-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: The Arizona Project Michael Wendland©1977 ISBN 0-8362-0728-9 Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc. 6700 Squibb Rd. Misson Kansas 66202 276 pps. - first edition - out-of-print New revised edition - available amazon.com Paperback, 304pp. ISBN: 0945165021 Blue Sky Press, Incorporated June 1988 --[4]-- 4 The Project Begins The airplane began its descent and banked to the west, just over the distinctive mounds that gave Camelback Mountain its name. Below, a maze of twinkling lights stretched over the light brown landscape of the Valley of the Sun, affording Wendland his first view of the city that would be his home for the next several months. It was Monday, October 4, 1976. The sun was just setting and the city, while not yet dark, was not quite light either. Purples blended with greens and the mountains that encircled the valley looked like dark tidal waves about to engulf a small desert island. As the 727 dropped lower, the downtown area of Phoenix showed itself out the left window. Wendland was surprised by how sparkling new it appeared. Glass and steel skyscrapers didn't fit with the Western image he expected. Except for the palm trees, it looked from the air like any other city. While waiting for his bags inside Sky Harbor Airport, he felt the first twinge of paranoia. In his telephone conversations with Greene, he had been cautioned to keep his whereabouts unknown. "Don't let your paper make any announcement that you're coming," Greene had warned. "We don't want the other side to know who our people are." Wendland looked about the terminal as he hefted his suitcases off the conveyor belt. This was silly, he thought, walking outside for a taxi. There was no one watching. The route downtown threaded through the city's black and Mexican neighborhoods. The cabdriver wanted to know where Wendland was from. "You got a lot of nigger problems back there in Detroit," offered the cabbie, a short, balding man in a light blue Ban-Lon shirt. "But let me tell you-here, we got niggers, Mexicans, and Indians. The niggers are bad but the Mexicans keep 'em in line. The Indians don't bother no one 'cause they're drunk all the time. But don't go walking around down here 'cause it ain't safe for regular folks." Wendland wondered why so many cabdrivers sounded so much alike. "I'll tell you this much, the weather's a damn sight better than it is back in Detroit. When I left, it was only forty-five and they were talking about snow by the weekend." "Yeah. We got good weather, I guess. It was ninety-four this afternoon." The fare from the airport to the hotel was $3.25. Wendland gave the driver $4.00 and stepped out in front of the Adams Hotel, a block-square sandstone building that stood eighteen stories above the city. Scalloped concrete forms shielding each window from the sun gave it a distinctly Spanish appearance, though the forms looked to Wendland like some sort of giant eyelids. The desk had his reservation ready and he was quickly ushered to the nineteenth floor. "Actually, you're only on the eighteenth floor," explained the bellman. "We skipped the thirteenth, so the superstitious won't get too upset. We call the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the eighteenth, the nineteenth. Anyway, this is our top floor. You got a good view up here." The bellman opened the door to a room midway down the west corridor. Inside were two suitcases, a pair of shoes, and a rack full of clothes. Hastily, he backed out of the room. "They screwed up downstairs," he apologized. "I'll be right back with a new key." Great security, thought Wendland. Greene had said that everyone on the team would be staying at one end of the nineteenth floor. That way, the office and the reporters' rooms would be sernicontained and immune from any overhead eavesdropping. Once the project got going, Wendland wouldn't want bellmen bursting into his room with the wrong key. Minutes later, the bellman, still apologizing, was back with a new key and led Wendland to a room two doors down from the first one. This one was indeed vacant. Rust-colored shag carpet stretched to stucco walls adorned with two large photographs of Indians and desert scenes. Two double beds separated by a nightstand, a color television set, a chest of drawers, a small round work table, and a separate dressing area and bath completed the layout. It took ten minutes for Wendland to unpack. He picked up the phone and asked the operator for Bob Greene's room. A woman answered. "IRE," she said, then, explaining, "Investigative Reporters and Editors." Wendland identified himself and asked for Greene. A moment later, and Greene's unmistakable Long Island accent was on the line. "Where the hell are you? We've been calling Detroit all day. You were supposed to be out here today." Wendland said he was in the hotel but, because of a full morning flight, had only