Chapter 7: What Was Already There
I had spent three hours the night before going through public records.
It hadn't been difficult.
Gerald Marsh's name was attached to enough filings that once I started pulling threads, they came easily.
Two code violation citations in the past four years — one for inadequate heating in a ground-floor unit, one for a plumbing issue that had gone unaddressed for eleven months before a tenant finally escalated it to the city.
Both citations had been resolved on paper.
Whether they'd been resolved in practice was a different question.
One small claims case, filed by a former tenant eighteen months ago, alleging wrongful withholding of a security deposit.
The case had been settled before a ruling.
The amount wasn't public, but the filing was.
And one complaint — unresolved, still open — filed eight months ago with the city's housing authority by a tenant in the same building as Eloise.
The complaint cited habitability concerns.
It had been acknowledged and assigned a case number.
Nothing had happened since.
I showed Eloise all of it.
She read in silence.
When she finished, she sat back.
"I didn't know about the housing authority complaint," she said.
"Your neighbor filed it.
Unit 3B."
"Mrs.
Okafor." Eloise said the name quietly.
"She mentioned something about the heat last winter.
I didn't know she'd filed."
"She did.
And the case is still open, which means the housing authority already has a file on this property." I paused.
"If another complaint were added to that file — from a different tenant, or from a neighboring homeowner with documented evidence — it would be harder to ignore."
Eloise looked at the screen.
"You want to file a complaint."
"I want to support you filing one.
Or filing one myself, about the conditions I can speak to directly — the state of the property from the outside, the history of Gerald's responsiveness, the pattern the public records already show." I paused.
"I'm not a lawyer.
I don't know exactly how far this goes.
But I know that a landlord who uses a logged complaint to retaliate against a tenant for a matter the complainant already withdrew — that's something a housing authority tends to care about."
"Retaliation," Eloise said slowly.
"You called Gerald before I did.
You told me he called you twenty minutes before you came over to my house.
That was the same morning I filed the complaint.
He called you before he had any conversation with me.
Before I had any chance to provide context." I turned the laptop back toward me.
"He moved fast.
Faster than someone who was simply following procedure."
Eloise was quiet for a long moment.
"If I do this," she said, "and it doesn't work—"
"Then you're in the same position you're in right now," I said.
"Six weeks, no renewal, looking for somewhere else."
"If I do this and it makes him angry—"
"He's already used his leverage.
The non-renewal letter is already sent." I looked at her.
"What else can he do?"
She thought about that.
"I need to talk to Mrs.
Okafor," she said.
"That's a good place to start."
Eloise stood up.
She picked up her coffee, finally, and drank the last of it cold.
"I owe you an apology," she said.
"A real one.
Not the version I gave you by the pool."
"You don't—"
"I do." She set the mug down.
"I treated you like an obstacle.
Every time you called, every time you asked me to stop — I made you into the problem so I didn't have to sit with the fact that I was doing something wrong.
That wasn't fair to you."
I didn't say anything.
"And I'm sorry," she said.
"For all of it."
I nodded.
"I know you are."
She picked up the letter from Gerald and folded it back into thirds.
"I'll go talk to Mrs.
Okafor today," she said.
"And then I'll call the housing authority."
She was almost to the door when I said, "Eloise."
She turned.
"Bring your kids Saturday," I said.
"Whatever happens with Gerald — that invitation still stands."
She held the letter against her chest.
"Thank you," she said.
She left.
I sat at the table for a while after she was gone, thinking about the open complaint on the housing authority's website.
Case number 2024-HR-4471.
Assigned.
Unresolved.
Waiting.
I picked up my phone and called Dan.
"I need to tell you what's been happening," I said when he answered.
"I figured," he said.
"Start from the beginning."
I did.
When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.
"So you went from wanting to teach a neighbor a lesson," he said, "to filing a housing complaint against her landlord."
"More or less."
"Okay," he said.
"What do you need from me?"
That was Dan.
Always that.
"I need you to look at something tonight when you get home," I said.
"I found Gerald's property management license registration.
There's a renewal application on file from last year.
And there's a section on that application that asks whether the applicant has any unresolved housing authority complaints."
A pause.
"And he checked no," Dan said.
"He checked no," I said.
The line was quiet.
"That's not just a housing violation," Dan said.
May you like
"No," I said.
"It's not."
