“Yes.”
“But now more drastic measures seem to be called for.”
“And so?”
“So I have written an article outlining, rather graphically, the urgency of the problem. And this article I have submitted, by means of a few special contacts I have collected over my career, to The New York Times.”
The words New York Times seemed to send a small electric shock through Nina’s cell phone.
“The New York Times?”
The current seemed to disappear when she said the name of the newspaper. Perhaps because of the question mark she had inserted.
“Yes. It is a publication of quite extensive circulation.”
“I’ve heard of The New York Times, Professor. But, I have to ask: if the situation is that bad, shouldn’t you just call Louisiana Petroleum immediately?”
“Perhaps. It is an option that I have naturally considered. But I must point out, that Louisiana Petroleum has allowed this situation to come about.”
“Yes, yes, I see.”
“But the bottom line is, I have just finished talking on the phone with several of the newspaper’s editors.”
Darkness had fallen on Bay St. Lucy now. She could see through the kitchen, on beyond the plate glass sliding door that led out to her deck. The waves were scudding in, silver breaker foam glowing in moonlight.
“Because of the urgency of the situation—and perhaps because of my modest reputation—they are agreeing to print the article.”
“When?”
“Well, that is the question, my dear Ms. Bannister. This is a story of immense ramifications.”
She could feel what was coming.
She did not like it.
But what had been to like since her discovery of Edgar’s body?
Nothing
“This being the case, the editors have naturally asked me the source of my information. I explained that all data had been collected from the mainframe computers currently operational on Aquatica, and was, unmistakably, accurate. However…”
“However, they still wanted to know where you got the data.”
“Precisely.”
“And you told them?”
“That I had it from an unnamed source.”
“I see. That didn’t satisfy them, though.”
“Not entirely.”
“But Professor, I see stories all the time that come from ‘unnamed sources.’ I thought reporters were not required to reveal their sources.”
“They are generally not so required. But this is a very difficult area. You have also read, I am certain, of reporters who are required to do so by the courts. And these reporters frequently…”
“Go to jail.”
“Precisely. You must understand, Ms. Bannister, that my recommendation in this article is to shut down Aquatica immediately. To evacuate it, and to set about a series of extensive checks and repairs that would cost months of time and billions in revenue.”
“So they want to know where you got the disk.”
“Yes. They do.”
“And the truth is, I stole it.”
“Well…”
“I and a fourteen year old boy.”
Silence.
The waves continued their long, silent, scraggly roar.
“Did you give them my name?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.
“No, dear lady. No. I must have your permission to do that.”
“And what do you think will happen if I let you give them my name?”
“Oh. Oh dear. Well, I believe the expression is ‘all bloody hell will break loose for your life.’”
She smiled at the phone, and then at Furl, who was watching the conversation from the straight chair on the far side of the room.
Neither smiled back.
“Yes. I guess it will.”
“Again. I can quite easily proceed with channels that are…”
“Slower.”
“Yes. And I can almost certainly avoid bringing you into the situation. But…”
“By that time, Aquatica may have blown up, and killed everybody out there. Not to mention destroying half of the gulf coast.”
“Oh no, not half.”
“No?”
“No! All!”
She breathed deeply.
“All, my dear Ms. Bannister. This is an installation much larger than any we have dealt with previously, and sitting on much greater energy reserves. If all elements converge at precisely the right—or in this case, wrong—instant, then we are talking about an enormous explosion, which would release millions of gallons of oil per minute, and which could not possibly be stopped for weeks. The effects of such a calamity would be…”
She interrupted him.
“Yes. I understand. Listen, do you have to give them Edgar’s name?”
“I don’t know. But I fear, yes. He was the young engineer who originally downloaded the data. Without him…”
“I know. All right. Listen, you have to give me a little time.”
“Certainly. Certainly. If you wish to call me…”
“I’ve got your number.”
“Excellent. Now, as to how much time you will need…”
“Just a minute.”
She set down the cell phone, walked across the room, petted Furl, who said ‘rrggghh’, wagged his tail, and then, in a reciprocal gesture of affection, bit the back of her hand.
“Damn cat,” she whispered, wondering if the bite would draw blood.
It did. Just a tiny red spot. But blood, still.
Then she walked out onto the deck and looked at the ocean.
She remembered the way it had looked last night, just before she had gone to sleep on the beach.
And how fresh it had smelled.
Then she walked back into her living room and picked up the phone.
“Okay,” she said. “Use my name. Use both of our names.”
Static.
Then:
“This is very brave of you, Ms. Bannister.”
“Yes, well. I’m that kind of a gal.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. Just…go ahead and tell them. Tell them the whole story.”
“I shall. I shall, immediately. You understand, the newspaper may well wish to contact you.”
“I imagine,” she whispered, “that a lot of people may soon wish to contact me.”
