Dry Rot

by S. L. Stoner

  s s s

  The next morning found the two of them striding down Portland streets beneath a steady drizzle. The clang of horsedrawn trolleys mixed with the shouts of men wrestling heavy wooden freight boxes on and off wagons. Women wearing ankle-high walking skirts carefully wove through the bustle on their way to the public market, willow baskets dangling from their arms, gloved hands holding furled umbrellas aloft. Despite the rain and significant poverty in this western town, the people on its streets had a brisk vitality that said they had plans and the will to achieve them.

  “The man I want you to meet is Mr. Fred T. Merrill. He’s the city’s ‘bicycle king.’ And, he is also a city councilman,” Johnston explained, his voice raised above the rumble of wagon wheels over the uneven street.

  “I’ve heard of him,” Sage said. “Isn’t he something of a crackpot who uses his political office to sell his bicycles?” Merrill’s Bicycle Emporium was where Sage purchased a bicycle for Matthew, Ida’s nephew, in an attempt to jolt the boy out of his despair over his brother’s brutal murder. The strategy had worked, sort of. The new bicycle definitely distracted the boy. Unfortunately, that bicycle also led him into being shanghaied and nearly shipped out on a rotted-out whaling ship. These days, Ida watched the boy like a mother hawk.

  Sage had never met Merrill, however. What little he knew about the bicycle merchant came from the pages of the Portland Gazette. Oddly, Merrill never ate at Mozart’s. For most men of Merrill’s social status, Mozart’s was a frequent stop because it was one of the best places to see, or be seen by “those who mattered.” It and the Portland Hotel dining room were rivals for the reputation of Portland’s most top-notch eatery.

  Johnston’s laugh intruded on Sage’s ruminations. “Now there you go! That’s exactly what The Gazette wants you to think when it ridicules Merrill’s marketing antics. Sure Merrill uses loony publicity stunts to draw attention to his business. That’s why he’s successful. Personally, I like his bicycle stunts. They draw a lot of spectators for good, clean fun. But no, those marketing ploys are not what rankles our respectable establishment types and spurs The Gazette into jeering. What they flat don’t like are the stands Merrill takes as a member of City Council. He stirs up more trouble for the rich men of this city than ten other men put together. He knows how to get their dander up and keep it there.”

  “Like how? And when?” Sage asked.

  “Well, this ought to interest you, given your set-to with the shanghaiers this past summer. Just before your efforts sent that shanghaier Mordaunt off to jail, some council members planned to grant him an exclusive franchise to haul city garbage. Merrill raised a stink about Mordaunt’s sweetheart relationship with some of the councilmen. He forced them to back off that idea. A couple of months ago, he made them even madder. Standard Oil wanted to install huge storage tanks on the east side of the river, right across from downtown. Merrill’s followers pitched such fits at the council meetings that the oil company dropped the idea. Now it’s eyeing parcels of land farther downriver, near the town of Linnton.”

  Johnston chuckled and responded to Sage’s sideways glance with a grin but then the newspaperman sobered. “The Standard Oil fight riled up the bigger businesses and Merrill’s fellow councilmen went past hopping mad to apoplectic. Supposedly, the plan was for our councilmen and their esteemed pals, the near eastside landowners, to make packets of money selling the land to the oil company. At least that was their intention before ol’ Fred’s rabble rousing squashed the project.

  “They are determined to get Merrill booted off the council, come hell or high water. Every election they hunt for a candidate to oppose him. Since councilmen are elected by district, rather than citywide, they’re just spitting into the wind. Merrill’s constituency remains intensely loyal to him. Still, I don’t think the money men will ever stop trying to kill his political career.”

  When they reached the Stumptown’s fogged-up glass door, Johnston paused to warn Sage, “Once Fred starts talking you’ll not be able to drop in a word. Keep in mind that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite his love for telling stories, most of what Merrill says is reliable. Just sit back, relax, and let him roll.”

  Winter’s ubiquitous wet-wool smell hit their noses as they stepped into the warm café. Edging between tables crowded with working-class men, Sage and Johnston reached the rearmost table. There Merrill sat, a copy of The Journal spread across the table before him.

  “I see that you are a man of refined journalistic taste,” Johnston greeted Merrill who watched their approach. Beneath a full head of curly gray hair, Merrill’s face was strong, rather handsome, with a prominent nose, deep-set, piercing brown eyes and bushy brows. “Well, if it isn’t the publisher of this fine rag himself. Sit down, sit down,” Merrill said, folding the newspaper and gesturing toward the booth bench opposite him. The man vibrated energy. He stood and gave Sage a firm, friendly handshake across the scarred wooden table.

  Johnston wasted no time. “My friend, John Adair here, is the proprietor of that fine restaurant, Mozart’s Table. He came to me with questions about how the City Council hands out construction contracts . . . for jobs like the trestle spans across gullies, ravines and swampy ground. He’s most interested in why the Marquam Ravine bridge collapsed the other night.”

  Merrill’s face lost some of its geniality and his eyes narrowed. “Suppose you tell me just where your interest lies, Mr. Adair.”

