California Gold (32 page)

“Health and cleanliness are pleasing to God, Wyatt. I pray nightly that your body will be clean and healthy forever, my sweet boy. Swallow this.”

She was calling to him from the orange grove, and snarling, he went over the rope, scrabbled and clawed his way up to the Joshua trees. Mack hadn’t changed the oranges, goddamn him. The fruit was brown and withered.

Wyatt tore the oranges from the trees, hurling them every which way. Most of them rolled toward the street, and soon the slope was covered with oranges bouncing and caroming downhill.

“Wasted my time on this place. Too many problems. Too many rules. Got to be easier ways. Not here, though. Not here,” he shouted to all those who’d conspired to defeat him: Mack, Mother, Carla, creditors. “Not here—the hell with this place.”

When he came to his senses again, he was standing in the middle of the dry canal. Snakes of wind-driven sand and soil writhed past his feet. Mother appeared farther down the canal, a bottle of milky calomel in her hand. She held it out to him with the tenderness and pride of someone serving a fine meal. Mother was right: Health was everything. You could sell health in California, but not here. San Solaro was unhealthy.

“The hell with this place. The hell with you.” Strange echoes of his cries threaded through the wind’s keen—or were they in his head? He reached for the wind to choke and silence it, silence his enemies, silence his failure. Covered with dirt, wine stains, and vomit, he beat back the heavens with his fists, screaming: “The hell with you!
The hell with you!
THE HELL WITH YOU!”

Toward three o’clock the next afternoon, Christmas, the windstorm ended as abruptly as it had begun. Mack felt very much in need of a bath as he drove slowly to the arch and in beneath the pagan sunburst of The City of Health.

San Solaro had a strange quiet air. It was more than stillness after the blow. It was a sense of deadness. And something else, alarming—

Someone had trespassed.

The cardboard signs were not merely ripped down by the wind, but lay in torn bits. The flagged stakes had been pulled up and broken in two and three pieces. With sharpening anxiety, he drove along Grande Boulevard. On lot after lot, parcel after parcel, someone had destroyed the marks of a platted town.

“Wyatt?”

The shout drew no response but an echo.

Mack saw the circus tent then—collapsed, folded on itself, the white-and-yellow stripes running in all directions.
“Wyatt?”
He drove faster through the litter of signs and markers.

At the tent, he found two ends of a guy rope; they had been slashed with a knife. So had the other ropes.

He ran to the depot, and pulled up short at the sight of a paper tacked on the door. He tore it down, unable to believe the words crudely inked on it. Had Wyatt gone crazy?

IT’S ALL YOURS
.

It was unmistakably his partner’s hand.

Mack’s stunned eyes jumped from the paper to the fallen tent, the building lots beyond. Not a sign or stake remained standing anywhere.

ALL YOURS
.

“On Christmas,” Mack said, his face reflecting his astonishment and dismay.

P
APERS LAY ON THE
desk in neat piles, each one surmounted by a stone, a brass weight, or a child’s handmade trinket. The law books on the shelves looked well used. Enrique Potter’s third-floor office in the Baker Block was sunny, with an air of prosperity and efficiency. Displayed on a side table behind orderly rows of briefs, letters, and contracts, a framed ambrotype captured the good cheer of a stout Latin woman and five youngsters, dark-eyed as their mother, beaming for the photographer.

Potter puffed on a long cigar as he tapped the paper centered in front of him.

“Perfectly legal, Mr. Chance. You’re entitled to your partner’s share in return for one dollar.”

“Provided he doesn’t come back.”

“Think it’s likely?”

“No. Wyatt agreed contractually to hold all the down payments in escrow, but it turns out he didn’t. He deposited them in a regular personal account at the Farmer’s and Merchant’s Bank. What percent of the escrow funds he skimmed off, I don’t know. I suspect it wasn’t small. I’ll bet he bled us dry, because the cash drawer was always empty—we could never meet our bills.”

“You knew nothing about this private account until now?”

“Nothing. Wyatt kept details like that secret. I stopped at the bank before I came here. They wouldn’t divulge the last balance in the account, but they verified that Wyatt took it down to zero the first morning the bank opened after the Christmas holiday.”

“They had no idea the funds of San Solaro Development were legally required to be in escrow?”

