Hidden River

9: THE SUTRA OF DESIRE

Haze covers Lookout Mountain. A calm sky. Aegean blue. Jets bending diagonals. The stillness becoming deeper and more taut. A silent vacancy. An absence from airport to aqueduct. It’s early yet. A stray dog. A tailless cat. A girl in a black stole.

The foothills close as a spider on the ceiling.

Hawk’s-eye view.

A street made more straight by the perfect right angles formed at intersections. Light sucked sideways from the vast eastern sun.

Worry has you by the hair.

Enemies from compass point to azimuth.

But not on this morning of ivory cloud, azure heaven, and the friendly boiling local star.

And only a moment ago this was the mythic plain, a migration path for bison and the Comanche nation.

Imagine an archer the instant before release. Before the Spanish, before the horses. Poised and under discipline of sudden death. That same feeling. The template for success or disaster. Blood, either way.

Mosquitoes above the windowsill.

The dead sunflowers.

The thock of arrows in the stampeding herd.

The braves running on to catch more game. The butchers remaining with their long knives of antler and bone.

“Noo nu puetsuku u punine,” they call to one another before they part.

That was then. The city’s pulse a drumbeat of cars and feet. A million people breathing in unison as the alarm sounds seven.

It’s not worse, merely different.

The right angles, symmetry. The smell of cannabis, garbage, eucalyptus. Urine.

My father would say that the Comanche missed out on the great secret of the universe. The linking of the five most important numbers in mathematics by the formula e^iπ + 1 = 0.

My father.

What does he know?

Nothing.

Voices in the living room.

The pair of them.

Laughing, talking.

And then the silence betrays a more intimate encounter still.

A knock. A third voice.

Two men and a girl.

Happy.

She’s cooking.

They want me to come out but they think I’m sleeping. They’re letting me lie in. Still, the smell of food is bringing me back to life.

Even a junkie has to eat sometimes.

But if I don’t go out, the world out there can’t hurt me.

If I don’t go out.

I go out….

I don’t know what Ethiopians eat for breakfast, but it seemed unlikely that it was this. Areea had made us French toast with fried eggs, links sausages, and bacon. Faux maple syrup and coffee, too. Pat and I didn’t have the greatest appetites at the best of times, but John wolfed his portion and there was no denying that everything had a delicious flavor.

All very amiable. Areea in the middle of a story about her life in Ethiopia and why, of all places, they’d come to Denver. Apparently, it had the second-biggest Ethiopian community in America, though it was hard to concentrate since she was wearing a miniskirt that showed off her long, dark, beautiful legs, which complemented her flashing eyes and beautiful smile.

Still, everything clicked along until she and John started kissing again.

“Not at the breakfast table,” I protested.

“Alexander is right,” Areea said, removing John’s big hands from her bum.

John gave her a kiss on the cheek, and turned around to look at us.

“Well, boys, are ye not eating, how’s the grub?” he asked, smacking his lips.

“Everything is just wonderful,” Pat said.

“It is,” I agreed. “You’re a great cook, Areea.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Areea said, “American food is easy to make.”

She went to the kitchen to get more coffee.

“Isn’t she great?” John moaned happily with a goofy expression on his face.

“Jesus, you’re not in love with her, are you?” I whispered under my breath.

“I might be,” John said with a grin.

“You bloody eejit. You realize, of course, the relationship has no future,” I said.

“What is it with you, Alex? You’re such a grumpy boots every morning,” John replied.

Pat lit himself a cigarette and stared up at the ceiling. I clenched my fist under the table. I felt I had been very patient with John. Not one time had I brought up the fact that he had pushed a man over a balcony and bloody topped him.

“I’ll support her, I’ll look after her, I’ll get a job,” John said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, you’re doing a fine job now,” I muttered. “Me working my ass off all day long and you smoking pot and making love, living the life of bloody Reilly.”

“Why is someone else’s happiness such a burden to you? It’s the fucking ketch, robs you of feeling for your fellow man, don’t you think, Pat?”

“I’m keeping out of this, boys,” Pat said, and continued staring at a point above his head.

I took a sip of the coffee. John was a wanker, but maybe he was on to something there. I shrugged. I didn’t want this to develop into an argument. The situation was as much my fault as his.

“Sorry, John. Look, my head hurts, my sinuses are aching, my feet are killing me from all the walking. Problems, you know?”

“The sinus problem is from the pollution,” Pat said. “They should be dealing with that and the fucking drought, not going after minorities in this state.”

Areea came over with another pot of coffee.

“Wonderful,” Pat said, and gave her a grin.

“You have sore feet?” Areea asked me, and we all reddened with embarrassment, hoping that she hadn’t heard the rest of the conversation.

“Yeah, I do, I never walk this much normally.”

Areea took a long look at my feet and offered to give me a foot massage. I looked at John, I didn’t want to get into macho head games with him, but John nodded to show he didn’t care. I retired to the couch and Areea proceeded to torture the soles of my feet with her incredibly strong fingers. Ten minutes later she was done and my feet felt much better.

“Wow, that’s really amazing, you’re totally multitalented,” I said.

“That’s not all she’s good at,” John said. He and Areea dissolved into giggles.

“Honestly don’t know what she sees in you, she can’t even get a green card off you,” I said to him.

Areea asked Pat if he wanted a massage too. Pat refused out of politeness because his feet were in a bad way, but Saint Areea insisted, ignored his calluses and an open sore and gave him a gentler massage than me, but still effective nonetheless.

My watch said twelve and, sadly, it was time to leave this scene of domestic tranquillity. Pat begged me to have at least one martini before I went, but I couldn’t. I’d had a weird high this morning, inverted and almost a bad trip, and I wanted to stay off the booze. It turned out that the heroin supply in this town was very patchy and you never really knew what you were getting. Manuelito, my dealer, always complained about it. Around here the crack cocaine was of the finest quality but the smack could be dodgy. Smackheads were all in New York: singers, starving artists, Goth girls, anorexic fashion models.

I was reluctant to go, though. I was tired and this was the best part of the day, hanging out in the morning with John, Pat, and Areea, chatting, messing about, sharing the fire escape with Pat, looking down on the world.

Of course, last night I hadn’t been able to sleep. Two nights of that now. Ever since Amber.

Amber. Hypocritical me telling John off.

For it was all about her.

It’s an old trope, the peeler who falls for one of his suspects or a witness or a victim. It’s a cliché. They even tell you about it in the police academy, apparently it’s very common in domestic abuse cases.

I should have had more sense, anyway. After seeing Redhorse, I should have scarpered. Smart thing to do. But Amber was the magnet. She had caught me. Something about her that could not be denied. Smart, beautiful, sexy. Maybe if I’d been older I would have been immune. I should have run. But I didn’t want to. And there was that feeling I’d had that she was somehow Victoria Patawasti’s polar opposite. A looking-glass version of her, a Victoria in the parallel world. WASP, blonde, prim as a counterpoint to Victoria. Both incredibly clever, but Amber lacked Victoria’s wit and Amber did not have Victoria’s sense of humor, how could she? Victoria, who had been the only Paki in the whole school, darker even than her brothers, she needed a defense mechanism right from the start. She’d verbally taken apart anyone who’d screwed with her. Sarcastic, ironic, cool, in fact. I shouldn’t have let her go. And this was before ketch and Mum’s illness — no excuses. I suppose I was too immature, too caught up in my own universe.

