One Fell Swoop

by David Linzee

  “I’m Peter. We’ve exchanged texts.”

  “Oh yeah. Walk with me to the truck. I don’t want to set this thing down and have to pick it up again.”

  “You’re editor of the newsletter, right? In addition to being president of the association?”

  “I do all the jobs no one else will.”

  “It’s a good newsletter. I checked it out online. In fact, I’ve got an idea for it.”

  With a grunt, Joel shrugged off the plumber’s snake, which landed with a clatter in the truck bed. “You mentioned that in your text. Do you live in the neighborhood? I don’t recall seeing you around.”

  “No. I’m a freelancer.”

  He cocked his head and gave Peter a sideways look. “You think we pay? Sorry, but—”

  “Pay would be nice. But I’m willing to do the article just for the exposure.”

  “Just to get your byline in the Parkdale Neighbor News?” Joel leaned his elbow on the gate of the pickup truck and put his other hand on his hip. He gave Peter an appraising look. “I googled you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You used to be on the Springfield Journal-Register, over in Illinois. You covered the state legislature.”

  “I covered everything. We were short-handed toward the end.”

  “Good paper. I was sorry when it went under.” Joel was feeling the sun on his bald head. He pulled a battered ball cap out of his back pocket and put it on. “What I’m getting at is, you’re a pro. Why do you want to write for our newsletter?”

  Peter considered. Joel Rubinstein seemed to be a shrewd fellow. Honesty would be the best policy with him. “I’m interested in what’s going on here. Don Radleigh’s purchases, to be exact.”

  “Don Radleigh. Charming guy. Everybody loves his accent. But I’ve never been able to get him to sit still long enough to answer questions. What makes you think you can do better? You know the guy?”

  “He’s the brother of my girlfriend.”

  “Oh. So he’ll be willing to give you an interview.”

  “On that account, no. But if I tell him I’m writing a very positive piece, to show him to the neighborhood in a favorable light, omitting anything controversial—”

  “What you journalists call a blow job.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “That would be just right for the Neighbor News. I’ll hire you to write that piece. How’s three hundred dollars for six hundred words?”

  “That’s generous.”

  “Oh, I want more for my money than the article.”

  “More than the article?”

  “See if you can find out what the guy is really up to.”

  “Deal.” They shook on it. Then Peter pulled out his long, narrow reporter’s notebook. “Mind being my first interview?”

  “Sure. I’ll give you a quote. Mr. Radleigh is welcome in the neighborhood. I hope he’ll accept the invitation I sent him to join our association.”

  Peter nodded as he scrawled shorthand. “How long have you been in the neighborhood, Joel?”

  “I grew up in an apartment in that building over there. My father owned it. That’s the way it was back then, a working stiff would save enough to buy a building, then live in one apartment and rent out the rest. Made for a nice neighborhood, mostly Jews but lots of goyim, too. Everybody got along. Then came the sixties. A few blacks moved in and everybody panicked. But my dad didn’t want to up stakes. Buildings fell in his lap ’cause no one else wanted them. When I got back from Vietnam, I started working for him.”

  “You formed an association to bring the neighborhood back.”

  “In the eighties. By then, I owned so many buildings that self-preservation required it. I’ve got a dozen or so other landlords in the association. People who are on board with me, I mean. We’re trying a lot of community-building measures—”

  “I noticed the garden. How’s it going?”

  “Off the record?”

  “You’re the boss.” Peter put away his notebook.

  “The neighborhood has improved. A little. But I can’t say it’s turned the corner. St. Louis isn’t Austin or Seattle. We don’t have droves of young people rushing in, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to live. Neighborhoods in a growing city can come back in a couple of years. Takes a lot longer in St. Louis. Several times I’ve thought, we’re about to turn the corner. I can hand responsibility for my one hundred and fifty-seven toilets over to someone else and retire. But then there was a change in the tax law that made apartment buildings a less attractive investment, or a murder in the neighborhood that got too much media attention, and back we slid.”

  “Don Radleigh could be a boon to you.”

