Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

Wayne grabs Minty by the arm, pulling him back. “Why don’t you tell us what it is you want here?” he asks the men. “What makes this go away?”

  “If Mr. Minty apologized,” Bodine starts.

  “I’m not apologizing for a goddamned thing.”

  Wayne tightens his grip on Minty’s arm.

  Reverend Boykins clears his throat. “An apology is one thing, yes. The other is that we want to make sure our men aren’t put­

  ting their lives in danger just for standing up for themselves, you understand? And as this thing goes forward, I, for one, need to know that these men are going to be protected.”

  “It’s my understanding that the strike ain’t going forward,”

  Wayne says. “My men are ready to go back to work. Let’s make that clear right now.” He looks at Bodine. “You said we were close, Pat.”

  Bodine sighs and says to Reverend Boykins and Darren, “If I’m being real with you, there is no way for us to not take seri­

  ously the mayor’s proposal. If the stevedores adopt a viable pro­

  gram for race-blind hiring, I think there’s a very real possibility that the strike will reach a resolution shortly.”

  “And I’m telling you-all,” the Rev says, “pretending people aren’t black is not the way to equality. It’s not even possible, first of all. Any more than I can pretend you aren’t who you are.”

  “I thought this is what you all wanted,” Bodine says sincerely.

  “I think the hope has always been that you see what you see, and you take us anyway, for who we are,” the Rev says. “Not that we all go around pretending we’re the same. I don’t see how that helps anybody.”

  Carlisle Minty lets out an exasperated sigh.

  “And let me tell you what else,” the Rev adds. “You will never let those men out there know you’re serious about setting things 352 Attic a L o c ke

  right if you let this man get away with what he did. It will hang over this union for a long, long time.”

  “Why’d you do it?” Darren asks, looking squarely at Car­

  lisle Minty. “Why’d you do this to me? I don’t even know you, man.”

  “Goddamnit, Pat, are you gonna listen to this bullshit?”

  Minty asks.

  “It ain’t a bad question, C.”

  “Aw, hell.” Minty waves his hand in the air like he’s waving away the smell of horseshit.

  “You’re the vice president of the damn union,” Bodine says.

  “If you didn’t want a walkout, you shoulda talked to Wayne, or me, for that matter. It wasn’t necessary to pull a kid into it. He is one of mine, after all.”

  “I never touched that fucking kid,” Minty yells, his face grow­

  ing red at the jawline. “Jesus, Wayne, you want to jump in here?”

  he says to his union brother. “I mean, for one,” he says, speaking to Bodine again, “we’re talking about ten o’clock at night. How in the hell you gon’ tell me this kid saw me on a dark street, in a truck somewhere? That don’t make a lick of sense.”

  “How did you know it was ten o’clock at night?” Jay asks. “I mean, if you supposedly don’t know anything about it.”

  “Well, Mr. Smart Fucking Lawyer,” Minty says, ignoring a taming hand on his shoulder from Wayne Kaylin. “I got cops coming to my house, to my fucking job. They were real clear on what this kid thinks he saw me do. And I’m gon’ tell you what I told them, and then I ain’t gon’ say nothing more about it. It couldn’t have been me, okay?” he says, looking Darren in the eye.

  “I was at work. It’s on the fucking books. You can check it just like the cops did.”

  Jay looks to the Rev, who shakes his head. This is news to him too.

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 353

  “And I can do you one better,” Minty says, cooling his tone now that the facts seem to be turning in his favor. “Thomas Cole and a couple of suits from downtown were doing a site visit at the refinery that night. I had a cup of coffee with the man myself. He told the police as much already. Unless he’s lying too.”

  “You were working at Cole Oil when this happened?” Jay asks skeptically. “Ten o’clock at night?”

  “I was working the late shift as a matter of fact.”

  “The story checks out,” Wayne says to Bodine. “I mean, legally, the cops don’t know what to do with it. They got the kid’s statement. But Minty was at work, Pat. It’s on the books. He clocked in for the night shift at seven fifty-five pm and didn’t clock out ’til morning. And as far as the police are concerned, if a man like Thomas Cole says he saw Minty at work, then it’s enough for them.”