Too clever by half, the teachers used to say about me, and they said the same about her. But she went on to be head girl. I wasn’t subtle, that was my trouble, how could I be, growing up in that crazy house with those pseudo-hippie parents and aloof siblings — subtle would have gone unnoticed. And also, she was out of my league, destined to go to Oxford University, graduate with a first, and eventually be head-hunted by a nonprofit who would offer her a green card, free rent, a good salary, responsibilities, rapid advancement, and a chance to live in the USA. Aye. Fucked up then, fucking up now.

I sighed, went out.

Colfax Avenue. Heat, light, pollution, three Mexican guys being questioned by a motorcycle cop. A protester outside Planned Parenthood wearing a fetus billboard. Bikers in the park dealing pot.

The CAW building.

The Haitian concierge sitting at his desk and reading a green pamphlet, which was the latest security briefing from the Denver Police Department. He looked at me, smiled.

“Ça va?” he asked.

“Ok,” I said, hoping there wasn’t a description of me in there.

I pushed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator dinged. I got on. The day began.

That night, for the second time that week, I was paired with Amber Mulholland. We were soliciting in a town called Evergreen right up in the foothills. Big houses, lawns, American flags, kids on bicycles. It was odd that Amber and I would be together, for a couple of reasons. First, I had been working at CAW sufficiently long now that I didn’t need training or a partner anymore. Second, Amber told me when she did go out she did it only to keep Charles company. And yet here we were again. I wasn’t complaining. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of days, not since the night she’d caught me in a lie and I’d seen her steal and we’d rescued the kids and had hard, crazy sex up against a wall. I wanted to see her, I needed to see her.

She was wearing a white crew neck over khaki slacks. A little cooler here in the foothills. Needless to say, she looked stunning. We walked away from the van, and when the others were behind us, she turned to me. Her face flushed, rosy, biting her lip.

“Alex, listen to me, I lost my head the other night. I love Charles, I don’t know what happened, but it can’t ever happen again. I blame myself, the fire, the excitement, I don’t know, I was overcome, if you value my friendship you won’t mention it, please.”

I didn’t know what I was expecting her to say. But not this. Not the brush-off.

“Ok,” I said.

“Friends?” she asked, and offered me her hand.

“Friends,” I said, concealing my amazement at her behavior. It seemed so wrong, so immature, so silly. And yet maybe that’s what adults did. We walked in silence for a half minute and took out our maps.

“I think we’ll do better tonight. Tonight we have the Glengarry leads,” Amber said with a little smile….

She proved correct. A short night, but good work. Two hours, ten members each. A hundred and fifty bucks for me.

It was only on the way back to the van that we managed a real conversation. I tried to be lighthearted.

“You know what this neighborhood reminds me of?” I asked her.

“What?”

“It’s the sort of place a lot of Spielberg movies begin in, you know, picket fences and kids playing and stuff and then something ominous happens, aliens come, or a poltergeist, or government agents, something like that.”

“I don’t really go to the movies,” she said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Oh, that’s right. You said you like the theater,” I said.

She nodded and the conversation died. With annoyance, she brushed the hair away from her face. How dare one strand of hair be out of place again. She knocked her hair clip to the ground. I picked it up, gave it to her. Our fingers touched. She smiled at me. I swallowed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Look, about the other night, I’m glad you didn’t say anything to the police,” I said.

“It’s ok, I understand. You’re from Ireland, you want to work, and you don’t have all the papers, nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, sympathetically.

“Not every American takes that attitude,” I said.

“Well, I do, I come from pretty straitened circumstances myself,” she said.

“Your parents weren’t well off? Thought you went to Harvard?”

“I worked hard,” she said firmly.

“Tell me about your background, if you don’t mind,” I said, and again she returned my smile.

“It’s very complicated,” she said carefully. She blinked a couple of times, angled her head away from me.

“I’d like to know,” I said.

“Well, my parents were divorced, you know,” she said.

“That can be very hard on a kid, did you have brothers or sisters?”

“No.”

“What did your parents do for a living?” I asked.

“Dad was a mechanic, he went to college part-time, and he became a union rep and did well. Mom worked in a place called Dairy Queen, which you probably haven’t heard of, I haven’t seen any in Denver.”

“So you were solid working class?” I asked with a smile, since some people can take offense at that kind of question.

“I suppose so, I don’t have a, uh…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?” I insisted.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I don’t have a relationship with my dad, we haven’t spoken in years.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well, he divorced my mom and he’s a real operator, he had good lawyers and she got screwed over and got nothing. That’s the first thing. And then when I was going to college, he’d promised he would pay but he stopped paying. He wouldn’t give me anything until I went to see him, to beg in person, but I didn’t want to do that because of what he did to Mom.”

“I’m sorry. He sounds like a bastard,” I said.

“Yeah. He was, still is, probably. I don’t want to talk about it. What did your parents do?”

“My parents were both teachers, math and English. Dad’s retired, Mum’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, uh, what did your mom die of? I mean, if you don’t mind…”

“She had cervical cancer, it was misdiagnosed for a while and when it was diagnosed it was probably too late, they tried some alternative treatments, but those things don’t work,” I said simply.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “How old were you when she died?”

“I was eighteen, it was my second year of university, it was really hard, my siblings were in England and my dad was doing all this political shit, Mum was practically on her own, it was awful, really. She was tough, though, she said we should all get on with our lives.”

“I’m so sorry,” Amber said, and stopped for a minute to give me a look of real sympathy. She touched my hand again. I squeezed hers.

“My poor mother might as well be dead,” she said, her face sad with the memory.

“What’s the matter?”

“She’s only sixty-eight, but she has early-onset Alzheimer’s, hardly recognizes me, it’s awful. Charles had her flown out here to Denver, to a wonderful place. Oh, my goodness. Actually, I don’t want to talk about that, either, it’s terrible.”

I nodded sympathetically. But sharing that had brought me closer to her.

“To be honest, I don’t really like it here in Denver that much,” she offered after a while. “It’s a poor excuse for a city.”

“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?” I asked.

“Oh, Charles has to be here, for political reasons, you wouldn’t really understand. All politics is local in this country. We have to be here.”

“And does Charles have political ambitions?”

“I suppose so, don’t we all?”

“Not me. You don’t really hear about many national figures coming out of Colorado, though.”

“No, no, you don’t, the last was Gary Hart and we all know what happened to him.”

“The girl on the boat, that scandal thing,” I said.

“Monkey Business,” she said.

I swore inwardly, for we were already back at the van. Everyone else there, Charles beaming, wearing Dockers, deck shoes and a button-down Oxford shirt. His hair gelled. He looked younger, like the millionaire commodore’s wanker son at a yacht club function. And of course he was a millionaire’s son and he was a wanker. I had to bite down a real hatred for the man. He bounded over, kissed Amber, shook my hand.

