kitchen. Life here, it seems, erases memory. Finishing the window, I froze for a second, looking at the birds. They fly free, while I have a choice only between the left and right rope.
On the sixty-fifth, everything was different: only three apartments, space, the smell of big money visible through the panoramic glass. Housing for those who don't share hallways with neighbors. The first window—"Mrs. Smile." She always waves to me: whether she's laughing, curious, or just a kind soul—it's unclear. A pleasant woman in her fifties, today with a book titled Psychology of Constructive Disorder. She smiled and went back to her reading. Who she is—a psychologist, a genius, or just a bored lady—it doesn't matter. My guesses won't change anything.
Next—the apartment of "Mr. Young Godfather." I've only seen him once, but I never forget a face. Names and dates fade, but features are branded into my mind. The nickname stuck two weeks ago. He was putting on his jacket like armor, eyes slightly squinted, hair messy, a neat beard giving his face a heavy, dangerous character. There was charisma and a hidden threat in his appearance—simultaneously magnetic. Every movement, look, tilt of the head—a signal: no one here plays for fun.
The light in the next room went out. Abruptly, as if someone had cut the wire. But in the hall, where the guitar and piano stood, the lamps continued to burn. I took up my scraper, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him—"The Young Godfather." He was pacing the room. Shuffling folders, rearranging papers. He was in a rush. No, he wasn't just in a rush—he was feverishly trying to find or hide something. I didn't think much of it. Who knows what business these sharks have during rush hour. I continued to scrub the glass, descending lower, to the edge of the frame at the level of the sixty-fourth floor.
And then I saw his look. There was fear in it. Real, animal terror. He was talking to someone standing in the shadows. I could only see outlines—a dark silhouette, the edge of a sleeve, the shadow of a hand. "The Godfather" held out a folder, his fingers trembling. And in that moment, the shadow came alive.
The strike was fast and precise. Right to the throat.
The situation, which I'd taken for just a set of living pictures, suddenly sprayed the wall with real blood. But the man didn't fall immediately. He began to pray. Or gasp. He seemed to be trying to fight back, but from my angle of view, I saw only fragments of this monstrous struggle. He grabbed the killer's hand, trying to hold onto life, but the killer shoved him back with force. The shadow in the depths of the room froze for a moment. I didn't see a face, but I felt him turn his head, locking onto my silhouette in the rig. The shadow simply dissolved into the depths of the room, vanished into the darkness.
And "The Godfather" collapsed. His head jerked, turned, and stopped a few centimeters from the wall. Facing me.
He finally noticed me.
