“Dennis? Tom Feldkirk here. I—I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about what’s happened in this case. I didn’t have any part in it and didn’t have any way to change things. And I want you to know I don’t like what’s happened one bit.” The man’s voice is strained to the point of shaking. “I’m damned sorry, Dennis. It isn’t how I meant it to happen.”

McPherson sits dully with phone to ear. He thinks of the stories Goldman told him that evening. It’s possible, even likely, that Feldkirk wasn’t aware of how the superblack program would be used by Stanwyck. He probably found out after it was too late to do anything about it. Another pawn in the game. Otherwise why even call?

“Dennis?”

“That’s all right, Tom. It wasn’t your fault. Maybe next time it’ll go better.”

“I hope so. I hope so.”

Awkward good-bye. McPherson hangs up, looks at his watch.

Only twelve hours to go.

Chapter 57

57

In 1940 the population was 130,000. By 1980 it was 2,000,000.

At that point the northwestern half of the county was saturated. La Habra, Brea, Yorba Linda, Placentia, Fullerton, Buena Park, La Mirada, Cerritos, La Palma, Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Orange, Villa Park, El Modena, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Los Alamitos, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Corona del Mar, Irvine, Tustin: all of these cities had grown, merged, melted together, until the idea that twenty-seven cities existed on the land was just a fiction of administration, a collection of unnoticed street signs, announcing borders that only the maps knew. It was one city.

This new megacity, “Orange County North,” had as its transport system the freeways. The private car was the only way; the little train system of the early days had been pulled out, like the more extensive electric rail network in Los Angeles, to make more room for cars. In the end there were no trains, no buses, no trams, no subways. People had to drive cars to work, to get food, to do all the chores, to play—to do anything.

So after the completion of the Santa Ana Freeway in the late 1950s, the others quickly followed. The Newport and Riverside freeways bisected the county into its northwest and southeast halves; the San Diego Freeway followed the coast, extended the Santa Ana Freeway south to San Diego; the Garden Grove, Orange, and San Gabriel freeways added ribbing to the system, so that one could get to within a few miles of anywhere in Orange County North that one wanted to go, all on the freeways.

Soon the northwestern half was saturated, every acre of land bought, covered with concrete, built on, filled up. Nothing left but the dry bed of the Santa Ana River, and even that was banked and paved.