Condominium

by John D. MacDonald

  “Honest to God, this is some kind of terrible mistake! When is this supposed to have happened? What are their names?”

  Drusilla Bryne came in with a letter for his signature, put it in front of him and waited there. He said, “Hold on a minute, Sully.”

  Drusilla said, “I’m going to lunch now if it’s okay.”

  The office door was closed. That was the rule. Always close it. She was standing to the left of his chair. He winked up at her, switched the phone to his right hand, rolled his chair back a foot and reached his left arm around her. He pulled her close and bent forward and rested his left ear against the trim almost-flat belly, warm and soft beneath the summery skirt.

  “The two gentlemen, Sully, were Mr. Peter McGinnity and Mr. Hadley Forrester.”

  She stubbed strong slender fingers into the shoulder muscles near the nape of his neck, pressing and stroking, massaging away the tensions. The internal she spoke into his left ear, a querk and gurgle, a small growl of midday hunger. Sullivan spoke into his right ear, his voice light with relief. “Hey, I get it! You’re making a joke. Those guys are a total nothing, Marty. They’re senior citizens. Retired. There’s nothing they can do to anybody. No leverage. They came bothering me and I told them to shove it. What else?”

  As he stroked and caressed Dru with his left hand, he said, “What you are going to have to do is kiss ass. You are going to have to tell them that you are going to take care of every complaint, because that is what you are going to do.”

  “Marty! I get it! They’re in your office, right? They’re hearing your end of it. A snow job.”

  “Wrong, Sully baby. I’m completely alone.” As he said that he stopped listening to Drusilla with the other ear, leaning away from her to look up at her questioningly. She made a face at him and raised a fist in mock threat. He cowered back against the fragrant softness of her.

  “Well … whatever you want me to do, I’ll do. You know that. But can you give me a guideline?”

  “Such as what?”

  “One thing those old clowns want, they want Higbee taking orders from the Association instead of out of this office.”

  “Then you tell Julian that’s the way it is.”

  “I just want to remind you that Julian is milking a nice return out of that situation, and if they give the orders it is going to stop fast. I’m not making an objection. I’m just reminding.”

  “What I want over there at Golden Sands is people thinking somebody gives a damn about making them happy.”

  “Okay. It isn’t going to be easy turning Julian around. Lorrie will get the message with no problem. Julian is a mule.”

  “There’s the joke about the mule trainer.”

  “I know. Sure. The guy hits him with a sledge and drops him in his tracks and says, ‘Now I’ve got his attention.’ Okay, Marty. Wilco. You never ask for anything without some kind of reason, and you’re not going to tell me until you’re ready.”

  “Sully?”

  “Yeh, Marty?”

  “Kid, you’re doing a good job there. I’ve been over the statements. One word of advice. This will take the cream out of Golden Sands for a while. So don’t try to look good by squeezing it back out of the other condos we’re managing. Okay?”

  “Got you.”

  “Take care,” Martin Liss said and hung up. He released Drusilla Bryne. She turned and sat on the corner of his desk, one leg braced, one leg swinging, and looked down at him with a half smile. He noted that she was flushed and her eyes and lips looked heavy.

  “So?” she said.

  “On your way back from lunch stop in at Benedict’s and get me a liverwurst on rye and a large iced tea.”

  Her smile disappeared and she stood up. “Is that all?”

  “I’ll be reviewing a lot of figures this afternoon. Maybe I’ll have to ask you to stay over after five. Will you be able to?”

  Thus reassured, her smile came back. “Ah, darlin’, I was starting to wonder if you’d ever ask.”

  After she left he stood at the windows and looked out across the bay toward the Silverthorn tract, and then went into his private and personal washroom, relieved himself and, after washing, stared at his face in the mirror with the same remote and objective expression he had used at the windows.

