Black Water Rising

It feels odd to say it out loud. The first time they’ve acknowl­ edged to each other this part of her life, the years after she disap­ peared, the years after him.

“I figured if anybody would know something about it. . . .”

“Well, it’s not some big secret,” she says. “Not in the least.”

“This was Carter’s deal?”

“I’m guessing you’re talking about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?”

Jay nods. Sure.

“Well, what do you want to know?” she says with a shrug. “They passed a law in seventy-five, after all that bullshit with the Arabs. The point was to have the stuff on hand so we wouldn’t run into another crunch, you know. So, yeah, Carter’s administration had to implement it. The Energy Department started buying up oil in rather large amounts. And the question was where to put it. The salt caverns, Texas and Louisiana, they won.” She pulls her black pumps from the side of her desk and slides them back onto her feet. “This is all old news, Jay.”

The phone on her desk rings again.

“I didn’t know that much about it,” he says.

“Well, you were in law school at the time.”

He hates that she knows this, that she knows the facts of his life.

“You know anything about them closing down salt mines?” he asks. “Or buying up real estate?”

The phone lines on her desk start lighting up, one after another.

“Well, if barrel prices keep dropping like they are, I’m sure they’re trying to buy up as much as they can and store it wher­ ever they can.”

“Right.” Jay nods absently, trying to think how this all adds up.

“Why are you asking?”

“You hear about any problems with this? Like structural problems? Underground?”

Cynthia is still waiting for him to answer her question.

Then, realizing his silence is all she’s going to get, she sighs. “The technology’s not that new, Jay. But the thing is, no one’s ever tried to store this much oil in salt caverns before, not in a program this extensive. There were some problems in the begin­ ning. I mean, I heard some things.”

“Like what?”

She hesitates for a breath. “There were . . . explosions.”

“Leakage?”

“Something like that,” she says. Her words slow all of a sud­ den, as if she’s not sure how much further down this road she wants to travel. “But look, if anybody gets hurt, if there’s any property loss, the government pays. Somebody always gets a nice big settlement. That’s the way I understood it, at least.”

Jay thinks of the old man in High Point, the government tell­ ing him there was nothing they could do. He thinks of Elise Linsey and the threat on her life, the Stardale Development Company and its empty offices, the man in the black Ford and the hush money—the spirit of secrecy running underneath this whole thing.

“What is all this, Jay?” the mayor asks. “What are you into?”

She stares at him a good while, her blue-gray eyes narrow­ ing slightly. She seems to take him in for the first time since he walked through the door, noticing the bruises on his face and neck. She rises slowly behind her desk and crosses the room to stand before him. “My God, Jay,” she says softly, tilting her blond head to one side. Gently, she reaches out and touches the marks on his face. Her fingertips are cool and dry. “You’re in something bad, aren’t you? Is it the girl?”

“Cynthia—”

“Don’t worry,” she says quickly. “I said I wouldn’t give your name to the D.A., and I won’t,” she says, adding, “but you got to do something for me too.”

“Jesus, Cynthia.”

“Help me with this union thing, Jay.” She’s desperate, beyond any sense of shame. “I need a win, Jay, something that says I can do this goddamned job. Or else they’ll make this bigger than it is. They’ll make it about my hair or my clothes or what I’ve got between my legs, as if that’s got a fucking thing to do with anything. They’ll tear me to pieces, and you know it. I need to win, Jay.”

The phone has not stopped ringing.

Kip is now standing at his desk. His expression is grim. “Ms. Mayor.”

Cynthia looks past Jay to her assistant. The phone lines are all blinking, calls coming in on top of each other. Just then, the dou­ ble doors to the suite swing open. The mayor’s secretary walks in from the waiting room. She looks at Kip first, then the mayor. “I think you ought to come see this,” she says.

Outside the mayor’s suite, most of the staffers on the third floor are standing together in front of a wall of windows fac­ ing east. As the mayor approaches, Kip and Jay behind her, the staffers part and make way for her. They nudge each other and whisper. They glance at Cynthia, and they wait. She looks out the window at her city and lets out a single, ragged gasp. Jay, behind her, elbows his way through the crowd, edging for a view to the east.

At first, he doesn’t get it.

He sees blue sky, the white sun. He sees the larger-than-life C-O-L-E letters on the buildings across the street. He sees the top of the public library, a piece of the federal courthouse, the city skyline that he knows so