Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

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  Where his jacket, watch, and wallet are returned to him. His belt and tie.

  And he’s told that he’s free to go.

  He’s slow to move, and the clerk, a chubby girl in her twen­

  ties, ponytail cocked to one side, asks Jay if he’s gon’ need a goddamned escort out of the building. “You can go, you know,” she says. When Jay asks her about his vehicle, she only shrugs. He walks out of the police station about an hour or so before dawn, hungry and tired, his feet blistered and burning through the soles of his dress shoes. He stands briefly at the foot of the cement steps, the same spot where he left Elise Linsey so many nights ago, and he wishes for the hundredth time that he’d lis­

  tened to his wife that night, that he’d gotten out of the car and gone at least to the door of the police station, told the truth as he knew it.

  This time of night, the sky is somewhere between black and blue, the dying night as tender as a bruise. The air is moist and mercifully mild. Jay starts walking to the east, cutting through his city. He walks along the railroad tracks that run just to the north of downtown, chasing the sun, it seems, and its early morn­

  ing peek into the sky, the predawn scene of peach and violet, the wispy streaks of white clouds, thin as a whisper, a secret. He walks east until he hits Main Street and the bridge over Buffalo Bayou.

  The Buick is still parked by the side of the road. At the sight of it, Jay breaks into a weary, lopsided trot. He lays his cheek across the dewy roof of the car. He is bone tired, but deeply grateful. The keys are still in the ignition, the doors unlocked. Overhead, the amber streetlamps shut off one by one. In the predawn light, Jay looks both ways up and down the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 407

  street, watching for any traffic on Main. Then, on his hands and knees by the curb, he reaches into the car and beneath the front passenger seat, feeling along the frayed carpet on the floorboard. When he hits something hard, the metal of his .22, he claws the gun out from under the seat, holding it in the pinkish palm of his hand.

  For the life of him, he can’t remember where this little thing came from.

  If the gun was Bumpy’s first or Marcus Dupri’s, or if it was the same .22-caliber pistol that Lloyd Mackalvy pressed into Jay’s palm on Highway 71, the night they outran the Klan, the night Stokely said they were gon’ change the world.

  Jay swings his arm in a wide arc, sending the gun sailing through the air and over the bridge’s concrete railing, watch­

  ing as it pierces the skin of the water. Maybe it will find its twin somewhere along the muddy bottom of the bayou, he thinks. Either way, it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need it anymore. At seven thirty sharp, he’s standing inside Charlie Luckman’s office, on Milam, his dirty shoes sunk into the plush, caramelcolored carpet, the grime and sweat and rank funk of the jail cell still staining his clothes, clinging to his skin. He stands at the front desk looking like some half-dead shit the cat dragged in. The receptionist, an alarmingly thin woman in her sixties, her neck somewhat shrunken beneath the weight of a blond bouf­

  fant, does not appear to understand Jay, even after he gives his name three times. She keeps looking down at the same piece of paper, anything to avoid looking this filthy black man in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “But Mr. Luckman has a full, full schedule. He’s got clients, you know, and he’s due in court for a ruling just this morning.”

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  “Ma’am,” Jay says. “I can guarantee you he’s going to want to talk to me before he goes into that courtroom. This is about his client Elise Linsey.”

  It’s the name that does it.

  The receptionist finally picks up the phone receiver on her desk and dials the extension to Charlie Luckman’s office. “There’s somebody named Porter here to see Mr. Luckman,” she says to a voice on the other end.

  He’s led down a long hallway then, past the conference room. Charlie’s secretary, a pretty brunette in a navy blue wrap dress and flats, smiles through clenched lips when she sees Jay coming down the hall, when she gets a good look at his soiled clothes and knotted hair. She offers him a seat, tells him Mr. Luckman is on a call. Jay nods politely and walks right past her. He opens the door to Luckman’s office.

  Charlie is indeed on the phone. He looks up when he sees Jay.

  “What the hell is this?”

