Cape Perdido Page 4

  “Yeah.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “No. Yes. Curt, d’you ever think . . . about that night?”

  Silence, and then he shifted on the hard stones. “I think about it.”

  “We’ve never talked—”

  “We haven’t talked since then.”

  “Come on, we see each other—”

  “Haven’t talked about anything that matters, I mean.”

  “Has Joseph ever . . . ?”

  “Joseph?” A bitter laugh, and he tossed his cigarette away.

  “He—”

  “Look, Steph, let it lay.” Curtis pushed to his feet. “It’s cold here. You coming?”

  She shook her head and watched his catlike descent from the outcropping to the sand.

  Let it lay.

  Close that can of worms and keep it closed.

  Easy advice to give, maybe. Not so easy to follow.

  TIMOTHY MCNEAR

  At close to midnight Timothy could still see the delineation between sea and sky. It was faint, merely a matter of different shades of darkness, but his practiced eye focused and held on it. Lately he’d taken to staying in the loft, swaddled in his big chair, neglecting to eat the dinner the housekeeper had left for him in the oven, sipping one more glass of Scotch than was advisable.

  Waiting.

  For what?

  Death? No. In spite of the arthritis and shortness of breath after he climbed the ladder, he was in good shape, and longevity ran in his family.

  Forgiveness? Not much chance of that. He’d long ago given up on receiving a phone call from his estranged son or grandsons. He’d hoped one day to see understanding in Stephanie Pace’s eyes, but now that he’d betrayed not only her trust but everyone else’s, he knew it would never happen.

  Since that betrayal, the morning light, which used to greet him like an old friend, seemed cold and alien. The ring of the phone and the knock at the door, or any of the other things normal people expected and welcomed, didn’t happen. He was and would forever be alone, reduced to listening to his own heartbeat and staring at the horizon.

  Alone, and waiting.

  For what?

  Saturday, February 21

  JESSIE DOMINGO

  Jessie finished the last of her fish-and-chips, tossed the cardboard container in a trash barrel, and went to stand at the railing of the deck behind the Blue Moon Cafe. The morning had dawned sunny and clear, except for some clouds piled on the horizon that the local weather forecast had said were part of a storm front that was due to move in that evening. The Pacific was a brilliant blue and placid; sea lions sunned themselves on the offshore rocks or glided through the waves in sinuous motion. Jessie watched one climb onto a overhanging shelf, displacing two others, who bellowed indignantly.

  The town that had seemed so drab and shabby to her the day before now struck her as charming and somewhat festive. People streamed in and out of the café, the general store, and the other businesses, and wandered along the shoulders of the highway. They called out greetings to one another and stood talking in little groups; total strangers smiled at her as she made her way back to the motel. The fine weather had brought out the best in Cape Perdido, and Jessie was beginning to understand why people lived here in spite of its remoteness and lack of the amenities she was used to.

  She went to the door of Fitch’s unit, knocked, and once again got no response. The attorney had been absent from his room for over an hour, and it was nearly time for the public forum at the site of the defunct lumber mill to begin. She didn’t intend to wait around for him and risk missing it. Let him find his own transportation.

  She got into the rental car Joseph Openshaw had waiting at the motel for them, drove out of the lot, and followed the highway south from town, through a series of downhill switchbacks that brought it to sea level. The shore was lined with wind-warped cypress trees, and beyond them lay a sand beach. Offshore, more of the rock formations that Bernina Tobin had called sea stacks towered above the water. A long bridge spanned the Perdido River, wide at that point and blue as the sky, dividing around a small tree-dotted island, then merging several hundred yards before it flowed into the sea.

  Early that morning Bernina had taken Jessie and Fitch on a tour of the lower Perdido, parking in a graveled area at the north end of the bridge and leading them along a trail that wound for half a mile among tanbark oaks and pines, then forked, one branch descending to a pebbled beach. The river was swollen from the winter rains, rushing around boulders and carrying tree limbs and other debris. They had the beach to themselves except for a man tossing a ball to his Irish setter, which frolicked in the shallows.