“Well, folks, hope you’re ready to party,” he said.

“What is it, Charles?” Amber asked excitedly.

“We just signed our ten thousandth member,” he said, and gave her another big kiss.

“That’s wonderful,” Amber said, her face lighting up with pleasure.

“It is, ten thousand members and the timing couldn’t be better. Momentum is what we need right now. And we have it. Ten thousand members, if we could use the mailing list and hit them up for a hundred bucks a pop, we could have a million dollars in our PAC before anyone else even begins to raise money….”

Charles suddenly realized he was being indiscreet. He looked at me and forced a grin. He turned to Amber, kissed her again.

“Darling, Robert and I have been thinking, we’re going to have a big party, honey, tell me it’s ok, but the offices are so boring, I was really thinking we could go to our house, it’s big and nice, comfortable, everyone would love it, but if you don’t think so, we could go to the offices, tell me what you think?”

“If that’s what you want, Charles,” Amber said a little reluctantly.

“Terrific, I’ll tell Robbie and Abe,” Charles said, and ran back to the others.

“So we’re going to your place?” I asked Amber.

“It’s not as clean as I would have liked, the maid only comes every other day, I hope we’re not embarrassed,” Amber said.

Amber was not embarrassed. The house was spectacular. An Edwardian pile on Eighth and Pennsylvania, the heart of Capitol Hill, a block from the governor’s mansion. Easily six thousand square feet, with a big open-plan living room decorated in what I took to be southwestern style: Indian artifacts, prints, throw rugs, pastel furniture. A Georgia O’Keeffe painting of an adobe house. Pottery that looked to be pre-Columbian. It must have cost a bloody fortune, which meant the brothers couldn’t really have been as poor as Klimmer claimed, although wealth is a relative thing. Perhaps they weren’t that well off in comparison to their fabulously wealthy father. But even so, all of us humble campaigners were awed.

Twenty of us in here easily, but we hardly filled the space. Charles ordered a crate of champagne and food deliveries from several restaurants. We all mucked in, setting a table with caviar, French cheese, Mexican dips, hot plates, paté, and the like. After a couple of minutes I found Charles, gulping from a flute of champagne.

“Wonderful house,” I said, “just the place for a future congressman.”

“What?” he asked, grinning merrily.

“You’re moving into politics, I hear,” I said.

“Alex, walls have ears, I see. Don’t breathe a word of that. Please. But yes, it’s an exciting time, a very exciting time. You know, Robert thinks they’re going to ask me to give a speech at the GOP leadership seminar in Aspen on the sixteenth. I don’t know how I’ll manage it. Can you imagine, six months ago no one had heard of CAW. We couldn’t buy publicity and now, well, I hate to bring it into the realm of the personal, but things are looking up for me. I should have listened to Amber a long time ago.”

Charles was getting a little excited. I got him another champagne.

“So Amber wanted you to go into politics?” I asked, handing him the glass.

“She’s very clever, Amber, did I tell you how we met? Completely by accident, although I’d sort of known her before. Teacher-student relationships, frowned upon, you know. Anyway, yes, what a time. The first thing was to move CAW from Boulder to Denver. It seems like years rather than weeks ago. Couple of setbacks. We had those two terrible tragic incidents. Good God.”

His tongue was really loosening, but before he could tell me any more Amber appeared, took Charles by the arm, and tried to lead him over to the window.

“Sorry, Alex, she said, there’s something we have to take care of.”

“No, don’t go,” I said, “I never get to talk to the big boss anymore, this is my big chance to weave my way into his consciousness.”

“Yeah, what’s so important, darling?” Charles said.

“Well, I think we — someone knocked over a glass of champagne, you know what that will do to the carpet,” Amber said.

“Oh my God, Amber, leave it, this is a party, Rosita will do it tomorrow. Not tonight, we’re celebrating,” Charles said.

“Do come on, Charles,” Amber insisted.

They both disappeared and, try as I might, I couldn’t get into conversation with either of them the rest of the night. The best I could do was Robert, who was not drinking and indeed looked quite somber. He was talking to Abe about politics. I joined the conversation.

“Mind if I butt in? I find the American political system fascinating,” I said.

Robert looked me up and down as if deciding whether I was worth speaking to.

“And, Alexander, are you from the North of Ireland or the S-South?” Robert asked.

“The North,” I said.

“And that’s part of the UK,” Abe said.

“Yup.”

“So you vote for the London p-parliament,” Robert said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Interesting. Alex, we were just talking about the elections, here, n-next year,” Robert said.

“They vote for the president and the House and the Senate,” I said.

“No, not the Senate, Alex, only a third of the S-Senate,” Robert said.

“But it will be the big year,” Abe said, “a presidential election year. The GOP candidates are already battling it out. Dole will win, of course.”

“I know, how could you miss it, it’s in all the papers,” I said.

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t read the p-papers. Or they read exclusively about O. J. Simpson. Only about fifty percent of people eligible to vote actually vote in this country, I think in Ireland it’s around seventy to eighty percent.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Dole will lose,” Abe said, “and Charles will help pull the party back to the center, we’ll all do well out of this.”

Robert looked at Abe as if he were saying too much.

“Oh, I’ve told Alex about August sixth, we can trust him,” Abe said.

“Good heavens, how many other people have you t-told?”

“Just Alex.”

Robert turned to me.

“Alex, p-please don’t say anything to anyone. Abe should never have told you. We d-don’t know for certain that Wegener is going to announce his r-retirement, it wouldn’t do to j-jump the gun.”

“He’s retiring, Charles’ll have the drop on everyone, the state chair wants him, the GOP needs him. Nobody should forget that this is the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, not just Reagan and Bush,” Abe said.

“I’d rather you didn’t t-talk about this,” Robert said.

Abe looked a little put out.

“Ok,” he said glumly.

“You too, Alex,” Robert insisted.

“Won’t breathe a syllable,” I said.

“Robert, can I have a word?” someone asked.

Robert excused himself and headed across the room. Abe was embarrassed and made an excuse to leave me too.

As illuminating as the conversations with Charles and Robert had been, the real shock story of the night, the real revelation, the real scoop, was to come as the party was winding down and I was on a trip to the bathroom. Never has a bog run been so profitable in my life.

Some people, it is said, keep their Academy Award in the toilet, others provide reading material in a little magazine rack next to the throne, still others attempt to affect a comedic air by plastering the toilet walls with cartoons or purchasing kitschy or otherwise risible bathroom equipment. It is more of a British thing than an American thing. Brits take equal parts delight and shame at the contemplation of bodily functions. But some Americans feel the urge to introduce levity into their bathroom arrangements. Perhaps those who have gone to prestigious Anglophile universities.

The Mulhollands had thought it a good idea to place, on their bathroom wall, framed photographs of themselves in younger days. Preferably those from the awkward teenage years. There was Charles, face covered with acne, standing beside a snowman, whose face he had also unself-consciously covered with pebble acne. There was Amber dressed in a barrister’s wig and gown, playing a male part in the operetta Trial by Jury. There was a grinning Charles dressed in shorts and a striped jersey standing next to a dozen other boys, in front of a massed bundle of equipment, with the legend “Governor Bright Academy Lacrosse Team, 1973.”

