Hidden River

7: STORM BRINGER

John woke first. He’d had trouble resting on the pullout bed. There were no sheets and it was far too hot to kip in his sleeping bag. I’d had a good night since I’d brought a sheet bag and a sleeping bag to America. We checked out the apartment, small but surprisingly tidy. We learned later that Pat cleaned it when he was healthy. We climbed out onto the fire escape to examine the view. We were only about a mile east of our hotel on Broadway, but Colfax Avenue was a different animal. This was the original way into the city for travelers heading west and you could still see the traces of the old frontier town under the facades. No tall buildings, and if you evacuated the cars, the concrete road, the fast-food restaurants and tattoo parlors, it could have stood in for Hadleyville in High Noon. And it seemed hotter here, a seething heat that mingled with the vehicular pollution.

It also appeared to be one of Denver’s few black neighborhoods, or if not black, certainly poorer. East Colfax was the opposite of everything that Boulder stood for. Down at heel, black, grungy, dirty, honest, and a little bit scary. I liked it.

John, however, was horrified. Where I saw character in the odd derelict building or empty lot, he saw Berlin, June 1945, or—

“Bloody West Belfast on a bad day,” he said. “Not the way I imagined America at all.”

Before I could reply, a knock at the door. We climbed in off the fire escape, opened the door.

Patrick. Six feet tall, a hundred pounds, pale as a banshee, red eyes, cold sores, coughing, in fact, full-blown AIDS. Patrick O’Leary was thirty-three, about a year ago he’d been a two-hundred-pound, ripped, good-looking firefighter. Clearly going down fast. He introduced himself, claimed we were in the second-nicest apartment in the building, showed us how the appliances worked, made us coffee, told us his whole story. When we heard about the AIDS, neither John nor I drank the coffee. He was from Fort Morgan, Colorado, and had been a nine-year veteran paramedic with the Denver Fire Department; unfortunately the DFD had fired him as soon as they had found out that he was HIV positive. The union could see the fire department’s point of view, claiming he put at risk not only patients but also his fellow coworkers. He had lied about his condition too, so the union denied him benefits. He was in the middle of a lawsuit with the union and the fire department, but that, he admitted, would be settled long after he was dead.

Pat, though, had a friend in the DFD who owned a few buildings in Denver and who had let him stay rent-free in this place. All Pat had to do was keep the building as full as possible of tenants but it was harder than it looked, only four apartments were properly furnished, it had erratic plumbing, worse heating, it occupied a dangerous part of town, it had no super and no one to do maintenance. Also Denver was undergoing a building boom, they had closed the old air force base at Lowry Campus and thousands of much nicer lots were becoming available. The suburbs were opening up to the east around Aurora, to the west at Lakewood, and in the south around Littleton. Rich people heading out where they thought it would be safer for their kids. And in 1995 Denver the last place anyone wanted to live was the seedy strip around Colfax Avenue, liquor stores, porn stores, prostitutes, and junkies and everything grown worse since it had become a feeder road for the new airport.

Pat told us that in the other furnished apartments were a retired schoolteacher in his seventies, a nurse in her fifties, and an Ethiopian family of six on the first floor.

Pat was the de facto landlord, took a minimal rent, listened to no complaints, carried a gun. We told him that we were in Denver for only a couple of days until we could change our ticket and fly back to Ireland. He said we should stay longer, that the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as it looked and they had finally dealt with the roach and rat problem with a sonic vermin device. Comforting to know, but our minds were made up.

Pat had a phone in his apartment. We could use it.

I called British Airways. To change our departure flight would cost only a hundred dollars. I changed the tickets. I hung up. That was that. Our American adventure was done. Ending in shambles and disaster. Finito. We were all set to go and we would have gone, flying Denver to London, London to Belfast, and Victoria’s murderer would never have been found and I would have been assassinated by a secret cadre inside the RUC within twenty-four hours of landing on Irish soil, had not Patrick, at that precise moment, said:

“Boys, listen, make any call you like, I get ten cents a minute to Ireland.”

“Any call?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I could call up my dad and let him know we’re coming back,” I said after a pause.

“Go ahead,” Pat said.

I dialed the number for home. Dad picked up after a minute.

“Noel, is that you?” he said.

“No, Dad, it’s me.”

“Alex,” he said, “it’s good to hear from you. I thought it was Noel with the new flyers. The Green Party in Dublin gave me a hundred pounds and—”

“Dad, I’m coming home,” I said, ignoring him.

“Did you find anything out?”

“Yeah, the man who sent the note is just a local nut, nothing to do with anything. But as a matter of fact, I think the police have arrested the wrong man. I’m pretty sure they’ll release him soon. He’s got a good lawyer and I think I’ve helped him a bit. They’ll be opening the case again, it’s the cops’ job now, nothing more I can do. Coming home.”

“There’s nothing else you can do?” Dad asked, sounding disappointed.

“No. Will you tell Mr. Patawasti? I’ll be home in a couple of days, see him myself, but I’d like you to fill him in, if you can.”

“I’m very busy, but I’ll make a point of going to see him. Actually, I want to talk to him, I think he might want to come on the campaign trail with me, take his mind off things,” Dad said.

“Dad, for God’s sake, don’t ask him to campaign with you, give the man some peace, just tell him I found the guy who sent the note and it was unimportant, ok?”

“I will.”

“Ok, look, this is someone else’s phone, I better hang—” I began.

“Oh, Alex, wait a minute, your friend Ivan called three times yesterday, he was looking for you. I got him on the third call.”

“Facey called you up?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“He said that it was urgent that he speak to you. I told him you were still in America and he said that it was good that you were away. I thought that was a bit odd.”

“That is odd.”

“He said, wherever you are, you should call him, reverse the charges, if necessary, he said it was very, very important.”

“Shit.”

“I know, he didn’t sound like himself at all.”

“What did he sound like?”

“He sounded, I don’t know, worried, frightened. You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

“No. Did he leave a number?”

“He did, let me see, six-seven-oh-nine-three, got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, Alex.”

“Ok, Dad, tell Mr. Patawasti, ok?”

“Ok.”

I hung up, called Facey, he wasn’t home.

Pat brought me some milk.

“Alex, do you want milk in your coffee? I take mine black, but I always forget how other people like theirs.”

“No, thanks. Look, uh, can I use your phone later? I’ve an important call to make.”

