They were the first, honest words out of his mouth. And he was right. New Chinese money had poured into the tony enclave next to Pasadena, much to the chagrin of the old wealth residents. For a community that escorted anyone with a skin shade darker than alabaster to the city limits, the site of so many Asians gobbling up properties must have made their blue blood boil. And made men like Mr. Li extremely happy.
I needed to extricate myself from this situation before it got out of hand. For the first time, I regretted my decision to leave the knife-wielding magician behind. I rose from the chair and faced off with Li.
“Is there any message you would like me to deliver to Mr. Valenti?” I asked with all the formality of a Foreign Service officer.
“Yes,” Li stammered, “yes, there is. Tell Mr. Valenti this.” Li then pulled out another of his proverbs:
“Man’s power is only as strong as what he cherishes most.”
As I walked out of the office I couldn’t help but think what a curious choice of words given the circumstances. I wondered what Valenti cherished most — his museum or his granddaughter.
***
“Gao?” Claire laughed. “His name is Jimmy.”
We met for lunch at a place between our respective offices. It was one of these small-bite restaurants that were all the rage in downtown. It featured two-chew plates that ran upwards of fifteen dollars per bite. The casual decor and “hey guys” wait-staff were meant to eschew pretense but succeeded in doing the opposite. It was the kind of place my ex-wife loved.
“He introduced himself as Gao,” I told her.
“He was Jimmy for twenty-five years of his life and only recently became Gao. He’s managing his brand,” she said.
“Which brand is that?”
“The kind that caters to new Chinese money.”
Claire explained how, after the housing crisis, California was inundated with overseas money, as mostly Chinese investors pounced on attractive buying opportunities to enter the real estate market. For a while it was assumed that every cash offer in the state had its roots in the Far East. “Jimmy — now Gao — got in tight with that investor set.”
“Seems like a smart move.”
“He’s done very well for himself. He has a big house in San Marino.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
Claire was closely tied into the real estate development world in Southern California. Her law firm specialized in corporate contracts and securitization and her main client was Valenti. Career often came first with Claire.
“How’d you get involved in talking to Jimmy?” she probed.
“Valenti asked me to,” I replied.
“He approached you?” She was just as surprised as I was when the old man called me. “What for?”
“He wants help on a private matter.”
This about sent her spinning off her chair with curiosity.
“And you accepted it?” she asked with her face buried in the menu. She played it off casually.
“I could use the money,” I explained.
“You still have it in for him, huh?”
“I could use the money,” I repeated. I wasn’t ready to tell her the real reason Valenti approached me, not because I thought she would use it to her advantage but because I held onto some vague notion of client confidentiality. I steered the conversation back to Li. “What is going on with the museum and this cultural heritage proposition?”
“I’m biased but it’s safe to say that proposition has nothing to do with protecting some fragile, cultural heritage.”
Proposition voting was a particularly maddening aspect of California politics. After years of gridlock in Sacramento, citizens began putting propositions on the ballot which allowed voters to set the course for their state. If approved, the government would have no choice but to abide by them, despite how unfair or fiscally reckless they were. These quickly became the tool of every special interest group within and even outside of California to advance their cause.
I could never decipher what exactly I was voting on with these propositions and thus defaulted to voting no on all of them. I must not have been alone because the writers of these propositions began wording them in a way where a YES vote was actually a NO vote and vice versa:
Are you in favor of not stopping a halt to the court-ordered decision to cease automatic funding for firefighter relief trusts?
After that, I just stopped voting on them entirely.
“Can you translate for me what this one is about?”
“What they are all about,” said Claire. “Money.”
The fight apparently wasn’t over the museum itself but over the land surrounding the museum. Cultural hotspots were all the rage in the downtown revitalization push and a boon to developers of high-end condos.
“Who owns the land around the museum?” I asked naively. Claire’s smile gave me my answer. “And Gao wants a piece?”
“It’s a brand thing,” she explained. “He wants to be the go-to man for foreign investors. A development in his backyard without him having a piece is a blow to his image,” she said. “The Chinese are very proud. He doesn’t want to lose face.”
“Is the proposition going to pass?”
“That’s the hard part about propositions — the outcomes are almost entirely random.”
“How nervous is the Valenti camp?”
“It’s nothing that can’t be overturned at a later date.”
“But that would take a lot of time and a lot of money,” I added.
“And Carl isn’t the patient type.”
Shop-talk ended once the food arrived. Career might have been a priority for Claire but dining out was her real love.
“You have to try these arrancini,” she gushed and held a plate out for me. “We had it last week and it was amazing.”
“How is Mr. Teeth?” I asked casually. “Is he still trying to open a regatta on the L.A. River?”
Claire humored me with a smile. Her boyfriend was a square-jawed square and product of some English-sounding, East Coast prep school. He could boil water and somehow make you feel inferior.
“Todd and I are just friends.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.
“Don’t go feeling sorry for me,” she shot back. “I met someone else. He’s got a great mind and a passion for what he does.” The latter was definitely a shot in my direction. “He owns an art gallery down the road and he’s really doing well. He was just featured in a Times piece about Next Gen galleries. He reps some big names and has some pretty amazing stuff.” That second-to-last word was a fixture in Claire’s vocabulary.
“His family is wealthy?” I asked.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because no one owns a gallery and actually makes money off it.”
That hurt her more than I intended.
“You must be alone,” she surmised. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so interested, and nasty about what I have going on.” That pretty much soured the rest of the lunch. I tried several times to right the ship but all my attempts fell flat.
“I’m sorry for being a jerk,” I said.
Claire didn’t acknowledge it right away. She waited until we had finished the meal and drifted out onto the sidewalk crammed with office workers returning from their lunch hour. She gave me a hug and whispered in my ear:
“Get yourself a girl, Chuck.”
***
When I got back to the office, my assistant was waiting for me by the entrance to our floor. She looked anxious and when I inquired as to why she was hanging by the door, she leaned in to whisper.
“Mr. Restic, you have a visitor,” she said.
I looked over her shoulder at the reception area where Hector sat on one of the leather couches and impassively watched a video extolling our corporate values that played on loop all day. It drove anyone within earshot to near insanity but it looked like Hector was hypnotized by it.