Victims Read Free Page A

repairing washing machines and dryers for Sears, what the army inculcated in me came in handy: Only one way to do a job: right. Machine needs three screws, you don’t put in two.”
    I said, “The same goes for boxing.”
    “Pardon?”
    “Your hands. I used to do karate, you pick up the signs someone else is into martial arts.”
    “Martial arts?” said Belleveaux. “Nah, none of that for me, I just did a little sparring in the army, then a little more when I got out, light welterweight, used to be skinny. Busted my septum three times and my wife, she was my girlfriend back then, said Stan, you keep scarring yourself to the point where you’re ugly, I’m going to go find myself a pretty boy. She was kidding. Maybe. I wanted out anyway, what kind of life is that, getting knocked around, feeling dizzy for days? The money was terrible.”
    He drank some Coke. Licked his lips.
    Milo said, “So what can you tell us about Vita Berlin?”
    “What can I tell you,” Belleveaux echoed. “That’s a complicated question.”
    “Why’s that, sir?”
    “She wasn’t the easiest … okay, look, I don’t want to be speaking bad of the dead. ’Specially someone who—what happened to her. No one deserves that. No one, no matter what.”
    I said, “She had a difficult personality.”
    “So you know what I’m talking about.”
    I didn’t deny it. “Being her landlord could get complicated,” I prompted.
    Belleveaux picked up the soda can. “Does what I tell you go in some kind of record?”
    Milo said, “There’s a problem with that?”
    “I don’t want to get sued.”
    “By who?”
    “Someone in her family.”
    “They’re difficult as well?”
    “Don’t know,” said Belleveaux. “Never met them. I just believe in being prepared, ounce of prevention and all that.”
    “No particular reason you’re worried about being sued.”
    “No, but those kinds of things,” said Belleveaux. “Traits. Orneriness. Runs in families, right? Like Emmaline. My mother-in-law. Her sisters are all like her, scrappy, always ready to tussle. It’s like stepping into a cage of badgers.”
    “Vita Berlin threatened to sue you?”
    “About a million times.”
    “What for?”
    “Anything that bothered her,” said Belleveaux. “Leaky roof, she doesn’t get a call-back in an hour, I’ll sue you. Torn carpet, I’m at risk of tripping and breaking my neck, fix it fast or I’ll sue you. That’s why I got irked when she demanded I show up for the toilet and wasn’t there when she said she’d be. That’s why I decided to use my key and go in there and fix it. Even though I knew she’d call me up and bitch about entering the premises without her permission. Which the landlord association says I can do at my discretion for just cause. Which includes reasonable repairs requested by the tenant. Turns out the toilet was fine.”
    Milo said, “You went into the bathroom?”
    “I listened while I was looking at her. I know it’s crazy but I couldn’t move for a few seconds, just stood there trying not to hurl my breakfast. And it was quiet, toilet’s out of whack you hear it. So I thought about that: It wasn’t even broken.”
    I said, “Vita enjoyed giving you a hard time.”
    “Don’t know if she enjoyed it, but she sure did it.”
    “Did you try to evict her?”
    Belleveaux laughed. “No grounds, that’s the way the law works. To get evicted, a tenant’s just about got to …” He stopped short. “I was going to say they’ve got to kill someone. Oh, man, this is terrible.”
    I said, “Seven years, eight months.”
    “I bought the building four years five months ago, she came with it. I thought that meant good, long-term stable tenant. Then I learned different. Basically, she thought she owned it and I was her janitor.”
    “Entitled,” I said.
    “That’s a nice word for it,” he said.
    “Cranky lady.”
    “Okay,” he said, “I’ll come out and say it: She was a miserable specimen, didn’t have