Blood and Oranges

had to fear was fire.
He turned around to read the shiny brass plaque on the building chosen as the site for the message: Security Trust and Savings Bank.
Hungry, he crossed to the Alexandria Hotel, bought a newspaper at the cigar stand and eased onto a counter stool in the coffee shop. “Going to change things big-time around here,” said the waitress when he asked about the aqueduct that was frontpage news that morning in the Times. “What can I get you?” Her nametag said Agnes.
He was about to order his usual breakfast when he noticed a great pile of oranges in a basket behind her. Oranges, that’s what he thought of when he thought of Los Angeles, orange groves and palm trees, neither of which you could find in Salinas.
“Orange juice, toast and coffee, please.”
“Blood oranges.”
“How’s that?”
“From Pomona. Sweet and sour, just like L.A.” Agnes smiled. He smiled back.
She squeezed and poured. The juice was red. “First time here?”
“How’d you know?”
She laughed. “Well, maybe the suitcase gave me a hint. And maybe that the train just came in. I expect you’re in land like everyone else coming to town.”
Afterward, he sat in the shade of Central Park and read the paper. Already, he felt the city’s vitality flowing into him. That waitress thought I was in land, could see I knew land, he said to himself. The newspaper said the aqueduct had traversed Kern County, Antelope Valley and was at the San Gabriel Mountains, most of the two hundred miles to be covered. He bought more newspapers and maps and spent the night at the Alexandria, a fine hotel, they said, good as anything in San Francisco, maybe better since the earthquake. The next day he rented another Tin Lizzie and rattled his way up toward the Mojave Desert, following the maps, sweating through 100-degree temperatures.
He stood on a hill above the town called Mojave and observed what they’d built, followed the caravans south on roads that barely existed toward the place called Lancaster, moving south toward the mountains, standing on hills and watching the action below as a general might observe his divisions. He stopped when he came to towns to check the car and learn whatever people knew about the army of workers oozing its way southward, inch by inch, day by day, mixing concrete, digging trenches, building tunnels and reservoirs, laying pipe, approaching the end of five years of work.
Back in Los Angeles, he searched through records at the county courthouse. If everyone coming to town was in land, he had to get a jump. Nothing, he noticed, was said about the aqueduct’s final destination. Where would it enter Los Angeles? Over the mountains into Pasadena was the obvious route because it was the shortest, and Pasadena was where the people with big lawns lived. But the maps showed a second option, longer but requiring less tunneling. The aqueduct could turn west and skirt most of the San Gabriels at Saugus. That route led not into fertile Pasadena, but into the barren San Fernando Valley.
Why did county records not show where the water entered the city? Even the Los Angeles Times, which had bought up Kern County land all along the route of the aqueduct, said nothing about the project’s final destination. But they had to know, someone had to know, and to know where the aqueduct entered was to know the future. Already a month in the city, he was hardly wiser than when he arrived. He’d met no one who could tell him what he needed to know. He had $107,650 in the bank and didn’t know what to do with it.
Frustrated, tired of endless research, tired even of the grand Alexandria Hotel, he went down to breakfast one morning with no idea what to do next. Maybe it would be San Francisco after all. He bought his paper as usual and took breakfast as usual in the coffee shop, exchanging a few pleasantries with Agnes, who always made sure he got a juicy blood orange from Pomona to start. Afterward, he went out, crossed Fifth and stood where the voice had told him to think of the water.
Security Trust and Savings Bank.
He went in and asked to see the manager. The teller hesitated until he said the magic words: “I have a large deposit to make.” An elevator took him to the sixth floor and a corridor took him to the front, overlooking the Alexandria. He’d never been in a bank this size, but was not the least bit intimidated. Something about a big bank account that gives a man confidence, especially in a big bank. He was impressed that a mere bank manager should have such splendid surroundings until he saw the name on the door:
J. F. Sartori, president, Security Trust and Savings
“Mr. Sartori will see you shortly, sir. Do you have a card?”
That’s something I’ll have to do, he thought.
“None made up yet, Miss, new in town.”
“Just write your name and address on this card, please.”
If some people are born to the stage, some are born to banking, and Mr. J. F. Sartori was one of them. If Eddie was put off by the name while waiting—Italians are mostly fishermen in the north—a glance at the man dispelled any doubt. Everything about him, from fine tailoring, to manicured hands, to penetrating eyes and a slow, measured way of speaking said: “I am a banker and a very good one.” Ramrod straight, with a manly handshake, thinning gray hair, matching brush mustache and as sober a face as you will find on the chancel of any church, Joseph Francis Sartori was someone who made you want to give him your money.
“How can we be of service, Mr. Mull?”
Seated, Eddie explained—explained about Tesoro and Claus Spreckels and the $107,650, everything but the voice he’d heard outside the bank. He explained that he was deciding between San Francisco and Los Angeles as a new home for him and his brother, who was an ordained minister.