“He knows about Talley,” Warren went on. “He knows about Talley and now he knows that Cornwall is talking to this cop, McCracken, telling him God knows what, and all Kieffer wanted was twenty-six hundred dollars. It’s already done, I already gave him the money. I’m asking for your help. I don’t want a bunch of people pulling their money out of the business just because they’ve heard some rumors, or read a story in a newspaper. Cornwall gave me thirteen hundred — that’s half. All I’m asking from you is six hundred and fifty.”
Sabbath dinner. A challah bread, a glass of Cutty Sark for the men, candles but no wine. There was noodle kugel with raisins, glazed chicken, green beans with sliced almonds. In a closet off the kitchen, with its footstool for the high cabinets, were two “For Sale” signs painted with the words L & B Realty: L & B for Louis and Belle Lazar, their realty agency, more a hobby than a business. I remember the realty signs like another toy in a house full of toys. I remember a great deal about that house. My grandmother collected china dolls in different period costumes. There was one dressed as a Beefeater, one as Anne Boleyn in a purple gown with an extra finger on one of her hands. My grandfather loved sports and kept his cousin Billy’s boxing gloves as a memento of him — Billy, a boxer in the army in World War II, a Jewish boxer. I have the gloves now in my own closet at home.
“It’s nothing serious,” Ed told Lou after dinner. “Just some nonsense with the new tax laws. We have to move some money around. The usual song and dance with the IRS.”
His father wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at the sealed envelope addressed to L & B Realty.
“Just cash the check and bring it to Ned’s,” Ed said. “He’ll take care of it from there.”
He willed the scene into normalcy by simply watching his father, not saying anything until the strangeness passed.
The show of weakness, the show of qualms. There was the way Ed had stood at the window, as if he couldn’t look Warren in the eye. There was the concentration on his face as he considered what Warren really meant by the loan to Kieffer. He thought about it for a long time afterward. He thought about James Cornwall talking to McCracken and he thought about the impasse with CMS, about James Kieffer bringing the news that Chino Grande was an illegal subdivision.
It was $650. It was nothing. He saw that if he stood on principle, then everyone would have no choice but to turn against him — Warren, Cornwall, Kieffer, Talley, possibly several others he didn’t even know about yet.
“I think you should wash your own money from now on,” Warren had told him, when he’d finally capitulated. “I don’t think you want my help with that anymore. I think it would be better for you if you handled the money for Talley on your own.”
The author as a newborn with his father and grandfathers, Ervin Berman (left) and Louis Lazar (right)
Lou Lazar left the bank with the envelope of cash and got back into his car. He put the $200 in the glove box and started the ignition and drove slowly to the office building on Central Avenue. It was Tuesday, March 7, 1972. He had never heard of J. Fred Talley, had no idea what the $200 was for. The office building had an elevator even though there were only three floors, and on floor three you could have been in a dental complex: a gray carpeted hallway with freshly painted graphic designs on the walls, windows hung on the inside with white venetian blinds and stenciled in black with the names of the businesses. When the secretary let Lou into Warren’s office, Warren was on the phone. He didn’t hang up, just raised his eyebrows, his hand over the receiver, and indicated that Lou could leave the envelope on the desk.
“Fence-posting.” “Hanging paper.” Selling land to a stranger who was using a false name, or selling the same land to two or three different people in different states. Manufacturing contracts and then retailing the mortgages to still another person through a chain of corporations. These were some of the procedures Lonzo McCracken had learned about in the past year from Tony Serra.
Congratulations on your investment program with Western World Development, official broker of the Great Southwest Land and Cattle Company.
In a volatile market, mortgage securities are your safest, smartest bet for the future.
Lots are going fast in our scenic Beaver Valley subdivision.
Mr. and Mrs. Craig from Hannibal, Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. LaMotte from Utica, New York. Mr. and Mrs. West from Burnsville, Minnesota. They’d been coming to McCracken’s office for the past month or so with their paperwork in accordion files, their fear like resentment in their eyes, telling him the same story they had now recited three or four times to different, unhelpful officials. Two quarter-acre lots near Wilcox, no deed ever sent, just tax forms and a payment booklet. Eleven payments made, then the mortgage reassigned to something called the Bemis Corporation, then the news that there was no deed, not even a lot, or maybe there were three buyers for the same lot, all of them still responsible for the payments, the checks due each month to Bemis or First Bank of Michigan or Spectrum Enterprises or the Franklin Bank of Texas. McCracken would take down their statements on a carbon form. They had written letters, the buyers would tell him: to the land companies, to the Real Estate Department, to the attorney general, to HUD. Did they have copies of these letters? No, they had not thought to make copies of the letters.
James Cornwall sat in the coffee shop, looking annoyed by some mild physical pain. He wore a linen suit with a tie and matching pocket square. He had ordered the steak sandwich, but he wasn’t eating it and it sat before him as if that had been his intention all along. “What did Serra tell you?” he asked.
McCracken lowered his gaze, then looked Cornwall in the eye. “He said he had permission to turn Warren in. That was the phrase he used. I guess he meant permission from who he works for.”
Cornwall looked across the restaurant, his eyes steady, sightless, his mouth a little open. They had always joked that Serra was “mini-Mafia,” but it had always been a joke.
McCracken opened his hand beside his plate. “I’m trying to help you,” he said. “I need a copy of the books. That’s the only way we can go forward.”
“I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.”
“Then I’ll get a warrant.”
“I need to talk to you,” Cornwall said, standing in the doorway of the bedroom with his suit jacket still on, his unknotted tie around his neck. His wife lay in bed with the ten o’clock news on. He had talked to McCracken again — she knew and didn’t want to discuss it anymore. She scratched the back of her neck, watching President Nixon campaign.
“He said he wants a copy of the books,” Cornwall said. “He needs proof. I told him I couldn’t do it — if I did that, he’d have me in a corner.”
She moved her hand as if to brush something off the blanket. “So then we’re back where we started.”
“I was thinking I’d like to get out of Phoenix,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’d like us to move back to Eugene.”