Water Rites (18 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he reception was for Johnny — some kind of private party. It was the first time they’d gotten together since their near miss in Portland, but this wasn’t Carter’s first choice of situation. He grimaced as he parked his car, wishing that they could be hanging out somewhere over a couple of beers. He wanted to tell Johnny about Nita. Maybe he just wanted to listen to himself try to explain to Johnny how he felt.

Then maybe he’d have a clue.

He slammed the door and locked it. The house was on a narrow street that overlooked the public market and the main streets of The Dalles. It was big, with a fresh new coat of paint. Carter stifled a yawn. He had gotten about two hours of sleep — not nearly enough, but too much if you wanted to look at it that way. He smiled. Nita and Rachel had been asleep when he’d left to review the night’s flow reports and the morning’s business.

Nita. He paused on the wide, railed porch, staring blindly at the old warehouses that lined the riverbed’s edge far below. Her black hair had veiled the pillow and she had smiled a little in her sleep when he had kissed on the cheek. He had felt . . . Carter shook his head impatiently.

The door opened. “You going to stand out here all day?” Johnny grinned at him, casually elegant in a loose shirt and linen slacks. “So I’m sorry I missed you in Portland, already. Stop sulking out there and come on in.”

“I’m not sulking. I’m asleep.” Carter let Johnny sweep him through the door, grinning. “I was sorry to miss you, too.”

“We’ll connect sooner or later.” Johnny slapped him on the shoulder, but his grin seemed a bit strained. “Better yet, we’ll go down to San Francisco and do the clubs.” Johnny held out his hand to a tall, dark-haired woman. “Meet Gwynn. She’s giving this party. She owns the government fuel franchise for The Dalles.”

“It’s a living.” She held out a hand to Carter, smiling. “Although I’d much rather live in San Francisco. When are you going to invite
me
down to do the clubs?” She gave Johnny a smile. “Glad to meet you, Colonel.”

“I’m glad to meet you, too.” Carter returned her light squeeze of greeting. “Thank for letting Johnny drag me along here.”

“Oh I would have invited you anyway.” A dimple showed at the corner of her mouth when she smiled. “Let me get you a glass of wine?”

“Thanks.” Carter watched her walk gracefully away. Johnny’s current lover?

She was the type of woman Johnny fell for — tall and elegant. They always reminded Carter of Amber, Johnny’s ex-wife. Although he was never going to say
that
out loud. Twenty-five or thirty men and women milled in the long, well-furnished front room. A few of them browsed the laden table set up in front of the windows. The rest clustered at the far corner of the room, watching some kind of performance. A burst of clapping and laughter greeted Carter.

“A magician. The guy’s pretty good.” Johnny jerked his head at the crowd. “Gwynn hired him off a streetcorner down in Bonneville. Here’s your wine.” He took the glass from Gwynn’s hand and kissed her lightly and proprietarily on the cheek. “When the show’s over, Gwynn can introduce you around.”

“So what brings you to The Dalles?” Carter asked as he wandered over to the buffet table with Johnny. “Gwynn?” He gave Johnny a sideways look. “Or business?”

“Actually, I wanted to see you. Gwynn and I are old news. I think she likes you, by the way.” Johnny smiled, but a serious tone underlay his light words. “I want the lowdown on what’s going on here. Hastings has been putting in some heavy troop requests. I want to hear your side of it before we shell out.” He took Carter by the elbow, steering him toward the far corner of the room. “What’s happening here?”

“Nothing, yet.” Carter sipped his red wine. It tasted like real stuff — not a cheap tank grown blend. Gwynn must make good money on her fuel franchise. “The troop request is real, Johnny. I was planning to lean on you. We’ve got a sabotage situation that’s escalating fast, and not enough people to deal with it. We need more bodies.”

“That’s bad.” Johnny frowned into his own glass. “Like I told you —Mexico is getting restless. That means there’s no extra water to play with. If someone blows a big hole in the Pipeline, the valleys dry up.”

“So give us more people.” Carter watched Johnny’s face, strugging with rising frustration. Johnny wasn’t hearing him. This was Johnny Seldon, member of Water Policy. The friend you could reach. Not this guy. “Hastings said he got turned down.”

“He did. I can’t do it, Carter.” Johnny smiled a smooth, seamless smile. “Chicago scared a lot more people than you. Military force to protect water flow was a hot issue, and the media would love to go after us again.”