  “In a couple of months, this beach’ll be crowded with people and dogs,” Bernina told them. “A kayak-rental van sets up at the parking area and does a good business. By midsummer, the water’s a lot lower, lazier. By fall, sandbars make it barely navigable. Add to that thousands of acre-feet of water being siphoned off annually, and recreational use’ll drop off sharply.”

  She then led them back to the main trail and farther upstream, where the forest thickened and the ground was carpeted in pine needles and moss. At an outcropping above another beach, she stopped and pointed. “That’s where they want to put their damn pumping station. They’d bury a cistern housing a series of electric pumps in the river channel and run a twenty-four-inch pipe down the stream and across Timothy McNear’s land to bags moored offshore. The pumping station would be unmanned except for periodic maintenance, and you can imagine the potential for vandalism that kind of situation poses.”

  At the Friends’ meeting the previous evening, Bernina had speculated at length about additional vandalism or outright violence against the waterbaggers, but as Jessie stood in this quiet, beautiful spot, it seemed an unlikely prospect. But then someone had spray-painted the waterbaggers’ cars, and she supposed Bernina, as part of the community, was in a much better position to judge its emotional climate than she.

  Now, as she drove toward the defunct lumber mill, Jessie decided she’d work the crowd after the presentation, conduct an informal public opinion poll. Although the local level of hostility toward the waterbaggers would not be a large factor in the state board’s decision, it could very well sway some of its members to the environmentalists’ side.

  Ahead the land curved out onto a point that formed a natural harbor, and on it she spotted the long beige buildings of the old mill, rust-streaked smokestacks rising high above them. The car in front of her braked and pulled onto the shoulder; seeing that the roadside ahead was lined with vehicles, Jessie did the same. As she joined a group of people who moved slowly toward the mill, she listened to snatches of their conversations.

  “. . . bastards think they can just come in here and take our water, they got another think comin’!”

  “The tugs they’re gonna tow those bags with, they’re slow, gotta keep close in so they don’t clog up the shipping lanes. Could scare off the humpbacks when they migrate. That’d be the end of the whale-watching business.”

  “Yeah, and those bags’re gonna be seven hundred and seventy feet long. Can you believe it? That’s two and a half football fields!”

  “And a football field wide. Don’t forget that.”

  “Well, I’m gonna hear what the man’s got to say, but it’s not gonna change my mind.”

  “Old Timothy McNear— remember all his talk about tearing down the mill and making it a park with public access to the ocean? What a liar!”

  “You seen that southern guy? He looks shifty as all get-out.”

  That southern guy: Gregory Erickson, CEO of Aqueduct Systems. Jessie wouldn’t have called him shifty, not exactly, but her impression of him the night before had been off-

  putting—an impression bolstered by the man’s vague and confusing background.

  Erickson, one of the foundation’s researchers had learned, was a native of the Raleigh-Durham area. He had a degree from an Atlanta business college th
at was little more than a diploma mill, but the résumé he’d submitted along with his application to the state water board listed an impressive number of jobs in “resource management” with firms throughout the world. However, when the researcher attempted to contact the companies regarding Erickson’s tenure, he’d come up with either blanks or resistance. Only Erickson’s last position, as a public relations specialist for an Australian firm that harvested water in Turkey, was fully verifiable, but even there the specifics were sketchy. Apparently he’d picked up enough expertise and capital during his tenure with those firms to establish Aqueduct Systems and had been in business for three years, in partnership with a consortium of Japanese and South American investors. The company had completed successful water harvesting projects in Eastern Europe, and Cape Perdido was to be its first foray onto American soil. Had Erickson not been involved in the consortium, the situation would have been somewhat straightforward, but those foreign interests made it tricky—

  “You’re a pretty lady.”

  Jessie started and looked at the speaker, a small, nut brown man with a bad limp, wearing a blue knitted cap with an absurdly large dirty-white tassel. He smiled crookedly, revealing yellowed teeth. “Yes, ma’am, very pretty.”