  “Well, yeah. He’s bought up a lot of buildings very quickly. Frankly, though, the guy makes me nervous. He’s a mystery to me. The kind of investors who ordinarily buy buildings in Parkdale, they come to me for help. They need bank loans. Government grants. It’s a slow process. But Radleigh? He just writes a check. I sure wish I knew where his money comes from.”

  “I’ll do my best to find out.”

  Chapter Four

  That evening, Peter called Don’s cellphone. He picked up at once: he was at O’Hare Airport, homebound from London, and thoroughly befuddled by jet lag and in-flight liquor. He said he would call back tomorrow.

  He didn’t, and was unresponsive to Peter’s messages. The day ended with no appointment made. Peter was unfazed. This was typical Don. The next morning, he mounted his bike and headed back to Parkdale.

  Reaching the neighborhood, he pedaled up and down its grid of streets. Don had a conspicuous car, an old maroon Jaguar sedan. It was not long before he spotted it, parked by the curb with its trunk open. Don was nearby, hammering a “For Rent” sign into the front yard of a building. He was wearing jeans, but they were expensive designer jeans, and his denim work shirt had sharp creases and probably a monogram, if you looked closely enough. It was a sunny day but he had no cap. Vain of his thick blond hair, he never wore hats. A pair of sunglasses rode the yellow waves atop his head. When Peter called his name, he advanced with a puzzled expression.

  “Peter? What brings you down here?”

  “We talked on the phone, remember?”

  “No, sorry. Head like a sieve these days. What did we talk about?”

  Don’s bad memory provided his friends and acquaintances with much amusement. It also provided Don with a pretext for stalling or getting out of commitments. Peter asked, “Do you know the Parkdale Neighbor News?”

  “That rag. I’m always picking them up from the yards of my buildings. Nobody reads it.”

  “They’ll read the next one. It’s going to carry an interview of you. By me.”

  He waited for the reaction. But if it occurred to Don that Renata had sent Peter, he did not let on. “Oh. You got an assignment from that Rosenthal fellow?”

  “Joel Rubinstein.”

  “Well, I hate to cost you a paycheck, Peter. I know you’re unemployed.”

  “I’m freelance.”

  “Right. But I’m afraid I haven’t the time to sit for an interview.”

  “Fine. Go about your business. I’ll tag along. It’ll make for a better story.”

  “What’s your slant?”

  “A day in the life of a socially responsible, community-building landlord.”

  Don lowered his sunglasses to his nose. Behind them, he made unhurried calculations. Finally he said, “All right. Lock your bike to yonder lamppost.”

  Peter did so. As he got in the Jaguar next to Don, he was thinking that this had been a bit too easy.

  “First off,” Don said, “you can’t use the word ‘landlord’ in the article.”

  “I can’t?”

  “Sounds so medieval. As if I’m going to be exercising le droit du seigneur. The modern term is property owner. And I am the very model of a modern property owner.” He began whistling the Gilbert and Sullivan tune as the Jaguar pulled away from the curb. After the initial hesitation, he see
med to be looking forward to the interview.

  “How many buildings do you own in the area at present?”

  Don worked his eyebrows, looking straight ahead. “A lot.”

  “But how many?”

  “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  “Don, anybody who’s willing to do some internet research can find out that you own eighty-nine buildings.”

  “Why ask me, if you already know?”

  “How come you’ve bought so many buildings, so quickly?”

  “Because I have boundless faith in the future of Parkdale.” He glanced at the blank page of Peter’s notebook, lying on his thigh. “Come on, start writing. Don’t you know a quote when you hear one?”

  Peter obeyed. Don continued, “We’re well located. We have excellent housing stock. Just blow off the dust and these buildings will shine. Parkdale was a flourishing neighborhood once and will be again.”

  “A lot of St. Louis neighborhoods were flourishing once and are borderline slums now. What’s different about Parkdale?”

  “It has Joel Rubinstein and his friends in the association. And now it has me. You know, I was making a packet selling houses in the suburbs. But I wanted to do something that would make a difference. So I went looking for a neighborhood to rehab, and chose Parkdale.”

