Drought Read online

  ‘You don’t regret marrying her, do you, Halford?’

  ‘I don’t regret marrying her money. I just wish that she hadn’t come along with it.’

  Saskia smiled and shook her head. ‘If it hadn’t have been for Mona, you never would have made Governor, you know that. Everything you want in life has its price, and Mona was yours. Now, what are you going to say to the good people of San Bernardino about the drought situation?’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ asked Halford.

  ‘Yes, I have. Tuna salad. I don’t recommend it.’

  ‘Then how about a drink? I could really use a drink.’ He looked around the lounge and spotted a waiter in a yellow coat talking to one of the golf club members. Saskia didn’t know how he caught the waiter’s eye because he didn’t even raise a finger, but the waiter immediately saw him looking toward him and excused himself to the man he was talking to. He came hurrying over and said, ‘Yes, your honor, what can I get you?’

  ‘Bring me a double Knob Creek on the rocks, would you, and this desirable lady will have a glass of Krug.’

  ‘Well?’ asked Saskia, when he had gone.

  ‘What am I going to say to the good people of San Bernardino? I’m going to be straight with them.’

  ‘That’ll be a first.’

  ‘Come on, Saskia, they’re dumb but they’re not stupid. They already know that we’re suffering the worst nationwide drought since records began, so there’s no point in trying to hide that from them, is there? What they don’t know is that it’s a hell of a lot more serious than we’ve been telling them, and it’s not just the lack of rainfall that’s to blame.’

  Saskia raised one eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to admit that we’ve been turning a blind eye to decades of chronic mismanagement and underinvestment in the water supply business, and right now the infrastructure is so darn rotten that our pipes are leaking more water than is actually reaching people’s homes?’

  ‘God, Saskia, you’re such a goddamned lawyer. No, I’m not exactly going to put it like that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to warn them that the little water that is getting through is five times more polluted than it’s ever been? Or that the water in at least nineteen cities in California is pretty much poisonous? Did you see the latest tests from the water department? Every glass of water you drink in California contains agricultural pesticides and toxic chemicals from factories and mines, not to mention untreated domestic sewage.’

  ‘I’m not exactly going to say that, either.’

  Saskia smiled. ‘I didn’t think you would, Halford, not for a moment. You’ll tell them one of your creative truths, won’t you? Just like the creative truth I’ve been telling the county departments about your wonderfully egalitarian scheme for rationing water neighborhood by neighborhood.’

  ‘That’s your job, Saskia. That’s why I appointed you. Governing a state like California involves a whole lot more than looking after people’s welfare. Now and then, God gets pissed with us, for one reason or another, and He shakes us up with an earthquake, or brings us a three-year dry spell, like He has now. When that happens, and it’s simply beyond our capabilities to supply everybody with all the vital services they need, we have to keep people calm, and optimistic. We have to make it clear to them that we’re doing everything we can, but most of all we have to make them understand that it’s not our fault. I mean, whose fault was Hurricane Katrina?’

  The waiter brought them their drinks, as well as a bowl of wasabi nuts and a selection of cheese straws. Halford immediately tipped out a handful of nuts and then clapped them into his mouth. ‘Haven’t eaten since breakfast, and that was only muesli. Mona’s got me on this goddamned health regime. I mean, do you think I’ve put on weight?’

  Saskia said, ‘Nobody blamed the federal government or the New Orleans city administrators for Hurricane Katrina. What they did blame them for was the cack-handed way they handled it. The same is going to happen to you with this drought, unless you’re careful.’

  Halford swallowed whiskey and clapped some more nuts in his mouth. He crunched for a while, looking at Saskia and saying nothing. Eventually, though, he swallowed, and coughed, and said, ‘Like I told you, sweet cheeks, I’m going to be straight with them. I’m going to tell them that we have no choice but to shut off the water supply, neighborhood by neighborhood, and people will undoubtedly suffer. But everybody in every city in the state will suffer equally. We’re all in this together. I’m even going to shut off the water supply to my own home in Brentwood for forty-eight hours.’

