Black Water Rising Read online

  Jay lights another cigarette and makes a right turn onto Clinton.

  The newspaper said it was the 400 block.

  He wants to see it for himself.

  If only to put this whole thing out of his mind. He drives parallel to the bayou, along Clinton, a narrow twolane road, heading west. There are warehouses on the south side of the street, tall trees and brush behind them, and then the bayou, which Jay knows is there, but can’t see in the darkness. There are no streetlights or even city signs on this stretch of road. Jay flips on his brights, taking a curve in the road, his head­

  lights swooping past the warehouses, dark and deserted at this hour, past grain silos and steel machinery and yards of chain-link fence. A few feet ahead, there’s a sudden turnoff in the road, a path of dirt and gravel to the left that winds around to the back Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 55

  of a warehouse . . . and toward the water. Jay takes the left turn, slow and easy. He drives cautiously, maybe ten, fifteen miles an hour, tossing his cigarette through the crack in his car window. Dirt and gravel kick up a fine dust that swirls in the hazy white light of his high beams.

  Around back of the warehouse, there’s a locked gate. Behind it, Jay sees the silhouette of small hills, mounds of broken concrete and quartz, finely crushed, like tiny sand dunes. A sign on the fence reads quartz industrial, inc. Jay remem­

  bers the name from the newspaper.

  In front of him, the dirt road ends abruptly.

  Jay slams on his brakes, almost running into a thin film of yel­

  low police tape. It’s blocking off a large, burnt-up patch of grass, probably twenty-five yards wide. Jay shuts off the engine to his car, but leaves his headlights on, shining them past the field of dirt and grass to the hawthorn trees and bunches of scrub oak and Spanish moss on the other side. He still can’t see the bayou from here. If he didn’t know better, he would laugh if somebody told him there’s water on the other side of those trees, running right through the middle of the city.

  Part of the crime scene tape has come loose and is trailing in the dirt. It seems the cops have already come and gone, their business done, which makes Jay feel better about getting out of his car. He notices the white spray paint right away. Four X’s in a rectangle mark a ghostly shape of something once there and now gone. Jay takes a careful step over the yellow tape to get a better look. Up close, he sees tire tracks. Somebody was parked here, he thinks. There’s another mark in the grass, a misshapen oval of white police paint, indicating something that once lay beside the tire tracks. White male, Jay thinks, shot twice. At Jay’s feet there’s a dark patch of motor oil . . . or blood. He is too afraid to touch it, to have any of this on his hands. He backs up suddenly, overcome 56 Attic a L o c ke

  with the feeling that this was a superbly stupid idea. He should never have come out here.

  It’s when he turns to leave, toward his car and the street, look­

  ing back the way he came, that he sees something in the distance, high above the trees.

  The lights of the Freedman’s National Bank clock: 9:37 78˚

  It’s the same thing he saw from the boat Saturday night, the same image, the same angle. He turns and looks behind him, past the trees to the downtown skyline. It’s all the same. He’s standing on higher ground, some twenty or thirty yards above the surface of the water, but there is now no doubt in his mind: This is where she must have been standing when they heard the shots.

  The thought makes him ill, the fact that he carried that woman with his bare hands, spirited her away from what he now realizes was a crime scene.

  There’s a sudden flash of white light on the main road, a pair of headlights coming down Clinton. The car hits the same curve in the road, its lights momentarily streaking down the dirt path, hitting Jay in the chest. In an instant, he sees himself in the driv­

  er’s eyes: a black man, after dark, standing inside police tape. For all he knows, it’s a cop on the road. For all he knows, this is still an active crime scene. He watches the car’s brake lights come on as it slows on the main road. If his eyes are right, the car is back­

  ing up toward him.

  His first thought is to hide.

