5
A kind of conjuration.
I am writing this sentence on June 21, 2007, almost exactly thirty-eight years after the night of the moon landing. I did not know the story of that night until a few months ago. Nine months ago, I knew almost nothing about my father at all. I am working from a stack of index cards, a time line filled out with notes taken in libraries and government agencies and in the room of my house that I use as a study. I have a banker’s box full of newspaper clippings, depositions, grand jury testimony, office correspondence. I have the interviews I did with journalists and former police officers, with my parents’ friends and relatives, with my mother. I have anecdotes like the one about the fortune-teller, the one about the night of the moon landing. I am trying to imagine how it all happened, trying to dramatize the scattered bits of information, to understand the nuances. I don’t know if anyone who knew my father will recognize this portrait I’m making. This portrait is crucially distorted by the way his life ended. When his friends and loved ones knew him, they didn’t know the future—the future had not yet distorted his image. I am adhering to the final shape, the unbeautiful shape of what happened, reconstructing an old mosaic with only a few of the tiles, letting the fragments suggest what might have been in the missing spaces.
Verde Lakes, Yavapai County, 2006
. . .
By the time I got to the exit to Camp Verde, it was snowing so hard that I could hardly discern the road from the empty land on either side of it. I didn’t know quite where I was going. The wipers were moving at full speed. There was a road called General Crook’s Trail, and I followed this road into an Old West town where the buildings, as much as I could see of them, were outsize brick or wood facades in front of rough, windowless boxes. There was a café, a title company, a store. I drove up and down the main street and finally pulled into the parking lot of the title company. It was snowing even harder by then, the sky getting darker, the day seeming to end already though it was not yet noon. A secretary told me there might be someone at the chamber of commerce who could give me a better map of the area. She knew where Verde Lakes was, but her directions were confusing. The chamber of commerce was staffed by an elderly woman with an odd, comical way of speaking that turned out to be unintentional. She wore a vest and owlish glasses and moved around in a determined way, finally providing me with a flier that had a vague map with stars on it for the area’s restaurants and motels. It wasn’t surprising to hear her story of dropping everything to come to this part of Arizona. She told me that she knew some people who lived in Verde Lakes. She said it was a shame what had happened there. The land, she said, had been sold as a retirement village to air force pilots stationed in Japan. Some of the lots were in a flood zone. She told me there’d been a terrible flood several years ago, in the 1980s, in which a woman died, pets were abandoned, garbage was left strewn in the limbs of trees. “I remember when that was still a ranch and I went up to Ned Warren and I asked him what he was doing building on a flood plain,” she said. “He told me the water never gets that high.”
She didn’t know my father’s name. I had talked to enough people in Arizona by then to not be surprised that she remembered Ned Warren. I left the chamber of commerce with the map and went back to my car. By then, there was a good three inches of snow and I was getting concerned about whether I’d be able to drive back to Phoenix if the storm persisted. I didn’t want to spend the night in Camp Verde. I drove with the radio off so I could concentrate better on the road. Verde Lakes was about a seven-minute drive from the chamber of commerce. Down the highway a few more miles was a state park and a little farther down was an Indian reservation casino, but Verde Lakes itself was just some land near nothing, a few trees and a grid of streets that looked like it had sat vacant for a long time before gradually accommodating a few trailers and simple one-story houses. It went on and on, block by block, a suburban neighborhood that had failed to appear—no homes in different styles, no landscaping or patios or decks. A school bus dropped off a few kids. Later, some teenagers walked by in black clothes and camouflage, part of a six-pack on a plastic tree, cigarettes. I was taking pictures of their neighborhood and I don’t know what that meant to them, or if it meant anything at all. They looked at me in my car and they became alert, self-conscious, their suspicion visibly turning from me to themselves.
There was a street there, as I knew there would be, called Zachary Lane. My mother had always told me about Zachary Lane, about how my father, in the early days of his land company, had named a street after me. There was another, longer street called Lazar Road: vacant lots, trailers, fences made of wire and stakes. On one of the street signs someone had taped up a homemade poster for a yard sale.
I’ve grabbed the brass ring.
I didn’t know the story of the brass ring or the moon landing on that day, but I sensed that this was not the kind of place my father had imagined. But perhaps he had simply not cared—perhaps I was naive about his motives or intentions. I knew I was not an objective judge. My emotions were carrying me from one conjecture to another. His life and death seemed pointless in that place. I thought he must have been either very foolish or very cynical, but neither view was very convincing.
Months later, I came across a memo from a journalist about my father.
Several different profiles have emerged of Lazar—a “sheep,” an aggressor, a devoted husband, a swinger—but no one seems sure which description fits the best.
PART TWO
A Phoenix attorney who dealt with Warren during his early land dealings says a favorite Warren saying was: “Everybody’s crooked—I’ll show you.” Said the lawyer: “Corrupting people—this was his delight.”
