Hidden River

8: AIR, WATER, EARTH, FIRE

Patrick and I are both irritated. It’s hot, dry, we have the fan way at the other end of the room so the cards don’t get blown over and John and Areea are not taking the game seriously at all. John has his hand on her lap, Areea has her hand at the back of his shorts.

I look at Patrick and shake my head in disgust.

“The one thing, John, that I can’t stand is people not taking poker seriously when there’s money in the pot.”

“It’s only two dollars,” John says, and winks at Areea.

Areea giggles for no reason at all.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I say.

I can tell Patrick feels the same way. For him in particular, whose weeks remaining on planet Earth can be counted in the few dozen, minutes are precious, seconds are bloody precious.

“Are you calling or not?” I say.

“No, then,” John says impatiently, throwing down his cards.

“Your hand, Patrick,” I say, annoyed.

He picks up his winnings.

“I think maybe we’ll take a martini break,” he says.

“Good idea,” I say, looking significantly at John, who has started snogging Areea on the lobe of her ear. It’s been two hours since I shot up and another rule I have is that ketch and spirits don’t mix, but what the hell, anything to get away from those two, who have been carrying on like this for the last few days.

I follow Patrick all the way along the corridor and into his apartment, which is minimally decorated with a few photographs of friends and a bookcase filled with art books. CD player and CDs of all descriptions but mostly classical. He puts on a piece by Stravinsky, which does nothing to soothe my mood.

It’s July 10. I’ve been going to CAW for more than a week now, making about a hundred and fifty bucks a night, commuting downtown, buying the groceries, and also attempting to look discreetly into the Victoria Patawasti murder. John, by contrast, has been hanging out on the fire escape smoking pot, eating potato chips, drinking beer, and making out with Areea when she’s off her shift. It’s starting to get on my nerves.

“It’s starting to get on my nerves,” I tell Pat.

“Me, too. You know, I was bluffing that hand, I had nothing,” Pat says.

“I know.”

This is one of Pat’s good days, in fact since we showed up, he says he’s been doing much better. He was perishing through loneliness: the lawsuit’s pissed off most of his old pals in the DFD, and his only family lives in Wyoming.

Stravinsky’s violins start screeching at one another and Pat puts ice into the martini shaker. Pat makes a dry martini, a very dry martini. He informs the Bombay Sapphire gin about the existence of a substance called vermouth before he pours it in the shaker. He takes two glasses from the freezer, adds an olive to each, and asks me to do the shaking, which I do.

We retire to the fire escape.

“She’s very pretty, isn’t she?” Pat says.

“She is, Pat, gorgeous face, great legs, honestly, I don’t know what she sees in that big ganch.”

“Well, it’ll all end in tears,” Pat predicts, as we lean forward to watch two men attempt to beat each other senseless at a brown, grassless park on the corner.

“John and Areea?” I ask, unsure if we’re still on the same subject.

“Yes,” he says.

“Because of her parents?”

“She says she’s eighteen, but I think she’s much younger,” Pat says.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” he says.

We sip our martinis.

“What about you, is there a special someone in your life?” Pat asks, the vowel sounds making his cheeks hollow sickeningly.

“Nope. There isn’t.”

“Back home, I mean.”

“Answer’s still no. I can’t seem to hold on to a steady relationship.”

“You leave them or they leave you?”

“They leave me, Pat.”

“You think maybe the smack doesn’t help?” Pat asks.

“I’m sure it doesn’t. I’m sure it does not,” I say.

Pat looks at me. He’s not going to lecture me or give me grief. He’s just pointing out the obvious. And it’s that question yet again. And the answer. I must release it from me. Let it go. I don’t have to do heroin now, I don’t have to. So why am I doing it?

“We all need something, Pat,” I say lamely.

“Yeah, we do,” Pat agrees.

“And what about you, Patrick, is there someone in your life you’ve been hiding away?”

“Well, actually, I was in a long-term relationship until last year. Of course, he left me when I started to get sick.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right,” Pat says with disgust.

The sun is making its way across Colfax and the street is yawning, waking up, putting on its usual show. Guys appearing on the street corners, women walking hand in hand with little kids, other kids playing basketball. Old men talking. Big old cars playing N.W.A. and Public Enemy, bigger, newer cars blaring Tupac and Notorious B.I.G.

And as always the professional dealers, easy and unobtrusive, and the rookie dealers looking around a million times to see how much attention they can bring to themselves.

I stretch.

“Pat, it’s time I was heading,” I say.

“Not yet,” Pat says, and rubs his hand over his gaunt, unshaven face.

“Love to stay, Pat, but it’s twelve o’clock. I’m supposed to be downtown by one.”

“Don’t know why you’re working for those right-wing bastards. Strip-mining the national forests, polluting the skies. Drought all year, couple of snowstorms which did nothing, and they’re talking about the Wise Use of water to promote business, which means less conservation. I mean, Jesus, how about telling the goddamn Coors family to give some of their surplus water to Denver.”

I can’t help but suppress a smile. Pat clearly cares a lot more about this than I do. I don’t mind arguing for fewer environmental regulations, I’ll argue any point of view if I can get some dough out of it.

“Pat, I have to go.”

“Ok, mate,” Pat says, which makes me grin again. Pat’s taking on a bit of an Ulster accent and vernacular hanging out with us. And though we have screwed up our murder case and I am exiled from Belfast, at least it seems we are doing a bit of good for someone in this world.

July in Denver. Insanely hot. One hundred and one degrees says the board outside Channel 9. Drenched with sweat, I ride the elevator up to the CAW offices. Pat says Denver is livable for a few weeks in October and a few weeks in April. Winter and summer, the rest of the time. I can well believe him. People with sense leave town at this time of year for cooler places like a blast furnace or the surface of the sun.

I walk into the office.

I’m well liked now, established.

Abe says hi, he’s wearing the same Sex Pistols T-shirt he’s had on for the last week. Johnny Rotten is so coated with gook he has taken on a three-dimensional quality. Still, the place is air-conditioned and the offices are losing their chaotic feel and taking on a semblance of order.

