“I’m just asking for approval of the minutes,” Mr. Johns pointed out. Milton then provided a lengthy rebuttal, confusing parts of the Bill of Rights with the Ten Commandments. He went on to declare his dissatisfaction, specifically, with President Roosevelt and, in general, with the crooks who made up Congress back in Washington D Almighty C. Eventually, someone in the back of the room advised Milton to “run for dad-burned office if you want to give a speech.” Mr. Johns followed up with a gentle suggestion that Milton save his proposal for new business following completion of the published agenda.
“You can’t tell me what to do, Roger,” Milton groused. “You’re the moderator, not the King of Persia or something.”
For once, Milton had a small group of backers, Catholic hackles still up over the previously agreed upon allotments. With Mr. Judson’s help, Mr. Johns successfully gaveled them down, then got his majority vote to approve the minutes. That’s when silence settled over the room, all eyes on Cyrus Dinkle. Mr. Johns introduced him and Dinkle rose from his chair. He moved across the stage, his footsteps softly echoing over the hushed assembly.
Now if Roger Johns was as inoffensive as a fellow can be, Cyrus Dinkle was the opposite—a mostly bald and thin-lipped reptilian tyrant who looked as if he had never in his life done any heavy lifting, because he hadn’t. He was soft—soft belly, soft manicured hands, and soft jowls that flowed seamlessly into his soft neck. You’ll recall that Dinkle’s appearance on the agenda had sent small whirlwinds of gossip whipping around Tesoro like rumor-laden dust-devils. Indeed, his appearance at a town meeting, even without the promise of an offer, would have waggled tongues anyway as Dinkle disdained civic goings-on, preferring the solitude of his estate overlooking the ocean, except on those occasions when his man fired up the Duesenberg for a trip to San Francisco. Heads turned when the Duesenberg rolled through town with Dinkle in the back seat, his eyes resolutely avoiding us in favor of his Wall Street Journal, his purplish lips curled into a censorious sneer. “He goes to San Francisco to meet up wit’ the rest of the divils runnin’ this damned country,” Angus MacCallum once told me. “They drink brandy and smoke cigars and try to figger oot ways they can stick it to the workin’ man.”
Angus’s assertion might have seemed like a mean-spirited harangue from a bitter old man except that he was entirely correct. As Miss Lizzie claimed, Dinkle actually owned land and various businesses in several states, and his trips to San Francisco were spent in the company of bankers, who helped him foreclose and evict; mining company executives, who helped him figure out ways to put a maze of shafts where bears might have hibernated; lawyers, who advised him on the best way to maintain his stranglehold on water rights; and accountants, determined to make sure he paid less taxes than an Okie fruit-picker. Unlike self-made tycoons like Henry Ford, George Pullman, or Andrew Carnegie, Dinkle had not made his fortune by building something; rather he had manipulated and enticed and intimidated, moving money from someone else’s ledger column to his. In that way he was a harbinger of the future, a man unable to construct a birdhouse but adept at luring the bird inside and then eating it.
Dinkle glided toward the podium, a surprisingly graceful man given his age and bulk and the stiff curl of his back. Once settled, with the full attention of the room at his command, he fashioned a smile. I had never seen him smile and expected the result to be a serpentine thing. Instead, his smile was genuine, even warm. It was a welcoming smile, an expression of approval from a man whose wealth made us believe he was somehow superior to us, the unexpectedly seductive result making Dinkle not so much likable as irresistible. He began to speak next, and his voice was not the gruff, impatient snarl he routinely flung at kids in Tesoro, but a polished, syrupy tenor that would have elicited envy from a Chautauqua preacher. I looked around the room and was astounded to discover the faces of my friends and neighbors to be as open and unguarded as lemmings approaching a cliff.
“Citizens of Tesoro, it is a privilege to be here tonight,” Dinkle cooed. “It has been far too long since I shared your company and for that I beg forgiveness. I am hopeful that when you hear what I have to offer, you will pardon my absence from your lives and find it in your hearts to once again call Cyrus Dinkle your friend.”
