It wasn't like Saturday was going incredibly well.

I was getting everything done, but the attitude of the city seemed to be antagonistic, at best.

At one store, I was accosted by a man who demanded I get out of my car (I'd just gotten in) and talk to him about something. While driving, an oblivious woman ran through her stop sign right in front of me (my horn did nothing to make her notice). Coupons only half worked at one store, and it was the day of clogged aisles at the supermarket.

I did, however, get my errands done.

About a block away from home, I noticed something at a garage sale that I wanted to check out. So after putting everything away from my shopping excursions, I went back out to wander over to the sale.

One of the guys who lives across the way from my place was ambling out as well.

"Did you hear about this guy," he asked, pointing to the front apartment of his triplex.

That guy?

"Yeah, that guy. Y'know the SWAT team came Friday morning and picked him up?"

Friday morning? Yesterday?

"Yeah, he was chatting up teenage girls on the Internet and was gonna take em out to the desert in an RV so no one would hear their screams."

Something was definitely going foul in Albuquerque lately, and it wasn't just the smoke from all the fires.

Later in the evening (my garage sale visit was not fruitful), I found the TV report about this guy who lives 20 steps from me.

I didn't recognize the guy, who I might have seen, fleetingly, a couple of times. If that. It seemed like someone was living in that apartment, but whoever it was didn't come outside much or make much of a racket. I wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a line up.

I recognize the others who live in the five apartments around mine. I don't know all their names, but I do know what they look like. This guy was a mystery.

But he engaged undercover cops in chat rooms, thinking they were, alternately, a mother willing to sell her teenage girls for sex and the teenagers themselves. He had made a plan, and, he thought, a deal for one or both of these "teenagers."

I might have heard something Friday morning (the SWAT team came at five a.m.), I might have been woken up and then fallen back to sleep. I might have slept through the whole thing. I'm usually asleep at that hour.

According to the TV report, the guy is an ex-cop from Missouri. He's a security guard for an armored car company that delivers money to ATM machines. And he's never been arrested before.

Lots of kids live in the two triplexes in my complex. And, on the street, there are dozens of other apartments teeming with kids. I guess it's good (in a way) this guy went online to find whatever he was looking for. He didn't snatch some little girl off the street.

But I'm still a little creeped out by the whole thing.

It's always the quiet ones.

Matt Worley sometimes wonders about his neighbors, but he never thought he should be on the lookout for that.