  ‘You’re such a liar, Halford.’

  Halford shrugged, as if even his predilection for lying wasn’t really his fault. ‘No, I’ll do it. I’ll really do it. Admittedly, I’ll probably stay at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento until it’s turned back on again, but I often have to stay there anyhow, and I couldn’t really govern the state of California without taking my daily shower, now could I? Don’t want them calling me Governor Stinky.’

  ‘Some people call you that already, Halford.’

  Halford was about to snap back at her, but he had just helped himself to another mouthful of wasabi nuts and at the same time his cellphone rang, a loud old-fashioned telephone jangle.

  ‘Smiley,’ he coughed, spitting out bits of nut. He listened for a moment and then he closed his cellphone and said, ‘He’s arrived.’

  ‘Who’s arrived?’

  ‘The man I asked you to come here to meet. His name’s Joseph Wrack, and he’s going to be working alongside of the drought team from here on in, or at least until it starts to rain again.’

  ‘Excuse me? Joseph Wrack? “Wrack” as in “wrack and ruin”? I never heard of him. And what exactly do you mean by “working alongside” …?’

  Halford stood up. He picked up his cut-glass tumbler of whiskey, and Saskia’s champagne flute, too. ‘Come outside and meet him. He can explain it a whole lot more clearly than I can. In fact you’ll have only to look at him and you’ll know what I mean.’

  He led the way out of the lounge and through the open door that led out on to the golf club verandah. Twenty or thirty golf club members were sitting under green striped parasols, talking and laughing and drinking and eating. Most of them sported bright-colored polo shirts and lurid checkered golfing pants. But it was the tall, gaunt man at the very far end of the verandah who immediately caught Saskia’s attention. He had an iron-gray flat-top buzzcut, and he was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and black pants and he was leaning over the railing, smoking a long thin cigar. As far as Saskia knew, there was a no-smoking rule out on the verandah, but it looked as if none of the waiters had summoned up the nerve to tell him to put it out.

  ‘Is that him?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Halford.

  ‘He looks pretty mean to me. Like a gunslinger out of one of those Spaghetti Westerns.’

  Halford nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right. That sums him up exactly.’

  They walked across the verandah with several of the golfers swiveling around in their chairs to stare at Governor Smiley and to admire Saskia’s figure. The only person who didn’t turn to look at them was Joseph Wrack, who continued to stare into the distance, blowing out occasional clouds of smoke, which hurried away from him like frightened ghosts.

  ‘Joseph!’ called Halford.

  Joseph Wrack stood up straight. His face was Slavic, almost skull-like, with a high forehead and a sharply-chiseled chin. He had deep lines in both of his cheeks, and pursed-up lines around his mouth. In spite of that, his eyes were large and brown and liquid, which made Saskia feel as if he was much more sensitive than he appeared at first sight – more like a starving poet with an ax to grind than a gunslinger.

  ‘Hallo, your honor,’ he said, in a harsh voice that was little more than a whisper. He made no attempt to hold out his hand. He looked at Halford for a moment as if he were making a critical assessment of his white suit and his bright orange shirt, and thinking h
ow the fuck can the Governor of California come out in public dressed like the owner of a second-rate Reno casino? But then he turned his attention to Saskia and she could immediately tell that he liked the look of her.

  ‘You’re Sasha, then?’ he whispered.

  ‘Saskia.’

  ‘What kind of a name is that?’

  ‘Czech, originally, although some people think it’s Dutch. It means “protector of mankind”.’

  ‘That’s appropriate.’ He transferred his panatela to his left hand and held out his right. ‘Great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Saskia. You’re a beautiful woman.’

  ‘And you’re a very scary-looking man.’

  Joseph almost managed to smile. ‘I like to think so. It’s part of my job description.’

  ‘So what’s the job, Joseph, and why do you have to look scary for it?’

  Joseph pointed across the golf course, to the second green, where sprinklers were busily jetting water across the emerald-green grass. ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be long, and that’s going to need protection. Like, physical protection.’

  ‘I’m surprised the sprinklers are even going at all,’ said Saskia.