  “You chose Parkdale?”

  “That’s what I said. Am I going too fast for you?”

  It was the London moneyman who had chosen Parkdale, but Peter couldn’t say so without bringing up Renata. He continued writing.

  “This’ll be the easiest article you’ve ever written,” Don said.

  They turned onto Parkdale’s main drag and parked. Don led the way to a bare shop front. The door was open and he called out, “Ethan!”

  A wiry young man advanced from the dim interior, blinking at them. He had close-cropped dark hair and a ring through his left nostril. “Peter, this is my new tenant Ethan, proprietor of what will soon be the well-known ice cream emporium Cold Comfort. Peter is a journalist who’s profiling me. How’s it going?”

  “There was a shooting last night.”

  “Yes. Dreadful business. LaToya Robinson is her name. I reached her at Granger Hospital and you’ll be happy to hear she’s on the mend.”

  “It happened practically in front of this store. If I’d been here, I coulda got shot, too.”

  “If you’d been here, and open for business, it wouldn’t have happened, because there would have been lights and people. That’s how we’re going to drive crime off this street.”

  “Channel Five News called. They want to do a story. Which will scare people off.”

  “Refer them to me. I’ve an idea for an afterschool program I want to talk about, get the kids off the streets and out of trouble. Keep your pecker up, young Ethan, customers are coming.”

  Don clapped him on the shoulder and turned away, ignoring Ethan’s plaintive, “They better. My kitchen cost as much as a car. A nice car.”

  Peter followed Don out, scrawling shorthand. “Uh, Don? I love your act, but aren’t you overdoing it?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Suppose I call LaToya Robinson?”

  “Suppose you do?”

  “And find out you never spoke to her?”

  “Then you’ll have wasted your time. Because you wouldn’t be able to use that in a Neighbor News story.”

  Next door, a man was standing on the sidewalk with hands on hips, frowning. He was a tall, narrow-shouldered, big-bellied man with a moustache and bags under his eyes.

  “Herb, how are you?” Don said.

  “The zoning board is giving me grief about my sign.” He pointed upward, at the black skeleton of an unlighted electric sign, outlining a jowly pig, grinning in anticipation of being killed and devoured. “Too large for a sign that’s perpendicular to the building, they say.”

  “I’m afraid that’s true. You’ll have to install it flat.”

  “But nobody’ll see it. Cars whiz by at forty.”

  “They’ll slow down when we widen the sidewalks and put in landscaped medians.”

  “When’s that gonna be?”

  Don laid a hand on Herb’s shoulder, a gesture the other man didn’t seem to welcome, and turned him to look at the other side of the street.

  “This whole block will be transformed. There’s a farmer’s market coming to that vacant lot, locally sourced organic produce only, of course. Where the muffler shop is now, there’ll be an artisanal bakery. The pawn shop’s due to be replaced by a micro brew pub, and as soon as I get the chop suey joint out, a high-end tattoo emporium is taking its place.”

  Herb looked sideways at Don, stroking his moustache doubtfully. “I sure hope things improve,” he said. “You know how much it’s costing me to rent my smoker?”

  “Buy it,” Don said. “You’ll save money in the long run. You’re going to be here for years.”

  They got back in the Jag and turned onto a residential street. Peter asked, “Have you inked the deal with this artisanal tattoo emporium?”

  “It’s the bakery that’s artisanal; the tattoo parlor is high-end. Do try to get this right.”

  Abruptly he stopped and got out of the car, leaving the engine running. Peter watched him use his phone to take a picture of a “Kitty Lost” sign taped to a telephone pole. Returning, he handed the phone to Peter. “Help me keep an eye out for this cat.”

  “Oookay,” sighed Peter. “You spend a lot of time looking for lost cats?”

  “Sometimes I’m able to find them. Hang on … if I find this one, you can take a picture of me returning it to the tearful owner. Front page of the Neighbor News!”