The weird thing, the really weird thing is that apart from Abe no one has mentioned either Victoria’s or Klimmer’s death. Charles runs a tight ship and I suppose they want things upbeat for the new staffers like me. Or maybe they’re trying to be very positive in front of the camera crew, which has shown up twice more to follow Charles around.

Dozens of posters have gone up over the bare walls, nature scenes with words like “Perseverance” and “Serenity” underneath them. They’ve hired another couple of secretaries and the campaigners are coming together as a group. Aye, they’re looking to the future, not dwelling on the unpleasantness of the past.

Every day starts the same. Abe and Steve brief us about the evening’s assignment, where we’re going, what the rap is for the day, what to look out for. We do rehearsals, practice raps, role-playing and if there’s time left we stuff envelopes and write to our congressmen. There are about fifteen campaigners now. The organization is getting bigger.

We don’t see Charles and Robert at all until around five o’clock, when the van is ready to go. Sometimes Charles drives, sometimes Robert drives, sometimes Amber comes along.

No one will admit it with Abe or Steve around, but arriving at the office at one o’clock is a waste of everyone’s time. I suppose if you’re dedicated to the cause it’s all well and good, but I sense that most of the campaigners don’t give a shit about the forests or the Wise Use policy and are only here because they hope they can make cold cash.

Yeah, it’s been a week and I’ve been patient, laying the groundwork, being nice, friendly. I’ve endured Abe’s theories about why the Clash, the Ramones, and the Undertones were feeble imitators of the Sex Pistols. I’ve listened to him talk endlessly about the New York Mets. Tedious, but necessary. I’ve been cultivating him. Encouraging him. None of the Mulhollands will talk, but I know Abe will.

Abe was a University of Colorado student at the Earth Sciences Institute in Boulder. He started working for CAW during his vacations and stayed on after he graduated. He’s only twenty-five, but he’s the fourth in command.

For the last two days we’ve been getting lunch at the Sixteenth Street Pub around the corner from the office. Abe’s a lightweight, anyway, a 6-percent Stella Artois loosens his tongue.

We talk about the movies and when he’s finished his pint and it’s going to his head a wee bit I come straight out with it.

“Abe, why is there a film crew following Charles around?”

“I can’t tell you because we’re not supposed to talk about it. Robert would kill me. Charles would kill me.”

“Abe, you know you can trust me,” I say, trying to ignore Abe’s choice of words.

Abe takes a bite of his burrito and looks around the bar. No one else from CAW is there. And Abe wants to tell me, he just needs that final push.

“Abe, come on, what the hell’s going on? It hardly seems fair that everyone else is allowed to know and I’m not.”

“Everyone else doesn’t know,” Abe protests.

“Come on, mate, I won’t say a bloody thing, I can help better if I’m in the know.”

“That’s true.”

“Yeah, ’course it is, come on, what’s the deal with the camera crew?”

“You won’t breathe a word?”

“No.”

“Ok, listen, I swear to God, don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t, just bloody get on with it.”

“Congressman Wegener will be seventy years old on August sixth,” Abe says slowly and significantly.

I look at him.

“That’s it?” I ask. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Everyone thinks he’s going to run again next year in 1996, but he’s not, he’s going to announce his retirement on his birthday. He’s only told the chairman of the Colorado GOP and the chairman has only told Charles.”

“Who has told you? Amber, Robert—”

“Listen, Alex, you can’t breathe a word of this. Once he makes his announcement, there could be a feeding frenzy. Wegener represents the Eighth Congressional District, solid Republican, a safe seat, whoever succeeds him is guaranteed a place in Congress.”

“And it’s going to be Charles. That’s why he’s taken a leave of absence from his law firm. That’s why they’re filming him, campaigning door to door,” I say.

“The state GOP has had its eye on Charles for some time. He’s thirty-eight, successful, he has a seriously photogenic wife, and he’s founded an environmental organization, us, which could be the GOP’s route into the environmental debate, political turf solely occupied by the Democrats. Charles will have no serious competition for the seat, he’s being anointed, but it goes further than that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say, you know.”

“Don’t start that again,” I tell him.

“Ok, well, but you gotta keep this quiet.”

“Sure.”

“Ok, look, what do you think’s going to happen at the general election next year?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dole will lose. Dole will lose to Clinton and the GOP will be thrown into turmoil. They’re going to need to move toward the center to beat Gore in 2000. They’re not going to pick someone like George W. Bush or Pat Buchanan. They’re going to pick moderates, and Charles will be a young, moderate, environmentalist, outsider congressman from a Western state. Do you see?”

“See what?” I ask.

Abe’s boiling with excitement. The momentum’s there, he’s giving me this secret, something he can’t contain anymore.

“Don’t you see, Alex? Charles could be an ideal vice-presidential candidate for someone like John McCain or even Colin Powell. Powell-Mulholland in 2000? This isn’t penny-ante shit. This is the big enchilada.”

“Jesus,” I say, impressed by his seriousness about it all. But surely it’s a fantasy, a long shot, more than that, a delusion. Who ever heard of a two-term congressman getting to be a vice president, no matter how good the demographics.

“Long shot,” I said.

“Nah, Bill Clinton was a long shot in 1992,” Abe says, and continues to explain the concept. I pretend to be entranced. Abe goes on and on in a whisper and gradually it occurs to me that whether Charles really could be vice president in 2000, or 2004, or whenever, it doesn’t actually matter, for I see now why Alan Houghton had to die. It’s enough that Charles has convinced himself that Congress and the vice presidency are possibilities and it gave him that final push to kill his tormentor, his shadow, his blackmailing familiar. Yes. And poor Victoria got in the way. I take a sip of beer, nod at Abe, and make a mental note that I’m going to have to find out who Alan Houghton is and what connection he has to Charles.

Abe whispering now: “Alex, listen, you didn’t hear it from me, ok? And it goes for all of us. We can’t rock the boat, we can’t do anything official until Wegener’s birthday announcement. Do you see? We all have to go hush-hush.”

“I do see, and I see why they moved CAW to Denver. This is going to be a campaign HQ as well? Right?”

