Comera shook his head. “Only that it had curtains; a lot of them do. I don’t know what color.”

Good, Ableson thought. The man was a clear, to-­the-point witness.

“Fine,” Lerner said encouragingly. “Now just tell us what happened. Everything you can remember. And try not to leave anything out, no matter how silly or insignificant it seems.”

Comera nodded. “Where do you want me to start?”

“What made you look out of the window in the first place?”

“Noise,” Comera said.

“What time was it when you first heard it?”

Comera said, “About five-­thirty. I work in the Bond Factory in Long Island City. I get out at four-­thirty, it takes about forty minutes to get home. My sisters and father weren’t home yet. My mother was in the kitchen, and I’d opened a beer and turned on the TV. The local news. They were talking about the weather, which was lousy, and the traffic, and I fell asleep—at least I think I fell asleep—and when I first heard the noise I thought I was dreaming about home. I’m from Ponce,” he said, “in Puerto Rico. Outside the town. And a lot of the people there keep their own animals. Pigs, chickens, a cow or two. And in the fall they’d slaughter them and you could hear the noise they’d make. And I hear this noise like animals screaming . . .”

Ableson looked at Hawkins. He was leaning forward in his chair.

“. . . and I think I’m dreaming that I’m back in Ponce and someone’s killing pigs outside. But I open my eyes, see the TV, and I know I’m in Brooklyn, not Ponce. Only I still hear that noise.”

“You went to the window then?”

“No,” Comera said.

“Why not?”

“I was scared.” Hawkins didn’t move, the tape slid through the recorder.

Lerner prompted, “But finally . . .”

“Yeah, finally I did,” Comera said. “But I kept down, right at the sill.”

“Why?” Lerner asked.

“You wouldn’t ask that if you’d heard the noise; I didn’t know what was going on or who was doing it, and I didn’t want anyone out there to know I was watching.”

“What did you see?”

“The van, and three guys standing on the sidewalk.”

“Describe them, please.”

Hawkins looked out of the window and Comera said, “Two were short, one was tall. Very tall. They were wearing plastic raincoats, the kind that fit in a bag, and rain hats, like sailors or fishermen wear.”

“Slicker hats?” Lerner asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you see their faces?”

Ableson forced himself not to watch Hawkins.

“No,” Comera said and Ableson heard Hawkins shift in his chair.

“Not at all?” Lerner asked.

Comera shook his head. “But I think they were white.”

“Had the noise stopped?”

“No, man, it went on and on. Not just yelling . . . wood split, glass broke, stuff crashed. I thought that house would fall down.”