  “Look, kid, I’m sorry about what all happened to you, I am,”

  Minty says, not sounding sorry in the least. “But it wasn’t me, okay?” He looks around the room at the others. “And even if it was,” he says, suddenly smug, as if he’s just dying to admit that it was him, as if he’s daring them to do anything about it, what with the law and Thomas Cole on his side. “Don’t matter much anymore. You got your strike in the end, and now it’s done. We can all get back to work.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Jay says, still stuck on one thing in particular, one thing that seems mildly incredible to him, or just plain odd. “You’re telling me that Thomas Cole, the CEO of Cole Oil Industries—”

  “CFO,” Minty corrects him, bragging, kind of, as if it were his job.

  “You’re telling me the CFO of Cole Oil . . . is your alibi?”

  Minty eyes Jay coldly. He seems to take the question as a per­

  sonal attack. “I’m not just some peon down there. I put in nearly 354 Attic a L o c ke

  thirty years at that refinery. I’ve earned the respect of a lot of people. And yes, Thomas Cole is one of them. I do an important job for him, not that you would know about it.”

  “He’s a production coordinator for Cole,” Wayne says, back­

  ing him up.

  “Senior supervisor,” Minty corrects him. “I keep track of the crude.”

  “Is that right?” Jay asks.

  “Yes, that’s right. I’m the one seeing to the tankers out there,”

  Minty says, still bragging. “I mark the levels down in the books when the oil comes in off the ships and the tanker trucks. I keep track of how much or how little we got on hand, what sets the prices, you know. So I’d say I’m pretty important down there, somebody Mr. Cole might want to say hello to once in a while.”

  Jay, all of sudden, feels something hot behind his ears. He’s had this sensation before, like two live wires touch­

  ing, something in his mind getting ready to ignite. It’s some­

  thing about the mention of Thomas Cole that doesn’t sit right. Minty just happened to be working the late shift that night, and Thomas Cole just happened to be by the refinery at the exact time Minty needed corroboration for his whereabouts? There’s no doubt that Minty is lying. The real question is, why would Thomas Cole play along? Why would the CFO of Cole Oil lie for a man like Carlisle Minty? Why help him get away with a crime? Unless, of course, Jay is reading it all wrong . . . back­

  ward, in fact.

  He stares at Carlisle Minty, the callous look in his eyes.

  “Who keeps track of the crude during the walkout?” he asks.

  “Nobody,” Minty says. “The plant’s dark.”

  He says it like he thinks Jay’s an idiot.

  The strike, of course, has shut down everything.

  “Nothing going out,” Jay says out loud, rolling the words Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 355

  around in his mind, then finishing the thought, “and no workers to bring any oil in.”

  “That’s right,” Minty says.

  Jay gets a sudden image of oil tanker trucks in High Point, the old man’s description of them secreting away oil in the middle of the night. The cleanup, he called it, and said it stopped short just about a week ago . . . right about the time the strike got started, when the Cole refinery in H
ouston went dark.

  Pat Bodine looks down at his watch. “So what are we doing here? Are we in a place to put this behind us?” he asks Reverend Boykins and Darren. “ ’Cause I’d like to make some statement to that effect as soon as possible.”

  “So that’s it, huh?” Darren says.

  “Look, if the police investigation says it wasn’t Minty, I just don’t know what else I can do here,” Bodine says. “The sooner we put this behind us, the sooner I can go out and negotiate the best deal on your behalf. And that’s what we should really be focused on. I’m on your side with this thing, I really am.”

