Hidden River

10: THE REMOVER OF OBSTACLES

Denver already up. Dollars being made in oil, high tech, commerce, land spec, tourism, and the like. I noted the cars, counted the SUVs, the Jesus fish and the odd “God Hates Gays” or “Abortion = Murder” bumper sticker. At Einstein Brothers I bought a mixed bag of bagels. Carried them to the building, walked up the five flights.

“Alex, what about you?” John asked.

“Not too bad, mate,” I told him.

Areea smiled at me. She was always here now. Before her job, after her job.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Hi,” I said.

John took the bag of bagels, split it open, and toasted three of them.

“Where’s Pat?” I asked.

“He’s putting his face on.”

Pat always spent at least an hour getting his appearance into some kind of shape for the day ahead. There were sores to be covered, a beard to be shaved extremely carefully, there was rubbing alcohol and pancake to be applied to his skin.

“I’ll just take a half, John,” I said as I went into the bedroom to boil my heroin and shoot up.

“Ok, pal,” he said. He didn’t ask where I’d been all night, or what was going on. This was one of John’s good qualities.

I found a clear track of vein, injected myself, lay down on the bed.

“Did you fall asleep?” Areea asked a couple of hours later.

“Yeah,” I said.

John gave me a look and shook his head. “You’re running late,” he said, “and your bagel’s freezing.”

“Where’s Pat now?” I asked him.

“He’s not feeling well,” John said.

“No?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go visit him.”

I walked down the hall to Pat’s. I was a bit late, but I had to ask him something.

He was wrapped in a blanket in the living room, sipping raw gin from a pint glass. His face drawn, tired.

“Get you anything, mate?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Listen, I’ve got a question. It can wait if you’re not up to it,” I said.

“Fire away. I’m better than I look.”

“Where does Cherry Creek go?”

“The river or the shopping mall?” he asked, stroking his stubble, his dead cheeks.

“The river. How could a shopping mall go anywhere?”

“It meets the South Platte at Confluence Park.”

“And then what?” I asked.

“Platte, Missouri, Mississippi, Gulf of Mexico.”

“Shit, ok, I see.”

“Why you wanna know?”

“Oh, nothing, just curious.”

“You wanna know anything else, sip of gin or a martini?”

“Nah, I have to go, actually.”

“Don’t think of fishing there or anything, just a couple of feet deep, best of times.”

“Ok, Pat, I have to head. Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

“No.”

“Gotta go to work,” I said apologetically.

“Sure,” he said. “Oh, nearly forgot, last night I got a call about you.”

“What?”

“Yeah, some Native American dude from the Denver Police Department called up, wanted to know if I had anyone stay over with me on the night of June twenty-second. Maybe two Mexican, Australian, or Irish guys.”

“Shit, and what did you say?”

“I said nope, said I used to take paying guests but it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.”

“And what did he do?”

“He thanked me, said it was just a routine inquiry, and hung up.”

“His name was Redhorse, right?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Pat said.

“Did the right thing, Pat, he’s looking for us since—”

Pat put up his hand to stop me. His eyes cold, certain.

“I don’t want to know,” he said. “The best thing is if I know nothing.”

“Ok. Probably best if you don’t tell John, either,” I said.

Pat’s eyes widened, but then he nodded and I said goodbye. I’d forgotten all about Redhorse. Or, if not forgotten, I had put him out of my mind. If I had any sense at all, I’d see that now was the time to quit, to get out of town. But I was so close. So close. And the hook was deeper than ever. She was deeper….

Incredibly, at the CAW offices Charles was there, looking a bit bleary-eyed but showered, his hair gelled back, wearing a fresh linen suit, white shirt, and tie.

“Alexander,” he said with a big grin, “you like cigars?”

“You had a baby?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he said, laughing. “I gave my first public speech last night.”

“How did it go?” I asked.

“Very well. Here,” he said and give me a silver tube.

Charles explained that he’d given the speech to a packed hall in Aspen, made lots of contacts, and then driven back this morning. He had even met Newt Gingrich and Senator Dole. He said that giving a speech wasn’t that much different from lecturing, or presenting a brief, or doing a rap at a door, except that you had to read off a Teleprompter, which took some getting used to.

“Wow, that’s cool, did you write the speech?” I asked.

“Robert and I wrote it. Robert wanted to come and, of course, Amber wanted to come, but, I don’t know, I thought it might be easier if I was there on my own. Amber tells me you escorted her to that play she’s been going on about.”

I nodded. He smiled. There he was. Together, tall, confident, just the sort of person who gets elected to Congress, whose past indiscretions are swept under a rug, never to see the light of day, the sort of fucker who pops up on a vice presidential ticket five years from now. I don’t know what kind of a person Maggie Prestwick was, but I’ll bet she was worth ten of Charles. Victoria Patawasti, I know, was worth a hundred.

“Come on, we’re having a meeting, everyone’s invited, including the campaigners,” he said.

“How democratic,” I muttered.