  ‘Hey, that’s bent and poa annua grass,’ said Halford, as if he were surprised at her ignorance. ‘Have to keep it well-watered.’

  ‘What was that you said about “we’re all in this together”?’ Saskia retorted. ‘I know you’re planning to allocate a more generous water supply to some districts than you are to others. I wasn’t born just before breakfast. But to irrigate a golf course, Halford, when you have hundreds of vulnerable people with nothing to drink and no way of washing themselves or flushing their toilets …’

  Halford gave another of his dismissive shrugs. ‘Look around you, Saskia. You see these guys sitting here, having their lunch? They have money, they have influence. So far as they’re concerned, they keep the local economy going. Without them, the less advantaged people in this county would have no jobs, no homes and no social security. They wouldn’t even have access to a faucet, let alone have any water coming out of it. These guys having their lunch here rightly feel that they deserve special treatment. They’ve worked their rear ends off all of their lives and they’ve given more to the community than anybody else, so they expect to get more back out of it. You can’t say that isn’t fair.’

  ‘What you really mean is, they’ve donated more to your campaign funds than anybody else, and you owe them, big time.’

  ‘Come on, Saskia. Stop being so cynical. These guys are wealth-creators. They’re philanthropists. They give millions to charity. If they want to continue to play golf, then they shall. It’s the least we can do to show how much we appreciate everything they’ve done for this community.’

  ‘Halford – San Bernardino is officially bankrupt. It’s the second poorest city in the nation, after Detroit. What have these vultures done for it?’

  ‘I know how bad things are. You only have to look at the place from the air. But without these guys, believe me, things would have been a whole lot worse.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Saskia. ‘But if the thirsty masses see that thousands of gallons of precious water are being sprayed on to a golf course, they might start getting a little restless about it, am I right? And this is why you’ve called in Joseph?’

  ‘It’s pointless having an austerity program if you can’t enforce it,’ said Halford. ‘Just ask the President. Now, Joseph here is director of public safety at Empire Security Services. You must know ESS … they employ over two thousand four hundred security guards and they handle everything from cash transportation to guard duties to crowd control.’

  ‘ESS – oh, yes, I know all about ESS.’ said Saskia. ‘Two of your security guards were accused of randomly shooting three innocent bystanders during that Chase Bank siege in Rialto last February. I know. I represented the bereaved family of one of them. “Trigger-happy to the point of psychotic,” that’s how the judge described your ESS men.’

  Joseph hadn’t taken his eyes off Saskia once. ‘That bank siege really was a one-off, Saskia. I hope it doesn’t mean that you and I can’t work in harmony together.’ His voice soft but abrasive, like somebody rubbing a pillow with glasspaper, and he made ‘harmony’ sound like some kind of devious conspiracy.

  ‘I’m totally confident that you can mollify the masses, Saskia,’ said Halford. ‘But if things do start getting out of hand, you can call at any time on Joseph and his people to supply any extra protection that might be required. It’s just a precaution, sweet cheeks. The thing of it is, the police have enough on their plate already, and a large number of officers live in neighborhoods where the water supply will be quite severely restricted, so I’m not one hundred percent confident that we can rely on their wholehearted support.’

  ‘Well, you may be a liar, Halford, but you’re a realist, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘This woman,’ grinned Halford, shaking his head and giving Joseph an unwelcome nudge with his elbow. ‘I love her. I do. I love her.’

  They sat down at one of the tables and talked for another twenty minutes, then Halford lifted his wrist and peered at his weighty Rolex watch. ‘Well, time I was gone, my friends. I have a meeting with some oil people before this pesky TV broadcast. Saskia, can I have a private word with you before I go?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Saskia. She stood up and Joseph stood up, too. He held out his hand again and said, ‘An unexpected pleasure to meet you, Saskia. Till the next time.’

  ‘Joseph?’ said Halford. ‘I’ll see you later on, my friend. Semper fi.’

  As they went back inside the golf club building, Saskia said, ‘You weren’t in the Marines, were you, Halford?’