  “. . . Thank you.”

  “You going to the festivities? I am. Officially, it’ll be my first time inside the mill since they shut it down. D’you mind if I walk with you? What’s your name?”

  The man was strange and smelled of alcohol, but seemed harmless enough. “Jessie.”

  “Jessie. That’s a pretty name. I’m Harold. Not Hal, I don’t like Hal. Or Harry. Just call me Harold.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, Harold.”

  “Thanks. Oh, look, they’re all waiting at the gate!”

  Two green and white cruisers from the Soledad County Sheriff’s Department were pulled up across a wide gate in the high chain-link fence that surrounded the mill, and officers stood guard, waiting till it was time for the public to be admitted. A TV van that Jessie had seen at the motel was parked near the cruisers, and a man from the county station was videotaping the protesters. They congregated to the left side, wearing large plastic buttons that read, “Don’t Drain the Perdido!” and holding hand-lettered signs. Jessie could hear them chanting: “No water bags, no water grab . . .”

  “They’re all waiting,” the little man added, “just like we waited when Mr. McNear shut down the mill. We waited with our signs, and we sent in a petition, but he shut it down anyway, and that was that.”

  “You worked there?”

  “Oh, yes. I was a sawyer till I had my auto accident—busted up my leg and hip pretty bad—and they gave me a desk job. Made me timekeeper; I worked with young Mack Kudge. He was my part-time assistant after school let out. Wonder what Mack would think of all this going on at our mill? Not that it makes no never-mind to him anymore.”

  “Who?”

  But the man was distracted. “Oh, balloons!” he exclaimed.

  Jessie looked where he was pointing, saw a flock of bright green and white spheres rising into the sky above the protesters. When she glanced back, the odd little man was gone.

  She continued moving with the crowd until it came to a halt near the sheriff’s-department cruisers; then she weaved through it toward the protesters. Bernina Tobin, wrapped in a red cape and multicolored skirt, was there, along with other members of the Friends whom Jessie had met at last night’s meeting, but their ranks had been swelled by dozens. They wore all-weather gear, jeans, and sturdy boots; many had the toughened skin of people who worked outdoors. A man in a wheelchair held a sign that read, “Disabled Vets for the River.” A woman with cotton-candy pink hair and flowing robes to match was blowing soap bubbles. One of the bubbles touched Jessie’s cheek before it burst.

  Bernina grabbed her arm. “Look at this! Will you just look at all these people who’ve come out in support of us!”

  “It’s going better than planned, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I was a little concerned when the deputies let in a car containing Timothy McNear and the waterbaggers a while ago.” She glanced around. “Some of these folks’re here to look for trouble—men, of course, who else?—but the deputies’ll keep them in line.”

  Jessie followed Bernina’s gaze to a group of men who were leaning on an old, mud-splattered Jeep that was pulled onto the shoulder on the opposite side of the highway. They were drinking beer and making unintelligible comments to passersby.

  “Good old boys,” Bernina added bitterly. “The kind who think a show of arms in the parking lots of the bars is the perfect end to a Saturday night.”

  One of the men yelled, “Let’s go, guys!” He crushed his beer can, hurled it into the roadside ditch, then led the others across the highway. They pushed into the waiting throng, jostling and shoving and receiving irritated looks in response.

  “Assholes,” Bernina said. “The world would be better off if men had never been invented.”

  Jessie had occasionally voiced similar sentiments—hadn’t every woman?—but she decided not to feed into Bernina’s intense prejudice.

  “Where’s Joseph?” she asked.

  “Inside, at the podium. I asked him to do the honors; he’s a better speaker than me.” Bernina glanced at her watch. “Almost time.”

