A novel
“…woe to those who dwell on the Earth…”
Revelation 8.13
One
The smokestacks stood silent. Five massive concrete smokestacks—the exhaust towers for the Winesta Pulp and Paper mill. Usually the mill ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But this was maintenance week, and the plant was shut down.
Gregg McKinnon stared at the towers. It was impossible not to be awed. Each smokestack was as wide as a house and as tall as a redwood. In the dark, Gregg couldn’t even see the tops, just the hole in the canopy of stars. There was a solidity about these smoothly-shaped towers—structures that would outlast the civilization that had built them. And Gregg was there to blow them up. It scarcely seemed possible.
J.J. Jones hadn’t been the least bit concerned. “Stuff’ll knock ‘em right over,” J.J. had promised. “Like they was made out of sand.” And J.J. had dropped a huge bag of homemade plastic explosives on the table, making Gregg jump. J.J. had laughed. “It ain’t gonna blow. Not without a detonator.”
And J.J. had gone on to explain about harmonics, and reinforcing frequencies, and sequential detonation until Gregg’s eyes glazed over. Finally, J.J. had drawn a diagram, laying out the exact location of each charge. The firing sequence would be preset.
Gregg hoped the stuff worked. There were thirteen other people on this job, and it would sure be embarrassing if the bombs turned out to be chewing gum. Gregg didn’t know shit about explosives and had had to trust J.J., the only demolition expert he could find. When you were part of a fringe environmental group it wasn’t possible to call up the local Chamber of Commerce and ask for a referral. And OUR ONLY HOME! (OOH!—pronounced oh) was pretty fringe.
Gregg turned around and waved.
Four other guys trotted forward, each carrying a large pack.
Gregg noted with pride that these men moved almost silently. Training. Lots and lots of training. The key to success.
Gregg took another look around.
Spotlights on the buildings had turned the night into day. If routine counted for anything, the three old-timers working as security guards would be starting their mid-shift break, settling in with coffee and donuts to watch late-night TV.
Gregg checked his watch. He didn’t need to give instructions, because every member of his team knew exactly what to do. The operation had been meticulously planned, like all OOH!’s operations. That was why OOH! was still in business.
OOH! had been a wrench in the gears of industry for the last three years, ever since Gregg and two of his buddies got sick and tired of being outspent, outlobbied and outmaneuvered by corporate America. They were fed up with CFCs, incinerators, the Forest Service, and pesticides. And they were through compromising. Go talk to the California condor about the need to compromise.
OOH!’s first operation had been the crippling of a fleet of logging trucks and skidders that had been poised to move into an old-growth forest. The destruction of those machines delayed the logging long enough to get a court injunction. And while the lawyers were fighting it out with motions and countermotions, Gregg and his buddies were spiking trees. That forest was still standing.
That success was followed by knocking out the power supply to a major coal-burning utility, shutting down the plant for two weeks—OOH!’s bit to help staunch global warming and combat acid rain.
After the coal plant, people began to notice, like the FBI. Other environmental activists noticed, too. They wanted to join. OOH! now numbered twenty-nine.
Gregg checked his watch again. It was time to move up.
He nodded to the others. “Good luck,” he whispered.
Gregg grabbed his pack and headed toward the towers. One of the four men went with him; the other three moved off to the right. Of the fourteen people on this job, five were on the towers, four were on the buildings, and the rest were spread out among the various pipes and conduits. The plan was to completely destroy the mill,
Gregg reached the shadow of a supply shed and stopped. 11:37. They would be starting in eight minutes.
“Eight minutes,” he whispered to the guy beside him.
Peter Thompson grinned. “Not long now.”
Gregg nodded. “Those maintenance guys are going to have a little extra work tomorrow.”
Peter laughed.
Peter came from Florida, near Tallahassee. He had been with OOH! almost a year. Before OOH! he had belonged to Earth First!, and before that he’d worked for Greenpeace. Peter’s years in the environmental movement had been his ticket into OOH! OOH! only took seasoned activists, to avoid informers. And each new member had to prove himself. Peter had chosen to dismantle a power pylon. The resulting collapse had plunged southwest Idaho into darkness for six hours.
Gregg crouched a little lower, and scanned the yards and empty parking lots. The mill seemed unusually quiet. Gregg was sure he had heard birds the previous two evenings. “It strike you as kinda quiet here tonight?”
Peter shrugged. “Nobody’s around.”
“I mean birds and frogs and stuff.”
Peter snorted. “They’re probably all dead. Just look at this place.”
The mill was like a moonscape. The only thing green was the paint on the buildings.
Gregg looked up at the smokestacks again. On a normal day tons of poisons sailed up those stacks. Up, up and away. Until rain and wind and gravity brought it all back down to become a part of the food chain—good things for little boys and girls.
Gregg pulled his shirt closed and buttoned it. The day had been warm, but now a chill wind was blowing down the valley. “Last night I heard birds.”
Peter pulled his shirt closed. “I’m surprised you were able to hear anything over the river.”
The Columbia River.
It was loud. Real loud. With a nice wet smell that spoke of melting snow in the mountains. Sixty years earlier it had been a beautiful river, a raging torrent, with millions of salmon and trout. Grizzlies had eaten themselves sick during the runs. But now the river was practically dead, clogged with silt from logging runoff, and blocked by dams. Scores of dams. The salmon were almost gone.
And no one really gave a shit. The creatures and plants of the world were disappearing, and the government called for more studies. That was why Gregg, and thirteen other members of OOH!, were sitting there in the dark. It was time to register a complaint.
And what better target than Winesta, the largest pulp and paper mill in the country. This one mill had already eaten enough trees to cover the state of Ohio, and it didn’t show any signs of losing its appetite.
“Show time,” Peter said.
“Yeah, show time,” Gregg replied. Gregg hefted the pack of explosives onto his shoulder and turned toward Peter. “Good luck.” They shook hands, and started across the empty lot.
On the other side of the mill, Jennifer Douglas was knocking on the door of the hut where the three security guards were watching TV.
Will Harkins jumped. It was almost midnight and he sure as hell wasn’t expecting anyone. He set down his cup of coffee and undid the safety strap on his holster. “You boys expecting anyone?” he asked.
The other two guards shook their heads.
“Hello-o?” Jennifer called out.
Jennifer had a sweet voice, a voice that made Will want to melt right where he was standing.
“Hey Charley, turn down that TV.” Will’s hand instinctively relaxed on his gun.
“I ran out of gas,” Jennifer explained through the door. “And my cell phone’s dead. Do you have a phone I could use, please?”
Will opened the door. The young girl standing in front of him was just the prettiest little thing he’d ever seen, from her straight blond hair, to her dimpled cheeks, to her small breasts, pointing right up toward heaven—but never mind that. Will straightened himself. The girl was an exact picture of what his granddaughter would look like in five years, God help him.
“Now you come right in here, young lady, before you catch a chill.” Will moved to the side so Jennifer could step in.
“I ran out of gas,” Jennifer explained again.
Will didn’t ask what she was doing way the hell out by the mill in the first place. Time enough to find out later.
