Should Have Looked Away by Philip Cox Read Free Book Online

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EIGHT
    It was just after one when Dan finally arrived at the office. Eddie had been back from Queens about an hour; May had instructed him to pick up his lunch on the way back, and now she had herself just gotten back with her own lunch and a salt beef sandwich for Will. Will was struck by the difference in how their two employees spent their lunch break. Eddie was always out for the full sixty minutes, normally entertaining a girlfriend in a coffee shop or deli somewhere; May, on the other hand, was never out for more than ten minutes: just a quick trip to the 7/11 on the corner.
    In some ways, Will seemed sorry for May: her husband had been in the Army and seemed to be always away on tours of duty; three years back he was killed by an IED in Iraq, and since then May devoted all her time to C & G Estates.  She never discussed any social life she might have, never any mention of anyone she might have been seeing. She had always been a private person, and Will did not want to jeopardise the good working relationship they had, or her value to the company, by going somewhere she clearly did not want to go. Such a shame, he always thought, she was still on the right side of fifty: she and her husband had had no children, and to be alone at such a young age was just not right.
    Will heard Dan’s voice outside as he was halfway through his sandwich. He was wiping his mouth with a napkin as Dan stuck his head round into his office.
    ‘Hey there, buddy,’ Dan said cheerfully. ‘Sorry I was so long.’
    ‘I’ve not been here long myself.’ Will told Dan what he had been doing that morning. ‘We were all out yesterday afternoon – well, Chrissy, Louise and me; I needed to take Loulou to the bathroom, and while we were in the stall, this guy got attacked. Well, more than attacked - he died later. So I had to go Uptown first thing to make a written statement.’
    ‘Jesus!’ Dan exclaimed, stepping into Will’s office and flopping down in one of the chairs across the desk. ‘And all this was because of a trip to the mall?’
    ‘That was a good guess,’ Will said. ‘Yes, we were in the mall. The one up by Columbus Circle. All because of a trip to the mall, and all because Louise needed to take a wiz. How was your morning, by the way? May said you had to take care of some personal business.’
    Dan adjusted his jacket collar. ‘Yeah, it’s an account I’ve been trying to court. A guy’s trying to sell some warehouse in Jersey, but the buyer’s mortgage company’s disputing the value of the place. We were talking about how to smarten the place up; you know, raise the value a tad.’
    Will laughed. ‘Sounds promising. And there was me thinking you were with some broad.’
    Dan laughed too, reddening slightly. ‘Funny.’ He stood up. ‘Any calls for me while I was out?’
    ‘May has yours, I think. Although there was one urgent one - a guy called Clay. I tried -’
    ‘I got him earlier. He called me on my cell this morning.’
    ‘Okay. As long as you got him.’
    Just then, Dan’s phone chirped. ‘I gotta take this,’ he said, leaving Will alone with the remains of his salt beef sandwich. He finished the sandwich and the bottle of water May had brought back for him. Then returned to his personal computer and pressed a few keys. Dan had inadvertently made a valid point: since the 2008 recession, both prime and sub-prime lenders, those that were still in business, were far more cautious than they had been before. Sub-prime lenders were those who cared very little about the status of the people to whom they were lending money, relying more on the assumption that the value of the property would increase. Prime lenders, such as Fannie Mae - a colloquial name for the Federal National Mortgage Association - and Freddie Mac - the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation – had always been more prudent, but these days they could be more cautious than Will would have liked. They were particularly