The Water Knife (30 page)

Maria thought of her own home. Her life from before. School friends she hadn’t seen in years. People she’d traveled with, headed for the dream her father had held in his head, of a California that they were never going to get to. Remembered Tammy Bayless, waving at her as she and her family bought their way north because they had the cash, and how Maria didn’t. How Tammy had given her all her clothes, since she couldn’t take them with her any farther, while both their fathers stood by, looking impatient and embarrassed at the gap that was being ripped between their children.

“I don’t have kids,” Toomie said, “my wife or me. Never bothered to find out why we couldn’t…It didn’t matter.” He shrugged. “But if we’d had ’em, they’d probably be like you. Your age, maybe a little older.” He waved toward the window. “And this is the world we would’ve given them. We would have loved them to pieces, but we still would have given them Hell.”

He sighed. “Second I saw you, I knew I should’ve taken you in. But I was afraid. Afraid.” He shrugged. “I don’t know—that I wouldn’t have enough to share, or it wouldn’t work out. Maybe that’s why we never had kids ourselves. It was easier not to risk failing.”

He went out and came back with some clothes. A man’s T-shirt that was like a tent on Maria. “It’s not your size, but at least it’s clean.” She draped it over her head and slipped out of Sarah’s party dress. It came off like the skin off a snake, and when it hit the floor, she was glad it was gone.

Toomie smiled at her in the shirt. “We’ll find some real clothes for you. My wife wasn’t too much taller than you. Fatter, though. I’ll dig open her boxes tonight.”

“Toomie?”

“Yeah?”

“What changed? Why help me now?”

“Hell.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. You think it’s easier to just wall yourself off. Just look away. But you know, I’m thinking we’re fooling ourselves. Might as well put a little kindness back in. Sow that seed, and see what comes. If I had kids, I’d sure pray that someone
would look out for them. Wouldn’t just be so busy looking out for themselves that they’d let tragedy happen. Just let it happen and happen without doing something about it.”

He went to the door. “You need a night-light? I got a little solar thing.”

Maria gave him a look. “That’s kid stuff.”

“Oh.” And Toomie seemed sad again, but he didn’t say anything, just nodded and went out.

Maria lay down on the mattress. There was a breeze coming in through the open window, carrying with it the scent of cooking fires and ash from mountain forests far away. Little dots of fire, twinkling like stars.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Toomie called.

“Hey, Toomie?” Maria called.

The big man returned. “Yeah, Little Queen?”

“Thanks.”

“No, Little Queen,” Toomie said. “Thank you.”

L
ucy caught up with Timo at a club shooting. Blue and red strobes, cops all around, busy scene and Timo in the middle of it, catching blood on pavement, sticky already, moisture disappearing into hot dry air.

Bodies lay sprawled in a motley assortment. Women in strappy dresses and boyfriends who looked like narco money and Cali slummers jostled for views from behind the police lines, interested and chatty as cops tried to get statements.

“It’s a bad one,” Timo said. “Chinese don’t like it when one of theirs goes down in the cross fire.” He nodded at the mob of cops. “City’s trying to look like they’re on top of their shit. I don’t think the boosters were looking to make PHOENIX RISING into a campaign for their body count.”

Lucy scanned the jumbled bodies and finally picked out the Chinese guy. Rich, for sure, lying in a puddle of blood, Ray-Ban NU data glasses shattered on his face. A blond woman lay close, a lot of bling on her, diamonds on her fingers, gold necklaces tangled around her neck. Lucy couldn’t tell where she’d been hit. She looked perfect, yet she lay still, her blood and her boyfriend’s mingling in a coagulating pool.

They were holding hands, Lucy realized. They’d died holding hands. What a mess.

Timo finished shooting pictures of the dead Chinese guy. “Little too tidy for the blood rags, but Xinhua loves lawless-in-America stories. With the China angle, I should be able to make some money.”

