NYT19980115.0965 NEWS NEWSWIRE Two of the three men suspected of stealing more than $1 million from security guards making a delivery in the World Trade Center have been arrested, law-enforcement officials said Thursday, adding that they were closing in on the third suspect. Although it is unclear how the suspects got past security at the twin skyscrapers to carry out the robbery Tuesday morning, an investigator said Thursday that it appeared all three entered through the front door, with at least two of the men flashing fake identification cards to the guards patrolling there. The investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the inquiry was now focusing on how the robbery was planned and whether it was the work of someone who did not participate in the robbery itself. It was not the perfect crime. Even as pictures of the men were being broadcast on television newscasts and published in newspapers, at least two of the suspects went back to their old haunts in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn, the authorities said. One suspect, Melvin Desmond Folk, was apprehended in nearby Park Slope, where he often collected aluminum cans. The other, Michael Reed, who sometimes worked as a butcher, was found in an apartment above a friend's house eating with an elderly neighbor. The third suspect, Richard Gillette, was still at large. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said that they found two suspects quickly because dozens of residents of Windsor Terrace _ a tightknit community _ had called police hot lines, giving detailed information about the men. The three suspects were longtime residents of the area, the police and neighbors said, adding that they were spotted together before the robbery. ``We've gotten two suspects within two days, and we're optimistic that we will get the third quickly,'' said James M. Margolin, an FBI spokesman. But he added: ``It wouldn't be thorough of us to assume that these are the only three people involved. And we are obviously exploring the question of whether there are others.'' Folk, 44, was arrested without incident shortly before 7 p.m. Wednesday, said Lewis D. Schiliro, acting director of the New York FBI office. He said Folk, who was homeless, had a small amount of the stolen money with him. Reed, 34, was arrested Thursday at the home of 73-year-old Annette LaRocca, who was with him before the police knocked at her door at 5:20 p.m. Mrs. LaRocca lives in an apartment above the home of one of Reed's close friends, John Costello, in Windsor Terrace. When the police came to the building, asking to search Costello's and Mrs. LaRocca's apartments, they found Reed sitting at the elderly woman's kitchen table, drinking tea between spoonfuls of macaroni and bites of butter cookies. Mrs. LaRocca said Reed had knocked on her door only a few minutes before the authorities arrived. ``He said he was hungry,'' she said, adding that he appeared to know that the police were after him but did not want to talk about it with her. ``I fed him because I felt sorry for him,'' she said. ``That's why I let him in. ``Then they called him and had their guns out like there was something they were afraid of,'' she said. ``But he wasn't really hiding; he was eating. And he went like a good sport.'' Costello, 32, also left in handcuffs, on suspicion that he had been harboring his childhood friend since the robbery, the police said. Shortly before the investigators came to his house, he had professed his innocence to a reporter, saying he had not seen Reed since the two met for a haircut on Tuesday afternoon. ``I don't know if Michael did it, but I had no involvement at all,'' he had said while eating lentil soup and scanning the pictures of the suspects in Thursday's newspapers. ``I've done some things that I regret and made some foolish moves, but not this,'' he said. ``I mean, that's a federal crime and I would never get involved with anything like that.'' At least two of the suspects carried guns during the robbery, according to the complaint, which said the suspects took $1.1 million, not $1.6 million as originally reported. They face federal bank robbery charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.