Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

“You’re general counsel of the biggest printing company in the city.”

“I sign off on contracts. If a problem gets interesting, I’m told to hire outside counsel. I married a woman mainly because I didn’t know how to say no when she asked. And I didn’t fight for a fair divorce. I’m through settling. I’m through letting things happen to me. I want that apartment. ”

“I believe you, man. You look like I feel about my ex.”

“I really blew it with Richard, didn’t I?”

Tommy said, “I bought it today.”

“What? Bought what?”

“Scalpel.”

“What?” I said again, though I knew what he meant.

“It’s just a skinny little handle with a bunch of blades. Like razors. Cops’ll figure some kid got her with a box cutter.”

I figured it was time to get a new real estate guy. Tommy King was nuts-creepy nuts-telling me all this because in his twisted heart he really believed that he was right and she was evil. It didn’t matter that he was the listing broker. Richard would sell to whatever fool paid his ridiculous price.

On the way home I got a call from another broker at Tommy’s agency, a partner named Marcy Stern, a woman with a shrill, demanding manner that matched her pointy face and darting eyes. “Listen, Joe, you’re out of there tomorrow morning.”

I was living rent free, baby-sitting an apartment for sale.

Tommy had gotten me the gig and I figured I was safe until I found a place of my own because the plain white box in an ugly white box building was listed for an insane price. Wrong about that. “How can you close in one day?”

“All cash deal. The client wants to dump his stuff before he hops his flight to Singapore. Get your junk out by 8.”

“Didn’t I sign something that said I’d get a couple of days notice?”

“Not if you want help getting another free place. Call Tommy King.” Tommy had a similar live-in security guard arrangement, sleeping in a succession of apartments on the market since he lost his home to the ex-wife he hated so much he wanted to cut her heart out.

I called Tommy.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll get you another one soon as I can. Bunk with me till then.”

I thanked him for his generosity and he repeated what he had said when he first offered me the apartment-sitting deal.

“Why watch your down payment get smaller? Bad enough watching prices go higher.”

At a quarter to 8 the next morning, Marcy unlocked the door with the agency key and looked surprised that I was still stuffing clothes into bags. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll be right out of your way.” I picked up a garment bag, a laptop backpack, and a suitcase-everything else was in storage. The suitcase, which had been damaged by an airline, broke open. My laundry fell on the floor.

Marcy and the new owner, a Chinese guy in a blue suit, along with a huge guy who appeared to be his bodyguard, watched me crawl around picking up my underwear, and shut the door firmly behind me as I shuffled down the long, dreary hall to the elevator.

Tommy was on the phone when I got uptown to his latest temporary place-a glass and mirrored palace in the sky with views of the park and both rivers. He pointed me toward one of the halls and mouthed, “Third bedroom on the left.” Then he continued loudly on the phone. “Hey, by the way, my ex is looking in Chelsea. She’s got a new boyfriend wants a pied-àterre. No, leave me out of it. If she hears I’m involved she’ll run the other way. I might have something you can show her. I’ll give you a heads-up.”

As soon as I bundled my stuff into the bedroom, which had hardwood floors, a marble bathroom, and no bed, Tommy wandered in saying, “You gotta raise some more cash for a bigger down payment so the bank’ll cut you a mortgage to meet Richard’s price. So the question is, where do you get the cash?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Most clients’ parents chip in.”

“My folks don’t have that kind of money.”

“Can’t they take a home equity on their house?”

I explained that a bank appraiser would not bother getting out of his car for their tiny ranch with a shallowly pitched roof on a quarter-acre lot. “If every neighbor on their block chipped in with a home equity loan, they might raise enough to send a crippled kid to Disneyland. No, Tommy, not everybody is rich. It just seems that way.”

“I gotta tell you, Richard is not lowering it. There are no minuses in that apartment. Once you accept the stairs and the kitchen-which you already did-there’s nothing wrong to make him lower his price.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

“Think about Brooklyn.”

“No!” I felt my face burn red again.

“Man, you’re looking obsessed.”

I repeated what I had said yesterday: “I won’t settle for second best.” Then I changed the subject to get him off my back. “I heard you on the phone. Sounds like you got un-obsessed with your ex.”

“What do you mean?”

“Helping her look for her boyfriend’s apartment.”

“Is that what it sounded like?”

“Sounded like you got over her.”

His face hardened up. “After what she did to me?”

“What did she do to you?”

His eyes widened. “Are you kidding? What did she do to me?”

“You keep saying it, but I don’t know what it was.”

“I told you. She got the apartment.”

“My ex got our apartment. But I’m not going to kill her for it. Much less cut her heart out.”

Tommy got really mad and started hacking away at me.

“She got your apartment? What kind of apartment? Tell me about it. View? Big? Classy building? High ceilings? Skylights?

Granite and nickle bathrooms?”

“No. No. No. And no. It was just a nice apartment. Nice layout.”

“Nice layout means small.”

“It was small. It was a New York apartment.”

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t cut my ex’s heart out for a piece of shit like that, either. But my apartment was fantastic. First of all, it was the best deal in New York. I bought it right out from under my firm-previous firm. Went to check it out.

Found this old guy, just got widowed, starts weeping while he’s showing me. It was gorgeous. He had no idea what it was worth. He just wanted out. I made an offer on the spot.

Condo, so I didn’t have to go through board shit. Gave my banker oral sex to get a bridge loan to close the deal-Hey! Lose the I-just-got-here-from-Topeka expression. She wasn’t that bad.”

Maybe she wasn’t, but Tommy had no smile for the memory.

“I thought I was made,” he raged. “Fucking brass ring at last. It had it all. Views, high ceilings, kitchen to die for, class building. She turned around and flipped it for ten times what I paid five years ago. She is fucking rich and I’m sleeping in a sleeping bag. Which is why-”

“I know, I know. You’re going to cut her heart out.”

That afternoon he called me at work. Richard had canceled our 7 o’clock meeting. I felt a cold lump in the pit of my stomach. It sounded like he had gotten the higher offer he’d been waiting for. “Any idea why?” I asked.

“No idea,” said Tommy.

“Can you reschedule?”

“I’ll talk to him next week.”

I had an awful feeling Tommy was trying to blow me off. In fact, I had an awful feeling that he himself had found the client who had made the higher offer. Hating myself, I did a terrible thing, telephoned my folks in Missouri and asked to borrow the fifty thousand dollars they’d been saving, buck by buck, so they could move south when my father finally retired from teaching.

The damnedest thing was how they didn’t even hesitate. I promised I would pay it back as soon as possible, thinking maybe I could in five years, and right after work hurried down to Chelsea prepared to meet Richard’s insane price with an extra ten thousand to beat the offer I just knew he must have gotten.