Bad Optics

by Joseph Heywood

  “What we do now?” a fidgety Allerdyce asked.

  “You interested in real estate?”

  “Not b’low britch and on’y if got tree, swamp, crick, critters. Wah! Town shit, no way.”

  There was a realtor name on the sign, and the closest office was on Grand River Avenue, east almost to Okemos.

  They entered a newer-looking building, very spiffy with a lot of chrome and glass, and undoubtedly leased, Service thought. Over the years he was amazed by how realtors aggressively sold structures, but rarely personally invested in real estate, or how financial managers who sold stocks with great enthusiasm and steep fees to customers kept few in their personal portfolios.

  They looked through clean floor-to-ceiling glass walls and saw the interior was an eye-blinding antiseptic white. They were greeted by a woman, thirtyish, also in white, head to toe. “House of saints,” Service whispered to the old man, who chuckled softly.

  Allerdyce’s rat nose was twitching wildly. “Wah, don’t smell no saints dis place.”

  “You can smell saints?”

  “More important smell devils,” Allerdyce said.

  “May I help you gentlemen?” the woman in white asked. She came right up to Service and thrust herself into his personal space, but he held his ground, even when she lightly brushed her breasts against him. Instead of retreating, he leaned into the contact, forcing her to pull away, and at that moment he saw momentary panic in her eyes. “We’re interested in a property on Northlawn Avenue.” He gave her the street number.

  She tilted her head and said, “Yes,” drawing the word out into at least two syllables.

  The woman did not go to her computer terminal or check a sales pamphlet. Interesting, he thought. “It is for sale, right?”

  Her left eyebrow danced. No words came out.

  Service stepped into the pause. “We’re wondering the asking price.”

  “Currently?” she asked, finally speaking.

  As opposed to what, he wondered. “Right.”

  “Seven fifty,” she said, still without consulting anything. Does she carry prices around in her head?

  “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”

  “Yes, of course. This is East Lansing, you know.”

  “Excuse me, but that sounds excessive,” Service said.

  The woman smiled. “You’re too kind. Personally, I would characterize it as bloody-way-over-the-top exorbitant or, if you prefer, outright mad.”

  “How long has this place been on the market?”

  “Eight years, nine? A long time.”

  So she remembers the price but not how long it’s been on the market. “You’d think a seller would be motivated to haggle after that long, drop the price, do something to move it.Why pay taxes on an empty shell?”

  “The perfect unanswerable question,” she said. “But it’s not empty. It’s furnished, and all the furnishings are included in the price. The thing about this kind of work is that you learn quickly how people do things for their own reasons, and often what you think of as commonsense and straightforward logic are not part of anything but your own notions.”

  “Local owner?”

  “The owner is deceased and the property controlled by the deceased’s estate.”

  Even more reason to deal to move it, he thought. “Is there a name?”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Just the estate knows the name. All else is private. Are you interested? Really?”

  “Just wondering,” he said. The real estate was of no interest, but this woman at another time and place might have been. He sensed smarts, attitude, and backbone in equal parts.

  “Is there a way to make a direct offer to the estate lawyer?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “All offers must come through us.”

  “Your rule, or the client’s?”

  “I couldn’t say,” she said.

  Service mulled this over. Because she doesn’t know, or knows and doesn’t want to say? “If you ask me, your client doesn’t seem overly motivated to sell.”

  “I would certainly agree with that assessment,” she said, inching her way back into control. She was pushing six feet in white flats and had the body type his friend Treebone called “Boney-Maroney, white hippy gal with heap-big honks.”

  She moved forward and this time he backed up. “Is a showing possible?”

  “Theoretically possible, but neither probable nor imminent. It can take two weeks to get a turn-down, which is always the answer. But the client inevitably tells us to be sure to ask again, because nothing is forever. And of course we do and still they say no. It seems ridiculous, this whole damn thing. Why list if you have no intention of selling?”

  He turned the question back on her. “Why would you list something you know you won’t sell?”

  She shrugged and grinned sheepishly, showing deep dimples. “Because you don’t really want to sell it?”

  “Only conclusion I can reach,” Service said. “Damn foolish, wastes everybody’s time.”

  “I would love to show you something else. There’s a lot to see if one has the time and the interest,” she said.

  Service smiled. “I have no doubt, and while the interest is plenty, our time isn’t. We have another appointment at ten.”

  Perfect professional response. “Not today then. May I suggest an evening showing? No rush that way. We could take it nice and slow. I can get us in and out of anywhere, even places listed by others.”

  “Except the place on Northlawn,” he said.

  She stomped her heel in mock frustration and bowed her head in apology. “Except there.”

  “I’ll keep your offer in mind,” he told her.

  “And I you,” she came back. “Shall we exchange cards?”

  He gave her one of his private stock, and she read it and looked up at him. “What in the world is Slippery Creek?” she asked, making eye contact. “For real?”

  “Very real,” he said. Her card said her name was Punner Bonaventure. “Your name is Punner and that’s for real?”

