Badwater

34

The doctor had come and Hap had left. The rain had stopped. The shower and hoses and pump were gone. Out here on the lawn it looked as though nothing untoward had happened. Scotty and his team had disappeared, to the parking lot I assumed. Walter was nowhere to be seen so I guessed he’d claimed Chickie’s boots for analysis.

Ballinger was here, though, rooster-pacing the walkway. “She talk?”

Soliano shook his head and squatted in front of Pria, who sat against the wall hugging her knees. “Miss Weeks, help your mother by helping us. Tell her we agree to pay. Tell her you will watch out for her interests.”

Ballinger halted. “Pay?”

“Five minutes, Miss Weeks. To think. And then please I will need your help.” Soliano headed back to his room, saying to me as he passed, “Talk with her.”

I took in a deep breath.

Ballinger sidled close. “How much the old lady want?”

“One million.”

“Getting expensive.”

I glanced at Pria, to see if she’d caught that. Of course, she might not know that Ballinger was the radwaste dump manager, that his company had already been extorted once this week, that he himself had no authority to pay out any million of CTC funds. As if Soliano, for that matter, did. The FBI was, in the end, a bureaucracy and certainly a field agent — even one as hotshot as Soliano — was not allowed off-the-cuff to dispense one million dollars. It was a bluff. And the girl Soliano was trying to bluff might be a fourteen-year-old from the rez but I’d bet she’d been raised by her daddy and her Aunt Ruth on tales of promises and threats and bluffs from generations of government agents who said let me help you but first you help me.

I didn't know how to get through to her. Maybe if I'd practiced on other kids, but I'd been pretty much tied up in my own angst, which kids could smell on me like bad cheese, and this kid more than any kid I'd ever run across made my head want to explode. But minutes were passing and Soliano was waiting. I said, “I’m sorry about your mom, Pria. I know you’re upset.”

“I want Grandfather.”

“Grandfather’s busy looking at your mother’s boots so we can find out where she went. Where she got into the radwaste. You don’t need Grandfather.”

Pria got up, leveling on me a look of closeup hate.

Just that quickly, I flipped. I became Soliano’s creature. “You know what, Pria? You can save us the trouble. You get your mother to tell us where the stuff is and we can send the experts to clean up the mess.” I waited. I was not reaching her. “What you have to do, Pria, is go in there and tell her she’s going to get what she wants. And I can’t tell you she is. So you’ll be telling a lie. And that sucks. Believe me, I work with a man who will cut out his tongue before he’ll tell a lie — unless it’s going to prevent a greater sin. You know, like murder? Or like crapping up your desert? Once this stuff gets loose, you know, it hangs around. You know what a half-life is? That’s the time it takes for half of a radioactive element to decay — to throw off half its radioactivity. So let’s see, Scotty says we’ve got cobalt-60 in the resins. Nasty stuff. Got a half-life of five and a half years.” I realized I was doing a Hap on her. Well sure worked on me, sure got me reviewing my radionuclides table. “Or maybe you’ve heard of plutonium-239? Hangs around a little longer. Gives up half its radioactivity every twenty-four thousand years.” I waited. “Let’s put it this way. How about your water? You want it to stay happy? Then get in there and tell your mother whatever she wants to hear.”

Her black eyes went flat.

It began to rain again, thunderstorm loud, as if I’d called in special effects. Water please, lord, and make it hard and loud.

Ballinger spoke. “Look here, I can maybe arrange for the company to pay a reward. You know, if everything turns out. If we get the material back.”

I doubted that. He can’t have much credibility left with CTC. And if word of his diddling Jardine’s paperwork hasn’t yet reached them, it will in the end. So what’s Ballinger doing? Helping out Soliano? And then, quid pro quo, Soliano helps out with his ethical and legal dilemmas?

Ballinger said, “Not a million, but…” He seemed to calculate. “Thousands?”

Pria shook her head.

I said, “No? No, you won’t help? No, it’s not enough?”

“Her,” Pria said. “She wants the money now.”

“Look, she knows we don’t have a sack of money under the bed, that’s why she got you into this. She thinks if we make a promise to you we’re more likely to keep it.” Yeah, and I’ve got a treaty for you to sign, too. “So you have to decide if you want to help us or not. I know you don’t want someone else getting contaminated.”

She compressed her mouth. The ultimate daughter decay product.

“What do you want, Pria?”

“I want you to leave me alone.”

Alone alone alone. The word buzzed in my head, like we were back up the echoing canyon, an echo of me, stiff-necked teenage me with my mom — you don’t care, you hate me because I’m alive and Henry isn’t, leave me alone alone alone. Good job, Oldfield. And now you can tell Pria to go to her room.

She was already moving. She started down the walkway toward Soliano’s room.

I said, startled, “You’re going to help?”

“I’m going to the rest room.”

She was heading toward the main building — the lobby — not Soliano’s room. I reached in my pocket and brought out my key. “Use mine.”

She looked at the key as if it were crafted of cobalt-60. She looked out toward the lawn, and the walkway that led to the lobby. Raindrops bulleted onto the concrete, and bounced. Her face closed. She took on an almost crafty look. Another echo. I nearly put my key away. She snatched it before I could.

I turned my hopes from the girl back where they belonged, to the geology. I found Walter in our lab examining a plug of boot soil under the scope. He grunted. I knew that grunt — an expression of interest, if not quite satisfaction.

Half an hour later we heard a door slam and footsteps pounding and, distinct, a curse. Dios mio.

We went out to investigate and saw Soliano loping toward the parking lot.