“Change the topic, here’s Robert,” Abe whispers.

Robert’s in the pub looking for us. Looking for Abe. He can’t find the route maps for where they’re going tonight.

Abe gives me a look to say nothing, gets up, and they head out of the bar.

Later…

We get in a large van, almost a bus, and head south toward Littleton. Charles isn’t with us again tonight and Robert’s driving. Surprisingly, Amber’s accompanying her brother-in-law. I’ve seen Amber only twice since I started here. And this is the first time I’ve seen her without Charles. She’s dressed down in a sweatshirt and black jeans, but she still looks stunning. You’d have to be misogynistic, the president of Greenpeace, Maoist, and blind to refuse to join the CAW if she asked you.

Robert drives and talks. Robert doesn’t have the charm or salesmanship of his older brother. Where Charles has us telling our favorite movies and books and gets Abe to rehearse us through doorstops and the rap (to increase group cohesion and team spirit, Charles says), Robert senses that he has to do something but is a bit of a wet blanket. He seems to have digested management guru books and gives us pep talks based largely on sports metaphors and stories about the rebirth of Chrysler.

We drive south down Broadway rather than the highway and after a time we stop in a typical leafy suburb, or what would be a leafy suburb, were not all the trees dying and the lawns turning brown.

“We’re here,” Robert says, and switches off the engine.

He turns around to look at us.

“You should tell them where here is,” Amber whispers.

“Oh yes, Englewood. It’s a borderline area, mixed incomes, so I want everyone to go in p-pairs tonight.”

Everyone nods.

Amber whispers something to him.

“Oh, yes, of course, we all have to g-get pumped up, don’t we?” Robert asks, almost rhetorically.

“Yes, we do,” Abe says.

“Ok, then. Um, Abe, are you ready to go?” Robert asks with fake enthusiasm.

“Yes, I am,” Abe says.

“I c-can’t hear you,” Robert says.

“Yes, I am,” Abe says, louder.

“I still c-can’t hear you,” Robert says.

Abe yells that he’s ready to go. Robert does the same routine with everyone in the van. It’s cringe making. When he gets to me, he says:

“Alexander, are you r-ready to go?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” I shout, USMC fashion.

And then something a little odd happens. Robert laughs. Strange noise, like a small animal drowning. Really, it wasn’t that funny. In fact, it wasn’t funny at all, but Robert’s cracking up about something. Snot comes out of his nostrils and he takes out a tissue, wipes his eyes, blows his nose. No peeler worth his salt makes snap judgments à la Columbo, but suddenly I don’t see Robert as the murdering type.

“Oh my God, that reminds me, r-really reminds me. You know, I got thrown out of the ROTC after one week? I would have made the worst s-soldier in the world,” Robert says to Amber, forgetting, I think, that the rest of us are here.

“I thought they’d banned ROTC at Harvard?” Amber asks.

“At school. At B-Bright. They said the only one worse was Charles and they didn’t throw him out because he was l-lacrosse captain. Oh, you should have seen me, it was—”

“Robert, the business at hand,” Amber interrupts, and gives him a look that none of the rest of us can see but which freezes him.

“Oh, yes, sorry folks, f-forgot what I was doing there. Um, who’s next?” Robert asks in a still-cheerful mood.

We go through the rest of the van and everyone claims that they are ready and enthused about going out tonight.

“Does everyone have their m-maps?”

We all nod and say yes.

“Does anyone not know how to read their map?” Robert asks.

One shy girl with curly brown hair puts her hand up.

“Ok, I’ll go with you,” Robert says.

We pile out of the van. It’s another warm night. Englewood looks like everywhere we’ve been going. Another white ’burb. By fluke or luck or foul design, Amber and I are the only two left without a pair, but it’s ok, I’m still new enough to need training by the top people.

“Looks like you’re with me, marine,” Amber says, twisting her hair behind her into a tight ponytail.

“Looks like,” I agree, somehow managing to get the words out.

We gather our clipboards and materials and walk out into Englewood. I stare at her ass all the way to the first house and my internal monologue is: Bloody calm down, Alex, she’s just a woman.

The first house we go to: a chubby lass, twenty years old, black hair, glasses, pretty, holding a wineglass. She opens the door, looks at us.

“Let me guess, you’re a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock and roll,” she says.

I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I look at Amber, baffled.

“She thinks we’re Mormons,” Amber says.

“What?” I say, still confused.

“We’re not Mormons, uh, we’re from the Campaign for—” Amber attempts.

“Let me tell you something,” the girl says, taking a large sip of wine, “I do not believe that the Angel Gabriel appeared in upstate New York and said go take dozens of wives. It makes no sense. Ok? No sense.”

“We’re not Mormons,” Amber persists.

“Damn right you’re not,” the girl says, “and I’m not going to be one either. And then he went to Utah? Jesus is no cowboy, I mean, come on, you people are seriously misguided.”

“Does the issue of deforestation concern you at all?” I ask.

“No, but converting dead people does, that’s a disgrace,” she says.

She closes the screen door and then the front door, leaving us outside feeling very foolish.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Amber says briskly.

“She must have been drunk,” I suggest.

We turn and walk down the path.

“I just don’t get the ‘you’re a little bit country’ thing,” I say.

“It’s from a TV show you would never have seen, a song they used to sing, from the Donny and Marie show. You know, the Osmonds.”

“Oh, who are Mormons, oh, I see, that was a good line, then.”

“Yes,” Amber says.

“Aren’t their missionaries always men, though?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Amber says, a bit snootily. “I don’t know anything about the Mormons.”

The encounter has embarrassed her, she doesn’t think it’s funny at all, whereas I think it’s hilarious, it’ll amuse Pat and John when I tell them.

“Me neither, all I remember about the Mormon missionaries is as a kid in Belfast. Our next-door neighbor would throw a bucket of water around them because he said they were the heralds of the Antichrist or something. He probably thought that because he was so filthy and they were always so clean and neat,” I say.

“That’s right, you grew up in Belfast, didn’t you?” she says, looking at me.

“Aye.”