“You think I don’ t know that?” Carter drained his glass, trying to hold on to his anger. “Damn it, Johnny, we’re going to have trouble if we don’t get extra people.”

“I don’t think you understand.” Johnny lowered his voice. “No one has more power than we do — not even the president — but it’s not a sure thing.” His eyes glittered in the light from the window. “You better believe we know it, even if we pretend to be so civic minded and above it all. The country amended the Constitution once to create Water Policy. They could do it again and take it all away. That amendment only passed by a hair-thin margin.”

And a lot of people had claimed it was rigged. “So the Committee’s going to play to the media?” Carter set his glass down on the windowsill very gently. “And we can go to hell?”

“Come off it, Carter. You’re talking like I’m the enemy.” Johnny sighed and sipped his wine. “Look, I’ve got a little leverage, even if the old boys think I’m still in diapers. I’ll try, okay? Now I’ve got to go socialize. I’m Gwynn’s major attraction this afternoon — and I need to feel some people out about things.” He rolled his eyes. “This job is twenty-four hours a day.”

“Thanks, Johnny.” Carter touched his shoulder lightly.

He wanted to feel hopeful, but he simply felt depressed. He’d known Johnny long enough to know when Johnny was sweet-talking his way out of trouble. Oh, Johnny had that tone down pat. And he’d just used it, promising to look into Hastings’ troop request.

So Hastings wasn’t going to get his troops and Carter was on his own. Dan Greely’s volunteers looked better and better. Carter retrieved his glass from the window, wanting more wine, wanting suddenly and intensely to get drunk, go back and get into bed with Nita and pretend this wasn’t happening. It hurt that Johnny had used that voice on him. He could have just said no, up front. Too bad, buddy. I’ve got my own row to hoe. Carter could’ve understood that. Carter shook his head.

A waiter offered a tray of full glasses and whisked away Carter’s empty one. He wandered back to the buffet table, looking for Johnny and not finding him, scanning the grazing crowd. He knew some of them — or knew who they were, anyway. They were the upper crust of The Dalles; the professionals, the business owners, the owner of a small trucking firm. Only a couple of farmers, as far as he could tell. No one from the Coalition meeting, not that this surprised him.

“Colonel Voltaire.” A very tall, dark-haired woman in a suit wandered up. “How nice to meet you. I’m Amanda Morrisy.” She offered him a long-fingered hand. “I’m with Pacific Biosystems.”

“Nice to meet you.” Carter wondered how she had known his name. Johnny? “I didn’t know Pacific Biosystems had an office in The Dalles.”

“We don’t.” Her smile was cool. “I’m in town looking for contract business. She made a face. “Without much success, I might add. I find a lot of resistance to biomass crops along the riverbed.”

“So I’ve heard.” Carter returned her firm grip. He had to look up to meet her gaze. “Why do you think that is?”

“These marginal farmers are always conservative and closed minded.” She shrugged. “You have to ram every change down their throats. It doesn’t matter if it will benefit them or not; if it’s new, it’s bad.”

Carter kept his expression neutral, remembering the Corbett woman’s face at the meeting. “I hear that the salt-water irrigation in the Valley does a lot of damage.”

“It would be a wasteland if we didn’t use seawater in the mix.” She shrugged. “The old crops would be too expensive for anyone to buy and US food reserves are down to about thirty-six hours’ worth.” She was still smiling and her tone was polite, but her eyes had gone cold and sharp. “I don’t see how anyone can seriously criticize a system that produces a very good and consistent yield.”

“I wasn’t criticizing.” Carter smiled politely and edged toward the table.

“I want you to know how much we appreciate Corps support.” She followed him. “We depend on the water that comes down both the Klamath and Willamette shunts, and by augmenting it with seawater, we make it work that much harder for all of us. It would be cost effective to pipe seawater up the Gorge you know.” She smiled. “Once, this was highly productive farmland. You do a fine job here, you know?”

“We do our best.” Carter gave her a thin smile. She was after something. “Excuse me.” He reached for a plate. The magic show was over and people were heading for the table en mass. He wasn’t really hungry, but it gave him an excuse to put bodies between them.

“She’s feeling you out. They’d like to have you in their pocket, too.” The low voice at his elbow was familiar. Carter turned, looked down at the small man with the thick tail of blond hair. “So you’re the magician from Bonneville.” Carter smiled. “I should have guessed. Jeremy, right? Jeremy Barlow.”