  Jay’s got his eyes on Carlisle Minty still, taking in the gold watch on Minty’s left wrist and wondering to himself what a pro­

  duction supervisor makes in a year, how he got himself a watch like that. When the meeting breaks up a few minutes later, Jay sees Pat Bodine drive out of the parking lot in a fifteen-year-old Chevy, while Minty climbs into a late-model Cadillac. Cole Oil has apparently been very good to Carlisle Minty. Darren tells the Rev he’s not going to the port commission meeting. As far as he’s concerned, this whole thing is over. “You got to see it to the end,” the Rev keeps saying over and over. Dar­

  ren shakes his head. “It’s over, man. They got us in a corner now. There’s no way we can win.” And anyway, he’s tired. Jay offers to give the kid a ride home.

  After he drives to Kashmere Gardens and back, he heads home 356 Attic a L o c ke

  to his wife, and Rolly, laid up on his couch. Bernie is reading a paperback at the kitchen table when he comes in. He kisses the part between her two french braids. Rolly, in the other room, is watching a western on television, Jay’s .38 resting on his thigh.

  “Didn’t you tell me Elise Linsey used to work for Cole Oil?”

  Jay asks him.

  Rolly stretches his lengthy arms overhead. “She was a secre­

  tary, I said.”

  “For Thomas Cole. They had a relationship, you said.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well,” Jay whispers, “that’s some fucking coincidence.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to need those phone records, man,” Jay says. “I need you to go back as far as you can, and I need you to do it as soon as you can.”

  Rolly sits up on the couch, wiping at the corners of his mouth.

  “I guess you not gon’ take my advice then,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “I guess this means you’re not gon’ leave it alone.”

  C h a p t e r 2 6 By the time Jay makes it to the Chronicle’s offices the next day, he’s had time to work out a few things in his head, after spending part of his morning in the government records department at the main library of the University of Houston, asking the librarian on duty for anything related to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The librarian was an older white lady, in her seventies maybe, with hair dyed black as midnight. She brought him congressio­

  nal funding records and maps, even newspaper articles, and told him she remembered him from his time on campus, when he used to spend days on end sifting through government records, looking for legislative ammunition. She told him that back then she’d been happy to help him find whatever information he needed, that it was her little way of being a part of things. 358 Attic a L o c ke

  “You at it again, son?” she asked, pulling at the thin sleeves of her cardigan. Jay smiled awkwardly, embarrassed that he couldn’t place her, that he didn’t remember her at all, in fact. He’d had a kind of blindness back then too, he thought. In the middle of his political struggles, this woman hadn’t even registered to him, no matter her kindness. Of course, it’s no secret he didn’t trust a lot of white people when he was younger. And the one he did trust—with everything—turned out to be a crushing disappointment to him, personally and politically. The mistake of trusting Cynthia Maddox had cost him his sanity and his sense of safety with himself. It’s partly why a woman like Elise Linsey had the power to shake him to his core, why he so easily let his fear get the best of him, mislead and confuse him. The whole world around Jay might have changed in the last decade, but his freedom, his true peace of mind, is not yet at hand. The librarian at U of H left him in a carrel with a hot cup of tea and a stack of papers and offered to bring him anything else he needed. He looked at the maps first, SPR sites going all the way back to the beginning. Bryan Mound in Freeport, Texas, was the first government storage site, and, according to the congressional paperwork in front of him—the records of government contracts and checks cut—the Bryan Mound site was initially managed by ColeCo, an engineering division of Cole Oil. Which meant, to Jay, that Cole Oil either taught the government the technology of storing oil in underground salt caverns or learned it them­

  selves on taxpayer money.

  But of course the most interesting thing about the maps of SPR sites located throughout the Gulf Coast was something that, by the time he saw it in print, came as no surprise to Jay. The maps, some dated as far back as 1976, showed no Strategic Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 359

  Petroleum Reserve facility in High Point, Texas, at all. And in all the pages and pages of Department of Energy records handed to him, there was not one mention of a purchase payment to the Crystal-Smith Salt Company. There was no record, in fact, of the government being involved at all. Which explains, Jay thought while sitting in the library of his alma mater, why the government so insisted they couldn’t help old man Ainsley with the closing of the salt mine or the crude coming up in his back­

  yard. It was never their oil to begin with.

  He takes the maps and a stack of papers with him to the Chron­ icle’s offices on Texas Avenue, downtown, where he’s in for his first real shock of the day:

  Lon Philips is a woman.