“I’m sorry. I did not precisely understand you.”
“That’s all right. Write the story well, Professor. A lot of people are depending on you.”
“Oh, I shall. I shall indeed.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night, Ms. Bannister. And all my best wishes.”
She clicked the phone shut.
She sat quite still for some time, wondering how she could have done such a thing.
She was admitting to being a thief.
Admitting it to everyone in the world.
And how could she have done this without consulting the Ramirez family?
What would happen now?
She had just finished mentally asking herself that question, when the phone rang again.
She flipped it open.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Nina Bannister?”
“Yes?”
“This is Liz Cohen of The New York Times.”
She looked at the back of her hand; a drop of blood was growing out of the small hole Furl had made in it.
It was, she surmised, to be the least of her worries.
The following afternoon she found herself in Jackson Bennett’s Mercedes Benz, heading out of Bay St. Lucy, driving toward a cabin somewhere in the forests of Mississippi, to meet with the writer she had spoken with the previous evening.
Elizabeth Cohen.
Feature journalist.
Who had asked her almost immediately:
“Are you the source?”
“Yes.”
“Is the information in fact valid?”
“Yes.”
And finally:
“Do you have a lawyer?”
She did.
And so Liz Cohen had called Jackson Bennett and arranged this meeting.
It had furthermore been decided:
The journalist was to fly out of New York at midnight, land in New Orleans at 3 AM, rent a car, and drive to the meeting place suggested by the attorney of Nina Bannister.
Because there was no question of holding this meeting at Nina’s house.
Or at Jackson’s office.
Or anywhere else in Bay St. Lucy, for that matter.
No, this had the potential to be one of the biggest stories of the…what? Year? Decade?”
This meeting had to be secret.
And so, accordingly, Jackson had suggested a cabin.
It was a nice drive. The radio emitted a bit of elevator music, which mixed with the murmur of the engine to have the same lulling effect that windshield wipers do during a long trip in rain.
The chain restaurants and filling stations came more sparsely as they left town. Finally, there were just pines and blue sky, the sun behind them getting multi-colored as its rays deflected through whatever layers of waste and garbage in the atmosphere made it look golden and magical.
“I had bought this cabin we’re headed to,” Jackson was saying, “several years ago as a kind of time-share venture with a couple of other guys. For the first year or two, I spent a good deal of time in it. Four or five of us would do a boys’ night out occasionally, playing poker and drinking beer until late Friday night, and canoeing off the hangover at whatever time Saturday we decided to get up.”
After a time, they turned off the main road and started meandering over the deep-rutted gravel lane that led through thick firs and balsams, getting just a glance here and there of a placid lake.
“Jackson, I want to thank you for helping me in this.”
“Nothing to thank, Nina.”
“I’ve probably messed this whole thing up. Going out there and getting that disk, without telling you—and now, The New York Times…”
He shook his head:
“Nina, whatever it is, I’ll hear about it when Ms. Cohen does. It would be very easy for me to say, you should have done this, or you should have done that. But the truth is, we wouldn’t have a Bay St. Lucy now—at least Bay St. Lucy as we know it––if you hadn’t been smart enough to do the right thing when everybody else was doing the wrong thing. Helen Reddington would be in jail if you had used bad judgment. You didn’t. You saw something nobody else could see. Hell, you almost won us a state basketball championship.”
She could not help smiling at this.
“Whatever is going on here, you’ve earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt. And I’ll help you in any way I can. Now…let’s just meet with Ms. Cohen, and see if somehow we can stay out of an all-out battle between the biggest oil company in the world and the biggest newspaper in the world.”
“They stopped at a grocery store Jackson went in, stayed for a time, then returned with a sack full of groceries, two bottles of red wine.
“There’s a little kitchen in the cabin. This interview might take some time. We might as well be eating while it’s going on.”
“What did you get?”
“Stuff to make stroganoff.”
“That’s as good a last meal as any.”
They kept going, deeper into woods, but still skirting the lake.
After about twenty minutes, they turned off the main road and started meandering over a rutted gravel lane that led through thick firs and balsams, getting just a glance here and there of the water.
The cabin looked as though it had always been there. There was a pier leading out to the green-glass still lake, the surface of which was dotted only by a few double-bump bullfrog heads and up-jutting logs that had once been willow trees. A swing and flier-chairs still sat placidly in the screened in porch.
They stopped and got out of the car.
The lake had begun to make its evening sounds. There were the tree frogs and humming mosquitoes of summer evenings, and crows still circling and cawing. Some kind of animal, maybe a deer, could be heard crunching quietly over the fallen leaves and decomposing twigs.
“I always carry a key to this cabin on my keychain. Never know when the place might be useful. Sometimes I ask key witnesses to stay out here, relax before their appearance in court.”
