BULLETS IN THE WATER

Genre
Award Type
Manuscript Type
A disgraced New York Chronicle journalist must sober up and solve a murder to prevent an opioid ring operated by good ole boys from piping and selling his Texas hometown’s water to another city and launder illegal drug profits in the process.

CHAPTER 1

Mike Carson’s previous invites to the New York Chronicle boardroom involved champagne but this was a summons.

“You’re firing me? I won a Pulitzer for chrissake.” Shock formed the question but anger fired the sentence.

“I know Mike,” said Ron Knowles. “I wish to God you were still that guy. We both know you’re not.”

The deputy editor looked from Mike to George Kleinberg, the business manager. Mike had been before him too many times in the last few years. Kleinberg was not a fan of his.

“A man killed himself,” Kleinberg said. “We’re on the hook for a couple of million in damages. Maybe more.” He leaned forward with a glint of satisfaction. “And that is thanks to you.”

“We’re exposed,” said Ron. “The story was never fact checked. You lied.”

And Mike had lied, had said he confirmed with two other sources. He had intended to get confirmations but one Bulleit 10-year-old bourbon had led to another and the time just slipped away.

“Can I resign?”

“Absolutely not,” said Kleinberg. “Have you ever read your contract? You’re in breach of at least six clauses. We are terminating you for cause — effective immediately. You’ll clear your desk and be escorted from the building.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“It’s policy Mike,” said Ron.

Kleinberg stood. He seemed to cherish the moment. “We’ll need your new address for the paperwork. Vacate the apartment by 5 p.m. tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. Wow. Thanks.”

“It was only supposed to be a couple of nights, Mike,” said Ron, “we were doing you a favor.”

“Your accommodation is no longer any concern of the Chronicle’s, not that it ever should have been.” Kleinberg said.

Mike stood up. Ron Knowles rose too. He was much shorter but Mike had looked up to him for almost twenty years. The man who brought him to New York.

“Jesus Ron.”

“Nothing I can do. I’m gone in a week.”

Down in the newsroom, Peter and Tyrone from Security flanked him in their crisp, white shirts, navy-blue epaulettes and matching pants. Mike reached for his laptop.

“Uh, uh,” Tyrone muttered.

“Unfortunately, you can’t take it Mr. Carson,” Peter said. Reluctantly, he put the laptop down. Mike picked up the beaming picture of his wife and stuffed it in one jacket pocket. The framed photo of Uncle Harold went into the other. There was nothing else of value in the desk drawers. He walked toward the elevators. A single, slow handclap marked his progress. Kleinberg, at the other end of the newsroom smiling and triumphant. Journalists at their workstations stayed buried in their stories, embarrassed.

Thirty-two floors of silence and faint body odor. In the lobby Mike was reluctant to hand over his Chronicle press card. Part of his identity was being ripped away.

“I’m sorry Mr. Carson. You’ll be missed.”

Mike doubted it. He walked out the revolving door onto 9th Avenue and headed straight for Henry’s.

He cradled his double whiskey in a booth at the back, cocooned by the warmth of the dark wood paneling and the comforting familiarity of the place. This would be the last time he would come here. It was the Chronicle’s local, no longer his. He would miss it.

He set the two pictures on the table. The faces stared out at him, judging. Uncle Harold looked like he had seen it coming. Liz on the other hand, Elizabeth Carpenter Carson, in her ivory top with the plain gold chain, had no clue. Her smile had no prescience. It was a look from years before. A look he liked — before Liz’s disappointment in him reached her eyes. Mike didn’t blame her for insisting that he leave. He had crossed a line.

INVESTMENT BANKER

GRILLED FOR TEEN MURDER

DEAD GIRL FOUND IN APARTMENT

By Mike Carson

He should have warned Liz before it hit the streets. It might not have made a difference but she deserved that at least.

When word of Charles Coolidge being questioned by NYPD Sex Crimes Division for the murder of a teenage girl reached Hansacker Capitol Bank, the rumor flitted around the building like a drunken butterfly and found its way to Elizabeth Carpenter’s office. She’d kept her maiden name for work. Liz had told him the story over dinner and he had decided to run with it.

Neighbors discovered the body of 14-year-old Leanne Conway in an apartment building on Mercer Street, SoHo. NYPD were alerted when EMTs found signs of strangulation

Liz and Mike, each had access to troves of confidential information through their jobs. In the early weeks of marriage, they decided it was dangerous to keep secrets from each other and introduced a Las Vegas policy to the apartment: what was said at home, stayed at home. Mike’s last two investigations had been expensive failures, his regular reporting was patchy and often late. He was under pressure to deliver and this was too good a story to ignore.

NYPD will not comment on the investigation, but it is known sex crimes detectives are questioning Charles Coolidge, an investment banker with Hansacker Capitol Bank in connection with the murder.

When he got home that evening, she had a packed bag waiting for him in the hall. Her rage was a physical thing, a forcefield he could not penetrate, whirling and gathering speed. Her questions peppered him like paintballs but his bourbon brain had no answers. All he had was sorry and each sorry pushed him farther out the door.