Pat looked at John and myself wistfully. He cleared his throat, wiped his skinny hand over his forehead. He had something to say:

“Of course, use the phone anytime, and listen, um, the building gets quite lonely, no one wants to visit me, they’re prejudiced against coming out here, even though we’re only a few blocks from East High School, which is a lovely building, uh, anyway. Look, so I was thinking, you boys can stay as long as you like. Rent-free until you get jobs. How does that sound? You don’t get an offer like that every day.”

“Uh, no. Thanks for the offer but, sorry, we, we have to go back home. I’ve already changed our flight to Sunday,” I said.

Pat’s face fell.

“Ok. Well, it’s nice to have you even for a few days,” he said cheerfully, “and if you want to reconsider, there’s no bugs anymore and no rent.”

I thanked him and went back to the apartment. I took a shower, and when I came out, John was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He was going out.

“Where the hell you think you’re going?” I asked.

“I’ve got to get out of here, I’m going nuts, just a walk up and down the street.”

“John, are you fucking out of your mind? Half the cops in Denver are looking for us, you think a haircut and a beard cut are going to fool them forever?”

“Listen, I can’t be cooped up in here, it’s too damn hot, I want out, I want to go to the cinema or something. I’ll wear my baseball cap, change my shirt, you said yourself they’re searching for Spanish guys.”

I looked at John, he did seem a bit jittery, but I was insistent.

“First of all, that baseball cap goes in the garbage. Second of all, not today, not today at least, maybe tomorrow when the heat’s cooled down, but for today, we are staying put, ok?”

“Ok,” John said reluctantly.

About an hour later, Pat saw that we weren’t leaving and came by with martinis. For someone in the throes of a major life-threatening health crisis, after a few drinks, Pat became quite the chatterbox. When he got a wind, he became an entertaining, angry son of a bitch, and we both found ourselves liking him. He particularly had it in for Colorado’s white Christian population, whom he blamed for the infamous antigay referendum that had changed the state’s constitution, allowing organizations such as the Denver Fire Department to fire gay people because of their lifestyle, never mind their HIV status. Odd, though, for with Pat’s red hair and ghostly complexion, he was the whitest person I’d ever seen and, technically, he was a Christian.

“Yeah, boys, they fucked the constitution. It’s going to the Supreme Court next year. Hope I live to see it overturned. Wipe the smile off their fat white faces. This is the only state in the country that did that. Colorado. The hate state. White, bourgeois scum,” Pat said bitterly while we sipped his martinis on the fire escape.

“And no blacks voted for it?” John asked mischievously, sucking on his olive and giving me a wink. I was glad to see that he was making himself forget about yesterday in a haze of alcohol.

“I’m sure some did, but it’s the goddamn Anglos. They’re all Fundamentalist Christian out here. Hate gays, hate non-Christians. They hate Catholics, Latins. Don’t believe me? Drive out on Federal sometime, ask those Mexican guys how they’re treated. While you’re at it, look at the cars, Jesus fish all over them or, occasionally, a Jesus fish eating a fish that says ‘Darwin,’ I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said ‘Warning. This car will become driverless in the event of the Rapture.’”

Neither John nor I got what he was talking about, so Pat explained that Fundamentalist Christians believe they will all be spirited up to heaven during the Rapture, an event that will precede the Apocalypse and the Second Coming.

Pat told us about the corruption of the Denver Fire and Police Departments, for which he blamed the white Masonic lodges. He then went off on John Elway and his series of car dealerships. He blamed the drought on the Coors people, and he even had it in for the Denver Zoo for reasons neither John nor I could fully understand. Paranoid and mad, but entertaining for a while. But we could see Pat wilt before us, he had limited energy, good enough for a few serious rants, but not a whole afternoon of it. Soon he had to lie down.

“What do you make of that Pat guy?” John asked later in the apartment.

“He’s all right,” I said.

“What do you think his deal is?”

“The they’re-out-to-get-me thing?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, they are out to get him. They bloody fired him. He feels betrayed, and I think he’s gone a bit stir out here in a black neighborhood.”

John nodded. The paper got delivered and the later edition of The Denver Post had the dismaying news that the Denver Police Department was watching bus terminals, the train station, and DIA in the hope of capturing the two assailants in yesterday’s apartment murder. Jack Wegener, a congressman from Colorado’s eighth congressional district, was quoted in the paper as saying that maybe now people would take seriously Pat Buchanan’s idea of building an electric fence on the Mexican border.

We tried to nap for a bit, and later, when we heard Pat singing to himself, we went down the hall to pay him another visit and maybe use his phone.

Pat made us two additional martinis and told us more about his favorite subjects; he hated the suburbs, SUVs, and Starbucks coffee. He said if he ever got money, he was going to open a chain of tea shops called Queequegs.

“Pat, uh, about the phone …” I said.

“Oh, yes, go ahead, take it in my bedroom for privacy.”

Pat’s bedroom. Spartan, to say the least. A futon on the floor, one sheet, one pillow.

The sun setting behind Lookout Mountain.

The phone call that’ll change everything….

I dial Ireland.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Facey,” I say.

“Shit, Alex, is that you?” Facey says in a whisper.

“It is.”

“Alex, Jesus Christ, where are you? Still in America?”

“I’m—” I begin.

“No, don’t tell me,” Facey interrupts.

“Ok,” I say, worried now.

“Alex, listen to me very carefully, ok? Pay attention. I’ve been trying to reach you. I’m only a messenger. I’m only a messenger, don’t take it out on me. Ok?” he says, sounding scared.

“Ok, Facey, just tell me,” I say.

“Alex, I wrote it down, let me get the piece of paper, I’m going to destroy the paper once I tell you, can you believe it?”

“Facey, just fucking tell me,” I yell at him, getting impatient now.

“Alex, from channels, way above me, not me, I’ve been instructed to tell you, that if you come back to Northern Ireland, you will be, I don’t know how to say this, Alex, I’ll just say it, they say they’ll see to it that you’re killed. They say if you come back, they’ll kill you. They’ll kill you.”

“Who will kill me?” I ask.

“Alex, oh God, I don’t know, don’t ask me anything.”

“Come on, Facey, I have to know everything.”

Facey, gagging, unable to get the words out. I give him a few seconds.

“Tell me, Facey,” I insist.

“Oh, Jesus. I’m supposed to tell you to stay out of Northern Ireland and stay out of the UK and if they hear that you’re cooperating with the Samson Inquiry in any way, you a-and your dad will be in very serious trouble.”

