The Water Knife

  He glanced at Lucy, then looked away.

  “They did a bunch of shit to a village.” He shrugged. “And it was exactly what some militia I worked with did to a bunch of Merry Perrys who tried to swim across the river to Nevada. And that was exactly like the cartels did when they took Chihuahua for good.

  “It’s the same every time. All the rapes. All the chopped-off cocks that get shoved in dudes’ mouths, all the bodies burned with acid or lit on fire with gasoline and tires. Same shit, over and over.”

  Lucy felt sick, listening to him. It was a view of the world that anticipated evil from people because people always delivered. And the worst part was that she couldn’t really argue.

  “Like there’s something in our DNA,” she murmured, “that makes us into monsters.”

  “Yeah. And we’re all the same monsters,” Angel said. “And it’s just accidents that turn us one way or another, but once we turn bad, it takes a long time for us to try to be something different.”

  “Do you think there’s another version of us, too?”

  “You mean like if we’re devils, we also get to be angels?” He tapped his chest, indicating himself.

  She couldn’t help smiling. “You’re probably not the best example.”

  “Probably not.”

  On the screen, Tau Ox was trying to convince some more Merry Perrys not to trust the coyotes who were about to guide them across. No one was listening to him.

  Angel blew out his breath and nodded at the screen. “I think we wish we were good, anyway,” he said. “It feels good to wish we were as good as him.”

  Lucy looked at the TV show, then back at Angel and was hit again by the unsettling impression of naïveté.

  One minute he seemed so hard that he might as well have been sculpted from slaughter and granite. But then, watching Relic Jones set his booby traps for the human traffickers, Angel became almost entirely innocent.

  Enraptured.

  Uncynical.

  “He’s totally going to hand it to the coyotes,” Angel said, and to Lucy he looked like a wide-eyed boy, entranced by the exploits of his hero.

  Lucy couldn’t help laughing. “Do you seriously like this show?”

  “Yeah. It’s great. Why?”

  “It’s propaganda. More than half of this show’s funding comes from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.”

  Angel looked surprised. “Seriously?”

  “You didn’t know?” Lucy shook her head, amazed. “They wanted to make Texas refugees more relatable to Americans in the Northern States. I did a profile of the producers. More than half the show is subsidized. You seriously didn’t know?”

  She started to laugh again, then laughed harder at Angel’s bereft expression as she did. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I thought you knew. Big badass water knife. I thought you people were always in the know.” She shook her head, gasping, trying to stifle her laughter.

  He was looking at the screen, his expression wounded. “I still like the show,” he said. “It’s still good, though.”

  He looked so sad that Lucy took pity on him. She choked back her laughter.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it’s still good.” She curled up next to him and laid her head on his shoulder. “What other episodes do you have?”

  —

  Timo’s call came an hour later.

  “Well, I got what you wanted. Meet me at the Hilton. In the bar.”

  “Seriously?” Lucy asked. “You cracked it?”

  “Yeah, I cracked it.” He hesitated. “But you aren’t going to like what I got.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Meet me in an hour. And for God’s sake, don’t tell anyone we’re meeting.”

  Which gave Lucy time to worry and stew before driving the beat-up Metrocar that she’d borrowed from Charlene downtown, taking dirty looks for her Texas license plates the whole way.

  Inside the Hilton 6 the bar was dim, letting in the blaze of the desert sun through autotints that cast the space in quiet amber.

  Timo was already waiting in a booth by the window, sitting with Ratan’s laptop, looking ethereal in the filtered light. It was as if everything in the bar were glazed by perpetual sunset.

  Timo caught sight of her, but his lips remained pressed in a tight line as she approached.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as she slid in across from him. “What have you got?”

  “We known each other a long time, right?”

  “Sure, Timo. What’s up?”

  He tapped Ratan’s laptop. “This is ugly stuff, girl.”

  She looked at him, confused. “What’s wrong?”

  “When you said you wanted me to look at this, I thought it was…” He lowered his voice. “You didn’t tell me we were pushing up against California.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You know what? I’d say it doesn’t—except I got a visit from a couple of guys this morning who flashed Ibis Exploratory business cards at me. Nice guys, you know? Just a couple nice guys who wanted to know if I was planning on living much longer in Phoenix. Real plata o plomo fuckers, you know?”

  “Ibis?” Lucy felt a chill. “Ibis came to you?”

  “If I’d known you were doing a water thing, I would have used someone else. I thought this was narco.”

  “Ibis knows you have the laptop?”

  Timo gave her pained look. “Actually, they know you have it.” He pushed the computer across to her and stood up.

  “Are you serious?” Lucy hissed.

  “They threatened me, Lucy. Me and Amparo. What am I supposed to do?” He hesitated. “They just want to talk to you.” And then he was up and walking away, walking fast, leaving her sitting in the booth.

  Setting her up.

  A shadow descended on her table, impeccable, settling comfortably into Timo’s place, tugging at his tie, opening his jacket.

  Lucy recognized him as soon as he sat down. It was the same executive who had approached her years ago. The man from Ibis. The man from so long ago who had observed, You write a lot of stories that are critical of California.