Dinkle went on, repeatedly referring to himself in the third person and invoking a lot of claptrap about God, good will, and charity, inferring that he, Cyrus Dinkle, possessed a non-stop elevator to Heaven. Of course, the opposite was true as Dinkle was Satan in saint’s clothing, the devil playing to a room filled with Fausts. I kept quiet, figuring folks would know this without hearing it from a ten-year-old boy like me, but it soon became apparent that they didn’t. Before long, heads began to nod approvingly, people in the audience laughing at his contrived, self-effacing asides. He was mesmerizing them with flattery and faux-amiability, a snake charmer playing his pungi, and I was reminded of Miss Lizzie Fryberg’s advice: “A man who refers to himself in the third person has a big enough head for two faces. Steer clear of him.”
I was contemplating her words when Dinkle unexpectedly called out my name.
“Come up here, young Connor,” he boomed. “There’s a good lad. Come up here and let your friends and neighbors see what a fine young man you are.”
I was stunned to hear my name called, even more surprised that he knew my name at all.
“Come on now, Mister O’Halloran. Come on up,” Dinkle exhorted.
“Go on, Connor,” Ma whispered.
I shook my head.
“Go on,” Ma repeated, giggling. “Everyone is waiting.”
I stumbled to the front of the room and climbed the steps to the stage. Dinkle then led me to the podium and stationed me at his side, a hand lightly cupping the back of my neck. His hand, like his smile, confounded my expectations. It was not warm and unctuously moist, as I had always surmised, but as dry and cool as snakeskin. He began to speak again, talking about good fortune and divine benevolence, at the same time squeezing my neck until I was dizzied.
“What a lesson you’ve taught us, young Connor,” Dinkle clucked, going on to employ a surprisingly competent repertoire of Bible verses, praising me as a combination of Jesus Christ and Tom Sawyer, and generally captivating the congregation like a magician about to levitate a volunteer from the audience. I was heartily embarrassed and wriggled out from under his hand, putting enough space between us to make certain the lightning bolt likely to crash through the roof at any moment would merely lift the hairs on the back of my neck while turning a liar like Dinkle into a spent matchstick. He issued a fatherly chuckle after I pulled away.
“That’s right, boy,” he said. “Steer clear of the limelight and the limelight is more likely to find you again.” It was an original aphorism among a host of pirated ones, but no one was surprised. Although Dinkle disdained community events, he was a regular at that panoply of aphorisms we knew as Methodist Sunday services. He never took communion, citing an allergy to grape juice and water crackers, a claim failing to dampen the suspicion that symbolic ingestion of the blood and body of Christ would cause him to burst into flames.
“But allow me get to the point, dear friends,” Dinkle went on. “You are all about to embark on a journey with which I am familiar. I, too, came from modest means, but through a combination of hard work and luck, was able to attain the measure of comfort that presently describes my station in life. You, too, have worked hard, but luck has not brightened your doors…until now. Until young Connor OHalloran parted the clouds and allowed the sun to shine through.”
Dinkle smiled at me, replacing the irresistibly smarmy expression he’d evinced at the beginning of his presentation with a rabid, facial scrawl. He clearly wanted me to bite the hook that had snagged a lip on nearly everyone else in the room. Instead, I suddenly felt like a seal already on its way down a shark’s throat.
“So now luck has smiled upon you,” Dinkle went on. “But I think we can all agree th
at luck is not a bank account. It is not a mortgage payment or a pair of new shoes or a trip to San Francisco for dinner and a moving picture show. Luck is not collateral until that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow resides in a safety deposit box at the Sonoma State Bank. Am I right?”
A hum of assents rose up, and with that, Dinkle had them. He went on to describe his offer: He would establish lines of credit for those who wished to pony up their ambergris shares as collateral. Limits would be set at $10,000, the money available upon signature to prospective borrowers as early as the next day, the interest rate, “A very reasonable 5.5 percent. Just like one of those new government FHA mortgages you’ve probably read about,” Dinkle revealed.
