Cape Perdido Page 5

  “Sssh!” someone behind them said.

  Gregory Erickson had risen and taken the second microphone. Joseph said, “Before we throw this open to a general question-and-answer session, Mr. Erickson, I have a few questions that have been submitted in writing. The first is mine. You’re proposing to take water for free from the Perdido—a river held in the public trust—and sell it for profit. Do you consider that a moral act?”

  The philosophical nature of the question seemed to perplex Erickson, and for a moment he hesitated. Then he said, “To address the issue of our taking the water for free, it will not be without cost to us. Construction of the pumping station upstream, sinking of the pipeline into the alluvium within the riverbed, acquiring the bags, contracting with the tugboat companies—these are expensive propositions.”

  Joseph asked, “What is the estimated cost to get this project up and running?”

  “That depends on the variables. Until we get a project under way, we have no idea what those variables may be.”

  Sidestepping the questions, Jessie thought. No consideration for the moral issue. And no one goes into a project of this size without accurate cost estimates.

  Openshaw seemed to be thinking the same thing; he smiled ironically as he said, “I see. Now let’s address the first part of my question: Is this a moral project?”

  Erickson frowned. “When approved, the project will be in compliance with all local, state, and federal laws. It will be in compliance with all international laws and precedents.”

  “But the underlying morality—?”

  “Some of us call what he wants to do stealing!”

  The loud voice came from the back of the crowd. Jessie turned, saw a heavyset, red-faced man in an olive drab parka—one of the group who had been drinking on the other side of the highway. From under his matching cap, wiry blond hair protruded in big tufts.

  Erickson flushed and looked at Neil Woodsman; quickly Woodsman stood and took the microphone from him. His motions were leisurely and self-assured, his face unperturbed. In a deep baritone whose accent was British rather than southern, he asked, “Is it moral to allow municipalities less fortunate than yours to die of thirst?” His tone was openly patronizing.

  “Nobody down there’s dyin’ of thirst,” the red-faced man shouted, “they’re usin’ the water to grow their lawns and wash their cars and fill their swimming pools!”

  The man’s companions clapped and stomped and whistled. Another man yelled, “Right on, Ike!”

  Joseph intervened. “Let’s move on to the next question—”

  Fitch called out, “I have one.”

  “Mr. Collier?”

  “Mr. Woodsman, what is the role of Marco Candelas, of Rio de Janiero, Brazil, in your operation?”

  “He is a partner in the consortium of which we are a member.”

  “And what is that consortium called?”

  “Galactic Water, Limited.”

  Jessie glanced at Fitch, saw he was smiling thinly. “Oh, and do you intend to eventually export water to Mars?”

  Woodsman scowled at the gibe, and Fitch said, “Question withdrawn. Now, what is the role of Hiroshi Okamodo, of Osaka, Japan, in your operation?”

  “He is a partner in the consortium.”

  “And Jesus Mondragon, of Buenos Aires, Argentina?”

  “He is also a partner.”

  “And your position with Galactic Water is . . . ?”

  “Also a partner, and chairman of the board.”

  Now Jessie saw where Fitch was going with this. Erickson’s involvement with foreign nationals was one of the key points in the arguments Fitch would set forth before the state board; by bringing it out in the open now, he hoped to further rally the public against the water grab, as well as warn Aqueduct—perhaps in the slim hope that they would withdraw their application—that he planned to use this point against them.

  “So,” he went on, “if the state of California’s water resources control board grants rights to extract water from the Perdido to Aqueduct Systems, it would essentially be granting such rights to you as sole owner of the firm and also as a principal in Galactic Water?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then it would require only an administrative change to transfer title to these rights to one of the other partners in Galactic Water?”

  “. . . I suppose so.” Now Woodsman looked to Erickson for assistance.

  “And if such title were transferred, the project would then be regulated under the North American Free Trade Agreement or the World Trade Organization, thus allowing you to circumvent California law.”

