Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

  So Jay knows something she doesn’t. Good. He asks a second time, reeling her in. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  Philips turns and looks over her shoulder at the receptionist, who has long since gone back to her motorboat and RV catalog, 362 Attic a L o c ke

  now thirty dollars closer to her dream. “Tell Jerry I’m going out for a bit,” Philips says. “But only if he asks.”

  She then turns and walks out of the building without a purse or a wallet, letting Jay pay for lunch at a taco place around the corner, which, for her, consists of two beers and half a pack of cigarettes. She munches on a few nacho strips, but only when she’s not smoking or sucking on jalapeño peppers floating in a pool of oily cheese on the plate between them.

  “Sweeney was an ex-con,” she says to Jay, lighting a Vir­

  ginia Slim, one with pink curlicues printed around the filter. She waves the lit matchstick in the smoky air before letting it drop on top of the table, which is sticky with lime juice. “He was into drugs or some shit like that, I heard. That gal over to the D.A.’s office is sweating, trying to connect this guy to Elise Linsey. That’s the only thing they got for motive. A bad buy or some trick who got rough with her, maybe somebody from her past. Elise Linsey wasn’t exactly a Girl Scout. But I’m sure you already knew that,” Philips says, pulling on her thin ciga­

  rette. She exhales slowly, staring at Jay through a white cloud of smoke. “You think they got it wrong, is that it? You think it was about something else?” she asks. He thinks she’s got a pretty good idea as to what this “something else” is, only she wants to hear him say it first.

  “Did she talk to you about the old man in High Point?” he asks.

  Philips doesn’t answer.

  He gets the sense she hasn’t decided yet how much she’s will­

  ing to share with a complete stranger. He needs her to know he’s not trying to upstage her; this isn’t some newspaper story to him. He lays his cards on the table. “I know about the oil,” Jay says.

  “The mess in Ainsley’s backyard.”

  Philips leans back in her chair, her pink-and-white cigarette Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 363

  frozen an inch or two from her lips. She watches Jay closely, silently, giving him the impression that she is, as of yet, unmoved, that she’s going to need to hear a lot more. From his lap, Jay unrolls the government maps from the library. He spreads them across the sticky table, pushing the nachos and the beer bottles off to one side. “And I know the old man is barking up the wrong tree,” he says, pointing on the map to an inland spot along the Texas coast. “The federal government maintains petroleum reserve sites in Freeport, Texas, and three other places along the Louisiana coast, but they did not buy the salt mine in High Point. I don’t believe they had a thing to do with it.”

  Philips barely glances at the map. She doesn’t have to. None of this is news to her, it seems.

  “I know the Stardale Development Company was probably a shell, set up to move those people away from the old salt mine before the walls of that cavern collapsed, before what was hidden came bubbling up to the surface. And I know, in my gut, that Thomas Cole and Cole Oil had a hand in it,” he says. Philips cocks her head to one side and smiles. It’s a look to suggest she’s maybe just the tiniest bit impressed. “All I want to know from you, Ms. Philips,” Jay says, “is, did Elise Linsey talk to you about any of this?”

  “You can call me Lonnie.”

  “I just need to know if she went on record with you,” he says.

  “And if this, God forbid, put her life in danger.”

  And mine.

  Lonnie stares at him across the tabletop.

  They’re early for lunch. It’s maybe a quarter after eleven. There’s one girl working the bar. She’s watching a soap opera on a thirteen-inch black-and-white set on the countertop. The only other customer in the joint is a man in a booth by the front door. There’s a newspaper open on his table, and the man, in his 364 Attic a L o c ke

  sixties maybe, has laid his head on it like a pillow. He’s snoring softly, like a baby.

  “No,” Lonnie says finally. “I never talked to her.”

  She motions for the girl behind the bar to bring her another beer. “Not for lack of trying, though. I guess by the time I got to her, she was all talked out.”

  “You think she was talking to another reporter or some­

  thing?”

