Before Another Dies (16 page)

“I apologize. I didn't mean to frighten you.” His voice was smooth and his words came with the ease of confidence. He smiled, showing teeth too perfect to have arrived naturally, and his eyes were a comfortable hazel.

“I didn't hear you coming.”

“My fault. I'll try to be noisier next time.”

I gave a practiced, polite laugh. “Don't do so on my account. I'm a little tired. I probably wouldn't have heard you if you drove up in a tank.”

“I left my tank in the garage.” He held out his hand, I shook it. “My name is H. Dean Wentworth. I enjoyed your speech. You might have a future in the politics game.”

“It's not a game. I can tell you that.” I studied him for a moment. I recalled that I had seen him standing to one side during my speech. He was not seated at one of the tables, meaning that he had not been on the select list. “H. Dean?”

“Everyone calls me Dean. The
H
stands for Horace. I dropped that sometime around first grade.”

“I can understand. I'm named after a dead president.” He tilted his head to one side. I explained. “My father teaches history at the university in Santa Barbara. He has a thing for biographies.”

“Madison Glenn . . . Madison . . . James Madison?”

I nodded. “I'm just glad he wasn't reading a bio of Ulysses S. Grant. At least Madison is a girl's name.”

“Oh, I don't know. If he had been he could have called you Uly . . . never mind. I see your point.” He turned and faced the ocean. “It's a beautiful evening.”

“We specialize in beautiful evenings. It's in the city charter.” I also turned to the ocean.
Who was this guy? He wasn't tipping his
hand.
For some reason, I was feeling uneasy.

“You do a great job. I live in Atlanta. Don't get to watch the sun set over the ocean much there.”

“I guess not. Excuse me for saying so, but you don't sound like you're from Atlanta.”

“That's because I was born and reared in Oregon. I settled in Atlanta after grad school.”

My back was beginning to hurt. Standing, walking, bending, and stress had settled in my lumbar muscles. I stretched and turned. I saw Nat looking my way. She made no motions, but her expression set off alarm bells.

“I don't believe we've met before,” I said.

“We haven't. I work for Rutger Howard and the Bennie's restaurant chain. I'm Mr. Howard's personal aide.”

“I see.” I said the words softly and stripped of any emotion.

“No need to be nervous. I'm sure you already know that we're considering putting a company store here. My job is to test the waters, see what kind of hoops we have to jump through, that sorta thing. But that's only one reason I'm here.”

Uh-oh
.

“We at Howard Enterprises—that's the parent company over our other business interests—believe in the political system. We often make contributions to campaigns we believe in.”

I heard a soft thumping and a tiny whine. It was getting louder.

“Whoa, let me stop you right there, Mr. Wentworth.”

“Please, call me Dean.”

“No thanks, Mr. Wentworth. You know it would be inappropriate for me to take a contribution from someone who has business before the council.”

“Don't get me wrong, Mayor. We're not wanting to make a contribution for a run for mayor. Of course that would be wrong. You're running for congress. That's different. And before you say no, I'm under orders from Mr. Howard to be as generous as the law and loopholes allow.”

“Laws and loopholes, eh.” That didn't sit well. The whirring and thumping was closer. “Perhaps you're unaware that the Federal Election Commission limits contributions from individuals and Political Action Committees.”

“As a matter of fact, I am aware of that. Individuals may give up to one thousand dollars to a candidate and PACs can give five thousand dollars. Of course, we can also give to your party with the understanding that the money would go to you. I'm sure that can be arranged. You may not be aware that we have a great many employees who trust our judgment and offer to contribute to campaigns like yours. We tend to attract patriotic, civic-minded folk.”

“That's called bundling, and I'm well aware of it. You collect money from one hundred employees at a grand a piece, and all of a sudden you've passed on a hundred thousand dollars.”

The whine and thumping stopped. Nat had made a beeline to us and stopped her wheelchair a foot from my leg. “How we doing?” she asked.