  She smiled. “Every bit as real as ‘Slippery.’” She took the card and scribbled on the back. “My personal cell phone,” she explained. “I have a condo south on the river, you know, on water that’s wet and sometimes slippery.”

  Full-on hustle now under way. Why? “I’ll call if I get the chance.”

  “Call and I can guarantee you a chance,” she said, deadpan.

  Driving through the Michigan State Campus, Allerdyce said, “Heat come offen’ at one’s back dere like crown-out pinefire. Dat girlie got da bad case of da boreds.”

  “Just bored?”

  The old man shrugged. “Wah. Dat bored girlie leave lots trails so she can be founded, rescued, hey.”

  Service nodded as they passed Ivy Free Hall, which was two storys, its redbrick walls choked in thick green ivy. Service found a visitor parking place with a meter a block away and put the truck there. The two men walked back along manicured lawns and past flowers trying to pop up from black soil beds.

  There was no receptionist inside the building and no obvious security cameras inside or out, just eight molded pink plastic chairs that looked vintage 1950s or older. There was only one inner door, unmarked, facing roughly toward Beaumont Tower.

  The men looked at each other. Service checked his watch. They were three minutes early. They sat sat on the chairs, feeling every bit as uncomfortable as they looked. Allerdyce said, “Nice chair.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Youse don’t like?”

  God, Service thought, I’m here with Allerdyce, here because of Aller-dyce. Maybe this is hell? What is wrong with me?

  Ten straight up, the door opened and a woman stepped out. Familiar face. It was the same woman from the realtor’s office, “Punner.” She’d been in
all white at the office, and now she was decked out in all black.

  “Good morning,” she said, firmly but politely. Not Punner’s voice. Entirely different. She gave no sign of recognition or familiarity. “May I see photo identification please, two pieces?”

  “Or what?” Service asked.

  “Or you won’t be coming in,” the woman said officiously.

  “You sure have a different tone than earlier,” he told her.

  She stiffened. “Excuse me. Earlier?”

  “At the realty office . . . Northlawn, Slippery Creek, the condo on the wet river, night showings, taking it slow, remember?”

  She sighed. “IDs please. We’re expected inside and wasting time here.”

  Service said, “You are Punner, yes?”

  She said nothing, took their IDs, examined them, and handed them back. “You were in a white outfit earlier, Punner Bonaventure? I have your card.”

  The woman took a deep breath. “Have you been using drugs?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Sir, my name, sir, is Liis.”

  “Not Punner Bonaventure?”

  “I am Liisette Gyttylla.”

  What the hell? The two women were mirror images. “Okay, sorry, Ms. Gyttylla, I guess my memory isn’t what it once was.”

  “Follow me,” she said and held open the door until they were past her. She closed the door and locked it after they were in, and began leading them down curving steel steps. Service eventually counted, seven long flights, not straight down vertically, but at a steep enough angle to feel it on the back of his calves. It was dark, with only small LEDs lighting the way, and after a while he found it difficult to estimate how deep under the campus they had descended. To make it worse, he kept bumping into a hesitating Allerdyce whom he kept gently pushing and urging ahead of him. The last flight ended at a Spartan-green door with a keypad, onto which Liisette Gyttylla tapped something, which popped the door with a hiss. An airlock?

  “Like bloody damn summerine dis place,” Allerdyce muttered.

  “You’ve been in a sub?”

  “Onct over Gorear.”

  Allerdyce. He had fought in heavy going in Korea, been wounded and decorated there, but a submarine? Is there sweat on his forehead? It’s not warm down here and we haven’t exactly overexerted ourselves. What’s up with that? The little bastard’s always been fearless.

  The woman held out a hand, invited them through the airlock door, which hissed closed and thumped solidly behind them.

  “Where dis is?” Allerdyce asked

  This tunnel was darker than the stairs, all the LEDs in strips along the floor. “No talking,” their guide said. “It damages the sensors.”

  Service noted that the floor was heavily insulated, heavy foam. It was like walking on sphagnum moss, a surface he hated, especially when he was fishing.

  The woman seemed to tilt backwards as she walked. The new tunnel was narrower than the stairwells. The three walked almost twenty minutes and came to another door with another keypad.

  The woman took a tray off a wall mounting. “Weapons, please.This is for your own safety. If you enter and weapons are detected, an alarm will sound and you will be shot on sight by security personnel.”

  Service said, “I’m clean.”

  “Me too,” Allerdyce said, but under the woman’s steely gaze produced a seven-inch skinning knife in a leather holder and, after more staring, a pocket flip-knife.

  “Your property will be returned to you when you exit,” the woman said.

  Allerdyce asked, “We get reseep?”

  The woman looked down her nose at him and said, “My word is your receipt.”

  “Nottin’ pers’nal, girlie, but I don’t know youse. How ’bout I keep my stuff, stay outten ’ere, wait on youse guys?”

  “You may not remain here unescorted,” the woman said.

  “Don’t need no eggskirt,” Allerdyce said.

