Running Mates

During that same general period a business associate remembers Berry telling him about traveling to Cuba for recreational purposes, going there by way of Mexico City under an assumed name while Nandy vacationed on her own in Paris. Asked whether he has ever visited Cuba, Berry replied with a flat no, and requested no explanation for the question.

Although Berry didn't volunteer it, a source says one of the less savory aspects of his business was the purchase and quick resale of low-income apartment complexes. This person remembers Berry spending part of his time collecting rents from substandard dwellings full of undocumented immigrants.

"Michael had these people over a barrel. He was basically a slumlord and charged them to live in squalid conditions, and they couldn't complain about it."

Berry denies that. "No, that's not true. I mean, they were not River Oaks properties, but by the same token I didn't check the immigration status, but I feel certain the residents were not illegal aliens."

Berry admits he did collect rents until he hired a collector. "At one point, the company was pretty small. I was fixing doors and changing locks and replacing carpet. So, yeah, I did all that myself."

One of the complexes he purchased was on Brandt Street in east Montrose. Resident Morgan Mull remembers meeting Berry when he bought the dilapidated 30-unit complex in early 2000.

"When he first bought the property he was around quite a bit, fixing it up a little," recalls Mull. "He was very affable, nice. Went through all these paint chips to see what kind of color would be the best, which I thought was kind of odd."

Later, Mull says, he noticed suspected dope dealers and prostitutes moving into vacant units. He is convinced that Berry quickly filled the complex to give the impression to potential buyers that it had full occupancy. He sold the apartments to a young woman as the situation worsened.

According to Houston police records, calls to the apartments for a variety of complaints ranging from drug dealing to prostitution to burglary surged in the last months of Berry's ownership, and peaked after the new owner took over, with an average of 28 calls a month. By comparison, police were called to the complex only four times in the first six months of this year.

A neighbor who asked not to be identified says an ad hoc committee was formed to get the complex cleaned up. "Berry had filled it with almost anyone who could pay the rent so he could show this high occupancy rate and income stream. He claimed he didn't know anything about it and it was his manager that did it."

Mull says the manager told him the exact opposite: that Berry had produced the renters and the manager had nothing to do with it.

Berry says that he had no neighborhood complaints before selling, and that he worked with residents afterward to try to clean up the property. He insists the problems did not originate with the tenants he put in the building, but rather from street crime and "walk-up traffic" in the neighborhood.

By then, Berry had begun phasing out his real estate activities to begin a new career thrust: running for City Council.

One of the neighbors to his former property says, "I thought if Berry couldn't run a 20-something-unit apartment complex, how in the world can he run the city of Houston?"

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In the fall of 2000, Houston political consultant Nancy Sims was managing Eric Andell's re-election race for his then-appellate court bench. On the campaign trail, she met an eager volunteer, Michael Berry, who began tagging along with Andell. He was flattered by Berry's attention, but the wary Sims saw something else.

"He was a very ambitious young man anxious to meet powerful people," remembers Sims. "He mostly accompanied Eric everywhere he could so that he could meet his friends."

Her next encounter with Berry was secondhand. He'd began preparing his run for City Council. Sims heard from a Houston Chronicle reporter that Berry had said he'd hired Sims as a political consultant.

Sims had not even submitted a proposal to his campaign, much less talked to him about it. "When I was in that business I did not agree to work for a candidate until we had done an interview with him."

Still, the reports kept coming from people who had talked to Berry and were told Sims was representing him. "If it was convenient for him, he would tell people that," says Sims, who suspects Berry dropped other consultants' names as well. "If he thought someone's name would help him with a certain person, he would use it."

When Berry eventually called, she told him she was concerned about his using her name. Sims says they agreed to continue the discussion when she returned from a holiday trip.