been able to get reservations on a late plane to Phoenix. "All your office would say was that you were not at your desk. When I asked if you were on your way out here, they just said they'd give you my message. I didn't think you were coming." Wendland reminded Greene that it had been his idea to keep the Phoenix trip quiet. "My office was just following your instructions. If they had told you I was here, that would have blown it." Greene laughed, surprised to be a victim his own plans. He gave Wendland the IRE room number and said everyone was just getting ready for dinner. The office was in suite 1939, just two doors down and across the hall from Wendland's room. Already, it looked like a mini-city room. The bed and most of the standard hotel furniture had been removed. Four metal desks lined the right wall and a long wooden table cut through the middle of the suite. Typewriter stands, smaller desks, and tables and filing cabinets were scattered about wherever they could be squeezed in. There were four people in the office. The woman who had answered the telephone was Myrta Pulliam from the Indianapolis Star, which was run by her father. She introduced herself to Wendland and then introduced him to the others. Alex Drehsler, a young, mustachioed reporter from the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson stood up and shook hands. With him was John Rawlinson, a tall, stocky, dark-haired man, also from the Tucson paper. The third man was Greene. Wendland had never met Greene face-to-face and was unprepared for the present vision. A huge bear of a man who must have weighed at least 350 pounds stood up from behind a desk in the far right comer of the room and lumbered across to greet him, his massive belly gushing over his belt and partially showing itself pink beneath a blue pullover sports shirt that seemed to be bursting at the seams. "Bob Greene," he smiled, stretching out his right hand and smoothing down a mop of modishly long gray hair with his left. "Welcome to Arizona." Greene explained the layout. His sleeping room was next door, and the adjoining doors between the office and his room would be left open during the day, giving the reporters extra working space. A bank of telephones with four outside lines had been ordered, though until Mountain Bell could get in at the end of the week to install them, they'd have to get by with just two hotel extensions, one in his room and one in the office suite. Two secretaries had been hired and would show up for work in the morning. Several interns from journalism schools in the area would be coming in to help out with office chores. Four cars had been rented and were parked in the hotel garage below. A Xerox machine was to be delivered the next day, tape recorders, transcription equipment, and an adding machine were on hand. Security was a problem. "We don't have any," Greene explained, "though we don't want that to be public knowledge." The suite had been carefully selected. There was a clean view from the window of 1939. Originally, Greene said, the hotel had wanted to put the team in the suite across the hall. But because windows from other downtown office buildings faced the hotel on the north side, Greene had insisted on the south side suite, where the view was panoramic and unobstructed all the way to the South Mountains, some eighteen miles away. "We'll keep the lights on twenty-four hours a day," Greene said, so it looks like someone is always in the office. And I'll be sleeping right next door. But let's not kid ourselves. That's all the security we have. If someone wants to burst in that door and mow us all down with machine guns, there's not much we can do about it." Greene had spread the rumor that the IRE suite was wired with a sophisticated electronic alarm system and that it was guarded by a plain-clothes security officer. "We know that's obviously bullshit, but, for a while at least, nobody else will." Wendland wanted to know when the other reporters working on the team would be arriving. "John Winters from the Republic will be in tomorrow. And we've got Tom Renner, but I'm keeping him out of the office, deep and dirty so to speak. Renner's job is to get the basic background stuff we need, but quietly. He's out reading law enforcement files and tapping some of his sources. Right now, we don't want him connected with us. A lot of his sources would dry right up if it was known. So he's staying away from the hotel and floating around the state." In all, Greene explained, about twenty reporters would be working on the project, though most would be short-timers, in for two weeks or so and then gone. There would be six full-time reporters whom Greene had scheduled for the entire project: himself, Renner, Winters, Rawlinson, Drehsler, and Wendland. Pulliam would be in and out. The modus operandi would be standard. Each piece of information would be recorded in memorandum. Greene would