First property vouchers and then zones — the pieces were starting to fall into place. The zoning manipulation that Claire and McIntyre hashed out came back into the picture.
“That Deakins property was a freaking gold mine,” said Paul, and we finally came to the part where he made his money. The man was literally salivating. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve then continued. “It was grandfathered in as a manufacturing complex, and thus, it had a very high number of vouchers. Apparently, this city still dreams of manufacturing jobs coming back. I sold them for a bundle.”
I then asked the inevitable question. “To whom did you sell the vouchers?”
Paul squirmed in his chair.
“Sorry, I’m really not at liberty to say. I am under a strict confidentiality agreement.”
“Come on, Paul, this is important.”
“I’m sure it is but so is my agreement. They were very serious about not publicizing it. And this is too good a lode to risk messing it up. I’m already telling you too much.”
Paul looked fairly intransigent. He was sitting on his “goldmine” and he wasn’t about to do anything to tip off other prospectors in town. There was still the question, however, of how this miner found his mine.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The Deakins Building,” I repeated. “How did you first hear about it? I’m just a little confused because it’s a random building in an area that I don’t imagine you know much about. And coincidentally it was owned by one of our associates.”
Implied, and not so thinly, in my question was the fact that Paul had to have been snooping in personnel files to even discover this building’s existence. I then gambled that where there was smoke, there was fire. He had, after all, mentioned other buildings. “How did you find out about all the properties that you bought?”
The threat to unveiling his real estate transactions was grave. But it paled next to the threat of bringing down the core of his investment strategy — his job at our firm. Fifteen years from retirement, he was already in the descent mode of his career. The hard work had already been done to get to this position. Now it was all about maintaining it until he finally touched down into a very comfortable retirement.
“We’re friends, right?” he asked. I let the question go unanswered. There was a delectable pleasure in watching him squirm. “In a way, I was helping them,” he reasoned. In Paul’s logic, trolling the confidential files for associates’ real estate investments and then targeting those who were underwater constituted help. “I’d help get them out from under the trouble they were in. That’s how I found The Deakins. That Ed character was way over-extended. When I first approached him he blew me off. He said he had some other deal going that was going to be worth a lot more than the property was worth.”
“That’s how you found out about the occupancy vouchers.”
“Yeah. He talked like he had something big going and I was so new to the game that I just let it go.”
“But once his body was discovered and ownership rights were transferred to the father-in-law you decided to revisit the transaction?”
Now it was his time to remain silent.
“Who did you sell the vouchers to, Paul?”
THE BETTER GOOD
Valenti was gobbling up vouchers. He was undoubtedly building something in that area, but I was wrong that The Arroyo was to break ground in Lincoln Heights. In that regard, McIntyre told me the truth that they had no intention of building there. But the manipulation of the zones gave me a clue of where to look. Those two slivers of land now falling in Zone 8 were done for a reason - they didn’t have the vouchers for where they wanted to build so they adjusted the zones to an area that was rich with them.
The picture started to come together. And the key was to follow the voucher trail. I knew The Deakins had been a target for a while and they eventually got what they needed. As Paul deliciously described, he had made some “good coin” on the sale. The other slice in that pie was Carmen Hernandez’s women’s center. That structure also landed in the thin slivers of zone changes. Carmen had played the city and Councilman Abramian like a fiddle. She got them to buy the land for her and gave her development money to renovate the properties into “low income” housing. But what if there was more to the deal that I was missing?
I was surprised Carmen agreed to meet me. She probably linked me to the story Mike was working on and may eventually be published posthumously. Her off-the-record comments to Mike’s request for a quote weren’t fit to print even if she had given her approval. Proponents of peace and harmony often had the worst tempers. Perhaps Mike’s murder had elicited some feelings of guilt and thus her acceptance of my invitation.
“Nice to see you again,” Carmen greeted me warmly at the door to her office in Echo Park. She wore an embroidered, floral dress with a dizzying palette of colors, the kind reserved for cultural parades but she adopted it as her everyday uniform. Carmen had sweeping arched eyebrows — they may have been drawn that way — which gave her the look of being perpetually interested in whoever was talking.
She worked in an open-space office with several desks and copy machines and filing cabinets. Three or four Chicano-study majors buzzed around the room with the air of importance of people who were “making a difference.” That explained the sizable number of people who were willing to do grunt work at no pay. Carmen glided through her army of volunteers to a large desk in the back where alley light poured in through large, picture windows.
“Can someone get Mr. Restic a coffee?” she called out even though she was a mere five feet from the coffee machine.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said and sat down in the chair opposite the desk. Carmen took her seat and lamented at the volume of work that had to be done. She wore the wearied look of her staff’s efforts well. “It’s for a good cause,” I felt the need to add. That brought her out of her artificial sullenness.