They walked across the porch, which overlooked the lake.
Jackson unlocked the door and pushed it open.
Nina had the bag of groceries in her arms. She took them inside.
It was a sparse cabin, but neatly made up. She could see dust particles floating in a shaft of light coming through the west window.
The cabin still had the musty smell of a place infrequently occupied, but, as she opened the window over the sink and felt the cool, pine-cone scented air float in, she felt the same sense of ease that the beach had given her two nights ago.
She looked through the window.
On the other side of the lake, two hundred yards or so away, a deer walked into a clearing. She could see him stop, raise his antlered head that was somehow not-brown not-gray but the exact color of the whole surrounding forest—then lower his head and meander away.
Twenty minutes later, Liz Cohen’s rental car pulled into the driveway, and the woman herself got out of it.
“Hey! Nina? Jackson?”
They both shouted back various greetings.
She beamed.
“Liz Cohen. Nice place you got here.”
“Thank you,” answered Jackson. “Come on up!”
“Will do!”
She bounded up the stairway.
Nina was uncertain whether the woman was so striking because she had NEW YORK written all over her, or because she was a little over six feet tall or because of her dense black curly hair, or because of the way she had of slightly leaning forward, not only into a room but into the world.
They all shook hands and then Liz Cohen said:
“So where is the booze?”
“Kitchen,” answered Jackson.
“What have you got?”
“Two bottles of red wine,” said Nina.
“That might not be enough. Given the story you’re going to be corroborating––hell, given your own story—that might not be enough.”
Jackson smiled:
“There’s a bottle of scotch underneath the sink. I always try to keep a full one there. Never hurts.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Can we go inside?”
“Sure,” he answered.
They did.
“Bedroom back here?”
“That’s right, Ms. Cohen. Just take your things back there and put them on the bed.”
“Liz,” she said, disappearing through the door. “Liz is fine.”
Within a minute she was back.
“Okay to smoke in here I hope.”
“Sure,” Jackson added, “but it will be more comfortable out on the porch. Why don’t you two ladies go out there, sit on those rockers, and look out over the lake while I make the drinks.”
“Great idea. Come on, Nina.”
They found chairs and sat down. Liz lit a cigarette, took a deep drag on it, held the smoke inside her for a cancerous amount of time, and then expelled it toward a stuffed owl that was sitting improbably on the far side of the porch.
“It must be fascinating to work with The New York Times,” Nina said. “How long have you been there?”
Liz looked at her through a haze of smoke and asked:
“Do you really care about that?”
Nina thought for a time and said:
“No, not really.”
“Good. No, I think I’m gonna like you, Nina. Now what the hell is going on?”
“Aquatica is going to blow up.”
“Well. I gotta say, that’s a story. There’s at least a Pulitzer in it. If you’re not full of shit, of course.”
&nbs
p; Jackson arrived with the drinks.
“Nina is not full of shit,” he said, sitting down. “If she says it’s true, then it’s true.”
Liz nodded and produced a smart phone from her purse.
“Thanks for the Scotch. Tastes great.”
“We try,” answered Jackson.
“So, I might as well tell you: we’re ready to run with Narang’s story. He called us yesterday then sent the story electronically. Somehow the feature got routed to me. Didn’t take much checking. He’s one of the pre-eminent authorities on this kind of thing.”
“I know,” said Nina.
“I’ve got to ask you some things. I’ll be typing as you talk, so don’t worry if I look distracted. I’m not.”
“I understand,” said Nina.
“All right. The big thing, of course, is, where did all this data come from?”
“From Aquatica.”
“They just volunteered it?”
“No, I went out and stole it.”
“You what?”
“I stole it.”
“From Aquatica?”
“Yes.”
“Oh this just gets better and better.”
“Nina.”
“I’m sorry, Jackson; this is the story and I’ve got to tell it.”
“Don’t worry, counselor,” said Liz. “She’ll be out in twenty years, with good behavior.”
“I don’t,” said Nina, almost despite herself, “feel like behaving good.”
“No. I guess not. So go ahead. Tell the story.”
“Almost exactly a week ago, I found a body in one of the drainage canals in Bay St. Lucy.”
“You found it?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, the two of you are making this whole thing up. This is a gag that one of my old boyfriends is pulling.”
“No,” said Nina. “It’s the truth.”
“The young man’s name,” said Jackson, “was Edgar Ramirez. The cause of death is still listed as drowning. There was great deal of alcohol in his bloodstream, and it seems he may have fallen.”
“Fallen,” said Liz, “into a drainage canal?”
“That’s the current theory.”
“Bullshit. But go on.”
Nina did.
“Edgar’s brother contacted me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Everybody,” Jackson said, “has gotten into the habit of contacting Nina when there is a murder to be solved.”
“I can see. Go on, Nina.”
Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) Page 11
