Zachary Lazar - Evening's Empire - The Story of My Father's Murder

She didn’t know my father’s name. I had talked to enough people in Arizona by then to not be surprised that she remembered Ned Warren. I left the chamber of commerce with the map and went back to my car. By then, there was a good three inches of snow and I was getting concerned about whether I’d be able to drive back to Phoenix if the storm persisted. I didn’t want to spend the night in Camp Verde. I drove with the radio off so I could concentrate better on the road. Verde Lakes was about a seven-minute drive from the chamber of commerce. Down the highway a few more miles was a state park and a little farther down was an Indian reservation casino, but Verde Lakes itself was just some land near nothing, a few trees and a grid of streets that looked like it had sat vacant for a long time before gradually accommodating a few trailers and simple one-story houses. It went on and on, block by block, a suburban neighborhood that had failed to appear — no homes in different styles, no landscaping or patios or decks. A school bus dropped off a few kids. Later, some teenagers walked by in black clothes and camouflage, part of a six-pack on a plastic tree, cigarettes. I was taking pictures of their neighborhood and I don’t know what that meant to them, or if it meant anything at all. They looked at me in my car and they became alert, self-conscious, their suspicion visibly turning from me to themselves.

There was a street there, as I knew there would be, called Zachary Lane. My mother had always told me about Zachary Lane, about how my father, in the early days of his land company, had named a street after me. There was another, longer street called Lazar Road: vacant lots, trailers, fences made of wire and stakes. On one of the street signs someone had taped up a homemade poster for a yard sale.

I’ve grabbed the brass ring.

I didn’t know the story of the brass ring or the moon landing on that day, but I sensed that this was not the kind of place my father had imagined. But perhaps he had simply not cared — perhaps I was naive about his motives or intentions. I knew I was not an objective judge. My emotions were carrying me from one conjecture to another. His life and death seemed pointless in that place. I thought he must have been either very foolish or very cynical, but neither view was very convincing.

Months later, I came across a memo from a journalist about my father.

Several different profiles have emerged of Lazar — a “sheep,” an aggressor, a devoted husband, a swinger — but no one seems sure which description fits the best.

Mexico — 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.)