“In some ways you know more about it than I do. We’re dealing with a complicated situation, so again, don’t try to guess ahead. Through friendship and business association, the group that makes up Rainbow has several connections with the Planning Board, on the Board itself and at the staff level. A member of Herbert Davis’ staff and an assistant secretary of the Planning Board serve on the same charity committees—I know this from my football days. The evidence that they’ve exchanged information is in MacIver’s files. Letters mention projects that weren’t proposed by the Board for another six months. This isn’t a simple land speculation. The newspapers watch that pretty closely. Rainbow is infinitely more complicated and subtle, and land is only the beginning. The thirty-eight principals are shareholders or officers in twenty-three different corporations.” Mike looked out the window again. “Where is Suffolk Street from here?”

Leland had to pick his way to it. It was on a slight rise north and east of the business district. From this distance it was a black smear of tar paper on the tenement roofs. Leland had a clearer sense of what was coming. Moderate rent, high-rise housing was going to be built on Suffolk Street within the next two years.

Mike said, “Five years ago, six real estate companies and four individuals descended on that area and began buying up the available land. In a few cases the companies and the individuals bid against each other. Three years ago, after these new people had acquired sixty percent of the area, it was announced that Suffolk Street was being proposed as a housing site. By that time some of the parcels had changed hands, back and forth, one new outfit to another, seven, eight times. On the occasion of each sale the price was raised significantly. By then, three years ago, the individuals who had begun in the buying were out. Three of them were officers in the companies that had taken over their parcels. All of them, individuals and companies, were part of Rainbow.

“Now follow this. The tenement at Eighty-four Suffolk sold for seventeen thousand dollars five years ago. Last year—the land still hasn’t been acquired by the city—it went to the Suffolk Street Land Company for sixty-six thousand dollars. The vice-president of the company that sold the building to Suffolk Street Land happens to be the wife of that previously mentioned member of Herbert Davis’ staff. They live down the block from the president of Suffolk Street Land. What they’re waiting for is the city to move to acquire the land under the provisions of a Federal Housing Act. Of course they’re going to realize a decent return on their investment. But that’s only the first part.