Jason Pinter - The Mark

Moonlight bathed the street, and a chilled wind blew through the city.

“So what now?” Amanda asked.

“Now,” I said, “we see what Grady Larkin knows. It’s a good thing you’re in the market for a new apartment.” I explained what I had in mind.

I squeezed Amanda’s hand as we approached the front door, then pressed the buzzer for Grady Larkin’s apartment. A scratchy voice answered.

“Yeah?”

Amanda said, “Hello? I’m trying to reach the super? I need to lease an apartment and, well, I hope it’s not too late, but I’m getting desperate and I heard from a friend that you have some vacancies.”

“Are you shittin’ me, lady? You know what time it is? Office closed like four hours ago.”

“No, I’m not shitting anyone. Please?” She ad-libbed, “My boyfriend just dumped me and I have nowhere to stay.”

There was an exasperated sigh on the other end, then the buzzer rang and the door unlocked.

The lobby was cold, quiet. Not the quiet of mourning, the quiet of fear. Our steps echoed through the hallway. We were trespassing on dangerous ground, and the building seemed anxious to protest.

We took the stairs down to the basement. The tiling looked bright, fresh-scrubbed. Larkin must have cleaned up after the police had left the crime scene. A complete one-eighty from the grimy textures last time I was here.

We arrived at apartment B1. I looked at Amanda, mouthed the words thank you.

You’re welcome, she returned.

I took the thick black marker out of my pocket, purchased at Union Station for ninety-nine cents, and placed it on the floor by the doorjamb.

I stepped around the corner, out of view of Larkin’s apartment. I felt steam on the back of my neck from the nearby boiler room. Wiping sweat from my eyes, I heard Amanda knock on the door.

I heard the creak of hinges that hadn’t seen WD-40 in many moons, then a throaty voice said, “So you need an apartment?”

“Yeah, um, my friend said he heard about a few vacancies here, and I was hoping I could look at whatever’s available. I’m in the market to lease, like, ASAP.” Her voice was girlish and naive, like a child asking for a cookie and expecting a slap on the wrist. Grady Larkin cleared what sounded like a pint of phlegm from his throat.

“You say your boyfriend dumped you?” I could almost picture Larkin leaning against the doorframe trying to sound seductive, arms folded as he pushed out his biceps. Amanda must have been trying pretty hard not to laugh.

“Yeah. Can you believe it?”

“No, I definitely can’t. Stupid prick.” I could almost sense his eyes feeling her up, and it made my skin crawl.

“I got a few openings, maybe a few more’ll open up soon. Had a few, how you say, incidents here recently.”

“Oh, yeah?” Amanda said. “What kind of incidents?”

“S’not important,” Larkin replied. “But I think I can fix you up.”

During our journey I’d grown protective over Amanda, despite the inherent irony. Since we’d met, she’d done nothing but help me survive, risking her life and future in the process. She believed in me. I only hoped I deserved it. And it hurt like hell to stand in the shadows while a creep like Larkin tried to play the young Marlon Brando.

“So let me see here,” Larkin said. I heard the rustling of papers. “I got an apartment just opened up on the fourth floor and another one on the first that’ll be available at the end of the month.”

“Do they have cable and Internet access?”

“They have anything you want,” he said, a sly tone to his voice. “Come, let’s have a look-see.”

I heard the stairwell door open, footsteps ringing on the steps, voices fading away. I waited, praying the trick would work. After a moment I heard a soft thud. That was my cue.

I held my breath as I stepped around the corner. I exhaled when I saw the plan had worked. As Larkin opened the door, Amanda had subtly wedged the marker between the door and the doorframe, preventing the lock from catching. They were in the stairwell before Larkin had a chance to notice. I pocketed the marker and slipped inside Grady Larkin’s apartment.

The home was dark, stale, and smelled like I was trapped inside a filthy ashtray. There was a small bedroom in the back, brown sheets thrown haphazardly across the bed. A worn paperback book lay on the floor. A picture of a heavyset woman holding two small children stood on a nightstand. The woman’s smile looked authentic, joyous. Larkin’s mother, no doubt. I bet she was really proud of her son.

A dirty old computer sat on the desk. Above it hung a calendar of half-naked women posed on a motorcycle next to-were my eyes deceiving me?-G. Gordon Liddy. Something told me Larkin didn’t throw many parties.

A steady hum came from a large copier in the corner. A rusty gray filing cabinet caught my eye, each drawer with dates in chronological order.

I pulled out the top drawer and found a shockingly neat collection of files, organized by tenant and month, dating back to 1999. Opening this year’s “May” file, I found a copy of Luis Guzman’s most recent rent check, made out to Grady Larkin. Sixteen hundred dollars my ass, that fucking liar.

Luis Guzman’s most recent rent check was for a measly three hundred dollars. Either someone else was subsidizing his rent, or Luis Guzman would never find a career as an accountant.

Three hundred dollars for a month’s rent in Manhattan for a two-bedroom apartment. Not only was that uncommonly low, it was impossible.

My fingers flew through the entire file. I found twenty more checks written by Luis Guzman, all addressed to Grady Larkin. As I went farther and farther back in the file, I realized this was more than an anomaly, but it actually had a precedent.

Contrary to everyone else who’d ever lived in New York, Luis and Christine Guzman’s rent had actually decreased over the years. The oldest check was dated January 1999. It was for six hundred dollars. Double what they were paying now, but still extraordinarily cheap by Manhattan standards. In January 2002, their rent dropped to $525, and then again to $450 in May 2003. Since January of 2004, they’d been paying just $300 per month. Thirty-six hundred dollars a year.

I should have looked harder before signing my lease.

I made a copy of the first check of each payment period and stuffed them in my pocket. I searched other tenant files to see if the theme held. Unsurprisingly, it did. I pulled out a check signed by one Alex Reed, dated February 2001 for four hundred dollars. In the memo area, it read Rent: Apt. 3B. One from October 2005 was for three-fifty. Alex Reed’s rent had steadily decreased the longer he lived in the building. Just like the Guzmans’.

It didn’t make sense. Lots of New York apartments were rent-stabilized, but I’d never heard of rent-descending. There had to be a reason for it.

I pulled out every file I could, and in the next five minutes I discovered that there were no fewer than ten residents of 2937 Broadway whose rent had declined sharply the longer they remained under contract. Even more surprising, though, was that there were many tenants whose payments increased over the same period.

Something was definitely wrong.

Half the building was paying less than when they moved in, and the other half was paying more. I separated the checks where the rent had gone down and made copies. Soon my pockets were bulging, the copier’s hiss steady and unceasing.

As I went to close the filing cabinet, one more folder caught my eye. It was labeled Payments-outgoing.

I opened it.

Inside I found checks written by Grady Larkin made out to various contractors. Exterminators. Electricians. Plumbers. Dozens to Domino’s Pizza. And each month, like clockwork, one large check was made out to a man named Angelo Pineiro for between twenty and thirty thousand dollars. For some reason, Angelo Pineiro’s name stuck in my head. I’d heard it before.