Concrete Underground (2010) (10 page)

We left the industrial sector by crossing the Guadalupe Bridge over San Hermes River, then decided to take the long way back and cut through the park. Even though it probably wasn't the safest move and ended up taking way longer than I expected, it gave her time to tell me more about herself and her life.

I half expected to hear some absurd story about being raised by wolves or running off with gypsies, but for once she was refreshingly plausible.

She was born Natalie McPherson nineteen years ago last April. Her parents met when her father was already in his fifties and her mother was in her late twenties. James was just getting over the end of his second marriage, which was ending in divorce. His first wife died of leukemia. Neither marriage had produced any other children.

Natalie's mother was the daughter of one of James's business associates. They met at a charity auction for McPherson's foundation and had a brief romance that ended messily. However, eight months after that messy ending, their daughter was born. Her mother died three days later due to complications that arose during labor. James McPherson was left to care for his only child alone, and named her Natalie after her mother.

She rarely saw her father as a child and was instead raised by a series of nannies. She was an imaginative and gifted kid who skipped a grade in elementary school, but she also had behavior problems. She felt bored and stifled by school, prone to daydreaming and often having difficulty focusing on any single task for a length of time.

While in junior high, she caught the theater bug and began acting in a handful of local children's companies. By the time she was thirteen, she was already in high school and her drama department staged an original play she had written for their spring production. It was they first time they had done a student work. At age fifteen, her works were being performed locally by smaller troupes. She also starred in many of them.

She graduated high school early and decided to focus on theater full-time, but in the three years since hadn't yet managed to making any headway into having a major production.

Nor was she really showing much interest in getting involved with her father's business or pursuing any other career for that matter. In fact, she was fairly open about being generally aimless and unmotivated, which was one of the major factors contributing to the strained relationship with her father.

In fact, practically the only thing the two of them had in common anymore was Max, whom she met when he came to see one of her shows. Her father misinterpreted Max's interest in her as being sexual and, fearing Max's reputation as unrepentant man-slut, tried to keep the two of them apart. Columbine picked up on this vibe immediately, so of course she made a point to spend as much time with him as possible, and the two of them soon became close friends.

---

"But before I let you in on all the details," I continued, back at the diner, "I need to make sure you realize exactly what's going on here."

"What do you mean?" she asked and inclined her head, intrigued.

"Well, for starters, do you know why everyone is so upset by my article?"

She shook her head and confessed, "Sorry, I don't really read your newspaper. Or any newspaper, for that matter."

"Fair enough," I replied. "In a nutshell, I basically accuse several powerful businessmen of bribing and threatening city officials into giving them fat government contracts. Businessmen like Max. And your father."

"Oh," she responded with amusement. "So I'm guessing that's why you were getting the cold shoulder at your sister's wedding, right?"

"Mostly. A lot of them just flat out personally hate me anyways, but the article didn't help things much."

"I'd imagine not," she chuckled. "So tell me more, I'm intrigued. What specifically did your article say?"

"Well of course the focus was Max, who got the contract to provide citywide free wi-fi, which of course is generating huge ad revenue for him as well as subscription fees from people willing to pay for faster, ad-free service. I have e-mails between him and city officials, including the mayor's chief of staff and the city administrator, where he makes some pretty severe threats if they don't choose Abrasax. And when I say threats, I'm talking both personal and professional - and some just bizarre, horrifying shit."

"Like what?" she asked, intrigued.

"He got so mad at one city staffer who wouldn't return his calls that he threatened to have the guy fired and blacklisted, have his house foreclosed, his teenage daughter violated, and his pet cat flayed alive."

Columbine laughed and shook her head. "I'd like to think at least one of those was an empty threat. So who else did your article mention?"

"Asterion Records Management, who won the contract for the city's records warehousing and digital archiving. Of course, they won the contract because they were the only ones given the chance to bid. Incidentally, their CFO had recently purchased gifts for several city council members, including a honeymoon to Asia for a newly-married member, an original Picasso for the council's resident art-buff, and even paying to remodel the vice mayor's kitchen. I was given copies of e-mails from an Asterion rep to city staff with detailed instructions on how to hide the source of the gifts.

"Then there was Inspiratech, who made millions on their contract to completely redo the network infrastructure in city hall an other city offices. But they won the contract only in the second round of voting. After the first round, the council member who cast the deciding vote against them was recalled from office by a vicious, well-funded campaign. No one knew how a tiny grassroots neighborhood committee behind the recall was able to raise that kind of money, but then I turned up several e-mails to the new council member suggesting he would be well-served by taking a more amenable stance on Inspiratech's proposal.

"And finally," I hesitated a little, "your father successfully lobbied the city to invest millions in redevelopment money in areas where he owns a lot of land, making the property values and the rents that he could charge skyrocket. Again, e-mails between your father's lobbyists and city officials contain a host of thinly-veiled and not-even-thinly-veiled threats. Your father has been a king maker in this city for decades. All ten sitting council members and the mayor won their seats with his backing. You don't ignore threats from a man like that.

"Those are the highlights, at least."

I paused for a moment, unsure how Columbine was going to react.

"Yay, pancakes," she sang.

I looked up to see that our waiter had finally dragged himself away from his ham-fisted attempts to pull some crunchy granola tail long enough to bring our food. He set down a mountain of buttermilk pancakes in front of Columbine and a bacon-and-egg muffin sandwich in front of me. Columbine proceeded to drown her plate in maple syrup.

"Hey, do you think you could see your way to tossing a little coffee into this mug while you're over here? I'm sure she won't mind if you're gone just a little longer," I added, pointing at the redhead, who had picked up a pinch of her cold, congealing oatmeal and started rubbing it in her fingertips, no doubt tripping on the way its lumpy, grainy texture felt against her skin.