Will nodded toward the heater in the middle of the hut. “You just set yourself down a second and have a nice hot cup of coffee. We’ll round up some gas for your car.” Will glared at the guy sitting next to the heater. “Move on over, Charley, so this little girl can get herself warm.”
Charley reluctantly slid to the side.
“You’re very kind,” Jennifer said, stepping into the room.
Will nodded. He liked that she was polite. Young people were usually surly as badgers. Will was facing away from the door and didn’t see the three young men who followed Jennifer in. All three men were wearing masks, and one was carrying a shotgun.
“Just stay calm, gentlemen,” the man with the gun said. “No need for anyone to get hurt.”
Will looked at Jennifer.
Jennifer shrugged. “I’m sorry. Really sorry. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Will snorted.
In a second all three guards had their wrists taped.
“You be careful with these three,” the man with the gun said. “They may be old but they ain’t dead.”
Jennifer took the shotgun. “I’ll be fine. You get along, now.”
Will Harkins could tell it wasn’t the first time this little girl had handled a gun.
Jennifer smiled at him. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re just going to take a little walk. This isn’t about you at all.”
Will got all red in the face. “What do you mean this ain’t about me? I work here.”
Jennifer laughed. “Not for much longer.” She pointed the gun at the door. “Time we got going.”
She guided them out of the hut and away from the mill. A hundred yards down the road they found some old stumps to sit on.
“Just what are you and your friends planning here, young lady?” Will wanted to know.
Jennifer set the gun against a stump and smiled. It was one of the most contented smiles Will could remember seeing.
“Why, we’re going to blow this fucking paper mill right off the face of the earth.”
Gregg was almost done setting the charges. He had laid out the pattern with a tape measure, then had placed the bombs. Now he was setting the detonators. He looked around, but couldn’t see Peter or any of the others, which meant he was right on schedule.
Gregg put the last detonator in place, checked his work, then turned around and stopped. Someone he didn’t know was standing in front of him holding a submachine gun, and the gun was pointed right at his stomach. The man with the submachine gun didn’t say anything; he didn’t even smile with satisfaction. Gregg let the pack he was holding slide to the ground, and put his hands in the air as high as he could reach.
At that moment, Gregg heard the helicopters. They were rising up over the bank of the river. Commandos began dropping out of the sky. As soon as they hit the ground, they ran toward him. It happened very quickly.
A loud ripping boom tore the air.
Gregg turned. One of the towers began to go, slowly at first, then all in a rush. Thunder rolled through the ground.
Gregg let out a whoop. A commando knocked him to the ground.
Of the fourteen members of OOH! at the mill, eleven had to be hospitalized. One was sent to the morgue, a victim of the explosion. Only Jennifer escaped uninjured, because when the commandos went for her, Will jumped in between.
“No need to swing that stick, Mister,” Will said, staring down the guy in front of him. “She won’t cause you no trouble.” Will turned to check on the other cops. Maybe this little girl had some strange ideas, but damned if he was going to let these men beat her to death.
The papers carried the news of the raid the next day, with a list of those arrested, and the name of the man who had been killed. There was no mention of Peter Thompson, because Peter was let go. Peter was a snitch who had been working undercover in the environmental movement for five years, placed there by a man named Roscoe Paradise.
Two
R. Roscoe Paradise was sipping champagne, and not the fifteen-dollar-a-bottle stuff. This was tete de cuvee. Roederer Cristal. The wine was especially good because Roscoe wasn’t footing the bill. The boss (and so the American taxpayer) was footing the bill. Roscoe had to laugh. The American taxpayer was a schmuck.
Roscoe liked good champagne. He also liked good food, expensive cars, and easy women, and could just about afford these things.
He took another sip of champagne, and checked the room—a huge private office that could have passed for the smoking room in an exclusive men’s club. The office was familiar because Roscoe was a frequent guest.
Even if he had wanted to, Roscoe knew he couldn’t have afforded anything in the room. The paintings and sculptures were all originals and all by famous artists. The massive desk had come from Japan, handcrafted out of snakewood without the aid of glue or nails. The room-sized rug was from Iran. The chairs from some flouncy New York designer. The wallpaper a special run. Antique Tiffany lamps provided just the proper highlights.
An impeccably done office. And most amazingly of all, it didn’t look like it had been assembled, but rather that it had always existed.
The office belonged to a man named William Peers Stillman, Roscoe’s boss. Stillman was the CEO of the United Chemical Corporation, a holding company that consisted of other corporations that were themselves huge conglomerates. An empire Stillman had built by himself.
Stillman raised his glass.
Roscoe raised his glass. It was important to be dutiful to one’s master, especially when one’s master was worth several billion dollars.
“Another perfect job,” Stillman pronounced.
Roscoe would have glowed with pride, but Roscoe wasn’t a light bulb. Instead, he nodded and emptied his glass. He wasn’t there because Stillman wanted to celebrate; the man did that with his friends. Roscoe was there because Stillman had something on his mind, something slimy, because slimy was what Roscoe did.
Out the window—just the proper-sized picture window—Lake Michigan glittered in the sun. A handful of sailboats were scudding about in the breeze.
William Stillman had happened on Roscoe Paradise twelve years earlier. Roscoe was one of several hundred people who applied for the job of chief security officer. After Stillman and Roscoe covered the niceties, and after they went over the details of Roscoe’s resume, Stillman came to the point: he wanted to know whether Roscoe, on occasion, would be interested in doing some off-the-books, overtime work for cash, lots of cash.
“For you or for the company?” Roscoe wanted to know.
“For me,” Stillman replied.
They didn’t go into the details. Roscoe’s resume had covered the details.
Roscoe said okay. Overtime had always been the name of the game.
Stillman pointed at the newspaper on the corner of his desk. “You made the greenies look like shit—murder, terrorism, conspiracy.”
Roscoe had seen the article that morning. The members of OOH! were in oh! so much trouble.
“How’d you blow that tower, with all those cops around?”
Roscoe shrugged. It was none of Stillman’s business how he’d managed that; it was only Stillman’s job to pay up—two percent of the rebuilding cost. Not a bad deal for the company, because the company had been planning to tear down that particular tower anyway. Now insurance would pay for it. Only a two percent loss, plus the deductible. And no demolition costs. Not a bad deal for the company at all. Roscoe wondered whether he was selling himself cheap?
“Where’s Thompson now?” Stillman wanted to know.
“Guarding a toxic dump in Kansas.”
That was Peter Thompson’s reward for five years of tip-offs and information that had saved United Chemical millions. That was how Roscoe always rewarded the men he had no further use for. And Thompson, like the amateur he was, hadn’t prepared for this betrayal; he hadn’t set up any leverage.
The plant in Kansas—a mismanaged hazardous waste dump—oozed all sorts of unsightly liquids. It was impossible to even drive by the place without your eyes tearing. After five years in the environmental movement, Roscoe figured Thompson would have a pretty good idea what that dump would do to him. The kid would wish he’d stayed with the greenies.
“You sent him to a toxic dump?” William Stillman shook his head. “You are one mean fucker.”
Roscoe loved it when the boss talked dirty. It made Stillman seem like one of the guys.
