A few months later, Zac's friend, Toto, came to town. Toto was a German guy with wild hair who made his money online, like most of Zac's friends. Zac met him in Lithuania a few years ago, through mutual friends. Toto was just passing through Medellin for a few nights before heading to Kenya.

"Oh, what's in Kenya?" I asked. A big group of us were eating lunch in the mezzanine area of a Peruvian restaurant. Our table was surrounded by leafy ferns and vines and trees — the typical jungle aesthetic of our neighborhood.

"I started a school there for Kenyan children, so I'm heading over for a visit. We've just finished constructing some new spaces. I'm pretty excited to see them!"

We began chatting about his school. Before long, I'd organized to run some pro-bono coding classes for a group of students there. If Toto's team could sort out a few laptops and an internet connection, my teachers on the other side of the world could teach them one of the most in-demand skills of the twenty-first century. We marveled at the wonders of modern technology as we ate paella and laughed with our other friends.

"Oh!" Zac exclaimed as he turned to Toto. "I have to tell you about this building I want to buy. It's going to be glorious."

Ah, yes. That building. It was funny how that project came about.

You see, four years ago, Zac had purchased one of two penthouses in an apartment block. The president of the building, Ronaldo, owned the other one.

Ronaldo hated Zac, to put it lightly. The entire building was filled with rich, old Colombian couples who were very Catholic, traditional, and set in their ways. They hated having a 'gringo' foreigner in the building — especially one that lived with multiple men as roommates. They couldn't understand why a man older than thirty wouldn't be married with multiple kids.

Furthermore, everyone in the building thought Zac's personal assistant, Carolina, was his mistress. She'd work from his apartment late into the night, and the residents of the building would ask Carolina why she wasn't home, looking after her husband. She was twenty-four. Needless to say, Zac did not appreciate the insinuation that he was sleeping with his staff, nor their sexist bullshit.

"They're all infuriating!" Zac raged to me as he paced around the terrace one evening. I'd frequently find him having passionate arguments with imaginary people somewhere in the apartment — a sure sign that he was furious about something. Sometimes it was FBI agents, other times it was a random person on the internet who was 'obviously wrong', and that day it was Ronaldo. Ronaldo had originally constructed the apartment block back in the Escobar era, and he basically controlled the whole building. Nothing happened unless Ronaldo approved of it.

"I just despise them all," he continued. "Yesterday Mery was in the elevator talking to the other maids and cooks, and everyone was gossiping about how their employers grope them. Mery told them I'd never laid a hand on her, and no one believed her. Apparently, getting sexually harassed is just part of the job down here. It's fucked up!"

Right then and there, a brilliant idea hit him. "Nikki!" he said as he turned to me with a newfound sense of excitement. "Nikki! Nikki! I've figured out how to solve this problem. I'm going to buy up all the apartments in this building, one by one. Simple. Then I will never have to see any of these people again."

I thought his solution was overkill, but a few months later, a 'For Sale' sign appeared in the window of the apartment directly below Zac's penthouse. Unfortunately, word had gotten out that Zac was interested in buying the apartment. Ronaldo wasn't going to let that happen. He held an emergency meeting with all the residents in the building, and made everyone agree not to sell their apartment to Zac. Zac was livid.

"They want a nice, traditional Colombian family to buy the place," Zac ranted to me. "I'll give them a nice, traditional Colombian family!" He called his lawyer, Pablo, and had him set up a shell company with the most generic Colombian name possible. He then cast three suitable actors to attend the open houses: a Colombian mother, a Colombian father, and their cute little Colombian daughter. "I can't wait to see the look on Ronaldo's face when he knocks on the door to welcome the new family with a home-cooked meal, and I'm just standing there, giving him the finger."

It was petty, but it was also highly amusing to watch the story unfold from the sidelines. I could feel Zac's excitement mounting as the negotiations progressed. He couldn't wait to stick it to Ronaldo.

Just as they were about to sign the paperwork, the sellers decided they wanted to keep the apartment after all. "Fuck!" Zac yelled off the terrace as he angrily punched the air. "Fucking Ronaldo!"

"Do you think he figured it out?" I asked.

"I don't know. I have no idea how he could have figured it out. Everything was going through the shell company and Pablo's law firm. Fuck. I need to let off some steam. Be right back." He promptly exited the terrace and walked into his bedroom. A few minutes later, I could hear the screams and wails of a woman being murdered.

"For the love of God!" I cried as Zac re-emerged from his room. "Can you please stop blowing those goddamn death whistles!"

"What? How did you know-"

"Because everyone can hear them! In case you haven't noticed, they are very, very loud."

"Huh? I've been blowing them in my soundproofed closet."

I laughed. "Whoever soundproofed your closet did a shit job. You can hear those whistles from a few blocks over. It sounds like your apartment is haunt-"

We both looked at each other with the same realization.

"How long has that old couple lived in the apartment downstairs?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Maybe twenty years or so," Zac replied.

"And when did you start blowing those death whistles?"

"A few months ago," Zac said. "I was perfecting the design on my 3D printer, so I had to test them several times a day in my closet until I got it right."

"And when did you stop blowing them every day?"

"A few weeks ago, when these negotiations started. I was distracted with all my other projects."

"Zac," I sighed. "You're the worst neighbor ever. The poor old couple probably vacated the home they'd lived in for twenty years because they thought it was haunted."

Zac grinned. "Maybe I should start blowing them agai-"

"No, Zac! Geez. You're such an asshole."

"But-"

"No," I said firmly. "You need a new solution to your little Ronaldo problem. Let them keep their apartment in peace."

"Fine," he pouted. He sat back in his chair and looked out across the city. Before long, his eyes fixated on a point further up the hill, a few streets away from us. "There," Zac said, pointing at a huge, abandoned twelve-story building. "I'm going to buy that building."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because then I can own the whole building and just rent it out to like-minded people who don't sexually harass their staff or have a problem with multiple men living together in the same apartment. It's a brilliant plan. Fuck trying to buy this whole building one apartment at a time. I'll get some investors on board and buy that building all at once."

"Well, that escalated quickly," I laughed.

Zac looked at me with his stupid troublemaker grin, then back up at the building. "Shall we trespass now, or trespass later?"