Where Echoes Live (25 page)

I described the painting on Ong's wall.

She nodded. “I've seen works like that. A couple of years ago we organized an exhibition of Chinese gold rush artifacts. The paintings were similar to our typical scrolls, except that the artists … well, most of them
weren't
artists. And they had to make do with whatever materials they had on hand—the one Ong has was probably done on canvas cut from a tent.”

I remembered the tentlike structures in the foreground of the painting, which I'd taken for pagodas. “So that was actually a picture of one of the gold camps. Where would Ong have gotten it? Are they available in galleries or antique shops?”

“No, not too many survived. It's probably an heirloom. When we put on the exhibition I mentioned, Lionel underwrote it pretty substantially; he said he wanted to raise public awareness of the hardships and discrimination our people suffered in the goldfields, because his grandfather's brother died in a battle between rival tongs of Chinese miners near Weaverville in the eighteen fifties. The brother might have done the painting and sent it back to China like people send snapshots or postcards today.”

“Then there's more to Ong than I assumed. From the way he acts and the appearance of his home, I could have sworn he'd done his best to distance himself from his heritage. On the other hand, he's passionate about the hardships his family has endured—attributes their success to them.”

“I think, like most of us, Lionel has a confused sense of ethnic identity.”

“It's strong, though, in its way. The fact that he's named this mining project Golden Hills—Gum San—indicates his feelings for his roots run deep. The project obviously means a lot to him—enough, perhaps, to make him go to any length to ensure it succeeds.”

Cheung nodded, clearly disturbed by the idea, and finished gathering the remnants of her lunch. From the glance she threw at the slide-laden light table, I knew she was eager to get back to work, so I scribbled my home number on my card and told her she could call me there any time if I wasn't available at All Souls. She said she'd be in touch as soon as she spoke with either Ong's secretary or the friend who had been to the Transpacific condominium.

On my way through the reception area I paused before one of the highly stylized scroll paintings. It depicted a scene similar to the one on the canvas in Ong's office—a mountain towering over a conifer-dotted plain—but even I could tell it had been rendered by a more skilled hand. Somehow, though, the painting failed to stir me in the way Ong's had; despite its crude workmanship, that one possessed something this lacked.

Passion? Yes, passion. But something more. Anger?

Yes, anger.

When I arrived at All Souls some forty minutes later, I found Ted at his desk in the once-grand foyer of the Victorian, long slender fingers skimming over his IBM keyboard. I smiled, thinking as I often did that with his fine features and neatly trimmed black goatee, he looked as if he should be composing a concerto at a grand piano rather than typing a legal document at a computer. Without glancing up or missing a beat he said, “One message in your box, and Hank asked me to tell you that he had to go out and will try to connect with you later.”

I reached for the pink slip. A Ms. Ryder from the state Board of Registration for Geologists and Geophysicists had returned my call. “Is Rae in?”

Ted shook his head.

“And she hasn't called?”

“No.”

“Dammit! What's wrong with her, anyway?”

Ted swiveled around and looked up at me. His face paled. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

Gingerly I touched my bruised forehead. “Bad fall. I was tailing a witness on Telegraph Hill—where those steps lead down from the Coit Tower parking area, you know?—and I took a header.” It was as much of the story as I was willing to tell him.

He looked vaguely disappointed; Ted is the co-op's chief gatherer and dispenser of gossip, and he likes his tales as dramatic as possible. In search of richer fodder, he asked, “What's Rae done now?”

“Hung up on me, for one thing.”

“What'd you do to her?”

“Why do you always assume I'm the one at fault?”

He shrugged, the comers of his mouth twitching in amusement. “Rae's awfully easygoing. It would take a lot to make her hang up on anyone—particularly you. You're her idol, you know.”

“You mean I
was
her idol, until everything fell apart last summer.”

“After the shooting?”

“Yes, things are different between us now. She's never said anything, but I can see it in her eyes, hear it in the tone of voice she uses sometimes.”
Yours, too.

Ted nodded and studied me, stroking his goatee; it was as if he'd heard my unspoken words. After a moment he said, “Well, that was a bad time for all of us—for a variety of reasons.” He'd lost his oldest and dearest friend to AIDS that week. “But the rest of us got over it eventually.”

“Not Rae.”

“No.” His gaze turned inward for a moment, as if he was examining his true feelings to verify that he'd indeed put the incident behind him. “It's not that Rae thinks you're a bad person, Shar. She's just frightened.”

“Of
me?”

“That's not what I mean.”

“What, then?”

“Why don't you ask her?”

“Would she tell me?”

“I doubt that she even realizes she's frightened. But if you talked about it, it might force her to confront what's really going on inside of her.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Sometimes you can be so damned …
obfuscatory!”

“Is that a word?”

“I don't know. Look it up and see.” I headed upstairs to my office, message slip in hand.

The yellow rose in the vase on my desk had wilted and browning petals dusted the corner of the blotter. As I swept them into the wastebasket, I reminded myself to call George as soon as he was due home from Stanford. Then I sat down and dialed the Sacramento number on the slip.

Ms. Ryder was in charge of records for the Board of Registration, and she had already pulled Alvin K. Knight's file. Mr. Knight, she told me, had been a registered geologist since 1973. In the years since then, only one complaint had been lodged against him, and it was later withdrawn.

“What did it concern?” I asked.

“I'm sorry. Since it was withdrawn, I'm not allowed to go into the details.”

So why go into it at all? I wondered. “Is there any other agency or professional association that can tell me more about Mr. Knight's credentials?”

“Try the American Society of Consulting Geologists and Mineralogists in Berkeley.” She read me their number.

I called Berkeley and spoke with a Mr. Hay. Unbound by the restraints of state bureaucracy, he had a good deal to say about Alvin Knight.