  4

  GEORGE GOBBIN WAS a tall dark-complected man in his late fifties, slightly stooped, lean except for a watermelon bulge of belly. He had a craggy face, a gentle, likable manner. He smiled easily and he was interested in people. He enjoyed civic meetings and social events equally, and these virtues had helped him make a pleasant living as a longtime personnel manager at Porter-Gifford, Inc., an old-line manufacturer of industrial pumps, valves and controls located in a small Iowa city.

  Throughout his executive career he had clung to the two-hundred-and-forty-acre farm on Bird Creek, twenty-five miles southeast of the city, the farm his great-grandfather had worked and had died on, kicked in the head at seventy-five while harnessing a team to the rock sledge. During hard times he had almost lost the farm, time and again. He had bad luck with tenant farmers. Elda had urged him time and again to sell, but in him there was a stubborn love of the rolling land, of the earth smells in springtime, of the watersong of Bird Creek.

  And then, last year, several events changed the lives of George and Elda Gobbin. A new interstate link was rammed through the countryside within roaring distance of the farm, with a numbered exit a half mile from the dooryard. A remote and mighty conglomerate picked up Porter-Gifford as easily as a child buys a cookie, and soon some shaggy and intense young men had appeared and dismantled Gobbin’s personnel records system and coded everything into the conglomerate computer systems. And a lifelong friend, Hap Sexton—insurance and real estate—said he would like a chance to see what he might be able to get for the farm, and George, dispirited by events, said go ahead, and Hap did, and George accepted the offer that left him with four hundred and twelve thousand dollars after taxes and commissions.

  After thirty-seven years with Porter-Gifford, he was able to opt for premature retirement at fifty-eight, selecting that alternative which would pay him seven hundred and twenty dollars a month for life, with Elda to get three hundred and sixty for her lifetime if he predeceased her. Through his local bank he put his four hundred thousand into tax-frees at an average five percent, earning twenty thousand a year. With their savings and the proceeds from the sale of their home, Mr. and Mrs. George Gobbin, after a twenty-day search, found and bought Apartment 3-C in the Golden Sands Condominium in November, paying twenty-two thousand down and signing an eight-and-a-half-percent mortgage for the thirty-four-thousand-dollar balance.

  On the six-month anniversary of moving into Golden Sands, on a Thursday, the sixteenth of May, George drove them down to the Beach Mall Shopping Plaza. While Elda did the grocery shopping, he wanted to pick up the new reel he had ordered at Fisherama. They had phoned to say it was in. When he picked it up, he decided he would not tell Elda what it had cost. He cashed a check at the Beach Bank, bought blades and corn plasters at Eckerd’s, locked his purchases in the trunk of the Chrysler and went looking for his wife. He found her in one of the middle aisles of the supermarket, standing and staring mutely at a display of canned soups. She was a small gray-blond woman with a tendency to gain weight. Lately she had been dieting, keeping careful track of weight and dimension, and swimming an hour a day. She had lost inches around her waist and hips, though not very many pounds as yet. She had a round, worn, pretty face, small hands, large breasts, and eyes of an extraordinarily clear and vivid shade of green.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, George! You startled me, dear. Nothing’s the matter. Edie Simmins said she cooked the meat the other night in chicken broth. I was trying to remember how she said she did it.”

  “You can ask her.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to ask her. I mean unless it comes up again. You know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is anything wrong?
”

  “What should be wrong? How far have you gotten on your list?”

  “About halfway. Don’t look at your watch, huh? I’m doing the best I can. They keep moving things around here, all the time.”

  “They want you to have to look for stuff every time, so you’ll see other stuff you didn’t know you had to have.”

  “Why don’t you go look at the magazines or something? You make me nervous hanging over me. You’ve done your errands?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said and walked away. He walked slowly through the mall looking in the shop windows, and when he came back she was at the checkout line. He waited and then wheeled the cart out to the car. Three big bags. The white tape dangled out of a bag. He looked at the total: $48.41. “Where does it all go?” he asked.

