hundred yards. Put in quarter-acre lots, ranch-style
homes done right—plank floors, rock fireplaces, plenty of wood-frame windows. Nothing fake.
Call it “The Woods” or “Country Acres.” Put out a couple of billboards along the Santa Ana Freeway—a painting of oak trees,
the sun coming up, a creek, green grass, maybe a family of people hand in hand, watching the sunrise. Never mind that in ten
years there wouldn’t be any “country” left out here except for a few strips of what was sometimes called “green belt” by the
used car salesmen who passed for city planners.
But then you didn’t sell people with the truth. Not with that kind of truth, anyway. There was a bigger truth that had to
do with inevitability. The best you could do was give people something for their money. They were on their way right now,
those people were, getting out of the goddamncity, trying to find a little bit of breathable air. That’s what the guy with the bumper sticker didn’t get. You couldn’t
leave the canyons to the lions, not forever.
Prices were skyrocketing out in the foothills. A couple of years ago you could buy up a lot with a house on it for sixty thousand
bucks. A hundred thousand would buy you a buildable acre. But those days were gone forever, and any serious real estate considerations,
even out on the fringes of the county, were strictly for high rollers.
There was a lot of federally owned land in the county, though. The Cleveland National Forest stretched across most of the
Santa Ana Mountains, and swallowed all of upper Trabuco Canyon. Most of it was wilderness. A dirt road ran back into the canyon,
open to traffic for five miles or so. Some forty cabins were hidden back up in there, in Trabuco itself and in Holy Jim Canyon,
which branched off and ran up toward Santiago Peak.
Right now you could buy one of those cabins for pocket change. The same cabin in Modjeska, or in the little town of Trabuco
Oaks, could set you back a couple hundred thousand. What accounted for that was partly that you couldn’t
buy
the land out in the canyon. You got it for twenty years, and then had to renew the lease. Built into the lease was what the
Forest Service called a “higher use” clause, which meant that the fed could buy you out at market value if they wanted to
put the land to some other purpose—like a park.
Also, there was no electricity or phone out there. Water was sketchy, especially in drought years. What was worst was the
bone-wrenching dirt road, full of potholes, that ran up into the canyon. Nobody went back in there casually. Klein would bet
money that there wasn’t one person out of a hundred in the county that even knew the place existed. Probably one in a thousand.
But it wouldn’t take much to change that. Pave the road, say, and run a wire back in there, and suddenly, very damned suddenly,
you could put your pocket change away.
In fact, Klein’s canyon enterprise operated on the brink of outright fraud. He wouldn’t have used that word in the company
of any of the consortium of investors and front men that he’d managed to peg together over the past months, but he had never
been one to fool himself.
Just as soon as the county announced its intention of turning upper Trabuco Canyon into a wildlife park, something was going
to happen to the value of the cabins back in there—something big. There were two ways it could go. The county could upgrade
the road and run power into the area, and the value of all those fifteen-thousand-dollar hovels would increase tenfold overnight,
literally. Or else the Forest Service would implement the “higher use” clause and eminent-domain the places, paying the owners
off at market value.
Klein was betting on the second scenario. There were only the forty cabins back in there, in Holy Jim and Trabuco canyons
combined—pocket money for the government no matter what happened to market value.
Somebody was going to make a piece of
homes done right—plank floors, rock fireplaces, plenty of wood-frame windows. Nothing fake.
Call it “The Woods” or “Country Acres.” Put out a couple of billboards along the Santa Ana Freeway—a painting of oak trees,
the sun coming up, a creek, green grass, maybe a family of people hand in hand, watching the sunrise. Never mind that in ten
years there wouldn’t be any “country” left out here except for a few strips of what was sometimes called “green belt” by the
used car salesmen who passed for city planners.
But then you didn’t sell people with the truth. Not with that kind of truth, anyway. There was a bigger truth that had to
do with inevitability. The best you could do was give people something for their money. They were on their way right now,
those people were, getting out of the goddamncity, trying to find a little bit of breathable air. That’s what the guy with the bumper sticker didn’t get. You couldn’t
leave the canyons to the lions, not forever.
Prices were skyrocketing out in the foothills. A couple of years ago you could buy up a lot with a house on it for sixty thousand
bucks. A hundred thousand would buy you a buildable acre. But those days were gone forever, and any serious real estate considerations,
even out on the fringes of the county, were strictly for high rollers.
There was a lot of federally owned land in the county, though. The Cleveland National Forest stretched across most of the
Santa Ana Mountains, and swallowed all of upper Trabuco Canyon. Most of it was wilderness. A dirt road ran back into the canyon,
open to traffic for five miles or so. Some forty cabins were hidden back up in there, in Trabuco itself and in Holy Jim Canyon,
which branched off and ran up toward Santiago Peak.
Right now you could buy one of those cabins for pocket change. The same cabin in Modjeska, or in the little town of Trabuco
Oaks, could set you back a couple hundred thousand. What accounted for that was partly that you couldn’t
buy
the land out in the canyon. You got it for twenty years, and then had to renew the lease. Built into the lease was what the
Forest Service called a “higher use” clause, which meant that the fed could buy you out at market value if they wanted to
put the land to some other purpose—like a park.
Also, there was no electricity or phone out there. Water was sketchy, especially in drought years. What was worst was the
bone-wrenching dirt road, full of potholes, that ran up into the canyon. Nobody went back in there casually. Klein would bet
money that there wasn’t one person out of a hundred in the county that even knew the place existed. Probably one in a thousand.
But it wouldn’t take much to change that. Pave the road, say, and run a wire back in there, and suddenly, very damned suddenly,
you could put your pocket change away.
In fact, Klein’s canyon enterprise operated on the brink of outright fraud. He wouldn’t have used that word in the company
of any of the consortium of investors and front men that he’d managed to peg together over the past months, but he had never
been one to fool himself.
Just as soon as the county announced its intention of turning upper Trabuco Canyon into a wildlife park, something was going
to happen to the value of the cabins back in there—something big. There were two ways it could go. The county could upgrade
the road and run power into the area, and the value of all those fifteen-thousand-dollar hovels would increase tenfold overnight,
literally. Or else the Forest Service would implement the “higher use” clause and eminent-domain the places, paying the owners
off at market value.
Klein was betting on the second scenario. There were only the forty cabins back in there, in Holy Jim and Trabuco canyons
combined—pocket money for the government no matter what happened to market value.
Somebody was going to make a piece of
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