Under the photograph in tiny print, each boy’s full name was spelled out. Charles William Mulholland, George Rupert Dunleavy, Steven Philip Smith, Alan James Houghton…

It took me a second to recall where I’d heard the name Alan Houghton before and then it did come back. Oh yes, I remember. The missing blackmailer.

Hubris, putting a photograph like this on public display?

Not necessarily. Probably no one ever took time to read the names. But even so, I wouldn’t have done it. Perhaps Charles wasn’t as clever as I thought.

I washed my hands and face, grinned, decided it was time to go.

Robert saw me to the front door and with forced, deliberate calm, I said:

“Wonderful party, mate.”

The next morning, I skipped the Areea-John lovefest breakfast and Pat’s martinis and after a nice hit of Afghani black tar heroin I walked to the Denver Public Library and did a search on Alan Houghton. Nothing. Next I tried the Governor Bright Academy lacrosse team. A lot of stories, but the big one, the one that interested me, happened back in 1973 when Charles would have been sixteen.

The Denver Post gave me the gist, but the Post itself had only two short articles and after a couple more questions, it didn’t take long before I was looking at the more extensive coverage in microfilmed copies of the Denver Dispatch, a now defunct newspaper that had covered the foothill communities to the west of the city.

The Post index had told me that an incident involving members of the lacrosse team had happened in May 1973.

Governor Bright Academy dated back to 1890, an all-boys boarding school in the southwest of Denver that, although not in the same league as Andover or Exeter, was far and away the best school in the state and indeed attracted pupils from all over the country. Bright took the boys at age eleven and kept them until they were seventeen. Academics were important, but Bright also encouraged each pupil to take part in a team sport. American football, soccer, baseball, ice hockey, basketball, lacrosse, and even cricket and rugby were offered. Those pupils who couldn’t make a team took up fencing or cross-country running or some other similar endeavor. Winter Fridays were devoted to skiing. Although Bright was a boarding school, its regime seemed to be popular with its pupils and almost half went on to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Academic excellence was important, but sporting achievement was rewarded with scholarships and other perks.

The lacrosse team was one of the most prestigious in the school. Lacrosse is a game unknown in Ireland, so I did some side research to find out what it was. Le jeu de la crosse. A French-named Indian game, popular among private schools. Played by the elite, mainly in the Atlantic states and Colorado.

The incident had happened on May 1, 1973, but had gone unreported by the Post and Denver Dispatch until two days later.

Maggie Prestwick was the daughter of the stable manager. Bright had its own riding school, with a half dozen show horses and another half dozen ponies for trail hiking. Tommy Prestwick, a single father, had a grown-up daughter at college and Maggie, who lived with him in the house over the converted stable block. Tommy had a lot of responsibilities and Maggie, he told reporters, was an independent girl who he thought could look after herself. He hadn’t noticed she was missing until the morning of May 2. He called the principal, who called the police. Bright, I suspected, had good relations with the Denver police department and they could be expected to be discreet.

Of course, the outcome of the police search was not good. My heart sank as I read the microfilm.

Along with a grainy picture of a derelict building, the May 3 issue of the Denver Dispatch had, as its front page lead, this:

Margaret Prestwick, the 15-year-old daughter of Tommy Prestwick, the stable manager at Governor Bright Academy, was found dead yesterday evening at the site of Rookery House, a former hotel, a mile from the Bright campus. Police are not releasing details of the incident and a spokesman for the Denver Police Department, Officer Anthony Sutcliffe, said that it was “too early to determine the cause of death or whether Margaret Prestwick had been sexually assaulted.” However, a spokesman for the Denver Coroner’s Office said late last night that Margaret Prestwick had been the victim of foul play….

In the next few days, the Denver Dispatch discovered further details of the incident. Margaret Prestwick had not been raped, but she had been sexually assaulted and then strangled. There were no scenes of struggle outside the property and the speculation was that Margaret had known her assailant and had arranged a liaison with him at Rookery House, a hotel that had suffered extensive fire damage years before and had lain empty since. In the weeks that followed, the Dispatch’s sense of frustration grew as little progress seemed to be made with the crime. The police interviewed many people, but no one was charged and there were no arrests. It must have been an important story within the community, for even two months later, the Dispatch’s crime reporter, Danny Lapaglia, was still writing about the unsolved murder.

This Fourth of July, the campus of Governor Bright Academy is quiet. School has been out for two weeks and the new term does not begin until after the long summer vacation. When school does begin, the new students at Bright will doubtless have heard of the ghastly events of the first week of May, when the daughter of the school’s former stable manager was brutally strangled a mere mile from where this reporter sits. As the weeks have gone by and the Denver police have seemingly run into a wall, it is no wonder that Tommy Prestwick, the murder victim’s distraught father, has resigned, leaving Bright Academy to be close to his only surviving daughter in New Orleans….

The story disappeared until November of that year, when Danny Lapaglia came out with a scoop. By this time, though, his article was only the lead on page five.

This reporter has learned that the Denver Police Department interviewed all the members of the Governor Bright lacrosse team in connection with the murder of Margaret Prestwick in May of this year….

The article went on to explain that a tiny piece of a lacrosse team tie had been found in Maggie’s teeth. Great significance had been attached to this. Every boy at Bright wore the same school uniform, black blazer, black trousers, white shirt. However, any boy who was a member of a team was permitted to wear his team tie rather than the school tie. If, indeed, the murderer was a member of the lacrosse team, that could leave only thirteen suspects. In Bright there were three soccer teams and two basketball teams, but only one lacrosse team, with ten players and three reserves. Only thirteen pupils in the whole school were permitted to wear the lacrosse team tie. All thirteen had been thoroughly interviewed but none had admitted to any knowledge of the murder. The police had not ruled out the possibility that a pupil who was not on the lacrosse team had used a team tie as the murder weapon.

But the police didn’t have the information that I had. That twenty years later Alan Houghton from that lacrosse team had been blackmailing Charles Mulholland from the same team. Maybe the blackmail was about something else, but maybe it was not. It certainly was worth looking into further.

I didn’t know how I felt. Ecstatic that I might have a lead, but it was a lead that would mean Charles, Amber’s husband, had killed more than once. Was Amber in any danger? In any case, I had to find out more.

I tried to speak to Danny Lapaglia, but his widow explained that he had died of cancer in 1983. Probably be a waste of time after twenty-two years but, anyway, I called in sick at CAW and took a trip out to the school.

It didn’t board anymore and half the pupils now were girls. Quite far out, too, the taxi ride cost twenty dollars. A beautiful campus: ivy-clad buildings, a swimming pool, a sculpture park. Only a short drive along Hampden Avenue to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

I told the headmaster’s assistant I was thinking of sending my adopted son there and he showed me around, but he’d been there for only two years and couldn’t be pumped for information. He let me walk the grounds. They didn’t own horses anymore and the stable block was now a garage for school buses. I walked in the hundred-degree heat across a dried stream and a brown field to where the old Rookery House hotel had been. Signs everywhere pointing out the danger of wildfires.