  Sage shot a quick look toward Johnston and received a nod in return. He took up an explanation he thought meshed with his role as a prosperous restauranteur. “I spoke with a man who told me that he’d worked on that trestle. He said the contractor who repaired it deliberately shorted the job. I’m a businessman. And, I started thinking that if this contractor does shoddy work and has performed other city work, there might be any number of trestles falling down around town with all this heavy rain. That’s bad for business. I figure someone needs to say something about it. Still, I don’t want to fly off like a loose axe head. It occurred to me that, before I raise a ruckus, I need to learn something about how things work at City Hall when it comes to public works contracting.”

  Merrill nodded, signaled for a coffee refill and settled back against the wooden booth. “That’d be Mackey, Abner Mackey,” he said with a sigh.“He’s awarded all the city’s bridge repair contracts. Never has to face any competition. Me, I squawk about it every time.” He shook his head ruefully, “And, they also outvote me every time. I don’t make more of a stink because I can’t provide a solid reason for objecting. I just think it’s better if we spread the work around—keep it competitive. So, you saying his company might be doing shoddy repair work interests me. I’d like to see somebody prove it. That’d jab a big ol’ stick between their spokes.”

  “How so?” Sage asked.

  Merrill leaned forward over the table. “I hope you don’t mind if I give you a little civics lesson, Mr. Adair. Not telling you about how things are supposed to work but telling you how they really work.

  “That’s what I’m here for.” Sage grinned and scooted closer to the table.

  “I hear a hint of the back East in your words, Adair. You once live back there somewhere?”

  “Yes, Pennsylvania and later on, New Jersey,” Sage answered truthfully, omitting the particulars—like how he’d been born into a coal mining family only to become the foster son of a rich mine owner. That background he always kept secret. Only three Portlanders knew about it—his mother, Fong and a certain brothel madam.

  Merrill looked at Sage who said nothing more. After waiting a beat, Merrill said, “Well, you probably saw instances of blatant graft, back there in the East,”

  At Sage’s nod, he continued, “Out here in Portland town, the rich boys tend more toward engaging in what I’ll call ‘honest graft’ for lack of a better term.”

  “‘Honest graft?’ That seems a contradiction in terms, Merrill,” Johnston spoke up.

  Merrill nodded slowly, “Most
folks consider a distinction between ’honest’ and ’dishonest’ graft to be a distinction without meaning. I’m one of them. Yet, that distinction makes one hell of a difference when you try to stop it.”

  Merrill took a sip of coffee, twisted his lips, set down the cup and started speaking again, “Dishonest graft is when the politicians and civil servants demand secret bribes, like from the prostitutes, saloon owners, gamblers, and in exchange they promise to look the other way or do them one favor or another. That kind of lawlessness makes for real rowdiness. Makes the streets unsafe. Dishonest graft like that is why I keep fighting for an ordinance legalizing prostitution. That way, we tax the business—keep it clean—if you’ll pardon the unsavory pun.”

  Merrill shook his head ruefully. “I’m losing that battle though,” he added. “Those prostitution grafters are crafty. Anytime I bring up licensing, they just mention ‘God’ and the air steams up with cries of moral outrage. Waving that red flag steers most folks straight past reason right into blind opposition. Happens every time. Come voting day, on their way to bank their prostitution booty, the hypocrites cynically tip their top hats to the fools they’ve deluded.”

  He paused to give another rueful shake of his head before adding, “Some of their wives are clamoring for an ordinance requiring a posting of the building owner’s name on those buildings that house operations of ill repute. My, my. Aren’t those righteous ladies going to be mighty shocked when their own last names are mounted up there for all the world to see?” Merrill’s eyes danced at the thought.

  Then he sobered, saying, “Honest graft, now that is more pernicious because it’s harder to fight. Let me give you an example. The council authorizes certain public improvements. Say, one of the council members learns, in advance of the rest of us, where a particular improvement is to take place. What he does, he has friends buy up all the land in that location while the price is still low. Next, that friend sells the land to the City at a much higher price. The councilman’s friend makes a neat little profit, some of it eventually landing, in one form or another, in the friendly councilman’s pocket. Guess who foots the bill for that little excess profit? You do, and Johnston does, and all the rest of us poor saps who pay our taxes faithfully.”

  Merrill thoughtfully sipped his coffee before continuing, “And, your so-called ‘honest’ grafter’s payoff isn’t always money. Instead of directly receiving some of the profit from the deal, it’s understood that the friend now owes the councilman. A little later on down the road, the friend’s councilman might receive a little gift or special treatment for one of his children or maybe the opportunity to participate in some sweetheart side deal. ‘Course, your typical ‘honest’ grafter tells himself that it’s merely a matter of taking advantage of ‘opportunities.’” Merrill used two bent fingers on either hand to demonstrate the quotation marks. “So what if the taxpayer ends up paying for all that sweetening that’s been spread around like manure in a farmer’s garden?”