read each memo and then mark it for various files. As the files grew, their contents would be meticulously indexed and cross-indexed on three-by-five cards. Already, several hundred index cards had been filed and fifty major files had been opened. "That's what you people will be doing for the next week, reading those files. By the time you finish, you'll be as familiar with this state as a native. You're the full-timers and I want you completely briefed on each area we'll be going into. Later, we'll split up into different groups, with one group handling land fraud, another digging into the mob, somebody else handling the political power structure, and a group going after the narcotics traffickers. As new people come in, we'll put them on a specific group, which will always be coordinated by a full-timer. That way, we keep continuity." The five reporters left the office and went downstairs to the hotel's Sandpainter Restaurant. Over drinks and dinner, the conversation carefully avoided any mention of the project. Afterwards, Greene and Pulliam decided to turn in. The Tucson reporters and Wendland were restless, and went out to get a feel for the city. For a while, they drove around aimlessly, stopping briefly for a beer at a couple of bars and getting to know each other. Rawlinson had worked in his newspaper's Capitol bureau for a year and knew the Phoenix street layout. So did Drehsler, who had lived in Phoenix before going to work at the Daily Star. It was all Greek to Wendland. A little after eleven, they found themselves on North Central Avenue, passing the Del Webb Hotel and the Rosenzweig Center, the sprawling complex of office buildings and banks that formed the city's financial heart. Abruptly, Drehsler hung a U-turn and turned off on a side street. He pulled into the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel. The three reporters got out of the car. Rawlinson, looking down, walked slowly past a row of parked automobiles and then stopped. "There," he pointed. "That's where Bolles was parked." The only signs of the explosion were a black stain and a couple of small potholes in the asphalt. A Chevrolet station wagon with California plates and a kiddie car-seat was parked on the spot. For a minute, the reporters just stood there. The darkened asphalt was what had brought them to Phoenix. It looked almost like an oil stain. "Let's get back," Drehsler said, breaking the silence. They returned to the hotel. Over the next several months, they and other reporters who joined the project would revisit the Clarendon parking lot. Standing on the spot where Don Bolles last stood was a spiritual charge for them. The next week passed quickly. John Winters came in the morning of October 5, 1976. A quiet, bespectacled reporter in his late thirties, he wore a full beard and a bolo tie, which, he explained, was the official Arizona State Tie by virtue of legislative order. Winters was the Republic's organized crime reporter, the staffer to whom Don Bolles had turned over his Mafia files. He had spent most of the past three months working on the Bolles case and, until city editor Bob Early had assigned him to the IRE team, had been looking into a series of suspected mob arsons and firebombings that had occurred throughout Phoenix that fall at various bars and restaurants. The secretaries also showed up. Marge Cashel, the petite, attractive wife of an Internal Revenue Service employee, had formerly worked as a secretary for the Arizona legislature. She became the office manager, receptionist, and head stenographer. Her assistant was Florence Hogan, a plumpish widow in her late fifties whose chief hobby was singing in her church choir. Carol Jackson and Nina Bondarook, two twenty-year-old coeds from Arizona State University's journalism school, came in as the first volunteers. In exchange for two credit hours, they would help index the project files. Except for the lack of telephones, the office began to function. The two hotel phones were constantly busy with calls from inquisitive reporters. They were calling in not to offer the team their services, but to get a story. Ever since word of the project's approval had been announced by IRE in Indianapolis, the project itself had become major news in journalism publications. Newsweek had run an article on the team just the week before, prompting a flood of requests from general interest publications. That Sunday night, the CBS television program "Sixty Minutes" had featured a report on Bolles's death and the impending IRE probe. By midweek, it seemed as though every television and radio talk show host and half the newspapers and magazines in the country were after interviews with IRE reporters. A Public Broadcast System TV crew wanted to film the reporters at work in the office. A Swedish film crew called long distance to express similar interest. Newsmen from Canada's Maclean's Magazine and England's Guard