The old hotel was gone and a housing development had obliterated any hope of finding clues or insights into Maggie’s murder.

It was only during the walk back across the dusty field under the unforgiving Colorado sun that I saw why the boys had met Maggie at the Rookery House. The Bright campus was on a hill that commanded the surrounding area. Two boys in Bright uniforms could be spotted from miles away coming over these fields. Except for this one field that led to the Rookery. For this field lay behind a small mesa that sloped down and away from the Bright campus. On the downslope side the little dry stream to the Rookery and the Rookery itself were completely cut off from Bright. Once you got over the brow of the mesa, you disappeared from view. Nice spot for a rendezvous.

Was it possible she had agreed to meet both of them? It seemed unlikely.

In the photograph, Charles was handsome, tall, poised, Alan stubby, askew, asymmetrical, and unattractive. If I had to take a stab at it, I’d say that Alan had tagged along unannounced. What had happened next was anyone’s guess. Impossible to say then, impossible to say now….

I went to the school office and asked if I could browse through the alumni magazines to see how Bright pupils did in life. They were happy to let me have the last twenty years or so of the annual. It was even indexed. Alan Houghton appeared three times. In 1984 he was living on the rue Saint-Vincent, trying to be — guess what? — a painter. In 1989 he was in his hometown of New York “working in the theater.” In 1992 he had moved to Denver, where he had bought a studio to “continue his experiments in the arts.” A grainy photograph from the 1980s showed a haggard young man, with a fixed grin and something that might be a brown toupee on his head.

He had moved to Denver, perhaps to be near his good friend Charles. Perhaps to start hitting him up for money. Who knew? But that might be it.

The bell went for the end of school.

“What time is that?” I asked one of the secretaries.

“Three-fifteen,” she said.

Three-fifteen. If I hurried, I could still get into the office.

I would. I wanted to see Amber, too. I wanted to untangle those thoughts of her that were crowding my mind.

I called for a taxi and made it there by just after four.

Abe was about to give me a lecture about lateness, but Amber intercepted me. Black jodhpurs, black cashmere sweater, boots. Hair tied back. Maybe not the most comfortable of sartorial choices, but it looked bloody great. She looked like a high-class dominatrix. As cute as a box of knives.

“Alexander, I’d like to speak with you,” she said.

“Ok,” I said, and I found myself wondering why my perception of her personality was so influenced by her taste in clothes.

She walked me over to the sofa that had just been set up in the reception area of the CAW offices.

“I’d like to ask you a favor,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” I said, as those lovely turquoise eyes blinked in fast succession.

“Charles is being asked to speak at a Republican Leadership Conference in Aspen,” she said.

“I know,” I replied.

“Charles doesn’t want me to go, thinks I’ll put him off,” she said, smiling.

“I can understand that,” I said.

“Anyway, it’s the same night a touring company of Dancing at Lughnasa is coming to Denver and I hardly ever get to go to the theater. Robert can’t go. It’s a big hit and it’s about Ireland. I thought, I mean, I wondered if you wouldn’t mind escorting me. I don’t want to go alone. I have two tickets. And I thought, because it was about Ireland, you’d be interested.”

“Of course,” I said, stunned.

“Thanks,” she said, and left the room without another word.

I shuddered. Hot and cold. She had me jumping through hoops. Intentionally or not.

To compound it, she didn’t come into the office at all for the next few days. In fact, I didn’t see her again until I met her outside the theater in a rented tuxedo. I was there twenty minutes early. She was late. A limo dropped her off.

She looked incredible in a slightly risqué, low-cut black dress and heels. She had had her hair done, too, pulled back and pleated and curled over on itself. Perfumed, bedecked with pearls over an impressive cleavage, she could have been going to the bloody Oscars or just a dinner party next door. My dinner jacket was old and too long in the sleeves and judging from the other patrons I was woefully overdressed.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she said.

“Not at all,” I replied.

“I’m glad to get out, I’d be worried about Charles all evening,” she said.

“Sure.”

“You’re not nervous, are you?”

“I’m not nervous. Why would I be nervous?”

“Don’t you get nervous for the performers? Hoping they’ll hit their lines and their marks?”

I shook my head. We went into the show.

The audience said “Ssshhh” as the lights went down.

The actors. The play. Amber’s bare arm next to mine. I hardly paid the story any attention at all. The only thing I noticed were the worst Irish accents I’d heard outside of an Irish Spring commercial. It went on for a long time.

The audience liked it, though, and there were four curtain calls. Amber clapped with the best of them.

We filed outside.

Amber wanted to walk home. She was very happy and it was a gorgeous night.

We walked south along Sixteenth and despite the play, despite the lovely evening, despite the champagne cocktails at intermission, Amber was talking about Charles.

“You can imagine how excited he was, he won’t be on television or anything like that, but it’s a real honor to be asked to speak, bigwigs are going to be there, Robert Dornan, Alexander Haig, he’s on the bill right after Newt Gingrich.”

“Great.”

“Charles, naturally, is diametrically the opposite. He represents the moderate wing, you know. He called me this afternoon, very excited. Of course, he’s been to Aspen a million times, but he’s not a natural public speaker.”

“Maybe you should have gone with him,” I said.

“He thinks it will be worse if I’m in the audience, better in front of a bunch of strangers, he says.”

“I don’t see Charles as the nervous type,” I said.

“Oh, you see, that’s where you’re wrong, Alexander, he’s extremely shy, he’s very much like Robert in that respect. He’s quite introverted. In many ways, it’s all a front, his whole persona. He does it to get the best out of people. Really, he’s very sensitive, shy. ’Course, you must keep that to yourself.”

“Of course I will,” I said indignantly.

We talked a little about the play and the neighborhood. On Pennsylvania Street, she pointed out the fancy nursing home where her mother stayed. A big, white, modern, soulless building.

“Charles pays for everything,” she whispered reverentially.

“That’s nice,” I said.

“He flew her in from Knoxville. It’s one of the finest homes in the state, she gets the best of care, it’s so sad,” she said, her voice breaking a little.

“It is,” I agreed. “Alzheimer’s is the cruelest way to go.”

“I can barely bring myself to visit, once a week is about all I can manage,” she said, overcome by sadness.

That topic had killed the conversation, and we walked in silence the rest of the way to her front door.

I wished her a good night.

“Oh, come up for a quick drink,” she said, slurring her words slightly and frowning a little at herself. Tipsy from the walk and the aftereffects of champagne, I assumed. She tapped in her security code, the cast-iron gate swung open; I followed her inside.

“What a night,” she said.

“Aye.”

“I wish Charles could have been there, it’s always the way, isn’t it, everything always happens at the same time,” she said.

“Yeah, life is like that,” I agreed.

“Do you want a drink?” she asked.

I didn’t, but I said, “Anything.”

“Charles has a collection of single malts, I don’t know a thing about whisky, would you like one?” she asked.

“I suppose in Tennessee you were all drinking bourbon?” I asked.

