Tag Archives: landlord

The Landlord

The prompt from my weekly writers group in Florida was to write a piece focusing on an aspect of character development. This post is an excerpt from a chapter in one of my novels, ‘Delayed Penalty’. Can you discern the personalities of these two characters from their conversation?

“Yeah, she lives here.  What’s this all ‘bout?  She in trouble?”  Dicky Lister was slouched in the doorway to the landlord’s apartment, a beer can in his hand.

“When did you last see her?” Detective Billie Radford asked.

Scratching his head, Lister said, “I dunno.  Coupla days ago, maybe.  Me an’ the tenants don’t exchange Christmas gifts, y’know.”  Radford noticed flakes of dandruff on his shoulders as he scratched his hair.

“Did you happen to see her sometime on the twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah, I guess, but early on.  Me an’ Lizzie don’t hang up our stockin’s for Santa together, neither,” he smirked knowingly.  “Wouldn’t of minded, though.”

“Her name is Lissa,” Radford said, “not Lizzie.  She’s been missing since Christmas Day, and I’d like to see her room.  I need you to let me in.”

Lister drew back a step, took a swig from the can.  “Nah, I can’t do that, Detective.  I got a key an’ all, but I never go in somebody’s room if they ain’t ‘round.”

Radford smiled disarmingly.  “Oh, I’m sure you don’t, Mr. Lister.  But it’s very important that I check her room, and I’m asking you once more, politely, to open it for me.  Otherwise, I can come back with a warrant, and in that case, we’ll make a point of searching the entire building.  That will be a lot more aggravation for you, I can assure you.”  As she spoke, she made a point of turning to look up at the ceiling in the hallway behind her.

“Whatta you lookin’ at?”

“Nothing really, and that’s a problem!  I don’t see smoke-alarms or sprinkler-heads in the corridor, which, as I’m sure you know, is a violation of code for a rooming-house.  That’s not something I’d normally concern myself with, but I’m wondering if the fire marshal’s office has granted you an exemption for that?”

Lister’s beady eyes narrowed.  “Oh, so you’re gonna report me for that?  You friggin’ lady-cops, man!  You got nothin’ better to do?”

“I do have something better to do,” Radford said, still smiling.  “I have to write a report about my visit here today, but if I don’t have a look at Lissa’s room, I won’t have anything to report.  So in that case, I suppose I’ll have to report the code violations.”

“You friggin’ cops!” Lister hissed again.  “Always makin’ trouble for us little guys.  Wait here a second ‘til I get the key.”  He closed the door unceremoniously in her face.

As she waited, Radford sent a text to the fire marshal’s office about the violations.

“Only thing worse’n a real cop is a lady-cop!” Lister sniffed a few moments later on the way to Lissa’s room.  As they passed through what passed for a front vestibule, he tossed his empty beer can on top of an overflowing garbage can.

Once he had the door unlocked, Radford said, “Thank you, Mr. Lister.  I’ll let you know when I’m finished here.”

After she closed the door on him, Lister offered a middle-digit salute before stamping back to his apartment to fetch another beer.  “Cops suck!” he yelled, knowing she’d be able to hear him through the paper-thin walls.  “You better not report me!  An’ I’m gonna tell Lizzie a cop was goin’ through her stuff!”

Ignoring his threats, Radford did a cursory walk-through of the bedroom and bathroom, saw nothing out of the ordinary for a young woman living on her own.  A more thorough search of her closet, dresser, and bedside table also yielded nothing of much interest.  The only curious thing that caught her eye was a black bra in the top drawer of the dresser—curious because it was flecked with what looked like…dandruff.

Yeah, he never visits tenants’ rooms when they’re out!  The pervert!

After taking a picture without disturbing anything, Radford put on a pair of plastic gloves and placed the bra in a plastic evidence-bag.  

On her way out, she taped two strips of yellow crime-scene tape diagonally across the door to the room, and photographed that, too.  Back in the vestibule, still gloved, she took a picture of Lister’s discarded beer can on the garbage can, then put it inside another evidence-bag.

Might be nothing.  But if the guy lied about never going into tenants’ rooms, maybe he’s lying about Lissa’s whereabouts, too.  We’ll check the DNA.

She didn’t bother to tell Lister she was leaving.

FUBAR

A recent prompt from my Florida writers’ group was to write a story about a screw-up—either a situation gone haywire, or a person who just didn’t seem able to manage. This was my submission—

“Son, you’re ‘bout two steps short of the finish-line, an’ three bricks shy of a load.”

So said the foreman, minutes before handing me my walking papers.  I tried arguing with him, saying it wasn’t my fault the wooden cartons of glassware fell off the fork-lift, smashing all the contents.  The stupid machine lurched forward as I started the motor. 

“C’mon, gimme a break,” I whined.  “Whoever drove it last left it in gear.”

“You drove it last, dummy!”

On the bright side, that wasn’t the first job I ever got fired from, and I managed to survive.  On the dark side, it wasn’t the last, either.

For example, take that job driving a taxi.  I got canned after my first shift, when I inadvertently drove my cab out of the service station with the gas nozzle still in the fuel door.  Pulled the pump right off its moorings, flooded the whole area with gas, shut down the whole block for hours.

