Invasion of Privacy

die for them.”
    “That where you got hit?”
    “Hit? I didn’t. Least, not by something you could see.” Elmendorf unzipped the sweatshirt and spread it open with each hand. The rosy blotch grew darker and uglier as it swept toward his waist. “I was exposed. Lots of us were.”
    “Exposed to what?”
    “The Army doesn’t know, or at least it isn’t saying. Guys started getting sick over there, but because most of us weren’t there long, the thing didn’t hit us till we got back. Headaches, nerves, rashes like this here. Plus aches in the joints so bad you’d think they were engines running without oil, just seizing up on you. How come I have to use the braces most of the time. And how come I can’t go back to photography. Man, there are days when I can’t even hold a newspaper much less adjust the settings on a camera.”
    “What about the VA?”
    “The Department of Veterans Affairs? They’re a joke. They had all of us register, we had any symptoms. But the Defense Department’s saying there isn’t any ‘syndrome,’ and without a ‘syndrome’ they can’t treat us and won’t pay us. Thousands of soldiers now, but they say they aren’t responsible because we didn’t really get infected, or whatever, over there.”
    I thought about Agent Orange, and how long it took those vets to receive any—and meager—satisfaction through the courts. Good Luck, Norman . I said, “So you can’t work at all?”
    “Not with the aches, man. They just dominate the day, you know?”
    I didn’t like the feeling I was getting about Elmendorf, that big-talk, no-action sense you develop about some troopers in bars. I took out two of the interview forms and handed one to him.
    “What’s this?”
    “As I told your daughter, I’m looking into whether another condo complex should switch to the Hendrix company for its management, and I’ve been asking your neighbors a few questions to assess your satisfaction with how Hendrix is managing Plymouth Willows.”
    “Okay by me. I don’t exactly have anything else to do.”
    “NAME?”
    “Elmendorf, Norman, NMI.”
    “For ‘No Middle Initial.’ ”
    “Right. Guess that didn’t change, either.”
    “Change?”
    “From your war, I mean.”
    I nodded. “HOMETOWN?”
    “ Lowell , like I said.”
    “EDUCATION?”
    “ Lowell Tech. They call it ‘ University of Massachusetts —Lowell’ now, but it was just Lowell Tech when I went there.”
    “Your wife?”
    “We’re divorced. She took off when I got back from the Saud. Basically abandoned Kira, the cunt.”
    I decided to skip the rest of the SPOUSE questions. “How long ago did you move here?”
    “About six years. Pioneers, like. First purchasers from the guy who developed Plymouth Willows.”
    As with Lana Stepanian, I wanted to ease slowly toward the Andrew Dees questions, hiding them among the others. “One of your neighbors told me about the problems he had.”
    “Which neighbor was that?”
    I couldn’t see it did any harm, but... “I’m telling everybody I talk to that their answers will stay confidential.”
    “Doesn’t matter. Lana’s the only one here long enough to really fill you in. She’s a nice girl, only kind of uptight about life. You know, a place for everything and everything in its place? I don’t see how you can five that way, myself.”
    Explained his living room. “I understand the Hendrix company was brought in by the C.W. Realty Trust.”
    “If that’s the name of the people who bailed out Quentin’s estate, yeah.”
    “Quentin?”
    “Yale Quentin, the guy who built Plymouth Willows.”
    “And he’s dead now?”
    “Four, five years. There was some kind of stink about fraud, him supposedly making up dummy buyers to fool the banks he borrowed off. I even remember him coming to the paper I worked for, checking me out with the editor so he could show the banks he was legit. Guess he wasn’t, though.”
    “How come?”
    “Well, he killed himself over the mess.”
    Lana Stepanian would probably classify suicide as “gossip.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “Yeah, brand-new Caddy, too.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “Quentin. He took his car over that ocean bluff you pass on the left just before our turn. Smashed the Caddy and himself on the rocks down by the water.”
    I nodded, bringing Elmendorf back to the form. “Any FAMILY MEMBERS visit you here?”
    Elmendorf looked up from his copy. “If you mean over-nighters, no. I got a brother comes by for dinner