“Just fine, Nat. Let me make introductions. Mr. H. Dean Wentworth, meet my campaign manager Natalie Sanders. Nat, this is—”

“One of Howard's boys. I know.” She smiled but in a way that made me think the pier was going to cave in.

He nodded at Nat. “Ms. Sanders. I don't believe we met.”

“Not officially. You came across my desk a couple of times.”

“I'm sensing some hostility here,” Wentworth said. “I think I'm being misunderstood. We're not trying to buy you, Mayor. We don't need to do that. We have sixteen hundred restaurants in company stores or franchises. People love us. We're welcomed into every city we go.”

“That's not what I've heard,” I said.

He shrugged. “There have been a few isolated cases in which certain civic leaders lacked foresight, but the courts have always held up our cause.”

“It's not for me to say whether or not you should be allowed to build. There's a process for all of that.”

“I'm well aware of that, and our planners and lawyers are good at dotting the i's and crossing the t's. That's not why I'm here. The campaign contribution offer is genuine, but I also wanted to give you a heads-up on something. It's only fair.”

I didn't like this. I encouraged him to go on.

“As you know, retail property is scarce in your city and getting water rights can be a challenge. Santa Barbara is the same way. We feel the best way to go is building on an existing business site.”

“I don't see what that has to do with me.”

“The owner doesn't want to sell. We think he should. We've offered more than the land is worth. We think eminent domain is the way to go.”

“You're not serious,” I said.

“I'm always serious, Mayor.” He smiled and turned his back to the sea. “It's an older building, built in the fifties. I'm sure that it's not up to code on several counts, so you and the council should have no problem declaring it blighted and thereby justify an eminent-domain ruling. You'd be doing your city a favor.” He gave me another Hollywood smile.

“It doesn't work that way.”

“Of course it does, Mayor. You know that. Or at least you should. It's done all the time. A major newspaper in New York followed the same process to acquire the property it needed to build its new office building. We're not thinking that large.”

I could feel heat radiating from my face. It had been a long time since I had completely lost my temper, but I was close, and the fuse was burning fast. “We're not New York, and our council members are close to their people. You won't get past the first meeting.”

“Not all of the council. I've already spoken to one who is in agreement with me and I'm pretty sure I can get more.”

“Who? Who did you talk to?”

He cut his eyes to the side. “Oh, look. Smile.” He stepped close and put his arm around my shoulders before I could react.

I turned my head. The flash of a camera strobe stung my eyes. A half second later my eyes cleared, and I could see the cameraman. It was Barry Harper, the self-styled reporter who tried to interview me earlier.

He smiled and gave a little wave.

“Thank you, Mayor. Please reconsider my offer of a contribution. You'd make a stellar congresswoman—and a beautiful one.” Wentworth started away.

“Don't underestimate me—Horace.” I had to force the words through my teeth. He stopped midstep. I could see his shoulders tense. He didn't turn; he just resumed his path, stopping for a second to say something under his breath to Harper. The weasel nodded and walked away, distancing himself by several paces from the man who hired him.

Blood surged through my veins. If I had an aneurism anywhere I'd know in moments. I had just been worked over by an expert. I wondered how the papers would handle it if I tossed Horace Dean Wentworth on one of Paul's still-hot barbecues. For a few moments I considered risking it.

I looked at Nat. She had turned her wheelchair so she could watch Wentworth walk down the pier. She was mumbling. At first, I thought she was speaking in a different language. She was. Twentieth-century longshoreman.

chapter 21

N
at and I conferred in the Fish Kettle until nearly midnight. Paul and his wife could tell that something had gone wrong and that we needed privacy. They gave us a wide berth as they and two employees finished cleaning up and closing down the restaurant. We sat at one of the tables to accommodate Nat's wheels. Her language had cleared up but she was still strung tighter than a banjo string. She drummed the table with her one good hand.