  It’s a few long strides to his car, the path to which is awash with the light of his high beams. It’s much easier, safer, he rea­

  sons, to step backward, out of the light and into the thick brush. He moves quickly, crouching low, pushing his body through the trees. The branches pull at his clothes, grazing his face, digging Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 57

  into his skin. He feels a hot sting on his cheek. Knee-deep in weeds and a fog of mosquitoes and moving by a thin stream of moonlight through the clouds, Jay tries to feel his way. His ankle turns on a piece of uneven earth and gravity seems to grab him whole. He slips feet-first down the embankment. He quickly reaches for the nearest tree branch, but it breaks off in his hand, causing him to slip again on the soft earth. He manages to turn onto his stomach as he hits the ground, clawing the dirt to keep from sliding all the way to the black bottom. He can hear the bayou whispering softly, kissing the sides of the bank below him. He remembers the sound of her falling, rolling into the water. If you didn’t know it was here, Jay thinks.

  How easy it would be to make a mistake, a wrong turn. He thinks of her. The screams, the gunshots. The confusion. A man dead, and her out here alone. Someone passes by, and afraid, she hides.

  Just like he’s doing now.

  Jay reaches for another branch, clinging tightly. He looks through the tangle of trees, checking for the car on the street. Its taillights are already fading in the distance. The car is back on its course, up Clinton Road and far away from Jay. He doesn’t know if the driver saw him, doesn’t know who it was or if they’re coming back, but he’s not waiting around to find out. He wants to get back to his car, to the main road, to the freeway and home. Fingernails digging in the dirt, Jay drags himself through the choke of weeds, moving an inch at a time.

  He hears something above him, some movement in the brush. For a tense moment, he fears a run-in with a bayou rat or a rac­

  coon. Then he hears footsteps crunching dead leaves and twigs and knows he’s not out here alone.

  “I help you with something?”

  It’s a man’s voice, no doubt about that.

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  Jay has no idea where he came from . . . or how long he’s been watching.

  Caught, Jay crawls through the brush, slowly, pulling himself out of the grass like a snake. He’s lost one of his shoes, and his sock, soiled up to the ankle, is coming off at the heel. He scram­

  bles to his feet, brushing dirt off his pants and what was once a clean shirt. The man, Jay sees, is older than he is, in his six­

  ties maybe, and smaller, more compact. He’s black, in coveralls smudged with motor oil and grass stains and cut at the sleeves. He’s got a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He stares at Jay, his filthy clothes and missing shoe.

  Jay opens his mouth to speak, faster than he can think of some reasonable explanation to come out of it. He stands in the dirt, mute and slick with sweat.

  “You ain’t supposed to be back here, you know,” the man says. Jay thinks of making a run for his car, but doesn’t want to make himself look any more suspicious than he already does. The man in the coveralls rocks back on his bowlegs, digging his heels in the dirt. He slides the cigarette from behind his ear and uses the head of the filter to pick something from between his two front teeth. He stares at Jay, eyeing his clothes, studying his every little move, trying to settle something in his mind.

  “You a reporter or something?” he asks bluntly. Jay is on the verge of correcting him, but stops when he catches the fleeting glint in the man’s eyes, the flash of perverse excite­

  ment. For the first time, Jay notices a wheelbarrow parked by the chain-link fence, a shovel sticking out of it. He takes another look at the man’s coveralls, coated in grass stains. The groundskeeper, Jay rememb
ers, the one from the paper. And according to the news article, the one who found the body.

  “Can I get one of those?” Jay asks, motioning to the pack of Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 59

  Carltons peeking from the man’s front pocket. He’s stalling, of course, trying to buy himself some time, a moment to get his head around this. He wonders what the old man knows. The groundskeeper purses his lips, upset that he’s being held to answer to some unspoken code, between black men or smok­

  ers or both. He reaches into his coveralls and taps out a crumpled cigarette for Jay, tossing him a book of matches. In the man’s side pocket, Jay spots the top of a liquor bottle.

  The man catches Jay staring at his stained coveralls and fifth of Seagram’s. “This ain’t my regular gig, you know,” he says, as if he feels he needs to explain himself. “I’m just picking up a little extra cash right now, that’s all. I come by a couple of times a week to clear out the trash, beer bottles and such. I’m keeping an eye on the place nights now . . . you know, since the shooting.”

