“And what about you? What do you get out of this?”
“You got a jeweler vacating a suite of offices down on the seventy-second floor. Six rooms with views south and west. I like having a big office with a good view. People look at you differently when they think you’re livin’ large.”
“So?”
“You’re still the building manager. Give me a twenaggive me ty-year lease at eighteen hundred a month and I’ll pull the trigger on Pete.”
“The Melmans are paying eleven thousand,” Terry said.
I shrugged.
“I don’t have the money,” the sandy-haired fraudster complained.
“Jimmy Pine said that he’d advance it to you. I mean, you’ll have to get another job to pay him back, but I bet you’d rather run a hot dog stand than spend your sunset years in prison.”
We haggled for over an hour but in the end I got everything I wanted. Hyman-Schultz, real estate developers, dropped the charges when Breland Lewis, attorney-at-law, brought evidence to their attention that Peter Cooly was just as likely a candidate for the crime, even more so because Terry was always broke.
Swain retired early and bought a hot dog cart. Whenever I see him he gives me a hot sausage on the house.
Some people, when they see my office, think that I’m putting on airs. They want to know what I pay for rent but I never say. Others are quietly impressed, believing that there’s more to me than they at first thought. The reaction to my posh workspace could be anything but whatever it is I’m left with an edge.
WHEN I GOT OFF the elevator on the seventy-second floor I felt a rush of satisfaction.