"But we can't . . . I'm sorry, Mr. Nobile. Two of the apartments on the top floor are already occupied."

"By whom?" asked Nobile. The two men with hands in their pockets nodded. They were proud to work for a man who said "whom."

"Mrs. Cochrane and the Gavins," Happy said.

"You have other apartments they can move into," Nobile said, and it was not a question. Still Happy

nodded.

Without turning in his chair, Rocco Nobile reached his hand up to his shoulder and snapped his fingers. One of the men left the room. Nobile asked Happy for a cup of coffee, black, without sugar, while they waited.

Before he had finished the coffee, the man returned to the apartment. "They'll move by the weekend," he said.

"Errrr, what'd you say to them?" asked Happy.

Before the man could answer, Nobile spoke. "Mr. Happy," he said, "my man was very nice to them. I am not wishing to cause trouble but I need the entire top floor. I entertain a great deal and I conduct my business from my home. I empowered my

man to make them a very handsome cash offer if they would switch apartments. Apparently they have accepted. I am glad. I want only to be a good neighbor."

Happy looked at the man who had just returned to the apartment.

"That's right," the man said. "Empowered. Me." He nodded.

Rocco Nobile's good neighbors on the fourteenth floor moved to lower floors the next day, with moving men paid by Rocco Nobile helping them, and with checks for two thousand dollars each in their pockets. That same day, an ant horde of carpenters and contractors and plasterers swarmed into the top floor, knocking out walls and joining the four apartments into one enormous penthouse suite. They were finished in one day.

The decorators arrived the next morning. The furniture they selected arrived that afternoon.