  ‘Are you serious? Of course not. But Joseph was. He was invalided out for some reason or another. Insanity, probably. No – only a joke! But I know for sure that he was at Abu Ghraib – that prison where the GIs were torturing Iraqi prisoners.’

  They were halfway along the corridor that led to the reception area when he suddenly opened a door on the left-hand side and peered inside. ‘Empty. Good. This’ll do.’

  Saskia looked inside, too. The room was windowless and airless and smelled of new carpet and leather. There was a long mahogany table in the center of it, with chairs all around. Halford held the door open wider and said, ‘After you, sweet cheeks.’ Once they were inside, he turned the key. ‘Don’t want anybody disturbing us, do we?’

  ‘What do you want, Halford?’ Saskia challenged him.

  ‘Maybe I’d like some reward for being so tolerant. You’re the only woman I ever allow to speak to me the way you do, and yet you have less of a right to do that than any other woman I know.’

  ‘You’re a pig, Halford. And the trouble is, you know you are, and you just don’t care. In fact you wallow in it, don’t you?’

  Halford came up close to her and laid his hands on her shoulders, rhythmically squeezing them. ‘You know how serious this is, Saskia. One way or another, a whole lot of people are going to die. The only question is, which people. Somebody has to make the decision and I was elected to make life-or-death decisions so that’s what I’m doing. I can’t stop people from dying. But it’s my judgment that they’re better off not knowing in advance. Otherwise, what’s going to happen? Anarchy. And then even more people are going to die, the worthy as well as the worthless.’

  With that, he turned her around, so that she had her back to him, and he pushed her forward until her thighs were pressed up against the edge of the table. She didn’t resist him, but then she didn’t make it easier for him, either.

  ‘Supposing I tell the media what you’re doing?’ she said.

  ‘You won’t. Any more than you’ll quit from my specialist drought team. You’ll do what I want you to do because you can’t face the alternative. Apart from that, you’re the best at what you do, and you take pride in that, don’t you? Forget the ethics, forget the morality. You’re the queen of friendly persuasion.
’

  He was standing so close behind her now that she could feel his hardened penis through his pants. She started to twist herself away, but he clamped his left hand around the back of her neck and forced her face-down on to the table. Then, quite casually, he lifted her floaty orange dress at the back, right up to her waist, baring her buttocks.

  ‘I was wrong to call you a pig, Halford,’ she told him, with her cheekbone pressed against the surface of the table.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ he replied. She could hear him tug open his zipper.

  ‘Calling you a pig, that’s an insult to pigs. I never knew a pig who blackmailed every other pig he knew, just to make sure that he always got his own way.’

  ‘It’s not blackmail, sweet cheeks. It’s insurance.’

  ‘Insurance?’ said Saskia. He was parting the cheeks of her bottom with his thumb now. ‘You just don’t have the stones.’

  ‘Oh … I have the stones, Saskia. You know that already.’

  He tugged aside the thin white elastic of her thong and slid inside her, right up to the open zipper of his pants.

  ‘I hate you, Halford,’ she said, breathlessly, as he pushed himself into her again and again, more and more forcefully each time.

  ‘That,’ he gasped, ‘that – is – beside – the – fucking – point.’

  He rammed himself into her harder and harder, and started to grunt with every thrust. He was keeping Saskia’s head pressed against the tabletop, which hurt. His penis was so big and hard she felt as if she were being forced wide open, and that he was burying himself inside her so deeply that its tip was almost nudging her heart.

  Somebody rattled the door-handle, trying to get into the conference room. After a few rattles they knocked, and called out, ‘Anybody in there?’

  This doesn’t deter Halford at all. He kept ramming and ramming and at last he suddenly said, ‘Kiiiii-mota!’ He took himself out of her and ejaculated all over the cheeks of her bottom and her dress.

  She stayed bent over the table with her face against it for almost half a minute, despite the fact that Halford was no longer holding her down. Eventually she stood up straight, and adjusted her thong, and straightened her dress. Halford had already zippered himself up and was combing his hair.