Evening's Empire: The Story of My Father's Murder (9 page)

PART TWO

A Phoenix attorney who dealt with Warren during his early land dealings says a favorite Warren saying was: “Everybody’s crooked—I’ll show you.” Said the lawyer: “Corrupting people—this was his delight.”

—
Newsday,
March 23, 1977

6

M
exico—somewhere on the Pacific coast, perhaps Mazatlán, not that long a flight from Phoenix. The date is easier to determine: it would have been Saturday, August 14, 1971. At a beach resort somewhere in Mexico, Ned Warren was sitting on the patio with a woman named Acquanetta Ross, waiting for his wife, Barbara, and Acquanetta’s husband, Jack, to come back from the concierge desk. Acquanetta Ross was dressed in a red cape, with peacock feathers in her hair, a beauty mark painted on her cheek. Like her name, her appearance was gaudy, theatrical, but her dark hair and sharp cheekbones projected a seriousness, even a toughness. She used a silver spoon to push a slice of lemon into a cup of plain hot water. She was dieting; this was part of her diet, she kept saying.

“What did Jack say about the land?” she asked.

“He said he bought some land yesterday. He said there was a balloon payment coming up down the road and he was already worried about it.”

“That’s all he’s talked about. I asked him why did he buy the land if he was going to worry about this balloon payment. It’s really ridiculous, don’t you think, these words they come up with? Balloon payment.”

“I’d say it’s a pretty descriptive word,” Warren said.

She stared at him with a showy disdain, blowing out smoke from her cigarette. “I can’t read my watch,” she said. “Where are they? What time is it?”

“It’s a little after seven.”

“I can’t stand wearing glasses. I know it’s vain, but I won’t wear them.”

She had been a B actress in Hollywood once, a star in films with titles like
Captive Wild Woman,
or
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman.
These feral roles had fallen to her because of her dark skin. For a time, her handlers had called her “The Venezuelan Volcano,” though in fact she was not Venezuelan but Arapaho Indian. Warren knew the story, as did most of what passed for “society” in Phoenix. The Indian blood was the subject of disdain, even if she and her husband, Jack, were local celebrities of a kind. Jack Ross’s Lincoln/Mercury dealership sponsored a weekly horror movie that Acquanetta presented on TV, dressed in outlandish costumes. On the strength of those ads, Jack was mounting a campaign for governor—laugh, but it was Arizona. Jack Ross’s brother, as Warren well knew, was married to the daughter of the most powerful man in Arizona, Barry Goldwater. There were reasons for this conversation.

“I wouldn’t worry about the balloon payment,” he said. “I have some investors over in Japan, they’re desperate for land.”

“Japan. Why would anyone in Japan want to buy land in Yavapai County?”

“They’re Americans. It’s a company that sells land to American G.I.s. Do you know how many soldiers are stationed in Japan? Korea, the Philippines?”

“No.”

“I never would have thought of it myself. Soldiers. Every one of those soldiers needs a place to invest his money.”

In six months, Acquanetta Ross would deny this conversation ever happened. In six months, Jack Ross would deny the entire trip to Mexico had ever happened. Eventually, these denials would create a mystery as to how Ed Lazar had known to call Jack Ross sometime in early September 1971 about some land Ross owned in Yavapai County, land that Ed Lazar had never seen, land that perhaps no one but Jack Ross ever really saw.

My father and Warren had offices on Camelback Road, in a bland stretch of small, nondescript buildings housing garages and stores. I have what I think must be a false memory of going there as a child: a door with the words
Consolidated Mortgage Corporation
printed film noir–style on its opaque glass panel, my father moving boxes of file folders through the door into the trunk of his car. I’ve had this memory for many years—I don’t know what it means. It comes back periodically, without connection to anything in my current life, and though it seems suggestive, it also seems meaningless, interesting but only spuriously so.

I have some of my father and Warren’s business correspondence to each other, which sounds like this:

On Cornwall forget unit 2 temporarily—suggest we keep those lots—I get his inventory—

on mobile lots—suggest Cornwall keep the down to 10%—we require 10% down—

leaves balance average of $3600—we want $1000 plus the interest so we take

correct percentage of flow starting 1st month—

On Com’l same thing according to a formula on the individual lot or if you prefer on the average lot with a

restriction that in no event should the impound on the individual lot be less than $1000 (plus int.)

A strange and difficult poem, written in unfamiliar language. I have read it many times now, and read many pages like it in order to understand some of its meaning, through context and association. Like a poem, it became more interesting over time, every word significant, every phrase set down with authority.

They were not fools, nor were they unsophisticated. They were slowly building up a business on margin, figuring out ways to eke out a profit, calculating the percentages. After two years of patient work, it seemed as if it was finally going to pay off, and perhaps that was why they decided to reward themselves that fall of 1971. What ends up being called “greed” seldom looks like greed at the time; it looks like common sense, ambition.

