Chapter 25

A half hour later, the bell on Malik’s speaking tube dinged. He pulled the vulcanized rubber plug from the tube.

“Yes?”

Your brother has left a telephoned message,” came Peng Delan’s distorted voice. “He is on his way over with another man to meet with you.”

“Thank you, Miss Peng. Just send them up when they get here.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes later, the little bell dinged again. It was operated by a cord that was carried inside the speaking tube and was one of three such cords that terminated behind Peng Delan’s desk.

“Yes, Miss Peng?”

But it was Andy’s tinny voice he heard. “C’mon, Emil, let’s go to lunch.”

Five minutes later they were seated at a table in a private dining room at the Inn. Andy had already introduced Malik to Wilber Shea, a Negro man of medium height, but very bald with just a fringe of silver-gray hair and a short-trimmed beard to match. He, too, was dressed in a business suit.

“Here’s the letter of introduction Mister Chen sent along,” Andy said, handing Malik a folded page he had extracted from his suit coat pocket.

After reading the short letter, Malik looked up at the smiling man. “So you’ve been working for K and ASR Land Resources, for how long?”

“Since just before we bought the Kuiper ranch. I was one of the three men that Mister Chen sent out here to look things over. The others were a senior purchasing agent and a civil engineer. I was the new guy. I suppose it was a learning trip for me.”

“Have you been back here since?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“So, what do you think?”

“It’s shaping up nicely,” he said. “I was very happy to be reacquainted with Missus Kuiper. I’ve taken one of the bunkhouse rooms out there, so I’ll be your neighbor, Mister Malik.”

“Please, call me Emil.”

“My name is Wilber, Emil.”

“Thank you, Wilber.” He lifted the letter and said, “Mister Chen wrote that you’d have a response to our proposal.”

“Indeed,” Shea said. “Simply put, you can have title to the acreage you want, if the K and ASR Land Resources can be your junior partner, at forty-nine percent.”

Andy reached into his pocket, produced a silver dollar, and slid it across to his brother.

Shea looked on in amusement. “A bet?”

Andy said, “I thought Mister Chen would want the majority share.”

Shea chuckled. “That means that Raul will owe Ming a dollar. Raul bet that you and your brother wouldn’t expect any participation by the road. Which reminds me, Mister Chen also insisted that we refer to him as ‘Ming’ in our conversations” He chuckled.” And I know you’re both on a first-name friendship with Raul Castillo.”

Shea sipped the iced tea. “This is very nice. What is that mint flavor?”

“Wintergreen,” Andy replied. “Emil’s favorite. Then I take it, since you’ve rented a room from Missus Kuiper, that you’re here for a while?”

“Until we get the basic details hammered out. Plus, I have some experience in selling multiple real estate parcels.

“So, tell me, what have you got in mind?”

Malik and Shea were sitting on the front porch of the converted bunkhouse at Mrs. Kuiper’s boarding home. Each was in a wooden rocking chair, watching reflections of the sunset off the churning Rio Isabella.

“Ming likes to hand these out,” Shea said, admiring the Guardia Real cigar he held out in front of him. “But, I’ll be honest with you, my vice is my pipe. My Pa and Grampa smoked pipes, and that’s what I started on. So I thank you for this, but you ought not to squander your supply on me. I’ll stick to my old briar,” he said, patting the lump in his jacket pocket. “The only thing I changed was that, Pa and Gramps smoked meerschaums, but I switched to the briar about thirty years ago.”

“Have you a favorite tobacco?”

“I do, it’s called Dutch Uncle. Comes in a flat tin. Very moist. The aroma has a hint of vanilla, but it’s a smoking tobacco, not one of those designed to smell good for your wife.”

“You have a wife?”

“I do, so to speak. Been married twenty-nine years. Beth and me raised up two sons and a daughter. They’re all married now and we have two grandchildren.”

“Your wife, Beth, is it, she back in Wichita?”

“She is. Ming said I should bring her along, but I thought I’d see what things were like, first.”

“So?” Malik asked.

“I’d really like her to meet Missus Kuiper.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“I’m not sure what she’d do all day, while I was off working, I mean.”

“What does she do now?”

“Besides the housekeeping? She likes to sew. Makes lots of the children’s clothes and all of the grandchildren’s duds.”

“Children’s clothes?”

“Those little ones could wear a different outfit every day for a year, and never repeat one, she’s made so many.”

“Does she use a machine, or hand sew?”

“Oh, I bought her a Singer some years ago. She likes to use those Butterick patterns.”

“Missus Kuiper has a Singer. Doesn’t get used as much since two of her daughters have moved out. The youngest enjoys baking more than sewing. Wait ‘til you taste her pecan sticky buns.

