Black Water Rising

“But you never spoke with Mr. Hennings?” Detective Brad­ shaw asks.

“No.” Then he adds, “And anyway, my wife found it, the bracelet.”

Detective Bradshaw smiles. He and Widman exchange a glance. For the first time, Widman steps away from the filing cabinet. Bradshaw tucks his notepad back into his pocket. The two detectives thank Jay for his time.

“That’s it?” Jay asks, trying not to sound too relieved.

“Unless there’s something else you want to add,” Widman says.

“Not that I can think of,” Jay says.

“Well,” Detective Bradshaw says. “Thank you again, Mr. Porter.”

“Sure thing, Detective.” The cops gone, Jay tells Eddie Mae to keep the front door locked.

Then he shuts himself in his office and, alone, reaches under his desk for the phone book. He’s got some questions of his own that he wants answered.

The Chronicle’s main line is busy. He gets a voice on the fourth try. He asks to speak to a Lon Philips. The line is soon ringing again, twelve times before someone finally picks up. The voice on the other end is thin and high pitched for a man. He sounds young, Jay thinks, green as a new blade of grass.

“Philips.” His tone is impatient, distracted. Jay can hear a typewriter clackety-clacking a mile a minute in the background. “What is it?” he barks.

Jay clears his throat. “Sir, I want to ask you about a piece you wrote a couple of months back. Late June, you wrote an article about an Erman Ainsley.”

The typewriter comes to an abrupt stop. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“My name is Jay Porter. I’m an attorney here in Houston.”

There’s a pause on the line. “The old man got himself a law­ yer, huh?”

The question strikes Jay as curious. What in the world does Ainsley need a lawyer for? “No,” Jay says. “I’m calling you about someone else, actually.”

“Well, I’m in the middle of a story right now.” The typewriter starts up again, at full speed. “I’m on a three o’clock deadline.”

“I’ll be quick.”

Jay checks to make sure the door to his office is closed. Then he asks the million-dollar question: “Why have you been trying to contact Elise Linsey?”

The typing stops again. Jay can hear Philips’s breathing through the line.

“She was the real estate agent you wrote—”

“I know who she is,” Philips says.

“I know you’ve been by her house,” Jay says. “Two months after your article went to print, you’re still trying to reach her, and what I want to know is, why?”

“My work is my business, Mr. Por-ter,” Philips says. By the way he draws out the name, Jay gets the idea that he’s writing it down.

“I guess I just want to know,” Jay says, “if this is something to do with the homicide in Fifth Ward.”

“You one of Charlie Luckman’s boys?” Philips asks. “I’m not doing anything illegal, just so you k now. Your client is free to call me back or not.”

“I think you’ve misunderstood me,” Jay says. “I don’t work for Charlie Luckman. And I certainly don’t work for Elise Linsey.”

“Well, who are you then?”

“I said my name is Jay Porter. I’m a lawyer here in Houston, which, in this case, is somewhat incidental,” he says. “The thing is, I read your piece on Mr. Ainsley, and I was wondering about the connection to Elise Linsey, why you’re still following her movements. Is this about her court case?”

“How do I know you’re not a reporter?” Philips asks from out of the blue.

To Jay, it’s another odd question. “I just told you I’m not.”

Philips is quiet a minute, his typewriter completely still.

“Well, that’s not good enough,” he says.

Jay hears a loud click. It’s another second or two before he realizes the line is dead. The phone book is still sitting on his desk, sitting right on top of all the other work he should be doing. He picks it up and opens to the S ’s.

The Stardale Development Company maintains an office on Fountainview, out west of the Loop, just off the 59 freeway. Jay heads in that direction on his lunch hour, but not before trying the number that’s listed in the phone book. He gets a recorded message, five times in a row.

The foolishness of this errand is not lost on him. But he feels reeled in by her, yoked by his own curiosity and his inability to take at face value Elise’s promise to leave him out of her trou­ bles. Somewhere deep down, he knows. It’s his own fault. He knows what the weight of his past has cost him, then and now. He knows the places where he can’t let go. Where his faith falls short.

His wife still out of the house, the dirty money still stashed inside his office, the man in the black Ford still at large, in pos­ session of Jay’s .22. . . . He has not slept a solid night in days. Or is it years?

He gets mixed up sometimes.

Talk radio is hot on the strike.

Almost every number on the Buick’s AM dial has callers lined up, one after the other, happy to offer what little informa­ tion they’ve picked up. From somebody’s brother who works the docks. Or an uncle who’s a project manager at one of the refineries. Jay listens to the parade of rampant speculation over a ham sandwich and a Coke as he makes the drive to the west side.

One gal on 740 AM claims to know firsthand that the strike won’t make it another week. She’s got a girlfriend who answers phones over to the mayor’s business development office, and according to this friend, the mayor and the unions and the busi­ ness heads have already worked out some kind of an agreement. They’re just holding out