  “It was you, huh?” Jay asks carefully. “The one who found him?”

  The man shakes his head to himself, whistling low.

  “Man, I ain’t ever seen no shit like that in my life, and I seen some shit, let me tell you.” He snatches his book of matches from Jay’s hand, striking one to light his own cigarette. “You can quote me on that if you want to.”

  He actually pauses, waiting for Jay to produce a pad and a pencil, to make sure he’s getting all this down. So this is his big moment, Jay thinks, his little piece of fame. The man’s name in the paper and everything. More than his mama ever dreamed for him, probably. Jay, playing the part, pats his pockets. “I must have left my notes in the car,” he says, trying to sound casual, jaded even, a beat reporter who’s seen everything. “What hap­

  pened out here?”

  “Hell if I know,” the groundskeeper says. He takes a single, lusty pull on his cigarette, sucking it nearly to the filter. He stares out across the field at the police markings, the ghostly shapes 60 Attic a L o c ke

  in the dirt. “It was early when I got out here Sunday morning, around eight, like I always do. I come up the walk here,” he says, pointing to the dirt road. “And I set my buggy over by the fence.”

  He points to the wheelbarrow resting against the fence now. “I stopped to get a little sip, you know, just to warm me up.” He reaches for the bottle now, reenacting the scene, pulling the Seagram’s from his pocket. He takes a hearty swallow, nodding his head toward the field. “And that’s when I seen the car. I mean, it was just sitting right there.” He nods toward the white markings in the grass.

  “What kind of car was it?” Jay asks, remembering the woman from the boat, her nice clothes and diamond ring.

  “It was a Chrysler, kinda gold-like,” the man says. “It was a rental, that much I remember, ’cause the sticker on the back said lone star rides. I got a good look at it too. I come up on it real close,” he says, tiptoeing on his bowlegs, walking through the open field like it’s a graveyard, careful where he lays his feet.

  “The driver-side door was wide open. The light was still on inside.” He gets within a few feet of the white police paint, the lumpy circle in the dirt, and then stops short, his voice almost solemn. “He was laying right here.”

  “Who was he?” Jay asks.

  The man shrugs. “Cops pulled an ID off the man, but who knows?”

  “It was a white guy, though, right?”

  The man nods. “Laying right there, hanging out of the car, on his back.”

  Jay looks out across the empty field. There are black mosqui­

  toes dancing in the white light of his high beams, crickets hum­

  ming to themselves in the brush behind them. Jay turns from the view of the field to look at the empty warehouse and the dark, nearly deserted street. At this hour, the place looks like an indus­

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 61

  trial wasteland. What in the world was she doing out here? “If he was on the driver’s side,” Jay mumbles to himself, repeating the groundskeeper’s description, arcing around the four X’s that mark the car, to what would have been the Chrysler’s passenger side, “then she must have been riding here,” he says softly, think­

  ing out loud, still trying to piece together some kind of a story. He wonders if the dead man picked her up somewhere, if the two knew each other.

  When he finally looks up again, the groundskeeper is staring at him.

  “How do you know it was a woman?” the man asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said . . . how do you know it was a woman he was with?”

  It takes Jay a moment to understand what the man is asking, to realize the mistake he’s made, the single clue he let slip from his mouth. The panic, when it hits him, is swift and forceful, and he actually feels himself sway just the tiniest bit. Then, remem­

  bering the article from the paper, he repeats a few of the details.

  “The cops talked to a lady friend,” he explains. “It was in the police report.”

  “Is that right?” the groundskeeper asks, a knowing smile creeping across his stubbly face. He pinches off the head of his cigarette, letting the cherry fall to the dirt and pocketing the dirty butt. “Well, I know why they talked to her.”