“But you should suggest your wife bring her patterns along. Baylor’s store has a pattern book, if she wants to order new ones. For that matter, she could probably get a job with our dress shop, even for the time she’s here. Missus Palmer is expanding, as soon as she moves to her new shop, she’ll be putting on more help. Of course, that would depend on how long you’d be here.”

“Beth’s had job offers before. She’s tried it, but she says it takes the fun out of sewing.”

“Well, I’m sure Missus Kuiper would be glad to see that machine getting more use. She’s been complaining it’s mostly just taking up space, nowadays. We should ask her what model it is, so you could tell your wife. Then the two of you could be sitting out here on this porch, looking at the rio of an evening.”

Shea turned toward Malik and said, “You’re quite the salesman, yourself, Emil.”

“It’s easy to bang the drum for something you love, Wilber.”

Tuesday morning, Malik and Shea, on horseback, toured both Waypoint and the land west of town, which the Maliks hoped to develop. He showed him Eve Palmer’s future dress shop, under construction, and the site of his proposed land sales office.

As they were grooming the horses in the stable behind the Malik ranch office, Shea said, “Emil, may I assume your real estate office is to be located so it will be convenient to your expanded law office?”

“That’s right. I plan to connect all three of the buildings by interior doorways and have the bookkeeping handled by the law office accounting department.”

“And your law office was sited where it is because of its proximity to the courthouse?”

“Exactly.”

“As it should be. There is a basic tenet of the real estate business that says the most important factor in determining the value of a property is its location. What I mean to say is, that’s an excellent location for a law office, but maybe not for a real estate office.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

“How will your potential customers likely arrive in Waypoint?”

“By train, I imagine.”

“And you expect to have them to walk up here, past a number of other businesses, including a bank and a competing real estate office, because it’s convenient for you?”

“Oh.” Malik said. Then, chuckling, he added, “I suppose I do. Not a good plan, huh?”

“No, not the best,” Shea said, smiling. “I understand you own other commercial parcels? Anything closer to the train depot?”

“A couple. There’s one on the corner opposite both the bank and the Judson Brothers law and real estate office. I also have property on the east side of the tracks, directly across from the depot.”

“Will you show me?”

“Sure. Then we can meet Andy for lunch.”

“Wilber, I’d like you to meet Morton Quincy. Mister Quincy is the General Manager of the Sonora Mining Corporation, headquartered in Dorado Springs. Morton, this is Wilber Shea. He’s a project manager for the K and ASR Land Resources Division. He’s out from Wichita for a while, working with Andy and me on a development scheme here in Waypoint.”

The two men shook hands and exchanged greetings, including, in the process, agreeing to use one another’s given name. Quincy had come to Malik’s office, asking to speak with him. Peng Delan, in turn, had called Andy’s office to see if Malik was there and had learned of the planned lunch at the Inn. Quincy was waiting in the lobby when Malik and Shea arrived.

“Another project, Emil? You getting bored with only your lawyer work, two mining developments, a smelter, a new spa resort, and finding homes for dozens of Chinese, let alone the peacekeeping committee? Oh, yeah, and the ranch up in Smoky Valley and sitting on the railroad’s board of directors?”

“Heck, Morton, you make it sound like work. I’m just having fun.”

Andy, coming in the door said, “Who’s having fun? Can I play? Hey, there, Morton, welcome back. Wilber, you tired of my brother bending your ear yet?”

Shea reaches up and wiggled his ear back and forth. “Nope. Still got some life in it.”

Malik said, “C’mon fellas, let’s go in and eat. Talking makes me hungry.” He looked ahead to see Jorje Garcia, Jr. at the maître d’s station. “Good afternoon, Jorje. Can you put us in one of the private dining rooms, please?”

After they had their drinks in front of them and had placed their orders, Malik said to Shea, “Morton just got back from the state capital on a information-gathering trip having to do with our mining and maybe with some of the labor union problems we’ve been having.”

“Your miners are in the union?”

“No, that’s not the kind of problem we’ve been having.”

“Oh, you mean about the Chinese woman getting killed and those other incidents”

“Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. But we’re also not quite sure what to do with the silver from our mines. The American silver market had been volatile, now it’s depressed, and all of that is due to the factions in Washington who are pushing for a gold standard monetary system.

“Coincidentally, there is one state senator who’s been prominent in showing support for a labor agitator who was here for about a week. Senator Aldecott also happens to own a gold mine, up north near the Utah border. It’s the most productive gold mine in the state. So we began to wonder if there might be a connection between the mining and the labor recruiting. And not just mining, but particularly, which metal is being mined.”

“You know, Emil,” Andy said, “that Volkov never really did any union recruiting, at least not that I heard of. Unless he was just here to assess the situation and is coming back. All we know of is that he talked about labor concerns with Mitchel Anderson, and then hung around for a few days, and he beat up a prostitute. We’re assuming those half-dozen hooligans that got arrested were Volkov’s, but all we have is the coincidence of them showing up while Volkov was here.”