“These lines of credit will allow you to enjoy your good fortune now rather than suffering through the prolonged and cumbersome negotiation process with the perfume companies,” Dinkle went on. “Of course, once the ambergris is sold to a perfumer, those of you taking advantage of my offer will be free to maintain the line-of-credit or pay it off with the accrued interest and close the account. It will be entirely your choice.”
I glanced at the row of town leaders sharing the stage with Dinkle and me. C. Herbert Judson and Roger Johns revealed no emotions at all. Miss Lizzie and Fiona stared at the floor, arms crossed, tight lines where their mouths should be. James Throckmorton seemed pensively interested, but Coach Wally Buford was simply agog, sporting the same grin he’d displayed after his team’s last win eight years previous, an expression of glee identical to nearly everyone else in the room. Suddenly, he leapt to his feet.
“Let’s hear three cheers for Cyrus Dinkle,” he cried out. “Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
“Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
“Hip hip…”
“Hooray!”
And that was that. The ball was rolling down the hill. There would be no stopping it.
Chapter Eight:
The Boops and Skitch Peterson the Hornswoggler’s auto sale
Cyrus Dinkle’s offer collateralized the entirety of each person’s ambergris shares, but represented less than ten percent of one’s total holding. “Safe as a savings bond,” Dinkle assured us. He knew it would dangle more temptation in front of folks’ noses than any of them could withstand, hence the long line going out the door of city hall on the morning after the second town meeting. Dinkle had spurned Roger Johns’s offer to have the lines of credit administrated by the Sonoma State Bank, preferring to handle the transactions through his own lending business. Accordingly, and for purposes of enrollment, he’d brought over two of his San Francisco employees, a couple of chippies with red lips, peroxided hair, and round fannies. The two blonde Betty Boops set up folding tables in the assembly room of the town hall, opened the doors, and started gathering signatures.
After Dinkle’s time at the podium the night before, the old man had quickly exited to avoid entanglement in any serious mingling. Once he was gone, Roger Johns and C. Herbert Judson cautioned people.
“It’s premature,” Mr. Johns told them. “We won’t know how much ambergris we really have until the perfumers perform their assays.”
“You should negotiate with Dinkle,” C. Herbert Judson added. “He’s asking each of you to leverage your entire holding against ten thousand dollars.”
Coach Wally Buford countered with his opinion that Roger Johns and C. Herbert Judson were a couple of limp-wristed milk-toasts as the ambergris would be worth far more than $10,000 per household once it was sold.
“That puts a dent of less than ten percent into its eventual value. Don’t seem like much of a risk to me,” Coach Wally opined. “You boys can go ahead and look a gift horse in the mouth if it suits your fancy, but I ain’t gonna.”
Milton Garwood then reminded everyone that neither Roger Johns nor C. Herbert Judson nor anyone else could tell him what to do. Mr. Judson followed up with advice for folks to carefully read the agreements.
“I’d be happy to look them over,” he said.
“Yeah, and how much is that gonna cost us?” Milton Garwood shouted. “Roger wants us to use his bank and you want us to pay you to read something we can damned well read for ourselves. Seems to me the two of you wanna bleed us dry before we’ve seen even one greenback.”
There was a good deal of shouting after that, about one third in attendance agreeing with Milton and two thirds expressing less than flattering opinions about his intelligence, parentage, or hygiene. Skitch Peterson the Hornswoggler and car dealer, put an end to the dispute with his announcement of a not-to-be-missed sale of used autos to begin around the time the ink was dry on the first signed line of credit agreement and ending when he ran out of cars. Skitch put some emphasis on the idea of a limit to both his inventory and his charitable disposition, suggesting folks might want to sign the damned papers and get over to the sales lot sooner than later.
