Drought Page 10

  ‘I’m truly sorry to hear that you’ve had problems, Martin,’ said Halford, furrowing his brow and putting on his best concerned-politician voice. ‘I’m sure that Saskia here will do everything she can to help you deal with them.’

  ‘I appreciate that, your honor,’ said Martin. ‘But I don’t think you realized how seriously people were going to be affected by cutting off their water for forty-eight hours, especially the young and the elderly and the sick. What’s worse is that you’re denying them medical help. Like I said to Ms Vane here, people are going to die. A lot of people are going to die, and these are people I’m sworn to protect.’

  ‘And what did Ms Vane say to that, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘She admitted it.’

  Halford turned around in his chair and pushed the make-up girl to one side. ‘The reason she admitted it, Martin, is because it’s true. We’re facing hundreds of fatalities, if not thousands. The springs are all drying up, the groundwater wells are almost empty, Lake Arrowhead reservoir is now less than thirty feet deep at its deepest point, instead of a hundred eighty-five, which it should be. Millions of acres of crops of all kinds are withering for lack of irrigation. But all we can do is manage the situation as best we can, and try to keep public order. That’s where people like you come in.

  ‘What I’m telling you, Martin, is strictly confidential, and the reason it’s confidential is because a citywide panic would only make matters a whole lot worse, and potentially even more lives would be lost. We’re having to make some very difficult choices here. In the final analysis, it’s not so much a question of how many people are going to die, but who.’

  Martin glanced at Saskia, although Saskia still had her eyes fixed on Joseph Wrack. That was the ‘but’ that Martin had sensed in her voice when she had confessed that ‘people are going to die’. Not how many, but who?

  ‘I’m not so sure I understand what you’re saying,’ said Martin, even though it was obvious. He just wanted to hear Governor Smiley spell it out.

  Joseph Wrack took the unlit cigar out of his mouth and said, ‘Governor – maybe you’ve said enough on the subject.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Halford, expansively. ‘Martin here is one of us, aren’t you, Martin? If he works for Children and Family Services, then believe me he’s a realist. He’s seen for himself those people who can help themselves and help others and people who can’t.

  ‘The plain unvarnished truth, Martin, is that forty-three-point-two percent of the population of San Bernardino is on welfare, and we’re having to dish out more than five hundred and three million dollars annually on cash benefits, Medi-Cal and food stamps.’

  ‘So what are you talking about?’ asked Martin. ‘Using this drought as a cull?’

  Halford shook his head and laughed. ‘Cull is kind of an extreme way of putting it, Martin. But let’s put it this way. In this life, you get what you pay for, and if you can’t afford to pay for it, you can’t have it. How can we justify cutting off the water to those people who religiously pay their taxes and their water bills, while continuing to supply those people who have never paid a bent cent for either?’

  ‘I see where you’re coming from,’ said Martin. ‘Some neighborhoods are going to have their water cut off less frequently than others? And some neighborhoods won’t have it cut off at all?’

  ‘We don’t have a choice, Martin. If we were running a gourmet restaurant, we wouldn’t let penniless bums come in and eat just because we felt sorry for them. You said that you’re sworn to protect the children in your care, and that’s admirable. But the best way that you can protect them is to make sure that their families stay calm and that civil unrest is kept to a minimum. Make them understand that they can’t make it rain by rioting.’ After he had said this, he actually laughed, and even repeated it. ‘Can’t make it rain by rioting. I’ll have to remember that one.’

  Martin said nothing, but he was aware now that Joseph Wrack had taken his eyes off Saskia and was staring at him, and there was no doubt about what that stare was trying to convey. You misuse anything that Governor Smiley has told you here in confidence, you make a single word of it public, and you’re going to regret it.

  Halford beckoned to his make-up girl and said, ‘Come on, let’s get on with it.’ He turned around to grimace at his bright orange face in the mirror and didn’t even bid Martin goodbye. Saskia opened the door for Martin and led him back down the corridor to the reception area.