ian showed up knocking on the office door. The IRE reporters backed off from all of these intrusions, trying to keep the lowest possible profile. There was nothing to report, they explained. After all, work had just begun. Some of the media accepted this response and let it drop. Others did not. United Press International somehow acquired a list of the names of the reporters headed for Phoenix from IRE's Indianapolis headquarters and promptly identified them all in a national wire story. There went whatever secrecy Greene had hoped to maintain. The New York Times ran a snooty piece quoting its executive editor, Abe Rosenthal, saying that the Times was not participating in the probe because if it wished to undertake such a project its own staff would be quite adequate. Besides, the Times chieftain pontificated, the use of reporters from different newspapers destroyed the competitiveness that made the American press great. He was echoed by Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post. But there were little victories and a practical joke. The reporter who wrote the New York Times piece, Robert Lindsey, sent an apologetic letter to Greene, admitting that more favorable comments on IRE had been edited out of his story. Lindsey said he was angry at the deletions and personally believed in the team concept. And when Jim Bellows, a high-ranking editor of the Washin gton Star saw Bradlee's remarks, he telephoned Greene to voice full support and put the complete services of his staff on call to the Phoenix project. The joke was at the expense of Time magazine, whose reporter kept badgering Wendland for the IRE room number. Several times Wendland explained that the team would like to keep its exact location a secret for security reasons. But the Time reporter kept pushing. "Look, just tell me what floor you are on," he pleaded. "I won't print it, but at least I can tell my editor that I know it." Wendland smelled a con job. Recalling the hotel bellman's story about superstitious guests, he pulled his own con and told the Time correspondent that IRE was headquartered on the thirteenth floor. The October 18 issue of Time magazine showed that both Wendland's "off-the-record" information and a bit of Greene's earlier rumor-spreading had become gospel. In a piece entitled "Arizona Invasion Force" that ran in the magazine's press section, Time called the project "the most remarkable journalistic joint effort since Woodward met Bernstein. But it began by saying, "On the thirteenth floor of the Adams Hotel in downtown Phoenix, there is an unmarked suite, guarded by a security man . . . . .. The outside telephone lines were installed on Thursday and, with the media calls dropping off, the team settled into a routine that left the reporters with strained and bloodshot eyes. Reading the files was a monumental task. On Thursday night, Pulliam and Rawlinson had fallen asleep in the office around midnight, court depositions and real estate records still in their laps. They were awakened by snores coming from Greene's room next door. With Wendland and Drehsler, they kept reading until two in the morning. By Friday, the reporters had finished most of the background files. And from them, they had a clear idea where they were going. They were now ready to gather their own information. Greene had compiled a list of corporations the team needed to research from the files. Thanks to a computer printout of more than twenty thousand land firms and their corporate officers, run for the team by a business professor at Arizona State University, the reporters had more than three dozen target companies to look into. That morning, the reporters fanned out across the city. Rawlinson and Pulliam went to the Arizona Corporation Commission to check the annual reports and original articles of incorporation filed on many of the target companies. Wendland and Drehsler were sent to the Maricopa County recorder's office to pull all real estate records on the firms. Winters prowled through the morgue of the Republic for newspaper clippings on a number of persons and firms. Record checking is the backbone of investigative reporting. Few people realize how much of their lives are documented on public records. From birth to death, from marriage to real estate purchases and disputes with neighbors and business associates-public records enable a good reporter to put together a complete profile on just about anyone. It is a long, boring, and tedious job, but if you know what you are looking for, there is not much about a person that can't be found out. Divorce proceedings, probate court estate hearings, tax assessment records, mortgage contracts, and applications for such things as drivers' licenses and business permits yield a vast amount of personal information. That was what the reporters set out to gather in the second week of the team's investigation. All good reporters must be familiar with