when Mike Rivera ascended the stoop at 153 Stanton Street. Jerry Ball followed. Behind them were Sam Bemer and Sandro. They entered the first-floor hallway. The stairs lay directly ahead. As they reached them, the rear portion of the hallway became visible. It was on the left beside the stairs. They walked down it toward Apartment 1B, whose door faced them at the end of the hallway. “So this is it?” said Sam, looking around with displeasure. “That’s the wall I was telling you about,” Sandro said, pointing back the way they had come. If the rear part of the hallway had not been visible from the front, the front door could not be seen from where they now stood. “I guess this is Mrs. Santos’s old apartment. This must be the common toilet she went to.” Sam opened a door on the right, under the stairway. The toilet had a pull-chain mechanism. “Let’s get cracking,” said Sandro. “Jerry has to get back to his studio to develop and enlarge these pictures if we want to have them for tomorrow morning.”