  ‘Call me tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to my contact in the DA’s office and see what I can fix for your son.’

  Martin said, ‘Surely you don’t go along with this rotation thing. It’s inhuman.’

  ‘I’m just doing my job, Martin. Like I said before, it’s a natural disaster and we’re just trying to cope with it the best way we can.’

  ‘You mean it’s like the Holocaust without having to go to the expense of buying Zyklon-B?’

  ‘My hands are tied, Martin. Apart from that, between you and me, I owe Governor Smiley big time.’

  ‘Surely you don’t owe him your common humanity?’

  Saskia gave Martin another one of her inexplicable expressions. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I probably do. Call me tomorrow, OK, about ten?’

  TEN

  Martin arrived back home at his apartment just after ten forty-five p.m. After leaving Riverside, he had first driven back to the office to collect all the folders he needed for the following day’s calls, even though he suspected that he would have to cancel his afternoon visits if he went over to the West Valley Detention Center.

  He had only two visits marked in his afternoon diary: a seventeen-year-old single mother with two children by two different men, now living with her incontinent grandmother in a rundown house on West Spruce Street, opposite the Salvation Army; and a family with eight children who lived not too far away on West Temple Street, in a two-bedroom house that was alive with bed bugs.

  Normally, he wouldn’t have considered that either of these visits was urgent. But both families were located in one of the neighborhoods where the water had been shut off, and he was anxious to see how they were coping. If he couldn’t make the appointments himself, because he was over at Rancho Cucamonga, maybe he could persuade Shirelle to drop in and see them, or maybe Dana.

  Before he had driven back home, he had made a detour to East Julia Street to call on Esmeralda. She came to the door with an immense white plaster covering her nose, like a cartoon character.

  ‘I’m OK now, thank you, Martin,’ she had told him, in a blocked-up voice. ‘Bless you, bless you for being a saint.’

  All the same, she didn’t invite him in, and she didn’t open the door wide enough for him to be able to see inside. He could hear soft mariachi music playing and smell marijuana smoke, and so he guessed that her lover Jorge was paying her a visit.

  ‘OK, Ezzie. Asta. Watch out for that Jesus.’

  ‘You too, Martin. Take care.’

  At last Martin pulled into the parking lot at Hummingbird Haven and wearily climbed out of his car. The fluorescent light over his parking space was intermittently flickering and buzzing. He walked across the dry, balding grass until he reached his apartment home. It was identical to all of the other one hundred and fifty apartment homes in this development – a two-story tiled house built of ocher-colored brick, and set in what had once been described as a ‘lavishly landscaped’ garden. Over the years, however, Hummingbird Haven had become increasingly shabby. The concrete surrounding the swimming pool was looking blackened and diseased, the net across the tennis-court was sagging, and the sandbox in the ‘tot lot’ was empty, except for a few sun-faded plastic buckets. But none of this bothered Martin much. He never swam or played tennis here and didn’t have any small children to amuse. He was hardly ever at home, except to sleep, and at least the rent was cheap.

  He climbed the steps to his second-story apartment. The night was noisy with cicadas and moths were swarming around the
light above his door. He let himself in and he could smell bacon from this morning’s breakfast. The living-room lights were on a time switch, so they were on already, but he went into the kitchen first. His frying pan was still in the sink, waiting to be washed, and his half-empty mug of coffee was standing on the draining board beside it.

  On the fridge door he had stuck individual photographs of Peta and Tyler and Ella, as well as a picture of the family all together, smiling and hugging each other, on the seashore at Solana Beach. He stared at them for a moment, gently touching the family picture with his fingertips, before he opened the fridge and took out a bottle of beer.

  He went through to the living room, swigging his bottle of beer as he went, and switched on the TV. He was just in time to see a repeat of Governor Smiley’s statement on KNBC News. Governor Smiley looked even more orange on the screen then he had in the make-up room; and his orange shirt only intensified the brightness of his face.

