Abner! Come Quick, Look!

There’s an old man pacing up and down the sidewalk across the street from our flat. He’s wearing a black overcoat, and smoking a cigarette. He takes a drag, shuffles along about 6 or 7 paces, and then takes another, turns around and does the same thing.

I just went back to the window to channel Gladys Kravitz check on him, and now he’s gone, along with the car that was sandwiched in between the black Hummer and the silver 2-seater Smart Car with a ragtop roof. Hey, now there’s a deathtrap on 4 tiny wheels.

At first I thought he was just a kindly old gent whose wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the house and he couldn’t be bothered to take a full-on walk around the block. And to his credit, it's too cold to go inside the gated square, sit on one of the benches and enjoy a fag in the midst of urban nature.

But now I wonder … maybe he was just pretending to enjoy a casual smoke while actually casing the parked cars for the quickest heist. Yes, that must be it. In as much time as it took me to write a paragraph, Sir Smokey Irollmeown hot-wired a sedan and drove off, scott free, leaving nothing but a boot-squished end of a hand-rolled cigarette as evidence. CSI Westminster will surely have him in the stockades by tea.

It does make perfect sense for this neighborhood. On the other side of the square, there’s a house where I swear something sinister is going on. I haven’t decided if it’s an underground CIA safe-house, or perhaps a Marylebone annex of Scotland Yard’s inquisition center.

Or maybe it's where Sydney's giving birth to Spy Fetus. How cool would that be, living up the road from Madonna (or maybe just Guy; I wonder who'll get the flat if they split?) AND on the same block as Sydney Bristow.

I’ll let you know after I’ve completed a little more of the investigation. Or maybe I'll know and won't be allowed to tell. Hmm...