The first rebuttal piece ran in the New York Times. Charles Coolidge had been questioned but was not a suspect. WNYC reported Coolidge owned the apartment building on Mercer Street where the victim had been found. The Post gave lip service to his innocence but started digging in the darker New York places and found their tabloid gold. The refined Ivy Leaguer liked to play it rough — sweaty, bloody sadist rough. Prostitutes of both genders and some in-between revealed the horrifying details day after day in salacious column inches. Social media went crazy. Clients slipped away. In a week his reputation was ripped to shreds.

Liz filed divorce papers the day Charles Coolidge hanged himself.

After two more guilty bourbons Mike pulled out his cell and dialed.

“Hey Liz,” in his best friendly, “how are you?”

“You know what, Mike? Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“I already know,” she said. “Ron Knowles called me, which was decent of him. What’s it been? Ninety minutes? You’ve got to be on your fifth at Henry’s right now because we both know you never call unless you’ve had at least four.”

“It would only be for a couple of nights Liz, till I get things figured.”

“Not happening, Mike.” This was her Elizabeth Carpenter non-negotiable voice.

“Well, technically half the apartment is mine.”

“Try looking for your half down your throat.”

“OK I screwed up, I know and I’m sorry. It’s just, I don’t know— ”

“You’re lost. You’ve been lost for a long time.”

“Maybe.”

“Go back to Texas, Mike. See if you can find your soul.” Liz Carson squeezed the last drops of tenderness from the husk of their relationship. “I hope you can. I do.”

“I—”

“Either way, don’t call me again.”

CHAPTER 2

Adam Polley cursed as he drove, tossing the folded newspapers in their thin plastic bags onto lawns and driveways. He always followed the meticulous routine he’d devised to deliver the San Antonio Express News and the Taborville Times. The paper delivery was his side hustle, small money but it helped dig them out of the hole. The pattern in the playing cards had been so deceiving. Not its fault but Adam’s, for failing to interpret clearly. Patterns were never wrong. Only humans.

Changes made Adam crazy. He couldn’t bear it when the picture wasn’t perfect and Mike Carson being back in Taborville was a blemish. Things with Adam’s wife had been rocky but were improving. Now, she was talking about Carson again.

Mike Carson was not part of this image, unless…

Maybe he had not come back for her. Maybe he was part of a different pattern. Would a big-time investigative reporter be interested in the weird land sales Adam had uncovered in Tabor County? Maybe. But would people think he was responsible for getting Carson here? Maybe going to his boss at the County Courthouse had been a mistake. Maybe taking the files home, to figure out the pattern, was a bigger mistake.

Adam pulled his ancient Crown Vic off the asphalt at the corner of Horton Creek Drive and Bluebonnet Road, as he did every morning, to reorganize the pile of wrapped papers for the eastern run to town. Ten feet to his left was an old, rusted mailbox, half hidden in the bushes and trash trees that colonized the abandoned farmhouse. For those who knew the system the mailbox dispensed oxy and hydros, china white and percs, in neat, little pharmaceutical bottles. He looked at his watch. Day 278. Clean and sober.

He was almost finished sorting when he heard angry voices coming from the big house on the corner. He had to crouch down a little to see through the passenger window, up the slight hill. A group of men argued loudly on the large front porch of the two-story mansion. Adam recognized the faces, matched them to the files he had taken home and started to sweat — cold, clammy, acrid sweat, not the honest manual labor kind. The chest pain started immediately and he found it hard to breathe. Adam knew it was a panic attack but that did not stop him from feeling he was about to die.

The voices carried clearly in the morning air.

“It needs to be dealt with.”

“No, he needs to be dealt with. We can’t just—”

“Calm down. All of you. Right now. We can handle this.”

Adam knew the last voice having heard it almost every day. As the man marched onto the porch Adam felt his throat constrict, his scalp began to tingle and the blood thrum louder in his ears. He tried to shrink.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

“The car.”

“Shit, that’s an unmarked.”

“Not one of ours.”

Adam turned the key, dragged it into drive and bolted. He raced down the road and almost lost it on the bend but managed to correct the slide. The bushes and scrub flashed past as he glanced in his mirrors. He didn’t have a plan; he needed time to think. He should get off this road. Flores Trace was about a mile ahead. He could turn there and get out of sight.

He was about to slow and turn left into the Trace when a long wheelbase pick-up shot out and completely blocked the road. Adam hauled the wheel to the left, hoping to skim by on the dirt but the weeds and scrub concealed a bar ditch which ripped linkages, snapped the A-arm and left the front wheel flapping like a broken wing.

Adam’s forehead bounced off the steering wheel, the patella on his right knee shattered as it hit the underside of the dash. The car took off and planted itself into a tree. Adam lay bleeding from the head, pinned between the seat and the crumpled dashboard. The hiss of escaping steam from the radiator was eclipsed by explosive, metallic chattering. Adam saw holes appearing in the door and felt the hammer blow of bullets rip into his body and his legs. He heard the sound of vehicles approaching and thought, for a moment, they might be EMTs.

