Coastal Disturbance

by Jessica Speart

  I struggled for air as the weight continued to press down upon me. The blackness receded into an ethereal mist as my body started to cave. I gasped, taking a jagged breath, afraid I’d reached the end of the battle. It was then that a jarring sound pierced the night, abruptly breaking the spell.

  I bolted upright and a searing pain rushed down into my lungs. It was a flood of fresh air. The shrill din rattled the night again, and I felt Santou roll toward me.

  “Aren’t you going to answer that damn thing, chère?”

  My hand trembled as I reached for the phone, glad for the cover of darkness.

  “Hello?” I hoarsely croaked.

  For a moment, there was nothing but silence. Then a voice slithered over the wire that made my every hair stand on end. Insidious and low, it was one that I didn’t know.

  “Stay the hell away from DRG. Otherwise, you might find it’s not beneficial to your health.”

  I held onto the receiver, wondering if this might not all be a dream, when the dial tone peevishly buzzed in my ear.

  Damn! I hate when that happens. Quickly gathering my wits, I pressed star 69, determined to ID my caller and nail the sucker. Instead, I found that my call had been blocked. I hung up and unplugged the phone, having battled enough ghosts for one night.

  “Who was that? A prank caller?” Santou drowsily asked as I nestled against him for refuge.

  His arms folded around me like a pair of wings that were safe and strong in the night.

  “Yes. That’s all it was,” I replied.

  But I knew it was much more than that. The voice had belonged to neither Drapkin nor Williams, making me terribly wary. Someone was out to get me. It was coming from up top, and most frightening of all was that I wasn’t merely being paranoid.

  Fourteen

  I awoke, wondering if last night’s call had been nothing more than a bad dream. Rolling over, I turned to ask Santou, but he was already gone for the day. My tip-off was the phone cord that lay limp as a dead body on the floor, while the telephone sat unplugged on the nightstand. Last night’s experience now came rushing back to me in gruesome Technicolor. No wonder my throat felt so sore.

  I hooked the phone back up, took a shower, and got dressed. Then heading into the kitchen, I began a search-and-destroy, rampaging through cupboards and drawers, intent on finding my prey. No, I wasn’t on a crazed quest for a box of Cap’n Crunch, or a few derelict Pop-Tarts. Rather, I was on a mission to unearth a colander. The damn thing had to be around here someplace.

  Where would I store a colander if I were Santou? I wondered.

  The question seemed reasonable enough, since he was the only one of us who ever cooked. Checking under the sink, I then rummaged through the pantry, before stumbling upon where the pots and pans were kept beneath the stove. I pulled out the colander and headed back into the bedroom, taking along a container of salt.

  This better work, I silently thought, knowing that otherwise I’d be forced to call in Marie and her dead husband for help.

  I proceeded to do exactly as I’d heard Eight-Ball describe. Only rather than merely sprinkle salt on the floor, I liberally tossed it around by the handful. By the time I was through, my bedroom resembled the beach after a storm. The pièce de resistance was to hang the colander on the doorknob.

  There! Take that, I challenged any hag that dared try to cross my threshold.

  Finally, I dug a mezuzah out of my drawer and nailed it on the door for an extra dose of good luck. Then I dragged my tired rear end to work, feeling rather like a hag myself, this morning.

  Unlocking my office, I stepped inside, where all appeared to be quiet on the Southern front. Wow. Even the answering machine seemed to have taken the morning off. Not a single call was recorded on it.

  I made myself a crappy mug of joe, knowing that a good cup of coffee would simply shock my system. Then I sat down to sort through the mail, intent on losing myself in busywork. But I couldn’t turn my mind off. I finally gave up even trying.

  Threatening phone calls be damned. I had no intention of backing off from DRG. Truth be told, the fact that someone wanted me to only further whet my appetite. However, I also knew that nothing more could be done until Gary finished his testing.