—Newsday, March 23, 1977
6
Mexico—somewhere on the Pacific coast, perhaps Mazatlán, not that long a flight from Phoenix. The date is easier to determine: it would have been Saturday, August 14, 1971. At a beach resort somewhere in Mexico, Ned Warren was sitting on the patio with a woman named Acquanetta Ross, waiting for his wife, Barbara, and Acquanetta’s husband, Jack, to come back from the concierge desk. Acquanetta Ross was dressed in a red cape, with peacock feathers in her hair, a beauty mark painted on her cheek. Like her name, her appearance was gaudy, theatrical, but her dark hair and sharp cheekbones projected a seriousness, even a toughness. She used a silver spoon to push a slice of lemon into a cup of plain hot water. She was dieting; this was part of her diet, she kept saying.
“What did Jack say about the land?” she asked.
“He said he bought some land yesterday. He said there was a balloon payment coming up down the road and he was already worried about it.”
“That’s all he’s talked about. I asked him why did he buy the land if he was going to worry about this balloon payment. It’s really ridiculous, don’t you think, these words they come up with? Balloon payment.”
“I’d say it’s a pretty descriptive word,” Warren said.
She stared at him with a showy disdain, blowing out smoke from her cigarette. “I can’t read my watch,” she said. “Where are they? What time is it?”
“It’s a little after seven.”
“I can’t stand wearing glasses. I know it’s vain, but I won’t wear them.”
She had been a B actress in Hollywood once, a star in films with titles like Captive Wild Woman, or Tarzan and the Leopard Woman. These feral roles had fallen to her because of her dark skin. For a time, her handlers had called her “The Venezuelan Volcano,” though in fact she was not Venezuelan but Arapaho Indian. Warren knew the story, as did most of what passed for “society” in Phoenix. The Indian blood was the subject of disdain, even if she and her husband, Jack, were local celebrities of a kind. Jack Ross’s Lincoln/Mercury dealership sponsored a weekly horror movie that Acquanetta presented on TV, dressed in outlandish costumes. On the strength of those ads, Jack was mounting a campaign for governor—laugh, but it was Arizona. Jack Ross’s brother, as Warren well knew, was married
to the daughter of the most powerful man in Arizona, Barry Goldwater. There were reasons for this conversation.
“I wouldn’t worry about the balloon payment,” he said. “I have some investors over in Japan, they’re desperate for land.”
“Japan. Why would anyone in Japan want to buy land in Yavapai County?”
“They’re Americans. It’s a company that sells land to American G.I.s. Do you know how many soldiers are stationed in Japan? Korea, the Philippines?”
“No.”
“I never would have thought of it myself. Soldiers. Every one of those soldiers needs a place to invest his money.”
In six months, Acquanetta Ross would deny this conversation ever happened. In six months, Jack Ross would deny the entire trip to Mexico had ever happened. Eventually, these denials would create a mystery as to how Ed Lazar had known to call Jack Ross sometime in early September 1971 about some land Ross owned in Yavapai County, land that Ed Lazar had never seen, land that perhaps no one but Jack Ross ever really saw.
My father and Warren had offices on Camelback Road, in a bland stretch of small, nondescript buildings housing garages and stores. I have what I think must be a false memory of going there as a child: a door with the words Consolidated Mortgage Corporation printed film noir–style on its opaque glass panel, my father moving boxes of file folders through the door into the trunk of his car. I’ve had this memory for many years—I don’t know what it means. It comes back periodically, without connection to anything in my current life, and though it seems suggestive, it also seems meaningless, interesting but only spuriously so.
I have some of my father and Warren’s business correspondence to each other, which sounds like this:
On Cornwall forget unit 2 temporarily—suggest we keep those lots—I get his inventory—
on mobile lots—suggest Cornwall keep the down to 10%—we require 10% down—
leaves balance average of $3600—we want $1000 plus the interest so we take
correct percentage of flow starting 1st month—
On Com’l same thing according to a formula on the individual lot or if you prefer on the average lot with a
restriction that in no event should the impound on the individual lot be less than $1000 (plus int.)
A strange and difficult poem, written in unfamiliar language. I have read it many times now, and read many pages like it in order to understand some of its meaning, through context and association. Like a poem, it became more interesting over time, every word significant, every phrase set down with authority.
They were not fools, nor were they unsophisticated. They were slowly building up a business on margin, figuring out ways to eke out a profit, calculating the percentages. After two years of patient work, it seemed as if it was finally going to pay off, and perhaps that was why they decided to reward themselves that fall of 1971. What ends up being called “greed” seldom looks like greed at the time; it looks like common sense, ambition.
Warren liked Ed Lazar—he liked his surprising spark, his sense of strategy. He liked the feeling you got that in some private way Ed’s life was geared toward obtaining and savoring a good time. He could look up and say one deadpan phrase that made you laugh, or he could say nothing, his eyes still, his silence the only sign of his disagreement. Without Ed Lazar’s image, it would have been impossible to underwrite Consolidated Mortgage Corporation with loans from places like First National Bank or ITT or Westinghouse. Without his acumen, it would have been impossible to turn a profit without resorting to financial corner-cutting or outright fraud.
They were playing it basically straight, taking out loans instead of selling mortgages, using the loans to put in the improvements on the land—the roads, the water lines, the utilities. The business was not a Ponzi scheme but an actual land development company. It was a slow grind: taking out loans brought in less cash than selling mortgage paper. But that May—May of 1971—Warren had walked into David Rich’s office and announced that he and Ed Lazar were both about to make $1 million.