It was Stillman who had initiated the campaign against environmental groups. Stillman had seen the writing on the wall, and the writing was green.
Stillman had started off in scrap metal, taking a family backyard dump operation and building it into a regional giant, mostly by convincing other junkyard dealers to only sell to him. When there was trouble, Stillman hired people to take care of the trouble. When there was big trouble, Stillman dragged his competitor into court and slowly bled him to death. It wasn’t the man in the right who won, but the man who was most determined.
So when it looked like the greenies were going to go on the attack and stay on the attack, Stillman pulled Roscoe off his job as head of security to deal with the problem, promoting Roscoe to vice president for community relations.
Roscoe loved that title. That title got him more babes than his good looks and big muscles ever had. A title, and a roll of hundred dollar bills—tipped the scale every time. The company’s quarterly update had even featured a small article, complete with photo.
What Roscoe actually did, when he wasn’t sipping champagne, was beat down local activist big mouths, whistleblowers, and organizers. Usually, these people weren’t much of a worry, because federal, state and local regulators simply ignored them. After all, it wasn’t the greenies who would be offering six-figure lobbying jobs upon government retirement. But sometimes these activists managed to get the press, and even entire towns, worked up. That was when Roscoe stepped in.
At six feet tall, two hundred ten pounds, Roscoe looked like Dick Butkus on his worst and meanest day. Roscoe spent six years as a Marine, then ten years working for the FBI. When he finally got sick of public service (and public pay), he hired himself out as a consultant (mercenary). Roscoe had fought in three different civil wars, once on both sides. He’d run arms and drugs.
Just an ordinary resume for a merc. Except at forty-seven, Roscoe was still alive while most of his compatriots were not.
“This group CEASE is starting to be a problem,” Stillman said.
Roscoe knew the group. It had been formed a little over a year ago and had, almost overnight, become a major headache. For some reason CEASE (Citizens for Ecology And a Sane Environment) had decided that United Chemical was America’s least-wanted corporation and was doing everything it could to bring the company down.
“I know the group.” Roscoe had two file drawers full of CEASE’s mischief.
“They’ve got the local action committees organized. It’s becoming a campaign. I want it stopped.”
Roscoe was already on it. There was this one particularly persistent organizer who would now always be a bit disorganized in his personal life, like not being able to tell his left hand from his right hand. Somehow the kid had fallen off a highway overpass.
Stillman pointed a finger. “Do you have someone out there, like Thompson?”
Roscoe still had his best boy still in place—Richard Corbitt. Corbitt had been undercover for six years now, and Roscoe didn’t figure Richard would get stuck at a toxic dump when he finally returned to corporate respectability. The kid was too smart.
“I got a guy named Richard Corbitt.”
“Can you get him in?”
Roscoe didn’t have an answer to that. He’d been trying to come up with an angle for the past couple of months. The problem was, CEASE was a relatively small group, all good friends, and Corbitt didn’t happen to be one of the friends. And you couldn’t be pushy anymore. Overenthusiastic volunteers were usually patted on the head, and sent off to canvas door to door, a good way to neutralize provocateurs.
“They’re a very tight group. They’re not looking for new recruits.”
Stillman stared. Time and opportunity waited for no man. “I guess you’ll just have to create an opening.”
Roscoe nodded. He hoped the battery in his tape recorder hadn’t worn down.
Roscoe always carried a tape recorder, a very expensive tape recorder, with a good mike. Voice activated, so he didn’t need to make funny scratchy movements whenever he wanted to turn it on. Roscoe had a nice collection of tapes documenting all manner of incriminating statements made by the boss. The tapes were Roscoe’s retirement account.
Stillman flipped a file across the desk.
Roscoe picked it up and opened it.
“They sent this to me!” Stillman said.
Inside the file was a mailing CEASE had sent to every United employee. The group had somehow gotten hold of the company’s personnel files. The packet, in addition to a green reading list, highlighted environmental degradations and worker-safety violations at United facilities, illustrating a company-wide disregard. Medical studies had been included.
Roscoe wondered where the hell CEASE had found that information. Even the government didn’t have those files.
The mailing was intended to inspire action among the work force, and had done just that. Whistleblowers were coming forward every day. And every accusation seemed to make it into the newspapers.
“They sent this to me!” Stillman stated. “Is that a challenge, or what?”
Roscoe shrugged. It was only a challenge if you accepted it; otherwise, it was an empty gesture.
Stillman slammed his fist down on the desk. “That goddamned faggot financier. You know what a mailing like this costs? We’ve got over fifty thousand employees!”
CEASE, unlike most environmental groups, didn’t have to go begging door to door; they had an endowment. A man named Benjamin Wilcox was the benefactor. Wilcox, a Wall Street whiz kid dying of AIDS, had decided he wanted to make amends for having made a fortune off companies that had trashed the environment. At the end of his life, he came to the realization that fresh air and clean water weren’t such bad things, and so gave his money to an environmental activist by the name of Leandra Trilling. And Leandra, with her friends, founded CEASE.
“I want to bury these assholes,” Stillman said. “Can you handle that?”
Roscoe looked offended. Burying people was his life’s work. It wouldn’t even be that much of a challenge, because the members of CEASE generally announced which organizational meetings they’d be attending.
Three
“And how many times, would you say, you witnessed a leak from those tanks?” Leandra Trilling asked. She sat, pencil poised above page three of CEASE’s standard report form.
Daniel Witherspoon laughed. “Witnessed? Christ, I was living in that shit. There was dribbles every day.”
“For the fourteen years you’ve been working there?”
“That’s right.”
“And nothing was ever done?”
“Cost more for repairs than what they lose down the drain.”
“A holding tank?” Leandra wondered.
Daniel Witherspoon laughed again, a cracked laugh, dry as the skin on his wrinkled face. “Just down the drain. Then into a ditch out back the plant; then into the river when the ditch overflows, each time it rains.” Daniel nodded. He was only thirty-nine but looked fifty. “Used to be fish in that river, fish you could eat, pretty as that bridge of yours over there.” Daniel pointed out the window at the Golden Gate Bridge, glittering in the sun like a trout breaking the water. “And mine ain’t the only tanks leaking. No, ma’am. You walk through that plant you better be wearing galoshes. And that ain’t counting when there’s a busted pipe, or someone leaves a valve open.”
Leandra recorded it all. Frequency of leaks. Chemicals involved. Number of times Daniel Witherspoon had notified his supervisor. Corrective actions taken. The success of those actions. Recurrences. Then on to medical problems: Witherspoon’s personal medical history; the medical history of his parents, his children, his co-workers—their names. For seventeen pages.
Filling out these reports made Leandra angry: fourteen years of chemical leaks at this one plant; eight years of medical problems. And while it might be impossible to absolutely prove that Daniel Witherspoon’s skin and kidney problems were related to the chemicals he was exposed to every day, one sure grew suspicious after ten or twenty or a hundred similar cases.
Leandra looked down at the last thing she had written. It was the reason Daniel Witherspoon had traveled all the way to San Francisco from Harton, Missouri.