  With that in mind, I decided to refocus my energy on the manatee case again. Williams and Wendell, along with all the bureaucratic hotshots in D.C., could take a flying leap if they didn’t like it.

  I knew that Manatee Mania’s critters must have been illegally obtained. The question was, how? I turned on my computer, typed in the word manatee, and began to surf the Internet, hoping for an educational ride.

  One by one, a series of articles popped onto the screen. Most dealt with manatees in Florida and told of how speedboats were knocking them off. It was old news that never changed from year to year. The only difference was in the revolving cast of intellectually challenged characters manning the boats. I continued my search, until I finally began to get bored.

  Whoa, hold on there! A story flashed by that unexpectedly caught my eye.

  Manatees Seek Warmth As Water Temperature Falls Below Sixty-Eight Degrees

  A Florida power company was making PR hay off the fact that manatees were attracted to the warm waters of its thermal discharge.

  “The animals like to think of this spot as their own personal health spa,” a company official was quoted as saying.

  “And we certainly enjoy hosting the gentle giants. They’re just like most Florida residents, who are spoiled when it comes to dealing with cold weather.”

  I stared at the story as I now thought about manatees and their migration routes. It’s well known that they like to swim up along the Georgia coastline in the summer. But what about those mammals that decided to extend their stay? I, myself, was a sucker when it came to soaking in a hot tub. So, it seemed natural that manatees would also be attracted to places with plenty of warm water.

  Thermal discharges and power plants.

  Yeah, okay. That made sense. But there were other industries as well that used water in the course of their daily operations—certainly plenty of which were located in Brunswick. The only question was, how easy would it be for manatees to reach them?

  I pulled out a map and began to mark the location of all those plants that seemed like good bets. Let’s see. A gas and light company, along with a paint manufacturing plant, could be reached via the Turtle River, while a resin factory’s warm water outlet was readily accessible by traveling up Terry Creek. Then there was the pulp mill that sat right along Purvis. That place discharged tons of warm water, creating a man-made waterfall through an enormous tube.

  Finally there was DRG. I again remembered how the chlor-alkali facility fronted hundreds of acres of marsh, and undoubtedly had a discharge.

  My stomach now flip-flopped as I realized what I had discovered. Most likely, manatees were being exposed to deadly mercury. Not only had Gary found toxins in the vegetation, mud, and water, but the next steps up the food chain were fish, birds, and manatees.

  My mind became a topsy-turvy whirling dervish, jumping first to Spud before careening over to Candi Collins and the water park. Hadn’t I stopped by and seen a manatee swimming lopsided just the other day? The coffee churned sickly inside me and I pushed the cup away.

  Perhaps the creature hadn’t been affected by undue stress after all, but was reacting to an overload of mercury in its system. The loss of balance could very well be a symptom—a form of Mad Hatter’s syndrome in marine mammals.

  If that were true, then it would also be a clue as to where Wendell was nabbing the animals. But I still needed rock-solid proof on which to base my case. Nothing less than one hundred percent ironclad evidence would do. Otherwise, Williams and Wendell might very well wriggle out of the charges. Something like an eyewitness confession from Candi would help. If nothing else, I could then set up a sting operation.

  If Candi truly cared about manatees as she claimed, maybe she’d finally listen to reason. Ho
pefully, she’d spill whatever information she knew. If not, I still intended to do everything in my power to bring Williams and Wendell to justice. I’d just have to come up with a different approach.

  I no longer cared about my boss Jim Lowell and his angry warnings, or last night’s threatening phone call. I’d be damned if I’d close my eyes and allow this matter to slide any further along. No way would I let a species edge one step closer to extinction. Certainly not so I could climb another rung up the ladder in my career.

  Maybe it wasn’t a black-and-white world, as Williams maintained. But I wasn’t yet willing to sell my soul and settle for gray. My philosophy had always been to charge ahead, do what’s right, and to hell with the consequences. I intended to discover what was going on and, in the process, make somebody pay.

