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Not amazing, in the cold glare of statistics: suicide was the second most common cause of death among college students in the United States. The boy’s father, now barking heartily on the telephone, had never finished college—the football injury in his sophomore year had killed his scholarship. Thirty-seven years later Co
He was aware, suddenly, that Co
“Sorry,” Oakley said. “Reveries, I guess. How are you, Earle?”
“Fine, fine. I keep fit.” Co
“Uh-huh. I wasn’t looking at the weather.” Oakley smiled around his unlit cigar.
“Terry? Stu
“Dazzling enough to make me wish I was twenty years younger.”
“Might not matter,” Co
“Adams who?”
“Frankie Adams. House guest—one of Louise’s charities. You didn’t bump into him? You will.” Co
Co
“So?”
“So I think it’s time to start rounding them up.”
“It’s only August, Carl.”
“Right. You can get a jump on the market.”
“And what if market goes up?”
“What if it goes down? You know I’m not a nervous Nellie but I don’t like the smell of it. The stock market’s been drifting down and I expect commodities to start leveling off pretty quick.”
“Better put a few more pounds on them, take the gamble.”
“That could be a quarter-million-dollar gamble, Earle.”
“Peanuts. I’ll take risk. Anything else?”
“When you liquidated your big board fund you asked me to scout around for a capital investment. Have you still got that cash free?”
“Most of it. Come up with something?”
“Half a mile of beach front on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. The developers are getting thirty thousand per half acre for choice spots on St. Thomas and the boom will hit St. Croix next—you might recall Will Rogers’ advice, buy land because they’re not making any more of it.”
“Will Rogers wasn’t a businessman. You scouted St. Croix?”
“Of course.”
“All right. Buy it.”
That was settled; not even a handshake was needed. Oakley smiled briefly. “That’s all at my end.” He clamped his jaws on a cigar and sat back, ready to learn why Co
Co
“A little. Storm signals are up, it appears.”
“She tell you her pet project of month?”
“No. She only complained about feeling neglected and abandoned.”
“Trying to teach her a lesson,” Co
“Oh-oh. And she bought it?”
“God save us from eastern liberal women without brains. She bought it.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Talk to Orozco. Your friend, not mine—won’t listen to me.”
Oakley said uncertainly, “Orozco’s a damned good snoop, the best in the state. I’d hate to lose him.”
“Private detectives are dime-a-dozen. Rather lose him than have him on my back all the time. Now he’s put the bug in my wife’s ear—I hear it all day long. Carl, you’ve got to inform fat pest I won’t have any more of it.”
Oakley couldn’t help smiling—that a fat Mexican private detective and a 120-pound woman could cause Earle Co
Oakley said, “On the face of it Orozco’s people have a real grievance.”
“Then let them take it up with courts and OEO and civil rights people. Carl, I’ve given up on it. I can’t seem to get it into heads of these silly chicanos that I own this place. Damn chicanos just can’t adjust to the times. Fantastic land-grant pipe-dream can’t change fact that I’m in possession with clean, clear title to land.”
“They don’t see it that way. The Mexicans claim this land is theirs by bequest from Ferdinand and Isabella.”
Co
Oakley said, “The viceroys of New Spain deeded the Tierra Roja land grant to the Spanish settlers. After the Mexican War the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 guaranteed the American government would protect the property rights of Mexican landowners with legitimate deeds. Now the chicanos claim the gringos came in and destroyed the old Spanish documents in the Mexican archives and got the chicanos’ land claims struck down by fraud in rigged Anglo courts.”
“Not bad. You memorize that for delivery on TV or what? You working for the chicanos now, Carl?”
“No. But I’ve listened to them and looked up some law. The chicanos have got a pretty persuasive case.”
“Aagh,” Co
“Nothing’s that simple any more. Look at the reparations the Alaska tribes got from the government.”
“Then tell the chicanos go argue with government. Look, Carl, I don’t want big federal case here. All I want is to get Diego Orozco off my wife’s back so my wife will get off mine. Read me?”
Without waiting an answer Co
Watching the big man’s back, the shoulders lifted defensively, Oakley said in a soft voice from which he withdrew all honest feeling, “I’ll talk to Orozco, Earle. I’ll take care of it.”