Breaking Into the Business
Daniel Cortes liked to take his time when he burgled downtown office suites. That meant he had to come up with an innovative break-in strategy.
Cover Story
The only place Daniel Cortes ever enjoyed working was inside a copy shop.
Most of the other clerks found it tedious, being tethered to a copy machine for hours at a time. But Cortes loved creating a rhythm with the copier. He prided himself on the fact that he could always work through the paper-clipped pages of a legal brief faster than any other clerk in the office.
During the mid-’90s, Cortes hustled for a dozen different copy shops in D.C., mostly along downtown’s K Street corridor. With rap beats in his head, the 34-year-old says, he learned to work the copier “like a DJ” working the turntables.
And just as Cortes mastered his own trade, he also picked up on the habits and responsibilities of other workers in downtown buildings.
He learned, for instance, about the ways of security guards. Cortes found that most guards, paid low wages for menial work, rarely make rounds or even leave the front desk at all during their shifts. And a lot of the more self-conscious guards, usually immigrants with a poor grasp of English, avoid confronting visitors lest they prompt an awkward exchange. Most guards, he noticed, get off work by 7 p.m.
Even when a lobby was locked down, Cortes watched the revolving cast of employees who came and went with key cards throughout the night, from lawyers burning midnight oil to copy clerks toiling through the graveyard shift. He saw small cliques adopt their own informal but reliable routines in each building: Cleaning crew exits at 10 p.m., copy crew takes its outdoor smoke break at 1:30 a.m., morning guard doesn’t arrive until sunrise.... Continued 
Issue of Jan. 7 - 13, 2005
News and Features
- Breaking Into the Business
Cover Story - Seasonal Funk
The City - Hall Monitor
The City - Too Much Information
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The Mail - White Makes Light
The Mail - Doomed to Repeat It?
The Mail - Hipster Slip-Up
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