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

have waited, but that is not certain. In any case, no voice spoke to him.

“Yes sir, Mr. Mull,” the man said when their order arrived, “I believe I’m on to something. Not for the first time either.”

Eddie peeled his orange, sipped his coffee, which had almost no taste, and listened to Callender’s stories of digging for silver in Nevada, copper in Arizona and gold in Mexico. For all his digging, he looked like a man who had washed out. Watching him lick his knife, Eddie figured he’d misjudged the man. He was ready to leave when Callender finally came to the point. It involved digging for oil in a place called Venice-by-the-Sea. He went on in some detail. Eddie didn’t leave.

“It is guaranteed.”

There wasn’t much guaranteed in Los Angeles, but Eddie had sold some lots in Venice-by-the-Sea and knew something about the place, the brainchild of an easterner named Abbot Kinney who’d come west for his health and sought to do something with money he’d inherited, which came from tobacco, which was the cause of his health problems, though he didn’t know it. He purchased a large tract south of Ocean Park and began building the New Venice, as he called it, complete with imitations right down to canals, arched footbridges, hanging palazzi and gondolas imported from Italy. For gondoliers, he used Mexicans.

Then he died.

“We buy Kinney’s land, bring in the oil and we’ll be rich as Doheny.”

“How do you know about any of this?”

“Worked for Kinney.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one for sure—only me. Now you.”

On the pier the Ferris wheel turned and the roller-coaster swooshed. Callender had taken off his faded Stetson, and his bald head shone in the light. Droplets of sweat glistened in his luxurious black mustache. Eddie found himself pulled in opposing directions. The man was preposterous, his stories belied by his appearance. Yet who’s to say?

“Why me?” Eddie asked.

“Your name’s Mull, right? I go to the Reverend Willie’s church. I am a Soldier for God. You’re his brother.”

That wasn’t good enough. “Why not a bank?”

“No collateral but my good name.”

“And you think there’s oil down there?”

“Just like Long Beach,” he said, blue eyes bright. “Signal Hill—sand, clay, bitumen, oil, it all adds up. And Santa Fe Springs, you heard about that strike, I reckon.”

“You know your stuff, eh?”

“Know oil soil when I see it.”

“How come nobody else does?”

“Couldn’t answer that.”

“Land’s for sale?”

“Kinney’s estate.”

“Asking?”

“Negotiable, not many people looking for mucky canals.”

Eddie was sizing up his man. Was this another sign, another tip? He could never explain what had happened outside Joe Sartori’s bank, didn’t even try, but it had changed his life. He’d thought of telling Willie, but never did. Willie would have gotten biblical, and Eddie hated that. He’d gotten a sign and played it. The trick was always in deciding if the sign was any good. That’s where instinct came in.

“You bring up oil there,” he said, “and you turn the canals to goo. All those pretty houses will be sticky black in a week. That means lawsuits.”

“Nope, creative destruction,” said Callender. “Happens every day down here. Gold destroyed the Sierra Mountains, copper destroyed the Arizona desert, L.A. destroyed Owens Valley, automobiles destroying the streetcars. Think about it. At Armageddon everything down here gets destroyed.”

“Down here?”

“You know what I mean. Make way for the Second Coming, the New Jerusalem. Don’t you listen to your brother?”

One of Willie’s Soldiers all right, Eddie thought—blunt, uneducated, mud on his boots (maybe oil), knows his Bible, ageless, probably younger than he looks, old hat, frayed suit probably the only one he owns. Strange eyes.

“You sure you haven’t talked to anyone else?”

“You’re the first. Seen those Mull real estate signs of yours all over town. Then, as I said, knowing you’re your brother’s brother, a holy man, means a lot to me. Had to find someone I could trust seeing as how I found the place but need the stake.”

“What’s to keep me from buying it on my own?”

“Like I said, your name’s Mull. Like your brother. Trust you just like I trust him. Family thing, ain’t it?

Eddie thought about that. He put a dollar down, watched the waiter take it and leave a few coins in change. He picked up the coins.

“We strike, we go fifty-fifty,” said Callender.

Eddie chuckled, amused to be dividing up invisible profits. “Why not? Say, what do people call you?”

“I’m called Henry.”

“Henry, let’s take a drive.”

“One other thing,” said Callender, standing. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do with the money.”

“Already spending it, eh?”

“I’m going to build your brother the biggest church this town ever saw—a temple rising so far into the sky you can see it in the next county. Willie Mull is the voice of God in this godless place, and I want his message to reach every sinner who breathes the glorious air of this great city.”

Eddie had his man pegged from the start, though Callender didn’t. He purchased five square miles of empty beaches and marshes from the Kinney estate just south of the canals, between Venice and the place called Playa del Rey, a large investment financed following a visit to Security Trust. Eddie sometimes sat next to Joe Sartori at L.A. Chamber of Commerce meetings. They were pals.

They brought in drillers to put down one test well after another. They spent days watching the hammers bang deeper into the sand, one thousand feet, two thousand feet, nothing coming up but salty sand and tar. At two thousand feet, Eddie was ready to call it off. There was always a risk of an empty hole. The more you drill, the more you lose. Callender was always there, and the little man had begun to annoy him, marching around in his mucky boots like he owned the place, dowsing the land with his stick like a mystic with his wand. Eddie was sick of the whole thing, sore at himself for taking advice from a crackpot, sore at himself for having agreed to go fifty-fifty, though it looked like