  They were coming up on the vacant lot that held the community garden, and Don said he had to pop in. Gardeners of various ages and hues were spreading woodchips in the paths between the raised beds. A woman, the one Peter had seen yesterday, came toward them. She was wearing a T-shirt that said, “People who think they can run the world should start with a small garden.” Her long, fair hair was bound in a loose kerchief. Her sturdy physique and stern expression, and the hose looped over her shoulder like a belt of machine-gun ammunition, made Peter think of a Soviet poster. She might have been a comrade leaving her crops to fight the Nazi tanks.

  “Don! Jill and Bob had their tomato plants stripped bare last night.”

  “How wretched for them. After all their work.”

  “Somebody needs to explain to these jerks that ‘community garden’ doesn’t mean just anybody can harvest vegetables.”

  “I’ll call the police. Ask them to swing by more often. How’s the workday going otherwise?”

  “Turnout could be better. Especially among the males. You know, I was really happy when so many men joined the garden.”

  Don raised his eyebrows. “Hannah! You actually had hopes for our sex?”

  “Males have upper-body strength, which is useful in garden work. Now, if only they had enough lower-body strength to move their asses out of their chairs ….”

  “Pack of damned layabouts, eh? Well, you’ll motivate ’em.”

  He leaned down to put his arms around her and kiss her on the mouth. She reciprocated with enthusiasm. Hmm! thought Peter. Was this part of the act, too?

  “Peter, this is Hannah Mertz, Queen-Empress of the Community Garden. And Hannah, this is Peter, who’s writing about me for the Neighbor News.”

  She fixed him with a level gaze. “Be sure to write that Don is the best friend the community garden has.”

  “Naturally.” Peter flipped a page and started scrawling. “Please spell your last name for me.”

  After Don accepted an invitation to dinner at Hannah’s, he and Peter got back in the Jaguar. Its old engine was not appreciating all this stop and go, and Don had to manipulate the manual choke to get it going again.

  “Hannah’s one of my tenants,” he explained as they drove away. “When she moved to Parkdale, she was a bird with a wing down. She’d been married to a student at Adam
s U. She supported him through business school, and once he had his MBA he divorced her and married a classmate. Right bastard, if you ask me. But it’s funny, she never says a word against him.”

  “Just says all men are bastards. Meaning her ex couldn’t help it. She doesn’t want to have to hate him personally.”

  Don laughed. “Bollocks! You just met her. What could you know? Honestly, you and my sister are two peas in a pod. She’s always coming out with blazing insights like that.”

  They drove a block in silence.

  “Mind you,” Don resumed, “maybe you’re on to something. For all the anti-man talk, she’s dead easy on me. Never nags me about doing the dishes or lowering the toilet seat. Anyway, I suggested Hannah take over the garden, which was languishing. She’s done wonderful things for it. And vice versa. Oh, hello, there are the Hrebecs. My newest tenants. Just moving in, in fact.”

  He pulled to the curb behind a U-Haul trailer attached to a car. A wizened couple were standing beside the car. Its interior was packed to the roof with boxes. Don said in an undertone, “They came here as refugees from the Bosnian war. Years ago, but they told me every time they pack up and move, it stirs bad memories. They do look a bit down in the mouth. Let me see if I can cheer them up.”

  The old couple, it developed, were not experiencing post-traumatic stress but simple fatigue. They had loaded the furniture themselves and couldn’t face unloading it.

  “And more’s the pity, it’s a third floor,” said Don. “Well, let us help with the heaviest things. You don’t mind, Peter?”

  “C’mon, Don. Landlords don’t help tenants move in.”

  “Property owners do. Let’s start with the sofa. Grab the back end.”

  It took two hours. The Hrebecs were so courtly and grateful that Peter could not be annoyed with them. He was annoyed with Don, who took a lot of cellphone calls, absenting himself from every third or fourth trip up the stairs. Peter was sweaty, sore, and exhausted when he sank back into the Jag’s leather seat. Don invited him home for a beer, saying it was the least he could do. Peter could only agree.

  It was five thirty, and already darkness was falling, a reminder that despite the warm temperatures, autumn was far along. Don switched on his headlights. He drove a few blocks and turned into an alley.