“What?”

“You know, because you’re next to Kentucky, Jack Daniel’s, that kind of thing,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we weren’t big drinkers in my family. My father, well, he was a recovering alcoholic, you know, we didn’t really allow it in the house…. Anyway, it doesn’t bother me, do you want a whisky?”

“Ok.”

If she wasn’t accustomed to alcohol, that explained how she could be tipsy. But why mention this out of the blue? Christ, maybe she was in a confessional mood. What else did she want to talk about? Maybe more about shy, introverted Charles? I would have to go softly-softly.

“Do you want anything in it? Ice or water?” she asked.

“No, nothing, thank you.”

She brought me a glass, smiled innocently, happily.

I chastened myself. No, she hardly seemed to be breaking under the strain of angst about a double murder. Maybe I was overanalyzing everything. You’re not supposed to do that, you’re supposed to get the information first, then collate it, and then think about it. Not leap to conclusions on inadequate facts. I relaxed, sniffed the whisky glass. Peaty. I took a sip: peaty with a seaweed tinge and a sugary harshness. From Islay or Jura.

“How is it?” she asked.

I noticed that she hadn’t poured one for herself.

“It’s good, it’s from the Inner Hebrides, you can tell because of the peaty aftertaste.”

She removed her pearls and put them on a sideboard. She kicked her shoes off and sat on the leather reclining chair next to the sofa. She really was extraordinary looking. Beautiful in a way that Irish girls aren’t. Healthy, sunny, fresh. She was the whole of America. Her big wide smile, her golden hair, her long legs. Even more attractive now that the thoughts of her poor mother had exposed her a little to me.

Her fingers tapped on the leather arm of the chair.

I got up, poured her a glass of whisky to see if she would drink it.

She sniffed it and took a big sip.

“Oh, Alex, that was a lovely play, Ireland sounds very romantic. Charles went there when he traveled around the world.”

“Yeah, he told me, he went to Dublin,” I said.

“Oh, yes, of course, he went everywhere. I’ve never even left America, if you don’t count Puerto Rico,” she said wistfully.

“And you don’t count Puerto Rico, because it’s still part of America,” I said with a grin.

“Yes, I suppose it is, isn’t it. What is it? It’s not a state, is it?”

“It’s a colony,” I said.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said dismissively.

“It is,” I insisted.

“No, I don’t think we have any colonies,” she said dreamily, her mind clearly on something else.

“You do, and Puerto Rico’s one of them, you got it from Spain, I think,” I said.

She bit her finger and looked at me.

“You know, Alex, when we first went out campaigning in Englewood, that night of the fire, the first time we’d talked really, apart from the interview, I was very impressed with that thing you said.”

“To the policeman?”

“No, when we talked to that dreadful woman. You said that thing about African Americans.”

“I honestly don’t remember what you’re talking about,” I said.

“You said that African Americans had invented jazz and blues and rock and done lots of things,” she said.

“Oh, I stole that from somewhere, I’m sure, it’s hardly an original thought,” I said.

“Yes, but clearly you have the sentiment, don’t you? You believe that. I mean, well, you know what I mean,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, laughing, and looked at her legs crossing themselves, her hand fixing her dress.

“No, of course not, I’m not saying it very well. In fact, I don’t know what I’m saying. I just mean that you, you have real empathy. Does that make sense?”

I examined her. What was she doing? What did she mean by that? Was she complimenting me by an unspoken comparison to someone else? Was she really talking about me, or talking about herself? Maybe in a roundabout way she was trying to tell me something about Charles. Charles is not like this. He is not like you and me. Charles is cold, single-minded. Charles is a—

“Is it because you grew up in Northern Ireland, was it very hard living there with all the bombings and everything?” Amber asked softly, dripping the words out with precision, brushing the hair from her face. That accent of hers always throwing me. Not New Jersey, not the South, not Boston. A gentle echo of Charles’s patrician tones. Slightly affected. She took another drink of his whisky.

“Not that hard, you just got on with things, you got used to being searched going into stores, that kind of thing, people are very adaptable,” I said.

“Did you see any of that bad stuff?”

“Not really,” I lied.

“You didn’t see anything?” she asked, her lips closing into a pout.

“Once when I was a kid they blew up our local toy shop and we got discounted train sets and Lego. They were all fire-damaged, but it was mostly the packaging. Really, it was actually a good thing.”

“Oh, my goodness, they blew up your toy shop? Why would they blow up a toy shop?”

“I don’t know,” I said, studying the reaction on her face, which was sympathetic. Upset for me.

“I bet you saw a lot more than you’re saying,” she said, smiling.

“No, not much.”

“I bet you’re just being brave and stoic like in the play,” she said, scratching at the skin under her gold watch. Taking it off.

“Honestly, it wasn’t that bad,” I said.

“No. I know all about it. That’s why you’re here illegally. That’s why you lied to the police, because you don’t have a green card. I don’t mind. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I know how difficult it must be. I read the papers. Ireland. It’s awful over there.”

“Well, it can be hard,” I agreed.

“It’s what the play was all about. And what a story, huh? Incredible,” she said.

“Yes, I forgot that it was set in Donegal. Donegal is very beautiful. Stark, there’s still some Gaeltachts out there, villages where they still speak Gaelic,” I said.

“Do you speak any Gaelic?”

“No. Well, a little.”

“Go on.”

“An labhraíonn éinne anseo Gaelige?”

“What does that mean?”

“Is there anyone here who really speaks Gaelic?”

“Did you learn that in the Gaeltacht?”

“No, I went to a Protestant school. The Protestant schools teach Latin, the Catholic schools teach Gaelic, I just picked some of the language up from a book. I’m pretty good at languages. The one thing I am good at.”

“Tell me more about yourself,” she said.

“You know everything, you saw my résumé.”

“We both know that was closer to fiction than truth, right?” she said, again with a smile.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“You know, despite his many travels, Charles is hopeless at languages, most Americans are, you know. I have Spanish, though,” she said.

“That’s cool, it’s always good to know a language.”

“I think I’d like to learn Irish, it sounds beautiful.”

“It can be pretty guttural. It’s not beautiful like Italian.”

“Ireland’s nice, though? Donegal, you say, is lovely.”

“It’s really nice, you’ve got the Atlantic Ocean, big, empty beaches, the Blue Stack Mountains, Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a pilgrimage site, you can wipe away your sins if you go there on a pilgrimage, you walk around the island barefoot and when you’re done you’re free of sin. Seamus Heaney wrote a very famous poem about it.”

“Did you go there?”

“What makes you think I have any sins?” I asked.

She laughed at this. A big sincere laugh. And it wasn’t that funny. She took a sip of the whisky and then another and then she grabbed my glass.

I touched her hand.

She looked at me.

And, oh God, I wanted to kiss her, I wanted to hold her, I wanted to be with her. I wanted her to tell me everything. I knew it would be all right. I wanted her and I wanted to have sex with Charles’s beautiful wife while he was out of town. To punish him.

“Maybe I should go,” I thought and said.

“Oh, don’t go, I was just about to try a different whisky, another glass won’t do me any harm, and I can’t drink alone,” she said.