  “Into damn good meals, friend.”

  “Okay, okay. The question was rhetorical.”

  “Don’t keep saying okay okay okay to me in that tired draggy voice as if you’re being terribly patient with some kind of stupid tiresome person.”

  “I’m sorry if it sounds that way. I don’t mean it to.”

  He walked away from her, wheeling the cart back to the walk in front of the supermarket. He gave it an extra push and watched it roll into the other carts. When he got back behind the wheel she said, “Thank you for apologizing so quickly, dear.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean it’s all over before it got nasty, is all.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you want it to be over?”

  “I guess so. Sure.”

  “That doesn’t sound very definite.”

  “It is definite.”

  “Are you cross again today?”

  “What makes you think I’m cross, for God’s sake?”

  “Look out for that girl on the bicycle!”

  “I see her!”

  “Why did I bother to warn you anyway? Of course you’d see her. You’d never miss a bare brown ass wobbling in the sunlight, would you?”

  “If I start going after kids that age, they’ll come after me with a net.”

  “I don’t think she was really much younger than that Antonelli girl was.”

  “For Chrissake, that was twenty years ago!”

  “Which makes it okay?”

  “Nothing happened anyway.”

  “Those letters didn’t sound like it to me.”

  “Let’s drop this right now. Right now, Elda, and I mean it.”

  They were soon back at Golden Sands. The Gobbins had one of the twenty-four protected parking places under the building. George put the Chrysler into his slot with geometric precision. He took their folding cart out of the trunk and loaded the three bags of groceries into it, along with his purchases. They rode up to the third floor in silence. He placed the bags on the countertop in the kitchen and took the cart back down and put it into the trunk before checking the doors to be sure the car was locked.

  Mr. Ames startled him by saying, close behind him, “Won’t do a damned bit of good, George.”

  “Oh. Hi, Brooks. What won’t do any good?”

  “Locking it. A thief could open up that car in six seconds. Everybody should realize we’ve got no security here at all. We’re alone here, George. If I was a hoodlum I could hit you on the head, take your wallet, roll you under your car and walk away and be miles from here before anybody could find you.”

  Brooks Ames was short and round and stood so very erect he seemed to lean backward. He had thick white hair, a heavy white mustache, a veined red face, bulging blue eyes and a high loud voice. He had owned a small printing company before his retirement.

  “Or Peggy Brasser could come steaming in and run me down before I could hide behind a column.”

  “Don’t make jokes about it, George. In the prospectus it clearly states that there is to be an armed security guard on patrol at all times. I’m demanding that we take legal action. People like you just don’t understand the danger. The courts let people off with a slap on the wrist: Be a good boy. The police have stopped giving a damn. What’s the use arresting people if nobody goes to jail? You got eyes in your head, George. Use them. Go up to Beach Village and look at the scum hanging around. Sick, dangerous persons. They always get money from somewhere. Now times are hard and getting harder. You think they’re going to give up booze and hard drugs and gasoline when all they have to do is come swaggering in here and take our money? What’s to stop them? The law? Don’t make me laugh.”

  “Maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.”

  Brooks Ames stepped close and clamped his thick red hand around George’s arm just above the elbow. The painful force of the clasp surprised and disconcerted him. Brooks lowered his voice to a stage whisper. There was peppermint on his breath.

  “You better wake up, George. I happen to know they’ve been casing this place. Everybody else is living in a fool’s paradise. I’ve seen them on the stairways, loitering and watching. I found one getting off the elevator on four, on my floor.”

  “One what?”

  “Oh, I confront them every time. I want them to know somebody is onto them. But they’ve all been briefed. They always have a cover story. It always sounds plausible. But they are sly. I can always tell them by the look in their eyes.”

  “What are they after?”