  ‘I’m not going to try to downplay this, folks. This drought is one of the worst natural disasters that the state of California has ever faced. It is far, far more severe than any earthquakes that we’ve suffered, because it affects not just those communities built on fault-lines, but all of our communities, from north to south, and from west to east. Because of that, I am asking each and every one of you to share the discomfort that a critical shortage of water is inevitably going to bring us. I have appointed a special drought crisis team to manage the fair and equitable distribution of what limited water is available to us, and I trust you will understand that when they shut off your water supply for a controlled period of time, they are acting in the best interests of all of you.’

  Martin took another swig of beer and shook his head. God, he thought, you’re such a liar. He had always taken it for granted that politicians lied, but it was still shocking to hear Governor Smiley come out with such a blatant untruth, when he had already told Martin that deprived neighborhoods would suffer much longer water shortages than affluent parts of the city. In this life, you get what you pay for, and if you can’t afford to pay for it, you can’t have it.

  He switched off the TV and went into his bedroom, where his bed was still unmade, the red-and-green Navajo-style blanket thrown back at an angle. He undressed in front of the mirrored wardrobe doors. He thought he looked exhausted, his dirty-blond hair messed up, his gray eyes hooded. He had a pattern of red bruises on his arms, which he had probably sustained when he was struggling with the gang who were stealing water.

  His body was still sculptured and muscly even though these days he didn’t work out as much as he knew he ought to. Across the right side of his chest, at a sharp diagonal, there were five white parallel scars as if he had been ripped across the nipple by a mountain lion. He had similar scars across his back and his buttocks and there were no nails on either of his big toes. There were two V-shaped burn marks on either side of his scrotum.

  He couldn’t help thinking about Saskia Vane, and what she had said to him about owing Governor Smiley ‘big time’. He couldn’t help wondering how a strong woman like her could be so much indebted to a man as crass as him, even to the point of forfeiting her sense of humanity.

  He went into the bathroom, dropped his shirt and his shorts into the laundry basket, and reached into the shower cubicle to turn on the water. Nothing happened. He went over to the washbasin, and tried both hot and cold faucets. Nothing. The water supply was shut off.

  For the first time that day, he understood exactly why the crowds on North D Street had been so angry.

  By the time he woke up the next morning, the sun was already beating down out of a cloudless blue sky. He pushed back the covers and rolled out of bed, and went through to the living room to turn on the TV News and weather forecast, as if he couldn’t guess already what Craig Fiegener would be telling him about today’s temperatures.

  ‘By midday, the IE is going to experience triple figures yet again, maybe in excess of one hundred twenty. Cloud, nil; precipitation, nil. And now over to Jacob Rascon for news about last night’s protests against the rotational shutting off of water supplies in San Bernardino County – Jacob?’

  Martin went to the bathroom and tried the faucets again. There was still no water. He lifted the lid of the toilet cistern and saw that there was just enough water for one flush, so he took a pee but decided not to pull the handle until later.

  There was no water for brewing coffee so he drank Pepsi instead, straight from the bottle. Usually it didn’t bother him if he didn’t make coffee, and when he did he rarely finished it, but now that he had no choice he found himself really craving for it.

  Back in his bedroom he was pulling on his pants when his cell played ‘Mandolin Rain’.

  ‘Mr Makepeace? Good morning, sir. This is Sergeant Wosnicky from police headquarters downtown. Corporal Evander asked me to call you and inform you that your son is going to be transported to West Valley Detention Center at two p.m. this afternoon. He should arrive there about two thirty. Once they’ve booked him in there you’ll be allowed fifteen minutes to talk to him, but you should call them in advance to make an appointment. Do you want me to give you the number?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes? Is that all?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes is the usual permitted visiting time, sir. His defense lawyer will be able to see him for longer before his arraignment hearing. So far as I know that’s scheduled for tomorrow sometime.’

  ‘OK. Thank you, Sergeant.’

  He called Peta. Sergeant Wosnicky had already told her that Tyler was going to be moved to Rancho Cucamonga that afternoon, and she was in tears.