She poured us both some Laphroaig. The conversation failed. She crossed her legs. Her skirt hiked up a little.

“So, no, I never went to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, it’s only for Catholics, really,” I said.

She looked at me, inspected me. She seemed to make a decision, poured herself some more whisky, added ice, knocked it back. But then said nothing, sat back down on the sofa. And asked dreamily:

“Is Belfast close to Donegal?”

“Geographically close, you know, less than a hundred miles, but the roads are quite bad, so it takes about three hours to get there.”

“And you never went to Carrickfergus, even though it’s only about five miles from Belfast, I checked that on the map.”

I studied her again. Nothing betrayed on her face. No subtlety, no fear, no repression of hidden emotion. Normal.

“No, like I said, I’ve never been to Carrickfergus,” I answered as carefully as if I were a bomb disposal expert, cutting the blue wire, not the red one.

I waited for her to bring up Victoria Patawasti. Was she about to crack? Was she suddenly going to tell me everything because I was a compatriot of the dead girl? Was all this Irish stuff getting to her, filling her with guilt about what she knew? Her lips did not quiver, her eye was steady. No, she wasn’t going to blurt out anything like that, instead she surprised me by saying something quite different:

“I suppose you know you’re very handsome, too skinny, maybe, but very handsome. Tall, dark, and handsome, in fact.”

“How do I reply to that?” I asked, embarrassed despite myself.

“You say thanks for the compliment and then you compliment me. It’s basic civility,” she said.

“Ok. But I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this because you asked me to give you a compliment, I’m saying this because it’s perfectly true. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life. I’m not good at saying things, but you don’t just look beautiful, you have that rare thing that gets said too much, and I’m sort of regretting saying it right now, but the thing called inner beauty, too. You have it. It’s a purity of spirit, I can just tell that you are both lovely and good. Since I saw you first, I’ve felt bewitched, it’s like that stanza from Yeats, ‘It had become a glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair, who called me by my name and ran and faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone and kiss her lips and take her hands…. And pluck till time and times are done the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.’”

“That’s incredible,” she gasped, genuinely touched.

I knew half a dozen Yeats poems, all memorized to impress a different girl in a different world. But it had done the trick and I knew I had to deflate the moment, so I finished off the whisky, gave her my best winning smile, and said:

“Yeah, Amber, maybe I’m cynical, but it’s true that when you’ve got an Irish accent and you’re trying to impress a woman and as long as she’s not Irish or a hard-bitten professor of literature then Yeats will generally do the trick. ‘He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’ is by far the most popular choice, but I like ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus,’ it’s got that great last line, the chicks love it.”

She looked at me for a second, fury on her face, and then I saw that it was mock fury and then she started to laugh and laugh. Laugh so much tears were running down her face. Relief? A huge pent-up flood of emotions suddenly let loose? I was going to ask if she was ok, but before I could, she was standing up and she was reaching out her hand to mine, and I gave her my hand and she pulled me to my feet and kissed me. Hard, passionate, angry kisses. Her mouth was hungry with desire. She was drowning, she was suffocating, she was dying, she was living again through me.

I carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. I pulled her dress down on one shoulder and kissed her arm and the top of her breast. There was a scar on the shoulder, a tiny imperfection in all that beauty. It made her more desirable, not less.

She wriggled out of the dress and undid her bra and ripped off my jacket and shirt. And still having my wits about me, I dimmed the lights, to hide the track marks. She looked up from the bed.

“I need you, Alexander, I need you, now, tonight,” she moaned.

I didn’t say anything. I took off my trousers and her panties. Her body pale, slender, carved in white marble, her hair like the faery gold; her red mouth open, so hungry, there was never anyone so hungry.

I kissed her neck and between her breasts and she pulled me close, her nails in my back holding on to me as if we were in danger of being torn apart. Sucked away into a vortex by terrible forces, the malignancy of Charles, by the blackness pursuing me. We were alone in this land of light. Secure. As long as we stayed together it would be good. Outside there were horrors, waiting like traps. But not here, not here. Here we were safe, safe, in this bed, in this one night.

“We’re shipwrecked,” she said, and I, agreeing, added nothing.

The bed and the silk sheets and her smooth skin and those eyes, blue like that ocean in Donegal. And her hands in my hair and on my back. And her voice in those soft harmonized American vocals.

“Oh, Alexander, you don’t know, you have no idea.”

“I want to know,” I said.

“No, no,” she said.

“Tell me,” I said.

“No.”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

“Kiss me,” she demanded.

My hands stroked her long beautiful legs and her belly and her arms. And I held her close and I kissed her and she tasted of champagne and whisky and ice.

And I kissed her and she didn’t speak and I came inside her and her body ached, hurting with pleasure and loss and she sobbed and we lay there in the dark, panting, breathing, holding each other.

And then she climbed on top of me and we made love again, and the midnight hour came and went.

“Hold me,” she said.

And I took her in my arms and I kissed her, and she smelled of booze and that perfume and her own sweat and the smell of me. She fell asleep. A drunk sleep. Exhausted.

This girl, this woman, here with me in the long, dark, lovely night. Beautiful. And I looked at her. This girl, whose husband was a hundred and fifty miles away in Aspen. This girl, whose husband maybe killed Maggie Prestwick or aided Maggie’s killer on a May morning twenty-two years ago. This man who almost certainly did kill his blackmailer and then committed another brutal slaying on the girl who found out about his slush fund. And it was neat now, tidy. Of course, we had helped, John and myself, killing the only person who could prove anything. We had wiped the traces. And now he could do anything. He could even run for Congress. And win. There would always be rumors, there would always be stories, but nothing that could be proven, nothing that would stick, and with his good works established, and his politics sensible, he would rise. And she would rise with him. From this foundation of blood and lies. Both of them bound by the black rite of this marriage. It would take place, it would happen. Unless I said something, unless I did something, unless I broke her away and let her know the truth about her husband, the truth about Victoria Patawasti. About Victoria, about Amber’s shadow, her mirror, her sister, the ghost that brought us together. Yes, and Maggie, too.

How much did Amber know? How much did she want to know? Is that why I’d slept with her? To find out the truth.

And she lay there snoring, and I knew what I was going to do.

A crime.

It could kill her.

It could fucking kill her.

I eased myself out of the bed. I went to the kitchen and got an ice cube.

I found my jacket. I took out the needle, the spoon, I got some water, my alcohol swab. I boiled the heroin, drew it up through the cotton wool. It would be her foot, she’d never notice and I’m the master, I always find a vein, every time.

But ketch and alcohol do not mix. Just ask any of a dozen dead rock stars. It can stop the heart. Can I take her across the line? What if she’s done nothing? Can I do that to her? Can I take her across and still have the right to save her, protect her?

I found a vein, put the ice cube on it, to numb it. She didn’t wake. I took off the ice cube, swabbed the spot with alcohol, injected the heroin above her heel.

She moaned for a second in her sleep.

I let her absorb it, I watched her chest move up and down.