“He’s alive.”

Adam tried to wipe the blood from his eyes and cursed. Everything had been going good until Mike Carson broke the pattern.

“Well, he can’t stay that way.”

Adam heard the pistol rack and then he heard no more.

CHAPTER 3

The hangout at Oliver and Main, in downtown Taborville, had changed completely in the sixteen years Mike Carson spent at The Dallas Morning News and The New York Chronicle. The building started life in 1886 as the Tabor Tavern, became the H&R Saloon, then transitioned through Slinky’s, the Corral, Bertie B’s, Nancy’s and by the time Mike left for college, had become the ostentatious Bluford Brotherington’s Chophouse and Taproom, although it was always known locally as Blu’s. The latest iteration was Gold Spurs Sports Bar and Grill. Mike hoped the food would be as big a mouthful as the name.

He walked through the newly stone-fronted entrance. No matter where you sat, there seemed to be three screens in view, each showing a different sport. The new owners had installed a huge horseshoe bar with high stools and small square tables arranged neatly around the sides, each with four chairs. In one corner was the obligatory shuffleboard, foosball and darts. They even had a couple of restored pinball machines.

The place was about a-third full which wasn’t bad for a weeknight at eight-thirty. Mike sat at a window table where he could see the entrance. A few people at the bar had been there for some time, he thought, their voices raised and alive with talk of death and murder. They speculated and debated, speaking over each other as they wondered who could have done such a terrible thing. What could it possibly have been about? And such a nice man, church goer, not that any of them knew him directly but they knew someone who said they did or thought they did. The circular conversations were accompanied by the ever-present threat of slippage from the stool.

One woman in particular must have been there since early afternoon. Her platinum big hair was mussed now and more of her crimson lipstick was on the empty glasses round her than on her mouth. She was late forties, maybe fifty. Sloppy.

“What can I get you?”

The server was tattooed from her wrists to her shoulders, Celtic symbols on the right and what Mike presumed to be Indian Ashram on the left. He followed the diagrams to her face, encountered the pearl studded nose-ring and two huge silver tipped holes in her earlobes. He continued past the eyebrow bars to the neon blue hair hanging opposite the shaved left side of her head.

“Do you have any Bulleit 10-year-old?” Mike said.

“What’s that?”

“I guess not. What bourbons do you have?”

“We got eh, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Knob Creek and Maker’s Mark.”

“I’ll take a double Jack and a glass of ice water please.”

She stalked away in an electric blue mini skirt which didn’t quite match her hair, as Mike looked at the plastic menu and decided the Gold Spurs signature half-pounder was the safest option. When she returned with his drinks, he ordered it with the sweet potato fries and she slunk off in the direction of the kitchen. Her feet would arrive before she did.

Mike had a rolodex of regrets, each card starting with ‘if only’. He was three sips through his bourbon, feeling guilty about his failure to maintain Uncle Harold’s house, when the double doors whacked open and a loud group of chattering twenty-somethings surged in and headed for the games. The decibel level doubled. One guy walked to the bar, shoved his way between two men on stools and slapped the counter.

“Beer for the boys, spritzers for the titties.” It wasn’t a request. The men, either side of him, studied their drinks intently. The kid had Brad Pitt good looks and maybe could have been a movie star, except for the cruel mouth and slightly crazy eyes. A pint-sized redhead detached herself from the group.

“I don’t want no damn spritzer, Karter, get me a vodka,” she said.

“C’mon Jess, you know how you get.”

“Yeah, I do,” she grabbed his crotch, “and you love it, bitch.”

“Get her a double vodka rocks,” Karter said with a sly smile.

Mike was tucking into the second half of his burger, which was actually quite tasty, when the platinum blonde, now minus all her lipstick, plopped onto the seat opposite.

“Has anyone ever told you, you look like Harrison Ford?” she said.

“The actor or the carpenter?”

“Carpenter?”

“It’s a joke.”

“Who’s the carpenter?”

“Like I said, it’s a joke.”

“You’re not a comedian, are you?”

“No.”

“Anyway, a guy like you shouldn’t be eating alone.”

“Is that right?”

“Sure is. A lady like me shouldn’t be drinking alone neither,” she did her best impression of inviting and then tried coy, unsuccessfully.

“I kinda like my own company to be honest,”

“You don’t mean it” and she reached out, picked up the longest of his fries, dipped it in the ketchup and maneuvered it towards her pouty lips. Fixing her eyes on Mike, she pushed the fry into her mouth, all the way down to her fingertips and slowly slurped it out. Mike pushed the plate away.

“Here, have it,” he said.

“No need to be rude.”

“Lady I don’t mean to be rude but I don’t like people eating off my plate and I don’t know where your hands have been.”

With the assistance of elbows, arms and wrists she rose to her feet.

“You are not a gentleman,” she said. “You are a goddam asshole.”

She sashayed her way indirectly to the bathroom.