California Gold (42 page)

M
R. EZRA PLASSMAN WORE
a stiff collar and a stiffer expression. As the Newhall freight agent for the Southern Pacific, he recognized his own importance.

“Our price to ship from our depot to Ventura is one dollar a barrel, gentlemen.”

It was November and still balmy and dry. The
creak-thunk
of the wells drifted into the office. Johnson reacted to Plassman’s statement with an outpouring of obscenities. The freight agent was righteously shocked—he was a church elder—but he wasn’t intimidated.

“That is the published rate, approved by the railroad commissioners.”

Johnson propelled some dark fluid into a spittoon. “Three crooks in Sacramento. All in your pocket, I don’t doubt.”

Plassman sneered at the remark.

Mack cleared some papers encroaching on the corner of his desk reserved for T. Fowler Haines. He wanted to punch Plassman’s oatmeal face, but in the most reasonable tone he could manage, he said, “It doesn’t cost this company anything like a dollar to get one barrel out of the ground.”

Plassman shrugged. “I can do nothing about that. However, businessman to businessman, I certainly don’t want to be unreasonable. Occasionally we do grant more favorable rates in the form of rebates.”

“Occasionally? I thought it was standard practice.”

“You’re astute, Mr. Chance. As astute as your partner is rude. Yes, rebates are certainly standard for any shipper whose volume is large enough.”

“Large enough by whose measurement?”

“Ours. I can easily determine whether yours is sufficiently large by examining your books.”

“My—?” Mack couldn’t finish. Johnson’s boot heel fell off the corner of the desk and hit the floor.

“Books,” Plassman repeated. “I’d have to take them with me. I will return them in a day or so.”

“The books of the Chance-Johnson Oil Company are private.”

“The information will be treated confidentially. But we must see the figures before we discuss any rebate. That’s standard SP procedure. Many other shippers, larger and more prestigious than you, have willingly and gratefully allowed us to—”

Like a snake rising to strike, Mack came out of the chair. “Get the hell out of this office. Get off our property.”

Plassman snatched up the file he’d brought from Newhall. “You may get satisfaction from displaying your temper, Mr. Chance, but you’ll get nothing else. Not from us. The railroad is friendly to those who treat it as friends.”

Johnson slid the Peacemaker from its holster. “You heard my partner. You better run ’fore I put a bullet in your ass.”

Something, at last, shattered the composure of Mr. Plassman. He nearly fell retreating down the office steps. From the safety of his wagon he called, “I certainly wish you luck in your search for another rail line to handle your oil.”

The buggy raced away.

Johnson seethed. “I should of plugged that toad. The goddamn gall—demandin’ our books—”

“I heard they do it all the time. I didn’t believe it.”

“Just like I said at the coal yard. Pack of road agents.”

“They’re worse than that. The law can catch up with road agents. The SP owns the law in California. It’s also an unbreakable monopoly. But Mr. Plassman isn’t unbreakable. I’m going to figure out some way to make him eat his rate schedule.” He kicked the desk. “Wait and see.”

The wind blew across the open porch and lifted dust in the bottom of the canal. Daylight was fading in a brilliant display of red radiance and purple cloud.

Johnson worked at the eternal job of removing invisible rust from the silvered barrel of his gun. Mack sat in a rocker and gazed out at the dry canal. Issues of a scientific journal were stacked up beside him. One lay open in his lap.

“Must be a fascinatin’ magazine,” Johnson remarked. “You’re ready to fall asleep.”

“No, thinking.”

“What is that rag?”

Mack showed him. The masthead said
THE IRRIGATION AGE
.

“Looks about as excitin’ as watchin’ my grandma darn socks.”

“It’s a pretty influential journal in the West. A man named William Smythe publishes it. Smythe’s convinced that scientific irrigation could make the land in this state bloom like Eden. So are a whole lot of stockmen and farmers and engineers and town-builders. Several hundred of them held a congress at the Opera House in Los Angeles last December. I didn’t know a thing about it.”

“We was otherwise occupied.”

“Here’s an article about irrigation development in Kern County, for instance. Here’s an advertisement for a tour of model communities around Redlands. And here’s the piece that interests me.”

He handed Johnson the magazine, open to an article full of schematic diagrams.

“Pipelines, huh?”