  “You do?” Jay feels the panic again, and he has a sudden thought of Jimmy’s cousin, the boat’s captain. It’s the first time Jay has considered him since the night of the boat ride. And it now occurs to him that the old man might have seen the same blurb in the paper and gone straight to the police. He’s so caught up in what that might mean for him, wondering if the cops already have his name, that he almost misses the next words out of the groundskeeper’s mouth.

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  “Dude’s pants were coming down,” the man says.

  “What?” Jay asks, not immediately comprehending.

  “The dead man,” the groundskeeper says. “The belt, the fly

  . . . his pants was wide open. The cops was all over it. And they was taking pictures of the ground over there.” He points to the dirt and grass where Jay is standing. “There were footprints, real small-like, you know, like a lady’s shoe.” Jay remembers the woman’s bare feet on the boat, her missing earring too. “But we don’t really know it was a woman,” the groundskeeper says. We, like he’s in on the investigation, like he and the cops are work­

  ing this one together. “We don’t know what that man was into. Hell, when I seen him, he was wearing leather in August, had on gloves up to here,” he says, demonstrating high on his forearms.

  “Ain’t no telling what kind of freaky shit was going on. That mighta been why he was hiding out here in the first place.” He lowers his voice, speaking the seemingly impossible. “I mean, it coulda been a dude he was with.”

  The groundskeeper helps himself to another Carlton. “Now ain’t that some shit,” he says. His expression has cooled somewhat, and he seems to have turned his investigative gaze on Jay, taking a second look at Jay’s soiled clothes and his missing shoe, seem­

  ingly calling his whole presence at the crime scene into question. Jay doesn’t like the way the man is looking at him, or what he thinks the man may be insinuating. It would be ridiculous, the idea of Jay being in any way involved in a murder, if it weren’t so . . . plausible. Even a rookie cop knows that more times than not, the perpetrator returns to the scene of his crime.

  “You with the Chronicle or the Post?” the groundskeeper asks.

  “I freelance,” Jay answers, a little too quickly.

  “Maybe I could get your name, in case I remember something else.”

  The smirk is faint, but impossible to ignore.

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  The groundskeeper stares at Jay, waiting for an answer.

  “Ernest Pennebaker” is the first ridiculous name out of Jay’s mouth. He delivers it as convincingly as a practiced closing argu­
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  ment, thanking the man for his time and reaching for his car keys. He nods good night as he slides into his front seat. Through the dusty windshield, the groundskeeper watches him, the Sky­

  lark’s headlights carving deep shadows beneath the man’s suspi­

  cious eyes. Jay throws his car into reverse, driving faster than he should, churning up reddish brown dirt across his rear window, creating a blinding haze of smoke.

  He rolls up his window and turns on the radio, trying to shut out the noise in his head. The box is set to 1430 AM, black radio. They’re in the middle of another hour of Confessions. Wash Allen is talking to a woman, a caller who’s sleeping with a married man, has been for years. She’s wondering if he’ll ever leave his wife, and if he doesn’t, where in the world will that leave her? The show is call-and-response, a rhythm borrowed from blues or the church, where black people come to lay down their problems. The callers have on-air names like CB handles. “This is Stormin’ Norman calling . . .” “Yeah, Wash, this is your girl Sunshine . . .” “Dark ’n’

  Lovely here, Wash, and I got something to say . . .” They’re all calling in, hot to give their opinions, to tell the woman on hold that she’s a stone cold fool.

  C h a p t e r 5

  The next morning, he stands over the sink checking his cut in the bathroom mirror. It’s at least an inch long where the tree branch got him. There’s a thin slash just below his cheekbone, a little too high to be explained away as a shaving mishap. He would put a Band-Aid on it, but he doesn’t want to draw any more attention to it. It’s bad enough it looks like the scratch of a woman’s fingernail, an act of aggression or passion, neither of which would be easy to explain to his wife. He doesn’t want her to know where he was last night. Not yet at least. Not until he gets ahold of Jimmy’s cousin. For it has become fairly clear to Jay that he will have to make some kind of statement to police detectives. He thinks it’s better if he contacts them first, before they come looking for him. Bernie, were she to hear about the Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 65