Rich turned a memo at a right angle to mark its place in a stack of papers. “You found a buyer,” he said.
“In California. Out in Bakersfield. They’re called American Home Industries. AHI. They build modular homes—it’s a good match for them, they can sell the land and then sell the homes.”
“That’s terrific, Ned. You’ve done really well, you and Ed.”
“They might be interested in that land of yours out near Casa Grande. I’ll speak to them if you want.”
“Acting as their broker, I suppose.”
Rich smiled and had the secretary bring in a bottle of Johnnie Walker and two glasses. This was how Consolidated Mortgage had started, with a glass of Scotch in the office of David Rich, who had loaned them the money—$30,000 that was now somehow worth more than $2.5 million in American Home Industries stock. Thirty thousand dollars that Rich had loaned them at a usurious 18 percent interest, the maximum allowed by law.
“You and Ed must be over the moon,” Rich said.
“Over the moon.”
“Happy, fulfilled. Not your style, I know. You want me to go in on the deal too, is that it?”
Warren raised a hand slightly above his knee. “Your choice. I just wanted you to know about it. After that eighteen percent loan, I thought maybe you thought we didn’t know what we were doing, Ed and I.”
. . .
It was only on paper, but there were things about being a paper millionaire that made your life easier right away. The risk was over, for one thing: the risk of lot buyers defaulting, the risk of Warren losing patience and sending the salesmen out to manufacture bad contracts. They had done a stock swap with American Home Industries, and now AHI was going to pay them a bimonthly salary in addition to giving them $2.5 million worth of its shares. Suddenly money seemed easy to make, a trick you had already pulled off once. Like winning at cards, it made you feel you had some special skill, a feeling that was hard to resist, even when you saw its illogic. That winter, Arizona State had won the Peach Bowl after an undefeated season, and it sometimes seemed like a good omen, a prophecy of what came about that spring.
The author’s father (in the rear in white shirt) and mother (beside him), after the Peach Bowl
Ed didn’t touch the money. The neighbors had all installed fences for privacy, but Ed didn’t bother—his entire property remained exposed. He didn’t understand the need for those fences. What could anyone be doing that required so much privacy? That was how he lived as a millionaire—shooting baskets at the local high school, riding there on his bike—not telling anyone about the success, instead savoring his own tact.
The name of Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, has twice cropped up in the current investigation….
The Arizona Republic published copies of letters written in 1971 by Mr. Goldwater and [U.S. Congressman Sam] Steiger on their official stationery endorsing one of Mr. Warren’s projects called Chino Valley Ranchettes, that was offered to American servicemen abroad under terms that violated Arizona law. The Phoenix Police Department said they had evidence that the actual wording of the letter had been drafted by Mr. Lazar.
The letters were used in sales promotion of the land, which the Phoenix police later found to be without water and with rock conditions that made installation of functioning septic tanks impossible.
—New York Times, June 14, 1976
They had demonstrated an ability to turn over land, to buy it cheaply and sell it quickly, and now there was a whole new market opening up, a company called Capital Management Systems based in Koza, Okinawa, that sold to servicemen all across the Far East—Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam. They didn’t spend much time marveling at the exotic sound of Koza, Okinawa. What mattered to Ed and Warren was that Capital Management Systems had bought lots in Verde Lakes and now they were going to buy many more lots in Consolidated’s new subdivision, Chino Meadows, in an area called Chino Valley, in central Yavapai County, near Prescott. T
he names would turn out to be confusing: Chino Meadows, Chino Valley. Many people would mix up the different “Chinos.” It made it still more confusing that Capital Management Systems was in Japan. But what mattered was the size of the market. Soldiers. Every one of those soldiers needs a place to invest his money. Consolidated, their firm, would go from being a retailer to a wholesaler, dealing in large volumes with Capital Management Systems, not the former lot-by-lot drudgery with all its attendant risks. What was even better was that they could make these deals on the side, out of the purview of their buyer, AHI, because Warren had somehow persuaded AHI to remove the noncompete clause from the contract. This meant they had AHI credit lines, but they also had the ability to go in on separate deals, to set up separate corporations.
Capital Management Systems was called CMS. Consolidated Mortgage Corporation was called CMC. The new umbrella they began to work under was called Consolidated Acceptance Corporation, or CAC, a separate corporation from CMC. It was going to be very hard for people to keep track of what was what or who was who: CAC, CMC, CMS. As it went forward, even the secretaries would sometimes get the different letterheads mixed up.
. . .
Warren stacked some papers on his desk, his forehead still shiny from the heat outside. He had just returned from his long weekend on the beach in Mexico. He wore a tan suit and a pale blue shirt and he sucked on a Dum Dum lollipop because he was trying to cut down on his smoking.
“I get bored on the beach after about ten minutes,” he said. “Nothing to do.” He was in his Robert Mitchum mode, dapper and sarcastic, breezing into the office now to check his mail, then breezing to his other offices, then back to his house and the pool.
Evening's Empire Page 5