“Plus, that was when someone killed Tian Wu and there was that attack on the Chinese men at Baylor’s store, which is a standard agitating tactic in the American West,” Malik said

“Yeah, I’m not disagreeing with you. I think that is a labor-organizing tactic, I’m just saying no one actually did any labor organizing.”

There was a tap on the door and it opened to the waiter bringing their food.

As they ate, Malik asked, “Morton, did you find out anything interesting?”

Quincy took a sip of coffee and said, “I did, but I’m not sure what to make of it.

“I went up to Buchholz on the pretext of talking to Aldecott about the labor union. Now, I hadn’t made an appointment, so, when I arrived and was told he was too busy to meet with me, I can’t really say he was deliberately snubbing me. However, I was able to talk to his general manager.

“He said he didn’t think that the union was going to be a problem. The only concession they had to make was an additional five cents a day for new hires, but only after the first year, then an additional five cents a day after the fourth year. All their other workers who had already been there a full year would get the nickel raise, no matter how long they’d worked there, and the dime after three more years. He said he didn’t figure anyone would be there long enough to get the dime raise, nor even the nickel.”

“What? Why?” Malik asked.

“He said they’d been cutting way back on production for months and had practically no actual mining underway. He was expecting to be let go, himself, any day now.

“I asked him why they’d cut back and he said that they’d basically high-graded the mine, but he wasn’t really sure what Aldecott’s intentions were.”

“What does ‘high-graded’ mean?” Shea wanted to know.

Andy said, “It’s when you strip a mine of all the high-quality ore first, leaving the poor ore for later or for whoever you sell the mine to, especially when you don’t tell the buyer what you’ve done. But the term is used more generally to describe that method of mining, which can have legitimate purposes.”

Malik said to Quincy, “That manager seemed pretty free with his information.”

“He did,” Quincy replied. “I could smell alcohol on his breath, and I think he was fed up with the situation.”

“Did he say anything about the anti-Chinese sentiment?”

“Not as such. He did say that they had had Chinese working in the mine before the union showed up. He said they had them doing most of the blasting and then the shoring.”

“The more dangerous jobs,” Andy commented.

“Yes,” Quincy agreed. “He said that when Volkov talked to the unemployed miners, he managed to blame the Chinese for the reduced production and the loss of their jobs, even though it was purely the owner’s decision.”

“That sounds like a tactic that Jonathan mentioned, finding someone to blame for your troubles.” Then Malik asked, “Anything else?”

“Not that it seemed remarkable at the time, but what he said about reduced production came back to me later.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, after leaving Buchholz, I went down to Cabot, where both Aldecott’s gold and our silver ore are processed, at least until our smelter is operational. Ostensibly, I was checking up on our shipments, but I managed to mention enough detail about Aldecott’s mine that they thought I was privy to his operations, so they shared more information. Apparently, all of his finished bullion is being shipped back to the mine. Nobody at Buchholz mentioned that part to me.”

“So Aldecott’s not having any minted into coins or otherwise traded or sold right now?” Andy reflected.

“It does not appear so.”

“Aldecott’s betting that the price of gold is going to rise on the world market,” Andy said.

“That would be my guess,” Quincy agreed.

Malik said, “The likelihood of gold prices rising is hardly news. But the price of US gold has been fixed for years, so I don’t know. What I do want to know, though, is why he seems to be targeting us?”

Quincy said, “That brings up a rumor I heard in Meseta, where I stopped overnight. My contact there asked if it was true that you were planning to run for governor, Emil.”

“What? Whether I was...?” Malik was shaking his head in surprised bewilderment. “Where in all that’s holy did that come from? I didn’t even want to be county sheriff, let alone run for anything even more ... Where did he hear that?”

“He didn’t say, specifically. What he said was, something about being surprised somebody from our end of the state was throwing his hat in the ring. When I asked who he meant, he accused me of playing coy. I had to persuade him I had no idea who he was talking about before he finally named you. Best I can remember is he said your name was mentioned whenever the topic of contenders came up.”

Andy said, “Is it possible someone is promoting your name?”

“I can’t imagine who. No one I can think of would do so without consulting me, nor can I imagine a faction that would be attempting to draft me by acclaim.”

Quincy added, “Another name mentioned for governor was that of Cable Aldecott

Andy said, “It seems unlikely, but it could be a motive for Aldecott to come after you.”

Shea asked, “Why do you think that those incidents were all about Emil? I mean, instead of being simply anti-Chinese intimidation.”

Andy said, “First, because Emil was involved directly in two of them and indirectly in the third, as Missus Tian was his clerk and she was killed in his office. At the same time, the only other sign of anti-Chinese assaults were in Buchholz, except for a minor incident on our trunk line, for which a conductor was fired.”