Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (5 page)

My helper read my writing, twisting a different hank
of hair. Either she'd been awfully active that way or she'd had a
perm recently. "Now, you want lines next to the questions?"

"Lines?" I said.

"Yeah, like for the people to write on. Their
answers, I mean."

"No. Just some vertical spaces between the
questions."

"Even the simple ones, like MAIDEN NAME and
EDUCATION, that stuff?”

"Yes."

A frown. "Gonna make it more than a page."

"That's okay."

“
We get paid by the page here, typing and copying
both."

"I understand."

"I took a course in school, too, on
public-opinion polling? Lots of people, they won't fill out forms
longer than one page."

“
I'll risk it."

"Your call." She
walked toward a desktop computer, a third hank twisting around her
finger.

* * *

Carrying the duplicated questionnaires back to my
condo, I put them in a portfolio with some of my business cards. Then
I brought the portfolio and a camera down to my silver Prelude, the
last year of the original model, but still holding up pretty well.
The camera could be hidden nicely under an old newspaper on the
passenger's seat.

Driving south out of the city, I refined my strategy.
A pretty simple one, actually. Olga Evorova wanted me to investigate
Andrew Dees as discreetly as possible, and that would require a
credible cover story. So, first stop, Hendrix Property Management in
Marshfield, to lay a little ground-work for the story: that I'd been
hired by an undisclosed condo complex to check out potential
management companies for it, Hendrix being on my "shopping
list." After Marshfield, I'd continue on to Plymouth Mills,
interviewing Dees and his neighbors at Plymouth Willows. Ostensibly
about Hendrix, but really using the questionnaires to profile
everybody's background equally, so Dees wouldn't suspect he alone was
my target.

The more I thought about the cover story, the more I
liked it.

It took me thirty minutes to reach the Route 128
split. Once on Route 3 toward Cape Cod, the traffic began to thin,
becoming downright manageable by the time I passed Weymouth. Another
nine miles and I saw the exit for Marshfield coming up. I took it,
the ramp dumping me eastbound on a two-lane highway with a third,
middle, lane meant as a temporary sanctuary for left-hand turns. It
was almost twelve, and rather than gamble on when the Hendrix folks
took lunch, I pulled into their parking lot before looking for food
myself.

The building was beige brick and two stories tall,
the center section of an otherwise one-story strip mall with bakery,
florist, dog groomer, two dentists, and eight or ten others. The
sugary scent from the bakery's ovens made my stomach growl but
probably made the dentists happy. The signs over the doors were all
done in curlicue lettering on wooden plaques, rendering them hard to
read. Maybe that explained why the lot was only a third full, at
least half of those vehicles probably belonging to people working for
the businesses themselves.

I left my car in one of the slots outside the dog
groomer and went up to a plaque with the Hendrix name on it. Opening
the door, I came into a small reception area with two leatherette
sling chairs flanking a coffee table, the magazines on it a bit
tattered. The indoor-outdoor carpeting was institutional green, the
paneling that stuff you can buy in three-foot sheets and glue to the
studs if a hammer isn't your favorite tool. The desk to the right of
the door was unoccupied, a bodice-ripper romance opened face down at
the halfway point of the paperback book. Other than a phone, pink
message pad, and some pencils, there wasn't much to see.

Then an inner door opened, and a short woman with
thick calves came through it. About fifty, she wore a simple wool
dress that clung unflatteringly around the thighs. Her hair was
graying, probably naturally, since I didn't think anyone would use
salt-and-pepper dye on theirs. The face was alert but pleasant, like
a career bureaucrat who knows her way around the agency.

"May I help you?"

"Ms. Hendrix?"

"Me . . . ? Oh, no." The pleasant face
treated me to a pleasant smile. "No, I'm Mrs. Jelks. Did you
want to see Mr. Hendrix?"

"Please. My name's John Cuddy."

"Will he know what this is in regard to?"

Awkward, if polite. "I'm here about a
condominium that's seeking new management."

The smile seemed to waver. "Certainly. Please
have a seat, and I'll see if he's available."

I thought, "Like you hadn't just left him alone
in there," but kept it to myself.

She disappeared through the same door, coming back
twenty seconds later. "Mr. Hendrix will see you now."

I moved past her and through the doorway.

The inner office was bigger than the reception area,
but that was the most you could say about it, the only window giving
a panoramic view of the strip mall's Dempster Durnpster. There was
another door to the left, and a desk with relatively little on it
tucked into the right corner. A credenza matched the desk, sort of,
holding an IBM clone, fax machine, and multi-buttoned phone.

A man of about forty with sandy hair and
tortoiseshell, round-lensed glasses rose from a swivel desk chair to
greet me. "Boyce Hendrix, Mr. Cuddy." A mellow voice.

Apparently Hendrix believed in "Dress-down
Everyday." From the soles up, he wore old Adidas tennis shoes
with no socks, stone-washed blue jeans, and a buff-colored safari
shirt with Hap pockets. His handshake was firm and decisive, though.

He gestured toward another black leatherette sling
chair that seemed to be pining for its twins outside. I took it.

Easing himself back down, Hendrix said, "Mrs.
Jelks tells me you're interested in our help?"

Only slightly confused. "Perhaps, I'm
representing a condominium complex that's considering a change in its
management company."

"Representing?" A judicious look. "You're
an attorney, then?"

"No." I handed him a business card.

After reading it, Hendrix snapped it down on his
desk-top as though he were dealing blackjack. "Private
investigator." He looked at the card a while longer, then to me,
more judiciously. A careful one, Mr. Hendrix. "Go on."

