On average, even in Gotham City, people were very trusting, very innocent, and very, very stupid.
Selina wrestled the window-washing rig into position and lowered herself over the waist-high wall at the roof’s edge. She stopped when she had a clear view of Eddie’s apartment. The wrought-iron flower baskets were crusted with pigeon droppings—a sign that he wasn’t running electricity through them. If the sun had been shining, she might have had trouble seeing the wires taped to the window glass, but in the waning light, the wire stood out like Interstates on a roadmap.
She unzipped the jumpsuit and dug out a surgical steel chain from around her neck. A small pouch was suspended from it. Removing the walnut-sized lens from the pouch, Selina made a cylinder around it with her fingers and aimed it across the street. In a city well-endowed with gadget-laden characters, Catwoman got by with a set of lockpicks and a bit of polished crystal that could double as a microscope or telescope, depending on her need.
“Breakers,” she swore softly. “Damn.” Any vertical movement of the window would trip the alarms. Still, the situation could be worse. Selina squinted and focused on the tiny disk in the upper corner of the windowpane to see if it was. She relaxed. The wired had been laid on the glass, not embedded within it. Catwoman could stand on a wedding-cake ledge and remove the central portion of the pane without triggering the alarm—but it wouldn’t be her idea of fun.
Eddie Lobb’s apartment wrapped unevenly around a corner. She could see most of the windows from her current perch, and although there was no real reason to think that the ones she couldn’t see were any less secure than the ones she could, Selina felt obligated—for her alter ego’s sake—to check them out. The mirror-sided building didn’t offer enough handholds for vertical movement, but with care she could travel horizontally. She climbed out of the rig and traversed the twenty-odd feet she needed for a better view. She hooked a borrowed web-belt into a ventilation louver, turned around, and came close to falling.