“You see,” Daniel continued, “me and my buddies, we got to talking one day, after a couple of beers. Health stuff. It’s embarrassing to say; we never talk about that stuff. It’s like, if you get sick, you’re weak; or you ain’t taking care of your family right, if they get sick. But we’d had a bunch of beers, and we started talking. Seems, we was all of us not quite right. We all work the same part of the factory, mixing chemicals in these big vats, stuff slopping all over the floor, getting on your clothes, breathing it in. They had to give us special shoes; used to melt the rubber right off the soles.” Daniel looked down at his shoes. “They kept saying we ought to wear respirators, but the damn things they give us wouldn’t let the air through; and anyway, I think it was the stuff soaking through our skin that was the worst.” He held up his hands and pulled back his sleeves.
Leandra hadn’t noticed it before, with the sleeves down, but the skin to the middle of Daniel’s forearms was stained a yellow-gray brown. And his arms were covered with a nasty, pussy rash.
“We all been to the company doc. But the doc just tells us to quit smoking and drinking, and what do we expect if we eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, and watch the tube all the time. He said there’s nothing wrong with us, except we’re lazy.”
Daniel winced as he said that. “Well let me tell you, lady, I’ve worked full time since I was twelve. First on the farm helping my daddy, then, after I graduated high school, in a steel mill. And when the mill shut down, the chemical plant. And for half those years I worked two jobs. Ain’t no one except this damn doctor ever called me lazy.”
Leandra’s father had been a farmer; no one had worked harder. Daniel Witherspoon was the same sort of man.
Leandra stared at Daniel’s chemical-stained arms. She was embarrassed to be interviewing him, she in her expensive city clothes, her life made easy by the products he manufactured, products that were killing him.
Leandra was almost exactly Daniel’s age, but with her hair still dark, and with a lean muscular body, she looked ten years younger.
Daniel Witherspoon didn’t work at the United Chemical Corporation because he was stupid; he worked there because it was the only job in town. He had been born in Harton, Missouri. His father had been born there. His grandfather had bought a farm there. Daniel Witherspoon had three kids and a house he probably couldn’t sell. He didn’t have a whole lot of choices. But that didn’t mean he was happy.
There was the soft rap of knuckles on the door.
Leandra looked up. Joanne Patterson was standing there, Leandra’s best friend and co-founder of CEASE.
Joanne smiled. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m off.”
Leandra turned to Daniel. “Just give me a second.”
Leandra stood and walked to the door. When she reached Joanne, she gave her a hug. “Thanks again.”
Joanne smiled. “You bet. Say hi to your mom.”
“I will. Have a safe trip.”
They hugged again, and Joanne walked off.
Joanne was headed out on the road. Like everyone at CEASE, Joanne spent most of her time on the road, visiting local organizers and attending rallies. It was one thing to coordinate, and mail people reports; another, to hold their hand, and breathe and smell and taste the poisons they lived with every day.
Leandra returned to her chair and glanced down at her notes. Then she glanced up at Daniel. “You and your co-workers realized you were ill.”
Daniel nodded. “Must’ve been about a year ago we had that conversation. We decided we’d fork out and go and see a private doc, someone in St. Louis. Took a day of vacation time to do it. Drove up together. Five of us. Company had to bring in subs.”
Daniel shook his head. “By the time the doc got to the fifth guy, he knew what he was going to find. We all had the same thing, and it sure as hell wasn’t indigestion, like the company doc was saying.”
“Did you show the company doctor these medical reports?”
“Sure did. He laughed, and said each doctor was entitled to his opinion, but that didn’t make that opinion worth anything.”
“And that was it?”
“He said it was a coincidence we were all sick.”
Daniel Witherspoon and his four friends had impaired kidney and liver function, and possibly cancer (the necessary tests hadn’t been done), all of which the United doctor ascribed to excessive alcohol consumption.
It reminded Leandra of accounts she’d read about coal company doctors and black lung disease. It had taken until 1969 to get black lung acknowledged as an actual disease in America, thirty-four years after the British named it such.
Daniel Witherspoon was in this office because he was probably dying and didn’t want one of his neighbors, or one of his children, to die too. Coming to CEASE was his chance to do something.
And Leandra fully intended to do something. That was why she and Joanne founded CEASE. Twenty million dollars. Twelve employees (including two lawyers and a computer ace). One target: United Chemical.
Leandra had been surprised to discover that ninety percent of the towns that had United plants also had action committees and that those committees had done a pretty good job documenting environmental abuses. In two months, CEASE had collected all the data; two months after that, they had a comprehensive report.
It wasn’t a pretty picture. United’s corporate practices were enough to make decent people purse their lips and shake their heads: a company-wide pattern of indifference to worker safety, and complete environmental disregard—which imperiled the families of its workers.
The complete report was sent to every action committee; and the highlights, along with scientific papers detailing the consequences to an individual’s health, were mailed to every United employee. The cost of that mailing had required a dip into principal, but the results more than made up for the money spent. Within a month, CEASE had received over three thousand additional reports of corporate malfeasance, all from United workers.
The response didn’t surprise Leandra one bit. It was a lot to expect worker loyalty, when management was paid millions, and everyone else had trouble meeting the mortgage.
The local newspapers ran the whistleblowers’ accounts; and the national media picked up a few stories. The pressure forced United to respond, and even make a show of addressing the grievances.
Maybe it was possible to turn things around: a world where a person had once been able to drink the water from rivers and lakes. It used to be Eden.
Leandra finished up her interview with Daniel Witherspoon. Thank God the man’s children were healthy. The worst was when the kids were sick, too.
Four
Roscoe Paradise put the car into park and turned off the engine. He was down the block from the hall where the Huntsville People’s Action Committee was meeting. Roscoe was down the block, rather than in the hall’s parking lot, because Roscoe didn’t want to be seen. When a person was planning to be bad, it was always best not to be seen. And Roscoe was planning to be bad. CEASE always sent a member to these action committee meetings. It was time to downsize the organization.
Roscoe had learned about this meeting from a United security update. United kept track of all action committee meetings, just like the action committees kept track of the company.
Roscoe settled in. He figured he had an hour to wait until the meeting was over. An hour to sit and pick his nose, until his snitch IDed the CEASE flunkey.
Roscoe took another look at the hall. Two men were standing outside. One was a cop. The other was certainly RIC security, the company the action committee was targeting. These men had video cameras, so they could videotape the people at the meeting.
Videotaping troublemakers had become a routine pastime for police. Departments traded pictures, like baseball cards. The FBI had a national catalogue, each bad guy assigned to a category. All a field officer had to do was call up, say, the file on environmentalists, and pictures of every evil greenie in the country popped up on the computer screen. Which sure made life a whole lot easier. With pictures, the local cops could arrest a troublemaker before a meeting. And God help the man or woman who occupied more than one niche in the FBI’s catalogue of bad guys. That person was primo shit as far as the Bureau was concerned.
Roscoe’s snitch was a man named Ted Anders. Roscoe had called Anders at home and, without identifying himself, had told Anders he needed a favor.
Ted Anders had laughed. “You and everyone else.”
“You get a hundred bucks,” Roscoe stated.
“Who the fuck is this?” Anders demanded.
