Lawrence Block - The Devil Knows You’re Dead

The building manager for the condominium didn’t know much about MultiCircle. She had never met anyone connected with the company, or indeed anyone who had occupied the premises prior to the Holtzmanns. It was her impression that the Holtzmanns had been the first people actually to live there, but she might be wrong about that. Nor had she had anything to do with the sale of the apartment, or of any of the units. The building had had a sales agent who had used one of the unsold apartments as an on-premises office, but of course all the apartments had been sold long ago and the sales agent had moved on. She could probably find out the agent’s name, and a number that might or might not be current. Would I want her to do that?

The number wasn’t current, as it turned out, but getting the right number wasn’t any harder than calling 411 and asking for it. The hard part came when I tried to find someone at the sales agency who knew anything about the building at Fifty-seventh and Tenth. No one who’d sold space there still worked at the agency.

“There ought to be someone who can help you,” a cheerful young man told me. “Hold on a minute, okay?” I held, and he came back with a name and a number. I called the number and asked for Kerry Vogel, spent a few more minutes on Hold, and was given another number to call.

When I reached her, Kerry Vogel had every bit as cheerful a voice and manner as the fellow who’d steered me to her. I have a feeling it’s part of the job description. She remembered the building vividly, as well she might; she’d lived in it for a year and a half.

“We’re gypsies,” she said. “All of us in this business. It’s a crazy life and not everybody can stay in it. You get a building and you pick an apartment. That’s one of the perks, free rent, and it means you’re there all the time, you can easily make appointments to fit the prospect’s schedule. Also you’re encouraged to pick one of the nicest units and fix it up attractively, because it’s good psychology, your prospect right away sees himself living there. You rent good furniture, hang some nice art on the walls, and have the cleaning service come in once a week. And you’d be surprised how many times you’ll take the person all over the building and they wind up, like, I want your apartment. So you write up the sale and you move.”

She had occupied five different apartments in the Holtzmann building, three of them in the same vertical line as the Holtzmann apartment, each of them in turn sold out from under her. She had trouble recalling the name MultiCircle Productions, but she remembered the apartment. I don’t know what there was to remember, since she hadn’t lived in it and since it was substantially identical to the ones above and below it, but then I’m not in that business.

She remembered now. A man had come by himself to look at apartments. He looked foreign, but he could have been European or South American, she couldn’t tell which. He was tall and slim and dark and he hardly said a word. She’d rushed the sales pitch and didn’t show him everything because he made her nervous.

And you had to follow your instincts, because the job was a dangerous one. For a woman, anyway. Because men were hitting on you all the time, and that was okay, it got to be a nuisance but you learned to live with it. But sometimes it wasn’t just hitting on you, it didn’t stay verbal, it turned physical. Sometimes it was rape.

Because it was easy for them. You were alone, you were in your own apartment, there was even a bed there to help them get the idea. And the building was generally half-empty at the very least, so there was no one around to hear you scream. Not that they could hear you anyway because that was a big selling point of the better new buildings. They were completely soundproof, and wasn’t that a great thing to tell a potential rapist?

She’d been lucky so far, but she knew women who hadn’t. This guy had spooked her some, so quiet and watchful and all, but nothing happened, he never hit on her at all. And when he left she was sure she would never see him again.

Which was true, actually, because she didn’t. From then on the only person she saw was his lawyer, who was Hispanic. He didn’t have an accent but his name was Spanish, and no, she couldn’t remember it. Garcia? Rodriguez? It was a common Spanish name, that was all she remembered. She didn’t remember the buyer’s name, either, and she had a hunch she had never heard it, or else she probably would have known whether he was South American or European, wouldn’t she? From the name?

She was pretty sure all anybody ever told her was MultiCircle Productions, whatever that was. See, anybody could buy a condo. With a co-op you had to go before the tenants’ board and satisfy them that you were a decent person and you wouldn’t be giving loud parties or being an unwelcome presence in the building. They could turn you down for any reason at all, or for no reason. They could discriminate in ways that were illegal for either a landlord or a private seller. Why, there was one East Side co-op that turned down Richard Nixon, for heaven’s sake!

Condos were different. If you had a pulse and your check was good, you could buy a condo, and the other tenants couldn’t keep you out. And once you had it you could sublet it, which a lot of co-ops didn’t allow. So the luxury condos were very popular with foreigners who wanted a safe investment in the United States. And buyers of that sort were in turn quite popular with people selling condos, because they didn’t expect you to finance their purchase, nor did they want a clause in the sales contract making the sale contingent upon their getting a mortgage. They generally wrote out a check and paid the full sum in cash.

Which was what this buyer had done. She remembered the closing, because nobody showed up for it, not even MultiCircle’s lawyer. He sent the check by messenger.

Come to think of it, had she ever met the lawyer? They’d spoken on the phone several times, and she had this mental picture of him that looked like the lieutenant on Miami Vice , but had she ever seen him?

She didn’t remember the selling price, but she could ballpark it. All the apartments on a line varied in price — the higher you went, the more you had to pay — and that floor on that line would be, let’s see, three-twenty? Well, give or take ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but that was close, anyway.

Probably a third of that was the view, and wasn’t it spectacular? You didn’t mind sitting around by the hour waiting for prospects when you had that to look out at. She’d enjoyed living there, although she hadn’t been crazy about the neighborhood to begin with. But she liked it better as she got to know it more.

“There’s a place right across the street,” she said, “that’s really super. Jimmy Armstrong’s? Looks like nothing much from the outside, but it’s nice and the food’s sensational. Serious chili, and the selection of beers on tap is outstanding. You ought to check it out.”

I assured her I would.

I called Elaine. “I had a hunch you’d be home,” I said.

“I was out earlier, though. I went to the gym. Of course there were no cabs to be had, but I put on that plastic shmatte and I carried an umbrella. And I still got soaked going and coming, but it didn’t kill me. You’re home, I take it?”

“And staying put.”

“Good, because it doesn’t look as though it’s going to quit soon. If I lived on a lower floor I’d start building an ark.”

I told her what I’d learned about MultiCircle. “Foreign money,” I said, “and no easy way to tell where it came from. One principal or a whole slew of them, and no way to tell that, either. A condo’s an attractive investment, a good hedge against inflation and a way to shift some money here to guard against political or economic instability at home.”