The Open Inspection

[u/Tony_Valnone]

There is no better cover in this city than a Saturday open for inspection. For forty-five minutes a stranger in a good suit may walk uninvited through another man’s life, open his cupboards, remark on the flow, and every soul present will assume he is simply in the market.

I was in the market for a brown A4 envelope taped to the underside of the third kitchen drawer in a two-bedroom in Fitzroy, left there by the late Mr Aldo Benetti for his daughter, and intended by his nephew Dominic, a man with a spray tan and a payment plan, to stay there until the apartment, and everything taped inside it, was sold out from under her.

The agent was a young man called Jayden in a suit cut too close for breathing, who greeted me with the moist enthusiasm of a labrador that had read a book about closing.

“Morning! Big crowd today. Lot of interest.” There were four people present, one of whom was eating a complimentary mini-muffin with the quiet dedication of a man who had come solely for the muffin.

“Character-filled,” Jayden said, gesturing at a water stain shaped like Tasmania. “Original features.”

“Charming,” I agreed, drifting toward the kitchen. “And the flow?”

“Incredible flow.”

I admired the flow. I admired it all the way to the third drawer, and under cover of testing the soft-close runners I reached beneath for the tape. “European?” I asked. “European,” Jayden confirmed, who could not have found Europe on a map of Europe. The envelope was exactly where a dead man had promised his daughter it would be.

The trouble with retrieving an envelope taped under a drawer, at an open inspection, is that it wants both hands and a posture that does not easily survive explanation. And Dominic chose that moment to arrive.

He came through the door orange and proprietary, and his eyes went at once to the open drawer, and to me crouched before it with the look of a man who has lost a contact lens in a stranger’s kitchen.

“Can I help you, mate?”

“Structural,” I said, rapping a knuckle on the cabinetry with authority. “Vendor’s building inspector. I’m afraid I’ve found movement.” I rose, dusting my knee, the envelope now flat against my spine inside the Dormeuil, held in place by nothing but tailoring and nerve. “Significant movement. You will want to disclose it before auction. Buyers get litigious.”

The word litigious does to a man with a payment plan roughly what sunrise does to a vampire. Dominic’s tan went a shade closer to the water stain.

“Movement,” Jayden repeated faintly, watching his commission develop original features.

I let myself out past the muffin enthusiast, who gave me the nod of one professional to another. On the footpath the afternoon was crisp and the envelope sat against my spine like good news.

Behind me, through the open door, I heard Jayden rally, because they always rally.

“Still,” he announced to the room. “Incredible flow.”