  “More like the Federal Trade Commission.” She pops a jala­

  peño pepper in her mouth, cooling the sting of it by sucking air through her front teeth. “They’ve been looking at Cole Oil for about six months now.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She smiles, sly and prideful. “I am a reporter.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jay says, shaking his head. “Why are you sit­

  ting on this?”

  Lonnie rolls her eyes. “It ain’t all that simple,” she says. She leans across the table, propping her elbows on top of the maps.

  “What you gotta understand is, this was a joke assignment, that piece you read. It wasn’t supposed to be much of nothing. I mean, look, I’m barely two years out of the University of Missouri,” she says. “I’ve had maybe two bylines. I’m a girl, and untested. To send me out to High Point, it was a joke, you understand? Write a little something about the kook by the water, an old man shak­

  ing his fist in the air. ‘Write it cute,’ my editor said. I mean, that is literally what he said. This was never meant to be more than Sunday morning filler.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, it started with the fact-checkers downstairs,” she says, letting out a soft burp. “I mean, nobody could corroborate any of it. Except for the obvious—the factory closed and the old man was pissed, driving everybody around him crazy. But this shit about Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 365

  the government, none of that added up,” she says. “Of course, to my editor, this only added to the ‘character’ of the piece, you know, ’cause it only made Ainsley sound crazier, which, to him, was the story. I mean, one man marching on Washington . . . it’s a joke, right?”

  “How did you get to the FTC?”

  Philips nods her head, as in “hold on,” and reaches for another chip. “I kind of knew from the beginning that there was some­

  thing missing from the story. But we had a slot to fill, so at print time, we went with what we had, what you read. Then about a week later, I get a call returned. A guy from the Energy Depart­

  ment, who’s been there since Ford. And lo and behold, just like you said, the U.S. government has only a handful of SPR sites in the country, and High Point, Texas, ain’t one of ’em. Therefore, he cannot comment. But then he starts asking me a lot of ques­

  tions on what I know about the whole deal. In the course of my work, had I had any contact with an Alexander Bakker or Elise Linsey? Questions like that, you know. And then he asked if I had spoken with any other current or former employees of Cole Oil.”

  Three beers, and the heat is starting to catch up to her. She peels the flannel shirt off her shoulders, revealing a rather frilly camisole underneath.

  “You get those sometimes,” she says. “The ones behind a desk, the type that don’t want to make an official statement, but got a lot of shit they wanna say anyway. He was dropping hints left and right. I mean, this whole thing might not have gone anywhere if this dude hadn’t called me back.”

  “Who’s Bakker?” he asks.

  “A lawyer.”

  “I thought we were talking about the FTC?”

  “We are, we are,” Lonnie says. “But it started with the 366 Attic a L o c ke

  DOE. They were looking at the big oil companies—your Exxons and Shells and Coles—as early as seventy-four. The Carter administration, what I come to find out on my own, launched a full-fledged investigation round about seventyseven, looking into charges of hoarding and price gouging while the whole country was in the midst of a major crisis
. And it’s not just this deal with the salt caverns, of which I would venture to guess there are many, all along the coast, filled to the brim and effectively hidden underground,” she says, pointing to the geological maps on the table. “That ain’t even half the shit they been pulling.” She rests her cigarette in the ashtray, freeing up her hands to punctuate the story, accenting every other word with a two-handed flourish in the air. “But it was a half-assed investigation from the start, never fully funded, so my guy on the inside tells it. I mean, hell, half of the Energy Department’s policy was written by oil industry analysts, guys who used to work for Cole and Shell and Exxon and Gulf Oil. You understand? The shit went nowhere. And then when Reagan and Bush came in, the investigation was officially closed. Big fucking surprise, right?” she says. “Espe­

  cially with all the friends the Coles got up in Washington. The whole thing just went away.”

  A few more customers trickle into the restaurant. The man in the booth lifts his head once, looks right at Jay, then lays it back down. Jay can smell onions and fried corn coming out of the kitchen, chicken mole and cilantro.

