Evening's Empire

by Zachary Lazar

  “I’d like to have those checks before we get into this,” Warren said. “The ones Charlotte wrote.” He wiped his mouth and sat back. “I’m going to make sure Dennis pays you for those. I don’t know if Charlotte did it, or maybe Dennis told her to do it, but it never should have happened.”

  Adamson placed his hands sideways in a steeple on the table, studying them as though to see if they were clean. It seemed to Warren that he was trying to remain deliberately motionless. He made a very slight shrug toward the bar, where Verive sat with his arm extended on the counter, fingering an ashtray.

  “I brought Carl along when I went to see Dennis the other day,” he said. “He just sat at the bar like he’s sitting now. I didn’t have to make any threats, in other words. Carl was sitting there. I don’t know what Honey told the feds, but I never even had to raise my voice with him.”

  Warren looked at him, lighting a cigarette. “You’re upset about not getting paid,” he said.

  “Not upset.”

  “I apologize for it, it was stupid. You’re doing me a favor by giving me the checks back. When you go to the grand jury, why don’t you take Mickey Clifton with you? He’s a good lawyer and I’ll pay for it.”

  Adamson unclasped his hands and tapped the table. “I told Dennis it was time to pay what he owed. I was firm with him, but I never touched him and I never had to make a threat, because I brought Carl with me. Just the sight of Carl is usually enough to get the message across, do you know what I mean?”

  Warren pushed aside his plate. He let out a long stream of smoke, one eye squinted slightly, the other watching Adamson, a show of alert wariness backed by self-assurance. “What if I told you I want to have three people killed?” he said. “Could you get me a price for that?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t say ‘what.’ Is that something you can do, or did you and Carl just come in here and try to strong-arm me?”

  “I’m not stupid enough to try to do that.”

  “Given what you’ve been telling me about this grand jury you’re going to. Given my problems in the courts. Given this little story you keep telling me about taking Carl to go see Dennis. I’m asking you if you can look into what I just asked you, or do you want to just give me the checks and I’ll pay you the money and that will be it? We’ll all just go our separate ways. Or maybe I should go talk to Carl myself.”

  Adamson didn’t answer. Warren took another drag of his cigarette, then crushed it out in the ashtray. Then he stood up and walked away from the table. He knew that Verive could sense from his spot at the bar that the stakes had just been raised. He looked right at him until Verive finally looked back. Then he went into the bathroom and waited for Verive to join him there.

  From a summary of an interview of John Harvey Adamson conducted by Phoenix Police Detective Ed Reynolds, May 3, 1995:

  … Adamson then went over again about how Ned Warren asked him how much it would cost to murder or could he arrange to have three murders done. Adamson explained to me that Talley at the time was the current real estate commissioner. Adamson stated that at the time he assumed that Talley was also going before the grand jury. Adamson had never heard of Ed Lazar. Ned Warren did not say why he wanted Lazar killed. Again Adamson emphasized the fact that he does not remember who the third person was. He also did not remember why this third person was to be killed….

  At this point in Adamson and Ned Warren’s conversation, Ned Warren got up and said he had to go to the bathroom. Adamson watched Ned Warren as he got up and walked by Carl Verive who was sitting at the bar. Adamson could see that Ned Warren said something to Verive as he walked by. A moment later Carl Verive followed Ned Warren into the bathroom. About fifteen minutes later Adamson stated that he walked into the bathroom to see what was going on, when he could hear that Ned Warren and Carl Verive were talking about Lazar. Adamson then turned around and walked out of the bathroom alone. Later Adamson would leave the bar with Carl Verive. He stated that they did not discuss what Carl and Ned talked about in the bathroom. I asked Adamson why? And he replied that you just don’t do that….