“You musta already donated your brain to medical science!” the dispatcher growled.  “You’re livin’ proof of the theory of de-volution!”

He wasn’t happy that I asked for a free cab-ride home.  Turns out, I had to walk.

Keeping jobs isn’t the only thing I’ve messed up, though.  I’ve also had issues with landlords from time to time, all of whom seemed quite unreasonable.  On one occasion, I answered my phone in the kitchen, forgetting I’d left the taps running to fill the bathtub.  I realized the problem immediately when I saw water pooling around my feet, and quickly rushed to shut off the taps.  The landlord began pounding on my door as I was cleaning up the mess, summoned by the tenants on the floor below whose ceiling had caved in on them.

“Your elevator don’t go all the way to the top floor, y’know that!” he yelled.  “Your antenna’s not pickin’ up all the channels!”

In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best time to remind him the building was a five-floor walk-up—no elevators, no TV service.  I got an eviction notice the next day.

Thank goodness it didn’t take long to find temporary digs, but I was only there a couple of days when my new landlord—my surly sister-in-law, never my biggest fan—told me to get out.  Screamed it, actually. She’d reluctantly agreed to let my brother set me up in their spare room in the basement, but apparently she wasn’t a fan of Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden cranked to a hundred decibels ‘til well past midnight.

“But Tish, they only sound good if you listen with the volume way up,” I griped.

She looked at me pityingly.  “Well then, you’re deaf as a stump.  An’ about that smart!”

“What?” I said, trying to be funny.  She didn’t laugh. Didn’t change her mind, either.

In addition to mistakes with jobs and landlords, I’ve also had issues now and again with the demon-rum.  I vaguely recall the time, after knocking back a few pints, I knelt down in front of the first woman I wanted to marry—Mary-Ann something, or maybe Mary-Lou.  Astonished, she asked me what I was doing on my knees in the middle of the pub, and sadly, right at that moment, I couldn’t remember.  And then, according to what I heard later from the police, I toppled over on the floor.  The love of my life was long-gone when I awoke in the drunk-tank.

In court the next morning, I told the judge I’d be representing myself.  “Not a good idea, son,” he intoned.  “In your condition, you’d lose a debate with a doorknob!  I’m surprised you managed to hit the floor when you fell on it!”

Even the therapist the judge sent me to was unimpressed a month or so into our sessions.  “When you were assigned to me,” he said, “I didn’t realize you had a drinking problem.  Not ’til you showed up sober once.”

“Not to worry, Doc,” I told him amiably.  “I’ve always been a coupla beers short of a six-pack!”  Not surprisingly, I don’t see that therapist anymore.  Never saw Mary-Sue (Mary-Jean?) again, either.  Never had our second date.

I suppose I’ve always walked a bit of a crooked line, even when not under the influence.  My mother, God bless her, once said, “It’s like you’re half a bubble off plumb!  Like you’re one saucer short of a tea-set.”

That might have been what got me started on the hard-stuff, come to think of it, because I never did drink tea again after she said that.

Probably the biggest mistake I ever made in my life—although I still have years left to change that—was when I decided to join the Marines.  I was unemployed, nowhere to live, without a girlfriend, banned from my favourite pubs, and hungry.  In desperation, I signed up for a pre-boot-camp, where a former Drill-Sergeant set out to weed out the wannabes from the wunderkinds.  You can probably guess which I was.

“You hafta be the poster-child for birth-control, gomer!” he screamed at me on the first day.  “You give inbreeding a bad rap!” 

“I was adopted!” I said, as if that would make any difference.

“Yeah?  Well either way, you musta fell outta the family tree an’ hit every branch on the way down.  Too much chorine in your gene pool!”

He never let up on me, and by the fifth day, I’m sure I’d heard every description of screw-up ever invented.  They just kept coming.

Day 1: “You’re not pullin’ a full wagon, boy!  You’re a few mules short of a team!”

Day 2: “You’re ‘bout as sharp as a marble, son!  You don’t know whether to scratch your watch or wind your butt!”

Day 3: “The gates are down, the lights are flashin’, but the train ain’t comin’, bucko!  You’re deprivin’ some village somewhere of its idjit!”

Day 4: “Your driveway don’t reach all the way to the road, boyo!  The wheel is spinnin’, but the hamster is dead!”

I flunked out on the fifth day, and for the first time the sarge seemed to take pity on me.  “Sorry, son, but bein’ a Marine means you gotta be burnin’ on all thrusters, roger that?”

I didn’t know what thrusters were, nor did I know anyone named Roger, so I just nodded meekly, no smart wisecrack this time.

“You got a good heart, kid, but it’s like your boat don’t have all the oars in the water.  Like you don’t got all your soldiers marchin’ in line.  So, here’s what you oughta do.  Go join the navy.  Or join the army.  They need guys like you!”  He ended that last sentence with a mocking laugh.

So, shortly thereafter, I found myself on my way to the nearest army recruiter, filled with hope after such a rousing send-off.  I chose the army over the navy because someone once told me they’d invented the acronym FUBAR!

Which, as I’d come to understand by then, is what I was!