“The goddamn tooth fairy!” Roscoe shot back. Everyone always wanted to know everything. “Listen up, snitch, unless you want your buddies at the plant to know you’re a fink, you’re going to do exactly what I say.” Because Anders’ pals might not have a sense of humor about working with a rat, and what a tragedy it would be if, somehow, Anders got his arm caught in one of the feed chains when no one was around to help. But thank God for workmen’s compensation.
At that, Ted Anders shut up.
Roscoe checked his watch. Three minutes had passed.
Roscoe hated sitting still. At least it was warm out. The worst was waiting in the cold.
“Synergy!” Arlene Spenser shouted. “Those bastards never talk about synergy. That’s the same as lying.”
The crowd roared.
Joanne Patterson managed to keep the smile off her face. Arlene sure was blunt. Blunt and angry.
Arlene nodded grimly. She was the mother of two, and both her children had birth defects, courtesy of RIC, the chemical company where she worked. She had been born in Huntsville, as had her parents, a nice quiet town of farmers and small businessmen, tradespeople. It had been a fine place to live, until RIC showed up, first the chemical plant, then the incinerator. Arlene’s husband used to work at the plant. He was dead these two years, from cancer of the spleen.
“Do you all know what synergy is?” Arlene asked. She looked around the room. The people there were her friends and neighbors. “It’s when one thing reinforces another, so instead of one and one equaling two, it equals three, or four, or five. The EPA, they don’t test like that. They only test one chemical at a time. But we breathe in that stuff all at once. Dozens of chemicals. Hundreds of chemicals. They don’t even have names for some of the things that come out of that smokestack; nobody’s ever seen those chemicals before. How do they know that stuff’s safe? They don’t even know what it is.”
The crowd roared again.
“They promised us this plant’d be clean. They said there’d be no combustion releases. They lied to us!”
The crowd roared.
“We’re gonna make them clean up their mess. They ain’t gonna just move to Mexico, like Simuplast.”
Three years earlier, the Simuplast Plastics Company closed its doors and moved to Mexico, leaving behind barrels of toxic chemicals in the boarded-up factory. The barrels had started to leak almost at once. They were still leaking.
And the EPA was still studying the problem. Pretty soon, the cost of the study would exceed the cost of the cleanup.
Arlene held up a piece of paper. “Every one of you make sure you get one of these.” It was a list of senior executives at RIC, including home addresses and phone numbers. “You call up these pissheads. Give ‘em a piece of your mind. Drive by their homes. Let ‘em know we know where they live. Let ‘em think about the possibility of a barrel of toxic waste dumped on their lawns, like they dumped that stuff on our playgrounds. They can’t just poison every kid in town and walk away clean, like they done with mine.” Arlene pointed to a woman in the audience. “Or yours, Georgia.” Arlene pointed again. “Or yours, Alison. There’s nothing in the Constitution says they got a right to poison kids just to make a buck.” At the back of the stage, the flag of the United States hung from a pole set in a cast-iron base.
There was more applause.
Joanne nodded. Arlene was a good speaker. She instinctively hit the buttons that got an audience going.
“We’re in this alone, friends,” Arlene said. She held up a letter. “This letter is to the FBI from our senior senator. He wants the FBI to investigate our organization. He says we’re a bunch of subversives. He says we’re terrorists.”
The crowd booed.
Arlene held up another piece of paper. “And this piece of paper is the work of our state senator. He’s sponsoring a bill that exempts RIC from any liability whatsoever caused by its incinerator. He says the incinerator is EPA approved. Well let me ask you folks, who do you think contributes more money than anyone else to our state senator’s campaign fund?” Arlene paused and looked around the room. “It’s RIC! And who do you think contributed a pile of money to the man who picked the head of the EPA?”
People were shaking their heads.
“I’m talking about the President of the United States!” Arlene looked at the crowd. “Let’s not forget this, come election time.” She nodded. “And what do you think the EPA did when RIC ‘accidentally’ dumped five railroad cars of ash into the sewer system? Or when RIC let barrel after barrel of pesticide slide off that listing barge and into the river? And what does the EPA do each time the burn bag ruptures, and plumes of black and orange smoke go up the stack?”
The crowd roared: “Nothing!”
“You’d think the EPA was part owner of Bobbie’s car wash.”
Everyone laughed. It wasn’t unusual in Huntsville to have to wash the ash off your car once or twice a week.
“We got the lab reports back from the monitoring equipment. I want to thank our friends from CEASE again.” Arlene nodded toward Joanne, and the man sitting next to Joanne, Bill Martens.
CEASE had set up monitoring stations around every United facility. The stations tested the ground water, soil and air for contaminants.
“Without this equipment we’d still be guessing,” Arlene said. “We’re doing now what the EPA should have been doing all along, except the EPA don’t care. Or maybe they knew what they would find. I’ll let Bill tell you about it. He can pronounce the words better than I can.”
Bill Martens stood up.
“This is Bill Martens,” Arlene said. “Let’s thank him for coming.”
There was loud applause as Martens stepped to the lectern.
Bill Martens was a scientist and lawyer, a former Nader’s Raider, who now spent most of his time advising local groups of their rights and what procedural steps they could take to force corporations to comply with existing laws. Unfortunately, the EPA didn’t always enforce the law. Sometimes, when contaminant levels got too high, the EPA simply raised the level of contaminants deemed acceptable. So drinking water that had been out of compliance was, with the stroke of a pen, suddenly in compliance.
Joanne leaned back in her chair. It usually took Martens about an hour to cover everything. Joanne admired Martens. He was a confident speaker who got right to the point, and didn’t feel the need to show off. And he was a hard worker. Each speech addressed exactly the issues confronting that particular community. That evening Martens was going to talk about RIC’s efforts to get their incinerator ash declared nonhazardous. Martens also wanted people to bring in drinking water samples. A community in Louisiana had been able to shut down an incinerator because the plant had been poisoning their water. Maybe the people of Huntsville could do the same.
Roscoe checked his watch. It was after eleven and no one, not a single person, had left the building, not even to smoke. It was scary—a entire hall of angry people.
Finally, someone walked through the door. Then three more people. Then a crowd.
Ted Anders appeared. Anders stepped to the side, lit a cigarette, and looked around—for the asshole who’d threatened him?
Roscoe smirked. Roscoe wasn’t worried about being spotted, because the nearest streetlight was behind him.
Anders nodded to his buddies as they walked by. One stopped to talk.
Anders’ job was a breeze. When the CEASE guy showed up, all Anders had to do was shake his hand. Fifteen seconds of work for a hundred bucks. Pretty fucking generous.
Roscoe figured he had a couple of minutes before that happened, because there were always people in the audience who stepped forward to say hi, shake hands, and maybe even relate their own little personal tale of woe. And the CEASE guy, being a wimp, would pretend to be interested, instead of saying how he needed to take a whiz and had for the last hour.
Bill Martens and Joanne Patterson exited the hall. Ted Anders clapped the guy he was talking to on the arm, and stepped up to them. Anders extended his hand and Bill Martens shook it. After talking to Martens for a second, Anders turned and shook Joanne’s hand.
Roscoe, clever guy that he was, figured both these turkeys were from CEASE. A two for one deal, just like after-Christmas shopping.