  Lonette Kay Philips, actually, according to the roster of employees covering a whole wall of the first-floor lobby. Jay calls up to her desk three times from the pay phones by the elevators, and each time, an answering service picks up the line. He would leave a message, but what would be the point? Philips hasn’t returned a single one of his calls in the past twenty-four hours. And anyway, he has no way of knowing if she’s even in the build­

  ing. The security guard posted by the elevators is no help. He won’t say whether he’s seen Lon Philips come through for the day, nor will he let Jay past without an express invitation. In the end, Jay tries a different approach.

  Near the building’s front doors, there’s a young woman in her twenties sitting behind a wide U-shaped desk made of glass and steel, whose job it is to answer the Chronicle’s main phone line and patch calls through to the offices upstairs. She does this while flipping through a thick catalog filled with motorboats and RVs advertised as “Condos on Wheels.” The catalog com­

  360 Attic a L o c ke

  pany offers E-Z financing in bright yellow writing. The recep­

  tionist, when Jay approaches, is looking longingly at a Leisure Mobile V100, which is really just an oversize van with the back­

  seats taken out and a full bar put in instead. I guess we all have a dream, Jay thinks. For ten dollars, the girl behind the desk is happy to report that Lon Philips is indeed in the building. “I saw her myself this morning,” she says. For another ten, Jay asks her to call up to Lon Philips’s desk or to get somebody on her floor to tell Ms. Philips that there’s a man downstairs with flowers for her, and that he’s demanding she sign for ’em herself.

  “Make it twenty,” the girl says.

  He has a smoke in the lobby, and he waits.

  It’s nearly twenty minutes before Ms. Philips comes down. He spots her by the purposeful gait, the way she impatiently marches to the receptionist’s desk, wanting to get whatever this is over with, and by the fact that, on her approach, the girl behind the desk nods her head in Jay’s direction.

  Sniffing a ruse, Philips puts her hands on her hips. “What the hell is this supposed to be?”

&
nbsp; She is probably ninety-five pounds, wet, and barely five feet tall. Her hairdo, a Dorothy Hamill sweep puffed up with lots of teasing and hairspray, looks like it weighs more than she does. And her voice, which Jay took to be soft and somewhat fey for a man, actually sounds gruff and salty coming from this slip of a woman, who for some reason is wearing a man’s flannel shirt in August. Jay thinks she may be only a few years older than the receptionist.

  “I don’t have time for a bunch of games,” she says, looking back and forth between Jay and the girl behind the desk, waiting for one of them to come clean. Jay finally takes a step forward.

  “My name is Jay Porter.”

  Philips looks him up and down, her eyes narrowing slightly. Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 361

  “The lawyer,” she says. Then, “That is, of course, if you’re telling the truth.”

  “You want to see my bar card?” Jay asks, half jokingly.

  “Yes.”

  It takes him a moment to fish it out of his wallet. When he does, Philips grabs the card and the wallet, inspecting them both, making sure to get a good look at his driver’s license too. Jay sneaks a look at the receptionist and the security guard. “Do you think we could go somewhere and talk?” he asks.

  “No,” Philips says. “I’m on a deadline as it is.”

  Still, she seems unable or unwilling to leave the lobby just yet. She can’t help her reporterly curiosity, it seems. It’s the very thing Jay was counting on.

  “Let me ask you just one thing then,” he says. “Are you the reason Elise Linsey got in trouble?”

  “Am I the reason she was arrested? What, are you kidding me?”

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” Jay says carefully, inching a lit­

  tle bit closer. “Are you the reason someone came after her? Is it because she talked to you?”

  Philips stares at him a long time, saying nothing.

  “Did she talk to you about the ‘situation’ in High Point, Ms. Philips?”

  Lonette’s hands fall from her hips. She actually looks fright­

  ened by the prospect of missing a huge part of her own story.

  “What do you mean, ‘the reason someone came after her’? ” she asks. “What are you talking about?”