Condominium by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

job running that place, and that’s what it is.”
    Hadley Forrester said, “The Higbees may be jewels beyond compare, and they may even be dirt cheap compared to some other arrangement, but it does make life difficult to have such an unresponsive slob listening to legitimate complaints. Though it is indirect, we
do
pay his salary, Mr. Liss. And he
is
a horse’s ass. Pete and I visited Gulfway Management and finally were allowed to talk to a Mr. Sullivan. His attitude was that we had a twenty-year contract with his company, an unbreakable contract, and he could give us as much or as little service as he felt like, and if we pestered him he would make sure it was less. It made us feel that when you placed that contract you did not have our best interests in mind.”
    Martin said, frowning, “That is not right! I will have a talk with Mr. Sullivan and see if I can change his attitude. If I can, I think you will find that Julian will become more cooperative.”
    “We would appreciate it,” Pete McGinnity said. “Let me get back to that fast shuffle you gave people who are going to be stung by that extra eighty-seven dollars a month. They’re not some kind of clowns getting into something over their head. Retirement money hardly ever is more than anybody needs. A person has an apartment, he pays the mortgage payments, the county taxes, the phone, the electric, insurance, television cable. These are going up. As you know. Let’s say John Doe, owner, is getting up there close to four hundred a month with everything he has to pay, and then we have to pop him with another eighty-seven on top of that. So all of a sudden he is paying fifty-five hundred a year for shelter, andif his retirement is nine or ten thousand, he is getting jammed pretty good.”
    “I can
understand
that,” Martin said, “I really can. And I can feel very sorry about John Doe getting mousetrapped by economic conditions. That’s why the Social Security keeps going up, to help out with his problems. What I said before, I’m very very sorry Benjie made such a bad estimate on the monthly assessment. I have to take part of the blame, but … Wait a minute! Maybe I can help. Investment Equities bought those last two apartments from us as of April first. Do I miss my guess, or is Frank West getting a free ride, just holding those two with no assessment until they’re sold?”
    “Free ride,” David Dow said. “I wrote two letters, but got no answer at all. My next move was going to be to hold back assessment money out of the recreation lease money.”
    “I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll negotiate with Frank West, and I can practically guarantee I can get him to pick up that money he should be paying in all fairness. He owes me a favor. Won’t that help the payments?”
    David Dow took a little calculator from his pocket. In a few moments he said, “If they will pick up their share of the accumulated deficit, average monthly payments will drop to $161.35, and the deficit payment drops to $166.60. So it will be $14.55 less per apartment on the June assessment. Not much.”
    “Anything at all is a help,” McGinnity said. “What else can you do for us, Mr. Liss?”
    Martin laughed. “Whoa! There’s no guarantee I can even do that much. All I say is there’s a pretty good chance. You have to understand, with Golden Sands I’ve got no more leverage. I’m all the way out of it. Being human, I want to have my projects turn out well. I want people to be happy living there. That’s why I’m trying to help.”
    Forrester stood up so suddenly he startled Martin Liss. He said, “Thank you for your time and your help, Mr. Liss. We’ll be leaving now. We know you’re a busy man.”
    “Please be in touch if there’s anything I can do to help.”
    The four supplicants rode slowly back out to Fiddler Key in Pete McGinnity’s air-conditioned Cadillac.
    “Well, couldn’t he just be mister nice guy?” Wasniak asked. “You say he didn’t have