“For water. Maybe that’s our answer for the oil. It works for Stewart—why not for us?” He jumped up. “You can handle things here for a week. I think I’ll take a little prospecting trip”

The capitol rotunda in Sacramento was a fine airy space, flooded with sunshine and ringed by massive marble columns, and buzzing with the voices of legislators, clerks, lobbyists, farmers, and ranchers coming and going. Discreetly shielded behind a column, Walter Fairbanks III conducted a conversation on behalf of the SP political bureau.

Fairbanks’s auburn hair was precisely parted and his mustache neatly trimmed. He wore a sedate black suit with a gray cravat and gray spats over black shoes. His gray eyes veiled his contempt for the legislator from Zamora, Yolo County, a man with greed written all over his lumpy face.

“I’m glad to know you look favorably on Santa Monica for the harbor site, Senator LeMoyne.”

“That’s my present thinking, yes, sir.”

“You’ll continue to be under tremendous pressure to change your mind.”

“Already am.”

“Stand fast, and Mr. Huntington, Mr. Herrin, and all the rest of us at the SP will be most appreciative. By the way—” He drew some plain sealed envelopes from an inside pocket. “Here’s your annual pass. Good on any of our routes.”

LeMoyne snatched his prize. “I noticed envelopes like this here on all the desks in the House. Wondered when I’d get mine.”

The wretched provincial was fairly slavering over his bribe. Fairbanks smiled. “Because of your seniority and your record of friendship, you get a little something extra. There’s a letter in the envelope presenting you and your family with a complimentary week at the Del Monte Hotel. It’s a splendid resort—”

“I know, I know. Nothing but the best people—”

“Quite right. We built it originally to help fill our southbound trains from San Francisco. Now we use it to reward friends.”

“Count me one of those, Mr. Fairbanks. Yes, sir.” LeMoyne jammed the envelope in a side pocket and held his hand over it, as though fearful of meeting someone as dishonest as himself.

They shook hands and LeMoyne left. Fairbanks wiped his fingers on his trousers and stepped from behind the pillar.

And stopped.

Like a rock in an eddying sea, Macklin Chance was standing in the center of the rotunda.

Despite the noise and bustle, Mack saw Fairbanks immediately. The lawyer looked hale and prosperous as he sauntered over. Although Mack had put on broadcloth, neat and respectable, it was rag compared to Fairbanks’s superbly cut black suit.

“Well, Chance. What a surprise to see you.” Fairbanks didn’t offer his hand.

“I’m trying to locate Otto Hellman.”

“He’s here. The railroad commission rate hearing.” He gestured to some chamber behind Mack. “I hear you’re handling oil instead of champagne these days. Well settled in Los Angeles, too.”

“Not permanently. I have business in San Francisco one of these days. A few accounts to settle. There’s a detective in the police department, for instance. Coglan’s his name.”

Fairbanks showed not a ripple of surprise or recognition. The self-possession probably made him a good lawyer.

“There’s Hellman,” he said, raising a hand to signal. Hellman saw him and changed course. A young clerk got in his way and Hellman shoved him aside with a curse. He was as large, untidy, and bumptious as ever. Unexpectedly, Mack was glad to see him.

Fairbanks fiddled with his pearl-gray cravat. Nervous? Mack wondered. Then he guessed the reason: Hellman’s daughter.

“Hello, Walter. My God, look here. It’s the champagne man. Now he’s the oilman. How are you, Johnny?” Hellman pumped Mack’s hand with genuine warmth.

“Fine, Swampy.”

“I don’t like that name.”

“I don’t like
Johnny.
”

“That’s right, that’s right, I forgot. Ha-ha.” His raucous laugh disturbed the rotunda, where any crime was tolerated so long as the perpetrators maintained decorum. Hellman slapped Mack on the back like a lodge brother. Under his wrinkled jacket Mack was astonished to see the holstered Smith & Wesson.

Fairbanks said, “Otto, how is Carla?”

“How should I know? She don’t tell me much, she just wires for money.”

“She was fine when I saw her two weeks ago,” Mack said. “Shall I give her your regards?”

“You see her often?” Fairbanks asked coldly.

Mack stared him down. “Often.”

“Then please do. Otto. Your servant.” Fairbanks stalked off, livid. Mack permitted himself a smile.

Hellman drew him to the side of the rotunda. “Is that true, Johnny? You see my daughter a lot down there in Ventura County?”

“Some,” Mack hedged. There hadn’t been another encounter since his ride to the river ranch. “She has a regular friend, a Britisher. He owns citrus groves in Riverside.”

“Oh, that one.” Hellman plucked a cigar from his jacket. With a look to see whether anyone was watching, he bit off the end, leaned over, and spat it behind the pillar.

