Catching me looking at him, he gave me a wink and straightened up for a moment; then something went click in his eyes, and they cooled down again as he slumped back into bubba pose, like the whole standing up straight thing had been a momentary aberrance caused by a crick in his back.
He had my complete and undivided attention, and I promised myself that if I ever found myself dealing with him again, I’d never underestimate him. “So what am I supposed to be looking for?” I asked him as he crowded in and began to peer over my shoulder.
Putting his lips close enough to my ear to look like he was trying to cop a midmorning kiss, he whispered, “You’re the geol‘gist, right? Look for geol’gy.”
I flipped back and forth in the report he had given me. “This is a plan for a housing development,” I said. “There’s no geology in here. None at all. You sure you got the right file?”
Agent Jack slung an arm around my shoulder as comfortably as if we were a couple of low-rent trailer-park lovebirds. At a barely audible whisper, he said, “Keep it down. I have ‘structions to keep you unner wraps. That’s why this report is checked out unner my name; ol’ Tom din’t want you goin’ up to the counner and leavin’ your name, get it? Now, when you’re done wit’ that one, I’ve got another. But you be thorough, okay? Gotta take this nice ’n’ easy.”
Grumbling, I bent back over the task of reading, which, inside of five minutes, had my eyes glazing over. The report on Eastgate Acres had all the fizz of dry mud and half the palatability. I flipped through the rest of the report to check out the illustrations, found nothing interesting, and started reading again in the middle, and then near the end.
At the best of times, I’m a slow reader, and this stuff was pretty dry. No, let’s call that arid. Parched. A real bore-o-rama. We’re talking mud cracks. Moreover, I was beginning to feel the lack of sleep the night’s events had brought about. That and not having any clear direction on the nature of the question I was seeking to answer had me in a bad mood, because at moments like that, I begin to feel like somebody else would have a clue where I didn’t. In summary, I wanted to go eat something sugary and put off noticing how inadequate I felt. Anxiety-driven weight gain is an occupational hazard of the intuitive, spatial thinker.
I stretched and looked about. No doughnuts in sight. Gritting my teeth, I told myself, When in doubt, invent a system. Turning back to the front of the report, I began reading each heading and subheading in order, searching for anything to do with any subject remotely referencing geology, or soils, or building stone, or … you name it. When that didn’t produce results, I started again and read the first sentence of each paragraph. In this way, I finally found a few lines way in the back of the voluminous report that referenced the kind of core sampling done for soils analyses, followed by a brief statement regarding the type of foundations that would be used on all structures larger than a certain size. The statement referenced work by Francis W. Malone, consulting geologist.
And that was it. Period, end of paragraph, end of topic. I flipped back and forth in the report, looking for the map that would give me the position of the development relative to the topography of the mountain front. When I found it, it looked like the development was right smack on top of a major break in slope, which is all it takes to raise a red flag with any geologist: it says, “possible fault.” In fact, it looked like it was right near Faye’s house. That got me looking even harder at the map. “Whoa,” I said softly. “Jack-o, check it out.”
Agent Jack craned his neck to read it. Then he looked at me, his eyes sharpening as he read me for clues while his facial muscles continued to play pudding brain. “Wutzit mean?”
“Well, here’s this big, long report with all this crap about this proposed development—all the nuts and bolts about lighting and sewer and paving and so on—just like they designed it around existing knowledge of everything any reasonable person would want to know about the area, geologically speaking. Brief reference to managing the soil type for foundation design. Not a breath on the subject of whether that soil might occasionally have some rather enormous shock waves running through it. Look at this change in topography. Any geologist can tell you that a steep slope means risk of landslides, and a change in slope can be a fault scarp. Movement along a fault can also cause a landslide, or it can mess up your foundations on the way to racking the whole house. Now, based on this morning’s experience, does it sound smart or reasonable to talk about the soils engineering but not the geological picture that put that soil there, or the slope it’s lying at?”
“Nice work,” Agent Jack said, closing the report on his thumb to keep the place. “Now read this one.” He slapped another one down, turned, and shuffled slothlike off toward the photocopying machine.
I stared at the cover of the second report. Another development, this time a shopping center, also past history. Same developer, Hayes Associates, Eagle Gate Tower, Salt Lake City. I dug straight to the back of the report but found only the same weaseling paragraph about foundations that the first one had sported. Instead of racked houses, this one brought to mind an image of panicked shoppers trying to find their ways out of collapsed department stores and parking structures. There has to be a building code that addresses all this, I assured myself. A city built against a fault showing this much displacement can’t get by without one.
I straightened up and looked around the room, ready for the next report, now not the least bit interested in doughnuts. I wanted to discuss each new bit of evidence, to think out loud. Bubba Jack was still waiting in line at the photocopying machine, so I filled time studying the room, tapping my thumb on the table. I had not been to the Salt Lake City Planning Department before, or even to the City and County Building. I had driven past once or twice, marginally noticing the behemoth structure as I navigated through traffic on State Street. But on entering it today, I had been happily surprised—impressed, in fact. It was a big old sandstone job with elegant carvings. It was five or six stories tall, with a steeply sloping slate roof and an imposing central clock tower that reached another four or five stories above the rest, surmounted by a big green statue of a woman with her arm raised. “Columbia,” Agent Jack had said as we strolled up the long walkway from the curb. “I hear she’s fond of pumpkins.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I had asked.