  “What the hell does all that have to do with this asshole comin’ in here and ruinin’ our river?” The red-faced man again.

  More whistles, claps, and shouts. The point Fitch was trying to make apparently didn’t interest the man and his friends. He went on. “We don’t need some guy from North Carolina messing with the Perdido, and if he tries to—”

  Whump!

  The percussive sound drowned out the report of the first shot. Jessie started and looked around frantically. The crowd was momentarily silent; then people began shouting and milling about in panic when they heard a second shot ring out. Jessie ducked down, pulling Fitch, who had frozen, along with her.

  A third shot. Now people were rushing along the access road toward the highway, shoving and trampling one another. Through the microphone, Joseph yelled for everybody to keep calm. Jessie raised her head, saw he was the only person left on the platform. The others were scrambling into two cars parked near the pier.

  A sheriff’s cruiser inched through the gate, parting the panicky crowd, then bumped off the pavement and sped overland in the direction from which the shots had come. The car carrying the waterbaggers and McNear moved quickly up the access road, causing cries of protest from those it nosed aside. Jessie looked around to see if anyone had been hit, and saw the TV cameraman frantically filming the giant water bag. It spouted like a humpback whale.

  Someone had decided that vandalism and verbal threats against Aqueduct International weren’t enough.

  JOSEPH OPENSHAW

  The shooter was probably on top of the old office building,” the deputy, a man named Worth, told Joseph. “At least, we found a ladder leaning against the wall there. Newish one, aluminum, hadn’t been exposed to much weather.”

  “Must’ve been a powerful weapon to make that big a hole in the water bag.”

  “Yeah, something like a thirty-aught-six, three rounds placed close together. Maybe we can recover the bullets from the bag, maybe not. Damn thing’s gonna be a bitch to get out of the water.”

  “The tug—”

  “Is trapped at the pier by the bag. We’ve got one hell of a mess on our hands.”

  Joseph felt someone come up beside him. Jessie Domingo, with Fitch Collier close on her heels. The lawyer hunched inside his expensive down parka, shivering. Domingo’s jacket was thrown open to the wind, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright.

  Joseph said to the deputy, “Let me know when you’ve got something more.” Then he turned to the others. “Quite an introduction you people’re getting to our little community. How about we go have a drink?”

  Jessie nodded, but Fitch shook his head. “I need to make some calls.”

  “Give you a ride back to the motel?”

  “I’ll take our rental car, if Jessie doesn’t mind.”

  Jessie said, “I’ll go with you, Joseph.”

  The Deluxe Billiards hadn’t changed since its owner used to wink at Joseph and his high-school friends’ false IDs. A horseshoe-shaped bar, two pool tables, small dance floor in front of the jukebox, tables with candles in red glass globes. Tourists who went looking for what passed for nightlife on the Cape generally ended up at the Oceansong, on the bluff north of town; the Deluxe, on a side street east of the highway, was strictly for locals.

  Joseph watched as Domingo took in their surroundings. The Deluxe was, he supposed, about as di
fferent from her New York City hangouts as possible. But she didn’t seem displeased, and took him up on his suggestion of a pale ale from a Calvert’s Landing microbrewery. Then she sat back, seeming content for the moment to listen to a country song that was playing on the jukebox. Joseph glanced around the shadowy room, nodding to acquaintances: Marie and Tom Wallis, high-school sweethearts now married twenty years; Rosalind Katz, working on her third divorce and probably her fifth martini; Bob Alonzo, once the class cut-up and now superintendent of the west county unified school district. In the dim light, they didn’t look all that much older than in the days when they’d flashed those fake IDs; if he closed his eyes and listened to the music, he could imagine that he was once again on the dance floor, Steph moving gracefully in response to his lead. . . .

  Their beers arrived. Jessie tasted hers, nodded approval. Then she said, “I understand you’re originally from this area.”

  “Born and raised in the hills above Oilville.”

  “The reservation?”

