45. Interview with Nicholas Freeman: Part 1
Nicholas Freeman is the property manager of Forest Grove Apartments, the complex Anthony Stephens resided in during his time in Tallahassee. The office at Forest Grove is a two room suite with advertisements pasted on all the walls in the main room above two couches and a desk. Mr. Freeman is in his mid-thirties and sits behind this desk now, straightening his tie before folding his hands together and smiling. There is a bag full of mail next to the desk which Mr. Freeman glances at.
6 July 2011
– Tenant mail. [Mr. Freeman chuckles] Was just about to go put it in their boxes before you came in.
– Yes, it’s part of the job.
– This complex is owned by the umbrella company CampusPad Management, so they set the rules. I have nothing to do with that part of operations.
– We used to ask the postal workers if they could just put the mail in the slots themselves, but then we began receiving complaints about misplaced letters, mail sitting on the ground in the mail room, just a big hassle overall. And I don’t blame the postal workers; they have one hell of a job to do. It’s just—a few years ago the higher-ups at regional decided it would be best if the property offices received a daily bag containing the entire complex’s mail and office staff could put it in the boxes themselves. Though I can’t say I was too happy about this decision, it’s part of the job so I deal with it.
– Well—[Mr. Freeman shrugs, then leans in and lowers his voice a bit] I will say though, the same people who made the decision also decided, around the same time, that they were going to cut the entire CampusPad Tallahassee staff by twenty-five percent, which amounted to one less person in each office of every complex in the city. They said it was temporary. [Mr. Freeman shakes his head, smiling grimly] That was about five years ago. At our property, there is now only me and one leasing consultant, Kristina, in the next room. [Mr. Freeman indicates the room adjacent to his office, where a bright-faced Asian woman waves and smiles] We both work six days a week, and one of our duties during those hectic work weeks is to put away the mail. [Mr. Freeman leans back and begins picking at his nails] There’s a bit of an upside, though. After a while of doing it, I noticed that people receive some pretty interesting stuff.
– All types of mail in the tenant’s boxes. And I’m not going to lie, I look through it. I don’t open anything, nothing like that. And I didn’t pay attention at first. But then I realized it’s fairly entertaining and it makes the time go by faster.
– No. It’s perfectly legal as long as I don’t open anything. Like I said, I’m just looking. I can level with you, right?
– Okay, example: apartment 6H, a man named Schumacher, he has a subscription to Playboy, Hustler and—get this—Playgirl. [Mr. Freeman pauses and chuckles] Playboy and Playgirl both.
– Last year had these three guys—Easton, Rodriguez, can’t remember the third guy’s name but I know the Easton ones first name was Sean, he used to give me the rent check and pick up his magazines—who had subscriptions to what seemed like every video game magazine on the planet. I mean, I couldn’t even put their mail in the box half the time, I’d have to leave a note in the box for them to come in here and pick it up. And there’s this other young man who lives in 3B now—where your Anthony Stephens used to live actually—who gets an envelope every two weeks filled with cash. There’s never a return address on it either.
– Odd, isn’t it? I’ll hold each letter up to the light and see a stack of hundreds in there and wonder if he’s never heard of Western Union. Ridiculous.
– I want to reiterate: I’m not doing anything wrong, I just look at it. I don’t open anything, touch anything, nothing. And sometimes it becomes advantageous to the corporation when I do. For instance, getting on the subject of Mr. Stephens, I remember specifically how I caught on to his act.
– Yeah, I remember him perfectly. I was putting the mail away one day and I saw a change of address confirmation form made out to his apartment, 3B.
– You know the forms. If you go online and change the address you want your mail delivered to, they forward all your mail to that new address. But they send a confirmation notice to you first, just to make sure it’s really you making the request. Stephens got a confirmation, said that his mail would immediately be forwarded to a P.O. Box in—Boca, I believe it was. So I put it in his box and didn’t think too much about it until I got back to the office. Then I started running it all over in my head like, well, why would Stephens change his address?
– It was only spring back then, see? This is a college town, with a set schedule. Leases aren’t up until August, the end of the summer semester. And he hadn’t notified us of anything. I brushed it off anyways, thinking that it was nothing. Until I went to put mail in the boxes the next day and checked his box just to see, and the notice was gone. So, he checked his mail. Then later, I noticed that there was no mail for Stephens anymore. Nothing. Not even one of those ad catalogues that everybody throws away as soon as they get them.
– So, a week before rent is due, I decide to go up and knock on Stephens’ door to hand-deliver his bill to him. Perfectly legal to do that. But nobody answers his door. I’m not allowed to enter the apartment without his permission or three days notice, so I taped his bill to the door, went back down to the office and get a NTE—that’s Notice to Enter—went back up and taped that to the door as well.
– I passed by the next day and both the bill and the notice were still there. When I entered the apartment a couple days after that, the furniture was the only thing left. Seems he’d cleared out what he could carry and left everything else behind.
Who Is Anthony Stephens? 
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