Page 154 - Just Deserts

Playa de los Borregos

who have no interest in this land other than its short-term
commercial exploitation, have each, in the past thirty days, made
contributions in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars to the
Corn Research Institute of Topeka, Kansas. For the benefit of those
who may not be aware of it, the Corn Research Institute is a barely
legal non-profit organization whose director and sole salaried
employee is Berit Grinnan—the wife of Emory Lane, chairman of
this hearing!’”
Gloria Mundy grinned, her mouth a prow pushing a wake of
suntanned wrinkles across her cheeks.
“And Grover had all the documentation: names, dates, amounts.
The hearing room went wild. Reporters who had been dozing in the
back row suddenly snapped to attention. Lane rapped his gavel, but
he couldn’t hammer away the evidence. The developers were red-
faced, screaming bloody murder—at each other, at Grover Green, at
the commissioners. The name Manny Billings kept coming up; it was
all his doing, cried the embarrassed entrepreneurs. Then, in a
moment of relative silence, one of the reporters stage-whispered,
‘Baloney! Manny Billings has been in jail for the past six months for
trying to bribe a D.C. meter maid.’”
“That shut the developers up tighter than a bed of clams. Several
of them ran from the room, muttering about lawyers. Lane took the
opportunity to regain the floor. He was shaken, according to Grover,
but too mean to give up. ‘This hearing,’ shouted the chairman, ‘has
nothing to do with some alleged financial transactions in Kansas. We
are here to consider the merit of the petitioners’ bids for the tract
known as Playa de los Borregos. If no other testimony is to be given,
we will now arrive at our decision.’”
“Then Grover opened the second envelope. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I have
one more thing I want to be made public. This land was originally
part of the Chippaway Indian Reservation, by act of Congress in
1887—is that not true, Mr. Chairman?’
“Emory Lane appeared puzzled by this statement. ‘Of course it is;
everyone knows that. But it reverted to the general holdings of the
federal government after the Chippaways, like every other Indian
tribe in that area, became extinct.’”

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