Lucy counted the bodies. Eight, no ten…Christ, eleven. An odd mishmash of party clothes and beat-up-looking refugees. “What the hell was this? Some kind of narco hit?”

“Texans, if you can believe it.
Pendejos
are all riled up on account of that coyote mass grave thing. All the talk in the dark zone’s about fighting back. Creating Texas militias. Mutual protection posses. Shit like that. This is the fourth gunfight I been at tonight. BodyLotty’s going to be way skewed for the day. Probably the week, too. Texans are all hell-bent to fight back.”

“Against what?”

“Hell if I know. Flynn says this shootout started because someone in line for the club had the wrong drawl. Spilled over. Bunch of other Texans joined in. Solidarity thing. Next thing you know—boom—bodies dropping.”

“A lot of bodies.”

“Yeah, funniest thing is, the person who started it is still alive. Sucker’s not even from Texas. Atlanta, Georgia, of all places.”

Lucy stared at the bodies. A whole pile of misunderstanding. The city felt as if it were imploding.

“You want something?” Timo asked.

“What?” She tore her gaze from the bodies. “Oh. Yeah. I was wondering if you have anyone who could crack a hard drive for me.”

“You looking for scandal pictures?”

She shook her head. “It’s private. I just need it cracked.”

“Private, huh? Well, I can get someone to take a look at it.” He waved for her to follow him into the bar, and she tagged along. The cops let her and Timo by, Timo joking easily with them. Him and the murder police, one chummy posse that rode from bloodbath to bloodbath. All of them enjoying one another’s company as they gathered around the tangled bodies. It reminded her of Torres, back before he’d ended up as one of Timo’s photo spreads.

“You didn’t recognize the Chinese guy, did you?” Timo asked.

Lucy glanced back at the body. “No. Why?”

“Dunno. Seems like we’re getting more cops than I would have expected. Even for a good PR show.” He nodded at a couple plainclothes murder cops who were questioning witnesses. “Don’t normally get a detective on scene this fast. Thought it might be political, too.”

“And if it is?”

“Pics sell better. Xinhua might be willing to pay more than they say at first, if I know the angle.”

“I’ll check.”

“Thanks.” He took the laptop from her hands. The bartender came over, but Timo waved him off. He gave Timo a dark look but left. Timo thumbed through the photos he had on his camera already, nodding to himself. Overhead a couple TVs were running the latest feeds. The dam up on the Colorado was completely gone, and the ones below it, too.

Timo caught the direction of her gaze. “Christ, that’s a mess, ain’t it?”

Lucy nodded, fascinated. So much had been happening in her own life that she’d forgotten that the world around her was still going down the drain. A good portion of a town called Delta seemed to have been completely wiped out. Water blasting and spreading after coming through a canyon. There were aerial views of the destruction.

“Had to be California,” Timo said as he fiddled with the computer. “This is government issue,” he muttered. He glanced up, concerned. “This ain’t a cop’s, is it?”

“No.”

“Well, it might as well be. It’s missing its key.”

“That’s what I wanted you for.”

He grimaced. “I can’t get in. This is designed to feed through a cryptolink. Probably some corporate card—a phone maybe. Might be a piece of jewelry, something like that, passes info back and forth. Crypto goes in one side, comes out the other. If you’ve got the key with you, it works. If you don’t, it don’t.”

“Is there any way to get past the key?”

Timo shrugged. He was watching the TV again. “You ever get the feeling it’s all falling apart?” She couldn’t help laughing, but he wasn’t deterred. “I’m serious.” He jerked his head up at the wreckage of the dams. The footage showed empty lakes with their bathtub rings around their sides. A few muddy pools in the canyon bottoms were all that was left of the azure reservoirs that had been there a day before.

The TV cut to a helicopter view, circling a massive yellow dump truck smashed and bent, spat out upon the riverbanks, fifty miles
downstream from where the dam had broken. It had been crushed and tossed and floated by the violence of the water, and all that was left now was a rounded metal nugget.

