Tales of Eviction 2

When our tenants start to complain about one another, I have no idea who to believe.

My boss and a friend bought a house to subdivide into three apartments. When they discovered they had different business expectations, they split the investment: my boss took the back yard and his friend kept the house. I handle the rents as a favor.

One of the tenants had worked for us a cleaning woman, but not a particularly competent one. The apartment owner said he might as well keep using her, since he no longer had anything worth breaking.

She reminds me a bit of the stereotypic lace-curtain Irish, only with a Mexican twist. She wants both middle class respectability and to be the hacienda patroness cum catina proprietor entertaining her neighbors. One of the neighbors, who works as a bouncer, simply tries to politely refuse her invitations to sit around and drink on the patio.

The ice cream man’s a different story.

One of our former employees, who has a rental property, sent him to us. He told me he’d planned to have five men in the house, each contributing to the rent, but could only get three. So we got him.

I got the impression that the others worked for him with push carts, while he sold ice cream bars from a truck. During the summer, they got drunk and loud a few times. The woman I think of as Maggie complained, but as the bouncer said, she was also willing to drink with them, until she wasn’t.

I shrugged. What can you expect when you have a group of men living and working together in an unairconditioned apartment in the heat of summer with no women? I was wrong about one thing. At some point, a woman had moved in with the group.

Things simmered along until a few weeks ago when Maggie and her 12-year-old daughter came in to report they’d called the police the night before. They said things were noisy, and when the police arrived, one of the men had a cut cheek. The ice cream man apparently talked back to the police, and spent the night in jail.

The owner of the house called to ask what had happened. Apparently, Maggie had called him in the night to ask permission to call the police.

I talked to the bouncer the next time he came in, and, by then, Maggie was telling his wife and the ice cream man’s woman that it wasn’t she who’d called the police.

He confirmed it had been noisy, and when the police were around he and his wife had stayed low in their apartment.

His wife was told by the ice cream man’s woman that the police had broken in the back window, found the man’s “employees” hiding in the bathroom, beat up the one and fled. The ice cream man then called 911 and got abusive when the police returned with paramedics.

The bouncer was in an expansive mood, and said the ice cream man did have a temper. He’d come to the bar where he worked, and gotten ugly when he refused to let one of the “employees” enter with a fake ID.

He also said the day after the police visit, he’d seen a woman he knew from the bar at the apartment. She’s in her seventies and comes looking to drink and dance with young men. Since she pays the bills and is well-behaved, they treat her as one of the regulars.

Apparently, she’d bought a cell phone for one of the ice cream man’s “employees,” and he hadn’t paid the bill. She was trying to collect money and threatening that, if she wasn’t paid, she’d report them to her brother who works for immigration.

I have no idea what happened that night, but doubt the police were the ones who broke in. My guess is that they were either henchmen for the good-times girl or someone else who’d been gypped and they may have said they were the police to scare people. I suspect the victim was probably the intended target.

Of course, by the time my boss got there to investigate, everyone had moved out and the ice cream man blamed it all on Maggie. My boss went through his male bonding routine, offered him a better apartment for the same rent as an apology, and yelled at me for suggesting he should be evicted.

When the ice cream came to pay his rent, he brought an interpreter to demand the promised two-bedroom apartment. Since the family in the apartment by boss had promised weren’t moving after all, he demanded the one where the abused woman had lived. I told the interpreter that young children lived in that building and he’d already been too noisy for a family building. When she asked how noisy, I mentioned the police.

The ice cream man came in the next day to pay the rent in another man’s name. I rather suspect the interpreter represented the man he’s to whom he promised to rent the second bedroom and the mention of the police was a surprise.

My problems aren’t over. When the bouncer came in with his rent, he said his 12-year-old son had just moved in with him. Maggie’s daughter’s the same age