Grandpa struggled to be heard, his leathery skin flushed and pinkish. “If you’ll just let me explain. Please listen. I treat my tenants well. Not one of them has any complaints. Some of them are here to speak on my behalf. Please listen to me. I am not a slumlord.”
The hearing officer firmly pounded his gavel. “Quiet, please. Mr. Arrujo has the right to speak in his defense.” His tone was matter-of-fact—the activists’ job was to heckle the old man, his to make the request that they stop.
Bruce noticed the florescent lights reflecting off Grandpa’s sweaty forehead. He shouldn’t have let the old man wear his wool suit.
Grandpa spoke again. “Now, if I may just explain the situation to you, you will see that I have not violated the Cambridge rent control laws. You see, my house has only three apartment units, not four as you claim. And since I live in the building, it is not subject to rent control.”
The hearing officer interrupted. “We’ve been through this already, Mr. Arrujo. You also own the house next door. Under the terms of the rent control law, the two properties are combined and treated as a single four-unit building. And four-unit buildings are subject to rent control, regardless of whether you live there or not.”
Grandpa pounded the wooded lectern with his fist. “But that makes no sense! The two homes are separated by a driveway, a yard and a fence. They are two separate buildings. Just look at them, look at these pictures.” He stepped away from the podium and offered a stack of photographs to the hearing officer.
The young man held up his gavel to block the advance, while his other hand shielded his eyes. “I’m sorry, sir, but we will not revisit this point. The law is the law.”
“But the law of Cambridge, Massachusetts can’t change the laws of physics, can it? These are two separate buildings. Just open your eyes and look!” Bruce saw pockets of sweat seeping through Grandpa’s shirt on either side of his tie. He looked around for some water.
The hearing officer stared past Grandpa at some spot behind him on the wall. “The only issue that remains is whether you have been charging your tenants more than the rent controlled rents for a four-unit apartment building. If you have no evidence on this point, then this hearing is over.”
Bruce watched Grandpa’s large frame shrink into the podium, then lean against it for support. The activists, too, saw it. Vibrancy evaporating under hot lights. They began their chant again: “Slumlord, slumlord, slumlord ….”
Bruce had spent the last hour watching a roomful of pony-tailed leeches suck the blood from Grandpa. Enough. He stood and turned, facing the group of activists that filled the small hearing room around him. His voice cut through their rhythmic chant like a laser beam. “Shut the fuck up. Every one of you.”
The room echoed in silence. Instinctively the activists sensed the danger in the room, smelled Bruce’s ferocious aggression. They edged away. He coiled and watched them, his powerful young body trembling. Daring the group to resume its heckling. Praying that just one of them would catcall or hiss or hoot. Seconds passed. Nothing.
A crash splintered the silence. Bruce spun his head in time to see the lectern bounce once off the floor, then come to rest near the prone body of his grandfather.
Grandpa’s eyes were closed. His tongue protruded from the corner of his mouth. His face was ashen. The wooden lectern lay next to him, box-like, its open side facing the heavens. Waiting for Grandpa.
Bruce kicked a chair aside, slid to Grandpa’s side. He cradled the old man’s head for a moment, then allowed himself to be pushed aside as a policewoman applied CPR. He held Grandpa’s cold hand and sat on the floor, numb.
One of the activists snickered. Or maybe it was a nervous cough, or even a murmur of concern. But to Bruce, it sounded like a snicker. He leapt to his feet, bounded across the room and hurled himself into the group of hecklers.
There was no time to escape his attack.
And no defense against the savage blows thrown in righteous fury by a young man avenging the fact that he had been left alone in the world.
Bruce still felt cheated by it.
Cheated by the loss of Grandpa. But also cheated by the fact that he had no memory of the brawl. No memory of his fist shattering a heckler’s nose. No memory of his work boot burying itself into the mid-section of another heckler, fracturing three of her ribs and rupturing her spleen. No memory of grabbing the pony-tailed hair of another and smashing his head onto the back of a metal chair, opening a gash on his forehead that squirted blood into the air like a garden hose. And no memory of being wrestled to the ground by a group of Cambridge police officers.