Her breath became shallow, she began to sweat. Was her heart going to fib? I sat there, frightened for ten minutes, but then she came out of it. She was in the center of the high. There were things I had to know and this might be the way.

I woke her.

“Amber,” I whispered. “Amber.”

She looked at me, smiled.

“Amber, I want to ask you something.”

“Ask me anything,” she said drowsily, happily.

“I want to ask you about Charles.”

“Ask me anything,” she moaned.

Heroin isn’t a truth serum and the memory doesn’t blank afterward, so you have to be reasonably subtle, not shock them enough so they’ll remember.

“If Charles wanted to get into someone’s computer, could he do it?”

“Computer?” she asked, her eyelids heavy, her lips in a pout, quivering, under the opium paralysis.

“Yes, Amber, a computer. Could he get into someone else’s computer?” I asked quietly.

“Carrickfergus,” she said.

“What?”

“Carrickfergus,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

She groaned, started drifting off. I didn’t have much more time.

“Ok, forget that, what about Charles?”

“Charles.”

“Yes, look, if Charles was going to kill someone, how would he do it?” I asked gently.

“He wouldn’t do it, he wouldn’t kill anyone.”

“But if he had to, if he had to kill someone.”

“He wouldn’t,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes fluttered, closed. Damn. I looked at her. That was enough, I couldn’t risk anything more, she’d remember, I’d kiss and tell her she was beautiful and say something about, oh, I don’t know, Africa, lions. In the morning it would all be jumbled up. She wouldn’t recall. It hadn’t worked or maybe it had and she knew nothing, she was as innocent as the—

“Throw it,” she said lazily from her sleep, her eyes still closed.

“Throw what?”

“Throw the gun, get rid of it,” she insisted.

“Where would you get rid of the gun?”

“Have to get rid of it, Italian gun, throw it away, anywhere, Cherry Creek. Get rid of it.”

“Why there?”

“I don’t know, the nearest river, get rid of it, get rid of it….”

She began to snore again.

She knew, then, she knew Charles had killed Victoria. She had told him to throw away the gun.

I could imagine the scene. He’s just killed Victoria, he comes back. “Oh, Amber, something awful has happened, it was an accident”—and he’s still got the goddamn gun.

Congressman Wegener’s birthday announcement is coming up, they have too much to lose. Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe he went to confront Victoria and things got out of hand. Amber keeps a cool head. She orders him back out into the snow to get rid of the gun. He throws it in the water and it’s washed away, like what else? Her conscience. Her humanity.

I stared at her sleeping form, at — what was it Yeats said? — “that terrible beauty,” and I thought, Am I better than you? Me, who took a chance on killing you, to get that?

Had a wee while left.

I looked her over. I examined her, as if she were a corpse. That scar on her shoulder had been a tattoo she had had removed. It was about the size of a silver dollar. I could tell from its shape that it had been a harp. Working-class girl, with a harp tattoo. Shanty Irish girl, bit of a klepto, marries old-money Charles? Then she reinvents herself as patrician fabulous? She didn’t give much away. Just that accent and the way she ate pizza. I admired that. Liked that even as I hated her for what Charles did to Victoria. Hated her and wanted her, too. My muscles ached. My body writhed. I wanted a hit.

I still had time.

I forced myself to have a scout around. The predictability of the decor. What did it show? What a good job the cleaning woman did? Charles’s shallowness, Amber’s impression that this was how the other half lived. No cultural cringes, no giveaways. I went to the garage and checked their car. An E-type Jag. Had Charles killed Alan Houghton on Lookout Mountain? That’s where they’d found Houghton’s car. Charles could have arranged a meeting up there, killed him, put the body in the trunk and dumped it somewhere, a lake, a canyon, the foundation of a construction project. I popped the trunk, checked it, but it had been long since cleaned. A spare tire, a tire iron, and a Leatherman multitool.

Back to the house. That photograph of Charles playing lacrosse. But screw the murder, I wanted more about her. I searched the drawers, I smelled her underwear, I went through her things. Lingerie, fishnet stockings, tasteful stuff from a high-class boutique. But then at the back, a leather panty with an attachment for strapping on a dildo. I rummaged around. Nothing else. Kinky little minx. I went up to the bed and touched her breasts, kissed her. I watched her. I could have killed her with that dose. Thank God, she was alive, breathing easily.

Got up, searched some more. Looking for back story, photographs, but there was precious little. The past was wiped. Something to be ashamed of, maybe. Finally, in Charles’s study I found a box of college stuff. I rummaged through and found a few pictures of an Amber Doonan in a Harvard production of Twelfth Night. Further down another yearbook. No Amber Doonan, but a photograph of Amber Abendsen, a talented actress in the drama society. She had changed her name. Why? Could she have married someone before Charles?

A talented actress, the caption said.

What else about you, Amber? What else could I know about you? I found her purse and rummaged through it. Driving license, credit cards. A notebook with all the pages blank. More to know but too late now.

Too late now. I was shivering. I put the box away. I went back to her. Breathing. Lovely. I needed a hit. I couldn’t bear to look at her without a hit.

I threw the used needle in the garbage. I cleaned the vessel in the bathroom sink. I cleaned the spoon, let it air-dry. Waited, patient. I took the ketch, I boiled it, I found a vein. Alcohol and heroin do not mix, I thought as I injected myself. I stowed my kit back in my jacket, I lay down with her on the bed.

I climbed on top of her, I touched her belly, breasts. She could barely respond, but I had to have her.

I eased my way inside….

Early morning. Sunlight the color of her hair, filtering through the wooden slat blinds. She’s awake, looking at me. She smiles when she sees me wake.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi. You look great,” I reply.

“Really? I don’t feel well at all,” she says.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m just a bit under the weather, groggy.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and look at her.

She seems a little yellow. I kiss her and touch her legs and incidentally check out her left heel. If you miss the vein you can leave a big blister, but I didn’t miss the vein and it seems fine down there.

“I don’t feel a hundred percent but I know what will help. Let’s make love,” she says.

“Ok.”

I kiss her and climb on top and we make love, but I’m still under the influence of the smack and I let her be on top and her back arches and her big breasts heave and drip sweat, and we come together and we’re happy.

I laugh and she laughs.

“Well, that’s position twenty-one in the Kama Sutra knocked off,” I say in an Indian accent.

“What did you say?” she asks, suddenly sitting up.

“I said that that’s position twenty-one of the Kama Sutra knocked off.”

She wraps the blanket around herself and rubs her eyes. Her leg moves in such a way that it is no longer touching mine. She shivers. She looks at me in the half-light with those cat blue eyes. She turns away. I’ve screwed up somehow. She yawns.

“You better go, Charles might be back soon.”

I stretch lazily and nod.

“Gosh, yes, it’s seven o’clock, you better go, we have a maid service that comes,” Amber says.

“I’ll see you this afternoon?” I ask.

“Yes. Come here, Alex, kiss me,” she says.

I lean over, kiss her. Thinking: She’s beautiful, she’s frightened, but she’s basically good, and somehow, somehow, it’s all going to be ok, it’s all going to work out for the best, for her and for me and for everyone.

Of course it is.