Dead End Street Read Online Free

talk?”
    â€œAnything for you, Madame President,” Shelby said with a grin. “Sit.” She waved at a chair.
    I pulled the chair closer to her desk. “I just had an odd visit from two people who work for the City. Or maybe one person with the City and another with a non-City agency, but they’re working together. Anyway, I have been informed that the Society owns a building in a blighted portion of the city. I looked like an idiot because I didn’t know we owned
any
real estate, except for the property where we sit. Can you provide any enlightenment?”
    â€œLady, if you don’t know, after you put in several years in my job, how the heck am I supposed to know?”
    â€œWell, I didn’t know during those years, so now we’re even. I will admit that I have some vague memory of a discussion years ago, that in the past a lot of people chose to remember the Society in their wills with real estate ratherthan cold cash. Could be that was their only asset, or maybe they couldn’t unload it and figured their generous gesture would look good in their obituary or whatever. Anyway, my visitors said that somehow one—at least, I hope it’s only one—transaction didn’t get filed properly, so apparently we still own it.”
    â€œAnd the problem is what?” Shelby asked. “Can’t you just sell it now and be rid of it?”
    â€œNothing is ever that simple, Shelby,” I told her. “It’s located in an area where I think I’m pretty safe in saying that there is no active market for property sales. That is, a slum. Maybe if these people hadn’t tracked me down, the property would have defaulted to the city and they could do whatever they wanted. But some eagle-eyed researcher found the mix-up, so now we’re on the hook for it.”
    â€œWhat do they want you to do?”
    â€œThat’s kind of tricky, I think. If I understand it correctly—and mind you, I’ve spent all of half an hour with these people—they kind of dangled the hope that they would work with us to expedite the legal aspects if the Society would throw its weight behind some kind of neighborhood redevelopment effort.”
    â€œPublicly, you mean?” Shelby asked.
    â€œI think so. Kind of add some prestige to their efforts, and maybe give them some historic ammunition in their efforts to rebuild what was once a fine old neighborhood.”
    â€œHmm,” Shelby said thoughtfully. “Is that a bad thing? I mean, the Society would get some visibility, and it would look like we’re fulfilling our mandate to preserve local history. They didn’t ask for money, did they?”
    â€œI told them flat out that we don’t have that kind of money. I guess our only bargaining chip is our standing in the cultural community.”
    â€œWhat happens if we don’t play nice with them?”
    â€œI don’t know. Somebody may really want this property to complete a larger lot for some plan we don’t even know about, although I don’t think anyone will offer to buy it from us. We could give it away, to the city or a private developer, if there is one, or to some kind of community organization, but I don’t know how the board will feel about that. I can’t make an executive decision anyway, so I have to take it to them. If we do nothing, we might get cited and fined for neglecting it. If something were to happen to someone there, we could have some liability. Obviously I have a lot more questions than answers.”
    â€œDid they tell you that?” Shelby asked. “Smells a bit like blackmail.”
    â€œI didn’t get that feeling from either of them. I think they really are trying to do something good.”
    â€œSo why’d you come to me? I know diddly-squat about how Philadelphia government works.”
    Shelby hadn’t lived in Philadelphia for very long, so that wasn’t surprising. “I