He had memorized the police reports, and one of the cops even had been willing to give him a blow-by-blow description. But it simply wasn’t the same as being able to re-live his vengeful fury over and over again in his mind.
The hearing officer delayed his decision for a few months after Grandpa’s death, but in the end he sided with the activists’ arguments and ordered that nine years worth of rents be rebated to the tenants—in an amount totaling over $300,000.
Meanwhile, the injured activists sued Bruce for damages from their injuries. Grandpa’s buildings, which he had left to Bruce in his will, had become Bruce’s property, and the court ordered them conveyed to the activists as compensation for their damages. However, the tenants had first claim on the $300,000. The activists immediately sold the four buildings (two of which were now subject to rent control), but after deducting the $300,000 that was owed to the tenants and paying their lawyers and their medical bills, the activists walked away with next to nothing. It was little solace for Bruce for the loss of his inheritance, but it was something at least.
* * *
[February 13, 1990]
Charese was in the habit of staying in bed until the mailman arrived. The doorman would ring her, and she would rush downstairs in her bathrobe and a baseball cap. A year ago she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the apartment before she had showered and applied make-up. She just didn’t care that much anymore.
She was hoping for a letter from her sister. It was her only contact with her family, and it was irregular, but Charese longed to feel that she belonged to something, even a family as self-righteous and hypocritical as her own. Her father was a minister in a small Georgia town, and her mother a teacher at the local elementary school. On Sundays Reverend Galloway preached the words of God—messages of compassion and kindness and understanding. During the week Mrs. Galloway taught the lessons of American history—mandates of tolerance and open-mindedness and individual liberty. At home, however, the parents Galloway forgot these messages and these lessons; theirs was a strict and joyless household, one that stressed discipline and order and obedience. After spending the entire day nurturing and caring for the congregation and community, it was as if her parents simply had nothing left to expend on Charese—actually, Charles at the time—and his sister.
Looking back, Charese realized that she had been stupid to embarrass her father by publicly announcing her homosexuality the day before Easter. Especially with the bishop in town for Easter services, and her father hoping to increase his influence in statewide religious affairs. But adolescent emotions run strong, and the seventeen-year-old Charles had been waiting for years to avenge the humiliation caused by his father sermonizing about “the evils of teenage masturbation in the very household of the messenger of the Lord.” So when ‘Master Charles,’ as he was referred to at school after the sermon, saw the opportunity for a little Easter Massacre of his own, he didn’t exactly contemplate what the repercussions of his actions would be twenty years down the road.
The repercussions, not surprisingly, were that his parents kicked him out of the house and never spoke to him again. His sister, against the mandate of their parents, corresponded occasionally, but only to convey news of the family and never to hint that there was even the slightest chance of a reconciliation. Perhaps the clearest evidence of the desperate state of her life was that she had written to her sis
ter about possibly moving home. She understood that her desire to go home was similar to the desire of a starving man to catch a rat for dinner. Neither choice is in the least bit appetizing, but both are proof that the survival instinct runs strong.
It had been six weeks now, and she still had not heard back from her sister. Easter was in three weeks, so maybe this wasn’t the best time to go home anyway.
CHAPTER 25
[February 16, 1990]
Pierre put Valerie down for the night, then sat for ten minutes and watched her sleep. It continually amazed him how strong—almost violent—his love was for her. He had no doubt he could kill on her behalf if necessary. He came downstairs. “Carla, Sweetie, we have to talk,” he said as he poured them each a glass of wine.
“Uh oh. Last time a guy said that to me, I ended up throwing my engagement ring at him. Of course, I’m safe this time—you know if you try to divorce me, I’ll murder you.”
Pierre laughed. “No, that whole New Hampshire thing doesn’t appeal to me.” Carla looked at him quizzically. “You know, ‘Live free or die.’ I’ll stay right here as your slave, thank you very much.” Of course he would stay—how many women would be able to joke about their fiancee breaking things off just two months before the wedding?