“That’s quite near a place called Carrickfergus, isn’t it?” she says.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been there,” I tell her.

My résumé is crucially different from Victoria Patawasti’s in that respect. But even so, it’s time to change the subject.

“Yeah, in fact, everything I know about the Mormons comes from that Sherlock Holmes story and that’s hardly complimentary,” I say.

“You read Sherlock Holmes?” she asks excitedly.

“Some of them.”

“I love Conan Doyle, I love mysteries. Mysteries, puzzles, figuring stuff out, I love that stuff. It’s not Charles’s thing,” she says, her face lightening.

“Never Chuck, or Charlie, or Chaz, always Charles, eh?”

She frowns at me and I see that I’ve goofed up. Charles’s name is not a subject for levity.

“Who’s your favorite mystery writer?” I ask.

“Oh, the divine Agatha,” she says, giving me a big smile.

“Are you a Poirot or a Marple?” I ask.

“Oh, a Marple, of course,” she says.

I grin at her. She really is quite captivating and suddenly to think that either she is implicated in a brutal murder or closely related to the murderer seems utterly absurd. Once again I wonder if I’m completely on the wrong track about all of this. Or maybe my dick or the ketch is clouding my judgment.

In the next house an old man gives us a lecture about the low reservoirs, the yearlong drought, the importance of conservation, and refuses to take a leaflet.

In the next house no one’s home. In the next house they don’t want to give. Next house, fat white woman in a print dress, very heavy perfume. I give her the rap.

“You doing the whole street?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“How much they give next door?”

“They weren’t home.”

“I’ll bet they were. Mother’s black, father’s Japanese, Chinese, something like that.”

“Really?”

“A lot of Negro families in the street now,” she says.

“Is that a fact?”

“It is a fact. It is,” she says conspiratorially.

“Well, that’s America,” I say, a little thrown by the first obvious racist I’ve met since coming here.

“Look at that O. J. Simpson. Would you want him next door? All on welfare. They’re not really contributing anything, are they?” she says.

“Who?”

“The Negroes. Who do you think? They don’t do anything. Haven’t done anything.”

I look at Amber for support, but she’s staring at her shoes in shame and humiliation. Honey, you’re going to meet a lot more people like this if you start moving in right-wing activist circles, I’m thinking. And again she looks vulnerable and slightly lost.

I smile at the woman.

“Well, they built the railroads, won the Civil War, were the workhorses of the Industrial Revolution, created an amazing literary culture, and invented four original musical forms in this century alone: jazz, blues, rock and roll, hip-hop. Boring old world without them, huh?” (I say all this with a big friendly smile. The woman looks furious.)

“What is it you want?” she asks.

“We’re trying to promote Wise Use of the forests,” Amber says.

“I don’t think so,” the woman says, and slams the screen door so hard that it rattles on its hinges. I can’t help but laugh and even Amber grins.

Two more doors, we get nothing. As we head south the neighborhood is getting less affluent and the next street on our map is distinctly poorer still. The cars parked outside aren’t as nice and the kids playing in the street are Mexican. I find it quite interesting the way there’s almost an invisible demarcation line and I remark on this to Amber, but she doesn’t reply.

Clapboard houses, most of them run-down looking. Rubbish piled up on the sidewalks in black bags. At the end of the street there’s a big warehouse that looks as if it hasn’t been used for about fifty years. The windows are dirty or smashed, and someone has drawn soccer goals on the walls.

It’s dark now. The wind has whipped up, the sky is clouded over, and the temperature has dropped by thirty degrees. I shiver and we go down the path of the first house. A dog barking in the backyard, snarling at us through a chain-link fence. Slabbers coming out of its chops. I ring the bell and an Asian man answers. Amber does the rap, but it’s impossible to hear over the dog, and anyway, he’s not interested. We cross the yard to the next house and tap on the screen door.

It is answered by a huge man in a dirty white T-shirt and jeans.

“Yeah, what do you want?” he asks, like we’re the millionth person to have called on him that night.

“Hi, we’re from the Campaign for the American Wilderness and we’re—”

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupts. “I know what you are. You guys should do your research better. You guys were around here last week for the same fucking thing.”

Amber’s shivering beside me, a little cold too in her thin sweatshirt.

“The old growth forests are a vital part of—”

“I know they are. Thank you,” he says, and closes the door.

“It’s going to be one of those nights, I can tell,” I say.

She nods glumly.

“Maybe we should take a break, find a coffee shop or something,” I suggest.

She shakes her head.

“No, everyone is going to do their full quota, so should we, it would upset Robert if we snuck off somewhere,” she says, not very enthusiastically.

“Ok, you’re the boss,” I say. I didn’t mind, in the last week I had had a lot of success, ok to strike out tonight, especially with such charming company around.

We cross the street to the next house. A bungalow, straggly garden, wire fence, patched screen door, scuffed paint.

Amber knocks on the screen door.

“Hold on, wait a minute, I’m getting the money,” a boy says.

He opens the door. Fifteen, skinny, pale, curly hair, gormless expression.

“Dude, where’s the pizza?” he asks.

“We’re in your neighborhood tonight, campaigning to promote Wise Use of …” Amber begins and does her whole rap uninterrupted.

The kid looks at her and shakes his head.

“Yeah, but dude, where’s my pizza?” he asks.

“We’re not the pizza people, we’re promoting Wise Use of the forests,” Amber says a little desperately and does the rap a second time. Again, I think that she seems younger than the thirty Abe says she is. Is she so naive that she doesn’t see that the kid is stoned out of his fucking brains?

“What the fuck is keeping you?” another kid yells, appearing in the hall, flipping a cigarette lighter on and off.

“These guys won’t give us our pizza,” the first kid explains.

“Whoa, she’s a babe,” the second kid says.

“Come on,” I say to Amber, “let’s go.”

She hesitates for a minute and lets me take her down the path. The power in the relationship has shifted in that moment. She, who is supposed to be training me, has cracked. She’s wearing flats, is an inch or two smaller than me. But it’s enough. She has to look up to ask me the question.

“What was going on there?” she asks.

“The kids were stoned,” I tell her.