“That’s me.” Jeremy gave Carter one of his crooked grins. A small green frog appeared on the tablecloth beside a bowl of mixed nuts. It stared up at them for a moment, throat pulsing, then leaped onto a cheese plate and vanished. Behind them, someone squeaked in surprise.

“That is some gadget.” Carter shook his head as Jeremy surreptitiously pocketed his projector. The frog seemed to have bought them some space at the table, and from the look of innocence on Jeremy’s face, Carter suspected that had been his intention. “What did you mean?” He lowered his voice. “About Pacific Bio’s pocket?”

“What I said.” Jeremy reached for a small sandwich, picking it up carefully with his thick, clumsy fingers. “They own a lot of politicians — they pretty much run California, and I guess they weren’t too ethical about how they got that job. Now they’re after what they don’t already own in Oregon. Or so I’ve heard.” He bit into his sandwich.

“Where did you hear this?” Frowning, Carter balanced his plate lightly on his fingers. “I haven’t heard it.”

“Maybe you don’t listen to the right people.” Jeremy picked up another sandwich, then frowned at it. “I ride with truckers a lot.”

“Truckers stay out of politics.”

“Yeah, but they don’t miss much. You can’t stay out of something unless you know where and what it is, and they make sure they know it all.” His lopsided grin came and went again. “I believe them.” All trace of a smile vanished from his eyes. “I move around a lot. I’ve been down in California and back east. Pacific Bio owns a lot of ag land. They own the people who work it.” He looked at the half-eaten sandwich in his hand, put it down. A shiny black fly appeared on it, large as Carter’s thumb. It took off, zoomed in a tight silent circle above the sandwich, and then popped like a soap bubble. “It’s tough trying to fight the Dry,” Jeremy said softly. “You plow your soul into the land, because it’s the only way you can keep yourself hanging on, keep watering, and weeding, and praying you make harvest this year.” He looked up, his eyes as dry and blue as the sky. “When you lose that land, when you walk away from it, you leave your soul behind.”

“Poetic, but hardly true.” Morissy leaned over Carter’s shoulder, smiling. “If we contract to grow biomass on someone’s land, we don’t buy the land. We don’t need the taxes. We simply offer a contract that covers our investment in cloned bush-starts and equipment. The farmer still owns the land. He sells to us, and we pay him. Simple transaction.”

“Except that they owe you for the bushes. And they owe those taxes.” Jeremy shrugged. “Debt can be a pretty heavy chain to drag.” A glowing insect popped into the air between them and vanished abruptly.

Morrisy flinched. “Did you contract some land to us and then regret it?” Her smile had gone tight. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

“No.” Jeremy picked up his plate with the uneaten sandwich on it. “My father never contracted our land. It died, and so did he. It wasn’t your fault.” He gave the Pacific BioSystems executive a slight bow. “Maybe I’ll see you in The Dalles,” he said to Carter. “Take it easy.”

“They have to blame someone.” Morrisy gave Carter a wry, conspiratorial smile. “You much catch a lot of it, too. You’d think we’d engineered the climate change just so we could make a buck.”

“Yes.” Carter looked after Jeremy. “We catch a lot of that.” Maybe that’s all it was — a sourceless anger and darkness, like in Chicago. Blame for no reason. If that was true, nothing he did in The Dalles was going to help. He frowned.

Dan Greely had made that anger feel pointed and personal. So had Sandy Corbett. And Nita, who had never stood in a shower.
When you walk away, you leave your soul behind.
Had one of them shot Delgado’s’ brother and Mike Watanabe? Harold Ransom, or the Corbett woman, or even Greely? It wasn’t at all impossible. Where the hell could you stand in this mess?

Carter felt a tiny click as the stem of his wineglass snapped. He stared numbly at the small blossom of crimson on his palm.

“Hello.” Gwynn paused on her way across the room, two full glasses in her hand. “What did you do?”

“I cut myself.” Embarrassed, he grabbed for a napkin. “I’m sorry about the glass.”

“Never mind about the glass. Come on.” She took him firmly by the elbow, smiling over his shoulder at Morissy. “I’ve got a first aid kit in the kitchen.”

Carter followed her through a swinging door and into a large, bright kitchen. A big sink was set into a center island with a polished granite top. Stainless steel appliances hummed and copper pots and pans hung from wrought-iron hooks overhead.

“Wash your hand.” She pushed him toward the sink. “I’ll get something for it. You know, I was about to rescue you from Pacific Bio’s clutches. You didn’t have to get so dramatic.” She winked at him over her shoulder as she rummaged in a cupboard.