by Attica Locke
But he still doesn’t know who she is.
Since that first bit in the paper, there has been nothing else mentioned in either of the city’s two major newspapers about a white male, shot twice, in Fifth Ward. There has been no mention of an arrest made in the case or even a suspect the cops might be talking to. Jay doesn’t know what this woman may have already told the police about him. For all he knows, they could have been watching him tonight . . . watching him take an envelope full of cash, what could easily look like pay
ment for something else; the man from the black Ford said he could make it look as if Jay had something to do with the shooting.
He can’t help feeling that this whole thing is a setup, the money nothing but bait. But why, he thinks, would anyone want Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 175
to trap him? His whole life he’s made no enemies he can think of . . . save for the U.S. government, of course. The thought is like a hand grenade tossed under his bath
room door.
He watches it roll across the floor, taking up position at his feet.
The blow, when it comes, takes his breath away. He has a sudden, sharp memory of Charlie Wade Robin
son, a Panther out of Detroit, Michigan. Back in ’69, the feds tried to nail him on a charge of conspiracy to commit mayhem and engage in unlawful assembly, which one progressive judge promptly threw out of his court. When the feds couldn’t get Charlie Wade on that, they tried to put him away on an illegal weapons charge. But he dodged that bullet too. Two years ago, the way Jay heard it, Charlie Wade Robinson was coming out of a McDonald’s restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia, his six-year-old daughter in tow, when federal officers arrested him on felony tax evasion, right there in the parking lot. Long out of the poli
tics game by then, Charlie Wade had started an arcade busi
ness with an investor he’d met at a party, and the IRS claimed they’d played fast and loose with the accounting. The feds had finally found a charge that would stick. He’s been locked up ever since.
Same thing happened to a Natalia Greenwood, out of Clarks
ville, Mississippi. She cut her teeth during Freedom Summer in ’64, and went on to Washington with Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party later that year. When they wouldn’t let the folks from the MFDP vote at the Democratic convention, Natalia Greenwood turned radical. She started talking about taking up arms ’round about the time the Deacons for Defense were getting going in Bogalusa, Louisi
ana, long before the Panthers. She was rumored to have an FBI 176 Attic a L o c ke
file two inches thick. She was arrested several times, for crimes as serious as conspiracy to overthrow the United States govern
ment and as petty as not paying her phone bill. But she was never actually charged with anything in court. Except in 1978. She followed a girlfriend into the bathroom of a Manhattan disco and was arrested along with half a dozen other women who were doing lines on the countertop. For a cocaine-possession charge, Natalia Greenwood spent two years in lockup and the state took away her kids.
The names and faces come back to him:
Lionel Jessup, Camille Bodelle, Ronnie Powell, M. J. Frank, Carl Petersen.
Men and women who fought on the front lines for what they believed in and were labeled radicals, had their lives threatened on a daily basis, and somehow managed to escape the reach of the federal government in their prime . . . but who now, in their thirties and forties, suddenly find themselves in trouble with the law again, arrested and locked away in jail.
They were fools back then, Jay thinks. Young and naive to believe they could raise voices and guns against a superpower and get away with it. Weren’t they always meant to pay . . . some
day, some way? Hasn’t he, deep down, been waiting for this very moment? The day when they would come for him again? He wakes up hours later, mouth dry, his head a throbbing mess.
In the light of a new day, he tries to rein in his paranoia. After all, Hoover dropped dead in ’72; COINTELPRO had been officially discontinued the year before. Jay had his day in court, and they let him go home. That was the end of it. This is a different time, he tells himself; it’s only your mind that can’t move out of the prison of its past.
It’s all in your head, man.
Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 177
Nobody was watching him tonight.
The man from the black Ford made sure of it. He had Jay drive out to an abandoned rail yard, didn’t he? A place surrounded by empty fields?
But, of course, this does nothing to put Jay at ease. The facts of this story, the last twenty-four hours of his life, are laid out before him like the disparate pieces of his bro
ken phone, pieces that don’t line up neatly or make any sense together: a man hands him a stash of cash to keep his mouth shut about a murder he didn’t actually witness. This is dirty, any way you look at it.
The strike made the front page, headline news. Above the fold is a report on the vote last night and spec
ulation about the outcome. An inside spread in the Post has a collection of quotes from local business leaders and oil company honchos, all espousing various doomsday scenarios, describing what a devastating blow a strike would be to the local and national economies. AM talk radio is hot on the news too, people calling in panicked. Things have been so good in Houston for so long—oil companies getting rich, setting the tone and pace for the rest of the economy; people coming from all over the country to get in on the action; hell, New York magazine did a piece in ’80 calling Houston the city to beat—that a lot of people in the city can’t remember when things were any different. On 740, there’s a woman caller who works in human resources at C & C Petrochemicals, a Cole Oil Industries subsidiary that makes plastics and other synthetic goods from oil waste. She was still in high school during the crisis in ’73, she says, but the other girls in her office remember they laid off several hundred people back then.