  “And then here comes Mr. Ainsley, walking on Washing­

  ton.”

  Lonnie smiles at the imagery, the sheer lunacy of it.

  “And somebody in the Energy Department, and even I don’t know who, passed some of their information, shit they put together along the way, over to the FTC. All of a sudden, the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 367

  word gets passed along . . . those boys down in Texas are set­

  ting prices like they ain’t got enough to fill a fucking Toyota when anybody with their eyes wide open can see what’s really going on in this industry.” She starts to whisper, as if she fears just speaking this out loud might cause a panic right here in the restaurant. “Barrel prices dipping lower than Elizabeth Taylor’s neckline, industry analysts predicting a worldwide oil glut. A glut, Mr. Porter,” she says with a caustic smile. “You understand what that means, don’t you? It means this whole city’s economy is built on a lie.”

  She picks up her cigarette from the ashtray and takes a long drag, blowing the smoke through her tiny nostrils, waving it away from her hair. “And the party’s about over. They can’t sus­

  tain this, and they know it. Hiding the oil, that’s just one tactic of many, to keep the supply-and-demand balance the way they want it. If the shit hadn’t started coming up in Ainsley’s backyard,”

  Lonnie says, “wouldn’t nobody have ever known the difference, you see?”

  Jay thinks about the petrochemical workers, out on strike alongside the longshoremen, and the shutdown at the Cole refin­

  ery. The strike, he realizes, would have made it impossible to move the oil that was leaking out of the cavern, to tuck it safely away somewhere else, like back in the oil drums at the plant. The strike, therefore, made it impossible for the company to hide its crime, which was, by then, starting to come up in plain sight, like black water rising in the streets. Jay wonders aloud why, if the Houston refinery was dark, they wouldn’t have just moved the oil somewhere else—like another cavern, if they were in possession of one. Lonnie shakes her head at the notion. “Those caverns only hold so much, and apparently not so well, not long term, at least.”

  “Why not move it to another refinery then?” Jay asks. “Don’t 368 Attic a L o c ke

  these big companies have processing plants across the coast, in Louisiana too?”

  “The Cole boys closed their refineries out in Iberia and St. Bernard parishes sometime last year, claiming supply shortages and a need to cut back on operating costs. The same year they made something like nine hundred and fifty million in profit, in profit, ” Lonnie says. “You understand the game, right? It’s just another way they fuck with supply. It’s how they keep the prices up at the pumps.”

  Stickup artists, Jay thinks. No better than the meanest thugs on the streets of Fifth Ward, dudes who’ll jack you for the few dollars in your pocket.

  “The truth,” Lonnie says, “Cole didn’t have anywhere else to put the oil.”

  Jay’s head has started to ache, his palms suddenly moist. Just the mention of a government investigation and he feels unsteady, short on oxygen, as if he’s afraid the mere association with any of this shit is enough to get him in deep, deep trouble. He thinks of the hush money in the envelope. He should have cut it loose a long time ago; his own greed makes him look complicit in a crime much bigger than the one he’d first imagined. He remembers the shootout in his apartment, how close he came to losing everything.

  “Where does Elise Linsey fit in all this?” he asks Lonnie.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” she says, sitting back in her chair, letting Jay know that it’s his turn now. “And start with the dead guy in the Chrysler.”

  “He attacked her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do,” he says, deciding in that moment that he will leave his wife out of it for now, the boat trip and the screams they heard on the water.

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 369

  “She told me as much, anyway.”

  “You talked to her?”

  Jay nods. “She said she barely knew the guy. They met in a bar, maybe a night or two before the shooting. He got rough with her in the car. I’m guessing that’s why she shot him. She never said word one about a drug buy.”

  “Would she?”

