Gun Machine

“No, no, stay sat. I’m explaining. Because I don’t want any trouble, and you’re gonna see why. The rent on three A is paid annually. In cash. What happens is, sometime in March, someone calls me up and says, How much for another year on three A? And I’m like, tax time’s coming up, so I take the rent, add on twenty percent for my trouble, make it a nice round number, and give them that. Next day, there’ll be an envelope on the floor with the cash in. And I forget all about three A for another year.”

“And that didn’t smell like trouble to you?”

“Listen, people rent from me for all kinds of reasons. I got people paying me four grand a month just for somewhere to fuck three lunchtimes a week. My old dad always said, Asking too many questions gets in the way of doing business.”

“What business was your dad in?”

“This one. I inherited it. The Pearl Street place has been in the family since the fifties. Inherited the guy in three A too. His original deal was with my old dad, and that too passed down to me.”

“So your dad met him.”

“I guess.”

Tallow sank lower in the chair. “This is where you tell me that your dear old dad collected his last rent check a while back.”

“Yeah. Retired, went to Disney World, died on the It’s a Small World ride.” Carman glanced around his shitbox fiefdom with a mirthless grin. “Yeah, there wasn’t any compensation. There were hookers involved. And explosives. Anyway. No, my old dad’s long gone.”

Tallow took out his notebook and pen, feeling like he was about to try to screw fog but professionally compelled to log what little this meeting had given him. “So, Mr. Carman. You never met the tenant of three A. It was a long-standing arrangement with your father. How long do you think this arrangement has run?”

“Twenty years, easy. I, you know, I don’t have paperwork on it to refer to.”

“I figured. Have you ever been inside apartment three A?”

Carman rubbed the back of his neck. Smiled. A smaller smile, but a real one this time. “Tried once. Back when I first took over running that building, when my dad was still around. I was younger, and I hadn’t learned that one thing yet. So I wanted to know something about the invisible man, you know? Couldn’t get in. He’d jammed the lock somehow. Hadn’t changed the lock, but there were dead bolts or some shit behind the door. Never did figure out how he got in and out of the place. And the next time I looked? He had actually changed the lock, and added some new ones. I said something to my old dad, but he said, It’s the guy in three A, leave it, it don’t matter.”

“What one thing? You said you hadn’t learned that one thing yet. What’s that?”

“Like I said, asking too many questions gets in the way of doing business. You got to learn not to ask questions all the time. That one thing is learning the right question to ask at the right time.”

“Is that right.”

“You’d know that, Detective. Right?” Carman sat proud in his back-room throne, having found a little epigram he’d probably heard on a TV show and offered it to his guest like an old subway token.

“Who are you selling the building to, Mr. Carman?”

“Some banking company. Vivicy. They’re, like, financial services, all that weird money stuff that no one understands and that never sounds completely fucking real.”

Tallow wrote Vivicy down and paused a moment. Made a small spiral movement with his pen, like he was stirring the fog.

“Mr. Carman. Why are you selling the building? Why is Vivicy buying it? And were you going to tell them about the man in three A who has secured his apartment door so that no one can enter it?”

Carman sucked his teeth. Tallow just gave him the dead stare.

“I’m selling it because they offered me enough money to retire on,” Carman said eventually. “And I don’t mean retire down to Florida, get loaded, and drown while trying to dynamite a children’s ride and get blown at the same time. I mean a fucking yacht someplace, and slaves and shit.”

“And.”

“And the guy in three A ain’t my problem. They’re going to knock that place down, and if the crazy guy’s still in there when it happens, then it still ain’t my problem, serve him right, and I got mine. That about cover it, Detective?”

“When do you get paid?”

“When the building’s empty.”

“I also asked why are they buying it.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t the right question at the right time. The first day my old dad figured I was bright enough to jerk off and chew gum at the same time, he told me this. He said, The thing about land, son, is that they don’t make it no more. So if you want a big shiny building in the financial district to keep your internets and your gadgets and your fucking gold treasure in, well, the financial district ain’t going to grow more land for you to put it on. So you need to find an old building and knock it the fuck down and build over the hole.”

“Give me the names of the people you’ve been dealing with at Vivicy.”

Carman tensed up quickly. “Why?”