Facey goes quiet. I can hear him breathing. Someone in the police had passed the message down to Facey. Samson must be close to uncovering some heavy shit. They didn’t have to warn me. Obviously, they didn’t want to kill me, but they would if I showed up in Ulster again. Things must be getting serious. If I returned to Northern Ireland as planned on Friday, by Saturday night I would be facedown in a border ditch. They’d tip off a terrorist cell and get them to kill me. Tell the Prods I was a traitor, tell the IRA I was an important cop. Wouldn’t matter. Of course, it would cause a stink, but not much of one. It would be better for all concerned if I just stayed away.

“Thanks, Facey,” I said.

“Are you ok, Alex?” he asked.

“I’m ok,” I said.

“And you won’t come back, will you?” Facey said.

“No,” I said.

“Good,” Facey said, relieved. He had done his bit, he had secured his career and, maybe just as important, he had stopped his good pal Alexander getting bloody topped.

In a week our money had almost gone and the novelty of living in Denver had worn off. I really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back to Ireland, it wasn’t exactly safe staying here in Denver, and attempting to travel to another city might be the most dangerous thing of all with the cops still watching the bus stations, train stations, and airport. Could always rent a car and drive somewhere. But where? And what if our descriptions had been circulated to the car rental places? Stealing a car was out of the question. Easiest way to get caught. Best thing was to do nothing. Stay put. A lot of cops are lazy and their attention wanders. In another week they’d be thinking about something besides the Klimmer case. A week after, there would be many more pressing crimes to consider and a week after that, we could leave town wearing “We are Klimmer’s Murderers” T-shirts without attracting attention. Besides, we had a clean, rent-free, and safe place to stay, and scoring heroin was easily done with our dwindling bucks a mere fifteen-minute walk from the apartment.

The boy who sold the ketch behind the Salvation Army place was a Costa Rican called Manuelito, nice kid, and he liked me because heroin was a minority taste in this town that was graduating toward crack, speed, crank, and other uppers.

John could have gone home, if he’d wanted. But he chose to stay with me. Doing penance by hanging out with me in exile. I had finally told him everything. I had known John since childhood and to protect him and Dad and everyone, really, I’d kept mum about my resignation from the cops, but now he had to know. I couldn’t go back to Ulster, and he said he would stay with me, at least for a while.

Pat was glad to have us, and when our dough began to run out, he told us about a man he knew who could make us a green card or a J-1 visa. We said thanks, but no, better not get caught doing anything illegal.

Pat had good days and bad days. Sometimes he had energy and would clean the apartment and talk to us, other days he would lie in bed and we would minister to him water and very weak tea. Once we saw the old man who lived on four, but we never saw the nurse. Maybe she’d left and it had slipped Pat’s mind.

All the time, though, we saw the Ethiopians. There were six of them. A father, mother, grandmother, two adult boys, and an eighteen-year-old girl. Only the youngest boy, Simon, and the girl, Areea, spoke any English. Simon and Areea both worked at Denver University as janitors and both were hoping to take classes there in the next quarter. The father and mother both cleaned offices in downtown Denver and the other brother worked in a restaurant. An interesting lot and they made spectacular food and we liked hanging out with them as much as possible. Even though they paid minimal rent, dough was tight and we didn’t like to inflict our presence too much. Still, the dad had character and Simon translated many stories about the corruption and general unpopularity of Haile Selassie, the crazy Jamaicans who somehow thought Selassie was the messiah, and a legend that the Ark of the Covenant was in a monastery in the Ethiopian highlands.

Simon might have had the best English but the girl, Areea, found us the ad. Areea: slender, doe-eyed, straightened hair, tan complexion, pretty. The Ethiopians, improving their reading, took both The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News and when they were done Areea brought them up to us. I think she had a thing for John, which showed she was no judge of character.

The ad was in The Denver Post.

Red Rocks Community College seeks teaching assistants for its joint diploma in Irish and Celtic Studies. Teaching exp. a must, college teaching exp. preferred. Contact Mary Block, RRCC, 303-914-6000

Areea thought this would be perfect, considering our Irishness and everything, but neither of us had teaching experience and although short of money this seemed just about impossible. John, though, had spotted something else.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “Alex, look at this.”

The ad two below Areea’s.

Wanted: Young, enthusiastic activists, who care about the environment, no experience necessary, generous remuneration. Résumés to: Campaign for the American Wilderness, Suite 1306, 1 New Broadway, Denver, CO 80203.

I gave the paper back to John and shook my head.

“I don’t think so, Johnny boy,” I said.

John took me by the arm and led me onto the balcony out of Areea’s earshot.

“Alex, we just go see what it’s all about, we just show up, they don’t know us from Adam, they have no way of connecting us to Victoria or Klimmer. Klimmer was killed by two Hispanics, remember.”

“First of all, fuck that, second of all, we don’t have a work permit,” I said.

“Pat’s friend,” John said.

“John, it’s asking for trouble,” I said.

“Fuck it, Alex, it’s a bloody godsend, don’t you see, it’s why we were here, it’s almost a kind of message, we’re meant to work there, of all the ads Areea could have showed us, she showed us this one?”

“She showed us the one above,” I said.

“Alex, come on, don’t deny the significance of it.”

“John, you’re crazy if you think I’m walking into the lion’s den, just because of some stupid ad,” I insisted.

“Alex, it’s a job, we have no money for food, or, I might add, ketch. No one knows that we saw Klimmer, he said so himself. We wouldn’t be walking into the lion’s anything. The cops are looking for Hispanic guys in his death. There is no one to connect us to that at all. And once we’re back on the case, you could legitimately ask Mr. Patawasti for money again. Don’t you see, this is our way out.”

“Your way out of guilt,” I said, and wished I hadn’t.

“No, your way out of not starving and not going back to Ireland to a bullet in the brain. I’m going to see what it’s all about, you can come or not, up to you….”

I am seven feet away from Victoria Patawasti’s murderer. Here in this room. If Klimmer was right, one of those two men a mere three weeks ago took a.22-caliber revolver and shot Victoria in the head.

Charles Mulholland, Robert Mulholland.

But also sitting at the desk in front of me, Mrs. Amber Mulholland (Charles’s wife) and Steve West (vice president and personnel manager). The room: white carpet, nature scenes on the wall, a large plate-glass window that looked out on Barnes & Noble, McDonald’s, and the Rocky Mountains stretching fifty miles north and south in a huge panorama that took the breath away.

And something else that took the breath away.

Klimmer had been right about Amber Mulholland. You’d have to be crazy not to want to be with her.

How could you focus on Charles or Robert, trying to figure which one was the killer, when she was there?