  With that in mind, I picked up the phone and dialed the one person I knew who also refused to compromise. Which was probably why we were both stuck in steamy south Georgia in the first place.

  “Fletcher here,” Gary fumed into the phone, sounding distinctly pissed off.

  “What the matter with you?”

  “Plenty,” he barked. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Wherever you want. I’ve got nothing but time, a cold cup of coffee, and a kick-ass attitude. Let me just zap my cup in the microwave, put my feet on the desk, and then you can begin.”

  Gary chuckled in spite of himself. “That’s what I like about you, Porter. You always keep your priorities straight, no matter what.”

  “Okay. So, what’s up?” I asked, after heating the coffee.

  “I got home last night to find a message on the answering machine from my boss. Damn if Drapkin didn’t manage to go and blow the whistle on us. Anyway, the old coot warned that I had no business poking around DRG’s grounds, and to stay the hell away from the place. His exact words were that I hadn’t been authorized to work any such case, and was on the verge of finding myself in big trouble. It seems we’ve been blocked yet again.”

  Boy, was that ever fast! Drapkin must have rushed back inside his office and speed-dialed some power broker’s number on the double. I wondered if he’d called his friend Clark Williams for help. That seemed to be the only plausible explanation. It also revealed just how much of an old boy’s club was actually going on down here.

  “You know what really sucks?” Gary continued, just beginning to warm up. “I always figured that no one could force me to back off from a case. You know why? Because I’m with the federal government, and we’re the good guys. Who’d have guessed that the people we’d be fighting most would be our own bosses? It’s a miracle we ever get anything accomplished, at all.”

  “I had a phone call last night, as well.”

  “Oh yeah? Who from? Lead-ass Lowell?”

  I laughed at Gary’s nickname for my boss. “No name was given. He just warned me to stay away from DRG, and then inquired after my health.”

  “How thoughtful,” Gary dryly commented. “Gee. You’d almost think they knew we were onto something.”

  That was enough to kick-start my heart. “Does that mean we really are?”

  “Only if you consider mercury up the wazoo to be a major problem. You remember that drainage canal you pointed out on DRG’s grounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you also remember that I took a water sample from it.”

  “Enough with testing my memory already. Just tell me what you found!”

  Gary chortled at my impatience. “Let me preface it by saying that the maximum safety level for mercury is considered to be two parts per million. Well, there were twelve thousand, five hundred parts per million in that water sample. And it ain’t nothing when compared to the amount of mercury that’s floating in the man-made lake we stopped at just outside the second cell building. No wonder Drapkin had a shit fit when he saw us there.”

  “Then there’s no doubt that DRG is illegally discharging mercury?”

  “Not so far as I can tell,” Gary confirmed. “In the process, that plant is poisoning the marsh, the water, and the wildlife, to say nothing of what it’s probably doing to a bunch of sorry-ass people. And the amazing thing is that I’ve been ordered to keep my mouth shut and sit on all this information.”

  “I suspect there’s probably even more going on than we know about.”

  “What makes you say that?” Gary asked.

  “Just call it women’s intuition for now,” I said, thinking again of Eight-Ball’s jitters.

  “That’s good enough for me. But it still doesn’t make sense as to why so much mercury is being discharged. I guess Drapkin thinks of the marsh as his own personal toilet, into which he can flush a smorgasbord of contaminants, and just hope that it all disappears. But even so, this is pretty damn excessive.”

  “The other question is, what are we going to do about it? And how much proof do you actually have?”

  “Enough to kick this puppy up to the next level of investigation. That’s why I disregarded instructions, wrote up a report on our findings, and faxed it off to my boss early this morning.”

  “Great. There’s no way he can choose to ignore solid evidence. Fish and Wildlife is going to have to let us move forward on this, whether they like it or not. I’ll get to work and shoot off my own report concerning all the mercury in those wildlife carcasses around Purvis Creek.”