Fiona and Miss Lizzie watched all this go on with frowns. Miss Lizzie’s father had moved to Tesoro from San Francisco to escape the snobbery attached to his family’s big money. However, the big money followed him and his sole heir, Miss Lizzie, didn’t need or want an advance from Dinkle. She intended to use her ambergris shares to open a bigger clinic and recruit a real doctor to Tesoro. And Fiona? She was simply too savvy to be taken in by a high-end grifter like Cyrus Dinkle. She and her aunts had a small mortgage on the mercantile and another on the Kittiwake Inn next door and could think of nothing to buy that would justify increasing their indebtedness. Besides, Fiona agreed with C. Herbert Judson and reiterated her previous warning to me. “There will be fine print in those agreements. I guarantee it. A lot of fine print.”
Like much of America in 1934, Tesoro was a man’s world—at least that’s what women wanted them to believe. As a practical matter it meant that most of the signatures collected by the Betty Boops were men’s. Dinkle, of course, had counted on this, which explained his choice of loan officers for the transactions. Betty Boop Number One was a chirpy type, distracting a mark with chatter as she lifted his wallet. “Oh, no one ever reads anything past the first and last pages,” she prattled to the men in a breathy voice, arching her back as if aiming her breasts at their dilated pupils. “It’s all a lot of lawyer gobbledy-gook, anyway. I just hate gobbledy-gook, don’t you? It gives me a headache. Do you know what I do to get rid of a headache? I take off every stitch of clothing and get into a nice hot bubble bath. Just soak in the bath as naked as a jaybird. I love that.”
Of course, the red lips and platinum hair and round fanny and talk of nakedness pretty much did it for most fellows. They filled out their names on the first page and scribbled a signature on the last one, the intervening pages given a cursory review to ensure Chirpy Boop’s impression of them as sufficiently manly insofar as financial affairs were concerned. Betty Boop Number Two looked much like her partner but was a Garbo type with a Russian accent, inducing men to quickly sign before she became too bored to continue offering glimpses of her substantial cleavage and shapely legs. The Boops were a good team, and by noon, Cyrus Dinkle had leveraged most folks in Tesoro up to their eyebrows.
Not everyone in town put a foot in Dinkle’s snare. I mentioned the skepticism evinced by Roger Johns and C. Herbert Judson, and of course, Miss Lizzie and Fiona were openly disdainful. Angus MacCallum merely snorted when I asked what he might buy when there was cash in his pocket. “A fool and his money are soon parted, laddie,” he said, “and only a fool would pat in wit’ Cyrus Dinkle.” While the Boops collected signatures at the town hall, Angus occupied the day in his usual way, scanning the sea from the observation deck of his lighthouse from 4:00 a.m. until breakfast, then beachcombing and generally wasting time until it was reasonable to pour himself a glass of rye whiskey. The other person sensible enough to stand outside the epidemic of buying about to infect Tesoro was the least likely candidate for such immunity: my mother, Mary Rose O’Halloran. At first I t
hought Ma didn’t understand Dinkle’s offer. I was wrong.
“Don’t be fooled by Cyrus Dinkle,” she told my brother and me. “He doesn’t make offers. He baits hooks.”
My mother had been better since I discovered the ambergris. I wanted to credit her improved state of mind to the impending life of wealth and comfort I’d earned by outrunning Angus MacCallum to a treasure on the beach. However, I admit it was more likely attributable to the concoction Miss Lizzie had prescribed to steady Ma’s nerves. Miss Lizzie had experimented with a number of nostrums over the years to treat Ma’s mood swings, including St. John’s Wort, saffron, ginkgo beloba, folate, and zinc. She’d driven Ma to a shabby storefront in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where a fellow peppered her with needles, and had once arranged for a consultation with a psychoanalyst who claimed to have studied his craft under the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Some of it worked for a while but none of it for long. At times I wished Miss Lizzie would give up. However, she was the type of person who had to finish what she’d started. Her latest formulation—a disgusting blend of cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, seaweed, lemon, sugar cane, and mineral water—was a sickening green color and Ma had been advised to choke down nearly a quart of the awful stuff every day.
Treasure of the Blue Whale Page 5