Amber, tall, overwhelming, a blond, more than that, an iconic blond. A strikingly beautiful American woman of the type that I didn’t think they made anymore. Something old-fashioned about her. Sophisticated, clever. Hair falling in a cascade down her elegant back. A white blouse, pearl necklace, icy blue eyes, skin like porcelain, no, marble, no, vellum — soft, rich, extraordinary, in fact. Cheekbones like knife blades. Liz Taylor’s eyes. Audrey Hepburn’s neck. And no, again, forget comparisons. If the Führer had had his way all women would look like this. Radiant, regal, poised, strong.

She didn’t look fake like Miss America. Miss America would be the girl doing Amber’s nails. She was the real deal. You couldn’t overwrite her. She had star quality. Grace Kelly rather than Madonna. Hitchcock rather than Chandler.

Adroit, assured, and with the sort of sneering sangfroid that made you want to give her a three-picture deal, made you want to sell your family into a silver mine to spend the night with her. And something menacing about her too. This is the sort of woman who never had to lift a heavy box in her life. This is the sort of woman who could start a war between Greeks and Trojans.

I learned later that she was about thirty years old, originally from Tennessee but, fortunately, she didn’t have a Southern accent. That would have been the clincher. If she’d said “Free the South from the Yankees,” you would have been out looking for guns and horses.

And as Charles is talking and I’m standing there looking at her and not looking at her, two thoughts occur to me: she’s thin enough and beautiful enough to be a model or an actress or a person in her own right, not just Mrs. Amber Mulholland, and, second and more weirdly, she’s the inverse of Victoria Patawasti. In mathematics it is called the reciprocal. Victoria, bronzed and brown-eyed and heavy-lidded and dark-haired and beautiful. Amber, golden-haired and azure-eyed and pale-skinned and athletic and beautiful.

And maybe there was a sexual motive, after all. Maybe Charles was having an affair with Amber’s dimensional opposite.

Maybe.

Maybe it was too much to be with her.

You can only stare so long at the sun….

But anyway, the here and now.

The office, the mountains.

Charles himself. Thirty-eight, tall, clean-shaven, handsome, cool, hair in a blond wave, breaking extravagantly to the left of a large intelligent face. Gray eyes with a slightly surprised expression on pale cheeks. Linen jacket, open-necked white shirt, fluttering hands, charming, just the type who could kill someone and be blasé about it in front of the missus or the cops.

Robert Mulholland, the younger brother by five years, another blond. It’s like the Village of the bloody Damned in here. The same wave breaking on a barer beach, paradoxically, although younger, he’s losing his hair, but he’s still lean, handsome, pale, with glasses, taller even than his brother, more of a William Hurt look about him, black T-shirt, distracted, bored. Smarter? More cold-blooded? Fingers folded in front of him on the oak desk. Steady hand on a pistol grip.

Both brothers nice, friendly, inviting. You didn’t need Hannah Arendt to talk about the banality of evil, experience has taught me that either of them could be the killer.

I can’t help wishing I had John around.

Is John here to support me? No, he’s not. John lied. For when he’d convinced me to go to CAW and made me see the sense of it, he said that it was better I go alone, too suspicious, the pair of us, two Micks, showing up.

He was right, but even so.

I had made it through the first stage, an interview with a man called Abe, and now this was the final process.

The fourth person at the table, Steve West, a goateed, squat man, is doing most of the talking now. I don’t like him, he has his hat on indoors, and people like that can’t be trusted:

“Well, uh, Mr. O’Neill,” he continues, looking at my J-1 visa (from Pat’s mate, a proficient little forger who mostly worked with the large Mexican and Central American communities but for only another hundred dollars rustled up an Irish passport), “Abe has passed you on to us, so you must be the sort we’re looking for, let me, uh, let me explain a little about the position. At this stage we’re looking for another dozen campaigners, to increase name recognition and membership of CAW. It’s important, especially now we’ve moved to Denver, that we increase membership. Membership is important for revenue and for political clout. The more members we have, the more influence we can muster and the more members we’ll get.”

“I see,” I say. “And how many members do you have at the moment?”

“Eight thousand five hundred, or thereabouts, five thousand of whom are in Colorado. I know, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club or Audubon, but we’re a very young organization and now we’ve relocated to Denver, we’re hoping to grow exponentially. We do have branches in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, but also Sante Fe, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles,” Steve says.

“How young an organization are you?” I ask.

“Three years old, but it’s only really in the last six months that we’ve really begun to get things together. I’ve taken a leave of absence from my law firm and now that we’ve moved here to bigger offices, we’re hoping we can really grow,” Charles answers with a winning smile.

“You’re from Ireland?” Mrs. Mulholland says, surprised, suddenly looking up from my entirely fictional CV. I have to not look at her to answer.

“Yes,” I say.

She passes the CV to Charles.

“And you’re here on a J-1 visa?” she asks.

“That’s right,” I say, “I’m going to be attending Red Rocks Community College for a year, doing their Celtic Studies diploma, and then I’m going back to the University of Ulster.”

Charles and Mrs. Mulholland look at each other. Robert picks up the photocopy of the résumé and takes his glasses off to examine it.

“What part of Ireland are you from?” Charles asks.

“From Belfast,” I say.

There is a slight pause, then Robert coughs.

“You’re here studying at Red Rocks Community College?” Charles says.

“That’s right.”

“If you’re a student you won’t be able to work full-time?” Charles says.

“Well, my schedule is pretty flexible,” I reassure him.

“Is this your first time in America?” Mrs. Mulholland asks.

“I came once before, traveled around a bit.”

“Very different from Ireland, I would expect,” Mrs. Mulholland says.

“Oh, yes, very different,” I say. “It’s actually warm in summer, which we don’t get much.”

“We went to Ireland, didn’t we, Robert?” Charles says.

“Charles, we’re a little pressed for time, if I could bring it back to—” Steve tries to say but is interrupted by Robert.

“Dublin,” Robert says.

“Yes, only Dublin, but it was charming,” Charles muses.

“It’s a nice city,” I agree.

“I’d like to go,” Mrs. Mulholland says to Charles.

“Mr. Mulholland, please, we have a lot of people still to see,” Steve says.

“Mr. O’Neill,” Charles says, “look, I’ll cut right to it. We’ve had a bit of a, well, a bit of a tragedy. We lost one of our most trusted personnel just last week, and we’re actually desperately shorthanded at the moment. Not just because of the move, but because of the, er, anyway, what we’re really looking for are enthusiastic, intelligent people who understand the ways in which environmental policies have been manipulated and want to see common sense prevail. You don’t have to agree with us one hundred percent politically but you do have to understand where we’re coming from and be willing to bring our message to the public.”