  “You might want to hold off on that, Pepper.”

  “What for?” It wasn’t like Gary to want to hog the limelight.

  “Because I haven’t finished my story yet. I received a second phone call shortly after faxing my report, once again telling me to back off in no uncertain terms. Only this time, the order came straight from the Regional Director’s office. It seems that Bob Montgomery has taken a sudden interest in my activities.”

  Holy shit. First there was the letter Santou had shown me, and now this. Clark Williams’s tentacles appeared to be spreading everywhere. The thing was, why should he care about DRG?

  Then I realized. Drapkin was probably contributing money to Williams’s congressional war chest. If so, he’d expect a favor in return. Still, there were things that didn’t add up.

  “I don’t get it. Why would Fish and Wildlife first want to stop us from investigating Manatee Mania, and now DRG?” I questioned. “Especially if DRG really is dumping contaminants into the marsh and creating a potential health hazard?”

  “That’s easy,” Gary responded. “It all comes down to money and politics. Do you have any idea how many people visit the Golden Isles each year? About two million tourists responsible for generating more than two billion dollars along the Georgia coast, and tourism only keeps growing. Now imagine that word leaks out as to what’s going on down here. What do you think is going to happen? Not only that, but politicians are trying to attract more business to the area, while also making this a desirable place for wealthy senior citizens to retire. They don’t want people knowing about polluted water. Instead, they’re doing everything they can to keep a lid on it.”

  “Who’s this great universal ‘they’ that you keep referring to?”

  “The county, the state, anyone with a vested interest. My guess is they’ve put pressure on Montgomery to force us to back off.”

  This was all beginning to make sense. “Listen, I found out Williams sent Montgomery a note complaining of my activities and demanding that I be controlled,” I revealed.

  “Should I even ask how you managed to unearth such a tasty tidbit?”

  “The information was passed on to Santou.”

  “Unbelievable. This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “I feel as though we’re being derailed at every turn,” I groused.

  “That’s because we are,” Gary agreed. “Which is why drastic measures are called for. It’s time that someone took a stand. And seeing as how I’m sick of all the crap, I figure it might as well be me.”

  “What are you talking about?” I cautiously asked, made wary by Gary’s tone
. It sounded as though he were preparing himself to be some sort of sacrificial lamb.

  “I phoned my boss fifteen minutes ago and informed him that, under the circumstances, I had no other choice but to turn whistleblower.”

  Whistleblower. The very word set my nerves on edge. I’d always wondered if I’d have the courage to take that step. Gary had just proved himself a man of conviction, signaling that he strongly believed his superiors to be caving in to political pressure.

  The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 prohibits any form of reprisal against employees who expose waste, fraud, and abuse—in theory, at least. But there was bound to be a backlash.

  “Fuck ’em all. I’m tired of being told by Fish and Wildlife to play nice and work well with others. If Montgomery and his crew don’t have the guts to take on big business in this region, then I’m sure that some hard-hitting environmental groups in D.C. will. That ought to blow the top off this whole house of cards. Then maybe there’ll be an honest-to-God investigation.”

  “How did your boss take the news?” I asked, my nerves turning into sparks of excitement.

  There was a pause, during which I heard Gary take a drink. I wondered if it was coffee, or something stronger this early in the day.

  “Just as you’d suspect. He pooh-poohed it as a shallow threat. I assured him it wasn’t, and told him that at least one of us still has balls. But then we’ve been butting heads for years. As for Montgomery, he’s always hated me with a passion. Probably because I see him for what he is—a political ass-kisser.”

  I took a deep breath and plunged in. “Okay. So, where do we take it from here?”

  “Whoa! Hold on there, Pepper. You’d do better to keep your distance and stay out of this one. It’s bound to get nasty.”

  “Like hell I will,” I retorted, not about to be left out of what was shaping up to be a heavyweight championship fight. “We’re in on this together, right?”