Killer Move

From where I was standing you get a good sense of what The Breakers is about. A condo complex built in the heady days when throwing up blocks on the Florida coast was basically a license to print money, the resort had everything a family needed to beguile a couple of weeks in the Sunshine State. A hundred and twenty apartments, in blocks of six; said two-story blocks arranged in a pair of concentric circles around a central area holding eight tennis courts. (The Breakers prides itself on its facilities, and hosts the annual Longboat Key Tournament.) Palms, fern beds, and path decking lightened the effect and gave the blocks a little personal space. Each had a cheerful name, was painted a different shade of pastel, and, to the discerning eye, was beginning to look a little tatty.

On the ocean side of the inner circle stands a four-story administrative building holding the resort offices and reception, meeting/conference spaces, a gym, and—arrayed over the entire top two stories—the gargantuan living space of the resort’s owners. The corresponding point on the outer circle is home to, in addition to the adjunct of Shore Realty’s office, a little grocery market, a place to buy beachwear, Marie’s Restaurant (small and poised, a pianist most evenings, nonresidents welcome, but shorts or flip-flops are not), and Tony’s Bistro (the more casual dining option, child friendly, with a tiki bar and tables on a patio overlooking the pool area).

Beyond that, the beach—on which there are several four-bedroom bungalows, the pinnacle of the resort’s rental cost ladder. Other buildings dotted around the complex hold a game room and an area where parents can dump their more tractable children under semiexpert supervision for two-hour sessions, the better to sun-worship in peace. There’s a repair division, too, domain of Big Walter the maintenance man, but I’ve seldom needed to tangle with that side of things (or with him). He’s a decent guy and a wiz at fixing things, but of large build and inclined to perspire freely.

My job was to take listings of condos of which owners had decided to divest themselves and sell them to someone else as quickly as possible. In many ways this was a sweet deal—a monopoly located right on-site—which is why I’d chosen to work there rather than at the mainland office over in Sarasota. The problem was that selling the properties was getting harder every year. Tony and Marie Thompson ran The Breakers with an iron fist, tight purse strings, and a management style that was beginning to betray its age as blatantly as the buildings were. All but three of the apartments were owned on a fractional basis, as is common practice. The owners were not allowed to do their own decorating, on the grounds that this led to regular guests developing favorites among the condominiums and demanding the freedom to choose, which would make it harder to allocate them with maximum income-generating efficiency. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the system except it had been a few years since the buildings had been given attention, and this was beginning to show both inside and out. Everything worked—bar the occasional blatting AC unit or a toilet that needed unblocking on too regular a basis; it just wasn’t looking what Karren insisted on calling “supergreat and perfect.”

This meant in turn that the condos weren’t getting the resale prices their location on the key warranted; thus I was neither making the commission I deserved for the hours and dedication I put in, nor shining in the community to the degree required to actualize my five-year plan (now already in its sixth year, which was bugging me no end) of being able to get the hell out of Shore Realty and set up my own shop, preferably in an office down on St. Armands Circle, candidates for which I had picked out some time ago. And this was why I had taken it upon myself to do what I was going to do next: meet with Tony Thompson to try to convince him to shake out a little cash to spruce up the place.

I went to my car, unlocked the trunk, and took out a shopping bag. Then I rolled my shoulders, muttered a couple of motivational phrases, and strode off in the direction of reception.

“This is quite a find, Bill.”

I stood sipping a glass of iced tea, looking down out of the plateglass window toward the ocean, while Tony Thompson peered with satisfaction at the bottle of wine.

“Heard you mention it a while back,” I said. “I happened to spot a source, snapped it up.”

“You got a good memory.”

“Stuck in my head, is all.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Can’t have been easy to get hold of.”