“I can’t answer that. Maybe they looked the other way.”

“Were the down payments in cash?”

“About half the time.”

“And the other half? Checks, were they? Written how? To the corporation? Its escrow account?”

“I never saw any written either way. They were always made out to Wyatt personally.”

“Didn’t you think that peculiar?”

“I didn’t know enough to think so, Mr. Potter. Now that it’s too late, I do.”

“I must say, you take embezzlement calmly.”

Mack’s hazel eyes fixed on his. “I can’t undo it. All I can do is learn from it.”

The lawyer from Durango regarded his visitor with a growing respect. Mr. Macklin Chance was poorly dressed and unpolished, but he was no bumpkin. He had a driven air about him, and he was unquestionably intelligent. Potter suspected no one would have to make an important point to him more than once.

“How many lots did the development company sell?” Potter asked.

“Only thirty-eight.”

“At what price?”

“It varied according to location in the tract. The lowest interior lot went for two hundred forty-five dollars. A corner lot, along the canal, cost five fifty.”

“What was the usual down payment?”

“Wyatt asked twenty percent, but in some cases he had to drop that to ten or even five to sign the deal.”

“So with a full down payment on the highest-priced lot, we’re only talking about a loss to the buyer of a hundred and ten dollars. Your partner didn’t get away with all that much cash.”

“Any is too much,” Mack said, giving him a bleak look. “But he stole more than down payments. Wyatt closed on seventeen of the lots at full price. He insisted on cash at closing. He said banks tended to snoop and regulate too much.”

Potter flashed a cynical smile. “Those seventeen buyers won’t be a great threat. They received deeds for real property which does exist. The primary worry are the customers who lost their deposits. The sums are relatively small, but that is no guarantee you’ll get off the hook. People are emotional about their money. So this is the first issue. If you want the tract, you also get the responsibility.”

“I want it,” Mack said without hesitation.

The lawyer flicked ash into a spittoon under his desk, then brushed a speck of it from his trousers. “The transfer should be properly recorded at the courthouse. I’ll handle it, if you wish.”

“For how much?”

Potter laughed. “Now there’s a smart client. Ask a lawyer about his fees first, not after the work’s done—when the fee is liable to quadruple. Ten dollars, plus the county recording charge.”

Mack nodded to signal assent. He sat holding his hat between his knees, still unsettled by the shock of Wyatt’s disappearance. It was three days after Christmas; he’d ridden Railroad all the way into Los Angeles to find some answers. The most important one eluded him: What to do next?

The question had occurred to Potter. “Your creditors…” he began.

“I ran the total last night. Eleven hundred seventy-three dollars, twenty-five cents.”

“It’s an honest man who counts the pennies.”

“And someone who grew up poor. When pennies are scarce, you learn to count, Mr. Potter. Carefully. Most of the debt is owed to the surveying firm. I’ll pay off all of it as soon as I can. I don’t want anyone taking the land.”

“How many creditors are involved?”

“Five or six.”

“Give me a list. I’ll work it out.” Potter smiled at Mack’s reaction. “Calm yourself—I won’t charge. Sometimes I work for nothing if I think there’s more business to be had in the future. You strike me as a client with that sort of potential.”

“Well, thank you. I’m not sure your faith’s justified—”

“False modesty. Of course you do.”

Mack reddened, caught. He laughed and then so did the lawyer.

Potter grew serious again. “I don’t know what you intend to do with San Solaro, Mr. Chance. Indeed, I don’t know what you can do. It was a viable piece of property in fat times, even though, from what you tell me, your partner had only the vaguest idea of what’s actually necessary to develop a town. Some of our Escrow Indians are like that. They’re gone now. Times are lean. I have a client in Newhall, so I’ve seen your property. Given San Solaro’s remote location, I’d say the land’s largely worthless except as pasture.”

The quiet assertion hit Mack hard. Potter handed back the agreement. From his pocket Mack took T. Fowler Haines. Why he’d brought it along he couldn’t clearly say; he needed it with him, that was all. Enrique Potter looked at the guidebook with frank curiosity, but Mack didn’t explain. He slipped the folded paper in beside Carla’s scarf and put the book away.

A faraway drum roll of thunder drew his eye to Potter’s window. Over the roofs of nearby commercial buildings, the pale winter sunshine had been eclipsed by a threatening gray sky.

