Killer Move Read online

  I picked it up, flipped it over. Just one word on the other side: MODIFIED.

  “Hell is this?”

  “What?”

  “Thing on my desk.”

  “No idea,” Karren said without turning around. “Came in the mail. Probably some viral marketing crap.”

  “Viral marketing?”

  “You know. Coming in under the radar. Keeping it on the down low. Advertising that’s cool and hip and engaging and just so New Edge it makes you want to spit.”

  I looked back down at the card in my hand. It was matte black on both sides, had just that one word in white letters and bold type across the front, and my name and the company’s address on a laser-printed sticker on the back. The sticker had been put on perfectly straight.

  “I’m not engaged,” I said, and dropped the card in the trash.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I got through a slew of e-mail, made a few calls—Shore business only, anything else I do on my cell when away from prying ears—and left the office a little after eleven. The clouds were bunching overhead, purple thunderheads that promised an almighty downpour. The only downside was that the air had become even heavier in preparation, the earth offering up every drop of moisture from its hot lungs, anxious to have it purged in the upcoming hammer of rain. It felt like if you were to reach out and make a wringing motion, actual water would drip down out of the atmosphere to steam off the ground.

  I hesitated, aware that this was precisely the kind of moment when I would formerly have lit a cigarette. I didn’t do that anymore, however, and this morning that felt like less of an imposition. It was taking hold, finally, Mr. Nicotine Addiction packing his bags. I paused to pay homage to the fact. The author of one of my favorite personal development blogs is big on taking the time to mark good moments rather than fretting about the bad—reprogramming reality through altering focus to the positive. Drive yourself and you drive the world. Plus, I was running a little early anyhow.

  From where I was standing you get a good sense of what The Breakers is about. A condo complex built in the heady days when throwing up blocks on the Florida coast was basically a license to print money, the resort had everything a family needed to beguile a couple of weeks in the Sunshine State. A hundred and twenty apartments, in blocks of six; said two-story blocks arranged in a pair of concentric circles around a central area holding eight tennis courts. (The Breakers prides itself on its facilities, and hosts the annual Longboat Key Tournament.) Palms, fern beds, and path decking lightened the effect and gave the blocks a little personal space. Each had a cheerful name, was painted a different shade of pastel, and, to the discerning eye, was beginning to look a little tatty.

  On the ocean side of the inner circle stands a four-story administrative building holding the resort offices and reception, meeting/conference spaces, a gym, and—arrayed over the entire top two stories—the gargantuan living space of the resort’s owners. The corresponding point on the outer circle is home to, in addition to the adjunct of Shore Realty’s office, a little grocery market, a place to buy beachwear, Marie’s Restaurant (small and poised, a pianist most evenings, nonresidents welcome, but shorts or flip-flops are not), and Tony’s Bistro (the more casual dining option, child friendly, with a tiki bar and tables on a patio overlooking the pool area).

  Beyond that, the beach—on which there are several four-bedroom bungalows, the pinnacle of the resort’s rental cost ladder. Other buildings dotted around the complex hold a game room and an area where parents can dump their more tractable children under semiexpert supervision for two-hour sessions, the better to sun-worship in peace. There’s a repair division, too, domain of Big Walter the maintenance man, but I’ve seldom needed to tangle with that side of things (or with him). He’s a decent guy and a wiz at fixing things, but of large build and inclined to perspire freely.

  My job was to take listings of condos of which owners had decided to divest themselves and sell them to someone else as quickly as possible. In many ways this was a sweet deal—a monopoly located right on-site—which is why I’d chosen to work there rather than at the mainland office over in Sarasota. The problem was that selling the properties was getting harder every year. Tony and Marie Thompson ran The Breakers with an iron fist, tight purse strings, and a management style that was beginning to betray its age as blatantly as the buildings were. All but three of the apartments were owned on a fractional basis, as is common practice. The owners were not allowed to do their own decorating, on the grounds that this led to regular guests developing favorites among the condominiums and demanding the freedom to choose, which would make it harder to allocate them with maximum income-generating efficiency. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the system except it had been a few years since the buildings had been given attention, and this was beginning to show both inside and out. Everything worked—bar the occasional blatting AC unit or a toilet that needed unblocking on too regular a basis; it just wasn’t looking what Karren insisted on calling “supergreat and perfect.”

