Black Water Rising (32 page)

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
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 seventy-seven, 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. “Especially 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 Washington.”

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
word gets passed along…those boys down in Texas are setting 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 sustain 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 refinery. 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
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 shoot-out 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.

“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 self-defense, 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
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, swirling the last little bit of juice inside. She seems bothered by the pieces of this story she can't put together with any real precision. “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.”

“True,” Lonnie nods. “But her name's not on any of the paperwork, 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 mention they employ, with all their satellites and subsidiaries, something 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 Spanish that Jay doesn't understand.

“You think Elise Linsey had any idea what she was getting herself into?”

Lonnie shrugs again. “Don't matter no way. She's in it.”

Jay looks out the front window of the restaurant. There are
clouds moving in, blackening the sky. It's going to storm again, he thinks. “He used her and then he tried to get rid of her.”

“You really think Thomas Cole tried to get this girl killed?” Lonnie asks softly, careful not to let the words drift past their table. They seem to both know that their whole conversation has been leading to this one question.

Jay shrugs.

What the hell does he know, really?

He turns his head toward the window again, watching the changing light in the sky, wondering how long before the clouds break beneath their own weight, how long before the storm hits. “I'll tell you what, though,” he says, his eyes still pointed toward the window and the charcoal sky. “If you can put Dwight Sweeney and Thomas Cole together, I mean, find some connection between the two of them.” He turns to look at her. “There's your story.”

Rolly's girl at the phone company can give them sixty days, going back to sometime in June, but any records beyond that are stored on the eleventh floor, she says, on a mainframe that she does not in any way have access to. By whatever romantic or pecuniary arrangement he and the girl have worked out between them, Rolly is able to get the phone records in hand by Thursday, the day Judge Vroland had set for the pretrial hearing in Elise Linsey's case. Rolly brings the printed pages by Jay's office around lunchtime. He comes in smelling like a chili dog and drinking a Dr Pepper out of a paper bag. He takes an open seat across from Jay, lights a cigarette, and stretches out his long legs.

Jay flips through page after page of phone calls to and from Elise Linsey's west side town house, marking the numbers that
show up repeatedly, careful to note any calls to or from Washington, D.C., of which there are quite a few.

He asks Rolly how many of the phone numbers he was able to identify.

“It's whatever the girl could give me,” Rolly says.

Jay starts with the D.C. calls—six to Elise's place through June and early July, and two calls
from
her place to the same 202 number in late July. The most information the girl at the phone company could get, Rolly reports, is that the calls came from a phone line within a telecom network run by the U.S. government. To get more specific about who or what office the 202 number belongs to was a phone call the girl was not willing to make without knowing why Rolly was asking in the first place.

Jay makes a note to turn the number over to Lon Philips.

The Houston calls are easier to identify.

Jay recognizes one of them on his own. He's called Charlie Luckman's downtown office enough to be able to recite the digits in his sleep. According to the phone logs, Elise Linsey made her first call to Mr. Luckman's office on August 3, the day the discovery of Dwight Sweeney's body made the paper.

That she did not call a lawyer right away, on the night of the shooting, even, is not all that surprising to Jay. What
is
interesting, though, is the fact of who she did call at 1:27 in the morning, early Sunday morning, August 2, not two full hours after the gunshots they heard on the boat.

The phone number, 713-247-4475, appears on nearly every page of the computer printout, showing up once, sometimes twice a day, for months. The correlating address, Rolly tells Jay, is a residence located at 1909 Willowick Road, not even a stone's throw from the River Oaks Country Club. According to Rolly's girl at the phone company, 247-4475 is one of two residential phone lines belonging to a Thomas P. Cole.

Jay thinks again of the night of the shooting:

Elise, bruised and nearly beaten, came within an inch of her life, twice. He pictures her in the backseat of that car, how she fought, shooting her way out of a bad situation. He remembers pulling her from the bayou, barely breathing, and dropping her off in front of a police station. Somehow, she had survived it all. And the first person she called was Thomas Cole. The very man Jay suspects of having orchestrated the hit on her life.

“My god,” he mumbles to himself. “She has no idea.”

From the pocket of his ever present leather vest, Rolly pulls out a bundle of papers, folded over lengthwise and rolled as tightly as a good cigar. He rests the papers on the edge of Jay's desk. “What's this?” Jay asks, opening the pages somewhat tentatively, as if he were opening a present he's already sure he won't like. “Calls from the condo,” Rolly says. “Out on the plantation.”