  There was a stirring at the front of the crowd, and people stepped back as two deputies got into their cars and edged the wheels off the access road. Another pair rolled back the gates. Slowly the crowd moved forward, the protesters allowing most of them to pass before bringing up the rear. In spite of the wintery temperature, the sun made Jessie overly warm. She pulled off the hood of her parka and let the strong, cold sea wind stream through her hair. It brought with it the odors of brine and creosote. The broken-asphalt road led past a boarded-up guard station and between two of the mill’s long buildings, which slumped under sagging roofs, their paint pitted, high windows broken. Graffiti covered their walls; obviously the chain-link fence was no deterrent to local taggers, and if McNear employed guards, they were grossly ineffective.

  The road went up a rise where corrugated-iron sheds fanned out to either side, then descended toward the shoreline. At its top Bernina stopped and motioned at the scene below.

  A wide concrete pier extended into the water at the end of the road, and a wooden platform had been erected at its base; several folding chairs and a stand with two microphones were arranged on it. The sea was choppy here, and a red and white tugboat tied up beside the pier bobbed and strained at its moorings. A high, elongated royal blue mass floated at the pier’s end like the carcass of a giant sea creature, nearly filling the crescent-shaped harbor.

  “My God,” Jessie said, “is that the bag?”

  Bernina nodded grimly. “Inflated to its full size with seawater. And Erickson thinks it isn’t an eyesore!”

  “Eyesore” was putting it mildly. As Jessie had overheard someone in the crowd say, the bag was more than two and a half football fields long, at least a third that wide, and some ten feet high. It dwarfed the pier, extending far along the point to the northern boundary of the mill property. Its blue color looked unnatural against the sea.

  “Erickson claims the bags’ll blend in when they’re anchored offshore,” Bernina said.

  “They’d have to be halfway to Japan to blend in.”

  “Exactly. And Erickson knows that. He’s a typical product of a capitalistic, patriarchal society— blind to everything but his profit margin. When I think this land was supposed to become a public park after Timothy McNear razed the mill, I could just spit nails! What kind of recreational facility would that be, with a tug belching exhaust, and a big blue bag wallowing offshore?”

  “Any idea why McNear agreed to support the waterbaggers’ project?”

  “Sheer meanness, according to people who know him. And money, of course. They must’ve paid him well.”

  Bernina started down the rise, and Jessie followed. As they neared the platform, sh
e saw Joseph Openshaw mount its steps, followed by Gregory Erickson. A few moments later they were joined by the two other Aqueduct people she’d seen in the restaurant the night before and Neil Woodsman. Woodsman remained by the steps, holding out his hand to a tall white-haired man in a tan trench coat. The man ignored it and mounted the steps slowly, taking the chair that Erickson offered.

  “Timothy McNear,” Bernina said. “The traitor himself.”

  Jessie studied McNear. Her files said he was in his mid-seventies, but his appearance was that of a much younger man. His white hair was luxuriant, his relatively unlined face a deep saltwater tan, his carriage erect. As he sat, his eyes scanned the crowd as if he were searching for someone. Then he looked away, focusing on Gregory Erickson.

  Erickson had dressed for the occasion in a blue plaid shirt whose color exactly matched that of the water bag. Coincidence? Jessie suspected not. The CEO stood in conference with Joseph Openshaw for a moment, then sat as Joseph went to the podium and took one of the microphones from its stand. After the usual grunts and whines from the sound system, he spoke into it, and the crowd quieted.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Joseph Openshaw of the Friends of the Perdido, and the gentleman to my right is Gregory Erickson, CEO of Aqueduct Systems. Mr. Erickson has offered to meet with us today to discuss his company’s proposal to export water from the Perdido to southern California.”

  As Joseph went on to outline the basic plan—hardly necessary for this crowd—Jessie felt a tap on her shoulder. Fitch Collier’s angry voice said, “Where the hell have you been? You took the car, and I had to bum a ride down here with a stranger.”

  She turned to him, saw his mouth was white and pinched. His blue eyes glittered in anger behind his tinted lenses. Cell phone withdrawal, perhaps?

  “I could ask you the same,” she said. “I checked your room starting around noon, and you weren’t there.”

  “Well, why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “I went to the general store and picked up a sandwich for lunch, and then I—” Why was she explaining herself to him? “I didn’t want to be late for this—”