Let’s pull all these fragments back together and see what we have. Here’s the original snippet.
It was then that a car in the street backfired. The dwarf seemed to evaporate. One moment he was standing beside the desk. The next he was crouching beneath it, one hand inside his jacket. And somehow I knew that his finger wasn’t wrapped round another bundle of money. For about thirty seconds nobody moved. Then Naples slid across to the window, standing to one side so that he could look out without being seen. He had to stand on tiptoe to do it, his hands perched on the sill, the side of his face pressed against the glass. When he turned around, he left a damp circle on the window. Hair oil and sweat.
At that moment there was a knock on the door. Jane vanished. Where there was an eccentric old lady before, there was Obama again, if Obama wore floral dresses and liked to hide, shaking, behind his desk. I guessed there would have been days in the oval office where that could have been likely. We all stared at the source of the sound for what seemed like ages. Then Fliss strolled to the door to identify the knocker. She squinted through the peephole, one hand on the door knob, the other reaching for the taser I knew was in her handbag. When she looked back at us, she produced her purse instead and broke into a huge smile. “Lunch! Can you handle pizza in your condition, Ms Doe?”
Suddenly a man shouted, “Don’t say another word!”
D'Angelo’s eyes popped in fright. A second ago he’d been talking tough. Now he looked like a frozen deer. And I was pretty sure that fancy tracksuit was going to need a wash. Neither of us breathed for a few seconds. Then D'Angelo slowly leaned forward to get a better view through the doorway. His hands started to shake and thick wet ring of sweat appeared around his tracksuit collar. Then a woman suddenly cried, “It’s true! Jordan is coming out of her coma!” and both of us relaxed. Pacific Palisades. The show was trash, but uber dramatic.