Joanne and Martens got into a car and drove off.
Roscoe started his car and followed.
Martens was driving slowly, so Roscoe drove slowly. Roscoe wasn’t in any rush. He had all night, and all the next day, if he needed it.
Joanne rolled down the window. “Seeing all those people, I sometimes think we might even win.”
Martens laughed. “That would be something.”
There was a despair among environmentalists that almost precluded the possibility of ultimate victory, as if sanity could never win out over greed.
“What time is your flight?” Joanne checked her watch.
“Twelve-thirty.”
“You’ll have to get moving.”
“The airport’s not far.”
Joanne pointed to a motel on the right. “Just over here.”
Martens nodded and pulled into the parking lot.
Joanne leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. Say Hi! to the gang.”
Martens smiled. “Happy trails!”
Joanne laughed, picked up her briefcase, and climbed out of the car.
Martens waited until she was through the door to her motel room before he drove off.
Number 107, Roscoe noted.
Martens pulled into the street and, after a minute, was on the highway. Roscoe tootled along behind him. The traffic was light, spotty in places.
Roscoe was working it out: the broad was staying over, the guy wasn’t; and greenie central was a long ways away. So where was Mr. goody-two-shoes environmentalist, driving fifty-five, headed? The airport? That was the road they were on.
Roscoe checked the rear-view mirror. No one was behind him.
Roscoe killed his headlights and sped up, using the rear lights of Martens’ car to guide him. Roscoe had two large rubber bumpers on his car, the kind that are designed to save the rest of your bumper in a fender bender. These particular rubber bumpers had been reinforced, however, and were attached to the frame of the car. And Roscoe had fashioned two removable stick-on patches to go over the rubber bumpers, because rubber leaves a mark when you ram a car from behind. These stick-on patches were made of Tyvek, a nearly indestructible paper-like product used to wrap the outside of new houses. The Tyvek patches were smooth and left no marks at all.
Bill Martens looked up. A ghost image had popped into his rearview mirror: a red shadow of a car, with a mustachioed demon at the wheel. Martens felt a slight bump.
Roscoe grinned, and slammed down on the gas. The sudden acceleration pushed Martens’ car to the right. Roscoe eased off a second, then slammed forward again. By then Martens’ car had fishtailed and was pointing off the highway. Roscoe rammed him over the bank.
Martens’ car crashed down the slope, through a bush, and over a small tree, finally stopping in the ditch at the bottom. Roscoe pulled over, killed the engine, hopped out of the car and raced down the bank. Martens was sitting there shaking.
“You okay, buddy?” Roscoe shouted. Roscoe reached in and turned off the engine. The headlights went dark.
Martens was still shaking. Thank God he’d been wearing his seat belt. And thank God for airbags.
Roscoe set his hand on Martens’ shoulder and shook him gently. “You sure you’re okay? That was pretty hairy.”
Bill Martens turned. Everything seemed okay. “I guess I am.”
“Well not anymore!”
Roscoe’s fist caught Bill Martens square between the eyes.
Roscoe reached in, unbuckled the seatbelt, and smashed Martens’ head against the windshield. Then Roscoe withdrew a syringe from his jacket pocket, removed the safety cap, and found a vein in Martens’ neck. The liquid in the syringe was pure grain alcohol. Roscoe injected it very very slowly. There was enough to make Martens borderline drunk. A half-empty pint bottle of vodka finished the scene.
Once the police found the bottle of vodka, they would lose interest. They would decide that Martens, half drunk, had lost control of his car. They would see he hadn’t been wearing his seat belt, and would figure the airbag must have malfunctioned, inflating after the accident. Case closed.
Roscoe put the cap back on the syringe (safety first!) and tucked the syringe back in his pocket. It was one of a handful of dirty tricks he always carried. Be prepared. Yes, sir. R. Roscoe Paradise and the Boy Scouts of America.
Roscoe went to see about the gas tank. On TV the gas tank always exploded. Roscoe didn’t want the police to be disappointed.
A little fiddling, and the tank was leaking nicely. Roscoe let some gas dribble onto a stick, turned the car back on, stepped away from the car, then lit the gasoline-soaked stick with a lighter. In a second, Martens’ car was burning.
Roscoe got to the top of the bank just as another car was pulling over.
“A guy’s hurt bad!” Roscoe shouted. “Call for an ambulance! I got a first-aid kit in my car!” Roscoe ran.
The other guy started to fumble with his phone. The guy was staring at the burning car, not at Roscoe.
Roscoe reached his car, hopped in, and drove off. After a minute, he turned on his headlights.
Roscoe wasn’t worried about the footprints he’d left beside Martens’ car, because when the firemen arrived they would trample everything. The detectives wouldn’t find a thing in the morning.
There was an exit up ahead. Roscoe took it. There was still another piece of business to attend to.
Joanne was beat. She had gotten up at five that morning to drive to Huntsville, arriving at her motel just an hour before the meeting. She was going to spend two days in town, going over additional steps action-committee members could take in their fight against RIC. If monitor wells showed RIC’s chemicals in the town’s water supply, they might be able to get a court order to shut down the plant.
Joanne unbuttoned her blouse and turned on the shower. A long hot shower was just what she needed, and never mind that long hot showers weren’t politically correct. Sometimes a person needed to pamper herself.
Joanne stood soaking a long time. Finally, she began to soap herself. She’d brought her own soap. She liked the scent.
Ten minutes later she was in bed. The curtains were drawn, but the headlights of passing cars still showed. She needed to lower the shades. But that would necessitate getting out of bed. Finally, she decided if she didn’t lower the shades she would spend the next hour wishing she had.
The shades made it almost dark.
At 3:45 AM Roscoe slipped a pick and tension wrench into the lock of Room 107. Picking a lock made almost no noise and took almost no time. In less than a minute, the handle turned and the door opened. It stopped against the security chain. One good shoulder and the screws holding the chain leapt out of the wall. Roscoe closed the door behind him and stepped to the bed.
The sound of splintering wood insinuated itself into Joanne’s dream. She was walking in the woods, a quiet patch of woods with just the sound of water running.
Then a tree was falling. A huge tree.
Then all the trees were falling.
She was in an old-growth forest and loggers were cutting the trees. They were laughing and looking up, at the trees coming down, and at her. She was chained to a branch forty feet in the air.
The tree she was chained to started to fall.
Joanne leapt up as the tree hit the ground.
Roscoe slammed the palm of his hand into Joanne’s forehead. Joanne fell back against the pillow.
Roscoe reached down and ripped off the panties Joanne was wearing. Joanne couldn’t believe it. There was a man in her room and this man was going to rape her.
Joanne tried to scream, but the man’s hand was on her throat. And the knock on her head had left her as weak as a kitten.
Roscoe pulled down his pants and climbed on board. Banging his victims was one of the perks. Roscoe pushed in hard. The first push was always the best, when it was dry and tight, and tore a little.
Joanne closed her eyes. In a minute, it would be over and this man would leave. Then she would call the police and go to the hospital. And when she finally got home, she would scrub herself raw. Then she would go on with her life.
Roscoe ground his fingertips into one breast.