  “It isn’t officially a rez, although we call it that. Just sixty acres given to some tribal members by Timothy McNear’s father in the nineteen-fifties. Their families had been living there and working the lumber camp since the mill was founded, and they’d always been good laborers, so before old man McNear gave Timothy control of the company, he signed over the deed.” Joseph smiled ironically. “Not that it was much of a sacrifice; the land’s poor, wasn’t doing him any good.”

  “And you lived there till you went to Berkeley?”

  “Yeah. Attended the unified schools, fished the Perdido, hunted in the hills. Raised a fair amount of hell up and down the coast. Didn’t really appreciate the countryside back then. Like most of the kids around here, I was dying to get out. Wasn’t until I was at Cal on scholarship that I came to realize what a wonderful natural world we have here.”

  “And that turned you into an ecologist?”

  “I had a lot of help from a couple of my professors, but yes, I suppose so. Losing something will make you aware of how precious it is.”

  “Losing?”

  Joseph hesitated, surprised to find himself talking so freely to this young woman. “In a sense. Berkeley, Sacramento, the other places I’ve been, have changed me. I come back now, I find I’m from here, but not of here.” Enough said. “But what about you? Were you raised in New York?”

  “Long Island. It’s not so different there: the kids’re all dying to get out, mainly to Manhattan, which they consider the be-all and end-all.”

  “And so you did.”

  “Not exactly. My parents wanted me to see more of the world. Dad had traveled around a lot—he was a relief pitcher for the Mets.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

  “Kip Domingo.”

  “You know, I think I saw him pitch. I’m a big baseball fan.”

  “Not bad, was he?” Pride was evident in Jessie’s voice. “He’s a radio sportscaster now. And my mother, she acts—has for years—on a soap opera. Plays a real wicked-witch-of-the-west Scotswoman, which is funny, because while she actually is Scots, she’s also the nicest person you could hope to meet. Anyway, it’s a pretty grueling schedule, commuting to Manhattan five days a week. Like Dad, she wanted me to have more experience of the world before I decided where to settle. So they encouraged me to go to college at University of Colorado. That’s where I got into environmental studies. As I told you yesterday, I read both your books. They’re really good, and they helped shape my own philosophy.”

  “Thanks. You liked Colorado?”

  “I loved it there.”

  “But you went back to New York.”

  “To work in state government, the department of environmental conservation. The job market was tough at the time, and a friend of Dad’s had pull there. Anyway, I hated Albany. Absolutely hated it. The bureaucratic maneuvering, where you have to take two steps sideways to take one step forward.” Momentarily her face clouded.

  Something there that bothers her more than the usual disillusionment with state government. Wonder what?

  Jessie shook her head, banishing the cloud, and went on. “Finally, six months ago, I heard about this job at ECC, applied, and actually got it. Not an easy thing; it’s a very prestigious outfit. So now I live the Long Island girl’s dream in the big city. It’s fast-paced, exhilarating. Something going on every minute. And I love it there, too.”

  Joseph liked her unabashed enthusiasm. Liked the way her eyes shone and her cheeks flushed as she talked about her life. And reminded himself that she was young, too young for a tired veteran of the environmental—and various other—wars.

  “Well,” he said, “Cape Perdido must be quite a change from Manhattan.”

  “Yes.” Jessie leaned forward, her face sobering as if she’d just remembered her purpose for being there. “Joseph, who do you think shot the water bag?”

  He shrugged, unwilling to speculate just yet.

  “That man heckling at the back of the crowd,” Jessie went on, “who is he?”

  “Ike Kudge.”

  A frown creased her high forehead. “Kudge . . . Does he have a relative named Mack?”

  Now, where the hell had she heard that name? “Mack was his older brother.”

  “Was?”

  “He died, years ago. Why do you ask?”

  “A little man named Harold whom I met in the crowd mentioned his name. Said he used to work at the mill with him. And then he made a strange comment, about what was going on there making ‘no never-mind’ to Mack anymore.”

