Black Water Rising

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 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.

“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 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.”