“First things, first,” she started, “Your friend. I’m sorry for your loss. We may have had our differences but I cannot condone violence. A life is so precious and yet the youth of today wantonly disregard it. In their defense, they know no other life than that of the streets. That’s the disservice we’re doing to our children in this city. There are no jobs. The schools are underfunded and under-served and out of step with the special needs of our diverse cultural potpourri.” Somehow Mike’s murder was a referendum on the plight of inner city youth. “We thank the Lord they found his killer. He was an Armenian gentleman?” The racial distinction was telling. She said it like she and her race had been absolved from past sins.
“The police believe it was him, yes,” I replied but my tone said I didn’t agree with it.
“The right man?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
Carmen studied me. I could see her body go a little tense.
“And so what is it you wanted to discuss, Mr. Restic?” She shifted to a more formal tone.
“Relax,” I tried to allay her suspicions. “I just want some information. I’m not a reporter. I have no interest in publicizing anything we discuss. I want information that could help me understand who could’ve had reason to kill my friend.”
“I had nothing to do with it. Surely you can’t think that I did?”
“I come with no preconceived notions,” I answered vaguely.
“I want to help.” I waited for the but. “But I don’t feel I should discuss this topic with you and certainly not without my legal counsel present.”
“I thought you said you had nothing to do with this?”
“Who are you to accuse me?” she attacked.
“Lady, don’t play this game with me. If you start throwing your weight around like you do with these stupid kids then there will be trouble. I will throw this shit all over.”
“There’s nothing to throw.”
“How much did you make selling occupancy vouchers to Valenti for the properties where the new women’s center is to be built?” Her chee
ks turned crimson under the crimson blush. “I’ll take your silence to mean that it was a fair amount.”
“Can we discuss this outside?” she asked. Gone was the booming voice with the cadence of a pep rally. I leaned in and matched her tone.
“Is this volume better?” I asked. “Are you afraid your crusaders will hear that there’s a cause higher than the one you’ve sold them? Like you said, the poor youth of today. They’ve yet to learn the lure and destructive nature of money.”
“What do you want?” she asked coldly.
“How did the deal work? Start from the beginning. Who approached whom?”
Carmen explained the origins of the deal. It was cooked up by Langford. Like Valenti told me, everyone in a deal needs to come out in the black for it to work. Langford wanted the vouchers for the Arroyo deal. He also wanted to work a few angles on the soon-to-be women’s center properties to maximize his return. He approached Carmen with the idea to have the city pay for it. He instructed her to use her connections with Councilman Abramian to ram the agreement through.
“Did the Councilman know about the voucher part of the deal?” I asked.
“Did he know about that little aspect of the transaction? No. Did he and the city get a much needed boost in a depressed area that will continue to give back to the community for decades to come? Yes,” she said in a resounding fashion.
I listened to the rest of Carmen’s story through the filter of knowing that the person telling the tale always told it in a favorable light as it pertained to her. Where Langford was the bully and idea man, Carmen was the babe in the woods. I imagined the truth was somewhere in the middle. And when she told me the compensation of the deal, I knew it was understated. Going by the rule of thirds — whatever someone says they lost in Vegas is actually three times that number — the money she made on the voucher deal was a hefty sum.
“Do you know Ardavan Temekian?”
“No.”
There was little emotion in her answer. It was direct and decisive. I believed her.
I was back to where I started. There was a connection between these vouchers and the murders but the details behind it were hazy at best. Temekian seemed to fit into the play but again I didn’t know how.
I thanked Carmen for her time and honesty. She looked relieved to have it over and wanted to make sure it was over by walking me to the door.
“I learned at a young age that life isn’t fair,” she told me. “There comes a time in all of our lives when we have to do things that may compromise what we believe is right and moral but the larger need outweighs it. One step back, two steps forward, as they say. It’s not that we are proud of it. Lord knows we aren’t. But the Lord also knows the reasons why we did it and he’s been known to make some exceptions,” she smiled. “The larger good sometimes requires a little dirtiness so you can wash more hands. You can understand where I’m coming from.”
“If that makes you feel better,” I told her, “then I’m willing to go along with it.”
THAT OLD ROUTINE
Claire and I met at a bar on Grand Avenue that catered to the corporate world from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and to the USC crowd after that. There was always a window in between where the drunk remnants of the corporate crowd intermingled with the co-eds getting an early start on their partying. It was bad enough that you stayed for that fourth beer but then to be confronted with fresh-faced youth starting out their evenings while you just wanted to go home and go to bed was a particular injustice.
We drank Old Fashioneds with a giant square of ice and maraschino cherries. They went down very easily. We kept the conversation light and for a moment we slipped back into a world that didn’t exist anymore, one where we’d meet up after work and slug a few cocktails and complain about our bosses and direct-reports with equal vitriol. The jokes got funnier as the night progressed. We’d then sober up at a new restaurant that was getting all the buzz and we’d eventually head home where we’d finish the night off proper — that’s if the common excuse of exhaustion and an early morning conference call didn’t interfere. As if sensing that we were reverting to our old habits, and not wanting to proceed to the horizontal part, Claire changed the subject.