“At their age?” she says, sounding amazed.

“That’s the age you get stoned,” I say.

“Not where I come from,” she says indignantly.

We get halfway down the path to the next house when the sprinkler system comes on, soaking us.

Amber is furious.

“And that’s illegal too,” she says. “Breaking the water rules.”

When we get to the door, they’re pretending not to be home and we have to brave the sprinklers down the path again. I offer her my jacket, but she says no.

No one’s home in the next house, either. Her hair is damp and clinging to her face. She looks increasingly miserable, increasingly beautiful.

“So where do you come from?” I ask.

“Knoxville,” she says after a pause.

“Where’s that?” I ask, not entirely ignorant.

“It’s in Tennessee,” she says.

“Cool,” I say, “it’s a cool place.”

“What do you, an Irishman, know about Tennessee?” she asks, finally breaking into a little smile.

“A lot,” I say.

“Like?”

“Well, you’ve got Elvis for a start,” I suggest.

“Memphis is totally the other end of the state,” she says. “Although we did go on a hellishly long school trip there, if you can believe it.”

“Did you go to Graceland?”

“Yeah, we did, it was so boring.”

“Did you see the toilet?”

“What toilet?”

“Where Elvis died.”

“Elvis died on the toilet?” she asks.

“See, now I know you’re an imposter, obviously you’re a Communist sleeper agent awaiting the rebirth of the Soviet Union. Every red-blooded American knows that Elvis died on the toilet,” I explain.

“Well, I didn’t,” she says, laughing.

“You should have, your cover’s blown. Every Brit knows that Evelyn Waugh and King George the Second died on the privy, we find that kind of thing funny.”

“I thought you were Irish,” she says.

“It’s complicated. Oh, and speaking of that, another Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, President Jackson, he’s big in Ireland because his parents came from, uh, Ulster.”

I was going to say Carrickfergus again, but realized just in time that this word is far too likely to remind her of Victoria.

“The Hermitage is miles from Knoxville as well,” she says, “and don’t say Nashville, either, because that’s miles away too.”

“What about Dollywood?” I say.

“How do you know about Dollywood?” she laughs, amazed again.

“Are you kidding, she’s huge in Ireland, country and western in general, huge, Patsy Cline is practically a saint.”

“Is that so?” she says, giving me a sideways glance.

“It is.”

We’re at another house. I’m annoyed, we were just beginning to have a great conversation. My next line was going to be to ask why she didn’t have any kind of a southern accent. We ring the bell. A black man answers the door. He’s elderly and is wearing a coat as if he’s on his way out.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“Hi, I’m an environmental activist in your area tonight to raise consciousness about the plight of the ancient forests.”

“That a fact?”

“Yes, sir, it is. Is this an, uh, an issue that concerns you at all?”

“Trees?”

“Yes, the old growth forests, they’re being cut down at a—”

“Let me tell you what concerns me. They’re cutting food stamps, I can’t afford to feed my kids, I hardly see my kids. Hardly ever see them. I’ve been unemployed for six months and there ain’t no work.”

He stares at me, waiting for me to reply, but I can’t say anything. I look at Amber, she does her rap like a good ’un, closing back to the fifty-dollar memberships.

“I’ll take a leaflet,” he says politely.

I give him a couple of leaflets and say goodbye and we walk back down the path again.

“I can’t believe this,” Amber mutters under her breath.

Perhaps this is the first time she’s ever met people immune to her charms. And we’re both cold. She looks totally pissed off. Wet, lovely, and miserable, her ponytail being blown about in the wind. Her nipples erect under her sweatshirt.

“Sure you don’t want to get a coffee or something?” I ask, putting my hand on her elbow to prevent her walking. She looks at me and shakes her head.

“Charles would be upset if we stop now, a few more streets,” she says quietly.

“This is getting us nowhere,” I protest.

“I know,” she says.

“But look down at the next street. It doesn’t look at all inviting,” I say.

She looks where I’m pointing. Broken windows and screen doors, refuse and bits of furniture on the sidewalk and on the barren lawns.

“Come on, Amber, we’re done here, it’s nine-thirty, this has been a pretty disastrous night, we’ll go get something to eat and meet everyone else back at the van, hope they did better,” I say.

Amber is resigned and nods. A blond hair comes loose and falls on her face, she pushes it back violently, like a drill sergeant pushing a soldier back in formation.

“They won’t have done any better,” she says after a minute or two.

“Why not?”

“Well, uh, do you ever go to the theater?”

“Not really.”

“I love the theater, never get to go. Don’t you love it?”

“I might love it, I just haven’t experienced it,” I say.

“Well, anyway, did you ever hear of a play called Glengarry Glen Ross?”

“No, never heard of it,” I tell her.

“It’s about these real estate men and they cold-call people, but they’re all after the Glengarry leads, people who actually want to buy real estate. Well, we normally go to neighborhoods which are on the GOP list, people who have contributed to Republican causes before, like the Glengarry leads, people who are interested, so that’s why we’ve been doing quite well, but Robert thought tonight we could just try a random neighborhood in the suburbs to see how we do. See how it works out.”

“Yeah, worked out great,” I say.

She looks at me. Laughs.

“What was that you said about something warm to drink?”

Five minutes later we’re at a strip mall. Most of the stores are closed, but there is a pizza place that’s still open. We go in, order a slice each and coffee. There are only a few customers, so we’ve no trouble getting a table.

“So Tennessee,” I say.

“Yup,” she says, biting into her pizza with obvious relish.

“What happened to your accent?”

“I moved to New Jersey when I was ten, my dad worked for a power company.”

“What? So really you’re a Jersey girl?” I say, surprised.

“Well, I don’t know about that, I was born in Tennessee,” she says a bit defensively.

“I get it, you’re one of those people ashamed of Jersey, so you say you’re from Tennessee?”

“I’m not ashamed, I just feel more like a southern girl, at heart,” she says with that infectious grin.

“Yeah?” I say, gently mocking her.

“No, look, I lived in the south for eleven years, barely six or seven in Jersey before I went to college in Boston,” she says.