He smiles at me, looks at Robert, and waits for my response. He’s smooth, smug, likable.

“Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Mulholland, I had never heard of your organization until very recently but I’ve read your brochure and your ideas seem very sensible. Although I’m not an American, I do agree that the environment shouldn’t be preserved like a museum but that land and forests should be developed in manageable ways that balance the needs of nature with the needs of people,” I say.

“We also need p-people who will get on with other people, it’s a small environment, we need to bring everyone together as a t-team,” Robert says, speaking expansively for the first time today and it’s a surprise because he has a slight stutter. A stutter, though, does not mean a thing, it is no reflection of an inner life, revealing neither guilt, nor shyness, nor anything. It reveals nothing except maybe a disinclination to become a public speaker and perhaps not even that — Demosthenes and Churchill both stuttered.

“If we took you on a trial basis, could you come tonight?” Charles asks, running his long fingers through his hair.

“Yeah, but why in the evening?” I ask.

“Because that’s when people will be home from work,” Charles tells me.

“Perhaps Abe didn’t explain, this will primarily be an evening job, will that be a problem?” Steve asks.

“Not at all,” I say.

“Do you think you would fit in here?” Mrs. Mulholland asks.

“I do, it seems like an exciting opportunity to get in at the start of an organization. I like challenges and I think I would like this one.”

The table looks at one another, sighs. I get the impression that I’m the first normal person they’ve interviewed today. Not easy finding student-age workers in July in Denver. Indeed, nothing must have been easy at the moment. They must have been swamped, really. Moving to Denver and having to deal with the deaths of two of their key employees.

“Well, maybe we’ll see you tonight,” Charles says.

“One or t-two more questions?” Robert asks Charles.

“We are very pressed, Robert,” Charles says.

Robert bites his lip.

“Ok,” he says.

“Wonderful to meet you,” Mrs. Mulholland says, and everyone thanks me for my time.

Steve sees me to the door and says in a stage whisper:

“I think I can say with all honesty, Alex, that we’d like to welcome you to the family.”

“Thanks,” I say, and walk out into the bare reception area to wait for the formal decision.

An hour later. Charles giving me the tour of the CAW offices. Showing me everything, apologizing for the mess. CAW occupies the entire tenth and eleventh floors of the building. They have twice the space they had in Boulder and it still looks very empty. There are about a dozen employees in cubicles and several others in offices. Charles introduces me and I do my best to remember names. Charles is taller than me, he smells of a light masculine musk. I’ll have to find out what it is. His accent, too, is peculiar, it’s very difficult for a non-American to separate out American accents besides the obvious ones like the Deep South, or Boston or Chicago. It’s slightly Anglicized, though, with a twang, did he go to England for a few years? Perhaps that’s the way they teach them to speak at Harvard or prep school.

“And this is a portrait of Margaret Cheverde, our honorary president, she’s the daughter of an Italian prime minister. Of course, that’s pretty meaningless, in Italy they let everyone be prime minister for a week or two,” Charles says, laughing at his own joke.

I laugh too. He has two nervous twitches: he keeps turning the white gold wedding ring on his finger and he keeps running his hands through his hair. I’m no Freudian, so I don’t figure either means anything.

When we’re done with the tour of the chaotic eleventh floor he tells me what the job will be tonight.

“Tonight, Alex, myself, Abe, and Amber will be taking a van of campaigners out to the sticks, you know, going door to door, trying to drum up members. I haven’t actually done it for a while, but it’ll all fall into place,” Charles says, grinning.

“I’m sure it will,” I agree.

“And look, I don’t want you to be disturbed or anything, there’s going to be a film crew following me around tonight. I know it’s a dreadful bore, but it’s one of those things we have to endure, you know, for publicity.”

“A film crew?” I ask, surprised.

“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll just carry on as if nothing’s happening and they’ll do their job, keep out of our way, sorry it has to be on your first night, but it’s just one of those things.”

We talk some more about tonight, but he keeps looking at his watch. Before he goes, though, I ask him about Mrs. Mulholland, whom Klimmer didn’t mention at all as a staffer. He laughs and says that Amber isn’t supposed to be here at all, she’s just helping out for the next couple of weeks because they’re incredibly short-staffed. She’s a wonder, he says, and I can’t help but agree. Does she know she’s married to a murderer? Or that her brother-in-law is a murderer, or maybe it’s both of them. Or maybe she knows and doesn’t care. Or maybe she’s Lady Macbeth behind the scenes. Charles stops talking. My eyes must have glazed over for a moment.

“Everything clear?” he asks me with a look of concern.

I nod. “Everything is great,” I say with enthusiasm.

“Good. I’ll get you your clipboard and your fact sheets and then Abe will get you to fill in your tax details and show you how to doorstop and how to do the rap. Tonight when you go out, probably Abe or myself will be looking after you, so you’ll have a good time. Is there anything else you want to ask?”

“Uh, no, just, I don’t know, about money, maybe?”

“Oh, sure, hasn’t Steve told you?”

“No.”

“Ok, you get a third of all the money you make over quota. Quota is eighty-five dollars. If you make under that, you get a flat rate of forty percent of what you raise. But don’t worry about that. Most people make about three fifty a night, which means they get, what’s a third of that?”

“One twenty.”

“One hundred and twenty, that’s not bad, is it?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I’m doing the sums in my head. One hundred dollars is about sixty pounds, which isn’t bad for a couple of hours’ work. Not bad at all. Thinking about this cheers me up again. Abe comes out of the office with a clipboard and some fact sheets. He’s a kid my age, fat, ginger bap, wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I talked to him briefly earlier. Seemed ok.

“Ok,” he says, “let’s get you started.”

Charles departs, casually swinging his key ring, Abe brings me into his office, sits me down.

“He told you everything?” Abe asks in a New York accent.

“Yeah, although he was a bit vague and mysterious about personnel problems. Some kind of tragedy?”

“Oh, shit. Look, Alex, Charles wants us to draw a line under it, look to the future and all that, but I should tell you that we had two terrible things happen to us in the last month.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ask.

Abe tells me all about Victoria and Klimmer, explaining that they’ve caught one of the killers and are looking for the others. He tells me not to bring it up with anyone at CAW. He seems a bit upset, especially talking about Victoria, and I’m considering him an empathetic ally when he adds that one of the worst aspects of the whole thing is that now he can’t wear his Warren Zevon “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” T-shirt around the office.

