Summary
Visibly annoyed with Jake’s questions, the receptionist goes back to Mr. Yelburton and gets Jake a meeting in his office. Yelburton apologizes for the wait. Jake tells Yelburton that Yelburton must have been the one who hired him, explaining that Mulwray didn’t want to build the dam and found out Yelburton was dumping water at night; then he was found “drowned.” Yelburton calls it an outrageous accusation. Jake threatens to expose the water dumping to the news. Yelburton calmly says they’ve been trying to help out farmers with orange groves by diverting some water to a valley in the northwest and that some runoff is to be expected. Jake hands Yelburton his card and says he doesn’t want to nail him, but wants his help finding out who put him up to it. Jake says maybe Yelburton can then be “head of the department for the next twenty years.”
Evelyn is waiting for Jake in his office, smoking a cigarette and looking out the window. Evelyn offers to pay Jake his usual salary plus $5,000—a significant bonus—to find out who murdered her husband. When asked about her father, Evelyn lights a cigarette even though she already has one burning in the ashtray. Jake notes this to her. Evelyn admits to nervousness about the subject, as her father and Hollis had a falling out over Hollis’s insistence that the water should belong to the public. She also says Hollis never forgave Noah for getting Hollis to build the dam that broke. She says they never spoke after that. Jake asks if she is sure. She says of course and signs the contract Jake’s secretary draws up.
Jake travels to meet with Noah Cross on his ranch. Noah says Jake has a “nasty reputation,” and he likes that. They sit down to lunch, and Jake is served a portion of fish with the head attached. Jake jokes that it’s fine as long as they don’t serve the chicken that way. They discuss Hollis’s death, which Escobar and the police are considering an accident. Jake says they used to work together in Chinatown. Hollis asks if Jake is sleeping with his daughter. Jake gets up to leave, insulted by the question. Noah insists Jake sit down and says he doesn’t want Jake taking advantage of a woman in distress.
Noah offers Jake double his fees to find Hollis’s girlfriend, saying she’d be one of the last people to see Hollis alive. Jake asks if he remembers the last time he saw Hollis. Noah says no. Jake tells him it was five days ago outside the Pig ’n Whistle, and that he has pictures of their argument. Noah’s face drops. He says they were arguing about Noah’s daughter, and that Noah didn’t want Evelyn to find out about the girlfriend. Noah says he’d like to help the girlfriend if he can. Jake says he’ll check into it as soon as he checks out some orange groves.
Jake goes to the Hall of Records to look up property records. Jake finds that most of the land in the Northwest Valley has changed owners in recent months. Jake coughs to cover the sound of him tearing a line of owners’ names from the book, which he can’t check out. Jake next drives out to an area with orange groves. In one, a man on horseback fires a gun, just missing Jake’s head. Jake attempts to drive off, but other men shoot out his tires and apprehend him, hitting him with a crutch. An older farmer on horseback puts an end to the young men’s fighting with Jake and asks whether Jake is with the real estate office or the water department. Jake admits he is a private investigator and says someone hired him to see if his land was being irrigated. The old man scoffs at the idea and says the water department’s been sending people to blow up his water tanks and poison his wells. Jake gives them the contract he has with Evelyn. The younger men hear the name Mulwray and say that’s who has been messing with them. Jake gets into a fight again, and the crutch-wielding man knocks him out cold. When he wakes up, Evelyn is there. The old man says he didn’t look too good, so they contacted his employer.
Evelyn and Jake drive back to the city at dusk. Jake explains that the dam her husband opposed was a “con job” and the water is going to be diverted to the valley they’re in. He says all these new owners on the list he tore from the book have been pushing farmers out, buying the land for cheap, and planning to sell it off for millions more once water is diverted to it. Jake looks at the list and realizes that a man called Jasper Lamar Crabb was in the obituaries too: he died two weeks ago, but he bought the land one week earlier. Jake says that’s “unusual.”