“You met Charles at Harvard?”

“Yes, how did you know that?” she says.

“I just guessed. You mentioned that he went there too, when Robert talked about ROTC.”

“You’re quick,” she says.

“No, not at all,” I say.

“I met him there. He was teaching a class on economics, it was very boring. I was a science major, you know, but I thought I’d try something different.”

“He was a professor?”

“No, don’t be silly. He was a graduate student. You never get a professor, ever. You’ll see, you’ll get taught by PhDs at Red Rocks.”

“Oh, yeah, I think someone said something about that. Term doesn’t start for a few weeks yet. Uh, so you loved his class and you married him?”

“Do you want to hear the whole boring story?” she says, completely distracted by her pizza, which is dripping melted cheese everywhere. She dabs her mouth with a lead violinist’s fingers. Again, that feeling about her. Those vulnerable eyes. And those toned arms, like the skin of an F16.

“I do want to hear the whole story, you seem like a terrific couple,” I say.

“Thank you. Well, ok, Charles got his PhD, left Harvard, we hadn’t gone out then at all, in fact, I don’t think he liked me. He gave me a C, which screwed my GPA. He went on to Yale Law School. Then he moved back to Colorado. Went to work at the law firm. He’s from here, you know. Anyway, he and Robert set up CAW and worked very hard to get it off the ground, everyone thinks their dad does everything, but they hardly see him. It was all their own work.”

“So I believe,” I say.

“It was. Anyway, it was the most bizarre coincidence, I left college and I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and I did a few things in marketing and in PR but nothing really exciting and my mom went, uh, had been in the hospital, she had an accident, and it was a very bad time and I was skiing at Vail and who should I run into but Charles, who remembers me from that class. And I tell him he ruined my GPA and he laughs and he tells me what he’s doing, he’s just set up this organization and it’s really struggling and he says I should come work for him, and I do and it’s then that we fall in love and get married. Just like that. And CAW becomes this big success and everything works out.”

She finishes her speech as she finishes her slice. Telling it all has completely transformed her mood. She’s said it like it’s some Horatio Alger story of rags to riches rather than what it is, bored kids of a millionaire, fucking around with other people’s money so they can slime their way into Congress. And once again I wonder how much she knows. Everything? Does she support Charles, even if it means murder?

“But someone told me you don’t work at CAW anymore. And yet here you are out on the coal face?” I say.

“Yes, after we got married Charles decided it wasn’t a good idea for two married people to be in the same working environment, so I quit and we hired a brilliant girl, from your part of the world, actually; but now with the move to Denver we need all the help we can get, so I’ve had to chip in.”

“You’ve got an Irish girl working for you? I never saw her around the office,” I say, sounding excited and surprised.

“Actually, we’ve had a bit of bad luck with that really. We had two terrible things happen in the last few weeks. No one’s mentioned it to you?”

“No.”

“No. I suppose that’s for the best. It was just terrible, right when we were moving from Boulder to Denver. Awful.”

“Ok, you have to tell me what happened, you can’t leave it like that,” I say.

“We had two people killed. They were both murdered in their own apartments, people broke in and killed them, as brazen as that, one of them was in broad daylight. Mexicans. I think they must all be part of a gang or something.”

“So what, did they steal their stuff?”

“I think that was the reason, burglary, it was awful, if anyone robbed me, I’d just tell them to take everything, you know, there’s no point in dying over a purse or something,” she said, and shivered.

“Yeah.”

“It’s this town, you never know which are the good neighborhoods and which are the bad. They all look the same, don’t they? Vulgar, tedious place in many ways. I never really go out anywhere and I exercise at the gym.”

“I see a good bit of the city, it seems ok,” I say.

“I don’t care for it. Any break we have, we go to Vail. I’ll bet you know more about Denver than I do and I’ve lived here three years,” she says, sucks down some more of her coffee and plays with the melted cheese on her plate. It’s kind of sexy. But then everything she does is kind of sexy.

“What time is it?” she asks.

“A quarter to ten, we don’t have to go over there for a while yet.”

“Do you want to split another slice?” she asks.

“Ok,” I say.

She gets up and goes over to get one. The first slice was hard enough going down, but I want her to be happy. She comes back and plonks the half a slice on my plate.

“It’s very good pizza for the sticks,” she says.

“What was the Irish girl’s name, it’s a small world, I might know her?” I ask.

“Victoria something, she wasn’t really Irish-Irish, she was Indian, you know, from India, it was a difficult name to pronounce, I met her once, I think, she was nice, she was born in Ireland, but her parents were from India.”

“Well, I can’t say that I knew any girls like that, our school was pretty white. I don’t think we had any immigrants, not even from Scotland or anywhere,” I say.

“You would have liked her, she was nice.”

“I know this is a grisly topic, but who was the other person that died?”

“Oh, Hans was a vice president in charge of mass mailing. He was a bit of a drinker, no one’s quite sure what happened. He fell off his balcony. They saw him arguing with two Mexican men or something. The police shot at them, still looking for them. The whole business is just awful. You’re hardly touching your pizza,” she says.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not that hungry.”

“You said you would split a slice.”

“I only said that because I knew you really wanted one,” I say, giving her a big grin.

She laughs and wrinkles up her nose in mock rage.

“Well, I am tricked and angry,” she says.

“Apologies,” I say. “Look, why don’t you have it?”

She thinks about it for a second or two.

“You’re not eating it?”

“Nope.”

She grabs the pizza and bites into it.

“No sense food going to waste,” she says.

I really enjoy watching her eat. She finishes the slice with obvious delight and wipes her hands.

“What do they eat in Ireland? Corned beef and cabbage?” she asks.

“Actually, no, I’d never heard of that till I came here. But the diet is just awful, anyway. Fried everything. Fried sausage, bacon, eggs, potato bread for breakfast, chips for lunch, fish and chips for dinner. Lot of butter, lot of cream. Blood pudding, ice cream. Beer. Belfast is like Logan’s Run, no one’s alive over thirty, they all have heart attacks.”

She laughs a little.

“Maybe the Catholic guilt kills them,” she says.

