Page 27 of The Happy Month

At the beginning of each month there was a deposit of $5,000. There was also an automatic payment of $993.16 on the second Tuesday of the month. This guy was living on almost $6,000 a month, and he wasn’t even spending it all. The beginning balance in January 1990 was $2,354. The closing balance was $2,987. I pulled out the January bills and was able to match the amounts for most of them. American Express was the largest bill at $1,789 for December. A number of charges from department stores, which were probably Christmas gifts, seven lunches or dinners it didn’t specify. Two of them at The Ivy, which was a favorite industry haunt. Gasoline for his Mercedes. A weekly charge at Gelson’s, a high-end grocery store. Nearly two hundred each time which seemed like a lot. Was he buying a lot of alcohol? There was also a charge for the florist at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills. That snagged me. I skipped ahead and checked the bills for the next few months. It happened every month. I skipped ahead to the latest date and it was still there. A standing order.

Ronnie came out of 1019. “Hey, look what I found.” He was carrying a medium-sized bowl of matchbooks.

“Cool,” I said, then went and grabbed the Fred Segal bag. “Dump them in here.”

“I want everything in here, FYI. Can you offer them ten thousand for the lot?”

“Ten thousand dollars?”

“Yes. We’ll use some of it to furnish the co-op and then sell the rest. We’ll make enough to pay ourselves back, meaning that we’ll decorate the co-op for free.”

“If it’s worth more than ten thousand, why would they accept that offer?”

“Convenience. It sounds like they have a lot of problems. This is one problem solved.”

“Do we have ten thousand?”

“Kind of.” I knew him well enough to know ‘kind of’ meant credit cards.

“How will wekind ofpay that off?”

“It’s time to refinance the Bennett house.”

The Bennett house was our first house. It was small and cute, and we rented it to a couple of lesbians and their little boy. He continued, “That mortgage is at eight point three five. I think I can get a mortgage for seven and a quarter, so it’s worth it to refi. The value has gone up so we’ll get good terms, and we can pay off the ten grand and a few other things.”

“Okay,” I said. Basically, I left the money stuff to him. “I doubt they’ll take it, but I can offer.”

John came back with our lunch. I had respectable carne asada tacos, a lot of chips and a Coke. Part way through, John asked, “So how big a house did this guy have? Two bedrooms? Three?”

“There are two beds,” I pointed out.

“But he could have easily done something else with a third bedroom. Or even a fourth.”

“I can find out,” Ronnie said, and pulled his cellular phone out of his back pocket. “What’s the address?”

“410 Faring in Holmby Hills.”

He walked away and a moment later I heard him saying, “Hey Margie, can you run a property for me?”

She must have said yes because he gave her the address. I felt like I shouldn’t just sit there listening, so I asked John how his burrito was.

“Not bad, especially for some random place.”

“There’s a place up here everyone goes to. La Casita Grande. It’s great.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“I didn’t know you spent much time in Silver Lake.”

“Oh yeah. There was this guy…”

And then Ronnie was back with us. “Eighteen hundred square feet. Two bedrooms, library, formal dining room, pool, lovely view. Not big for Holmby Hills, obviously. The house sold for over a million. And it’s a tear-down.”

“I guess it pays to be a lawyer,” John said.

“He must have bought it a long time ago,” I said. “Did you find that out?”

“No. Our system only goes back ten or twelve years. Otherwise, I’d know the last time the house changed hands and how much they paid.”