178 Attic a L o c ke
Jay snaps off the radio when Bernie pads out of the bath
room. She’s moving more and more slowly these days. He can’t tell if it’s the pregnancy or the heat, or both. He tells her not to fool with his breakfast this morning. He wants to get into the office early. The idea is to get there well ahead of Eddie Mae, but he does not tell his wife that. Instead, he offers to fix her something quick on his way out, scrambled eggs or toast. But she’s already in bed, halfway back to sleep by the time he gets his shoes on.
Outside, he checks the trunk of his car, checks to make sure the money is still there. Satisfied, he slams the trunk closed, looking both ways up and down the alley behind his building, checking over his shoulder for nosy neighbors. He doesn’t want a soul to know what he has in his possession. Finally, he slides into his car and heads for work, watching for a black Ford in his rear window.
Traffic is heavier than normal at this hour. Every gas station he passes has at least three cars waiting at each pump, some lines spilling into the street. One man at a Gulf station on Almeda is filling up gas cans, loading them into the back of his truck. It’s a sight Jay hasn’t seen in years, people hoarding oil, scared there won’t be enough. He cannot believe all the hubbub over a small number of men asking for a better wage, the way this thing is reverberating across the city, like an echo across a valley, where a small whistle can make a very big noise.
Jay keeps a lockbox for petty cash underneath his desk. Only
$23,400 fits inside. Until he can think of something better, he pockets the rest of it. Eight hundred rolled up in each of his pants pockets, held tight by two rubber bands from his desk drawer. He secures the lockbox with a key, then hides the money in the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 179
bottom of a filing cabinet. Then he picks up the telephone on his desk, purposely not thinking this through, not even completely sure he can go through with it. He cradles the receiver against his shoulder and dials the mayor’s office. And just as calm as if he does it every da
y, he asks to speak to Cindy.
C h a p t e r 1 4 The name gets him past the mayor’s secretary. She puts him on hold for what seems like an hour but by his desk clock is really only four and a half minutes. When the mayor comes on the line, her voice is so abrupt, so coarse and loud, that it actually startles him. “I can’t do this right now, Jay. I have a meeting at eight o’clock. The port commissioners, Pat Bodine from the ILA, some of the OCAW boys, the stevedores . . . they’re all coming here,” she says, sounding very much like a harried housewife who’s still got curlers in her hair and dirty dishes in the sink less than an hour before her guests are set to arrive.
“Thomas and Patrick Cole just walked over here from across the street,” she says. “They’ve been waiting outside my door for Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 181
the last twenty minutes. And now OPA’s saying they want in on this meeting.” The Oil Producers Alliance, a group of local refin
ery owners, is one more lobbying group pulling at the mayor’s attention. “They sent the Cole brothers as their representation. The Cole brothers, Jay,” she says, drawing out what is universally considered the most powerful name in the city of Houston. The Cole brothers—Patrick, John, and Thomas—run the largest industrial complex in the city and one of the largest corpora
tions in the entire country. “This whole thing has blown way out of control,” Cynthia says. “This is between the stevedores and dockworkers, nobody else. I don’t know what the hell everybody expects me to do about it.”
All of this is beside the point. Jay doesn’t give a shit about the strike.
“Cynthia,” he breaks in.
“Look,” she says quickly. “I know I said I’d help you with this thing, that boy getting beat up and all, but this just isn’t the time to be pointing fingers. Let’s stop this walkout before it starts, and then we’ll get on the other matter.”
“I need a favor,” he says, stopping her. “No questions asked.”
There is a long, flat silence on the other end.
“I’m cashing in my chip,” Jay says. “After this, we’re even.”
Cynthia is silent, her breath completely still. She’s bracing herself, it seems, as if she’s been expecting this moment for a long, long time. Finally, she speaks, softly, almost timidly. “Jay,”
she says. “There’s something I need to say to you.”
“Not now.” He’s not prepared to hear a confession now. “Just do this for me,” he says.
“What is it?”
“On the right-hand corner of your desk, there’s a stack of papers.” He waits for her to find it. On the other end of the line, he hears a rustling of papers, then stillness. He imagines her 182 Attic a L o c ke
with the pages in her hand, trying to follow him, to guess what this is all about. “Okay,” she says. “I think I’ve got it.”
“The police briefings. Yes?”
“Jay, what is this about?”
“August third,” he says. “It was a Monday. Whatever you got from the chief’s office that morning would have made mention of activity over the weekend. I’m looking for a homicide. White male, gunshots. They found a body in an open field by the bayou, on the south edge of Fifth Ward.”
“I remember that one.”
“Okay, then,” Jay says. “I want you to tell me everything they told you.”
There is no reply, no shuffling of papers, no searching for the right page, nothing to suggest an easy and immediate granting of his request.
“Cynthia?” he says.
“Kip, could you step out for just a second?” Her voice is muted, as if she’s got her hand over the receiver. Jay had no idea she wasn’t alone. “Tell them we’ll get started in a minute,” she says to her assistant. Then, waiting until Kip is well out of earshot, she says to Jay, “What the hell is going on?”
“Just tell me what they told you.”
“Why?”
“No questions, remember?”
“Are you representing the girl?”
He assumes she means the woman from the boat.