  “I got good reason to believe she’s telling the truth.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Lonnie says, looking out the front window briefly at the cars passing by on Travis. “I mean, the girl’s got a pretrial hearing in a day or so,” she says. “If this was all selfdefense, why isn’t that coming out? Why would Charlie Luckman bother with a hearing? Why not jump to trial? And why the hell didn’t he bring all this out in front of the grand jury?”

  “You can’t mount a defense in a grand jury hearing.”

  “Right.” Lonnie nods, though Jay can kind of tell this is news to her.

  “And anyway,” Jay says, “I don’t know how much she’s told him.”

  “Her lawyer?”

  Jay nods.

  “Come on,” Lonnie says.

  “Maybe she’s afraid no one will believe her, what with her past and everything.”

  Lonnie stares at him over the beer bottles and maps. “How do you know this girl again? Where are you getting all this from, Mr. Porter?”

  “And I’ll tell you what else,” Jay says, trying to distract her with new information. “Dwight Sweeney, the guy in the Chrysler, also known as Neal McNamara, also known as Blake Ellis, among others . . . he’s an ex-con, all right, but it’s not drugs. He did a 370 Attic a L o c ke

  seven-year stretch in the late sixties for taking money from an undercover cop in some kind of murder-for-hire scheme. So you see what type of guy I’m talking about.”

  Lonnie leans forward. “You think someone hired him to take her out?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not somebody had a reason to.”

  Jay watches her stab the girly pink-and-white cigarette into the armadillo ashtray. Smoke and the smell of chiles flow in from the kitchen. Somebody, in the last few minutes, has turned up the music. “You tell me, Ms. Philips . . . do you think Elise Linsey talked to the Federal Trade Commission about Cole Oil?”

  Lonnie shrugs, twirling the beer bottle in her hand, swirl­

  ing the last little bit of juice inside. She seems bothered by the pieces of this story she can’t put together with any real preci­

  sion. “I know her name’s come up one too many times for it not to mean something. I mean, I know they were looking at her, you know, as somebody from outside the Cole organization who might know something. But I can’t get anyone in Washington to say much more than that. I can’t get anyone to even admit to an official investigation.” She presses her mouth into a frown. “I couldn’t guess what she would have told them anyway. Far as I
can tell, she was just the face on that Stardale thing, the one who went and knocked on doors and smiled and looked pretty for the folks, you know. I don’t know what all they would have told her about what was really going on.”

  “She had a relationship with Thomas Cole, you should know.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, I’m just saying, Cole might have said more than he should have or even more than he meant to. Two people get together in the dark, there’s no telling what might come out.”

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 371

  “True,” Lonnie nods. “But her name’s not on any of the paper­

  work, none of it I’ve seen. I talked to some of the High Pointers who moved out of Ainsley’s neighborhood, and all of the real estate papers these people got came out of a law firm in Dallas, everything signed by an Alexander Bakker.”

  “What’s his deal?”

  “He’s a former D.C. lobbyist, used to work at a firm that had Cole Oil as one of its biggest clients. But we’re talking ten, fifteen years ago. I’ve been chasing this story on my own for months now, and that’s as close as I can put Bakker to Cole Industries.”

  “That’s pretty close.”

  “Not close enough, not enough for my editor to take on the Cole brothers. They’re fucking hometown heroes. I mean, these people got schools named after ’em, for God’s sake. They built parks and arts centers and all that kind of crap. Not to men­

  tion they employ, with all their satellites and subsidiaries, some­

  thing like twenty percent of the workforce in the entire county. Nobody wants to take that shit on unless you’re talking about something real serious.”

  “Price gouging isn’t serious?” Jay asks.

  “Not unless you can prove it.”

  “What about the oil coming up in Ainsley’s backyard?”

  “Prove it’s theirs,” Lonnie says, setting her bottle down hard on the table. It lands somewhere south of Brownsville on the map. “Trust me, I been round and round on this one.”

  The music in the restaurant changes. It’s something slow and bluesy now, a single woeful guitar and a woman’s words in Span­