The meeting was just a pep rally for Charles. He talked about his speech and the conference, how he’d met half a dozen senators, congressmen, and governors. He told us that we should all be ready to see some big changes in CAW in the coming months. CAW was going to be adopted by influential people within the GOP as a counterweight to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, who were firmly in the Democratic camp. It would mean more money, more work, more potential for growth. He didn’t mention August 6, but he was itching to, I could see that.

My eyes flitted down the table to Amber. Dressed in burgundy slacks and a tight silk cream sweater, her hair piled under a beret, it was a look I hadn’t seen her pull off before. She resembled Faye Dunaway in one of those films from the seventies. She mustn’t have had time to fix her hair before Charles had unexpectedly shown up. That would have been fun if he’d appeared even sooner, interesting seeing her talk her way out of that one. Would Charles’s violent streak extend also to the killing of his wife and her lover in their marital bed? No, a bit too clichéd for him. It would not serve his future self.

The meeting broke up, and although Amber looked nervy, I needed to speak to her. I pushed through the crowd.

“Nice hat,” I said, just as Abe bumped into her, making her spill her tea.

“What?” she said, glaring at Abe.

“Sorry,” Abe said, chastened.

“Forget it,” Amber said, recovering her poise and giving me a nod.

“What did you say, Alex?” she asked.

“I like your chapeau,” I said.

“Thank you, Alexander.”

“You look like Faye Dunaway,” I said.

“Faye Dunaway?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t she always play the villainess?”

“No, I don’t think so. She was the victim in Chinatown.”

“Well, that’s not good either,” she said with a tight smile.

“Hey, it was cool about Charles, wasn’t it, apparently he was a big hit,” I said.

“He was, I really should have been there, it was selfish of me to go to the play,” she said almost to herself.

“But you would have put him off,” I said.

“Yes, that’s what he said,” she muttered.

“Next time, maybe he’ll want all of us there, as his confidence grows,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said, and looked at me for the first time. Abe, Robert, and Charles began laughing at something. I took the opportunity to lead Amber to the windows at the far side of the room. I kept my eye on the trio behind us. Maybe we were looking at the gray clouds, debating the possibility of rain. Denver needed rain badly.

“How soon did he get there after I left?” I whispered.

“About an hour, it was close,” she said.

“Jesus,” I said. “But everything was ok?”

“No, I don’t feel well at all. After you left, I threw up. Revolting,” Amber said.

“Maybe the whisky,” I said, but of course I knew it was the heroin. That was a dumb move on my part, I was lucky I didn’t give her a bloody heart attack.

“Alexander, I don’t know what to think about last night,” she said softly.

“I know, I know,” I said stupidly.

“It’s confusing. I, I think, perhaps, we shouldn’t try to see each other again for a while,” she said.

I looked at her. She was so beautiful and at a loss. I was surprised. I thought she was going to say either “Alexander, I need to talk to you” or “Alexander, this was a terrible mistake” or “Alexander, I can’t see you again.” But not confusion. That was unexpected.

“Do you want to see me again?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I had a wonderful time,” I said, perplexed.

“Me, too,” she said, and smiled so sweetly that it made my dick skip a beat. Was I falling in love with her?

“And you hid everything? And he has no idea?” I asked.

“No idea, he was talking all about his speech, all about himself,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

She touched my hand. This, I saw, would be one of those moments I would always remember. Robert, Abe, Charles, fifteen feet from me. Charles’s wife touching the back of my hand. Five people in this room. Charles laughing. Amber looking at me with sadness in her eyes. What was betrayed on my face? What emotions was I revealing? Could she read me like I was supposedly reading her?

Aye, the moment.

The room. Denver out the window. The Rocky Mountains. The rest of the great North American continent curving away to the horizon.

Amber.

Amber’s husband. Victoria Patawasti’s killer. With those hands. With that fingertip he squeezed the trigger. With that laughing face. Standing there, grim, in Victoria’s apartment. Standing there. Perhaps admiring his handiwork or perhaps recoiling at the horror of it. Stepping back, remembering to drop the driving license, walking out, closing the door, taking the elevator, holding on to the gun. Amber, the devoted wife saving the day. Drop it in the nearest river. Cherry Creek. Drop it. Get rid of it.

Amber. Her lips parted slightly. Breathing out. Her finger on the back of my hand. If time could freeze then we all survive and the bad things don’t happen and it doesn’t get worse. But time can’t freeze….

Amber lifted her finger from the back of my hand, leaned back. Charles was looking at us.

“What are you two conspiring about over there?” he asked, grinning.

“Maybe it’s going to rain. Make a change. Be nice, be like real Irish weather,” I said, meteorology always a good fallback.

“When we were in Dublin it didn’t rain at all, did it, Robert?”

“It did not,” Robert agreed. “We c-could do with a good downpour here, forty days and forty nights, if we’re lucky. They haven’t let me water m-my lawn since March of last year.”

Amber turned away from the window and walked back to the others.

“I’m very proud of you, darling,” she said to Charles.

“Maybe we’ll all get to go to the next conference, or even the convention in San Diego,” Abe said, getting between Charles and her.

“It’s possible,” she said, examining the tabletop like it was the Risk map of the world and she was in trouble in Central Asia. She couldn’t look at him. I walked over and joined the merry group.