“Bet they do Glen Canyon next,” Timo said.

“No. California’s already got control of Lake Powell,” Lucy said. “They’ll pass the water down.”

“Still wouldn’t want to own land below a dam these days.”

“On a beach, either.”

“Tell it, sister.”

Timo went back to fiddling with the computer. “Look, I got a friend, might be able to fake a key. It’ll take time, though. Can I take this for a bit?”

Lucy hesitated.

Timo rolled his eyes. “What, you think I’m going to scoop you or something?”

She tried to make herself not feel anxiety at the thought of the computer disappearing from her control. “It’s valuable.”

“Trust me,” he said. “The lady I’m taking it to, she does security for microbloggers. Helps people like us keep from getting ourselves killed by narcos. She’s good, and she’s on our side.”

Lucy tried to force away her feeling of foreboding and made herself smile. “I’d appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “And lemme know about that China guy. If he’s a big fish, I can probably charge Xinhua triple for good bloody photos.”

He grabbed the laptop and his camera and headed for the door.

Lucy watched the computer walk away.

A
s soon as Lucy left to meet with Timo, Angel decamped to get in touch with Catherine Case.

In the early evening, the heat was coming off the city, dropping into the low hundreds.

A night market had sprung up around the pump. Tiny solar lanterns dangled like fireflies over men and women as they wrapped burritos and
pupusas
and soft tacos in the newsprint of the blood rags.

Angel had spent enough time in disaster barrios to know their rhythms, and he should have felt comfortable in this landscape of chipboard squats, quadruply chained mountain bikes, and cut-to-rags Gore-Tex fabric blocking dust from doors and windows, but even now, with rooms to base out of and his trail behind him dead, he couldn’t quite escape his prickling paranoia.

The place felt charged to him, the dry air wired with as much malevolent electricity as a thunderstorm’s.

Angel leaned against one of the concrete defense barriers that surrounded the Red Cross pump, watching as people lined up for their evening rations. Dirty T-shirts. Cut-off shorts. Swaybacked exhaustion. Cash and cards going into the machine, the pump chiming as jugs filled. The people disappearing back into the rat warrens of the squats, carrying their treasure.

Not far away an old guy had spread a blanket and laid out disposable phones, Clearsacs, and repurposed Chinese-language tablets, along with the latest copies of
Río de Sangre
, cigarettes, and hash gum.

Angel bought a disposable phone.

It took a little while, but eventually he was passed through to Case’s own number.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

“It’s been kind of busy down here.”

What was it about the place that had his hair standing on end? No one he recognized in the crowds. No Calies jumping out from behind the taco vendors. So why was the place getting under his skin? Was it sixth sense, or just the dregs of adrenaline still ticking through him from his shootout with Julio?

“Where are you now?” Case asked.

Across the open plaza, a black guy sporting a Dallas Cowboys jersey was being stalked. A crew of low-rent gangbangers were on him, clearly looking for a fight with the asshole who was willing to fly Texas colors. Angel eased himself back into an alley between stacked shelters, waiting for them to pounce. Instead, people coalesced around the Cowboys fan, men and women lifting shirts to show pistols to the
cholobis
.

“I’m in the middle of a damn tinderbox,” Angel muttered as the
cholobis
lifted their own shirts, showing their own weapons. He backed deeper into the alley.

“What?”

“Never mind.” He tried to keep one eye on the brewing mess and the rest of his attention on Case. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Why haven’t you been answering my calls?”

“I dumped my phone.”

“Why? We lost your car, too. I thought you were dead.”

To Angel’s surprise, the
cholobis
were backing out of the fight, looking tough but clearly seeing that they were outgunned, surrounded by more Texans than they’d anticipated. He wondered if the Cowboys fan had been deliberately baiting them.

“I ditched the car, too,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s been a day full of surprises, and I don’t feel like catching any more.”

