on the box, but as long as you have two paper clips, this should take only about five seconds.
Or you can do what I did: Wait three minutes for a young woman to walk out the door, smile at her, say “thanks” and she will hold the door open for you while you gather your materials and walk inside. The nice thing about people is that they are usually very polite and helpful, even when letting perfect strangers into their home.
I climbed a flight of stairs to the second- floor landing and made my way down the hall. There were six apartments on the floor and all of them, except for the one at the end of the hall, had their front doors wide open. As I passed each one, I could hear the drone of televisions, the cacophony of too many people in a small space having arguments and the wail of more than one child. I peered into each apartment and was struck by how similar they looked-a galley kitchen opening into a large living room, which opened onto an outdoor balcony. I could smell cooking meat and deep- fried vegetables, human sweat and something that smelled vaguely like vinegar, but more pungent.
The closer I got to the last apartment, however, the more I began to notice a different smell.
A smell that reminded me of Kosovo. Of Iraq. Of Afghanistan.
You never get used to the smell of decomposing people. Smell it once and no amount of deodorizer or lye or bleach will hide the smell from your nose for too long. Dead bodies smell like rotten lamb, and fecal matter, and rotten fruit, and spoiled milk, wrapped in burning garbage, but worse. Dead people smell like no other dead animal for simple evolutionary purposes. It gets the living moving… and fast.
In this case, however, someone had gone a long way to hide the smell, because as I stood outside the door, I could decipher it only as an undertone. My guess was that whoever was dead inside the apartment-and my guess was that it was probably both Nick and Maria, because biker gangs aren’t known for leaving witnesses-was being absorbed by an acid, probably in the bathtub.
“You know the guy who lives there?”
I turned and saw a balding man of about fifty. He had about fifty keys on a belt chain and wore a short- sleeved work shirt that was pocked with sweat across the chest. It said RAY in cursive over the breast pocket. I had the sense that he wore this shirt every day but didn’t bother to wash it.
“Know him? No,” I said. “Just know that he owes me money.”
Ray nodded but didn’t say anything. He looked me up and down once but didn’t convey any emotion.
“Have you seen him?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t normally answer questions from people dressed like you carrying two guns but who have to sneak into my building.”
Interesting.
“Jackie Roach,” I said, extending my hand. The man shook it but didn’t put much effort behind it. He wanted to hear my story. I had one. I always have one. “I work for the banks, tracking down people who’ve skipped on their foreclosures. Mr. Balsalmo, he owes Seminole Savings and Loan a considerable amount of money.” I pulled up my shirt and showed him the locations of my two guns, which he really shouldn’t have been able to see, but I had the sense that this guy had been around a gun or two in his time. “You gotta protect yourself when you have my job. You understand?”
“I understand,” he said, and lifted up his left pant leg, revealing a Saturday night special in an ankle holster. “You do property management for long? Packing is just like brushing your teeth in the morning.”
“Been there, done that, bought the bootleg off eBay!” I said and gave the man a full belly laugh. “One thing Jackie Roach knows is property management. Doing God’s work, buddy, God’s work.”
Ray still wasn’t smiling, still wasn’t exactly happy to see me and still didn’t know quite what to make of me. Being a property manager is a lot like being a prison guard: You see all kinds of miscreants on a day-to-day basis and everyone lies to you.
“You got a letter or something you want to leave?”
“Letters don’t work anymore,” I said. “You know that. It’s all about face-to-face with these people. That personal connection. Gotta be close enough to strangle someone to get your point across, right?”
Still nothing from Ray. He was listening to me, but it was as if he was trying to hear another conversation at the same time. Like he was looking for the subtext.
“Unless you got something,” he said eventually, “maybe you should just head on out. People in this building work for a living, someone like you in the building scares them, you understand? People got kids in here. We don’t need any more drama. Get it?”
I did. And “it” was not good. And accounted for the smell, too, I’d guess. I took a step toward Ray and leaned in a bit. “Look, this Balsalmo guy was bad news, right? Did a little time. Dealt some crank. I understand. I saw his record. I get that. I got kids, too, right? But, Machito, I’m just doing my job. Maybe you open the door and just see if he’s hiding in there? If he is, I have a conversation with him and then I go.”
Ray shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if he were literally weighing his options, but didn’t say anything. Having a conversation with Ray required one to fill in a lot of blanks.
“His girl been around at all? Maria? Because maybe I could talk to her. She was always the reasonable one.”
The mention of Maria’s name got Ray animated. “She moved out last week. Let him keep the place. Put him on the lease and everything. Stupid, eh? Italian guy living in Little Havana. You knew he didn’t have a clue.”
A little boy came running down the hall, screaming at full throat. Not like he was hurt. Like he was a little boy. But when he saw Ray, he came to a full and silent stop.
“Sorry, Mr. Ray,” the boy said, before hustling inside one of the open doors.
Ray started walking toward the door and shuffling keys. “Nick, he’s a nice guy. Respectful to me. ‘Sir’ this and ‘sir’ that, but he’s not the kind of element I want in my building. So maybe we just have a talk with him together. You up for that?”
“Ray, I’m one hundred percent up for that,” I said. “Nice people got bad debts and got bad jobs. But I got kids, like I said, so I know what you’re saying.”
Ray put his key in the door and started knocking at the same time, saying, “It’s Ray,” as loud as he could. “It’s Ray. I got Jackie Roach with me. It’s Ray,” he said one more time and then opened the door. He turned to me before he stepped in. “You smell that?”
“Maybe a dead rat?” I said, which was probably true, just not in the same context.
“That ain’t a rat,” he said.
Nick Balsalmo’s apartment looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Spatter patterns on the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Pools of blood in the living room. From the angles and velocity, it appeared he’d been bludgeoned as the final coda, but the pools indicated he’d also just bled a lot, like, say, if his fingers had been cut off. Ray walked through the apartment briskly, opening doors while I stood in the entry hall surveying the scene. I hadn’t touched anything yet and wasn’t about to. I just needed to hear Ray say what I already knew: Somewhere, Nick Balsalmo’s body was rotting away under some chemical.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ray shrieked. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again. “He’s in here!” It sounded like Ray was in the bathroom, though it was hard to tell as I was already back down the hall and heading for the exit. Nick Balsalmo was dead. What I didn’t need was to be standing there when the police came, trying to explain who I was.
After I got to my car and zipped back into late-afternoon Miami gridlock, I called Barry. I had to try five different numbers, but I finally found him.
“Where are you?” I said when he answered.
“In a comfortable spiritual place,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Listen to me,” I said. “You’re in danger. Tell me where you are and I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m in a church, Mike,” he said.
“What are you doing in a church?”
“I’m meeting a business associate.”
“In a church?”
“Do you know how hard it is to get a legal bug into a church? It’s sanctuary space. Plus, my business associate works here.”
“You’re washing money for a church?”
“Tough times, Mike. Even the Lord has to eat.”
Negotiating cramped Miami traffic and the cramped logic of Barry at the same time wasn’t something I was
