Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder (19 page)

Enclosed find a copy of promissory note from James Kieffer. Consolidated Acceptance Corporation is assigning one-quarter of the proceeds of this note to Consolidated Mortgage Corporation in exchange for your remittance to Consolidated Acceptance Corporation, in the amount of $650. Period.

Very truly yours,

Consolidated Acceptance Corporation,

N. J. Warren

The memo was like an image of his own qualms and bad faith.

He called his lawyer, Phil Goldstein. It was not a good time to be thinking about getting out of the business, but he wanted to discuss what it might cost him to do so anyway.

“I’m glad you called,” Goldstein said. “I was going to call you. When was the last time you spoke to Ned?”

“We’re not on the best of terms right now.”

“Well, that’s fine. That’s just fine. Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“You’re not going to like this. You better sit down for this.”

It was Goldstein’s habit to get sarcastic just when things were at their least funny.

“They’ve closed up shop,” Tony Serra told McCracken over the phone. “Cornwall’s gone—disappeared.”

McCracken stared down at some evidence sheets in their folder. “What do you mean ‘disappeared’?”

“He left the country or something. No one knows for sure.”

“When?”

“Last Friday, they filed for bankruptcy. Kieffer had his guys put everything on hand trucks. They carted it off. They went down and seized the books.”

“Kieffer?”

“Jim Kieffer. Talley’s office.”

McCracken thought of Cornwall sitting in the coffee shop last week, his food untouched, promising that this wouldn’t happen, that he wouldn’t flee.

He hung up and put his jacket on. He took the elevator down to the parking lot and then he started up Central Avenue in his car, forcing himself to drive slowly, his stomach distended, chest burning. He took a deep breath and let it float up into his head. A good, deep breath and you felt the heat dissipate, a rational distance between yourself and the moment that was about to flare out of control.

There were cars in the lot on East Camelback—everything looked completely ordinary. In the building’s lobby, the directory still listed Great Southwest Land and Cattle in white letters on the black board. But Serra was right. Almost everyone but Cornwall was still there, but the books had disappeared.

In the offices of Consolidated Mortgage, the phones rang, they were answered, but the typewriter keys struck only sporadically, thin clicks against the platens, the transistor radio low but somehow impertinent amid the solemnity of closed doors, the men in their emergency meeting. In his office, Ed did some calculations on a yellow pad, using rough figures he knew by heart—salesmen’s commissions, office overhead, roads and utilities, payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable. He was determining the slimmest margin Consolidated could operate on, now that there would be no more money coming in from AHI, which had just frozen its credit lines. Warren’s hair showed gray between the dark furrows. You looked at him and saw an investor, nothing more or less stolid than that. He watched Ed, guessing the figure in advance, and Ed put down his pencil, looking not at Warren but at Phil Goldstein, the lawyer, who leaned back with his cigarette drawn behind his head, the kind of gesture a film director might make after finishing a take. Before Goldstein were the folders, laid out on the conference table like tiles—Consolidated Mortgage, Great Southwest, Cochise College Park, Queen Creek, Prescott Valley—all of Warren’s empire, company by company, in each folder the documents showing where each company got its financing. On top of each folder was a mark indicating which company’s paper was still good, which was not, which paper might still be attractive to under-writers like First National Bank or ITT or Westinghouse, now that the land market was collapsing.

“We can go to about twenty-one percent,” Ed said. “That’s the most we can discount. After that, we’re running a loss.”

Warren wiped two fingers blearily down his cheek. “We won’t have to go that deep,” he said. “But it won’t hurt to tell AHI we’re going that deep.”

Goldstein came out of his recumbency. He was a large, bearded man, a blond Jew who could wear suspenders and a silk bow tie because he had played football in college. “You want your stock back,” he said.

“I want the stock back because it’s still worth something,” Warren said. “Consolidated is worth five million dollars. In a few months, AHI will be worth nothing. Why should we be helping them out?” He twisted the paper wrapper off a lollipop, frowning down as it tore and stuck to the candy.

“’We will sell paper until such time as AHI can resolve its credit issues,’ ” Goldstein said, as if dictating the letter already. “ ‘We will sell this paper at substantial discount, likely running Consolidated at no profit in this interim period.’ ”

“Let AHI think about it for a while,” said Warren.

Ed pushed the yellow pad away from him and looked back over his ledger. He would have to not panic. If they forced this split from AHI, then it would be his problem, not Warren’s. It would be up to him, not Warren, to keep Consolidated running at no profit in this interim period.

He had signed a personal guarantee on the loan for the Oklahoma land. There would be no easy way to walk away from the business, even if he wanted to.

McCracken drove up Central Avenue to North 44th Street and parked in the lot of the Real Estate Department, the warrant in his jacket pocket, on the opposite side from his gun. He took the elevator to the fifth floor, then walked the gray linoleum hall with his three rubber-banded notebooks in his hand.

“I’m here to see Fred Talley,” he said to the girl at the desk.

There was a man standing behind her, leaned against the wall. He was James Kieffer, McCracken realized. Jacketless, in a red tie and a white short-sleeved shirt, he crossed his arms.

“If you know where Jim Cornwall is, I need to talk to him,” McCracken said.

“I have no idea where Jim Cornwall is,” Kieffer said. “Did you try his home?”

“I need to see the Great Southwest records. Right now. I know they’re here.”

“Go yell at Berger’s office,” Kieffer said. “They’re the ones that made the call.”

McCracken took the warrant out of his breast pocket. He smoothed it out slowly on the counter, running the edge of his hand over the piece of paper, then held it up.

“I’ll call Berger’s office right now,” Kieffer said.

McCracken followed him back into the maze of desks, the gray steel file cabinets, the coffee urn on its stained plastic card table. Talley’s door was ajar. He looked at McCracken and frowned, his mouth open. He was eating some kind of sandwich out of a paper bag.

“Do I need to call my lawyer?” he said.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“You wait right there until I call my lawyer.”

A $5 million fraud. Not just one bankruptcy but many. Not just Cornwall’s Great Southwest but the companies who financed their paper or did business with them. The land business was a confidence game. The value and sale of real estate is always something of a confidence game, but no one anticipated how quickly everyone could lose confidence. It didn’t matter if you were playing it basically straight. Before long, no one was very interested in the investment potential of Arizona land.

Ed went through the papers in his desk, the memos and pamphlets and brochures. He thought of Cornwall hearing about the AHI deal last spring, seeing it as a glint of hope.
I could use the financing more than you could—you know that. If there’s any way you could put in a word for me, I would appreciate it.

How unlikely it all was. How unlikely that less than a year later they would both be in so much trouble. How unlikely that AHI would fall apart the exact same week that Great Southwest fell apart. How unforeseeable that his life would end up so resembling James Cornwall’s life.

The rock face in sunlight. The tufts of dry grass pushing through the sand. The hiss of insects, the sudden flare of grasshoppers. The pointless shades of brown, the grass putting forth its blades.