Jake and Evelyn go to the old-age Mar Vista Rest Home, where Crabb was living. Lying about wanting to house his father there, Jake gets past the director of the home and finds that the elderly residents are the ones who own the land in the valley. He speaks to one old woman who knows nothing about the land she owns. She is quilting. Jake notices the logo of the Albacore Club, which he passed through on his way to meet with Noah. The director comes and gets him, saying someone wants to talk with him. While Evelyn goes to get the car, Jake goes out to meet Mulvihill at the entrance, beating him up until a gun falls from Mulvihill’s pocket. Jake kicks it away and walks away just as the men who cut his nose walk up with their hands in their pockets. Evelyn startles the men by driving up quickly. Jake jumps in Evelyn’s car and the men shoot at the fleeing car. Evelyn drives Jake away with a sense of cold composure.
Analysis
Polanski builds on the themes of conspiracy, water rights, and deceit with Jake attempting a bold means of pursuing the truth. Feigning politeness to get into Water Department head Yelburton’s office, Jake shifts his attitude, attempting his own brand of intimidation by accusing Yelburton of killing Hollis to cover up the illegal dumping of water during a drought. However, Yelburton doesn’t crumple under the pressure, and he offers Jake an alternative explanation for the water runoff. While it is unlikely Jake believes him, the suggestion that water is being diverted to the northwest valley gives Jake a useful lead.
Polanski introduces the theme of trauma with Evelyn going to Jake’s office to officially hire him to investigate Hollis’s murder. When Jake mentions Noah Cross, her father, Evelyn’s demeanor changes, hinting at a complicated if not traumatic history with her father. Jake picks up on her nervousness, noting how she lights a second cigarette having forgotten she has one burning in the ashtray. Having surprised her with the question, Evelyn admits that Hollis and Noah had a falling out over the issue of who should own the city water supply—the public, or private profiteers like Noah. In an instance of dramatic irony, Jake asks Evelyn if she’s sure Noah and Hollis never spoke after their falling out. The audience meanwhile knows that Jake’s operatives recently took photos of Noah and Hollis arguing outside the Pig ’n Whistle.
Suspecting that Noah is more involved in Hollis’s death than Evelyn is letting on, Jake visits Noah at his ranch property. Polanski draws out the dramatic irony by having Jake question Noah about his last contact with Hollis. Rather than admit to his argument with Hollis, Noah claims not to have seen Hollis in ages—a detail that highlights Noah’s deceitful tendencies. However, Noah shifts the focus to Hollis’s mistress, who Noah claims he would like to “help” if Jake can find her.
Curious to learn more about Yelburton’s comment that water is being diverted to orange groves, Jake goes to the Hall of Records and discovers many parcels of Northwest Valley farmland have recently been purchased by new owners. Having stolen the list of names, Jake proceeds to investigate the groves in person. However, in an instance of situational irony, he finds himself the target of angry farmers who believe he is a Water Department stooge there to poison their wells or blow up their reservoir tanks. With this bizarre turn of events, Polanski shows how the conspiracy Jake has stumbled across is far more complex than he expected.
As Jake and Evelyn leave the valley, Jake pieces together the components of the conspiracy he has uncovered so far. Beyond discovering water was being dumped covertly, Hollis knew the proposed dam project was being developed to enrich corrupt developers. Those same developers had been pushing farmers off their land in the valley in order to buy it for cheap, planning to sell it off once water had been diverted to the region. As he speaks, Jake finally understands what Ida Sessions was talking about when she told him to look at the newspaper obituaries: One of the new owners of the farmland died recently—a week before he supposedly bought the land. In an instance of verbal irony, Jake uses understatement to call this fact “unusual.”
To discover the truth behind the shady land deals, Jake and Evelyn employ their own brand of deceit to get into the Mar Vista rest home where the supposed landowner had been living. Once inside, Jake confirms that everyone on his list of new property owners is a resident at the home. Beyond that, they are oblivious to the fact their names have been used to buy up land, meaning someone powerful is hiding their identity as they buy all the land in the valley. Who that person is becomes obvious when Jake sees Noah Cross’s Albacore Club logo on a piece of fabric an elderly woman has included in her quilting project. Polanski returns to the theme of intimidation with the unexpected arrival of Claude Mulvihill at the rest home. As the men tussle, a gun falls from Mulvihill’s jacket, which suggests he may have been planning to kill Jake for not keeping his nose out of the conspiracy as he’d been warned.