“There’s one possible asset on the land,” Mack said. “Deposits of tar.
Brea
—”

“Ah, that’s interesting. You might be sitting on oil. Do you know anything about getting it out of the ground?”

“Nothing.”

“Given your present straits, Mr. Chance, it might be a good time to learn.”

Mack rode Railroad over to the
Times
building. A block away, he passed a delivery wagon stacked with freshly printed copies. Reporters and others on business bustled in and out of the newspaper office unimpeded. Four weary pickets carrying placards trudged their circular path in front. Mack recognized one man from the first visit.

“Afternoon. Have you seen Father Marquez?”

“He was here till noon. There’s been some trouble.”

Uneasy, Mack resettled his feet in the stirrups. Railroad flicked his ears forward. “What kind of trouble?”

Another picket spat out a stream of tobacco. “The day after Christmas, Father Diego had another face-down with Otis. The father tried to stop him from going inside. The words got pretty hot, and Otis called out more of his plug-uglies. They told him a priest had no right to get down from the pulpit and mix in a labor scrap. They pushed Marquez around, he pushed back—”

“Looked like it might get real bloody, but it didn’t,” a third picket put in. “Just a scuffle, mostly. But a lot of threats.”

“Somebody made good on ’em,” said the first man.

“Yeah, but you’ll never prove Otis had anything to do with it.”

“What are you talking about?” Mack said.

The first picket’s face grew bleak. “A rider came hightailin’ in here this morning. Last night, somebody burned the Marquez family adobe. Father Diego left an hour ago.”

He saw the smoke long before he saw the
rancho.
Long thin plumes drifted up at forty-five degrees against a sky turning as black as the granite lichen on the great rock faces of Yosemite.

Mack wore no spurs, but he worked Railroad hard with his boot heels, and the mule was lathering badly, almost spent from the long ride. There would be rain any minute, the storm right behind the dust plume Mack’s passage had raised on the peninsula.

He wasn’t concerned with that, only with the terrible message of the smoke rising above Rancho de los Palos Verdes del Pacífico. The mule climbed the last hill and then Mack halted, aghast at what he saw. Not the adobe where he’d spent me night, but its remains: fallen rubble, a few black beams at wildly canted angles. The central chimney stood alone, like a graveyard monument. The thick sour smell of burning was everywhere.

He saw a saddle horse tied to the crumbling well, but not the priest. He booted Railroad down the hill. Behind him, a lightning bolt clove the sky and forked over the mountains, appearing to strike them in three places. The wind rose, spreading the stink of the fire.

“Diego?” He shouted as he rode up to the well. “Diego, where are you?”

Raindrops fell, fat, widely separated drops that splatted the dust, leaving dark spots. He leaned on his saddle pommel, scanning the ruins. Nothing moved except the smoke tendrils rising all around the quadrangle. The raindrops blew in gusts, then, abruptly, the brief shower ended. Thunder pealed to the east.

“Diego?” he called again, choking it off when the priest stepped from behind the chimney and clambered over heaps of rubble, one hand stretched out as though he might fall any moment. His thick black hair tossed in the wind.

Mack jumped off the mule and rushed to meet his friend. “I heard about this in town. I thought you might need someone to help with—” Then he saw Marquez’s eyes. Living hell. “My God, Diego, who did this?”

“Not anyone I will ever be able to find, or prosecute,” the priest said with bitter fury.

“You don’t think Otis ordered it?”

“Of course not. Colonel Otis is a Pilate. No need to incriminate himself. He can wash his hands—the mob will act for him.”

“What can I do?”

Marquez waved him off, then lurched past him, muttering. “This is how they punish those with the temerity to speak against them. They can never be defeated fairly. The fight can’t be won by turning the other cheek. It can only be won by men who fight as they do. I can’t fight confined like this.” His hand flew to his clerical collar and pulled, but the fabric was strong. Ropy muscles rose up on the back of his hand, and then the collar tore. His clenched hand fell to his side, the ends of the collar fluttering in the wind. Marquez stared at Mack with an ugly curl on his duck-lipped mouth, as if daring him to criticize or condemn.

Mack shivered, because he recognized something new in the priest’s eyes. They no longer reflected an inner civility and compassion, only brute anger.