“I need her name,” he says. He wants to know who he’s deal
ing with.
“Why?” She sounds worried now, or just plain confused.
“I can’t answer that question.”
“Well, I can’t give you this report, Jay. It’s sensitive informa
tion.”
Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 183
“Not asking you to give it to me. Just tell me what’s in it.”
She lets out a sigh. “I can’t do that.”
“No one will hear a word from me about it. I won’t tell a soul we talked.”
“It’s an ongoing investigation. The police let me in on it just as a courtesy. This is not my information to share. Not even the press have this—”
“I’m asking you for a favor, Cynthia. This is between me and you.” He plays the one card he’s got. “I think you know you can trust me.”
For a moment, he hears nothing on the other end. When Cynthia’s voice returns, it’s cold and flat.
“Her name is Elise Linsey.”
Jay reaches for a slip of paper on his desk. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know anything but her name.”
“You have an address?” he asks.
“No.”
“Date of birth?”
“No.”
“They arrest her?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “But I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“Evidence was light.”
“What’d they have?”
“A body,” she says. “And fingerprints in his car. That’s it.”
“Her fingerprints?” Jay asks.
“That’s what it says.”
“What about the body, the dead guy? You got a name for him?”
“They’re not releasing it, not even to me.”
“So that’s all you have?”
“White male, shot twice,” she says bluntly. “They found two 184 Attic a L o c ke
bullets, one outside the car, the other in his skull, both twentytwo caliber.”
“Let me guess,” he says. “They haven’t found a gun.”
“No.”
The murder weapon is a .22, just like his missing gun.
“Oh, God.”
“Jay,” Cynthia says. “Do I want to know what this is about?”
He has a moment’s thought of telling her about Jimmy’s cousin and the car accident that killed him, what Jay now knows was probably murder. She could take the information to the police, start an investigation for the man’s family. But he’s afraid of what leaking the information would do to him or his wife, so he keeps it to himself. He underlines the name elise linsey on the paper in front of him, pressing so hard that the pencil lead snaps. “I appreciate this, Cynthia.”
“Jay?”
He hangs up the phone.
There’s an E. Liddie in the phone book.
An E. Linney.
An E. Linnwood.
And at the bottom of the page, his finger practically pressed on top of it, there’s an E. Linsey: 14475 Oakwood Glen, phone number not listed. Jay writes the address on the back of a ceaseand-desist order he’s been drafting. There’s a street map on top of the phone books Eddie Mae keeps under her desk. Using the index, he tries to find Oakwood Glen. By the name, it’s no sur
prise that it’s located on the west side of town, home to dozens of new housing developments and subdivisions, each one full of Oaks and Glens and Hills and Estates.
The front door opens, and Eddie Mae blows into the office, Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 185
bringing a warm gust of August air behind her, thick and moist and laced with the burnt smell of engine exhaust from the park
ing lot. Her wig is a caramel-colored number full of ringlets that don’t suit her face or age. And it’s crooked on one side. She’s wearing sunglasses and no makeup and blowing hot air about her current boyfriend and his
long list of shortcomings, starting with a fight they had at six o’clock this morning, carried over from the night before. From what Jay can gather, it had some
thing to do with a dominoes game and a missing six-pack of beer. Jay butts into her rant long enough to tell her he’s stepping out for a while and doesn’t know when he’ll be back. She waves him off, still running down her boyfriend, muttering on about his crusty feet and tuna fish breath.
Jay takes his time heading west, circling the streets around his office building until he feels certain he’s not being followed. Then he makes his way to Memorial Drive, watching the landscape change before his eyes with every westward mile. He drives past furriers and diamond retailers in the Galleria shop
ping district and four-star restaurants off Post Oak Boulevard, into a plush residential community of newly constructed homes. One hundred years ago, this would have been logging territory. Developers have since tamed the area into a forest of subdivisions and planned communities. Memorial Drive is dotted with large, elaborately decorated signs, each enshrined in lush landscaping, announcing the entrance to one private housing community after another: Plantation Oaks and Pecan Grove Estates and Briar Meadows and Maplewood Glens.
According to the street map, he’s to turn right on Wilcrest, a few miles past Town & Country mall, then make another right on a street called Autumn Oaks Lane. Here he finds the entrance 186 Attic a L o c ke
to Oakwood Estates. Oakwood Glen runs down the center of the subdivision, lined on both sides with town houses made up to look like stately French Tudors. The street is wide and freshly paved, and there are newly planted pin oak trees in each yard; they are tiny and childlike, like something borrowed from a toy train depot. There’s not a stitch of shade to be found in the whole subdivision. Jay squints against the sun, checking house numbers through his windshield.
The fourth town house on the right-hand side is 14475. From the car, Jay studies the front windows of Elise Linsey’s home, looking for some sign of activity. He has no idea if anyone is home or what exactly he’ll say when the door opens, when he sees her face again. He checks his side mirrors before getting out of the car. There are few vehicles on the street at this hour. Oakwood Estates is quiet and still. Jay climbs out of the Skylark. At the front door, he rings the bell twice. But there’s no answer.