  “Are you really all that innocent? Listen. A week ago I went into the office. It was unlocked. Julian wasn’t there and Lorrie wasn’t there. The key cabinet was closed but … get this … the key to the key cabinet was in the lock!”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “Don’t interrupt. Do you know what is inside that service room over there? You ought to be interested in these things. I’ll tell you. Every single phone line comes down to a big unlocked circuit box in that room and then goes out of here in an underground cable. Suppose somebody hasn’t got a key to the service room? What could be easier than just giving it a nudge with a corner of a front bumper. In seconds you are out of the car and in there with tin snips cutting that cable. Then you go from apartment to apartment, using the keys you’ve had made from the keys you took from the key cabinet and replaced. You’ve got chain cutters. Unlock a door, cut the safety chain, hit you and Elda over the head with a hunk of pipe and clean out everything you have of any value. Pack the stuff in your own suitcases and take them down to the waiting truck.”

  “That’s a pretty wild notion, Brooks.”

  “You bet it is, and I can prove it.”

  “Prove it?”

  “You bet I can. There’s a place in New York City called Olympic Towers. It is a place with absolute total security. You never have to leave the building. Everything is right there for you. And do you know what they are selling nine-room condominium duplexes for, George? Six … hundred … and … fifty … thousand … dollars … per! And a monthly fee that would stagger you. What do you think of that?”

  “What does it prove?”

  “You’re not thinking, Gobbin. Are any nine rooms in a tall building worth that much money? Hell no! What are they buying, anyway? Security! People with that much money to spend are smarter about predicting things than you and I are. That’s why they have that much money. Why are they willing to spend it on total security? Because they know that the streets are going to be full of ravening mobs of hoodlums, smashing and stealing and killing, and they are going to be safe, while we go under.”

  Brooks gave George’s arm an extra-powerful squeeze. He moved even closer and in that strange hoarse whisper said, “Are you willing to serve?”

  For a few moments George Gobbin lost contact with reality. He stood amid concrete cubes and walls, amid metal machines in a shadowed place separated from the bright sun outside by a jungle of plantings. A short strong person stood at the wrong distance for his bifocals, too close for the distance lens, too far for the reading lens, blurred red face and blurred blue eyes, huffing warm peppermint smells at him, hurting his arm, making an incomprehensible request.<
br />
  He wrenched his arm free and yelled, in fear and anger, “Serve what?” He massaged his numbed fingers.

  Brooks Ames stepped warily back and said, “What’s wrong with you, George?”

  “Nobody is after us.”

  “You yelled at me.”

  “Serve what? How?”

  “I ran it up the flagpole with Pete McGinnity, and he said he had no objection if I could get the gun permits. The way I see it, suppose we sign up twelve men. Four times twelve is forty-eight. Four hours of armed patrol duty once every two days. That wouldn’t hurt anybody, would it?”

  “Wander around here with a gun for four hours?”

  “The patrol station would be right outside Higbee’s office where you can watch the elevators. Actually, what we ought to have is closed circuit television so you can watch the stairways and outside walkways too.”

  “Brooks, I am not going to watch anything.”

  “That’s your option, of course. Nobody can force you to do your civic duty.”

  “Are you going to be wandering around with a gun?”

  “When I am, you can sleep sounder at night, neighbor.”

  “I don’t think it will work exactly that way.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, George.”

  “I just don’t happen to think the corridors of Golden Sands are going to be awash in blood any minute now.”

  Brooks Ames smiled sadly. “Go ahead. Make your jokes. Your innocence is really very very touching.” He walked briskly away, whacking his metal-shod heels against the concrete, the sound bouncing off the hard walls and metal cars.

  George rode back up to 3-C. As he got off the elevator two children about six or seven years old raced into it, shrieking, and pressed all the buttons from 7 to G.

  “Hey!” George said. “Don’t do that, kids! You’re not supposed to push all …”

  The door was closing. The browner of the two children, wearing only red swim pants, blond hair hiding most of its face, said with a painful clarity, “Fuck off, gramps!” The door closed and the indicator showed it was heading upward.