record checking. Though certainly the least glamorous aspect of their job, it is probably the most important. Some enjoy the task, comparing it to the completion of a jigsaw puzzle. Others do not. Drehsler was in the latter category. He was a street reporter, who much preferred the person-to- person contact of interviewing. "We've been here a full week now and we've yet to talk to a real person," Drehsler complained to Wendland, his notebook surrounded by a stack of two dozen microfilm tapes at the recorder's office. At twenty-eight, Drehsler was one of the top newsmen in the Southwest. The year before, he had written a series on drug trafficking on the Mexican border that won him the coveted Arizona "Newsman of the Year" award from the Phoenix Press Club. That must have surprised a lot of people who knew his background. Born of German citizens who brought him to the United States when he was six years old, Drehsler had probably the most interesting personal history of any of the team's reporters. He quit high school six weeks short of graduation to join the U.S. Army in 1967, hoping to go to Vietnam as a combat photographer. Because of his German citizenship, however, he was turned down and made a supply clerk, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. That wasn't for Drehsler, who wanted adventure. So, borrowing five dollars from another GI, he went AWOL, crossing the border into Mexico and spending exactly half his grubstake for a bus ride south to Chihuahua. The next morning, he awoke in a sleazy downtown hotel and took stock. He had the clothes on his back and, after paying for his room, not quite two dollars. He walked around Chihuahua for a while until he came to the German consulate. Suddenly he was inspired. He went inside and told the consul that he was a free-lance writer-photographer on assignment from a German magazine to produce a feature piece on Mexico. Drehsler said he had just arrived that morning and had been victimized by a sneak thief who dashed out of the bus station with his suitcase. The consul was shocked and apologized repeatedly, shutting down the small office and personally escorting Drehsler to the proper ty room of the Chihuahua police station. He asked Drehsler to look around to see if he recognized any of his property. Drehsler said he did, picking out a couple of shirts, slacks, a jacket and sweater, a pair of boots, and even a suitcase to carry the new wardrobe in. Back at the consulate, his host beamed at his ability to assist his stranded countryman. Dipping into the consulate's emergency fund, he gave Drehsler twenty-five dollars' worth of pesos and bid him farewell, urging Alex not to let his "bad experience" affect the article he planned to write on Mexico. Armed with a tourist map, Drehsler set off on another bus, determined to see the country. Several days later, near a small mining and university town in the interior, he met a young English-speaking Mexican girl, who asked what Drehsler planned to do. This time, he introduced himself as a schoolteacher from Texas who had decided to take a year off to travel. The young woman had an idea. She knew of many young Mexican girls, the daughters of rich miners, who would welcome a chance to learn English. Would Drehsler consider staying in her city awhile, tutoring her friends? He certainly would. Staying at the home of two of the young woman's brothers, he picked up fifty pesos a week from half a dozen young women, learning Spanish while teaching English. This Mexican odyssey lasted over two years. After the tutoring job, he continued traveling the country, working as a ranch hand, a tourist guide, and a swabbie on a couple of shrimp boats. Back in Phoenix, he settled his problems with the army and knocked about for a while, pumping gas at filling stations and toiling as a janitor at Sky Harbor Airport. In 1970, he was fired from the airport job after trying to unionize his coworkers. At the time, Drehsler had been reading a lot of Jack London. London's background intrigued him. He figured that being a reporter wouldn't be a bad profession, so he went to the Phoenix office of the Associated Press. He claimed education at a number of Mexican universities on his application; for work experience, he made up an impressive list of Mexican newspapers, giving himself titles such as 4 'executive editor" and "assistant publisher." The scam worked and he was hired and sent to run the one-man Tucson AP bureau, located in the same building that housed the Arizona Daily Star. The only problem was that Drehsler didn't know how to type. When his ninety-day probationary period ended, he was fired, effective May 1. No problem. Drehsler had met a number of people at the Daily Star. While serving out the last week on the AP job, he began bad-mouthing his employers, telling a couple of editors at the paper that he was thinking about quitting. He'd much rather work for a newspaper, he