“Mr. Knight dropped his membership with us five years ago,” he said, “after he was requested to appear before our board for unethical conduct—falsifying the mineral survey on a mining claim that was in the process of being patented with the Bureau of Land Management.”

I reached toward one of my stack trays, where I'd put the file Anne-Marie had prepared for me on gold mining. “Patenting a mining claim with the BLM actually amounts to buying the land, does it not? The title passes from the government to the applicant for a nominal sum per acre, with no strings attached?”

“That's essentially correct. The General Accounting Office has recommended that the mining law be changed to permit claim holders to purchase only the mineral rights on the land, rather than the land itself. That was in response to a number of incidents where people bought property cheaply and then didn't put it into mining use—a good way to acquire valuable land at very low prices. But so far nothing's come of the proposal.”

“And what are the requirements for the patenting process?”

“The major one is that the applicant show the bureau that a valuable mineral has been discovered on the land and that the claim has been surveyed by a mineral surveyor selected from the BLM state roster.”

“And Knight was qualified to do that?”

“Yes. Unfortunately there was some question about the validity of his survey. A complaint was lodged with a state agency by a concerned environmentalist group that feared Mr. Knight was cooperating in a scheme to gain ownership of the land for non-mining purposes. It was later withdrawn, but we still felt it necessary to call him before the board for explanation.” Mr. Hay's voice had taken on a gleeful undertone. I gathered that he hadn't liked Knight—or maybe he was just the sort of person who enjoyed another's misfortune.

But what he had told me caused the germ of an idea to send out fragile tendrils. I asked, “So far as you know, is Mr. Knight still on the BLM surveyors' roster?”

“I see no reason that he would have been removed.”

“But nevertheless he dropped his membership in your society rather than go before the board.”

“Yes. Mr. Knight is not the sort of person who responds well to authority.”

Since I didn't like Mr. Hay's smug tone, and because I also am unresponsive to authority, I found myself in sympathy with the geologist. But not in such great sympathy that I didn't begin to peruse my file carefully as soon as I finished the call. Of particular interest to me were copies of two newspaper articles entitled “Forest Service Warns of Non-mining Use of Former Federal Lands” and “Miner Got Land Dirt Cheap.”

At close to three I called Knight's number and hung up as soon as the geologist answered. Then I set out to see him.

Alvin Knight was not pleased to find me on his doorstep, but my battered appearance caught him off guard, and before he could block me, I stepped into the house. He gaped and said, “Ms. McCone, what—”

“We need to talk. Shall we go to your office?”

“I'm very busy—”

I moved past him toward the room at the rear of the garage. “I doubt you're too busy to hear what I have to say.”

Knight remained where he was, hand on the knob of the open door. I stopped at the far side of the foyer and looked at him, eyebrows raised in impatient inquiry. He frowned, lips pushing out and jowls bunching until he resembled a caricature of a bulldog. After a moment he half shrugged and shut the door. I went on to the office.

The dim little room looked the same as it had the night before; not a paper had been moved, not a speck of dust had been disturbed. Whatever Knight was busy with, it wasn't work. He entered behind me and after a brief hesitation motioned at the director's chairs before sitting down himself. I remained standing.

“Mr. Knight,” I said, “you're on the Bureau of Land Management's roster of approved mineral surveyors, are you not?”

He nodded—warily, I thought.

“And five years ago a complaint was lodged against you by an environmental organization because they felt you might have falsified a survey on a gold-mining claim being patented with the BLM?”

“That complaint was totally invalid and later withdrawn— with a full apology.”

“What group filed the complaint?”

“The California Coalition for Environmental Preservation.”

“And where was the claim?”

“Lassen County.”

“Not Mono County?”

He shook his head, wariness plainly apparent now.

“And was the claim eventually patented?”

“It was. As I said, the complaint was completely invalid.'

“Yet when the American Society of Consulting Geologists and Mineralogists asked you to appear before their board to explain about the complaint, you opted instead to drop your membership.”

“It was an insult! They're a do-nothing group, anyway.”

“I see. And since then you've continued your surveying activities for applicants to the BLM?”

“Of course. Where is all this leading?”

I moved over and sat on a corner of his desk, placing my briefcase on a stack of papers beside me. “I'm interested in the patenting process. Is the applicant free to choose which surveyor to use from the BLM roster?”

“Yes.”

“And what criteria does an individual or company go by when it makes the choice?”

“Sometimes it's as simple as proximity—is the surveyor located in the area? Or availability within the prescribed time frame. In other instances the person may know the surveyor or his work.”

“Or he may know his reputation?”

“Well, of course.”

I opened my briefcase and took out the file on gold mining. Knight watched suspiciously as I thumbed through it to the copies of the completed applications for patenting the 700 acres of land Mick Erickson—as Franklin Tarbeaux—had sold to Transpacific Corporation. I showed him the last page of the mineral survey and asked, “Is this your signature, Mr. Knight?”

He glanced at it and nodded.

“When Mick Erickson—or as he's known in these documents, Franklin Tarbeaux—chose you to survey this claim in Mono County, what criterion did he use?”

“I don't—”

“Did he use you because of your proximity? Availability? Had you worked for him previously?”

No reply.

“Or was it your reputation? Your reputation as someone who would misrepresent a claim's potential in order to facilitate the patenting process?”

Knight balled his stubby hands into fists. I tensed, but he merely placed one on either thigh and stared down at them. I relaxed, certain now that I was on the right track; an innocent man would have protested, ordered me to leave his house, but Knight was doing neither.

“Did you ask Erickson why he was using an assumed name on the applications?”

“Something … something to do with keeping the mining venture separate from his consulting business.”

“And you believed that?”

Shrug.