Zachary Lazar On February 21st, l975, Edward Lazar was shot dead in a Phoenix, Arizona parking garage. Lazars son, Zachary, was seven years old—too young to know his loving, mild-mannered father very well. Evenings Empire is his attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to Ed Lazars murder, as well as a personal investigation of the man, his time and place, and his motivations. Why did Ed Lazar, a superficially fun-loving but basically quiet, intense, and precise accountant, take illicit risks in his business dealings? Why would he endanger his livelihood, reputation, and familys future? His son has written what he calls a conjuration of his father to answer those questions. On the summer night of the first moon landing, l969, Ed Lazar announced to his wife that he had grabbed the brass ring.—he had gotten his real estate licence and would be going into the land business with his former boss and new partner, Ned Warren. That night Walter Cronkite was shouting Go, baby, go at liftoff; six years later, also on the CBS Evening News, Cronkite would be reporting the gangland-style murder of Edward Lazar. Ned Warren had become widely known in Arizona as the Godfather of land fraud, and his former partner, Ed Lazar, was killed the day before he was scheduled to testify against him. Only the hit men were prosecuted—fined but not jailed. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with Ed Lazars friends, business associates, and family members, and clarified by scenes imagined in the context of this evidence, Zachary Lazar has written a piercing and singular story of the consequences of careless ambition.