Chapter 6

After I hung up I checked my watch and saw it was 11 a.m. That gave me an hour to run around and do some errands before my meeting with Sylvia. However, I was just locking the door to my apartment when the landlord appeared.

“Jay, I finally caught up with you. Do you realize you’re two months behind in your rent? And since you keep dodging me I’m getting ready to evict you, you know,” he yelled while rushing down the hallway towards me.

I fingered the big cheque in my pocket, smiled and nodded.

“Sure, I guess I did get a bit behind didn’t I? Well, I’m about to fix that. I got a cheque right here and I’m just about to go and cash it. If you can wait until this afternoon I’ll give you cash, enough to catch up with everything.”

“Well, if you say you got the money now. Why don’t you just write me a cheque for it all? That way I can take it to my bank and get things settled right away. How about doing that instead?” The land lord firmly stated.

I could see he was determined to get his money right away and I didn’t blame him. After all, I had been giving him the round around the past couple of months. But now with my $10,000 cheque I could easily settle up with him. Cash or cheque it didn’t matter to me.

He patiently waited while I hunted through my kitchen cabinets looking for my cheque book. I finally found it and with great flourish sat down and wrote one out that covered all arrears and current month’s rent as well.

With that done, I hurried out to my car. I ran it through a car wash to get rid of all the bugs on the grill and windshield. Then I headed for the bank. I sighed with satisfaction as the teller dutifully stamped it and deposited it into my account. Then I made the three late payments on my Charger and withdrew $4,000 cash. That would be enough to pay off the $3,000 to Lucky Louie, give the $300 to Sylvia and still give me some running around money.

Although the $10,000 was almost all gone already I couldn’t help feeling happy. Hell, I haven’t had this much money in months. I felt really rich. I walked back to my Charger and looked at my watch. With still half an hour left before I met Sylvia there was still enough time to meet with Louie and repay his usurious loan. Believe me, he’s one guy you don’t want to be late with when you promise him a payment.

What he calls his office is actually a main floor suite in a run-down apartment building right around the corner from the race track. Louie is a busy man, even with his high interest loan business, so there was a bit of a line up but I finally got into the apartment. As usual he was sitting behind a big desk littered with papers and stacks of money.

On first glance he looks like some character out of a B movie. He’s short, almost as wide as he is tall and wears very expensive but ill-fitting suits with a white, open necked shirt. I don’t think any clothes would fit him properly but who am I to criticize what he wears. He has a full head of neatly combed black hair and large black nerdish looking glasses that make him look owlish. The only thing missing would be a big, fat smelly cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth. I think he believes his get up makes him look like one of those old time gangsters you see in the movies. The only trouble is that he’s a modern day one.

They say the papers strewn across his desk contain the pertinent facts of each of his loans but I don’t know why he needs them because he seems to be able to carry the details of every one of them in his head. Also, it may seem foolish for anyone to have piles of cash lying around in plain sight like that but not for Louie. He’s very well protected by several big, mean looking body guards that are known to carry concealed weapons. There was also his fearsome reputation that keeps all but the most foolhardy from trying to rob him and to date nobody has ever dared to even try it.