“Is there anything else before we get down to business?” Abe asks.

“Well, Charles said there’s going to be a film crew following him tonight,” I say.

“Yes, yes, there is, he tell you why?”

“No, he didn’t, said it was publicity.”

“Well, if he didn’t tell you, I can’t tell you,” Abe says.

“What’s the big secret?” I ask.

“We’re not supposed to discuss it, in fact, I’m not even supposed to know, so if you don’t mind I’d like to leave it there, ok?”

“Ok,” I say, not minding because Abe looks like the sort of guy who couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

Abe pops the fridge, gives me a Coke, and explains the “rap.” Tonight we’re going to be asking people about the preservation of the old growth forests of North America and if this is an important issue to them. The rap has to be memorized. He does it for me a few times and I believe I’ve got it:

“Hi, my name is Alexander O’Neill, I’m from the Campaign for the American Wilderness, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to preserve our ancient forests, is this an issue that concerns you at all?”

If they say no, I’ve learned a set of answers, if they say yes, I’ve learned answers. It’s like a computer program.

“No, I’m too busy,” Abe says.

“Well, sir, this will only take one minute of your time, one minute to preserve our nation’s heritage,” I say.

“Good,” Abe says.

Abe role-plays me through a set of situations. A woman with a baby, a man on a phone, an angry man, etc. Always in every situation I am to be “closing the loop,” bringing the conversation back to the issue of preserving the old growth forests but allowing for logging in the managed forests, highlighting the shortsightedness of the Greenpeace policy of no development, explaining that logging companies plant more trees than they cut down, further explaining that Congress is choked by environmental pressure groups and that a voice for Wise Use, commonsense use of our natural resources is sadly lacking.

All the time he’s talking, I’m thinking about the Mulhollands. Charles — funny, nice, Robert cold but sympathetic, Mrs. Mulholland, Charles’s wife, the beautiful mirror of Victoria. A troika of evil? Hmmm. Maybe I was way off. Way, way off.

It’s six o’clock, we’re on a clogged highway heading south. We’re in a van. Over a dozen of us. All white, students, bubbly, irritating. No blacks, Asians, or Mexicans. Only one person I recognize from this morning’s set of interviews. Both of us new hires have been introduced to all the others. The others can’t be that veteran either, considering CAW only moved here a couple of weeks ago.

Charles is driving, and beside him in the front seat is Amber, twisting her hair into little ringlets, not being coy, just bored. Beside me in the back is Abe and another girl, who told me her name but I’ve already forgotten it. She’s young and skinny and looks like a student.

I don’t see the film crew and I wonder if both Charles and Abe were joking about that.

As we drive through the traffic, Abe keeps asking people to do tonight’s rap. He doesn’t ask me, which is good, because I’m still trying to remember it. That and all the facts and the angles. First question you’re supposed to ask is whether the issue of the forests concerns them. Second question (while you pretend to fill something in your clipboard) is their political affiliation. If they’re a Republican, you talk about waste, how the mining companies and timber manufacturers are going bankrupt; if they’re a Democrat, you talk about deforestation and why we have to cut down the tropical rain forests, because nutty environmentalists won’t let us use our own forests for managed growth. The tropical rain forests have a hoard of untapped medical potential. If a Democrat woman opens the door, you’re supposed to tell her about the breast cancer drugs they found in the Amazon. If it’s a man, you’re to talk about prostate cancer or heart disease. Whatever’s relevant to the person at the door. The most important thing of all, Charles tells us, while he’s driving, is always to be closing the loop.

Charles shifts lanes expertly and looks at us in the rearview mirror.

“Ok, folks, everyone’s favorite time, the getting-to-know-you questions,” Charles says.

Some people groan.

“Tonight we’ll do favorite superhero and why. Alex, Elena, you go first, of course, since you’ve just joined the family,” Charles says.

“Don’t make them go first, honey,” Amber says. “They should go last.”

“Ok, you’re right. Abe, you first,” Charles says.

“Uh, Spiderman,” Abe says, “because he’s an ordinary guy, lives in Queens, I visited his house, it’s a real address in Forest Hills, ’course Peter Parker doesn’t live there.”

“Ok, thank you, Abe. Favorite superhero, Michael,” Charles asks a tubby kid in sandals and brown T-shirt.

“Does the Bionic Man count?” Michael asks.

“Yes, of course, and why do you like him?” Charles asks.

“I don’t know, because he did cool stuff,” Michael says.

Charles goes around the van, getting everyone talking. By the time they get to me, the only superhero left is Batman. I give them my theory about the Batman TV show and U.S. presidents:

“The Penguin is obviously a caricature of FDR, there’s the accent, the cigarette holder, et cetera. The Riddler is Richard Nixon, the energy, all humped over. The Joker is Jack Kennedy, the big grin, weird accent—”

“Who’s Catwoman?” Mrs. Mulholland asks, suddenly interested.

“Jackie, sexy, dark-haired,” I say.

“She wasn’t sexy,” one of the kids says.

“She was back then,” Charles says, and gives me a grin. I can see that he’s thinking we made the right decision hiring this kid.

We finish the superheroes and Charles tells us that we have to remember the rap and be always closing the loop.

He makes us chant “Always be closing the loop,” and no one seems to think this is particularly embarrassing. Charles continues: “Remember, everyone, always be closing the loop, even if someone is arguing with you, always be closing the loop. Bring it back to the issue of how they can help and how they help is by joining the Campaign for the American Wilderness at fifty dollars a shot. If it’s too expensive, point out that that’s only a dollar a week and if they still don’t budge tell them we’ve a special reduced membership for thirty-five dollars a person, so they could join on their own, not at the family level, and still be doing their bit. Also, if it’s a flashy house, maybe a Mercedes in the drive, you can ask for a hundred-dollar membership or a life membership for five hundred dollars. You get one person to become a life member and you’ve made yourself a hundred and fifty dollars in one evening.”

In the front, Mrs. Mulholland is reading a novel with a deerstalker on the cover, Sherlock Holmes, presumably. How can she read without getting carsick?

It would be nice if they paired me with Charles tonight, Robert tomorrow night. Get a handle on both of them. I smile and shake my head. Eejit. Here I am, still trying to solve the bloody case. After all that’s happened.

“Bumps,” Charles says from the front, and we go over a couple of ramps. The van jolts. At a traffic halt a man wipes the van window with a squeegee, Charles smiles, winds his window down, says thank you and gives him a dollar.