"The board of trustees has asked me to inquire
for them, since they obviously wouldn't want their current company to
be . . . offended."

"Obviously. Which complex is it?"

I just smiled.

His smile was judicious, too. "And naturally the
complex involved therefore wishes to remain anonymous."

"Naturally."

"I'm not sure where that leaves us, Mr. Cuddy."

"Maybe if I could have some brochures for my
clients to review?"

A measured nod, then a very methodical search through
a desk drawer, more as though Hendrix were buying time than hunting
for something. Which made me realize something else: I hadn't seen
any brochures in the reception area, not even a holder for business
cards. If you were a management company, and potential clients were
waiting to see you, wouldn't you at least want them to have—

"Here we go," passing a glossy piece of
paper over to me. A grainy, black-and-white photo showed a couple ,
standing in front of a six-paneled door, beaming at the lens. Their
hair styles and clothes looked out-of-date, and given the cropping at
the borders, the picture could have been taken anywhere. Just
skimming the brochure's widely spaced paragraphs of text, I found two
obvious typos.

"How long have you been in business'?" I
said.

"At this location, only five years."

The photo looked older. "And how long have you
been in the profession, yourself?"

"Around ten."

"That should be about right for my clients."

Hendrix frowned. "Can you tell me how big their
complex is?"

"Let's just say over fifty units."

"And how far from Marshfield?"

"Oh, within fifteen miles."

I was intentionally dangling the bait, and Hendrix
seemed intentionally not to take it, making no effort to sell me on
his company.

"Wel1," he said finally, the tone still
mellow, "that certainly sounds like it's in our ballpark.
Unfortunately, though, we're pretty heavily booked at the moment."

"You are."

"Yes. A lot of our clients prefer a more
hands-on but low-key approach to property management, especially in
this economy. We're not expensive, and that matters, so we tend to
hold the complexes we attract."

I wanted to keep this going, find out why he was now
trying to gently discourage new business. "That's good."

Hendrix just watched me.

I said, "You see, that's why the complex hired a
private investigator instead of a lawyer. I'm cheaper, and a lot more
'hands-on.' "

Another measured nod.

"Wel1, I guess that brings us to references? I
gestured toward the brochure drawer. "And maybe a sample
contract?"

Hendrix used his feet to rock just a little in the
swivel chair. "We don't really have a 'sample contract,' Mr.
Cuddy."

"Not even a form you use as a model?"

"I kind of negotiate each one individually."

"On behalf of the corporation."

"Corporation?"

"Your management company here."

The rocking stopped. I was setting off a lot of bells
for him, and I couldn't see why.

He said, “I'm a sole proprietorship."

"Ah. 'Boyce Hendrix, doing business as' . . . ?”

"Hendrix Property Management Company."

I gave it a beat. "In addition to you and Mrs.
Jelks, how many employees do you have?"

"Some resident supers."

"Superintendents?"

"That's right."

Hoping to hear "Plymouth Willows," I went
back to an earlier request. "Maybe just the references, then."

"The references?

"Yes. Other complexes you currently manage, so
my clients can get a sense of how they might be treated."

"Tell you what," said Hendrix, coming
forward in the chair, his voice steady but his feet planted for
standing.

"Why don't you take our brochure there with you
back to your clients? They like what they see, we can go on to those
other things."

I held the brochure in my palm, making a weighing
motion with my hand. "Kind of skimpy, compared to the
competition?

Hendrix rose, flexing his shoulders back. "Each
management company has its own personality, Mr. Cuddy." The
mellow tone still. "I think you've gotten a pretty good sense of
ours. Let your clients decide, huh?"

As I went out through the reception area, Mrs. Jelks
nodded pleasantly to me over the romance novel.
 

=4=

Back in the Prelude, I drove east, almost to the
ocean. I couldn't see why Boyce Hendrix hadn't really pitched for
"my" complex's business. Also, a little enthusiasm on his
part would have been nice toward greasing the skids for my cover
story at Plymouth Willows itself.

Nice, but not essential, I hoped.

Turning south, I followed the narrow, twisting roads
that used to be the only routes between Boston and the summer
communities. I passed a forlorn shopping mall and at least a dozen
condominium developments, mostly weathered shingle, trying hard for
the quaint island look of Nantucket but coming up just a bit cramped
and sad. After about twenty minutes, I reached the outskirts of
Plymouth Mills.

At first glance, the town center seemed picturesque,
its buildings extending five or six blocks in each direction from a
four-way intersection. The architectural style alternated between
clapboard and red brick, the clapboard mostly white with black or
green shutters, the brick sandblasted at some point after the dingy
mills it covered had closed down. The retail stores were more likely
to be called "shoppes" than the places in the strip mall
back in Marshfield, with some specializing entirely in woven baskets
or stuffed animals or wine and cheese. Look a little closer, though,
and you could see the peeling paint and missing bricks, the cracked
sidewalks and unfixed potholes. Since the demise of the
"Massachusetts Miracle," most of the state had gone from
recession to depression, despite the optimism in the newspapers, and
Plymouth Mills, like the towns to the north, seemed not to have been
spared. Even the Porsche dealership struck me as dreary.

The police station came up just after the dealership,
which I'm sure made the Porsche people sleep better at night. The
department occupied one of the brick buildings, and ordinarily I'd
have stopped in, letting the desk officers know I'd be working the
town they were paid to serve and protect. However, I didn't want to
risk my license by extending the cover story about nonexistent condo
clients to the local uniforms.