  He’s behind his desk, his collar unbuttoned. There’s a blueand-red-striped tie hanging across the back of his leather chair, a glass of milk on his desk. “I’m gon’ have to call you back,” he mumbles into the phone.

  Charlie’s secretary steps in from the hallway.

  “I told him you were on the phone,” she says.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Charlie says. He looks at Jay, screwing his face up at the sight before him, or maybe the smell. “I don’t know how you run your business, Mr. Porter, but I don’t respond to ambush tactics. You got something you want to say on the Cummings thing, you can call a meeting or wait ’til we get in front of a judge. You can’t just barge in here, not today,”

  he says, reaching for his tie. “I’m not doing this today.”

  And then, because he can’t resist, “That girl gon’ take the five Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 409

  grand or what?” Charlie asks, spontaneously shaving $2,500 off his last offer.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Jay says.

  Charlie lifts up the white collar of his shirt, nods to his secre­

  tary. “Get him out of here, would you?”

  “I know where the gun is,” Jay says quickly.

  The office, which is beige and mahogany and smells faintly of butterscotch, is suddenly stilled, the air tight, as if somebody took the whole room in a choke hold, knocked the wind out of them all, especially Charlie. With the loose ends of his red-and-blue tie in his hands, he stares at Jay Porter, maybe just now remem­

  bering Jay’s face in the courthouse yesterday and what little sense that made to him at the time. He’s putting something together in his mind. “The gun that killed Mr. Sweeney,” Jay says. “I know where it is.”

  Charlie clears his throat. “Gail, shut the door,” he says. The secretary pushes the maple-colored door closed with her hand. Charlie sighs. “Might you kindly put your behind on the other side of it?”

  Behind him, Jay hears the door open and close again with a carpet-padded whoosh of air, soft as a baby’s breath. The room is starkly, almost painfully quiet. Charlie steps from around the corner of his desk, moving toward Jay slowly, tentatively, as if he were actually physically afraid of Jay, of what he has to say, but feels forced to close the gap between them anyway, if only to keep their voices at a minimum, down to a whisper. “How do you know my client?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Don’t you dare play games with me,” Charlie says. “Don’t come in here and say something like you just did and play games with me.”

  “Why don’t you ask her how she got those marks on her 410 Attic a L o c ke

  neck?” Jay says. “Why don’t you ask her why she really shot that man?”

  “How do you know . . . ?” Charlie asks, almost stopping him­

  self before he gets the words all the way out. “How do you know she shot him?”

  “Because I was there.”

  There, he said it.

  The words, once out, are like a locomotive on the tracks, with too much physical strength behind them to stop on a dime. He cannot, will not stop the truth. He tells the whole thing: the ride on the boat, the gunshots, the screams, the water rescue, the late-night drop in front of the police station, the black Ford and the money, Elise’s cagey behavior, the news from High Point, the old man and the oil, the cover-up, the real estate buys, the gov­

  ernment’s sudden curiosity in Ms. Linsey, the calls from D.C. He runs the story all the way to its breathless end, plopping the meat of it at Thomas Cole’s doorstep. He ends grandly on the
link between Thomas Cole and the deceased, the man who tried to kill Mr. Luckman’s client. This is his mess, Jay says, speaking of Cole. “And somebody ought to do something about it.”

  Charlie walks to the office’s one window, which covers an entire wall. There’s a small bar parked in the thick carpet in front of the window. It’s got a mirrored tray on top, a pitcher of water and a coffee carafe and three different types of scotch. Charlie pours himself a glass of water, downs it, then pours a scotch. He looks up at the view in front of him, the green spread of Allen Parkway, cut in half by the serpentine bayou, the city’s main vein.

  “What do you want?” he asks.

  “I want to testify.”

  Jay has never been on a witness stand in his life. He didn’t Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 411

  even speak at his own trial. His court-appointed attorney said they would tear him to pieces, getting into his reputation as a rabble-rouser, a troublemaker, a man with no love for his coun­

  try. Jay was silent through the whole thing. But not anymore.