Finally, as we start to get really moving, Abe turns to us and says we’re getting closer and gets us to repeat the rap. We all have a go and I manage to get through mine without too much trouble. Next, Abe gets us to pretend that we’re in actual “door situations,” some difficult doors, some easy. People who don’t speak good English, older people. I practice my rap a couple more times and he tells Charles that we’re well prepared.

Charles finally pulls the car off the expressway and we’re in a small mountain town with houses instead of apartment buildings. I thought we were only doing the city and suburbs, but this is clearly no longer Denver.

Darker now and all the streetlights come on with a pale yellow color. We stop outside a police station and Charles runs in. Abe explains to me that this is because we have to let the cops know we’re out collecting, in case there’s any kind of trouble. We’re allowed to knock on any door we want according to the law, though if we’re asked to leave someone’s property we have to do so.

Charles comes back to the car. It’s spitting down now and rain is streaking along the windows, blurring the town and everything else. He puts the car into gear and we go off. If I had killed someone a few weeks ago, would I be able to run into a police station? Yeah, I probably would, again, it means sweet fuck all.

Charles finally stops, distributes maps, sends everyone out, tells Abe to take care of Elena, tells me to wait in the back, kisses Amber, sends her with Abe. He pulls on a tan jacket and gives me an umbrella. It’s hardly raining now, and I say it’s ok.

“Take it, this isn’t like Ireland, it might really start pouring later, we need it, a good downpour,” he says.

I take the umbrella, but the rain has already gotten under the plastic cover on my clipboard, dampening the fact sheets — nothing I can do about it. Charles grins at me and we walk over to the first house. He seems younger now. He likes doing this.

I look around. It’s a fairly affluent area. New cars, and the houses have big gardens and fences. The difference from Ireland is that the houses are made of wood, not brick.

“Ok, Alexander, this is how it goes down. Each person is to get one zone to cover in an evening. Usually it’s about a hundred and fifty houses. Average you can get is about seven members an evening. Seven out of a hundred and fifty, but at the others you can leave leaflets, so it’s still doing a bit for the cause.”

“What town is this?” I ask him as we walk toward the first big house in the street.

“It’s called Colorado Springs. Nice place, the Air Force Academy’s here. Good hunting ground for us. Ah, there they are.”

Three men come out of a dark green Range Rover. Two are in hooded raincoats carrying a camera and a boom mike, the third is wearing a baseball cap that says Broncos on it. They are all in their thirties. Charles does not introduce me and this pisses me off a bit. He shakes the Broncos guy’s hand.

“Bill, I thought you wouldn’t show up because of the rain,” he says.

“Typical, first rain we’ve had in months, but it’s good for us, shows your dedication. Main problem’s the light, we’re losing light fast, Charles, I think we should get started.”

“Ok, what do I do?” Charles asks.

“You do your normal thing, and don’t worry about us,” Bill says.

“Ok, come on, Alex,” Charles says to me, “just ignore them if you can.”

We walk up to the first house.

“Now, Alex,” Charles says, “I’ll do the talking and you just watch. Later I’ll let you do a couple of houses on your own. But for now just let me show you how it’s done. We’re in a pretty affluent area as you can see. Volvos and BMWs, so I’m gonna ask for hundred-dollar memberships and, if it goes well, maybe try for a couple of life memberships. That’s five hundred dollars. We’ll see. Are you ready? Are you psyched?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

“I said, are you ready?” he says more loudly.

“Yeah,” I say with more enthusiasm.

We go through the gate and walk up the driveway, crunching our shoes in the gravel. The camera crew follows us and starts filming. Next door a dog starts barking and in the living room a TV comes on. It’s cold and I suppress a shiver. Charles pushes the doorbell and pats me on the back.

“It’s gonna be great,” he says, grinning from ear to ear and for some reason giving me the Spock “Live long and prosper” sign from Star Trek.

“Great,” I say, giving him Churchill’s V for victory sign as a response. Charles beams, unaware that the V sign means something totally different back in my neck of the woods.

Man in his late thirties comes to the door. Charles gives him the rap. The man resists, looks at the camera crew, baffled, Charles keeps at him for a painful amount of time and finally the man agrees to join the CAW at the thirty-five-dollar rate.

We do two dozen more houses and Charles signs up two more people, leaves leaflets at the rest, smiling the whole time. Bill stays behind with the ones that were cooperative and gets them to sign a release form, then races to catch us up again.

“You think you can do a door on your own now, or do you want me to stand there with you?” Charles asks.

“I can do it,” I tell him.

“Great. We’ll try down this street, might be a little trickier. I’ll do this side, you the other, meet at the end, ok?”

I nod. It’s a side street, Toyotas and Hondas, rather than BMWs and Volvos, but it still looks ok. Mock Tudor houses, some with gardens, picket fences.

My first house, I ring the doorbell.

No one home, I write “N/H” on the clipboard.

I walk down the path of the second house, knock the door.

“Coming,” someone says.

The door opens, and it’s an elderly man in his seventies. Pale, white, wearing a dressing gown, smoking a cigarette.

“Hi, I’m from the Campaign for the American Wilderness and we’re in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save the ancient forests…. Er, is this an issue that concerns you at, er, all?”

“The what?” the man says.

“The CAW, we’re an environmental org—”

“Nope,” the man says, and closes the door in my face. I hear him muttering as he walks back down the hall.

I write a zero beside his door number.

Next house. One-floor bungalow, painted a kind of frostbite blue. Creepy-looking dolls in the window. In this house there’s a screen door and a porch. I open the screen door, it shuts behind me, trapping me between the two doors in the tiny porch. It’s filled with potted plants and an enamel plaque of a fat man drinking beer that says on it “Bavaria the Beautiful.”

A black woman comes to the door. Early fifties.

“Hi, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to preserve the ancient forests of—”

“Wait a minute,” she says, “I’ll get my husband.”

She goes off and calls into the back room. She returns to the front room and closes the door. Meanwhile, the kitchen door opens and a man wearing dungarees comes down the hall. There is oil all over his hands, and he’s sweating. His eyes are opaque gray and dead tired.

“Whadda ya want?” he asks suspiciously.

“Hi, I’m from the, uh, Campaign for the, uh, Wilderness, we’re in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save the forests.”

“Yeah?” he says, and I show him the literature on the clipboard. The pictures of the trees before and after deforestation. The quotes from logging company executives and politicians. The list of endangered species in the Amazon.

“What are you selling?” he asks gruffly.