“Well, not us, my parents were hippies, they were Jewish, but we didn’t get any religion at all.”

“Is O’Neill a Jewish name?”

“Grandfather a convert,” I say.

“Really,” she says, looking intrigued. “Didn’t you get teased in school?”

“Not really, no one paid me any attention at school, I did well in my subjects, flew under the radar, everyone thought I was just a bit of a weirdo goof-off.”

“Well, we like weirdo goof-offs in America,” she says charmingly.

“I hope so,” I say.

“We do,” she says, reaches across the table and pats my cheek.

She’s being ironic, but the gesture is so intimate, it takes me aback for a second or two. Her fingers are sticky.

“I got cheese on you,” she says, grabs a napkin, wipes it off.

“Thanks.”

“Oh my God, Alexander, a long, horrible, freezing night, huh? Every goddamn door was worse than the one before,” she says, giggling. A lovely sound, the opposite of her brother-in-law’s guffaw. Hers is like a string quartet improvising on a theme by Mozart.

“I know,” I say.

“I don’t normally do the doors, I usually sit in the van with Charles to keep him company. Please tell me people aren’t that eccentric.”

“I had a guy with a gun open the door the other night,” I say.

“No?” she says, appalled.

“Yes,” I insist.

“What did you do?”

“I played it cool, he thought he was James Bond. Bit bloody frightening.”

“My God, did you tell Charles?”

“No, it was my very first night, I didn’t want to sound highly strung, you know?”

“If it had happened to me, I think I would have resigned on the spot,” she says, laughing. I sit in my chair and she plays with the cheese, stringing it from the plate to her mouth, completely unself-consciously.

“Ten o’clock, we better get back to the others and their tales of woe,” Amber says.

I go outside as she dashes to the bathroom. I watch her through the window. On the way out, she flashes her smile at the pizza man and he grins at her and comes around the counter to open the door. In the moment when he’s obscured by a pillar she deftly puts her hand in the tip jar, takes out half the notes, and puts them in her pocket.

“Thank you,” she says breezily, as she leaves.

We had walked nearly the whole way back to the rendezvous point when Amber noticed black spirals of smoke coming from the stoner kids’ house.

“That’s not pot, is it?” Amber asked.

“No, it’s not, their fucking house is on fire,” I said, and began to run.

We got to the house in seconds, but now the fire had taken hold. Sheets of flame coming from underneath the front door, a side window buckling from the heat — all the neighbors bloody oblivious.

“Amber, go to the closest house, call nine-nine-nine,” I said.

“What’s nine-nine-nine?” Amber asked.

“Jesus, whatever it is in this country, the fire brigade, call the bloody fire brigade.”

“Nine-one-one,” Amber said in a daze.

“Yes, just fucking go.”

I had to physically shove her in the direction of the house next door.

It looked bad. The wind and the open windows had really stoked the fire and as I got to the front step I was hit by a wall of heat. I staggered back, put my jacket over my arm and head. I pulled my shirtsleeve down over my fingers and pulled the screen door. The front door was unlocked, the handle searingly hot. I pushed it open.

A horrible sight.

The kitchen was on fire at the back of the house and the walls and carpet were burning. Jets of orange flame shooting up the stairs.

The living room was in to the right. Stairs to the left. Impossible to breathe. I ran down the hall, got about two feet, dropped to a crawl, fumbled for the handle, and shoved my way into the living room. My lungs aching, sparks falling on my back and hair.

Both kids lying on the living room floor, unconscious. The room wasn’t on fire yet, but thick black smoke poured in from a door to the kitchen. I stayed down on my knees, breathing. Behind me a huge tube of fire came hurtling down the hall, and I slammed the door. Something crashed down in the back room.

A couple of breaths of that smoke could knock me for six. But I had no choice. I got to my feet, picked up the TV set from off an upturned wooden crate, threw it through the front window. I kicked away the rest of the glass, got to the floor again, breathed. Stood. I picked up the first kid in a fireman’s lift, hoisted him on my shoulder, ran with him to the broken window, tossed him out.

The second kid groaned.

“It’s going to be ok, you little shit,” I said, and picked him up too.

My legs buckled, but I managed to get him across the room. I tossed him out and leaped after him into the garden. The street full of neighbors now. They dragged the boys out of the garden, helped me to my feet and down the path. A couple of them clapped and patted me on the back.

I dry-heaved and spat, someone gave me a water bottle.

I saw Amber. She ran over and threw her arms around me.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she kept saying, over and over.

Two fire tenders arrived and in a couple of minutes they had the blaze under control and out. An easy one for the fire department, considering the number of wildfires they were increasingly having to deal with in this second summer of drought.

A cop showed up and paramedics took the kids to the hospital. They both had suffered smoke inhalation but would be fine. A paramedic asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital but I said no. He gave me a hit of O₂. I coughed and heaved and he gave me Gatorade instead. Amber helped me up.

“How did you do that, how did you know how to do that?” Amber asked, incredulous.

I knew, but I didn’t tell her. My cop training had taken over. I’d been a cop for six years, not six months. It wasn’t me, it was automatic pilot.

“I don’t know,” I said, “it just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Are you ok? Are you hurt? Maybe you should go to the hospital? What do you think?”

“I’m fine,” I said.

While I recovered, we sat there on the curb with all the other onlookers. Amber held my hand and give me sips from a water bottle. A couple of minutes later a police officer came over to interview me. Tall, skinny, alert, he looked a little like trouble. I got to my feet. He asked me if I was ok. I said I was. He asked what exactly had happened. I began to tell him as simply as possible. He wrote everything down and in the middle of a sentence he suddenly stopped me.

“I know you,” he said.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I know you from somewhere, I can’t quite place it.”

“Well, I don’t think I know you,” I said, guessing that the cop recognized me from the bloody artist’s-impression wanted posters down at his station house.

“Yeah, it’ll come to me in a minute. What’s your name?”

“Um, it’s Seamus Holmes,” I said.

Amber looked at me, startled, but said nothing.

“Where do you live?”

“Uh, two-oh-eight Broadway, apartment twenty-six,” I said.

