Kieffer thinks Talley was silenced forever to keep him from “fingering the big men” behind the state’s land scandals.
“He had talked it over with his wife and he told me he would tell me the next day but he was dead by then.”
Talley, 70, the record indicates, died Nov. 3, 1974, of a heart ailment, 11 days [sic] after being admitted Oct. 21, 1974.
Kieffer recalled that Talley was in a regular room when he called Marge Bedford, the commissioner’s secretary, to ask to visit. Kieffer, at that time, was sales regulation director of the Queen Creek Land & Cattle Co., having left Talley in February 1974.
Bedford told him, the former investigator says, that Talley was out of intensive care but that he’d have to clear a visit with Mrs. Talley. He considered Talley, under whom he served, “a good friend.”
The next day, Kieffer says, he called for Mrs. Talley, at her husband’s side at the hospital, “but somehow I got him.”
To his surprise, “Talley answered and said he would see me the next morning (Sunday) and give me the names,” Kieffer declared. “Next day, he was dead.
“I think he was murdered but I can’t prove it.
“It was too convenient to have died from a heart ailment when he was doing so much better. Out of the intensive care unit.”
Kieffer said he reported on his beliefs at the time to a Phoenix police detective. But the detective told him that, after all, the body already was embalmed and that there was nothing that could be done to determine if Talley was murdered. Police sources claim they are unaware of Kieffer’s report but say that Talley’s body was autopsied. Death certificate details are secret under Arizona law.
J. Fred Talley
Ed took a photograph out of his wallet and put it down on the table to show McCracken. They were in Durant’s, facing the bar with its leather bolster. There were tables of men with documents and legal pads amid glasses of ice water and cocktails, the restaurant red-lit, dim with smoke, crowded even at four o’clock in the afternoon. The photograph showed Ed’s son Zachary gripping a red plastic baseball bat, many times thicker than an ordinary bat, more like a club. You could see the yellowing grass of the backyard, still glistening from the sprinkler head, the anonymous shambles on any Phoenix cul-de-sac in midsummer. Zachary wore a swimsuit and his hair was wet and he didn’t know how to hold the bat, the large size of which was meant to make it easier to hit the ball. He was smiling about the game instead of concentrating on it. Ed let the photograph sit there on the table for a moment after answering McCracken’s questions: the boy’s name, his age. That wasn’t why he’d brought it out.
“We live in a tract house, there’s not much yard,” he said. “You can’t see it in the picture — it would be hard to take a picture with the house in it, because the backyard is so small. I never made any money in the land business like Jim Cornwall did.”
McCracken looked at him with a mild but wakening scorn. He had fair, thinning hair and a slightly doughy face, not what Ed expected a detective to look like. He had the face of a school principal.
“Your son looks like a nice kid,” McCracken said.
“He is. Do you have a son?”
“That’s not what you want to talk to me about, is it?”
“Not right now, no. You’re right.”
“You want to talk to me about how different you are from Jim Cornwall.”
Ed took the photograph back, holding it by the edges. “I don’t have anything to say about Jim Cornwall. What I can do is back up what he says about Warren and Talley.”
He’d had a meeting with Al Sitter, a reporter for the Republic, so he had a pretty good idea of what the grand jury was looking into— the Talley bribes, the loan to George Brooks, but not the Kieffer loan. He told McCracken that it concerned him that Al Sitter somehow always knew the details of the grand jury’s “secret” proceedings and then reported on them in every morning’s newspaper. It concerned him as someone who might want to cooperate now that Talley was dead. He didn’t want his name in the papers, but even more important, he didn’t want his father’s name in the papers. The money he had given to Talley had been pissant stuff. Over four years, he had paid Talley less than $7,000. His share of the James Kieffer loan was a grand total of $650. There was a lot he could tell McCracken about Warren, but that was the extent of his own role in what the papers kept calling “land fraud” and “organized crime.”
“You never actually saw Warren give the money to Talley?” McCracken said.
“No. He asked me to go once and I said no. But what I can show you is a ledger with the monthly payments. The check stubs. I can explain how the money for Kieffer was handled like the money for Talley. I have a memo from Warren telling me to pay Kieffer.”
“What about Rosenzweig?”
“Who?”
“Did you ever meet Harry Rosenzweig?”
“I don’t know anything about Harry Rosenzweig.”
“Other public officials. Goldwater.”
“I think I’m going to stop talking until I have my lawyer with me.”
Warren’s voice on the phone was lighter than he remembered, mellow, a little hoarse at the edges. It was the same. He hadn’t heard it in more than a year.
“I’ve been looking into bail bondsmen,” Warren said. “I thought I’d pass on my recommendations.”
Ed looked at the sand-colored wall of his new office, the mild green filing cabinets, his face gradually stiffening into a meditative squint as he worked out the rationale for this call.
“I guess you know I spoke to the police,” Ed said. “I wonder if you also know that I didn’t reach a deal.”
“You should be careful what you say to those people. For your own sake.”
“They’ll eventually subpoena me, they think. About Talley. I’ve already talked to my lawyer about it.”
“Who’s your lawyer?”
“He said I would risk incriminating myself if I testified, so I’d have to take the Fifth. I assume that’s why you’re calling. You should know better than to call me here.”
“This is all too bad.” Warren sighed. “It really is. We’ll get through it, though. You’ll get through it and I’ll get through it.”
“I’ll take the Fifth. You don’t have to worry about it. Don’t call me here anymore, all right?”
It should have been easier to hang up the phone. It was humiliating: the inflections of Warren’s voice still acted physically on him, like a scent from childhood. He remembered their first meeting beside Warren’s swimming pool seven years ago, Barbara with the silver platter of shrimp, the houses overhanging the mountainside, the Scotch sweating in his hand. I don’t know how you can stand doing taxes every year for some of the people you must have to work for. You don’t seem like the type.
He got a call later from his lawyer, Phil O’Connor. This time it was good news. O’Connor said he had just spoken with Berger’s assistant, Larry Cantor, who told him they had a deal. They were going to give him immunity in exchange for his testimony before the grand jury.
He told the story in the broadest possible terms, and it didn’t sound as serious as it was. The language of taking the Fifth, of getting subpoenaed to a grand jury, of transactional immunity, was not language he could speak to most of the people in his life, so he didn’t speak it. Apart from the fear — and the fear was more easily forgotten than he would have guessed — the story didn’t sound real even to himself. He had done nothing wrong. He wasn’t worried. He didn’t think he had much to tell them that they didn’t already know. Even the word immunity was too strong, so he didn’t use it either. He simply downplayed his role, saying that he couldn’t believe some of the names they were asking him about in preparation for the grand jury.