Sunburn: A Novel(42)
If she and Adam stay together, will he police her money? Will she be asked to show her receipts, to account for every cent? Show me a man’s wallet and I’ll show you his soul, she thinks as she pockets Max and Ernest’s sad little dollars. Was that a famous saying? It should be.
24
Irving Lowenstein has no voice mail. If someone wants to leave a message for him, Susie takes it down, writes it on one of those pink while you were out slips. This morning there are three, all from the same number, which he recognizes immediately. A tenant. That means money going out instead of in.
Irving owns only a few properties now, mainly on the northwest side. He once had more than forty, thirty-six apartments and ten houses, some commercial in the mix. But it was too much work, and all he ever got for his trouble was labels. Slumlord, as if he were the one who made the places slums. They started out nice, his units. Now he’s down to one commercial property and three residential ones. He’d like to get rid of those, but he has a soft spot for the tenants, elderly women, good people, if prone to neediness.
Today, it’s Mrs. Macalester on Oakley Road, says the hot-water heater is acting up. It’s a pretty new heater, so he’s not sure what could be wrong. Turns out the pilot blew out, something he can fix, although anything with gas makes him a little nervous. He’s in and out in less than fifteen minutes and the day is so nice, the first real fallish day of September, even if the calendar says there are ten more days to autumn. He decides to eat an early lunch in a diner on Garrison Boulevard.
But when he comes out at noon, it’s hot again, the day’s promises broken. Noon on the dot, he notices on the dashboard clock.
High noon. Yes, it’s coming on high noon in more ways than one.
They think he’s stupid, those two. Why not? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice—but she hasn’t fooled him twice. He has been onto her for a very long time. Maybe she’s like one of those diseases you get as a kid. Once you’ve had it, you’re immune. He had a little case of the Pauline Ditmars blues, but once she cheated him, he was over it. There are a lot of women in the world, only so many dollars. Irving likes having money, although he permits himself few indulgences. The nice things, such as the house, were for his wife, and Birdy’s gone. Irving likes having his money in the bank, in brokerage accounts, in retirement funds. His account balances are proof that everyone was wrong about him—his parents, who wouldn’t support him past the age of sixteen, forcing him to drop out of high school. The teachers who gave him Cs and Ds, when he knew he was the sharpest in the class. The insurance agents with whom he works, who put so much stock into appearances, with their expensive cars and suits and haircuts.
“I don’t waste money on luxuries,” Irving tells new clients when they visit his office. “You see a fancy office, you’re looking at waste. I don’t have a big nut, so I have no incentive into getting you to bite off more than you can chew. And I’m a broker—I find the best policy for you. I work for you.”
Ninety percent of the time, every word was true. Ninety, ninety-five percent of his customers paid their premiums, and the policies were there when they needed them. People in insurance sell something that everyone resents paying for—until they need it, and then it’s never as good as they think it should be. Doesn’t make for popularity. Yet he’s the one who’s there for them, time and time again. Irving has helped families bury people, send children to college, survive natural disasters. He has consoled survivors and widows.
Helped to create a few widows, too. But that wasn’t his fault, not really.
It started in the early 1980s, when he still had properties in the county. He had a tenant in Dundalk, just over the city line. She was okay, but her kids were trouble. Moved in, basically turned the house into a shooting gallery. Place was trashed. But—she paid the rent. Somehow, every month, the rent was paid. He couldn’t evict them without cause and he couldn’t prove they were selling drugs out of the house. Maybe he should have let it go—they were paying on time—but once they vacated, it was going to cost him a year’s rent to get the place back into shape. They let metal men scavenge the appliances, then claimed they had been burglarized. Their hot-water heater was stolen, or so they said. He needed them gone.
He started to spy on them, thinking he would see something that would allow him to kick them out. But tenants have too many rights in Maryland and he never caught them in an open act of thievery. One night, he was wandering down the alley, smoking a cigar, trying not to look too conspicuous—it was a mixed neighborhood, still more white than black, yet Irving felt he stood out here—and it occurred to him that people couldn’t live in a house with a little fire damage. He tossed his cigar in the overflowing trash container behind the house. Such pigs they were. And it was a slow-starting fire, the smoke was only beginning to rise in the sky as he pulled away in his Buick. They would have had plenty of time to get out if their senses hadn’t been dulled by drugs. Or if the smoke alarms had worked.
Three people died.
That’s when Ditmars came into Irving’s life.
Later, too late, Irving would come to understand that the guy was always dirty. Ditmars was born dirty, couldn’t play it straight even when straight was the better play. He needed to be getting away with something, anything. Salesmen say, always be closing. Ditmars just wanted always to be putting something over on someone, anyone.