explained. Again, the con worked. He was offered a job with the Star, beginning May 1. Drehsler almost blew his newspaper job the first day. Assigned to cover crime news from four in the afternoon until one in the morning, he bumped into a group of Mexican women at the Tucson police department the first Friday night on the job. The women were from Nogales, some sixty-eight miles to the south, and they had missed their return bus. Drehsler promptly loaded them all into his car and drove them back home. But instead of immediately heading back to Tucson, he decided to celebrate his new job in Nogales' infamous red-light district. The celebration lasted four days. When he returned to the Star, he freely admitted his fling. Somehow, he kept the job. Over the next three years, he found his niche. Drehsler loved reporting- His varied experiences, which he called "adventure collecting," gave him an insight into how the other side lived. His stories were detailed and uncommonly well written. His disarming charm and sympathy gave him a wealth of news sources, among both criminals and the police. In 1976, married to a Mexican girl and the father of an eight-month-old daughter, he was a thoroughly rounded and mature news reporter with an impressive stack of reporting awards. But that didn't mean he had to enjoy going through public records. By Friday afternoon, he had had enough. "There's got to be an easier way," he said to Wendland, who similarly had been running through thousands of pages of microfilm records and then meticulously writing down the information they needed in notebooks. Drehsler looked at the sheet listing the particular real estate transactions the pair were interested in, as well as the microfilm pages they appeared on. Putting them all on a new piece of paper, he took it to a clerk in the office. "We want copies on all these," he explained. The clerk, a middle-aged woman who still hadn't lost her Brooklyn accent despite ten years as a Phoenix resident, studied the list. "You want all these?" she asked, her eyes registering surprise. Drehsler smiled and nodded. "It's going to take some time, then. And it's going to cost. We'll have to charge you a quarter a page. It's going to take three of us all afternoon to do this." "Okay," Drehsler said. "We'll come back." When the two reporters returned late that afternoon to pick up the Xeroxed documents, they had a three-inch-thick stack of 600 pages and a copying bill of $150 waiting for them. They paid the bill from their expense accounts and took the stack of documents to Greene for reimbursement from the IRE account. "One hundred and fifty dollars!" Greene exploded. "You had to have copies? You couldn't have just taken notes like everyone else?" "We would have been there until December," Drehsler replied. "Besides, this way we don't have to rely on notes. We've got the complete documents." Reluctantly, Greene paid the reporters the $150 they had shelled out. Rawlinson and Pulliam shook their heads. They had been taking hand notes. But before they could speed up their record pulling by similar means, John Winters from the Republic worked out an arrangement with the various government offices to provide microfiche copies of key records. The group borrowed a special microfiche reader that allowed examination of the filmed documents in the IRE office. The machine freed the reporters to schedule interviews during the day and complete their records research at night. Like Drehsler, Wendland was not fond of record checking. But from the files already compiled and the new documents they had dug up at the county recorder's office, he had come across a company whose background stirred his interest. For one thing, it had a direct tie to Detroit, which would surely please his editors back at the News. More importantly, the firm was run by the biggest names in Arizona. The corporation, called Goldmar, was a many-tentacled enterprise named after its principal owners: Robert Goldwater, the senator's brother, and three members of the Martori family, one of the state's most prominent clans. On the board of directors was Harry Rosenzweig, the former state GOP boss and political power broker who had masterminded Barry Goldwater's -political career since the late 1940s. Goldmar was involved in apartment rentals, land development, and real estate investments, but its prime business came from the growing and selling of citrus. Goldmar's main citrus orchard, a sprawling series of groves just north of Phoenix known as Arrowhead Ranch, particularly interested Wendland. For Arrowhead Ranch had originally been formed by a couple of Detroiters back in June 1955. And the Detroit incorporators were not just average businessmen. According to the documents on file in the recorder's office, Joseph Zerilli and William Tocco had started the Arrowhead Ranch. Zerilli was known back in Detroit as "Papa Joe." According to U.S. Senate