  I asked Adamson if Lee DiFranco was in town at the time this was going on. Adamson advised me that he didn’t know. I asked him if Lee DiFranco associated with Carl Verive? He stated that he knew that the two knew each other. He had seen Lee DiFranco and Carl Verive together around 1974 at Rudy Baragan’s bar which was called “Rudy’s.” This bar was located on East Camelback Road. Carl Verive dropped out of sight around 1974 to 1975 when he possibly went to California. I asked Adamson if he had ever heard that Carl Verive was involved in the Ed Lazar murder? Adamson advised me that he had only heard rumors about this, but had no firsthand knowledge of Carl ever being involved.

  From a summary of an interview of John Harvey Adamson conducted by Lonzo McCracken, August 8, 1979:

  ADAMSON said that after LAZAR was killed he had a conversation with CARL VERIVE at VERIVE’S home located on the west side of Phoenix. VERIVE told ADAMSON that NED WARREN SR. had talked to VERIVE in the restaurant in Applegate’s and had asked VERIVE to kill LAZAR. VERIVE said that he went to PEDOTE to get it done. ADAMSON said that VERIVE was acting like it was a very big deal. A little later ADAMSON said he went to Papa Joe Tocco’s place to see ROSSI. When he went in PEDOTE was sitting there in a chair. PEDOTE asked ADAMSON if he had heard anything about… WARREN using queer money (counterfeit money). ADAMSON said that he had not heard of anything like that and did not know the WARRENS fooled with that kind of stuff. PEDOTE said the payoff for killing LAZAR was to be in Los Angeles, California and “X” was to make the payoff. ADAMSON asked PEDOTE if they paid him in queer money what would he do. PEDOTE said do a couple more and not get paid for it.

  17

  She was a secretary at Consolidated for a little more than a year—late 1972 to early 1974—and it was sometime during then that Mr. Lazar left the firm. She remembered an office party where he gave a good-bye speech—it couldn’t have been a Christmas party, but she remembered it that way. Mr. McCollum had already bought the business by then, but Mr. Lazar was still executive vice president.

  She knew the company was in financial distress—everyone knew it. They worried about payroll every week, wondering if they would get their checks, and it seemed to get worse once they started the Oklahoma operation. They were selling packages because they couldn’t get financing from the banks anymore. Still, everything seemed aboveboard. Mr. Lazar assigned one of the girls exclusively to call the lot buyers to go over their contracts and make sure they had signed their HUD reports. HUD was their biggest problem. She remembered calling Mr. Talley a few times at the Real Estate Department, but all the stress and worry came from HUD. They were trying to shut down every land company in Arizona, people around the office were saying.

  Mr. Warren came in only once or twice a week. He was always charming, cream and sugar in his coffee.

  She had never heard of Educational Computer Systems, but she thought maybe Harry Rosenzweig, who had something to do with it, had bought some packages once, though she never saw him. She never heard anything about Congressman Steiger or Senator Goldwater.

  She remembered the name David Rich because Mr. Rich was going to buy Consolidated—she thought maybe he did buy it at one point. He had an English accent. Eventually, Mr. McCollum bought the company and he found a lot of debts, real problems. Lots of workers, contractors, started coming in demanding payment, very upset.

  Mr. Lazar was always quiet, serious, busy. He played tennis on Wednesday afternoons, and every morning he had coffee and yogurt at the same time, 9:15. He was so concerned that she wasn’t washing his spoon afterward that she bought him plastic ones. She would give him a different-colored spoon every day in his yogurt, and after that he never asked her about it again. He was very meticulous about things like that, also about his clothes and his teeth. She made his dental appointments for him. He had a beautiful smile.

  After Consolidated ran into trouble with AHI, in the spri
ng or summer of 1972, Warren and Ed Lazar started coming to David Rich for money. He had been a land banker going all the way back to 1959, with Lee Ackerman, just after he came over from London, but he had never owned a land company and never wanted to. Then sometime in January or February 1973, Warren came into his office and announced, “I have an offer you can’t refuse.” He offered all of Consolidated’s stock for $100,000, with only $5,000 down. With $5,000 down, Rich would get two-thirds of the stock right away. According to the offer sheet, Consolidated had the potential to generate $20 million a year in sales. Rich knew how the finances of land companies worked, so he thought it would be closer to $1 million a year. Still, $1 million a year in actual revenue on a $5,000 down payment.

