Condominium

Free Condominium by John D. MacDonald Page A

Book: Condominium by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online
Authors: John D. MacDonald
into the big comfortable armchair across from her. She went to the door and said, “Hey, Bonny, no calls, okay?” She closed the door and went behind her desk, leaned back in her chair, shook a match out and grinned at him. “Big mystery, huh?”
    “So far.”
    “Hmmm. The guard is up. Sweetie, relax. I’m going to try to do you some good, even though I shouldn’t, I guess. It could be a question of ethics. But it is also a question of friendship. We’re friends?”
    He smiled. “So far.”
    “The thing is, maybe I’d be doing you too small a favor for it to matter too much to you. I mean you talked about being lacerated, but you could have been sort of kidding. You
are
a partner. Are you really hurting, or were you kidding?”
    He asked for scratch paper. She slid a yellow pad over to him. “These are guesstimates, but close,” he said. He worked it out. “Cash down on the three, eighteen thousand. Cash for furnishing the three apartments, about twenty-two thousand. Call it forty invested. Total outstanding mortgages at this time, about a hundred and twenty thousand. Annual interest charges, about ten thousand five hundred. Annual assessment about three thousand. Repairs and maintenance, call it fifteen hundred. So that meanstotal carrying costs of about fifteen thousand, plus reduction of the principal amount of the mortgages.”
    He showed her the figures and said, “The legal fees I earn go into the kitty, and the partners split it all up each year according to a formula which favors the guys who’ve been aboard the longest. So it isn’t exactly all that great. I’ll admit it. The apartments are a real drain. I wake up in the middle of the night and wonder why I got into such a thing. It’s going to make me old before my time. And some of the money was my wife’s: ten thousand of the twenty-two we put into decorating. Nancy had fun doing the decorating and buying the furniture. But with no rentals, it isn’t fun anymore. We’ve been jabbing at each other about it. Tales out of school. Sorry.”
    “You’ve told me just what I have to know. Really. All kidding aside, it wasn’t a good investment, Greg.”
    “I bought one at Shoreline four years ago, paid forty and sold it for fifty-eight. I guess it made me overconfident or something.”
    “Look, I was never very high on Golden Sands. It seemed to me there aren’t enough apartments to support the facilities. I had a client seven months ago. Stan Wasniak. I tried to find the right place for him and his wife. He knew I was a little bit dubious about Golden Sands, but his wife flipped so badly over it, I had to close or lose it. Wasniak read me pretty good. I ran into him yesterday. He says that as of the first of June, it is
really
going to hit the fan. He’s an officer of the Association. He told me they’ve been over all the financial records and there is just no way they can operate that thing without more than doubling the monthly assessment,
plus
a double assessment in June to take up the slack.”
    His mouth sagged. “Double? From three thousand to six thousand a year for those three of mine? God, that really kicks it in the head. I can’t make out at all.”
    “The way rentals are going, no. You can’t. Even without that extra, I don’t think you can make out.”
    “Have you got some kind of answer?”
    “Yes, but you aren’t going to like it. It could be called biting the bullet. You are a young man with a good profession. I’ve been around a long time. I was divorced when I was twenty-two, and I’ve made out because I’ve got money sense. I manage a lot of property for a lot of people. I have seen too many guys go through too much agony trying to save things, only to lose them in the end. Sweetie, my old battle wounds tell me that Golden Sands is going sour. I’ve seen some of them go that way, and it isn’t pretty. As your friend, and your volunteer financial manager, I think you ought to dump those three just as fast as you

Similar Books

Cowgirl Up!

Carolyn Anderson Jones

Orca

Steven Brust

Boy vs. Girl

Na'ima B. Robert

Luminous

Dawn Metcalf

Alena: A Novel

Rachel Pastan

The Fourth Motive

Sean Lynch

Fever

Lara Whitmore