  She remembered him pushing the blood rag across to her, along with a pile of Chinese currency. Letting her know the rules of the game that would allow her to keep working in Phoenix.

  The man smiled as he took possession of the booth. He seemed almost unaged. Lucy tried to recall his name.

  “Kota,” she said. “You were David Kota.”

  “Well done,” Kota said, smiling. “We always thought you were good at your work. You had that knack for knowing the right names. Keeping people up in your head, with no help from a device. Sign of a good mind. Made it hard to know what you were up to sometimes, with you keeping so much locked inside your head.” He tapped his glasses, their data glazing the surface, a muddy window into his mind. “Most people need more help for their memories.”

  Behind the data glasses, Kota’s eyes were odd and watery. Liquid almost. Pale blue watery eyes, rimmed red. They were so unnatural, she wondered if he’d had them altered. Little pinpricks of black in the pale blue iris. He seemed to catch her focus.

  “I have allergies,” he explained. “This dust”—he shrugged—“it’s hard to get relief here, even with the filters over in the Taiyang. Everyone cuts corners. They’d never get away with shoddy work like this in California. No one’s really investing long term. Not even the Chinese. Not here, anyway. It’s a doomed place, after all.”

  “I’m not taking money,” Lucy whispered. “I don’t want your money.”

  “That’s good,” Kota said. “I already paid you.”

  “Do you want me to stop writing about something?” She motioned at the computer. “Is it that? The water rights? The Pima tribe? Can’t you just leave it?”

  He smiled. “It’s not what you write that concerns us this time.” They both contemplated the laptop in front of them. “It’s this computer.”

  “You have it. Just take it.”

&n
bsp; “It doesn’t have anything on it.”

  That brought Lucy up short. “It doesn’t?”

  “Well, it’s our company laptop,” he said. “I think I would know quite well what’s on it.”

  “But that’s what has the rights on it.”

  Kota held up a crooked finger. “Don’t play us.” He stared at her. “Where are our water rights? We paid for them. We want them. Ratan bought something, then he claimed he was swindled, but we know that’s not true, now. We know he had those rights. Where are they?”

  “I—” She stared at the laptop and swallowed. “I thought they were on the computer.” She swallowed again. “We all did.”

  Kota’s expression twisted. He leaned forward. “I’ve lost people on this,” he hissed. “Good people. You can’t expect me to believe you don’t have them.”

  “I don’t!”

  “So…the rights evaporated? Poof? Into thin air with them?” His red-rimmed eyes blinked. “I’m giving you one chance, Lucy, and I’d like you to take it seriously. You don’t want your friend Timo to take your last pictures, do you? Down in a swimming pool, all alone? You don’t want it all to end like that, do you?”

  “You’re an animal.”

  Kota pretended shock. “You think I like doing this? I only want what James Sanderson sold us.”

  “And I told you I don’t have it.”

  “What about the water knife? Angel Velasquez. Does he have them? He’s carrying them, isn’t he? He has them with him somehow.”

  “He’d have gone back to Las Vegas if he did.”

  “Unless he’s pulling the same trick that Sanderson did to Phoenix, and Ratan did to us. We’ve noticed a disturbing trend with these rights—whenever someone gets their hands on them, they try to sell them off and make their own score.”

  “I’m telling you I don’t have them.”

  Kota started to say something, then paused. He touched his tie, stroking it, a motion from his throat down to his chest, thoughtful.

  He’s getting instructions, Lucy realized. He was reading information coming in over his data glasses. Other people were in the booth with them, listening.

  “Ah,” he said. “So, then. Perhaps I believe you.”

  But he didn’t stop eyeing her. Lucy was suddenly filled with dread. I should get up, I should walk away. He was about to say something, and she knew it would be awful.

  I should go. I should run.

  And yet she remained frozen, unable to resist the journalist’s urge to find out where this story led.

  What do you want? What are you about?

  She was too attached. She’d been hooked ever since Jamie had told her about his scheme. However much she might lie to herself that she could still walk—or even run—away, she had to know.

  “What do you want?” she asked finally.

  Kota touched his data glasses. Lucy wondered what he was seeing and what kind of people held the leash on a monster like David Kota.

  Kota said, “Let’s assume that certain people I work with know a great deal about you. Your comings and goings, your associations. Let’s assume they know all about you. Much like a neighbor who watches your home for you, feeds your dog when you are gone, and warns you when you are in danger.”

  Sunny.

  “Is this another threat?”

  He gave a sharp negative headshake. “Let’s assume this is a friendly neighbor. Someone who just wants to look out for you.”

  Again a pause.

  “The water knife you’re with,” he said. “Your neighbor thinks it would be good for you to bring him to a certain place, at a certain time—”

  “I won’t do it.”

  Kota went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “There’s a service station, right on the edge of the dark zone. You’ll recognize it for the Merry Perry tent that’s on the corner. A whole revival, right there. All those Texans. All the locals they’ve converted here in Phoenix, everyone singing and stamping and searching for their god’s love.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  He wasn’t deterred. “We’ll expect you there, tomorrow afternoon. At, say, two-fifteen p.m.”