  This meant in turn that the condos weren’t getting the resale prices their location on the key warranted; thus I was neither making the commission I deserved for the hours and dedication I put in, nor shining in the community to the degree required to actualize my five-year plan (now already in its sixth year, which was bugging me no end) of being able to get the hell out of Shore Realty and set up my own shop, preferably in an office down on St. Armands Circle, candidates for which I had picked out some time ago. And this was why I had taken it upon myself to do what I was going to do next: meet with Tony Thompson to try to convince him to shake out a little cash to spruce up the place.

  I went to my car, unlocked the trunk, and took out a shopping bag. Then I rolled my shoulders, muttered a couple of motivational phrases, and strode off in the direction of reception.

  “This is quite a find, Bill.”

  I stood sipping a glass of iced tea, looking down out of the plateglass window toward the ocean, while Tony Thompson peered with satisfaction at the bottle of wine.

  “Heard you mention it a while back,” I said. “I happened to spot a source, snapped it up.”

  “You got a good memory.”

  “Stuck in my head, is all.”

  He looked at me suspiciously. “Can’t have been easy to get hold of.”

  “Not locally,” I admitted, watching waves lapping at the concrete pier sticking out from the middle of The Breakers’ section of beach, and on which a lone, picturesque heron was often to be found standing, as if hired by the management. About a third of the Thompsons’ residence was taken up with a double height living area. From its vast windows you could see a couple of miles in either direction along one of the most unspoiled sections on this entire stretch of coast. When Longboat Key began to be developed in earnest during the early 1980s, there were already sufficient numbers of people singing the conservation song that a degree of tact and reserve held the day. This probably enraged the moneymen at the time, but in the long run there had been advantages. Were it not for a cluster of taller (and more recent) condos down at the south end, you would be able to see all the way to the wilderness at the end of Lido Key.

  It was a great view. I wanted it.

  “So how’d you find this one?”

  “The Internet is a marvelous resource.”

  “Yeah, I hear good things,” Thompson said, setting the bottle on the breakfast bar and leading me toward a sitting area with white sofas and a glass coffee table big enough to play Ping-Pong on, assuming you had really short legs. It was bare, aside from a fat book of Sudoku puzzles and an ornate wooden box. “I got more than enough stuff to deal with in the real world. Don’t have time for all that doubya doubya doubya crap.”

  He took a cigarette from the box and indicated to me that I should do the same if I was so inclined. I shook my head, privately amazed that there were people who still possessed such objects. Back in Thompson’s youth—he was a hale and hearty sixty-eight, and famously t
ook a five-mile run on the beach every morning—they’d doubtless been quite the thing, along with onyx table lighters and station wagons with faux wood–paneled sides. The decor of the rest of the apartment was Florida Beach Traditional: tiled floors, pastel furnishings, coral collages on the walls, and wooden statues of pelicans on every shelf that wasn’t lined with paperback thrillers. The air-conditioning was turned up to STUN.

  “I thought you smoked.”

  “Gave it up,” I said.

  “What the hell for?”

  “It’s bad for you. So they say.”

  “Bullshit,” Thompson said. “Never done me any harm.”

  “Not everyone has your constitution, sir,” I said, realizing I was sounding a kiss-ass, and minding, but knowing also that that was precisely what I was here to do.

  Thompson lit his cigarette and settled back on the white leather sofa. “Okay. I’m grateful for the wine, Bill. You did good. But what’s your point?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the decorative state of the resort,” I said.

  “You telling me it looks like shit?”