  “They set her up. Let me get on the stand. Let a jury hear what really happened that night, who wanted to harm this girl, and, more important, why.”

  “Mr. Porter, this case is not going to trial. They don’t have the evidence. Emily knows that,” Charlie says, calling the judge by her first name. “And I wouldn’t put you on the stand no way. My client says she was not at the scene, and the state has yet to provide any substantial evidence to say that she was. So why the hell would I ever put up a witness who says she was right there? Especially if you’re telling me that gun’s buried and gone, some­

  where at the bottom of Buffalo Bayou. As far as I’m concerned, they got nothing.”

  “I could go to the other side,” Jay says.

  “You coulda done that this morning. But since I’m looking at you right now, I’m going to guess that’s not the way you wanted to handle things.” He cocks his head to one side, regarding Jay from a distance. “I don’t think you want to see that girl hurt. The state, though, they got other plans for her.”

  “Thomas Cole is the one who belongs behind bars,” Jay says.

  “I don’t have nothing to do with that, I don’t want to know nothing more about it,” Charlie says. “My job is to keep that girl out of jail, that’s it.”

  “ ‘That’s it?’ You’re just going to ignore the rest?” Jay asks, mildly incredulous. “You’re sitting up in this big firm, got all the resources in the world, and you’re just going to let this guy get away with what he did?”

  Charlie tucks his hands in his pockets, studying the tips of his 412 Attic a L o c ke

  boots. He’s trying to find the right way to put this. “I don’t think you understand what’s really going on here. You really think a girl like Elise Linsey . . . forget the clothes, the diamonds and all that . . . you really think a girl like that can afford me?”

  The words hang in the air for a minute before they finally settle in. “Thomas Cole hired you,” Jay says, finally getting it.

  “Look . . . I’m gon’ do us both a favor, Mr. Porter,” Charlie says, his boots already gliding to the door. “I’m gon’ pretend like we never had this conversation.” He opens the door to his office, pausing at the threshold, where the two men pass each other, only inches apart. Here, Jay gets the closest look yet at the down­

  ward turn of Charlie’s green eyes.

  “You’re afraid of him,” Jay says. Then, “You’re a coward.”

  The insult washes right over Charlie, as if Jay had been stating something as matter-of-fact as the color of the drapes or describ­

  ing the carpet on the floor. He pats Jay on the back and actually manages a smile. “Mr. Porter, I wouldn’t spend another minute worrying over any of this,” he says, holding the door open. “This whole thing’ll be over by lunchtime anyway. You’ll see.”

  Lonette Philips sits on the bench directly behind Jay. Just before the judge comes in, she puts a hand on Jay’s shoul­

  der, leans forward, and whispers, “The calls from D.C. to Elise Linsey? That number you gave me? It was a Martin Burrows, an employee with—surprise, surprise—the Federal Trade Com­

  mission. He was in their consumer protection division.”

  Jay has not been home or changed his clothes or showered since his arrest. Lonnie is mercifully silent about his haggard appearance in Judge Vroland’s courtroom this morning. She’s in another flannel shirt, rolled up to her elbows.

  “Was?” Jay says.

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  “Mr. Burrows is no longer employed by the FTC,” Lonnie says flatly, repeating the information she received. “He was ter­

  minated three weeks ago.”

  Jay stares straight ahead.

  Elise and Charlie are side by side, at the same table they occu­

  pied yesterday afternoon, he in the same suit he was wearing in his office only an hour ago, and she in a white pantsuit, a thin gold belt at the waist. They’re facing straight ahead, passing the time in silence, not speaking to each other.

  “I guess Cole really did it, huh,” Lonnie says to Jay. “The son of a bitch made a whole federal investigation go away.”

  When the judge comes in, they all stand.

  Lonnie whispers over his shoulder. “What happened to you anyway?”

  Because there is no quick answer, Jay doesn’t even try. Judge Vroland takes her place at the bench. Jay looks back and forth between the prosecutor, nervously fidgeting at the state’s table, and Charlie Luckman, whose legs are comfortably crossed, his hands resting in his lap.