  ‘It’s going to be OK, Peta. He didn’t do it and they won’t be able to prove that he did. In any case I’m going over there this afternoon to see him. How’s Ella?’

  ‘A little better, thank God. Her temperature’s almost back down to normal, and she managed to eat some cereal for breakfast.’

  ‘How about your water? Your water back on yet?’

  ‘No, not yet. I tried to call the water department to find out how much longer we were going to be cut off, but the line’s always busy, and there’s been nothing about it on the local news.’

  Martin said, ‘It’s the same here, in my apartment. Do you know something, after I talked to Governor Smiley yesterday, I’m beginning to think that they’ve shut our water off for good, or at least until it rains, which won’t be for weeks. Or months, even. Who knows?’

  ‘They can’t do that. Can they?’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Governor Smiley and his gang seem to think that anybody on welfare doesn’t deserve squat.’

  ‘But we can’t live without water, Martin.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the idea.’

  When he drove downtown, Martin found that the streets were almost completely deserted and most of the stores were shuttered. Broken bricks and other debris were strewn across the sidewalks and traffic signs had been uprooted. At most of the major intersections, black-and-white squad cars were parked, but he was disturbed to see nearly as many dark blue Explorers with the ESS logo on their doors, from Empire Security Services. Both squad cars and security vehicles had their engines idling to keep their air conditioning on. Although it was only nine a.m., the temperature was already up to ninety-two degrees, and the weather forecast on his radio warned of 120 by noon.

  Most mornings when he didn’t feel like cooking his own breakfast he stopped at Molly’s Café on the corner of North D Street for Polish sausage and scrambled eggs, but Molly’s was shuttered, too. Further along West Court Street, he saw more squad cars parked diagonally across the street, and more ESS Explorers, too, and at least twenty riot police standing around with the sun reflecting from their plastic shields, as well as uniformed security guards. A siren was whooping three or four blocks away, and there was a feeling in the air that something ugly was about to happen.

  He drove to the office, parked, and went upstairs. Brenda the receptionist pulled a face at him as if she w
ere disappointed that he had actually come in early, and she had no cause to complain about him. ‘Arlene’s having a team meeting,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry. It hasn’t started yet.’

  ‘What? Me worry?’ said Martin. He went through to the kitchen first, where a jug of coffee was brewing. He filled his mug, took a couple of Anna’s Orange Thins from the tin on the counter, and went through to Arlene’s office. Shirelle Jackson was already there, as well as Kevin Maynard and Dana Suykerbuyk, a plump young woman with a mass of dry blonde curls, a huge bosom and a bottom to match, and a fondness for lime green sweat pants with loops under the feet.

  Arlene looked up and said, ‘Ah, Martin, you’re here! We’re still waiting for Karen and Michelle, but we might as well begin. The thing is that this drought situation has suddenly escalated and the police are expecting some very serious trouble as the day goes on. The water was supposed to come back on in the first neighborhoods that were affected by mid-afternoon, but the drought crisis people think it may have to stay off for a little longer.’

  ‘Exactly how long is “a little longer”?’ asked Martin.

  ‘They’re not entirely sure.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure they are sure. They’re just not telling anybody, is all. So what are we supposed to say to our families?’

  ‘As always, Martin, our first concern is the safety and well-being of the children in our care. So what we need to do is to keep our families calm and try to minimize any risk of civil protest. We don’t want any of our children getting hurt in a riot.’

  Martin put down his coffee mug on her desk, which he knew she didn’t like. ‘If you think that I’m going to do Governor Smiley’s dirty work for him, Arlene, you’d better think again. You might as well know that I talked to the governor yesterday and he openly admitted to me that he has a deliberate policy of depriving the poorer neighborhoods of water while maintaining supplies to the wealthier districts.’

  ‘Aw, come on, I can’t believe that,’ put in Kevin Maynard. ‘Governor Smiley made a specific promise in his statement on TV last night that everybody would get their fair share.’