“Okay, slave, what’s up?”
“We need to have another of those money talks. First of all—the good news. We bought another property today. It’s just a condo, but I think we got it at a good price.”
“Great. Was this one of Bruce Arrujo’s auctions?”
“Yeah. The guy’s been incredibly helpful. This condo is on the first floor and has nine hundred square feet according to all the legal documents, so it’s worth today maybe $140,000. Good location by the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. But Bruce pointed out to me some obscure provision in the condominium documents—the owner of the unit has the legal right to annex part of the basement and expand his unit to make the unit fifteen hundred square feet. I went down into the basement—it’s already semi-finished space. So you spend maybe another twenty grand to finish it and, presto, the unit’s worth $210,000.”
“So what did you get it for?”
“Hundred ten. There was one other guy bidding me up, but I would have gone up another ten or fifteen. It was a clean deal—no owner to evict and Bruce said the title was clear.”
“This is a deal with Howie, I assume?”
“Yeah. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. You know we’ve bought two properties so far, this one and the three-family. Which, by the way, Bruce did get the bank to sign the document we needed to legally keep it as three condos. So I figure for both properties we’ve made about $150,000 in profit already, which we split with Howie fifty-fifty.”
“Really? Our share is $75,000? That’s great.” She sipped her wine.
“Yeah, and those are pretty conservative numbers. But the problem is that Howie doesn’t want to sell for a couple of years. So our profit is tied up, and in the meantime we have no income.”
“What about the rents?”
“We need the rents to pay the mortgages. Howie’s got a chunk of money, but it’s not unlimited. Plus, he’s really into the concept of leverage. So what we’re doing is paying cash for the properties and then taking a mortgage so that we can free up Howie’s cash to do more deals. And it’s tight—there aren’t many banks looking to make real estate loans right now, especially to investors. And the ones that do are charging pretty high interest rates. So, like I said, we need the rents to pay the mortgages. And what’s left we’re putting back into the properties. I think you agree with me on this—I don’t want to be in this business if we’re just going to be slumlords, so I told Howie we need to fix them up a bit.”
“Of course I agree.” It was a subject they discussed often. Many people in society simply fought for a piece of the pie; Pierre and Carla agreed that they should try to increase the size of the pie, not just eat from it. And, in real estate, growing the pie translated into putting money back into the properties for renovations and improvements.
Carla continued. “And, Pierre, I don’t mind cutting back for a few years. But we need some income. I mean, come on. We’ve got nothing coming in except a few hundred bucks from the brokerage business.”
“I know, and I have an idea. But I wanted to talk to you about it first. Howie has no problem if I go out myself and buy a property and flip it. The problem is that I’ve talked to a few banks, and none of them will do the loan. We have too much debt and too little income.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
He smiled. “Well, the bankers did. Anyway, I found a guy who will lend me the money, but he wants twenty-two percent interest. I thought I should talk to you first.”
“What, and if you don’t pay, he breaks your legs?”
“Something like that.”
“Pierre, are you crazy?”
“Seriously, Carla, he’s not the leg-breaking type. He’s more the foreclose and then sue us for everything we have type. But I still thing it’s worth it. If I buy a property and then flip it in two or three months, who cares about 22 percent interest? I mean, it’s actually a better deal for us than splitting it 50-50 with Howie.”
“And what if you can’t sell it in a few months? Isn’t the market still terrible?”
“It’s still bad, but the better properties are selling. Values dropped like twenty-five percent over the winter, but now they’re holding pretty firm. At least some people have realized that Boston’s not going to turn into Newark, that it’s still a world-class city. And they’re starting to buy in the good neighborhoods and the better suburbs. It’s the properties in the bad neighborhoods that are still in a free-fall. So if I have trouble selling, I’ll just cut the price.”
“Famous last words. I’m not kidding, Pierre. We can’t afford any more debt—hell, we can’t even afford our current debt.”
