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.
Then I heard a sound that made my heart skip a beat.
A steady pounding coming from the hallway. Footsteps. Voices growing louder.
Amanda. Grady. They were coming downstairs.
I thrust the last few checks into the copier, listening to the hum as it churned out carbons. When each one was ejected, I placed it neatly back in the filing cabinet. Sweat poured down my face. Their voices grew louder, as did the sound of feet echoing on metal.
I put one last check in the copier and pressed Start. The machine sucked the paper in, but instead of shooting out the original, all that came out was a sharp beeping noise. I looked at the LCD display.
In bold, blinking letters, it read Paper Jam.
Oh, God. Not now…
Frantically I opened the copier’s lid, hoping the original would be there. No dice. It was stuck somewhere inside the machine. I’d never been particularly savvy when it came to heavy machinery, and had no desire to go rooting around in the belly of some demonic steel beast, but I couldn’t leave any trace that someone had been in Larkin’s office. The LCD display instructed me to remove the middle portion from the copier to facilitate paper removal. Whatever the hell that meant.
The voices grew louder.
I pulled at a plastic tab that resembled the one blinking on the display. To my surprise, a shelf slid out effortlessly. Turning a mysterious green dial counterclockwise, I heard the sound of paper crinkling. Hopefully it wasn’t the original.
I kept turning the dial, and the tattered edge of a piece of paper peeked out of a thin slit. Turning the dial faster, I pulled at the page. It was a copy of the check. The original was still somewhere inside.
I pulled harder, horror sweeping through me as half the page tore off in my hand. I spun the dial faster, and the rest of the page came out. I pushed the compartment back in and heard a faint whirring noise. The original check, flat and perfectly preserved, came spitting out of the feeder. I thrust it back into the cabinet, shut the file and bolted out of Larkin’s apartment, the torn page crumpled in my hand.
Just as I rounded the corner, the stairwell door banged open and footsteps came to a halt in front of Larkin’s apartment.
“So you’ll let me know about 4A, right? I got three other buyers. Maybe if you give me a deposit tonight I’ll be able to hold it for you.”
“Actually, I’d like to talk it over with my husband before I commit.”
“Your husband? I thought you said your boyfriend just dumped you. I don’t see no ring.” Amanda gave a high, airy laugh. I took slow, deep breaths, oxygen flowing through my parched lungs.
“I don’t wear my ring. And my boyfriend did dump me,” Amanda said. “Our love is based on the spiritual, not the material. And who are you to judge my personal choices?”
“Right, whatever,” Larkin said. “So listen, I’ll hold it for you till tomorrow. After that, I’m not making any promises.”
“So then I’ll call you tomorrow. I can let myself out.”
“You do that.”
There was a loud squeak as Larkin’s door opened, a satisfying clunk as the lock hit home. I waited a moment, then stepped around the corner. Amanda was smiling. A quick nod and we headed up the stairs and out of the building. My pulse was racing, my neck, my wrists, my hands, my whole body tense with this new information.
We crossed the street and stood in the safety of a nearby bus shelter.
“So, what’d you get?” she asked.
I pulled the copied pages out and showed her, explaining the payment inconsistencies over the years. She looked puzzled, shuffling through the various checks like a student who couldn’t understand why she only received an A minus.
“So what does all this mean? What do we do with these checks?” Her eyes were expectant. Fortunately I’d thought about our next move while still inside Larkin’s apartment. I knew exactly what to do.
“We need to find out who these tenants are, what they all have in common and why Grady Larkin is the greatest landlord in Manhattan. Somebody is subsidizing the rent, but for only select tenants,” I said. “We need someone who can get some dirt fast, and get it without making any noise. And I know the perfect guy to do it.”
33
Dusk had settled over New York, a dim blue-black that seemed to mirror everything I felt on the inside. Weariness had crept over me like a cold front, and there was no shelter in sight. The man who’d wanted to kill me back in St. Louis, he wasn’t a cop. The cops wanted me dead for killing one of their own. But this man was a deadly mystery. I still didn’t know what he was looking for or what was in that package, but unless he was dead he likely hadn’t abandoned his quest. And a man like that didn’t die easy.
I’d been lucky to escape New York the first time. Lightning wouldn’t strike twice. The truth was buried here, and it would have to be uncovered soon.
I changed a dollar at a local grocery store, trying not to stare at the newspapers stacked up like tinder on the metal rack. On the cover of the early bird edition of the Gazette was another column by Paulina Cole. The headline read Henry Parker: A Villain For Our Times, Or Of Our Times?
Incredible. Somehow I’d managed to buck the trend. In this city, unless you were a celebrity with visible cellulite or a politician having a homosexual affair with the pool boy, you didn’t get hero-of-the-day treatment for more than twenty-four hours.
Not exactly the kind of story I hoped to hinge my reputation on. For years I’d dreamt about being featured on the front page of the New York papers. And now here was my dream, in full black and white.
“You okay?” Amanda asked, as a kindly man with a brown turban handed me two quarters, two dimes and six nickels.
“Yeah, it’s just…” I stopped, my head falling to my chest. “I want this to be over. I want my life back. I want