Warren liked Ed Lazar—he liked his surprising spark, his sense of strategy. He liked the feeling you got that in some private way Ed’s life was geared toward obtaining and savoring a good time. He could look up and say one deadpan phrase that made you laugh, or he could say nothing, his eyes still, his silence the only sign of his disagreement. Without Ed Lazar’s image, it would have been impossible to underwrite Consolidated Mortgage Corporation with loans from places like First National Bank or ITT or Westinghouse. Without his acumen, it would have been impossible to turn a profit without resorting to financial corner-cutting or outright fraud.

They were playing it basically straight, taking out loans instead of selling mortgages, using the loans to put in the improvements on the land—the roads, the water lines, the utilities. The business was not a Ponzi scheme but an actual land development company. It was a slow grind: taking out loans brought in less cash than selling mortgage paper. But that May—May of 1971—Warren had walked into David Rich’s office and announced that he and Ed Lazar were both about to make $1 million.

Rich turned a memo at a right angle to mark its place in a stack of papers. “You found a buyer,” he said.

“In California. Out in Bakersfield. They’re called American Home Industries. AHI. They build modular homes—it’s a good match for them, they can sell the land and then sell the homes.”

“That’s terrific, Ned. You’ve done really well, you and Ed.”

“They might be interested in that land of yours out near Casa Grande. I’ll speak to them if you want.”

“Acting as their broker, I suppose.”

Rich smiled and had the secretary bring in a bottle of Johnnie Walker and two glasses. This was how Consolidated Mortgage had started, with a glass of Scotch in the office of David Rich, who had loaned them the money—$30,000 that was now somehow worth more than $2.5 million in American Home Industries stock. Thirty thousand dollars that Rich had loaned them at a usurious 18 percent interest, the maximum allowed by law.

“You and Ed must be over the moon,” Rich said.

“Over the moon.”

“Happy, fulfilled. Not your style, I know. You want me to go in on the deal too, is that it?”

Warren raised a hand slightly above his knee. “Your choice. I just wanted you to know about it. After that eighteen percent loan, I thought maybe you thought we didn’t know what we were doing, Ed and I.”

.  .  .

It was only on paper, but there were things about being a paper millionaire that made your life easier right away. The risk was over, for one thing: the risk of lot buyers defaulting, the risk of Warren losing patience and sending the salesmen out to manufacture bad contracts. They had done a stock swap with American Home Industries, and now AHI was going to pay them a bimonthly salary in addition to giving them $2.5 million worth of its shares. Suddenly money seemed easy to make, a trick you had already pulled off once. Like winning at cards, it made you feel you had some special skill, a feeling that was hard to resist, even when you saw its illogic. That winter, Arizona State had won the Peach Bowl after an undefeated season, and it sometimes seemed like a good omen, a prophecy of what came about that spring.

The author’s father (in the rear in white shirt) and mother (beside him), after the Peach Bowl

Ed didn’t touch the money. The neighbors had all installed fences for privacy, but Ed didn’t bother—his entire property remained exposed. He didn’t understand the need for those fences. What could anyone be doing that required so much privacy? That was how he lived as a millionaire—shooting baskets at the local high school, riding there on his bike—not telling anyone about the success, instead savoring his own tact.

The name of Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona, has twice cropped up in the current investigation….

The Arizona Republic published copies of letters written in 1971 by Mr. Goldwater and [U.S. Congressman Sam] Steiger on their official stationery endorsing one of Mr. Warren’s projects called Chino Valley Ranchettes, that was offered to American servicemen abroad under terms that violated Arizona law. The Phoenix Police Department said they had evidence that the actual wording of the letter had been drafted by Mr. Lazar.

The letters were used in sales promotion of the land, which the Phoenix police later found to be without water and with rock conditions that made installation of functioning septic tanks impossible.

—New York Times,
June 14, 1976

They had demonstrated an ability to turn over land, to buy it cheaply and sell it quickly, and now there was a whole new market opening up, a company called Capital Management Systems based in Koza, Okinawa, that sold to servicemen all across the Far East—Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Guam. They didn’t spend much time marveling at the exotic sound of Koza, Okinawa. What mattered to Ed and Warren was that Capital Management Systems had bought lots in Verde Lakes and now they were going to buy many more lots in Consolidated’s new subdivision, Chino Meadows, in an area called Chino Valley, in central Yavapai County, near Prescott. The names would turn out to be confusing: Chino Meadows, Chino Valley. Many people would mix up the different “Chinos.” It made it still more confusing that Capital Management Systems was in Japan. But what mattered was the size of the market.
Soldiers. Every one of those soldiers needs a place to invest his money.
Consolidated, their firm, would go from being a retailer to a wholesaler, dealing in large volumes with Capital Management Systems, not the former lot-by-lot drudgery with all its attendant risks. What was even better was that they could make these deals on the side, out of the purview of their buyer, AHI, because Warren had somehow persuaded AHI to remove the noncompete clause from the contract. This meant they had AHI credit lines, but they also had the ability to go in on separate deals, to set up separate corporations.