  The whole thing plays out exactly as Charlie said it would. First, the judge offers her ruling on the search: the shoes are out. They were out of the bounds of the search warrant, and therefore out of any trial in her courtroom. Second, she asks the prosecutor if the state can proceed with their case without the shoes. “I mean, tell me you weren’t hanging this whole deal on every shoe is this young lady’s closet. Tell me you got something else to work with,” she says, to which the prosecutor, standing at her desk, responds, “We’ve got her fingerprints in the car, Your Honor, the very car they found the victim in.”

  “If I’m remembering it correctly, the defendant has admitted to being in the man’s car, out to dinner or something like that.”

  Charlie, following the action from his seat, nods his head. The 414 Attic a L o c ke

  judge leans forward in her chair, her eyes focused on the state’s attorney. “Do you have anything that puts the defendant at the scene of the crime? An eyewitness, a murder weapon?”

  “No, Your Honor,” the prosecutor says.

  Charlie, on cue, stands and asks for a dismissal of the case, based on a supreme lack of evidence. Judge Vroland announces to the room that she’s inclined to agree with Mr. Luckman. She doesn’t seem particularly pleased by this fact. She looks at the prosecutor as if her hands are tied, advising the attorney to pull together some more evidence and take it back to a grand jury. “I just can’t see you mounting a case with what you got now.”

  Behind him, Jay hears Lonnie whisper, “Oh, boy.”

  A moment later, Judge Vroland makes her second ruling of the day, granting defense counsel’s motion for a dismissal of the case. In less than twelve minutes, it’s all over.

  Elise is free to go. The gun, and the truth, still buried beneath the surface.

  She kisses her lawyer on the cheek, looking, only once, over his shoulder. She spots Jay in the gallery. Across her thin, pinkish lips, he sees something he takes for a smile as the clerk calls the next case on the docket. Lonnie puts a hand on Jay’s shoulder.

  “What now?” she asks.

  Jay says the only thing he can think of. “I have to go pick up my wife.”

  He stops in the washroom on his way out of the building. For five whole minutes, he stands alone over an empty sink, watching water run. When he feels he has the strength, he splashes cool water on his face, wiping at his eyes w
ith his sleeve. Behind him, one of the stall doors opens. A man, taller than Jay, glides to the row of washbasins. Jay catches a glimpse of him in the bathroom mirror. The man is lean, his features seemingly cut from stone. The face is instantly familiar.

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  Thomas Cole is standing at the sink right next to him. Jay stands perfectly still, watching Cole admire his own reflection, smoothing a few wayward hairs on his dark blond head. When Cole finally looks up, catching Jay’s reflection in the mirror, he smiles, an odd twinkle in his steely gray eyes. “Don’t make me regret I didn’t kill you when I had the chance,” he says, his tone mannered and cool, the smile belying his true menace. Just then, two lawyers enter the men’s room. They stand at the urinals rehashing a prosecutor’s performance in Judge Kup­

  perman’s courtroom; they are both convinced the prosecutor passed gas at some point during her opening statement. In the mirror, Cole gives Jay a wink. He tucks his hands into the pock­

  ets of his linen trousers and saunters out of the men’s room. Jay stays behind at the washbasin, feeling a heat radiate through his whole body. He is almost faint with it, a rage that has the power to break him if he doesn’t hold himself together. Everything, he knows, depends on him keeping a cool head.

  Bernadine is waiting for him on the front steps of the church, one hand on her swollen belly, the other tangled in the straps of her purse. She’s biting her bottom lip when he comes up the walk, and one of her french braids has started to come loose in the back. She looks to have slept as little as he did last night. When he’s within loving distance of her arms, she grabs hold of his neck. In his ear, she exhales. One breath, one syllable. She whispers his name, his father’s first initial. On the stairs, she’s two steps taller than he is, and it is something, he feels, to look up to this woman, to feel held up by his wife. She’s the first to tell him about the strike, the vote that ended it. They’re going to take a chance on this race-blind thing, she says.