Jack had not answered. Now I wondered if he was the pumpkin.
Inside, we had found a splendidly restored and maintained central staircase and hallways, spectacular limestone wainscoting, tiled floors, and gleaming period chandeliers. As I now studied the inside of the Planning Department’s office, I noted that it was a degree less opulent, but as lovingly restored.
“Finding what you need?” a man’s voice inquired.
“Oh, yes … ah, sure,” I answered. I turned to look, ready to match a face with the voice. It was a friendly-looking fellow with a black beard. “Nice building you got here.” I gestured at the high ceilings, the fresh paint on the walls.
The man smiled proudly. “Yes, it was all restored just a few years ago. Lucky, too.”
“Lucky?”
“Well, the earthquake. They didn’t just fix the paint and carpeting; they did a full seismic retrofit.” He shook his head meditatively. “I got to admit, I thought like everyone else that the thirty-four-million-dollar price tag was a bit steep, but the building rode out this morning’s shaker like it was just a little sneeze. Why, up to home we lost half the crockery, and there’s cracks running all up along the plaster, but here? Nothing. A couple pencils on the floor. Nothing.” He finished with a neat little gesture like he was flicking a little dust.
Everybody’s got an earthquake story, I mused. “Yeah, it was something. Tell me more about the retrofit, please. I’m a geologist, so I’d love to know how it held up.”
“Oh, you should get the guard to take you around sometime,” he said. “They’ll show you the base isolation system in the basement, and all the reinforcement in the clock
tower. Of course, you can’t take any pumpkins up there.”
I was just opening my mouth to ask him what all this stuff about pumpkins meant when Agent Jack returned from the copy machine. As he closed the final ten feet between us, he went so deep into his Bubba Jack act that I was afraid his knuckles were going to drag on the floor. The city employee saw him coming and took a step backward. Bubba Jack gave him a toothy smile laced with a malevolent insouciance that suggested that he was ready to smack anyone who messed with his woman. The man with the beard melted away.
I said, “Nice work, Jack. I was just about to unravel the secret of the pumpkins.”
“Jus’ love workin’ fer Tom,” Jack gurgled.
“I can see why you two get along,” I countered. “Between the two of you, you could act out all the different characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Jack managed to hide his amusement in a stiff-lipped smile that made him look like a half-witted adolescent who’d just heard a great fart joke. “Next file,” he said, guffawing gently.
In all, he showed me five files covering the two development projects, and not a one had even a paltry reference to what I’d call a geological appraisal. I compared the dates on the files, and the titles. There was a clear pattern to them: preliminary reports gave way to revised, and in the case of the project that had three reports, revised gave way to final. “So,” I murmured, “any chance the developer has turned in any reports marked ‘Report on Geologic Hazards,’ or perhaps ‘Environmental Impact?’”
“Oh yeah, we got the EIRs right here,” Jack replied, dropping a final two reports on the table.
I went through them page by page. Lots on traffic mitigation, noise levels, utilities consumption, and the like, but not a word on the fact that there might just be a honking big fault running right through either project, ditto landslide potential, or any of a half dozen other delightful geologic hazards. And the housing development lay perilously close to the swanky neighborhood where Faye lived. I looked at the map a second time. In fact, it was where Faye lived. Suddenly, I wanted to know a whole lot more.
I turned to Agent Jack and put an arm around him. “Let’s take a spin over to the Utah Geological Survey, Pa,” I murmured. “Got a little ol’ map or two there I’d like to take a squint at.”
Agent Jack gave me a toothsome grin. “Sure, Ma.”
9
MICAH HAYES SAT AT HIS SPACIOUS DESK ON THE TWELFTH floor of the Eagle Gate Tower in downtown Salt Lake City. From this rarified perch in the downtown Salt Lake City business district, he stared straight down on Brigham Young’s Lion House. He could look across Temple Square and up the hill toward the state capitol, uniting the three campuses on which he operated.
He was waiting for a telephone call, and he did not like to wait, or, worse yet, to be kept waiting. Waiting was not a skill he greeted with equanimity, especially when seated, even after his now fifty-seven years spent sitting in church each Sunday morning and half of the evenings of the week. In fact, it was only by taking over leadership of the study sessions that he had come to tolerate them at all. This accommodation had ironically earned him a reputation for great devotion. Had he contemplated this irony (and had been a man capable of appreciating ironies), he might have found it humorous, given the pragmatic, rather than spiritual, basis for his church attendance. Apparent piety was simply one of the prices of doing business in his community.
It was important that he sit completely still. He made a practice of leaving his door open for an hour each day, so that his employees could see him sitting there, being still. Even though no one was peering in on him at this moment, he was ever vigilant, lest one of them wander past, wasting time, as usual. When he was seen by such minions, or by his adversaries, he had observed that his stillness mired them in the presumption that he was calm and in control, and control was everything in this business.