“You know Henley?”

“Yah, sure, I met him. Remittance man.”

“What’s that?”

“Somebody whose family sends him regular checks. Either they don’t want him back or he can’t go back. Henley’s old man, Lord Whoozis-Something, he packed him over here a while back. Maybe Clive put his
Schwartz
in the wrong little girlie, maybe he insulted the queen, maybe he killed somebody. Who knows and who cares? We all got our little secrets. There’s a whole bunch of limeys like him down Riverside way.”

“He and Carla seem to like each other.”

Hellman waved his cigar. “Won’t last. Carla’s still got a yen for you. But like I said before—you hook up with her, you’re in trouble. Well, Johnny, nice to see you. Guess we both better tend to business.”

“You’re the reason I’m here.”

“What? How’s that?”

“I telegraphed your San Francisco office and they said you were in Sacramento, so I took the train up here to see you.”

“Make it fast, Johnny. I got to get back to the hearing. Sometimes those three idiots on the railroad commission forget who their friends are. If I ain’t careful, they’re liable to give everybody who ships wheat the same rate I get as a favored customer. Then who’d be dealing with me because I sell cheaper? Nobody. I got to look after my interests here.” He chewed his cigar. “What is it you want?”

“Money.”

Hellman’s eyes lost their geniality, and he scratched his pot belly. Two undone shirt buttons showed his fish-white chest.

“From everything I hear, you got plenty.”

“Yes, but I have a big overhead. I have a seventy-man payroll. I’ve built new storage tanks, bought a fleet of tank wagons—I’ll pay them off soon, but I need capital right now.”

Hellman chuckled. “Impatient cuss.”

“All my crude oil is going to Lyman Stewart for refining. He’s tough. He does no favors on price. I can get a better deal selling on the pier at Ventura. The problem is moving the oil to the coast. I want to build a pipeline, San Solaro to Ventura. Forty-seven miles, eight-inch line. Bigger than Stewart’s.”

“You got faith in the oil business down south, hah?”

“I have faith in everything I do. Sometimes it gets a little worn around the edges but I never lose it.”

Hellman chewed his cigar harder. “What’s the matter with the railroad to Ventura?”

“Screw the railroad. They want to crucify me with their highest rate. Look, Swampy, you loan me the money to build the line, I’ll give you a royalty on every barrel I move through it for five years.”

“Ten years.”

Mack drew a long breath. “Maybe.”

“You want the cash, there’s no maybe. Anything else?”

“I’m going to trench and bury the line. Stewart’s line is suspended above ground. Looks like hell. Ruins the landscape.”

“Sensitive, ain’t you?”

“This is a beautiful state. If we rip it to pieces, we’ll never be able to repair it.”

“You got some damn radical ideas, you know that?” Mack kept quiet. “How much you need?”

“At least two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“I keep that around in shoe boxes.” The rap of a gavel in some distant room started a rush in the rotunda. “Send me a proposal.”

“Where do I find you?”

“Here, there, someplace—you’re hungry enough, you’ll find me.” He waved the cigar and waddled off, leaving Mack with mingled amusement and exasperation.

Suddenly Hellman thought of something and turned back. “And remember what I said. Stay away from you-know-who.”

By the end of 1894, the Chance-Johnson Pipeline Company had acquired its right-of-way by purchase or lease and sent survey crews through the hills to the coastal plain.

Ezra Plassman of the Southern Pacific paid a hasty visit to San Solaro. “We’re informed that you’re building a pipeline to Ventura, Mr. Chance.”

“True.”

“You know, that’s a completely unnecessary outlay of capital. The SP’s special pricing committee discussed your situation only last week. Even without—ah—access to your corporate books, it’s evident that Chance-Johnson is rising fast. A potential power in the oil business. Enormous volume. The pricing committee reviewed the matter thoroughly and I’m happy to say the SP has granted you substantial rate concessions.”

Mack leaned back and touched his fingertips together. He smiled like a small boy with a new jackknife or pet frog.

“I thought they would, Mr. Plassman.”

Then Mack threw him out.

Through his lawyers and bankers, Swampy Hellman handed Mack money the way lesser men handed out change for a daily newspaper. Mack quickly learned the simple but astonishing lesson Nellie had tried to teach him in San Francisco: The problems in obtaining and handling $10 or $1 million were essentially no different; only the numbers were different. He finally believed it, and he knew he’d taken an enormous step forward.