Jay spreads the papers across his desk.

Of all the phone numbers printed, calls coming in and going out, one number leaps out at him, over and over, page after page: 713-247-4475.

“He's been talking to her this whole time,” Rolly says.

“Jesus,” Jay says, whistling at the wonder of it, the devilry it implies. He shakes his head to himself, feeling a pinch in his chest, an unexpected tug in this woman's direction. “Somebody's got to say something to that girl,” he says, looking up and pausing at the same time, as if he were waiting, hoping even, for that somebody to walk into the room and volunteer. But Jay and Rolly are the only two people here, and Rolly is keeping his mouth shut.

“She's gon' be on trial for her fucking life, man, and got a snake right up under her,” Jay says. “Somebody's got to tell her what's really going on.”

“You're all right dude, man. I've always known that about you,
Jay. But might I remind you that it was running to save this girl that got you in all this trouble to begin with?”

“This is bigger than the girl.”

“All the telephone activity out at the condo stopped a couple of days ago,” Rolly says. “You even know where she is?”

“No,” Jay says. “But I know where she'll be.”

 

There are some things in life that can't be avoided:

Death, for sure. Taxes. And court dates.

The pretrial hearing for the matter of the
State of Texas v. Elise Linsey
, case number HC-760432, is already under way by the time Jay makes it to Judge Vroland's courtroom that afternoon. There's a cop on the stand, a detective, Jay can tell by the awkward pairing of a camel-colored sports coat and navy trousers.

Charlie Luckman is standing behind a podium set up between the state's side and the defense table, where Elise Linsey, in a moss green blouse and black trousers, is sitting primly, her back stiff and at almost righteous attention.

Jay takes an open seat on the bench directly behind her.

By Charlie's posture, the way he leans his weight on the heels of his alligator boots, one hand in his pocket, the other relaxed at his side, Jay thinks he sees something familiar in Mr. Luckman's self-assured demeanor. It's the look of a lawyer with all his ducks lined neatly in a row, the cocksure stance of someone who believes the facts are on his side. Any theatrics, at this point at least, are down to a minimum. Charlie speaks in an even, respectful tone, asking the judge if he might approach the bench, as politely as if he were asking her if he might refill her glass of iced tea. He walks two stapled papers to the bench and asks that they be entered in as “defense exhibit A.” Judge Vroland peruses the pages briefly, then hands them to the cop at her right. The detec
tive barely glances at them. He seems to know already where this line of questioning will start.

“Detective Stone, do you recognize the papers in front of you?”

“Yes, sir,” the detective answers, though the “sir” sounds perfunctory and not at all sincere. Jay wonders if the two men knew each other in Charlie's other life as a prosecutor. “And that's my signature on the second page,” the cop says, stepping on Charlie's next question. From behind the podium, Charlie smiles, cool as a snow cone in January. “Very good, Detective Stone. You want to tell us, however, what exactly you're looking at?”

“Your Honor.” The prosecutor, the same bull terrier from the arraignment, stands behind the state's table. Her suit is navy and two sizes too big. “The search warrant has already been entered into the record. We've all
read
the thing. Do we have to go through a whole dog and pony show with it too?”

Her tone is so defensive, so pushy and unladylike, that Charlie is right to simply keep his mouth shut. The judge levels a disapproving gaze on the prosecutor. “I can assure you, Counselor, I don't take any of this to be a show. And I will allow the detective to answer Mr. Luckman's question.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Charlie says. “Mr. Stone?”

“It's a search warrant,” the cop says. “For 14475 Oakwood Glen, last known residence for the defendant.” He nods toward Elise.

“Yes, and as you've already mentioned, it's a search warrant that you yourself signed, along with a Judge Paul Lockhart, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Judge, may I approach again?”

Judge Vroland nods, waving him forward at the same time.

Charlie approaches the bench with a single typed piece of paper in his hand. He offers it to the judge, calling it “defense
exhibit B.” Jay leans forward in his seat, waiting, hoping, for Elise to turn around. From his jacket, he pulls a slip of white paper, a receipt from the taco place on Travis. He scribbles the words
we need to talk
on the back, then folds the piece of paper into a tight square, clutching it in the palm of his hand. Then…he waits.

“Detective Stone,” Charlie says. “This new thing we got here, will you let the court know what it is you're looking at?”

“It's an inventory,” the cop says. “What we took from the town house.”