  She had listened too long, she knew. She had to run. Right now, she needed to get up and run. She had to tell Angel and run with him, but Kota’s watery blue eyes held her still. He continued on, inexorable. “I’m a little worried that we’re not reaching each other.”

  “You can’t threaten me. I don’t care what you do to me. You can’t make me afraid. Not anymore.”

  “Threaten you?” Kota’s expression was bland. “Of course not. We’re not like that animal who kidnapped you. We would never hurt you.” He leaned forward. “We like how your fingers tap tap tap out stories. We’re averse to breaking them.”

  He reached into his jacket and laid a handful of photos on the table.

  “But this is your sister, is it not?”

  Lucy gasped. Anna, up in Vancouver. Photos of her picking up Ant from day care, buckling her son into their little blue Tesla, the day damp with gray clouds and verdant green trees behind them.

  More photos, a bit of Stacie in the frame, turned around in her car seat to watch as her mother secured her brother. The picture was so intimately close that the photographer might as well have been standing right next to Anna. Lucy could see a spray of rain on Anna’s hair, diamond liquid beads.

  Lucy stared at the photos, feeling sick.

  She’d lied to herself all along, pretending she could wade among the refugees and swimmers and dealers and narcos and not have any of it rub off on her—as if because she refused to look directly at the beast, the beast would agree not to look at her as well.

  But she’d been lying to herself. A girl in the bottom of a swimming pool became a cop shot dead in his driveway, became a friend dead in front of the Hilton, became Anna, smiling at her children.

  Anna, looking so soft and safe and happy. Anna, who thought the vortex was far away, not understanding that the threads of the world were all connected, and that as Lucy was dragged down, Anna and her children would be sucked down as well.

  This was the illusion Lucy had been living under—the idea that she could keep herself separate.

  But as soon as she started filing stories with her name attached, she’d become another bit in the maelstrom, paddling just as madly as everyone else to keep her head above water and to avoid being sucked down for good. It had just taken her longer to realize it.

  Lucy swallowed. “You’re going to kill Angel, aren’t you? That’s why you want me to bring him.”

  “You misunderstand us.” Kota smiled. “We just want to meet. He’s been slippery in the past, that’s all. If you bring the water knife to us”—he shrugged—“then you go back to tap tap tapping out your stories, and we all forget that we ever had this conversation. It’s a simple thing. Almost nothing, really.”

  —

  When Lucy got back to the flop, she found Angel sprawled on the mattress.

  “Well?” he asked, looking up at her.

  Her throat clogged. She couldn’t find words. All she could do was stare at the bullet wounds and scars on his body. She remembered the Ibis man’s comment—He’s been slippery in the past. Scars over scars. And now the new puckers of shrapnel in his shoulder. The wound that he’d taken rescuing her.

  “Well?”

  She could see his ribs, she realized. He was so very lean. Nothing but muscles and bone strength. He was staring at her.

  “You learn something?” he asked again.

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  She went to the water jug. Poured into a smudgy glass that someone had left behind. Furnishings that people had decided weren’t worth carrying farther north. She drank, convulsively. The water didn’t get rid of the parched feeling in her mouth. She filled another glass of water, feeling sick, not knowing what else to do.

  “We’ve got an address,” she said finally.

  “Oh?”

  She was surprised at how normal she so
unded. She should have sounded like a liar. He was so good at his work, she was sure he’d see her lie. But there was no hint of nervousness in her voice. Nothing at all.

  This is what fear does, she thought. It makes you a perfect liar.

  “There’s a place where Ratan was keeping his work materials. Some kind of safe house for the Calies, I think. It looks like the rights are there.”

  Angel was already getting up, pulling on his ballistic jacket.

  She watched him dress. “You ever get hot wearing ballistics?”

  He grinned at her for a moment, looking young again. “You kidding? Rig like this makes the ladies all think I’m a badass.”

  Lucy made herself smile. He seemed to take it as an invitation. He came across and pulled her close. As he started to kiss her, she had a terrified thought.

  He knows, he has to know.

  She fought the urge to push away, afraid that he’d sense her betrayal. He kissed her again, harder, hungrier, and suddenly she found herself sagging into his arms, kissing him back, hard and desperate. Tasting his tongue. Running her hands down the plane of his stomach to his belt, working the buckle, suddenly crazy, suddenly frantic with desire.

  Everyone dies. We’re all dead in the end, no matter what we do.

  There was nothing to fear. Nothing to regret.

  They clutched close, starved for each other, starved to live a little longer.

  It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s all the same in the end.

  CHAPTER 35

  Maria lay in a cage, fetal around her wounded hand. The blood had clotted, leaving throbbing stumps where her pinky and ring finger had been. She wondered if the wounds would get infected, and then decided it probably didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be around long enough to care. The sun burned down on her and a steady wind scoured the Vet’s compound, adding to her misery. Sands whipped her skin.

  Her pen abutted the fenced area that the hyenas occupied, and the hyenas watched her, tongues out, intrigued after their first taste of her. Whenever she moved, they came loping over to snuffle at the barrier, returning again and again, as if expecting her fence might prove weak.