His business was the development of unused lands—God’s investment in him—and the redevelopment of decayed properties—God’s dividend. His business was exercising the power of his imagination in the pursuit of making money, and make money he did. Piles of it, mounds of it; enough money to make his fair and honest tithe to the church and still have enough left over to purchase every political tick who presumed to cling to his hide and try to suck his blood. It was pathetic how cheaply they could be persuaded. A pittance of campaign money here, a “loan” to cover a foolish little bet there. They were all the same kinds of boys and girls once things came down to particulars. They were all idiots. They were all whores.
He was waiting to hear back from one of those whores now, and being kept waiting was irritating in the extreme. But he knew he must play the foolish game with this one for a while longer. Little that he liked to admit such things to himself, Hayes needed this particular fool, and, as two years remained before he would make certain that the fool was not reelected, it was undoubtedly not the last time he would need him. He would use this fool and his magnified ego to back the state geologist down again so he could avoid costly delays on his newest project: a solid city block of new shops three stories tall. Too bad it wouldn’t be ready for the hordes of tourists who would soon flood into the city for the Olympics, but his mall would reap the benefits of the bounty of additional tourism the Olympics would bring in its wake. The second phase of the project was ready to break ground. Time was money, and the fools set up hoops to jump through, rather than having the wit help themselves by helping him. Now they were requiring that he provide easier access to his new sports stadium to further promote the public good! What did they think—that commerce was not in the public good? It was the very essence of the public good!
Of course, by joining the stadium to the mall he had been able to get public funding, a dip into the public tax stream, so at least the bribes he must pay to push the mall project forward would not come out of his pocket. But first he had to deal with this latest resistance from the state geologist. Meddlesome woman! Hayes was almost mad enough to spit. The geologist worked for the elected fool, but the fool wasn’t controlling her. All she had to do was scream “fault line” and work ground to a halt. Why did he listen to her? He need only make an undocumented phone call to secure the necessary swing of a rubber stamp, but no, this fool wanted documentation from his godless scientists. Who were also fools. Gnats. Lice. All sucking blood. All lined up with their grubby little hands out. Smeeth had told him to his face that she couldn’t be bought, but everyone had a price and he’d find hers!
His right hand rose up and slammed down on his desk, making his expensive pen and pencil set rattle. Outside the door to his left, his newest executive secretary jumped noticeably. He rotated his head slightly and stared through the doorway at her back, at her narrow neck, at her birdlike shoulders. She was a perilously young thing. They were all young. By twenty-four at most, she’d be married off and pregnant, and her duty then would be to her family. How he longed for a nice impoverished divorcee with half a dozen mouths to feed—a woman who would nail herself to the desk just to keep her job. Focused. No quibbling. No bawling. But divorcees were unseemly.
What was this one’s name? Tina. Hayes looked on her with loathing. The precious Tina was now slouching in her chair, examining the state of her manicure. She was slothful. She would have to be replaced. “Tina!” he roared. “Close the door!”
She jumped up and whisked the door shut like someone was chasing her with a stick.
Hayes rotated his face back toward the window and took a long, seething breath, his hour of door-open time completed for the day. Evading his conscious notice, his right hand moved and picked up the gold-plated pen from the set and began to tap it harshly against the edge of the desk, tap-tap-tap. Where is he? he wondered. I want confirmation that Smeeth is out of the picture! Why can ’t he find his way to the telephone on time? He’ll pay for keeping me waiting, Hayes promised himself, now rapping the pen hard enough to leave a widening dent. He won’t cross me twice. I’ll have him out of office s
o quick, he’ll be wondering what’s causing the draft!
There was a knock at the door.
“What?” Hayes barked.
Tina’s watery voice penetrated the wood. “Your lunch, sir.”
“Bring it!” Damnation, he thought, that makes it noon! Where is that rotting piece of carrion?
The door opened wide and Tina shuffled in, carrying a silver tray with the offensive display of fruits and roughage his doctor allowed him.
Hayes’s ailing stomach tightened at the sight of it. “Leave it and get out,” he ordered.
“Um, sir?”
“What!”
“I’m sorry it’s late, sir. It’s just, like, everyone’s all upset about the earthquake, you see, and so everything’s running a little late. And, um, I was on the phone, you see, trying to get some word on that poor little baby boy, sir.”
Hayes turned his face to stone in warning. He did not want to hear problems, he wanted answers! But who was this boy she was telling him about? It sounded like something he should be aware of, to be informed of because knowledge was power. “Yes, the boy,” he said cagily, not making it a question, so she wouldn’t know that he didn’t know.
“Yes, he’s in intensive care. They don’t know if he’s going to live. I know the Ottmeiers. They’re such nice people, very worthy. I just can’t understand how anything like this could happen to them, but if it’s Heavenly Father’s plan … The thing that hit him—the bookcase—it was, like, so heavy that it hurt his insides. He’s b-bleeding … um, in-internally.”
“Send some people down to the hospital to give blood,” Hayes ordered. He did not say, You can go yourself. It was important to make the correct gesture, but that would be ridiculous. Tina was almost worthless, but what little worth she was to him, he would hang on to.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, her chin beginning to tremble.
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