The waiter left in a huff and mercifully headed for the pot of coffee sitting on a warmer behind the counter.

"You shouldn't be so mean to people, or so judgmental," Columbine chided gently as we watched him go.

I sucked on my teeth and briefly considered a couple snappy rejoinders, but decided against them. "Yeah, I know," I sighed. "It's just these pretentious fucking drones with all the shit sticking out of their skin, it's so phoney now, it's
de rigeur
, like counter-culture is just another uniform to wear."

"I think it's neat," she shrugged. "It's like you're taking control of your own body, turning it into something new, something better, not just passively accepting what you've been given. Haven't you ever wanted to be someone else?"

I rolled my eyes in answer just as the waiter returned.

Once he finished refilling my coffee and Columbine had managed to choke down her first impossibly large forkful of pancake, she eagerly asked, "So what do you want me to do to help with your plan?"

"There are a few things I was hoping you could explain for me," I replied, then dug an envelope out of my coat pocket and then laid it out on the table. It was blue and stamped with the crown-and-globe symbol in silver foil, just like the one I'd received the morning of Jenny's wedding.

"What can you tell me about this?"

Columbine picked up the envelope. "Well that's the symbol of the Highwater Society, like Max told you."

"Yeah, but what exactly does that mean?" I pressed. "What is the Highwater Society?"

"It's basically a social club for the richest of the rich. It started way back when the city was founded as an excuse for rich old men to get away from their wives and get drunk. Now they let in girls, and all the young tech millionaires have dropped the median age a good half-century or so, but the idea is pretty much just the same - rich people sitting around together to talk about how much better they are than everyone else."

I nodded to the envelope in her hands. "Look inside."

She opened the unsealed flap and pulled out the sheet of white paper inside. The page was headed "THE HIGHWATER SOCIETY" and contained a list of names with what appeared to be titles or positions. The titles were all taken from members of a king's court -
Steward, Chaplain, Seneshcal, Cup-bearer
. Columbine's father was listed as as
Chamberlain
. The rest of the names were all prominent political and business leaders, most of whom were connected to the scandals in my article. At the very top of the list, however, was, "Dylan Maxwell -
Fool
."

Columbine nodded her head as she slipped the paper back into the envelope. "Those are their officers. Where did you get this?"

"About two weeks ago, while I was still working on my article, I got a call from a woman claiming to have information about the e-mails I had been given - which caught my attention because at that point no one knew about them but me and my source. So I agreed to meet her, even though she wouldn't tell me her name or how she was connected to my story.

"Anyways, I showed up at the cafe where she said she'd be, but she never showed. I waited for a little over an hour before I finally gave up, but when I got up to leave, I noticed someone had slipped this envelope into my computer bag."

"Weird," Columbine replied as her eyes grew bigger, clearly enjoying the cloak-and-dagger elements of my story.

I reached into my coat again and pulled out a second matching blue envelope and passed it across the table for her inspection.

"This one showed up at my office Friday morning. The article it references had to do with a dead woman being found in a ditch on the side of the highway," I explained. "In my dream, the dead woman in Max's airplane was holding a ruby necklace with this same crown-and-globe symbol etched on it. That's how I knew it had to be the same woman; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise."

I could tell from Columbine's expression that the wheels were turning. "So does that mean the Highwater Society was responsible for killing her? Then again, she could also have been a member. But then why would they leave the necklace in her hand?" she asked excitedly, her mind racing through the implications.

"Those are all possibilities," I agreed. "But whatever the case, one thing's for sure - both the necklace and the body itself were left deliberately for Max to find. Someone was sending him a message. Which is the second thing I wanted to ask you about - and I know he's your friend, so this is going to be sensitive, but do you know of any enemies Max might have?"

Columbine stared silently at me in wide-eyed amazement for a moment, and then erupted into laughter.

"Yeah, you need a list? There's a phone book over by the bathrooms that'd give you a good start."

I rolled my eyes to let her know I was not amused.

"Look, you don't get as rich and successful as Max without stepping on more than your fair share of toes. And to be honest, he's involved in a lot things that aren't exactly on the up-and-up. The better question isn't who are his enemies, it's
who'd be dumb enough to actually try and take him on?
"

"Is he really that dangerous?" I asked.

"He's rich, brilliant, and completely sociopathic. It doesn't get any more dangerous than that."

"I thought he was your friend."

"He is, and I love him like brother," Columbine insisted. "But there are certain things I know enough not to ask about."

"Some friendship," I scoffed, then immediately regretted saying it.

"There you go being judgmental again," she said while waving her syrup-smeared knife at me. "Not everyone can be as cool and virtuous as you, Mr. Punk-as-Fuck Journalist, Crusader for Truth and Justice."

I shook my head. "I never claimed to be virtuous. I'm not a good man."

She didn't respond to this, and instead just shoveled the last forkful of pancake into her mouth.

I shook my head in astonishment. "How did a little thing like you manage to eat all that?"

"Don't let my petite stature fool you, there's a lot more to me than meets the eye." She winked. "
Judge me by my size, do you
?"

"You're such a dork," I said.

She got up to use the restroom while I scooped up the two blue envelopes and stuffed them back into my jacket. Then I took out my notebook and jotted down a few snippets from our conversation along with a couple things that stood out in my memory from last night:

Crown & Globe = Highwater, "how they find each other"

Max doesn't trust Lily, thinks she is my source

Saint Anthony: at flophouse looking for "Cobb"

I underlined the last word twice, then stashed the notebook and went up to the counter to settle the bill. As I paid, I noticed the waiter looking disappointedly at something behind me. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see the redhead walking out the front door.