  Merrill didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s what every smart businessman does,” he said, his tone now bitter. “They talk endlessly about such ‘opportunities’ while standing around in their silly golfing pantaloons or sitting on their well-clad butts in the Cabot Club’s leather armchairs. Bottom line, they make certain sure everyone of them benefits. You try to confront them and what you hear is, ‘Just sharing information’ about ‘opportunities’—that’s their explanation.‘Nothing wrong with that,’ is what they’ll tell you.” Merrill’s lips pursed in disgust. “I see them as a pack of sharks circling a leaky lifeboat full of taxpayers and telling each other, ‘Oh, my, looky there! Another opportunity, snark, snark.’”

  All three of them laughed at Merrill’s fanciful picture. Merrill paused to sip his coffee before moving on to specifics. “Talking about Mackey,” he continued, “some people claim that Mackey’s been unusually lucky when it comes to public works projects. That idea of luck is suspect once you know that Mackey’s built houses for some of the men sitting on the City Council. You gotta wonder if he’s given them real good deals on their lumber and labor. Is there a way to prove it? No, of course not. The Mackeys also sit on various company boards with some of the councilmen or on boards with the councilmen’s close business associates. Who knows what ‘opportunities’ they cook up when they’re together? One way or another, they make sure that all those juicy ‘opportunities’ stay right within their tight little circle.”

  Merrill studied Sage before asking, “Have you listened to enough of my griping or are you ready for the rest?” Sage nodded for him to continue, so Merrill bent forward and said in a lower voice, “Rumor has it Mackey also employs people on his payroll who exist nowhere except on his books. Where those phantom workers’ wages go is anybody’s guess. ‘Course, if it goes to some of my fellow council members, that’d be dishonest graft. Still, there’d be no way to prove our theory without a full-fledged investigation, and the district attorney won’t authorize that looksee because he’d be investigating the same men he breaks bread with.” Merrill sat back in his chair, laced his fingers across his flat belly and looked inquiringly from Johnston to Sage.

  “Whew,” Sage said, momentarily taken aback by the idea of such a complex fight in the middle of the strike. Fighting the Mackeys over their bridge contracts would be like fighting the city’s entire upper class. Not an easy task because that class always covers over its shenanigans with an oh-so-respectable veneer.

  “So, how can we taxpayers stop the so-called‘honest graft’?” he asked Merrill.

  “Can’t hardly,” Merrill responded, “Their scheming is slipperier than live eels in a barrel of oil. Unless and, until, someone acts so greedy that it becomes obvious. If what you suspicion about the repair work is true, the Mackey’s plain ol’ greed’s going to bring the city’s trestle bridges crashing down.”

  For awhile, the three of them sat without talking, letting the hubbub of patrons and the clatter of cutlery fill the silence. Merrill leaned forward across the table as if to share a secret. “Fact is, the challenge facing our honest citizen reminds me of a bicycle race I won in 1898,” he said.

  Next to Sage, Johnston reacted to Merrill’s statement by relaxing back against the booth’s back, evidently readying himself for a lengthy exposition. Taking Johnston’s cue, Sage also relaxed. This quirky fellow was definitely entertaining.

  Merrill remained leaning forward, intent on telling his story. “I’m not talking about an ordinary race. No, siree. I matched my bicycle against horse flesh. It was my nickel-plated safety bicycle against sixteen of the best horses in Cook’s livery stable. Safety bicycles became the new rage in 1898 because their samesize wheels make them safer and more practical for everybody. I wanted to publicize that fact. Of course, nowadays, a safety bicycle is all that anybody buys. No one wants a high wheeler any more.”

  Merrill took a breath and another swallow of coffee. “So, the first step I took, I announced the contest in the paper. We scheduled it to take place over six days, eight hours each day, up there at the Multnomah Athletic Club field.”

  Sage shifted uneasily. Surely this bicycle salesman wasn’t going to regale them with a minute-by-minute account of his six-day, horse-bicycle race.

  Merrill evidently noticed Sage’s impatient twitch because his steady brown eyes looked into Sage’s appraisingly, even while his magpie chatter continued flowing, “So anyway, we started out with a pretty big crowd, and, as I stuck with it, that crowd grew in size each day of the race. Every thirty minutes they traded out the horses. Me, I just kept pedaling. Sometimes, I pedaled so slow that I nearly lost my balance. Other times, I’d manage to pump up into a sprint. The point is, I never stopped. They declared me the winner at the end of those six days. The horses got too pooped to come out of their stalls.”

  He ceased talking and in the ensuing silence Sage struggled to make the connection. How in the world did wanting to stop honest graft relate to Merrill’s story?

  “The point is,”
Merrill supplied, with an air of patient indulgence, “these grafters and rich ne’er-do-wells are like those sixteen horses. They’ll prance in all full of confidence and sometimes it’ll seem like they are leaving you in the dust. Give them steady, unrelenting opposition, though, stay the course, and they’ll tucker out eventually. They’re used to having others haul their water for them. Just keep on pedaling down the track and you’ll end up wining the race, no matter how bleak the outlook might seem at times.”

  Sage raised a skeptical eyebrow as he asked, “Do you think, with this bridge deal, that the city engineer is one of those hauling water for them?”