testimony, he was the chief don of the Detroit Mafia. Tocco, a. k. a. "Black Bill," was one of Zerilli's lieutenants. The records showed that Zerilli had owned the ranch for almost four years. He had sold it in January 1959 to Del Webb, a Phoenix entrepreneur whose land development firm would become one of the largest in the nation. Webb, in turn, didn't hold onto the land for very long. A little over five years later, Arrowhead became the property of Goldmar. The sale prices raised Wendland's eyebrows. When Zerilli unloaded the land to Webb, he was paid nearly four million dollars. But Webb, a few years later, sold the ranch to Goldmar for just a one and a half million dollars. Wendland may have been new in Arizona, but he knew that valuable irrigated farmland like Arrowhead Ranch did not normally depreciate in value. Yet the real estate records indicated that it had done just that, losing about two and a half million dollars in five years. Studying the documents more closely, Wendland spotted the name of Carl Jarson, another Detroit man who had been involved in the original purchase of the ranch. Jarson, the records showed, was still in Arizona, running a citrus brokerage firm known as Western Growers Distributors. He decided to pay a visit to Jarson. Jarson was extremely cordial on the telephone. Sure, he'd be glad to talk to a reporter from his old home-town, giving Wendland directions to the cramped office he rented in a run-down old white frame house in Glendale, a northern Phoenix suburb. Jarson was in his unmarked office waiting when the reporter arrived. He beckoned Wendland to sit down on a battered old couch with oozing stuffing and promptly produced a display of yellowed newspaper clips that sketched his career in the fruit business. An affable, cigar-chomping man of sixty-five, he had spent a half century in citrus brokering, beginning at Detroit's old riverfront produce terminal. It was there that he had met and become partners with Joe Zerilli. "I figured that's why you wanted to see me," Jarson said. "I didn't think you just wanted to talk about produce and citrus." So Wendland asked him how the Detroit Mafia leader had come to own the Arrowhead Ranch. "It was just an investment," Jarson said. "Hell, I don't really remember. We just decided to branch out a bit. It started with a small grape vineyard and pretty soon we had the whole ranch." As an investment, the ranch was more trouble than it was worth, he claimed. "Mr. Zerilli just didn't want to have the headaches, so, after a while, we sold out." Jarson said that he had fallen in love with the state of Arizona while visiting the ranch and had decided to remain there. He and Zerilli had parted company amicably. "Look, I know what you must think," Jarson interjected, "but I'm no fuckin' Mafia. All I know about is produce. I loved Mr. Zerilli. He was always a gentleman. I haven't talked to him in years. I'm afraid to call him. Every time I see him, I'm called a hoodlum, a Mafia associate. Ain't that a bunch of shit?" Jarson stood up. "Come on, I'm taking you for a ride." They got in Jarson's car out front, and he drove around Glendale for half an hour, pointing out various citrus packers he did business with. Then he said he wanted Wendland to see his biggest buyer—Goldmar. Inside the huge Goldmar packing house, Jarson was treated as if he owned the place. He brushed by a number of office workers, who respectfully greeted him by name, and led the reporter to the packing area, where fifty Mexican workers sorted and graded grapefruit off a long conveyor belt. "This is my life," Jarson said, picking up a softball-sized fruit. "Citrus is what I sell. What do I know about the Mafia?" They returned to Jarson's office, and Wendland thanked him for his time. The interview hadn't been a complete waste of time. At least the reporter knew that Goldmar had been doing business with a Zerilli associate. There were other things about Arrowhead Ranch and Goldmar that needed checking. In the batch of newspaper clippings brought back by Winters from the Republic's morgue, Wendland had spotted a couple of two-year-old news stories dealing with a suit brought against Arrowhead and a number of other valley citrus growers alleging that they wittingly hired illegal workers from Mexico, thereby contributing to the high unemployment among American farm workers in the area. The suit had been dismissed, and the allegations seemed to have died as quickly as they had been raised. Wendland was suspicious. Back at the office Monday afternoon, October 11, Wendland called the Phoenix Legal Aid Society, which had been identified in the clips as a party to the suit. No one there recalled anything about the abortive legal action. They suggested he try the United Farm Workers Union, where he unearthed the name of Lupe Sanchez, a former union official supposedly knowledgeable about the Arrowhead case. Wendland left a message with Sanchez's wife, and Sanchez returned the call the next morning. "Oh, man, I'm all done with that," Lupe said, after Wendland asked what he could tell him about Arrowhead Ranch. "Look, all I want to know is whether they still use illegal aliens out there," Wendland asked. "If that's all you want to know, you sure as hell don't have to call me. Of course they do. Anyone could have told you that." "What I want is a complete picture. How many? What do they pay them? Everything." Lupe sighed. He had heard about the IRE team and was curious about what it was doing in his state. "Okay, man, look, I'll come talk to you. I got to come downtown anyway. But I want to get it all done today. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only days I have any free time from school. I'll see you in a couple of hours." He was at the IRE office door at two o'clock sharp. They went in Wendland's room to talk. A short, stocky man, Lupe knew all about Arrowhead Farms. He had practically lived there for the better part of a year, trying to convince the wetback laborers that they were being exploited and should support the farm workers' union. He guessed that upwards of 300 wetbacks picked at Arrowhe ad during the peak of the citrus harvest. Lupe said that he had been threatened and chased by ranch foremen during his visits there. He told of two of his coworkers who had been captured and then kicked and beaten in front of the wetbacks as an example of what the foremen would do to those who questioned the Arrowhead operation. He told of wetbacks who died at the farm from their work, of rumors of a mysterious wetback graveyard in one of the orchards, of incredibly low wages and a total lack of living facilities. "They don't even have shelter," he said. "They live in the middle of the orchards-worse than dogs. They camp there, without heat or water, sleeping on the ground." Wendland asked how the workers got to Arrowhead. "Ah, that's the worst of it. They're recruited down in Mexico, promised all sorts of riches if they'll just pay the service fee to the coyote who brings them across." "What do you mean, 'coyote'?" "Coyote. That's what the guide or recruiter is called." The coyote's fee ranged from a low of $75 to as high as $150. "You must understand that these are campesinos, landless peasants, and that fee may be half their annual income." After the payment was made, the wetbacks were smuggled across the border at night. "The lucky ones are driven north," he continued, "in special vans and station wagons that have had all but a small seat for the driver torn out. I know of as many as eleven wets jammed into one station wagon. The unfortunate ones make it A the way to Phoenix on foot, crossing the desert and using remote trails. Some of them actually die on the trip. Believe me, the desert is filled with the bleaching bones of many an unlucky wet." Once camped in the orchards of Arrowhead, the aliens are virtual slaves, Lupe said. "They are told that if they leave the fields, they will be picked up by the border patrol." Lupe said he had talked to wetbacks who had been shipped to other states against their wishes and forced to work in order to pay off outrageous bills they had supposedly run up for clothing or food. "This is a way of life out here," said Lupe. "You have no understanding of what it is like. It's pathetic. But no one cares. We've been screaming about it for years. No one listens. The newspapers don't care. The courts don't care. It remains the same." Wendland told him that if all he had said was true, the team of reporters certainly would care. "But we have to verify everything you said. We'll have to see it ourselves." "That could prove to be dangerous." "Why?" "I've told you about the beatings. The word is that there are phony workers in some of the orchards. They're there to keep the wets unmolested by Legal Aid people. When I was going out there regularly, I was warned that there was a guy planted in the orchard who was supposed to knife me. This guy was going to stick me and split. Then, if the cops came round, the foreman would just shrug and say it must have been a wetback gone crazy. And believe me, it would have worked. They would have said the wet got scared and ran back to Mexico. And that would have been the end of the investigation." "If all you've said so far is true, we're still going to have to go there ourselves. Will you take us?" Lupe shrugged. "Why not? Let's go." Wendland wasn't sure he had heard right. "Did you say you will?" "Sure. I've got a couple things I have to do first. Pick me up over at the Laborers Union in about an hour." "Today?" "Sure, why not? Unless you've got something else you have to do. Otherwise, I can't make it until Thursday." No, Wendland's schedule was clear. They'd visit Arrowhead that afternoon. pps. 37-53 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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