  “Not at all,” I said calmly. Prior experience had forewarned me that Thompson conducted conversations the way some people deal with cockroaches. “Compare it with facilities from the same era—Tradewinds, Pelican Sands, you name it—and it’s in great shape. Overall. But—”

  “Let me save you some time,” Thompson said. “We’re not going to be redecorating this year. End of story. Anything else you wanted to discuss?”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Three reasons. Money, money, and money.”

  “I hear you, and they’re all good reasons, but I’m going to lay it right out for you, sir. You got owner discontent. And it’s on the rise.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I said.

  Thompson frowned, sending sun-and-cigarette cracks across his broad, leathery face. “Thought you were just a Realtor, Bill. Didn’t realize that involved an oath of confidentiality. You a doctor on the side? Or a lawyer? I got a goddamned priest selling my condos now?”

  I smiled. “No sir. Just a Realtor. But if I start blogging every conversation with my clients, pretty soon people will stop telling me anything, right?”

  He appeared to concede the point. I pressed on. “Folks care about their properties. It’s where they live, who they are. I respect that. I respect their privacy, too. Anyone tells me anything, I’m where it stops.” I paused to let that point hit home—that I was a man who could keep his mouth shut in the interests of a greater good. “But I will tell you the chatter is not just coming from people who are looking to sell. With those folks, they’re out of here already. Screw ’em, right? I’m talking about the families who are happy owning their corner of The Breakers, who want to stay a part of it.”

  “You’re really not going to give up some names?”

  I hesitated again, this time to give the wily old fucker reason to suspect that, under exactly the right circumstances, I might spill a name or two.

  “No can do,” I said. “But you know the economic climate as well as I do, sir. Far better, uh, of course. It makes people twitchy. Everybody loves The Breakers. You built an amazing community here. Even the people I’m selling for, ninety percent wish they didn’t have to let their properties go. But they also have expectations. You let the feel-good factor drift, and . . . It’s a social network, old style. People sit around the pool and they talk. You need the core community to remain stable—and to believe it’s being listened to and valued. Otherwise it all starts to feel random, and then someone says, ‘Hey, that new place on Lido has got a bigger hot tub, and it’s just a short walk from St. Armands Circle . . . ,’ and people decide to vote with their feet. En masse.”

  “Are you saying that—”

  “We are not at that point. Not yet, sir, not by a long shot. But nobody wants that to happen, either.”

  “What’s your angle, Bill?”

  “Sir?”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  I went for broke. “I want what you’ve got.”

  Thompson’s mouth opened, closed. He cocked his head on one side and stared at me. “Say again?”

  “What are you worth, sir, financially, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “I surely fucking do.”

  The skin on the back of my neck felt very hot, despite the frigid air. “I respect that, sir, and I already know it’s in the tens of millions. Depending on how it’s accounted, and who’s asking.”

  One side of his mouth moved upward about a quarter of an inch. He looked like an alligator that was trying to decide whether to eat something right away, or if it might be worth watching its prey just a little longer, to see if it did something else funny.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t want to be manning a desk at Shore forever,” I said. “Right now, I’m capital light. That means my focus is on assisting those who already have. Protecting their position and investments, getting them a little more on top. Sometimes a lot more. And that means The Breakers, most of all. The better you do and the happier you are, the better I look and the happier I will eventually become.”

  The gator still didn’t bite.

  “The bottom line is that the talk I’m picking up is not Shore Realty’s problem. Matter of fact, the more people who sell, the more commission my company gets. But I don’t think I’d be doing my job if I didn’t give you a heads-up that you’ve got a situation brewing here.”

  I stopped talking. Not before time.

  “The people you’ve been hearing this from . . .”

  “Are not just the ones who whine about every damned thing, no. Otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering you with it. You’ve been in this business a lot longer than me. It’s your game, and you can play it exactly how you want. But if you like, I could talk to a few of the key players. Diffuse the chatter, press the pause button. Suggest it’s worth waiting a little longer before getting too het up about the situation.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I’ll discuss this with Marie,” he said, standing. “Not going to promise more than that. But that I will do.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Thompson.”