“Tell me about it,” she replied. Her voice crackled with bad reception. He wondered if the squats were interfering. She said something else, but static swallowed it. He pressed the phone tighter to his ear. “Say that again?”

The fight had evaporated, but Angel didn’t think the
cholobis
would let it lie. He eased back into the open, scanning for more trouble.

Case’s voice crackled and returned. “Why did you get rid of your car and cell?”

She sounded irritated. Angel thought he caught music in her background. Some kind of string quartet, making civilized music in Catherine Case’s pristine world back inside Cypress, while he waited for a shootout to erupt.

“Listen, I don’t know how long—”

“Just a second.”

He heard her talking to someone away from the phone and stifled his frustration. Where had those little gangbangers gone? He caught muffled voices on the phone, laughter, and then the background noise was gone and Case was back, seeming more focused. “What do you know about the dams?”

“The dams?” Angel tried to track. “You mean the one up in Colorado?”

“Three of them now,” she said. “Blue Mesa Dam. And Crystal, and Morrow Point Dam. They all came down. And now all that water’s heading for Lake Powell and Glen Canyon.”

“Powell’s low. It won’t matter, will it?”

“We assume. The crest will hit in another day. Glen Canyon is spilling water, just to be sure. Which is good for us, in a way. Mead will be fuller than it’s been in years.” There was more noise in the background. “Give me a minute,” Case said.

“Where the hell are you?” Angel asked.

“Just a second—” More muffled conversation. Angel fought the urge to just hang up. He hated having to stand out in the open but didn’t want to lose the connection. The Cowboys guy was still there, like a matador waving a red cape.

They’re picking sides
, he realized.
Everyone’s picking sides
.

Finally Case came back on. “I’m at the Cypress Five launch party. It’s fully subscribed, and we haven’t even broken ground. I’m here to fly the flag for SNWA. Let everyone know that we’re fully guaranteeing the project. One-hundred-year drought insurance, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds like a nice gig.”

Her voice sharpened. “It would be, except I’m standing around smiling and telling investors we knew California was going to make this move on Blue Mesa Dam,
and I had no idea
.”

“You think they’re coming after us, too? Going to hit Lake Mead?”

“My analysts say it will never happen. It would be like dominoes—it could take out all the dams below it. Plus we don’t think Northern California would let the state get dragged into a shooting war over Los Angeles and San Diego water. We think we’re still safe.”

“Is one of your analysts Braxton?”

“Let it go, Angel. I had him checked out. He’s clean.”

“Or smart.”

“You’re the one who hasn’t been answering my calls. Braxton, I can keep an eye on.”

“Since when don’t you trust me?”

“Since I started finding snakes under every rock I turn over. Ellis was supposed to be keeping tabs on what California was doing, and he gave me no warning at all. So here I am walking into an investor relations event, and I know exactly as much as the assholes who are buying the penthouse apartments. So you go ahead and tell me who I should trust.”

“Shit. You think the Calies flipped Ellis?”

“I imagine by now he’s sitting on the beach in San Diego, sipping piña coladas.”

“Or he’s dead.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Julio flipped.”

Silence.

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. He tried to shoot me in the head.”

“Why?”

“Why’d he shoot at me?”

“Why’d he flip?”

“Money, it looks like. He was trying to cut himself in on some water rights one of his people was running down here. Wanted to make a big score, I think.” He hesitated. “I think there’s a good chance he could have been ratting our people out to the Calies. For the right price, I’m starting to think he was pretty much up for anything.”

“Christ. I knew I should have pulled him out of Phoenix sooner. That place is corrupt.”

“Yeah. Could have saved his life.”

“Wait. He’s dead?”

“Pretty dead.”

“You shot back.”

“Hit him, too.”

“It would have been nice to ask him some questions. If we’re exposed because of something he did…”

Angel could almost hear the gears turning inside Case’s quick brain, taking in the new data, building new plans. Adapting. Changing up. He waited patiently, knowing instructions would follow.