  Service squeezed the old man’s shoulder. “C’mon, inside . . . now. We’re wasting time.”

  “Don’t got pimple-squeeze me, Sonny,” the poacher said, and his shoulders slumped in resignation.

  “Zip it,” Service whispered, pushing the man ahead of him. Another corridor lay ahead, same foam padding on the floor, same low-level LEDs at foot level. “Labyrinth,” he told the woman. “Some kind of Halloween scary maze?”

  “One supposes that depends on one’s view of life,” their guide said.

  The next stage of the journey took another brisk ten minutes, and again they stopped at a green door.

  “T’ink all Old Money Hall like dis?” Allerdyce mumbled.

  “I beg your pardon,” the Gyttylla woman said, halting and turning to stare at the retired violator. “This is anything but a joke, sir. We are serious people doing serious things.”

  Allerdyce held up his hands and gave her his bobblehead look, which made him look both ignorant and clueless. He was neither.

  The trek ended in a closed bay through another security entrance, with M seated in a soft leather chair behind a small, cluttered, see-through desk. “Welcome,” she said. “Right on time. I like that. No, it’s not a matter of like, I require timeliness as a basic human courtesy.” She looked at Allerdyce with scorn. “Two knives, sir. Really? Do you fear being assaulted?”

  “Don’t fear nuffin,” Allerdyce said.

  “Then why carry weapons,” she asked.

  “Why ain’t afraid,” he said. “Slice youse up quickern spicks wit dose.”

  “Your language is atrocious, sir, and your attitude reprehensible,” M scolded.

  “I ain’t much buy your bullshit neither,” Allerdyce said.

  M cracked what Service took to be a benevolent smile, maybe a touch amused. “I do like a man who is not easily kowed.”

  “Don’t like being horsed neither,” Allerdyce added.

  M said, “I’m certain you don’t. Who does? May I ask whose idea it was to revisit Northlawn?” she asked.

  “Both of us,” Service said.

  “Did I not tell you I would be invisible?”

  “And yet here you are in plain view.”

  “Only because I choose to be. Your visit to the realtor, did you find it fruitful?”

  “Could definitely bear fruit,” Service said, realizing it was all part of some cockamamie test. The woman Gyttylla remained impassive in her stone-face mask. Am I going crazy? That is the same woman and how does she know I visited the realtor? Sexy Miss Punner Bonaventure is one of her people. “The thing about jigsaw puzzles,” he said, “is that you have to have patience. Find one small piece at a time.” He could feel M staring at him, sizing him up.

  “Like solving puzzles, do you?”

  “Some kinds, sometimes,” he told her. “Not just any puzzle.”

  “Selectivity is good,” she said.

  “Why are we here?” he asked. He had patience but not for everything, and all this beating around the bush was starting to irritate him.

  “To solve the puzzle,” M said. “Did you really think a visit to the realtor would lead to me?”

  “Maybe,” he said, thinking on the fly. “The way it plays for me, you own the place through a legal trust and use it as a safe house and meeting place at your discretion.”

  “That’s a bit of twisted logic, but sounds like something you have some familiarity with.”

  “I’ve done undercover work,” he told her.

  “I know. Ionia County, the great tainted salmon caviar case,” she explained. “Yes, I do know about that, and I know you had people in your own department after you during that time—your own DNR. That must’ve felt rather disconcerting.”

  It had felt worse than that. “It pissed me off, but I’m still here.”

  “Your record shows you clearly know how to survive,”
she said. “So far. Who owns the mineral rights to the Mosquito Wilderness Tract?”

  “That is the question,” he answered. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “I do not . . . yet. But let me ask you this: What happens if nobody owns the rights?”

  “Somebody has to own them.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “We assume that there was ownership at one point in time. But now is now and proof requires evidence, so I’ll ask you again.What if nobody owns the rights?”

  “I assume the state would own them,” he said, guessing. This was not the kind of thing game wardens were trained to handle or have knowledge of.

  “Are you familiar with the fire at the Lansing Conservation Department Office in the early fifties?”

  Service knew about it, and was appalled at how one event could have so damn many negative downstream consequences. It was mind-boggling. “It was started by a knucklehead hoping to duck military service in Korea,” he said.

  “And poof, up went virtually all of the mineral rights ownership records dated before that time.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It means that all we can do is flag various state records and archives and hope to get lucky with a paper find on a duplicate,” she said. “The odds are rather long, and definitely against us.”

  He asked, “There are no statutes that give the rights to the state by default?”

  “That, in fact, is exactly how it works, unless someone comes forward with records with which they purport to show ownership.”

  “What’s the burden of proof?” he asked.

  “That remains to be seen. I’m advised that this seems to ride on how convincing the claimant and their evidence is.”

  “They have to convince a judge, right?”

  “Circuit court,” she said, “with the state supreme court the next step. All mineral rights are addressed in state courts.”

  “The main thing is it’s not a gimme, right?”

  “Probably not,” she said tentatively, “but you have to realize that this is an area with scant legal precedent and few lawyers deeply schooled in this dark corner of the law.”