“Langford brought the deal in,” she started. “And it was for a lot more than what Carmen told you.”
“I figured.”
“We got a good portion of the required vouchers from that transaction alone. That and the Deakins property,” she added.
“That was my co-manager, Paul Darbin,” I reminded her though she didn’t need it.
“When’s he going to cut that ponytail?”
“I was hoping he’d get arrested as one of those Occupy Wall Street protesters when he went out for his lunch.”
“One can dream.”
“How many deals did Langford bring in?” I asked.
“Just the Carmen deal. He was working Deakins but, well, you know what happened there.”
“How’d you get the rest of the vouchers?”
“We work with more brokers than just Langford. It’s better to spread the work around. If it’s limited to just a few they start to think they can exert pressure on the price. We prefer to keep the fear factor high. Having them constantly looking over their shoulders to see if a competitor is going to take a chunk of their kill helps us keep the costs down.” Lawyers preferred hunting analogies despite the fact that the majority had never been hunting and wouldn’t know how to shoot a gun if given the opportunity.
“How much information do you give these brokers?”
“On what we’re doing? Just enough to get what we need but not enough to screw us over with.”
“So no one would know where they were actually going to build The Arroyo?”
“Some didn’t even know that it was Valenti on the buying end. The sharper, more experienced brokers knew, of course.”
“Was Langford one of the sharp ones?”
“He was.”
“Did Carmen know?”
“I doubt it.”
I recalled the name of the buyer on the buildings on Holcomb Street. Mike was able to track down the name Salas to a P.O. Box in the Valley but from there it was a dead end. We assumed it was just another shell company by Valenti to throw any speculators off his scent.
“I know all the names of his shell companies. But I never heard of that one. Who are they?”
“They bought an entire block of apartment buildings near The Deakins. Temekian and his thugs pressured the owners into selling so we assumed they were connected to Valenti.”
“We didn’t do any occupancy deals with them. That much I know. It sounds to me like someone heard about the interest in the occupancy vouchers and bought up some land thinking that’s where the development was going. Speculation can be a risky game,” she added.
“So The Arroyo is not being built anywhere near The Deakins.”
She shook her head rather than replying verbally. I was treading on an area that was very dangerous for Claire. We had already run over a level well past “confidential” and were entering territory that could very well ruin Claire’s career if it got out that she had given me this information. For someone who cared as much about her career as Claire did, this could not have been an easy thing to agree to.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be discreet with the information you’re giving me.”
“Discreet with what?” she asked.
That was when she pulled an envelope out of her bag and slid it over to me. Later that evening when I had time to peruse the documents, I realized that it contained all the voucher transactions involved in The Arroyo project. It also included information on the actual site of the new concept mall. It was going to be much further north from Deakins, close to the actual arroyo for which it was named. It was to abut a row of Victorian mansions now under the care of the Historical Society which served as the sole reminder of the area’s more celebrated past. Claire had chosen to photocopy all of the documents to eliminate
any kind of electronic trail. At the bar I simply tucked it into my briefcase, like we were two spies passing state secrets.
“These things are hitting me already,” Claire said as she downed the last drops of her drink.
“One more?”
“Then what?” she asked.
I knew what she was referring to. That old routine was hovering around us. Dusk and sweetened whiskey and jukebox standards were conspiring against us. We bathed in a pleasant melancholy where neither of us wanted to be alone.
“Bourbon makes me nostalgic,” she said. “I gotta fight it.”
We settled up and stumbled out onto the street where the next generation waited patiently in line for the hand-off. The evening traffic was beginning to die down and there was a chill that seemed to come from above and pool around us. I walked Claire back to her car in a lot a few blocks away. We were in a quiet corner of the near empty expanse of asphalt. We hugged and she put her arms underneath my coat and I felt her cold hands through my shirt. She buried her face into my neck where I could feel her warm breath on my skin.
“I miss you,” she said but not in a way that meant come back.
RIALTO
“I fucking hate cops,” the man grunted and stuffed the rest of his Dodger Dog in his mouth.
In the middle half of the third inning the public address announcer had invited all of us to stand and honor five heroes from the Los Angeles Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriffs, and Glendale P.D. Cheli was the only woman among the bunch. She was awarded the Medal of Heroism in part for her conduct in the affair where Temekian was killed. A bunch of suits shook hands and posed for photographs as they pinned a ribbon on the lapel of her blazer. Cheli was only one of five honorees but she clearly held sway in the group. When it was her time to get the award, the other recipients applauded.
Smile Now, Cry Later (Chuck Restic Mystery Book 1) Page 20