“Why?”
“Cost. He said they were rethinking Wildcoast. Big hurdles with the County of Orange and the Cities of Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano. We had a handshake deal with the Tarlow Company, but Bennet unshook my hand. We had estimated the perc testing on a five-square-mile parcel would take six months and run about six million dollars. So, PacWest was very disappointed. No discussion, no negotiation, just out of the blue. Bennet pulled our plug. The not-so-funny thing is that I liked him and he liked me. I felt that he dropped my company under pressure. From who I can’t say. No idea.”
“And gave Wildcoast to Empire Excavators,” says Gale.
“Which finally broke ground on it just last week. Or so my soldiers tell me.”
“They’ve done a lot more than break ground,” says Gale.
“How deep are they?”
“Twenty, thirty feet. How deep until they hit groundwater?”
“In decomposed granite, fifty feet down,” says McNab. “If there is groundwater. But if they hit bedrock, then no septic, because the effluent can’t percolate down into the aquifer. So you add scores of millions of dollars to build a sewer system to accommodate a city of fifty thousand people. Raises the price of the homes, dramatically.”
“Bennet wanted to build affordable, Tarlow-subsidized homes for a full quarter of the Wildcoast population,” says Gale.
“That’s why sewer is a terrible idea,” says McNab. “Goodbye, affordable. Maybe even goodbye, Wildcoast, if you’re Bennet’s asshole father, Tarlow II. He wanted to put a fulfillment hub on that land. Warehouse space in the hundreds of millions of square feet. Sky-high leases. Smart development, high profit.”
“So sewer costs would be a nonissue, in a metropolis of warehouses,” says Gale. “There wouldn’t be anyone living there. Cheap septic would do it.”
Gale considers something that’s been bugging him since he first talked to the Empire Excavators guy digging the test pit.
“What if it’s not a perc test?” asks Gale. “What if they’re looking for something else?”
“Like what?”
“Gold? Crystals? What else is down there?”
McNab laughs. “They wish. But there’s nothing but trace gold in those mountains. So far as crystals, what kind? There’s worthless quartz to gem-quality tourmaline — pink to deep green — beautiful stuff. My wife’s got some.”
“Silver?” asks Mendez. “Oil?”
“Standard and Texaco perforated that whole area after World War II,” McNab says. “But nothing doing. The oil was north of there, from Huntington Beach up into LA County. Deputies, I have a seven o’clock.”
“Thank you for your time,” says Gale, rising.
“I hope you catch this guy.”
“Do you remember the night Tarlow died?” asks Mendez.
“Of course I do,” says McNab. “NLDS, Padres and Dodgers. Jennifer and I saw it at Petco Park in San Diego. She’d tell you the same thing, if that’s what you’re getting at. Because, yeah, Bennet Tarlow dangled a lot of money at me, then took it away. Cost us millions, if you want to look at it that way. But I sure wouldn’t kill him.”
“We have to follow up on this kind of thing,” says Mendez. “Just procedure.”
“Jennifer runs accounting here,” says McNab. “Gets in at nine, extension fourteen. Ohtani went three for four, but it wasn’t enough. Ask Jen. Pads won it, three-two.”
Gale and Mendez are halfway to the Explorer when Gale’s phone rings.
Amanda Cho:
“I’m returning your calls. Sorry to be not available.”
“Have you talked to Jeffs?”
“I saw him at Bamboo but he didn’t see me. I fear him. I’m with relatives now, in Chinatown.”
“Be alert. Pay attention. Stay around people.”
“I’m used to hiding,” she says, and hangs up.
33
Hal Teller wears a chocolate brown suit tailored in the loose British mode, a white spread-collar shirt, and a shimmering lavender necktie.
Gale considers Teller’s short gray hair brushed back from a dome of a forehead, his light blue eyes, a face lined and tanned from ocean fishing, some of those hours documented by colorful mounts on his office walls.
They’re on the seventh floor of the Tarlow Company in Newport Center, windows south and west for views of the Pacific Ocean, which glimmers silver in the morning light.
Gale has his notebook on a crossed knee, Daniela Mendez a cup of coffee.
“So yes,” says Teller, “Tarlow Company brought me on as an engineer when I was young. I mentored Tarlows II and III on the building arts as well as which projects to take and which to leave. Twenty years later I was the showrunner: residential, commercial, industrial. Now, at eighty, I’m captaining the ship with Bennet II. When I heard about Benny, I sat down in this chair and cried. Four hours later I was still here.”
A respectful silence from Gale and Mendez.
“I understand you were opposed to Wildcoast from the start,” says Gale.
“Opposed? No. But I was aware of the long-term financial realities and said so.”
“You were pulling for warehouses, weren’t you?” asks Mendez. “An enormous fulfillment center not far from Caspers Wilderness Park.”
“Still am. The county, the state, the country needs it. More goods on more doorsteps. Warehousing and distribution from a perfect location — proximity to the big ports for the trucks, and a freeway system that ties the whole nation together. And, because we own the land, we own the warehouses. Benny hated that idea. But, to be honest, I never hated Wildcoast. I just see a better use of our time and capital.”
“Where was Bennet’s father on all this?”
“Torn, I’d say. But you should ask him yourselves.”
“Is the Tarlow Company done with Wildcoast?” asks Gale.
Hal Teller’s blue gaze goes from Gale to Mendez, then he sits back.
“Far from. With Bennet’s sudden death, we’re taking a strategic pause, to consider. In the last few months we’ve seen rising antagonism toward Wildcoast. From the cities of San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Beach. The governor. The Juaneño Indians. The Orange County Board of Supervisors, with the exception of Kevin Elder’s Seventh District, which is bullish on a dream utopia adjacent to county land. Which was ceded by Tarlow Company to the county in 1953 for a wilderness park. In return for Newport Coast development rights.”
“Quite a trade for the Tarlow Company,” says Gale.
Teller nods.
“Especially considering that you bought that land out from under the Acjacheme natives for pennies on the dollar.”
“Pennies on the millions of dollars,” says Teller. “I realize, Mr. Gale, you are a member of that nation. The land grab was shameful, but legal. And let’s not forget that the Spanish taught farming and ranching and building skills to the heathens. Brought them muskets for hunting. And Spanish soldiers for husbands. Sent them away better than they found them is one way to look at it.”
“And trimmed the Natives down from three thousand, nine hundred to eight hundred and sixty-one,” says Gale.
“Shameful. Again. Yes.”
Teller purses his lips and looks down at his immense, curving, glass-top desk.
Trying for penance, thinks Gale.
Penance 101.
“Do you have a suspect in Benny’s murder?” Teller asks.
“We had a suspect that our DA declined to charge. Vernon Jeffs.”
“What was Benny doing way out there in Caspers?”
“We believe he was in the company of Jeffs,” says Mendez.
“Doing what?”
“Possibly to photograph a giant owl not even found in Southern California. We don’t know,” says Gale.