  So that was all. “The man you talked with is Harold Kosovich. He’s the town eccentric—if a place like this can be said to have only one.”

  “He did seem a little . . . different. Tell me about him.”

  The subject of Harold Kosovich was infinitely preferable to Ike or Mack Kudge. “Harold lived in the trailer next to my mother’s when I was growing up, so I guess I’m used to him. He’s part Pomo, part Russian, not that that has anything to do with him being strange.”

  “Pomo and Russian? Unusual combination.”

  “Not on the north coast. Fort Ross, down in Sonoma County, was established in the early eighteen-hundreds by Russian fur trappers, who came from Alaska with a group of Kodiak and Aleut Indians. The Pomos got on with the Russians—they were a damn sight more friendly than the Spanish or the white settlers—and traded with them. Eventually a number of them intermarried, and some even went back to Russia with the trappers when they pulled out of the area in the eighteen-forties. Harold’s the grandson of one of the trappers who stayed behind.”

  “Did something happen to him, or has he always been this way?”

  “I guess you could say life happened to him, but in a crueler way than it happens to most of us. His parents died when he was very young, and he was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Santa Rosa. I don’t know if you’re aware of what those places were like back then, especially for Indian kids, but he came out emotionally damaged. Arrested, a psychologist would say. Then he knocked around from place to place, working for the lumber companies. People who didn’t understand him treated him badly; he drank too much—an old story. When he ended up here, working for McNear’s, a few people on the rez, including my mother, took an interest in him, and he seemed to be getting better. Then the mill closed, and he lost everything that mattered to him. Now he’s just a sad old man living out his life on Social Security and odd jobs. He’s strange, but he’s got a right to be.”

  “He seems fixated on the mill, on the past.”

  Joseph felt a stirring of annoyance at the statement. What did this young woman, who was living out her dreams, know about losing everything? But then, why should she, any more than Harold Kosovich should know about having the world at one’s fingertips?

  Jessie didn’t seem to expect a reply. She sipped beer, gazed around moodily at the bar’s other patrons. “I suppose,” she said after a moment, “I should be getting back to the motel before Fitch come
s looking for me. He’s probably been on the phone to Eldon Whitesides.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know Eldon was such a hands-on administrator.”

  “He isn’t usually, but he’s taking a special interest in the situation here.”

  “Why?”

  She shook her head. “I guess because of the dangerous precedent that would be established if Aqueduct’s application is granted.”

  In Joseph’s opinion, Whitesides didn’t give a rat’s ass about precedent, unless it served to increase his stature and his stock portfolio.

  “Of course,” Jessie added, “Mr. Whitesides is something of a puzzle to all of us at ECC. No one really understands what motivates him.”

  And there you said a mouthful, young lady.

  STEPH PACE

  Steph pulled away from the Calvert’s Landing farmers’ market, the back of her old Ford station wagon loaded with fresh produce. She’d spent over an hour making her selections from the stalls that were set up weekly in the high school parking lot, and she was eager to get back to the Cape before the major storm front that the morning forecast had predicted blew in. While most of what she bought for the restaurant was delivered by the wholesaler from the county seat at Santa Carla, she also liked to shop the independent sellers who turned out for the Saturday event.

  Broccoli, she thought, turning north on Highway 1. Brussels sprouts and carrots and cauliflower and cabbages. All excellent vegetables, but no longer appealing after four long months of winter. Would spring ever come, bringing zucchini and green beans, peas and exotic greens? She was sick and tired of working with her cook on ways to make the old standbys interesting.

  Or maybe she was just sick and tired, period.

  After some miles, Green Valley Road appeared ahead and to the right, a blacktopped secondary artery that snaked eastward through the hills. One quick turn, and in less than an hour she could be at its intersection with the 101 freeway. And then? North to Oregon, south to the Mexican border. Steph smiled as she pictured herself speeding toward a new life, tossing out winter vegetables as she went—free of the Blue Moon, free of Cape Perdido, and most of all, free of Joseph Openshaw.