I looked at the signature and I looked at him. “I’ll have to see some identification,” I said.

Don’t ask me why. I didn’t really think there could be anything wrong with him or his check. The lads who write hot checks don’t offer you cash in an attempt to avoid paying sales tax. I guess I just didn’t like him, and I was trying to be a generic pain in the neck.

He gave me a look that suggested as much, then hauled out his wallet and came up with a credit card and driver’s license. I verified his signature, jotted down his Amex number on the back of the check, then looked at the picture on the license. It was him, all right, if a touch less jowly. I read the name, Stoppelgard, Borden, and finally the penny dropped.

“Borden Stoppelgard,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Of Hearthstone Realty.”

His expression turned guarded. It hadn’t been all that open in the first place, but now it was a fortress, and he was busy digging a moat around it.

“You’re my landlord,” I said. “You just bought this building.”

“I own a lot of buildings,” he said. “I buy them, I sell them.”

“You bought this one, and now you’re looking to raise my rent.”

“You can hardly deny that it’s ridiculously low.”

“It’s eight seventy-five a month,” I said. “The lease is up the first of the year, and you’re offering me a new lease at ten thousand five hundred dollars a month.”

“I imagine that strikes you as high.”

“High?” I said. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I can assure you—”

“Try stratospheric,” I suggested.

“—that it’s very much in line with the market.”

“All I know,” I said, “is that it’s completely out of the question. You want me to pay more each month than I’ve been paying for an entire year. That’s an increase of what, twelve hundred percent? Ten-five a month is more than I gross, for God’s sake.”