“We need to think damage control,” she said. “We need to take the lead, the initiative.”

“Okay, let's not make this worse than it is.” I wanted to sound calm and self-assured. “All that has happened is that he's asked for something he's not going to get, offered something we're not going to take, and took a picture that will do him no good.”

Nat looked at me as if my brains had begun leaking out my ears. “Do I need to lay this out for you?”

“No. I'm just trying to be optimistic. I'll say one thing: he's slick, and I don't mean that in an admirable way.” I took a sip of coffee. I didn't want it, but I had a lot of nervous energy to burn.

“So is an eel.” Nat pulled a small package of crackers from a holder on the table. Paul kept them there for folks who like crackers in their chowder. She began breaking them in their plastic wrapper. I don't think she knew she was doing it. “Okay, let's break this down. You gave a good summary. Let's look at each one. What did you say?”

It took me a second to realize that she was referring to my attempt to soften what happened. “He asked for something he isn't going to get, offered something we won't take, and took a picture that will do him no good. It was something like that.”

“Right. He offered a contribution to the campaign. Not unusual in and of itself. He was smart to do it here. After all, this was a fund-raiser.”

“But he didn't offer the legal limit or under, he offered to bundle the contribution.”

Nat crushed the crackers some more. “It's a way to work around the law, a way to give large sums of money to a candidate. It's done but frowned upon.”

“We shouldn't have any problem with that. We refuse to take a dime from him or his organization. Of course, he could have people send money in individually, then later reveal that they worked for him. He might be able to twist that to make it look like we organized it all.”

“I'll check into all the contributions we've received and see how many come from outside the district, then track them down to make sure they're valid.” She set the crushed crackers on the table. The squares were now just bits of their former shape. She took a spoon and began smashing those to dust. I was pretty sure who she was crushing. “What was this about blight?”

“It has to do with eminent domain.” I pushed the coffee cup away. Paul made the best coffee in town, but it was going down like acid. “Eminent domain is the power of government to appropriate private property for public use. For example, let's say the state needs to add a new off-ramp from one of its highways, so they need to build a curving ramp from the highway to a surface street so people can exit sooner and thereby lighten the traffic load on the freeway. Most likely they'll have to build on or over someone's property. Two things can happen. One, the state can purchase the property at fair market value, which is often less than the owner thinks it's worth, or they can declare eminent domain, removing the choice from the owner.”

“I understand that part. What did he mean by ‘blight'?”

“Governments can't seize property willy-nilly. They need some legal ground to proceed. In the case of the off-ramp it can be argued that the community benefits by allowing cars to exit sooner, decreasing traffic and traffic-related injury and death. But in the case of a single piece of property or several contiguous pieces like a city block it is more difficult to show the benefit. In Ohio a few years ago, a city wanted to replace some older homes with new condominiums. Their logic was that the city would benefit in permit fees and increased taxes. Naturally, the home owners who had worked decades to obtain and pay off the older homes were furious. To get what they wanted, the city council, led by the mayor, declared the neighborhood blighted and thereby created the legal ground to proceed.”

“The homes were old and decrepit?”

“Not at all. The neighborhood was lovely. Even the mayor went on record calling the community ‘cute.' That came back to haunt her.”

“If the homes were well maintained then how could anyone call them blighted?”

I reached across the table and pulled the cracker packet from beneath Nat's vindictive spoon. “Paul has enough to clean up.” Nat blushed but said nothing. “The city council defined what the word
blight
meant in that context. They said any house that didn't have three bedrooms, two baths, and an attached garage was substandard and therefore a blight.”

“That's ridiculous.” She started drumming her fingers again.

“It gets worse. The majority of the homes in the city fell into that category, not just the neighborhood in question. Now get this, every member of the council including the mayor lived in a house that would have been declared blighted if it were in the subject neighborhood. In other words, the mayor's home had only one bath, two bedrooms, and a detached garage. Blight was in the eye of the beholder.”