“I know, honey. But listen to me. We’re pretty much insolvent anyway right now. If this doesn’t work, we’ll really be no worse off then we are now. But if it does work and I can make thirty or forty thousand in a flip, that will give us the breathing room we need so that I can keep doing these deals with Howie. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it really is the only way.”
Carla studied Pierre intently. He knew she believed that his business sense was generally good—he tended not to be ego-driven like so many other real estate investors. She sighed. “Okay, honey. But please be careful. And the same rules, right? I don’t want to get involved with putting a family out onto the street. I mean, that might be us someday.”
Pierre reached over and took her hand. They had gone through a number of bottles of wine over the past few months discussing the morality of profiting over someone else’s misfortune. “I agree, same rules. If there’s kids there, I walk away.”
“All right. I can live with that.”
“You know, Carla, I hope I’m not just rationalizing, but I’m starting to believe that ‘bottom feeders’ like me and Howie actually serve a useful purpose.”
“Yeah, so do hyenas and vultures, but that doesn’t mean I want to sleep with them.”
Pierre leaned over and nibbled on her shoulder. “Mmmm, fresh meat.” She playfully pushed him away. “But seriously, prices were in a free-fall for a few months, then all of a sudden a few people like us have started bidding at the auctions and buying from the banks and now things seem to be leveling out a bit. Somebody’s got to buy at the bottom; otherwise the market just keeps falling, and there is no bottom.”
Pierre watched as Carla mulled this over. He knew his analysis made sense, but he doubted that Carla’s college economics textbooks ever made a point of lauding the economic benefits of bottom feeding. “You know what, I’ll buy it. I’m not going to go around bragging that my husband is a real estate vulture, but as long as we’re not putting families out on the street, I think you’re right—it’s no different than people who buy stocks when they’re cheap.
And it’s better than the people who choose to save a buck or two on a shirt even though they know it was made by ten-year-old slave laborers in Asia somewhere.” She smiled. “So come on, Mr. Hyena, let’s go to bed.”
CHAPTER 26
[February 22, 1990]
“Please, Shelby, I promise not to make a scene.”
“Hey, Charese, this is your case, so you don’t have to ask my permission for anything.” They were sitting in the reception area of Roberge’s high-priced law firm. “I just thought you might be more comfortable waiting in another room. But if you don’t mind seeing Roberge and Megan together, I’d love to have you in there with me. It’ll help keep them honest when I ask some tough questions.”
“Great. I want to watch the son-of-a-bitch squirm. And I can’t wait to see his little trophy wife.”
Shelby laughed. She hadn’t seen Charese so energized since before Thanksgiving. She hoped it wasn’t because she was high. “Okay then. But remember, you have to behave.”
“You mean I can’t stick a pen in his eye?”
“Actually, feel free to get under their skin a little, especially Roberge. You know, glare at him, roll your eyes, that kind of stuff. I’m sure his lawyer has rehearsed his answers with him—maybe you’ll be able to throw him off script.”
“You got it.”
Shelby squeezed Charese’s arm, and they walked down the hallway to the conference room. Roberge, Megan and Roberge’s attorney were seated in a row on the opposite side of a long mahogany conference table. Shelby walked around the table, shook hands with Roberge’s lawyer.
“Shelby, this is my client, Roberge Krygier. And his wife, Mrs. Krygier.” They looked like they had come straight from the country club—he in a blue blazer over a white turtleneck, she in a cardigan sweater over a button-down shirt.
Shelby shook their hands, noticed their manicured nails, wondered what kind of woman would allow herself to be introduced as “Mrs. Krygier.” She introduced Charese, greeted the stenographer, and walked back around the table to sit down. She addressed Roberge’s attorney. “I’ll start by taking the deposition of Mr. Krygier. If we finish in time, I’ll begin with ….” She turned and looked at Roberge’s wife. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your first name.” Shelby knew it was Megan, but wanted to gauge her a bit.
[Boston Law 01.0] Unlawful Deeds Page 16