  “The name’s Tony,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “As you know. You may as well start using it.”

  Fifteen minutes later I was standing at the end of the pier on The Breakers’ beach, surrounded by the flatness of the ocean. I still had an hour before my appointment down on Siesta Key, in reality nothing more than a meet-and-greet and something to tweak Karren White with. I’d take the meeting, of course—a key tenet of the Bill Moore brand is that if he says he’ll do something, it gets done—but right now it seemed very unimportant.

  There were a few couples meandering up and down the water line, and a group of kids twenty feet away being encouraged to look for shells. Most people were indoors, out of the noon heat.

  My hands were now still. For ten minutes after the meeting they’d been shaking. Sure, I’d planned to get man-to-man and cards-on-the-table with Tony at some point—but not today. The bottle of wine had been intended merely as an opening gambit. I’d logged the name and year, put out a notice on a beginners’ wine board I found on the Internet. A guy got in touch, declaring himself able to supply one and to also be in possession of another vintage that was an even bigger deal and guaranteed to be a huge hit with anyone who was searching for the first. I’d quickly snapped up both bottles—at a cost I hoped my wife did not discover before I’d had a chance to capitalize on the expense—and had been intending to get serious with Thompson only on production of the second. I actually had very little to offer him at this point. I’d taken a degree of license when describing the level of owner dissatisfaction, too, and was aware that Tony was a golf-and-drinking buddy of Peter Grant, founder-owner of Shore Realty. The two went back to the boom years, had been to school together, and socialized all the time. I was a Shore employee. Impl
icitly offering to set that to one side in order to run interference for The Breakers’ management was a very high-risk strategy.

  And yet . . . it had felt like the thing to do.

  Or I’d gone ahead and done it, at least, and it hadn’t yet exploded in my face. If Thompson had gotten straight on the phone to his friend, there’d be a message on my phone telling me to clear my desk and go fuck myself from here to Key West. No such missive had arrived—which hopefully meant I’d taken a massive step in the right direction.

  I wasn’t even having a cigarette to celebrate, either. Behold the man, see how he grows.

  There was a blarping sound from my pocket. It made me jump. I yanked out the phone and was relieved to see it was just a calendar reminder.

  But then I swore—loud enough to startle nearby children and have their wrangler glaring at me—and ran up the pier toward the resort.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By nine thirty I was pretty drunk. This is something all the blogs and self-improvement gurus advise against, but I felt I deserved it. Not only had the day seen strides toward me becoming a bigger blip on Tony Thompson’s radar, but I had reason to be relieved to be where I was—at a great table in a great restaurant, enjoying another big glass of Merlot and hiding the effects very well, I believed.

  “You’re pretty drunk,” Steph said.

  “No. I’m just high. On the vision of outstanding natural beauty across the table from me.”

  She laughed. “Corny. Even by your standards. Still, twelve years together. Eight, postknot. Can’t say we didn’t give it a try, right?”

  “You’re still the one, babe.”

  “You too.”

  She raised her glass. We chinked, leaned across the table, and kissed for long enough to make nearby diners uncomfortable. She was happy, and so was I. I’d bought her something nice from her favorite jewelry store and also gotten huge props for fulfilling her primary request, securing a table on the upstairs balcony at Jonny Bo’s. This is the premium spot in the place, with the (alleged) exception of a fabled private upper dining room, which no one I knew had even seen, and which I was ninety percent sure was a suburban legend. Our table booking still had me a little mystified. I’d broken into foul language at the end of the pier because I realized I’d failed to make the reservation. I’d tried, a number of times, but the number had always been busy—I recalled muttering about this in the office a week or so ago (mainly, of course, as a way of bragging about the venue I was trying to book). And yet, when I’d called that afternoon on the slim chance of a cancellation, I discovered I had made a reservation after all. Obviously I’d got through at some point, become wrapped up in some other piece of business, and forgotten. Whatever. Today was evidently one of those days when the universe elected to throw me a couple of bones. Hence the extra glass of wine.