Joanne gasped.
Roscoe laughed. He loved it when his victims showed the pain.
Roscoe didn’t mind that this woman was as still as a stone. Sometimes his victims played dead; sometimes they fought; and once in a while (not very often) one pretended she was into it. It didn’t matter. It always ended the same. Why leave a witness?
Roscoe slid his other hand around Joanne’s throat, and started to squeeze.
Joanne’s eyes popped open.
Roscoe smiled, an ear-to-ear grin. This woman hadn’t considered that this assault might end with her death.
Joanne started to swing her fists, twisting violently with her hips.
Roscoe squeezed harder. He was always amazed how strong even the smallest woman was. But never quite strong enough.
The swings grew less directed. Then the arms fell. Joanne’s body convulsed, then went limp, then voided. Roscoe drove home three quick times and was done.
He looked at the woman under him: Joanne’s tongue was hanging out, her face all purple.
Roscoe leaned forward and licked the tongue. Then he laughed, rolled off the bed, and pulled up his pants. Score two for the bad guys.
Roscoe reached for Joanne’s purse and rifled through it. He took the cash and her address book. The jewelry was too cheap to bother with.
Roscoe was careful to wipe his fingerprints off the purse and doorknob. His prints wouldn’t show on this woman’s skin, only the bruises.
Five
Three–dimensional geometric patterns grew, brightened, metamorphosed, faded, then disappeared entirely in a predetermined sequence across the computer screen.
A psychedelic parade, Leandra Trilling decided, complete with metaphorical, post-parade street sweeper, the glory and garbage alike swept up and eventually forgotten as, she was sure, after a month, a year, five years, the memory of her friend Joanne would disappear into some rarely-used corner of her mind.
The tears started again.
It was impossible to believe that Joanne was dead, and not just off somewhere for a few days: hiking the Olympic peninsula; wandering the steep slopes of the Sierras. They had known each other fourteen years. They had raised funds together, lobbied together, protested together, gone to jail together. And for the last year, they had squared off against United Chemical together.
Leandra could still recall the day she asked Joanne to sign on. Joanne had been about to leave for Louisiana, to help take drinking-water samples. It was hoped with the new administration coming in, the EPA might finally force the companies along Cancer Alley to clean up their sites.
Leandra had walked into Joanne’s office with the biggest shit-eating grin—she’d just been unable to contain her excitement. Joanne had laughed.
“You’re getting married, right?”
Getting married and having kids was a running joke between them, first as they crept into their middle thirties, then as they reached their late thirties. It wasn’t that they didn’t want kids; it was just that there were so many other things to do. Leandra showed Joanne the deposit slip.
“You won the lottery!”
Leandra had laughed. “I guess I did. You want a job?”
They had talked for hours about what to do with the money, bouncing ideas around, making plans, changing plans. They figured they had the money to hire twelve people. Enough to make a difference.
And now two of those people were dead.
Leandra had found out about Bill first, almost the minute she walked into the office. Her phone rang as she reached for the mail. A Lieutenant Caudwell was on the line. He wanted some information. There had been a car accident. Bill Martens had been killed.
“Looks like he got himself drunk, and drove off the road.”
The autopsy would be done by noon, then they would know for sure. But a bottle of vodka had been found in the car.
Leandra had protested that Bill wasn’t a heavy drinker, and had no history of drunk driving, or even drunkenness.
Caudwell wasn’t impressed. “Family’s always the last to know. What was he doing in Huntsville?”
Leandra told him about the meeting, and mentioned Joanne. She told him where Joanne was staying.
An hour later, Leandra found out about Joanne. Leandra sat in silence as Lieutenant Caudwell relayed the grim report.
“It’s not even lunchtime, and I’ve got two corpses,” the lieutenant complained. And there was no way Joanne’s death was an accident.
But Caudwell had a theory: Joanne and Martens had a fight; a struggle and rape ensued; Martens, in a panic, murdered Joanne, then got himself drunk and drove off the road.
Somehow Leandra had been able to mutter the impossibility of this.
“Happens all the time,” Caudwell stated. “Man makes a little mistake, then panics and makes a big mistake. I’m sorry.”
They would do an autopsy on Joanne, and compare the semen with a sample of Martens’ blood.
But when Lieutenant Caudwell called back three hours later, it was with a different theory. Joanne had died after Martens; and there was no evidence of Martens ever having been in her room: no pubic hairs, no skin flakes, no fingerprints. So Martens was clear of the murder, but not of drunk driving. He had been borderline DWI.
“Maybe he swerved to miss an animal?” Caudwell suggested.
There were skid marks that indicated a fishtail. It didn’t look like Martens had been speeding.
Caudwell was going to rule it an alcohol-related accident, unless something turned up when the lab boys went over the car, although the car, and Martens, were pretty badly burned.
Leandra was incredulous. “And the fact that two people, who had just been together, should suddenly die within a couple of hours of each other, doesn’t strike you as suspicious?”
“A coincidence,” the lieutenant decided.
He would be in touch. There were people to interview, witnesses to hunt down, and evidence to analyze. It was all going to take a couple of weeks, at least. And could she please send along a list of the members of the Huntsville People’s Action Committee.
Leandra was sure Caudwell would love to get his hands on that list, make his spying that much easier. “I don’t happen to have a list of members,” Leandra said. “We only deal with the executive committee.” Let him catch her in the lie, the son-of-a-bitch.
Bill Martens didn’t drive himself off the road. And Leandra didn’t believe in coincidences, not since a man named Michael Gant disabused her of such innocence.
“You’re in a bar,” Michael once postulated. “You bump elbows with a guy, and a conversation ensues. Is it chance? Or did this guy purposefully bump elbows to provide an opening?”
An alert individual considered all possibilities and entertained a healthy suspicion of seemingly random events. Leandra had met Michael through a friend.
“You’re working undercover,” Michael continued, “and the group you’ve penetrated doesn’t know who you really are; and no one who does know you, knows where you are. Then probably, if something goes wrong, it’s a coincidence.”
It was important not to be too paranoid. Excessive paranoia hindered effectiveness.
Michael raised a cautionary finger. “But if something does go wrong, only a fool would fail to investigate.”
A lot of people had known Bill and Joanne would be at that meeting.
There was a knock on the door, and a woman with blond hair, big breasts, and a little too much make-up walked in. Leandra couldn’t help but notice the woman’s dress: black silk, with beadwork around the collar. Leandra was sure it had cost a pile. It made her feel frumpy in her denim slacks and cotton blouse.
“I’m looking for the director of this organization,” the woman demanded. The woman raised her eyebrows, and shoved one hip aggressively to the side, as if to suggest that the person she was standing in front of couldn’t possibly be the person she was looking for.
Leandra took another look at the woman’s face, and laughed. Was it possible she had conjured this ghost with just a thought? “I liked you better with dark hair.”
Michael Gant stepped into the office and closed the door, then turned and opened his arms. “Leandra! Darling!” He looked like he was expecting a kiss.
Leandra made no move to get out of her chair. “This isn’t the best time, Michael.”
Michael glided forward, oblivious, his head and shoulders barely moving as he walked. “When would be a better time? I’m flexible.” He stopped in front of the desk, studying her. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good.”