Instead of instructions though, she sighed, and when she spoke, her voice sounded dull and exhausted. “Every time I think we’re getting ahead, we catch something like this. I just committed the SNWA to a four-thousand-unit Cypress expansion, and now I don’t know if we’ll even have water in the river by the time it’s completed.”

“You serious?” It was unnerving to hear the doubt in Case’s voice. The Queen of the Colorado, sounding as broken as a North Texas water manager bitching about her stolen Red River. The woman who’d work-released a gangster out of prison, given him a gun, and never shown an ounce of doubt now sounded worried.

Worse, she sounded weak.

“It had to be California who was running Julio,” Case said.

“I don’t think so.” Angel remembered the dead man from Ibis in his fancy apartment, plus the California goons he’d run into at the morgue and again at Taiyang. “I get the feeling Cali’s in the dark, too. Julio only had one guy working with him, some Zoner
cholobi
. It doesn’t feel like he had a lot of muscle backing him.”

“He was freelancing, then?”

“Seems like everyone starts freelancing when they get a whiff of these rights.”

“What are they?”

“Guy who was selling them claimed they were senior Indian water rights that Phoenix owns but don’t got control of.”

“They don’t have control of their own water rights?” Case started to laugh. “How’d they manage that?”

“Never underestimate the incompetence of a government salary,” Angel said. “One of their water lawyers, guy name of James Sanderson, sniffed them out. He was trying to auction them off to California, but he got greedy and teased us with them, too, which got Julio involved. And that got him killed. Funny thing is, I think the Ibis guy who bought up the rights for California tried to go indy himself, too. Soon as people get their hands on these, they start seeing the freelance opportunities.”

“How senior are these rights?”

“If what I’m hearing is true? Senior to God. Maybe a good chunk of the Colorado River. Maybe senior to California, even.”

Case laughed. “You don’t really believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore. Whenever anyone gets hold of them, they act like they found the Holy Grail. Right before they try to sell them off to the highest bidder.”

“Do you know how much I did for Julio?”

“Pulled him out of Hell. You did that with all of us.”

“Everyone’s hedging,” Case said. “That’s what this is about. Rats running for their lifeboats.”

“Had to be a powerful temptation. Those rights are probably worth millions.”

Case laughed. “If they’re as good as you say they are, they might be worth billions.”

That gave him pause.

What was a city’s survival worth? Or a whole state’s? How much would someone pay to keep the water flowing? How much would Phoenix pay now, just to be able to get back on its feet? How much would another city pay to make sure it didn’t end up hollowed out like Phoenix?

“Do you have any idea where these rights are now?” Case asked.

“I think the records are in crypto on a computer we ended up with. Julio was all in a hurry to find a way to crack the codes and get in.”

“It’s too bad you couldn’t just wound him,” Case said. “I would have liked to know how badly damaged we are.”

“I can go back and shake him, but I don’t think it’ll do any good.”

“I’m glad you have a sense of humor about this.”

“I think we’ll be fine. We’ve got the computer. We’ve got people who can crack it open—”

“We?”

Angel hesitated. “There’s a journo involved now, too.”

Case made a noise of exasperation. “This just gets better and better.”

“It’s a long story. She’s kind of tangled up in the whole thing. She was doing stories about the Phoenix Water guy who found the rights in the first place. It’s hard to get her untangled now.”

“How hard can it be?”

Angel hesitated.

“Have you got something for this woman?”

“She’s useful, okay?”

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll find someone who can crack the crypto for you. You have a callback number—?”

“No,” Angel interrupted. “I’m not going anywhere near our people. There’s no telling who Julio sold out. Everyone we know down here could be on California or Phoenix’s watch list. This journo I’m rolling with, she says she’s got friends can pop the computer open. Figure they got to be neutral enough that I don’t have to worry about getting shot at again.”