“Ok, Seamus, what kind of accent is that?”

“Irish.”

“Irish, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Not Australian, right?”

“No.”

“Hold on a minute,” he said, and walked off.

He went to his car and said something into his police radio. I was getting quite scared now. He walked back slowly. His face expressionless, giving nothing away.

“Just something I had to take care of there,” he said.

“Ok,” I said.

“And what do you do for a living?” the cop asked.

“Uh, I’m a schoolteacher, I coach, uh, soccer,” I said, the first thing that came into my head. Also a stupid thing. If he asked what school I was at, I was sure to blunder.

“What school you at?” he asked.

“Kennedy,” I said.

“Is that near Washington High?” he asked.

“Reasonably near,” I said.

“Yeah, I know it, ok, and you just saw the fire and went barging in?”

“Yes,” I said.

He nodded, was about to ask something else, and then his face lit up.

“Sheeat, I remember now, you play in the Cherry Creek Soccer League, right? I knew I recognized your face from something.”

“I play soccer,” I agreed.

The cop grinned. “I knew I knew you from somewhere.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I better cancel that radio call,” he said to himself.

“What?”

He looked at me. His face much more relaxed.

“Oh, nothing, it was to do with something else. I knew I knew you. Shit. And, hey, man, before the fire department gives you a lecture, which they will, I just want to say you did good getting those kids out of there.”

“Thanks.”

A TV crew from Channel 7 showed up searching for people to interview. They were getting in the way of the fire crew, and the cop looked distracted.

“Officer, is it ok if we leave, it’s getting late?” I asked.

“Hold on,” he said, not looking at me, “I gotta just take care of this and then I can let you go.”

The Channel 7 crew marched right onto the lawn, started to do a live feed. The cop straightened his tie. This was his chance to get on TV. He marched over and chatted to them for a couple of minutes.

And then, to my absolute amazement, who should get out of a red Toyota Camry on the other side of the street but Detective David Redhorse. All five feet of him. Jesus Christ. Now I understood. Redhorse was looking for us. He had stuck up a wanted poster at the cop shop or put the word out asking the police to hold for questioning any young men with Australian-sounding accents. So after Klimmer’s murder, Redhorse had gone to the train station to stake it out. He had seen the pair of us run onto the train and decided to follow. We seemed a little suspicious. But then we’d talked to him and his suspicions had been allayed a little. He thought we were ok. I was even injured, but it wasn’t a gunshot wound and the facts they knew at that stage were that the suspects were Hispanic and (because the cop had fired and seen me fall) that one of them had been hit by a bullet.

Still, something had been nagging at Redhorse, he’d checked out our story and hadn’t liked it and then come looking for us at the Holburn Hotel. Of course we weren’t there. It had clearly worried him. Two Australian boys who perhaps looked a little like the two Spanish boys that had killed Klimmer. John had cut his hair, but there was nothing he could do about his height. Maybe it didn’t mean anything, but it was something that he wanted to follow up.

And Redhorse himself scared me. A digger. A good peeler. His Denver Nuggets cap was on slantwise, his jeans and T-shirt were dirty, like he’d come from dinner or yard work, but appearances were deceiving, I could see that.

Redhorse lit himself a cigarette, took in the scene, and started making his way across to the cop.

“Let’s go,” I said to Amber.

I walked her fast along the street. We hurried down a long alley.

When we turned the street corner, Amber grabbed me. She led me under a big overhang at the entrance to an elementary school. She threw me up against the wall.

“You lied to him,” she said.

“I did.”

“You’re an illegal immigrant. All that stuff on your résumé is fake, isn’t it? Everything except for the address on your paycheck.”

“Not everything was a—”

She kissed me. She thrust her body against me and kissed me hard. Leaning up on her tiptoes, biting my lips. She took my hands and placed them on her breasts and we moved together backward into the shadow of the overhang. Her hands searched under my shirt and she touched my back and chest with her fingernails. She grabbed my ass with her right hand and pulled me closer. With her left she began unbuttoning my jeans.

“Right here,” she said. “Right now.”

“Madness,” I said as I grabbed for the zipper on her black jeans. She stopped me and pulled down her jeans and then her panties. She held me and shoved me inside her. She was dripping wet. I leaned back against the wall and she leaned on me and climbed on me and I fucked her the way only a junkie can. Need and desire and displacement and hunger and concentration and pain.

“You’re killing me,” she said.

“I—”

“Don’t stop,” she said.

And when I came, she came, and I groaned and she yelled and bit her finger and laughed.

“I’m breathless,” she said.

The whole thing couldn’t have taken five minutes. She kissed me and zipped herself up. I buttoned my jeans and looked at her and caught my breath. Amber had a little crazy in her: this, the stolen money in the pizzeria. A Venus in a sweatshirt. Everything you could ever think and more. And yet a sadness about her too, a sense of loss, a hunger that needed filled.

“We better get back,” she said.

She took my hand and we walked in silence along the streets, past the bungalows and mock Tudors and ranch-style houses, past mailboxes and strip malls and dog walkers and lovers and illicit men watering their lawn under cover of night.

She let go of my hand when we made it to the van. All the others inside, waiting impatiently. Robert wound down his window.

“Come on, you two, it’s been a trying evening for everyone, l-let’s get home,” he yelled.

I sat near the window. I stank of smoke. Everyone was polite, ignored it, didn’t mention it. Amber said nothing.

They dropped me on Colfax.

I watched them turn the van.

Amber in the front passenger seat.

You should run, Alex, I told myself. Run, now. Now that you’ve seen Redhorse. You should go.

Time had passed since Klimmer’s death and the cop resources were stretched thin. We could have gotten out of town easily. A million different ways. And yet I knew it was too late. The hooks were in.

Amber.

Stupid to remain.

I knew I wouldn’t tell John about Redhorse and I wouldn’t tell him about her.

The van drove off. Through the window I could see her brushing that golden hair.

I stood there. Coughed.

The whores. The homeless. The wide street. The black sky. The tail-lights diminishing. Standing there staring after the van, even when it had long since gone.