“All right, then,” Charlie says, tucking both hands in his pockets, looking down briefly at the tips of his alligator boots. “Let's start with the warrant.”

When Charlie has the detective read through the warrant, the list of court-approved items that police detectives—one Detective Harold Stone and a Detective Pete Smalls—were legally allowed to remove from 14475 Oakwood Glen, last known residence of the defendant, Elise Linsey, includes:

The detective lays the warrant on the wood veneer ledge in front of him. Charlie has him pick up the inventory next, the list of what the cops
actually
pulled as evidence from Elise Linsey's town house during their search.

“If you would, Detective, why don't you go ahead and read through it.”

“The whole thing?”

“The whole thing.”

Detective Stone looks at the judge, who nods.

The detective clears his throat. “‘Ladies' shoes, white, size six and a half. Two pairs of shoes, brown, size six and a half. Three pairs of shoes, black, size six and a half. Sandals, brown, size six and a half. Boots, burgundy, size six. Sandals, red, size six and a half. Two pairs of boots, black, size six and a half. Shoes, silver, with some kind of rhinestones on them, size six and a half. Shoes, pink, with rubber soles, size six and a half. Two pairs of tan loafers, ladies' size six and a half. Three pairs of sneakers.'” He looks up from the piece of paper. “‘Size six and a half.'”

“That's a lot of shoes,” Charlie says.

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me see, did I count…,” Charlie says, making a rather exaggerated show of incredulity. “Was that
eighteen
pairs of shoes?”

“That's what I read.”

“And those eighteen pairs of shoes are the only things listed on that inventory sheet, the only pieces of ‘evidence' that you and Detective Smalls pulled from Ms. Linsey's town house on Oakwood Glen?”

“Yes.”

“No gun? No bloody clothes?”

“No, sir,” Detective Stone says to Charlie. “It's just the shoes.”

“
Eighteen
pairs of shoes.”

“All size six and a half,” the detective says.

“Well, now, that warrant you signed was asking for shoes with blood on 'em and dirt, and, more important, it was talking about high-heeled shoes with a zigzag pattern on the sole. So, which of the shoes on that piece of paper matches that description?”

“None of them.”

“Am I to understand then that you and your colleague did not find any shoes in the defendant's home that had blood on them
or dirt from the crime scene, nor any shoes with a zigzag pattern on the sole? Is that right?”

Detective Stone's jaw tightens ever so slightly. “That is correct.”

Jay remembers Elise's bare feet on the boat the night of the rescue. He thinks of the black bayou water, the bits and pieces of this story it has swallowed whole, the deeds it washed clean. He thinks of the shoes, the gun, the prosecution's whole case, sunk all the way to the bottom of Buffalo Bayou, hidden in the muddy earth, washed over ten, twenty, a hundred times a day.

But where, then, is
his
gun?

Elise Linsey, seated before him, holds her head remarkably high, following the action in front of her. Jay clutches his handwritten note. He scoots to the edge of the bench he's seated on, not three feet behind the defense table. He coughs lightly, once, then a second time. Elise Linsey never turns around.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jay senses some movement in the gallery. He turns to his right and sees a new face in the courtroom. Among the courthouse lookiloos and beat reporters, there's a man wearing a tailored charcoal gray suit. He's taken a seat to the right of Jay, on the bench behind him, positioning himself closely enough that Jay can see the sea green color of his eyes from where he sits. The man keeps his jacket buttoned, his hands in his pockets. Unlike the others in the gallery, he is not watching the lawyers or the defendant or the witness on the stand. He keeps his eyes on Jay.

“Might you explain to the court then, Detective,” Charlie says, “why you saw fit and legally justified to take every shoe in my client's closet?”

“They were in plain sight.”

“So was the woman's furniture. Did you pack that up too?”

“The law gives police officers some leeway here. I believed
that the shoes were relevant in terms of putting the defendant at the crime scene. The shoes were in plain sight. So, yes, my partner and I picked them up as evidence.”

“And do you still believe the shoes are relevant, Detective?”

“Inasmuch as they establish the defendant as a size six and a half,” the cop says, looking at the judge briefly before eking out another piece of information. “The shoe prints we found around the car at the crime scene were a ladies' size six and a half.”

“And one more time,” Charlie says. “Did any of the shoes you took from the defendant's residence match the zigzag shoe print at the crime scene?”

“Objection, Your Honor, asked and answered,” the state's attorney says.