  Ed Lazar was very keen on the idea. Ed came into the office and practically begged him to buy the stock. “We can run this thing,” he said. Ed was an accountant, he knew the numbers—he could run the operation himself. He had brought his own father and some other relatives in as investors and he wanted to make sure they got back their money. Maybe $1 million a year for a $5,000 down payment. Rich lived to regret it, but he made the deal. After that, Ed kept coming to him for loans.

  He loaned Consolidated $100,000. Then Ed came back for $250,000 more. Rich said no at that point, no more. Then in February, HUD ordered Consolidated to shut down its operations in Chino Valley. After HUD got involved, you couldn’t sell land in Arizona. They made it impossible. Rich thought maybe that was when some bad sales may have been made, in Oklahoma, but that was just a guess.

  Eventually he sold his shares to A. A. McCollum and Bill Nathan of Crocker Investments. His attorney would not allow him to comment on that, as there was still litigation pending.

  That summer was Ed’s fortieth birthday, July 18, 1974. Susie threw him a big party with a Mexican theme—crepe paper decorations, a piñata. Money was still scarce, so she served miniature tacos and tostadas, and as jewelry she wore a necklace Zachary had made out of painted macaroni on a string. Their next-door neighbor Carol Nichols would never forget the party. Carol was an artist and had painted murals in Susie’s daughter Stacey’s bedroom. She always admired Susie’s talent for entertaining, and also the graciousness of Susie’s mother-in-law, Belle. At the end of the party, everyone gave Ed his birthday presents. There were dozens of packages of every shape and size, all of them beautifully wrapped, and as Ed opened them up one by one, he found that they all contained the same thing—tennis balls. More tennis balls then even Ed Lazar could go through in a year.

  He looked at Susie with that smile—he had that cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. Carol had been their next-door neighbor since they moved in, and whenever her father came to visit, he and Ed would get together and try to stump each other with sports questions. Her father could be a tough nut to crack, a wholesaler in the fruit business, but Ed could always make him laugh—he was funny, smart, iconoclastic. Carol had never known Jewish men who drank, as Ed did, though she was Jewish herself. They liked to kid each other, Ed and Carol. His new office was in the same building as the Playboy Club, and one day Carol called him up, pretending to be a playmate. She put on a Southern accent and said she had heard he worked in the building, maybe they could carpool together, save on gas. He got very interested until he finally realized it was her, and he said what he always said: “You’re trouble.”

  He worked as a tax specialist at LKH&H—consultant work, no clients of his own. If you looked up Ed Lazar in the phone book, you would find his home number but not his work number. When he’d left Gallant, Farrow five years before, he was bored with accounting, but now he was glad to be back doing it. For close to two years, he’d been on the verge of losing everything. Susie had had to go back to work. He’d had to check into the Homestead Act to see if their house was protected in the case of bankruptcy. It was, but every month was a struggle to make the mortgage on the $20,000 ranch house they still lived in. He was afraid Susie would leave him. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t. He told her to stop buying new clothes—no new clothes except for the kids. They stopped going out to eat. One morning she was doing laundry and she heard a loud pop and then a shuddering noise. The washing machine was broken—one of the plastic fins on the agitator had snapped off and the machine was full of clothes and soapy water. There was still more laundry to do. They had two young children who were always making dirty clothes. It was the one time she almost broke down in tears.

  No clients of his own—no public role. Part of the reason was that he was facing, along with Warren and David Rich, a $1.62-million lawsuit filed by A. A. McCollum and Bill Nathan, the new owners of Consolidated Mortgage. He had almost lost his CPA license. Five years at Consolidated and the stigma would never go away. It was supposed to take eighteen months to make $1 million in the land business. After five years, he had passed the endless problem onto someone else.

