Help me understand the real estate deal at the beginning of Salems Lot

Cafe Society
1

Okay. I’m reading Salems Lot for the first time ever. I saw the movie when I was very little and it scared the shit out of me and I never got around to reading the book so now I am. Its been so long since I saw the movie I remember absolutely nothing about the plot other than the floating boy at the window so please don’t spoil anything for me.

Anyway, I just got past the part where RT Straker (RS) comes in and makes the deal to acquire the Marsden house and the old laundry mat with Larry Crockett (LC). This can be found starting on page 89 according to my Kindle.

I’ll paraphrase some and quote some then ask my question:

RS: Hey, I want to buy the Marsden house and that old laundry mat for my associate.
LC: Sure, they are for sale and I can help you with that.
LC:QUOTE “The asking price for the Marsden place is $14k although they could be talked down…”
RS: QUOTE “That is no accord. I have been authorized to pay one dollar”

At this point RS hands LC a folder with a bunch of documents in it. LC is all disturbed by the documents (I’m too dense, ever after rereading the passage twice, as to why).

LC: “These papers…quit claim deed…land title search…my god man, don’t you know that piece of land is worth $1.5M?”
RS: “You piker, It is worth $4M, soon to be worth more…”
LC: “You can have the house for $8.5K and the shop for $16k”

RS: “The land on where the shopping center is built will be yours on fulfillment of 3 conditions”
RS: Sell me the house and laundry mat for $1. Your client in the matter of the house is a land corp in Bangor. The business now belongs to a Portand bank. I’m sure both parties will be agreeable if you make up the difference to the lowest acceptable prices. Minus your commission.

Later LC’s lawyer confirms that the shopping center land was purchased by an outfit called Continental Land and Realty, which was a dummy company with empty offices in New York.

Ok. I captured the relevant pieces above but please feel free to leaf thru your copy of the book to read the 5-6 pages completely if I wasn’t clear enough.

Questions (please answer without spoiling future plot points or tell me to wait till later if it’s coming up):

  1. I don’t understand the significance of the $1 offer. Is RS telling LC he will pay the owners of the 2 properties $1 a piece? Who authorized him to pay $1? His master or the owners of the properties?

  2. Later it sounds like he is telling LC he will pay LC $1 and then LC needs to come up with his own cash to finish the purchase.

  3. Why was LC disturbed by the papers?

  4. Why all of the sudden is LC convinced the property is worth $1.5M? Then RS says it’s worth $4M.

  5. Why doesn’t RS just pay asking price for the 2 pieces of property instead of giving LC the laundry mat land? Then find a trusted agent to pay to deal with his devious taskings later in the book?

  6. What is the significance of the dummy corp?

I’m enjoying the book (though so far nothing sounds familiar from the movie I saw in the mid 80’s). My lack of understanding about this plot point is bothering me though so I wanted to clear it up so I can proceed with the rest of the story.

Thanks! Don’t let me spoil the book for my self if I’m asking too many questions that will be answered in due time though.

2

It’s been a while since I read it, and I don’t have a copy on hand, but I think I can cover the basics for you.

  1. He’s offering $1 for both, as authorized by his master. The reason for that amount is probably a legal requirement; you find lots of references to “one dollar in hand” in real estate. I gather it’s a sort of minimum price for the transaction to recognized as a sale, rather than a gift.

  2. He is. What it boils down to is a bribe. RS wants to buy two properties with minimal paper trail and fuss, and is offering to hand over the deed to a much more valuable property to sweeten the deal. LC would cover the rest of the purchase price out of his own funds. Essentially, LC is buying the properties at regular price and selling them to RS for $1.

  3. LC smells a rat. He’s being offered a multimillion dollar bribe to shortcut paperwork on properties worth a total of less than $30K. The bait is so juicy that’s he automatically looking for the hook.

  4. The plot demands that LC be capable–in his professional capacity–of judging the value of the property described in the paperwork. Presumably it’s a sizable commercial lot in an area he knows is booming. Being the sharp operator he is, he lowballs his estimate at $1.5M, but RS knows better, and quotes an accurate current appraisal to show he’s not a sucker.

  5. There are 3 pieces of property in play: the house, the laundry, and the shopping center site. RS wants to trade the third property for the other two. This is the tail end of a series of misdirections. He’s already “cleaned” the ownership of the site he’s offering so that it would be difficult or impossible to connect it to him or his master. Now he wants to swap that to LC to establish a final layer of concealment: a cash deal with LC, who knows there’s something shady about it, and will make an effort to keep the deal quiet to protect himself. RS is the “trusted agent” dealing with the devious stuff.

  6. More of RS’s obfuscation. The dummy company was probably the last in a chain of shell companies that existed only to hold and transfer the property around, hiding who actually owned it.

3

Doh! You filled in one piece of the puzzle for me. That there are 3 properties in play. For some reason I thought the laundrymat was going to be the future site of the shopping mall mentioned by RS. That helps clear up alot of my confusion. Thanks. Alot of the other aspects don’t make much sense to me though. Why not give LC all the money to buy he properties? People in town are supposed to assume LC bought the properties for himself?

Im afraid I’m jumping the gun asking questions about a book I’m still reading so don’t let me spoil anything for myself if it looks like I’m about too!

4

No, it would be pretty obvious to people in town that LC wasn’t making personal use of the property. The point was to hide the transaction from anyone from elsewhere who might be trying to trace RS and his boss’s activities. I’m also not certain how much cash–as opposed to property deeds and such–they actually have available.

I don’t know how much more we can go into it without some spoilers.

5

Well Cubsfan - I’m glad I wasn’t the only one confused by this passage in the book. I’m also reading it for the first time. And, like you, I soiled myself when the movie aired on TV as a kid.

Thanks for asking the question and thanks to Balance for answering it!

All the best,
Streetgang

6

Laundromat. Laundromat. Laundromat. By analogy to an Automat. Having nothing to do with a Mat. :dubious::stuck_out_tongue:
We now return you to your original thread already in progress. :wink: