Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

Rosie. “I saw you there a few times when you lived in Playa del Rey. I knew who you were, always have.” She smiled. “Or at least since the war.”

“I do remember seeing you. You should have said something.”

“Too shy to accost a lady doing her shopping.”

She didn’t seem shy at all. “Come sit down. How are things in Playa del Rey?”

“Funny thing is that we were neighbors. You lived in the corner house on Montreal, and I lived just down Fowling Street with a view straight out over Ballona. Used to walk my dog by your house, hoping we’d meet, but the only place I ever saw you was Charlie’s.”

“I tended to get up early and come home late.”

“And now?”

“I’m back in Westwood. It’s a shorter drive.”

Yes, Maggie remembered this woman, remembered catching sight of her in the little market at the foot of the hill where everyone shopped, remembered thinking that she was too elegant for the beach, too pale, though it would be natural with hair and skin like hers to stay out of the sun. She did nothing to hide her age—no makeup, no lifts, no makeovers, a woman content with what nature had given her.

“How is Charlie’s?”

“Same place. Charlie died. Owned by Koreans now.”

“Tell me about the Ballona Club.”

She’d come to talk about the Summa hearings. An hour later they decided to continue the discussion at the Sixth Street Grill, where the hamburgers were good.

Like countless others, Rosie Travers had come west because she thought she was attractive and talented enough to land a job in Hollywood. The stories of those who never quite make it are the stuff of films usually better than those for the ones who do make it, but Rosie had no regrets. She met Bruce Roberts, who worked for a local television station, a man who loved the outdoors as much she did. She’d been brought up on Long Island, near the Seatuck Wildlife Refuge. Her father, Ed, had a twenty-foot ketch, and by the time Rosie was a teenager he’d taken her into every cove and inlet between Great Cove and Nicoll Bay. Their favorite cruise was south to the little islands north of Fire Island, dots in the Great South Bay. They went with poles, buckets, backpacks, cameras and boots. Ed had filled a dozen scrapbooks with photos of their excursions by the time Rosie left home.

“Playa del Rey was natural for us,” she said, biting into a juicy burger. “Bruce was raised in Newark—California’s Newark, that is, on San Francisco Bay. He grew up with boats and tides and marshes just like I did. We actually met on an outing. He kept a rowboat in Ballona Creek, not far from the old UCLA boathouse.” She laughed. “Our first date was in his rowboat if you can believe it. He kept an inflatable raft in the rowboat, one of those one-man army surplus things . He would paddle around the marshes and do a little fishing. He tried to get me into that thing once, but there’s no room for two—which he knew.”

Rosie was entertaining, but her serious side kept breaking through. “Those Ballona marshes, by the way, with rowboats and rafts, are part of the area that Summa claims is not wet enough to be classified as wetlands. Now you tell me how you can row a boat and fish on ground that isn’t wet. I doubt anyone from Summa has ever set eyes on Ballona, which, if you think about it, is actually a mini Everglades. The name wetlands does not fit a place where you can push out in a rowboat and drop your line six feet in the water.”

As much as Rosie talked, Maggie had the feeling she was holding something back, something to do with the real reason she’d come to the foundation. She mentioned trips to Sacramento but offered nothing about why she’d gone, even when Maggie asked. “One more trip to make first,” was all she would say. The Ballona Club had grown from five members to more than a hundred, growth spurting on news of Howard Hughes’s death, which people in Playa del Rey understood was going to change things permanently for the place they called home.

In Salt Lake City, Bill Gay announced that a search was underway for a Hughes will, which would clarify any questions about disposition of the Hughes land. In Los Angeles, “Ram” Morton, with Trevor Bonfeld by his side, held a press conference to proclaim that Summa was going ahead with Fred Goering’s plan to create a unique “city within a city” called Playa Vista that encompassed land from Hughes airfield to the Pacific Ocean. Howard Hughes, said Morton, had signed off on the design before his death.

Maggie’s second meeting with Rosie came a month later in the Sierra Club’s offices in what was now called the ARCO Building, with Cal and Lizzie also present. This time Rosie came with a thick, heavily tabbed notebook and was finally ready to talk about Sacramento, whence she’d just returned. Since Hughes’s death, she had visited every state agency that had any responsibility for land management, wildlife or the coast. She’d met with staffs and directors and spent time in their archives and libraries, making notes and taking photos with a mini archival camera.

“It looks like someone in the governor’s office has been bought,” she said, turning to a tab at the back of the notebook and producing several photos. “These survey documents from the Department of Land Management classify one-half of the Ballona land, or roughly sixteen hundred acres out of thirty-two hundred, as wetlands protected from development under the Coastal Act. That would protect everything between the Hughes airfield and the new marina and west to Playa del Rey.” She passed the documents around. “However, in its official filing, the governor’s office stated that the Ballona wetlands consisted of only five hundred acres, not sixteen hundred, which is ridiculous.”

“How could they do that?”