Authors: Michael Marshall
A
s I pulled around The Breakers’ inner circle I saw that Karren White’s car was already tucked into the better of the two Shore Realty slots—the one that gets shade in the afternoon and stops your vehicle from feeling like an oven turned to
BURN
when you climb into it at the end of the working day. She had parked with characteristic accuracy, the sides of her sporty little BMW exactly parallel to the lines, as if she’d put the car in position first and then sweet-talked Big Walter the handyman into painting the parking space around her (which, knowing her charm and forcefulness, was not entirely out of the question). I parked my own vehicle in the remaining space, with not dissimilar skill, and glanced at the clock in the dashboard. Eight twelve.
Hmm.
I logged the time in a utility on my iPhone. I’m not OCD about these things, you should know. The point of logging is merely to develop positive habits, reproducible patterns of behavior that can later be reallocated to tasks of greater importance. The point also was that Karren was at work before me on the third straight Monday, and doubtless thought this proved something, or might yield competitive advantage in the long run. She could not know that I’d already taken a working breakfast up at St. Armands Circle, coffee and French toast and twenty-five minutes of light banter with someone who might, eventually, make me a lot of money. She would also not be aware that on the way over from my home in Sarasota I’d caught up on the weekend’s brand-building and entrepreneurship podcasts (spooled from the Web onto the iPhone, and thence to my car’s meaty sound system), sent five e-mails (drafted before I left the house, edited, and then dispatched while waiting at traffic lights), and updated the status on my LinkedIn, Facebook, and HollaBack pages. The early bird gets the worm, true, but Bill Moore doesn’t mind dining second if the specimen of the phylum Annelida he snares is bigger and juicier as a result.
So, Ms. White, gather the better parking spot while ye may. We’ll see who grows fat in the end.
I braced myself before getting out of the air-conditioned comfort of the Lexus, but the heat still came on like a middle-aged banker bracing a cocktail waitress. Six years in Florida hadn’t yet accustomed me to the way humidity makes the place its bitch, already in position with insidious weight and heft before humans have even hauled themselves out of bed. As I locked the car I glanced at the sky above the sturdy two-story condo blocks all around me and was reassured to see clouds gathering inland. Sooner or later—maybe this afternoon, please God—a storm was going to break, and after that it would become more bearable for at least a day or two.
I strode over to Shore Realty’s little hut, noting that the picture of a recently listed two-bedroom condo had finally made it into the window. It was crooked. Once inside the cool and air-con-dry building, I righted this state of affairs, before turning to the office.
“Morning,” I said, a little louder than necessary—with an air of distraction, too, to make it clear I was not actually starting my working day but already well into my stride.
My voice bounced off the rear wall and came back to me without much to report. Shore Realty’s lair in The Breakers is neither large nor bijou. It’s the smallest outpost of a chain that has more impressive accommodation at the Ocean View Mall halfway up the key, plus additional locations in Sarasota, Bradenton, and Tampa. The bulk of my office’s business comes from reselling units within The Breakers itself—though this was something I had been trying to change.
The working area is a rectangle perhaps eight yards by six (I’ve never actually measured it), with space for three desks: mine, Karren’s—at which she sat, clattering away at her keyboard—and one for Janine, the assistant who spends her days performing support tasks like confirming meetings, misunderstanding basic computer functions, and putting properties in the window, never quite straight. Janine was nowhere to be seen, business as usual for this time of day (and other times, too).
“Back atcha, Billy-boy.”
Karren was sporting her standard getup—smart white blouse and a snug-fitting blue skirt that stopped above the knee, the better to showcase her tennis court–honed calves. Back in the day she’d been a force on the courts, by all accounts, had even considered turning pro. From what I’d seen—we’re afforded complimentary use of the resort’s facilities—she remained sharp at twenty-nine. Like, whatever. I play just enough tennis to hold my own when business demands and to lark around with my wife when she’s in the mood. Winning at sports is not the same as winning in business, just like
The Art of War
is not a corporate how-to manual. You run that beat-up 1980s routine on me and I’m going to stomp you into the ground.
“And Janine is . . . ?”
“Doctor’s. Kid’s got the plague.”
“Again?”
Karren shrugged theatrically, causing her long dark hair to pool up on her shoulders. Just about the only matter on which we absolutely agree is that Janine is basically useless, and her kid actually defective.
“Says she’ll be here by one, cross her heart and hope to diet.”
“I’ll be out again by then. Got a meeting down on Siesta.”
Karren went back to her keyboard and failed to rise to the bait. Point to her, probably, or maybe she simply hadn’t been listening.
When I got to my desk I saw something lying on it. This was easy to spot, as my working area is the tidiest in the Sarasota area, possibly even along the entire gulf side of Florida—though I’ve heard rumors of a guy up in Saint Pete who has nothing on his desk
at all
. Propped in the center of mine was a rectangular card, midway between business and postcard size.
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.
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.
“T
his 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 took 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.”