“What was that I heard out front—a car crash?”
Leandra stared. He’d been there a while. Snooping? “Why are you dressed as a woman?”
“I find that every now and then I feel the need to be whistled at.”
Leandra stood. It was time to throw him out.
Michael backed up a step. “It’s so the guy downstairs, the man keeping track of your visitors, won’t be able to keep track of me.”
“There’s no one downstairs.”
Michael raised his eyebrows again. “Are you sure? I counted three people who were loitering.”
“We’re on the seventh floor. The elevator services ten floors. There are a dozen offices on each floor. It would be impossible to keep track of our visitors.”
Michael raised a forefinger. “Not if the people keeping watch already had their eye on your visitors.”
Leandra began to remember why things had fallen apart between them. “Why are you here? Today?”
Michael’s gaze was appraising. “Something happened. What?”
All on their own, the tears started again. “Joanne is dead.”
“In a car wreck?”
Leandra shook her head. “Bill Martens, one of our lawyers, died in a car wreck. Joanne was raped and murdered.”
Michael glided forward a step. “I’m so sorry, Leandra.”
Leandra nodded. Michael knew Joanne; they’d dated a while. Michael was a daring-do sort of guy who attracted girls the way red attracts hummingbirds. Leandra had fallen for him after a night dancing. Joanne had been pissed as hell.
“These two incidents,” Michael said, “were Bill and Joanne together?”
“At a meeting.”
Michael looked as if his suspicions had been confirmed. “A group can be too successful. You must be cutting into United’s profits.”
“The police are barely looking into it.”
“It’s the other side who pays the police.”
For the first time in a long time, Leandra didn’t know what to do. She never thought she and her friends would personally become targets.
“No more Mr. Corporate nice guy,” Michael decided. He eyed Leandra. “Do you have a plan?”
Leandra was suddenly angry. She started forward. “My plan is to kick you right out of here!” She stormed around the desk.
Michael raised his chin with matronly aplomb. “You wouldn’t hit a lady, would you, dear?”
“It’s none of your fucking business what I’m going to do. Now get out.” Leandra pointed at the door.
Michael gathered himself. “I have to be going, anyway. People to see. Things to do.” He started for the door.
Leandra followed. “What things? Why are you here?”
Michael smiled. “Just checking in. Just saying Hi! It’s important to keep in touch with one’s friends. I have so few.” He opened the door.
Leandra set her hand on his arm. “Have you heard from Peter Thompson?” Leandra had spent a week trying to track down Peter. She’d known him for three years and couldn’t believe he was working for the other side.
Michael smirked. “I never trusted Peter. He didn’t have enough stories to tell.”
“Maybe he was modest.”
“If my middle name was rat, I’d be modest, too.”
Leandra glared at him. “How come you’re not in jail?”
“Why would I be in jail?”
“The rest of OOH! is in jail.”
“My fellow anarchists grew incautious. They thought their previous successes would guarantee future successes. A failure to appreciate the lessons of history.”
“You haven’t changed one bit.”
“Why change for the worse? And anyway, I wasn’t arrested because I wasn’t at that paper plant when that tower came down. I’m on to other things. Bigger things.”
Leandra looked suspicious. “What things?”
Michael smiled. “That’s on a need-to-know basis. If you’re genuinely curious, we could discuss it over lunch.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Would you be interested?”
“Who would my colleagues be?”
Michael wagged his finger. “Another thing you don’t need to know.”
“A lot of other people? A few? Does your organization have a name?”
“Wardens of Earth.”
Leandra laughed. “At least the acronym suits you.”
“WOE to that man by whom I am betrayed,” Michael stated. He looked somber for a moment, then smiled. “Give it some thought.” He turned toward the door.
“Michael…”
Michael turned back.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with this… with Joanne.”
The façade fell away. “I loved her, Leandra. As I love you. I would never hurt either of you.” He stared, then turned and glided out, closing the door quietly behind him.
Leandra stared for a moment, then returned to her desk. Why had Michael Gant chosen this day to show up? She would never know.
She pushed the thought away. Just being around Michael made her paranoid.
She picked up the office phone and asked Jacob Black to come in.
Jacob was CEASE’s data-processing expert. It was Jacob who had organized the information on United Chemical into an understandable whole, so that patterns of company-wide wrongdoing became apparent. That was the sort of data that got the media interested, and that won lawsuits.
Jacob walked in and settled in the chair in front of the desk. Jacob was lanky and looked as if he lived in front of a computer.
“You’ve heard?” Leandra asked.
Jacob nodded. Everyone had.
Leandra started to tear up, then got hold of herself. “We’ll be two short, now. Eventually, that’ll catch up with us.”
“A lot of people have expressed interest in signing on. I can put together a list.”
“I don’t know how we’ll ever replace Bill, or Joanne.”
They would never be able to replace Bill or Joanne.
Jacob got up, stepped around to Leandra’s side of the desk, and typed in a few commands on the computer.
“Some of these people have impressive resumes,” Jacob noted. The printer beside the desk began to hum and a piece of paper rolled out. Jacob picked it up and handed it to Leandra. “I’m sure if you advertised, and let the salary be known, we’d be swamped with job applications.”
Typically, working in the environmental movement wasn’t the cleverest way to put your kids through college.
Leandra glanced at the list. She knew about a third of the people, some better than others, none really well. The people she had known really well had signed on with her at the start, like Joanne.
“Why don’t you show this list to the others,” she said. “See what they think. Then we’ll have a meeting.”
Jacob nodded, but didn’t start for the door. “Leandra?”
She looked at him.
“Do you think this has to do with United?”
Leandra stared. If it did have to do with United, any one of them might be next. “I don’t know, Jacob. We’ll have to see what the police come up with.”
In CEASE’s main office Michael Gant was drawing a cup of water from the water cooler. Mountain spring water. Perfectly Pure! Unless of course, between purity tests, a beaver had taken a shit upstream. Then the water wouldn’t be pure at all. It would be full of bacteria, and chemicals to kill that bacteria, because no way was the bottling company going to just pitch a couple of holding tanks of water.
Bits of conversation drifted from the various rooms off the main office.
Michael wandered and sipped, checking desk tops, eavesdropping—one never knew what one might learn, or discover. Six months earlier, visiting to wish Leandra and Joanne success, Michael had met the man of his dreams: an awkward-looking, youngish man named Damien Ryerson, a bio-geneticist. Ryerson was at CEASE to spill the beans on United. That chance encounter had been, without a doubt, the most serendipitous moment of Michael’s life.
Michael stopped in front of the elevators and hit the down button.
Leandra was right, of course. Almost certainly no one was watching this office. An office building like this was really quite a clever choice if one wanted to avoid surveillance. Not that one should let down one’s guard. Being cautious should be a way of life. The enemy was tricky, and well-funded, and generally had nothing better to do with himself. Besides, on occasion it was fun to get dressed as a woman.
Even though it had been a bit of a risk, Michael had wanted to visit Leandra. He had come out of nostalgia because, if things went well, pretty soon Leandra, and most everyone else, would be dead. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.