“Nothing. I, er, I’m campaigning to save the trees, the old growth forests. There’s only—”

“Do I have to pay anything?”

“No, not really. It’s a—”

“Ok, where do I sign?”

I give him the clipboard and he takes a pen out of his lapel pocket and signs the sheet next to his door number. He gets oil all over the acetate cover.

“Ok?” he says.

“Yes, and if, er, you’d like to, um, make a donation?” I say to him, with a great deal of embarrassment.

“No, don’t think so.”

“Ok, well, thanks again.”

“My pleasure, glad to help.”

I turn and walk down the path. He closes the screen door behind me.

Shit, I say to myself, and mark zero on my sheet. I walk to the next house. I ring the bell and no one answers and I write down “N/H.”

No answer in the next four houses and in the fifth house an Asian girl comes to the door, wearing a Girl Scout uniform.

“Are your parents in?”

“Not allowed to talk to strangers,” she says bravely, and shuts the door.

I turn and walk back down the path. Smart kid, I say to myself.

Next house, no one home. Next house, no dice. Next house, old white guy in a crumpled suit, standing behind a patched screen door.

“Rain, finally, cool us down,” he says.

“Yeah, listen, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save—”

“Blue steel.44,” he says. “Used to have that.”

“What?”

“You know what gun I got now?”

“No.”

“A Walther PPK,” he says, his eyes narrowing.

“Really?” I say.

“Uh-huh. Never be too careful opening the door to strangers,” he says.

I look down and I notice, sure enough, that he’s holding a firearm in his left hand, bouncing it there on his hip.

“You know who has that gun?” he asks.

“Uh, no. No, I don’t.”

“James Bond. That’s James Bond’s gun,” he says, and gives me an off-putting smile.

“Well, that’s terrific, thank you very much, I’ll have to go,” I say.

“What do you want, boy?”

“I just wanted to leave you a leaflet, here you are.”

“Are you Scottish?”

“Irish, Irish. Well, look, thanks very much.”

“Irish, Scottish, isn’t it all the same thing?” he says.

“No, no, quite different. Well, thanks anyway, have a good night,” I say hastily, and back down the path.

When I meet up with Charles at the end of the street, I have signed up no one. I don’t tell him about the man with the gun in case he thinks I’m hysterical. But I take twenty bucks of my own money and pretend that I got two donations of ten bucks each.

“That’s pretty good, Alex, that was a more difficult street, tough test. Look, we’ll do a few more houses together and meet up with the others, ok?”

“Where’s the film crew?” I ask him.

“Oh, they ran out of light, but I think they got enough for tonight,” Charles says.

He doesn’t elaborate about who they were or what they were doing, so I let the matter drop.

Charles takes us back down to a more affluent street and I wonder if this was all a deliberate ploy to blood me on a lot of rejections to see if I got downhearted.

Sure enough, back in the richer street we get three more memberships and even a life membership.

The rain has eased and when we pick up the others, everyone is excited and happy. They’ve had a good night and a third of the money they raised will be going to them. We drive back to the city, everyone talking, laughing. We stop for pizza in a grungy-looking place on a slip road close to the highway.

We scrunch together several tables. The lights flicker. The pizza bakes.

Charles is in high spirits. He talks and, eventually, the attention turns to me, as the new boy.

“Alexander, what would you be doing right now in Ireland?” Charles asks.

“Well, it’s five a.m. there, so I’d probably be sleeping,” I say.

“No, no, no, that’s not what I mean, what do you do over there, at night, for fun, are there pizza places like here?”

“Uh, not that many and they’re expensive, pizza is more of a restaurant thing,” I say, a bit disconcerted to be the center of attention.

“So what would you do?” Charles asks.

“Go to the pub, I suppose,” I say.

“Are the pubs really full of musicians and music and stuff?” Amber asks.

“Some of them, but most aren’t, they—”

“I was in this pub in Dublin and it took forever for my pint of Guinness to come, I thought they’d forgotten about me,” Charles says. “They were so slow.”

“It’s supposed to be slow, Guinness has to be poured very slowly,” I explain.

“Well, it was slow, and the smoke in those places, terrible, I felt sorry for the bar staff, really awful,” Charles says.

“Don’t they play that game with the sticks?” Abe asks me.

“Hurling,” I say.

“Do you play it?” Abe asks.

“No.”

“Charles was the lacrosse champ at Bright,” Abe says. “Kind of a similar game, no?”

Amber and Charles look briefly at each other.

“What’s Bright?” I ask.

“You ever read A Separate Peace, Catcher in the Rye, any one of those?” Abe asks.

“No.”

“Well, it’s a bit like their school, Colorado version, Charles and Robert both went there. Very snooty, play cricket and everything,” Abe says. Clearly, he’s trying to get under Charles’s skin, wind him up a bit, tease him, but he’s overstepped the line somehow. Amber scolds him with a look that stops him in midsentence.

“Alexander, do you have any hobbies or anything like that?” Amber asks, questioning me with those big glacial eyes.

“No, not really,” I say. “I go to football matches, soccer matches, I mean, sometimes, I’m not very athletic or anything.”

Mercifully, the pizza finally comes.

I don’t eat any. Instead, I find myself staring at Amber Mulholland as she spills Coke on her white blouse. I hand her a napkin and she thanks me with a beautiful smile. Something about that smile, though. Beautiful like a sun-drenched cornfield above a missile silo.

How much does she know about what happened to Victoria? Would she even care if her husband or brother-in-law was a murderer? I examine her closely. Maybe I’m wrong. There’s something vulnerable about her too. A touch of the Marilyn or the Lady Di.

We drive back to Denver. I’m freezing, but no one else is. I try to get warmth from a cup of coffee. Charles is talking, but I’m not listening, ticking off the seconds till I can get home. We’re all exhausted. Amber, in a whisper, asks Charles how the filming went. He says it went great and gives her a kiss. The kiss makes me wince.

They drop me on Colfax Avenue.

A few hookers, a few gypsy cabs, their lemony headlights distorting in the rain.

I stand under the overhang at Kitty’s East Porno store. Still a few blocks to our apartment, but I’m so tired. Junkie tired. Drizzling still. The last rain for weeks to come.

From now on a continuation of the drought. Drought until August, when freezing rain would fall in Fort Morgan. And I would beg it to come down, invoking Vishnu, Storm Bringer, Lord of Night, begging him to cover me up as I lay there in the graveyard with gunshot wounds, wondering if it was too late then, to live, to survive, to avenge yet another horrible murder in this sorry, sorry excuse for a case.