The Death of Friends by Michael Nava

Author:Michael Nava [Nava, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780553577631
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 1996-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

19

I HEARD THE CLATTER of footsteps behind me.

“Mr. Rios?” Karen Holman said. She wore a white silk blouse, a gray skirt and low heels, the anonymous costume of a low-ranking office worker. I remembered she’d told me on the phone she worked for an escrow company.

“Hi,” I said. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

“No problem,” she said. “Real estate’s dead. Anyway, I was going to call you, because the owners want everyone moved out by the end of the week and you said you’d take care of Zack’s stuff.”

“Are they going to tear down the building?”

She frowned. “That’s what they say. I think it’s a scam to get around rent control.”

“You mean they’d get rid of the present tenants, then jack up the rents and find new ones? What about the damage to the foundation?”

“I know a contractor,” she said. “I asked him to come out and take a look around. He couldn’t find any structural damage, just some cracks is all. Nothing serious.”

“Have you filed a complaint with the city?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said.

“Building and safety?” I suggested. “The rent control board.”

“That takes time,” she said, “and they want us out now. We all got letters yesterday.”

“The other tenants aren’t even here,” I said.

“I know, I know,” she said, her cheeks flushing with anger. “It’s just plain shitty, but that’s what the owners are like. I don’t know what I’m going to do. They give me a four-hundred-dollar break on my rent to manage the place. I don’t know where I’m going to find a two-bedroom that cheap around here. I don’t want to move and have to take Teddy out of his school.”

“I know a Legal Aid lawyer who does tenant-landlord work. If you want, I could put you in touch with him. It won’t cost you anything and it sounds to me like you’ve got a case.”

“Can’t they fire me if I give them trouble?”

“Matt wouldn’t let them get away with something like that,” I said.

“Matt?”

“Matt Chin, my Legal Aid lawyer friend. Look, I’ll call him as soon as we’re finished.”

“That would be great,” she said, visibly relieved. “So, how can I help you?”

“Someone told the police they saw Zack coming back to his apartment the night Chris Chandler was murdered,” I said. “I want to know who it was.”

“Don’t the police know?”

“It was an anonymous call,” I replied. “The caller said he was afraid Zack might take revenge.”

She clucked, “That’s ridiculous. Zack’s like the last person in the world who would hurt anyone. And we’ve had our share of assholes around here but people don’t spy on each other.”

“I’m interested in the four apartments along this hallway,” I said. “Who lives in them?”

We were standing in front of 202. “No one lives here,” she said. “Thank God. The last tenant was one of the assholes I was talking about and he left at the end of September.”

“Two-oh-three?” I asked, walking toward it.

“The girls,” she said. “Joan Woods and Darlene Sawyer.” She smiled indulgently.

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