  She had grown up believing that if she married a Jewish man and knew how to bake a brisket, then everything would be all right. It wasn’t true, of course, but she found this out sooner than many people she grew up with. That summer of 1974 was the happiest they’d ever been. They knew they were never going to be rich. They understood that now, but they were glad that they weren’t poor.

  He was always a sharp dresser, but one time he came over to Carol’s house in a white guayabera and he kept asking if she liked his shirt. He had that smile, as if he knew how ridiculous it was, but he was playing it deadpan, and she didn’t know if he was joking or if he wasn’t. He was very funny. When Ronnie Fineberg graduated from law school, Ed gave Ronnie Quotations from Chairman Bill, by William F. Buckley. Ronnie was a liberal—Ed said it was something to fire him up before he went into court.

  Warren said, “McCollum wanted something for nothing, and I gave him nothing for something.” They almost came to blows. McCollum would say later that he got fucked to death on that deal. He spent $250,000 of his own money to buy Consolidated and it ended up costing him everything. Two accounting firms looked over the books and gave him the okay. Then he found out it was under a federal probe, that it had half a million dollars in undisclosed debts. He ended up on trial in federal court for fraud. His name dragged through the mud for nothing at all. Eight weeks later plus legal expenses, he was acquitted. Even then, he would go to the ASU football games and people who had been his friends would pretend he wasn’t there.

  They joined the Toastmasters Club, Ed and Ron Fineberg, but they eventually stopped going to the meetings and just went out for drinks. Newton’s on Van Buren every Tuesday night. One night Ron got a call that Ed had been picked up on a DUI. He went down to find him, but there was no Ed Lazar on the blotter. He had given a different name. He said he was Eduardo Español Fuck You.

  18

  In early November 1974, Adamson got a call from a friend of his named Mark Rossi, * who rented a liquor store from Carl Verive’s friend Old Man Kaiser. Mark Rossi knew everybody. The liquor store was near Papa Joe Tocco’s bar, the Barrel, on East Washington Street, and Joe and Albert Tocco headed the Phoenix branch of the Chicago Outfit. Rossi said he’d heard from another one of the Outfit guys, Freddy Pedote, yesterday. He said that Freddy Pedote wanted Adamson to give him a call.

  They were putting him in the loop, Adamson realized, which is what he’d wanted ever since he met Verive, but he saw now that there was more to it. He saw that he had no choice now but to go as far as they told him to go. They were putting him in the loop because of what he’d heard at Applegate’s.

  “Come over and we’ll talk,” Pedote said when Adamson called. “The Sun King Apartments, over on Thomas. Fifty-nine hundred East Thomas.”

  . . .

  The Outfit guys usually lived in run-down little houses, or they took a room at the Arizona Manor, but Fred Pedote was living in Scottsdale in one of those beige-stucco apartment complexes with Spanish tile on the roofs, a swimming pool surrounded by umbrella tables. Adamson parked in the lot with its aluminum overhang to screen out the sun. He walked into the cour
tyard planted with orange trees and bougainvillea, following a trail of gray concrete disks toward Pedote’s door. Pedote answered in a red golf shirt, a stout man in his midfifties, the hallway behind him a dark nebulous space from where Adamson stood in the sun. He could see that Pedote was short but big, muscle under the fat. He had brown, greased hair and a mottled complexion and strange, milky blue eyes. He smelled like Old Spice. They went inside and sat down in the dark living room and Adamson had a vodka cranberry and Pedote had a Löwenbräu beer.

  “Mark Rossi said you could help me get a setup,” Pedote said.

  Adamson stared down at the carpet, adjusting his sunglasses. “I’m not sure I know what that means.”

  “Mark said you knew how to make a silencer for a twenty-two pistol. We call that a setup. Okay?”

  “I don’t know why Mark told you that. I don’t have that on hand.”

  “I was told you could get me one.”

  “I could probably make you one. I’ve seen it done with a plastic bottle, that’s one way. But you’d be better off with a forty-five, not a twenty-two.”

  “I want the peashooter.”

  “Why?”