Charles finished his conversation with Abe, put his arms around his wife, and lifted her up in the air.

“I was really something, honey,” he said.

“I’m sure you were,” she said, laughing.

“No, really, they were terribly impressed, not just with the speech but the handouts, the whole package. I do believe we are on a roll,” Charles said.

“That’s wonderful, darling,” Amber said, and kissed him on the lips. He kissed her back and I decided to fade into the background. I had never seen Amber kiss Charles in the office before. Not in front of everyone. Perhaps she was just happy for him, perhaps it was because of me. I wanted to deck the bastard. The girl killer. And his accomplice.

“It’s all thanks to you, darling,” Charles was saying.

“No, darling, it’s you, all your hard work,” Amber said.

“I love you,” Charles said.

“And I love you, darling,” Amber said as I finally made it out the conference room door. I was seething. I wanted to get away from everyone. In the main office, Robert had found a cigar clipper and was offering it to anyone who wanted to use it. Abe and he were smoking provocatively under the No Smoking sign. I went to the bathroom, filled the sink, dunked my head, held it there longer than was strictly necessary.

A long, boring day stuffing envelopes.

That night we drove all the way down to Colorado Springs again. Robert, Abe, and Steve West taking the vans, both Charles and Amber staying home. Amber still not feeling well. Robert bossing us about. Like a lot of weak people, Robert was a bit of a bully.

When I’d got enough memberships, I went to look for Robert. I had a couple of things I wanted to ask him. He was glad to see me, he wasn’t making much headway.

“I’m done, Robert, I did every house twice, got fifteen members, I thought I’d keep someone company, you’re the first one I’ve found,” I said.

“Fifteen members, good job, very good job. Charles w-will be pleased,” Robert said.

I hung out and did some of his doors for him. In between we talked about the woeful state of his garden and how well CAW was doing. Finally, I got him off the environment and onto the topic of crime. Two or three questions in, I asked the lead.

“You know, I worry about some of the girls or someone like Amber out on her own, going door to door, you never know who could answer, once when I knocked someone came to the door with a loaded gun. Or there’s vicious dogs. Shouldn’t she have some protection?”

“Amber? Oh, don’t worry about her, she can look after herself. She’s a b-brown belt in one of those martial arts.”

“Yeah, well, not if the guy has a gun. The guy who hassled me the other night. He thought he was James Bond, he was carrying a Walther PPK.”

“Oh, well, I know Charles gave Amber a p-pistol when she moved to Colorado, the gun laws are very liberal here, not like Boston, both Charles and m-myself own rifles, although neither of us were any good. Papa tried to take us hunting once, dreadful, we both cried. They drummed us out of the ROTC, you know—”

“Yeah, so you said. So Amber carries a pistol?”

“I don’t know if she carries it, she should, a.22-caliber revolver.”

“She owns a.22?”

“Oh, yes. Charles had it handmade in Italy. Gold inlay. Work of art, really. His and her initials. Beretta, I think. Anyway, I d-don’t know much about that; Charles and I both learned how to shoot rifles. Totally different thing. We’re both NRA members, have to be if you’re going to run with the big boys in the GOP. Keep that under your h-hat, by the way, August sixth, Alex. Just a few weeks away, hush hush.”

I smiled, talked about the NRA and hunting, changed the subject back to the weather….

So had Charles killed Victoria with Amber’s.22? Had Amber told him to toss it in the nearest river — Cherry Creek? If so, by now it was nudged halfway down the goddamn Mississippi River for all I bloody knew.

I chatted with Robert about politics and CAW and other things, but he was done with his revelations.

We met the others, stopped for pizza, drove the long ride home.

Colfax Avenue. My building. On the third floor I was so exhausted I had to stop for a breather.

With heavy legs I made it up two more flights.

I opened the apartment door, went in. All I wanted to do now was sleep, but I could hear John and Areea, in my room, screwing. That shit, what did he think he was doing? I was going to go in and kick the bastard out, but I stopped myself. Why should I interfere, what business was it of mine? They couldn’t do it in her place because of her folks, they could hardly do it in the pullout bed in the middle of the living room. John had every right to be in the bedroom. I sighed. But if I gave in tonight, I would be giving him the room with its cooling cross breezes for the whole rest of the summer. I eased myself onto the sofa and listened to them. They weren’t talking, they weren’t being dramatic, they were just having good, beautiful sex. Slow and wonderful lovemaking between two people who were very fond of each other. When was the last time I did that? Last night? I wasn’t sure.

I sat there and wondered what to do. Was Areea going to stay there all night? It seemed unlikely, sooner or later she’d probably slip back down to her apartment.

I felt I had intruded and it made me uncomfortable. The apartment had only limited space and you could hear everything. I backed out of the living room and walked down the hall, closing the door quietly behind me.

I looked at my watch. It was twelve-fifteen. I walked all the way along the corridor and around the bend to Pat’s place.

I knocked gently on the door in case he was asleep.

“Yeah,” he said, almost immediately.

“Pat, you’re up,” I said.

“Alex, is that you? What’s up?”

“John-Areea-fucking-my-place.”

Pat opened the door. He was wearing his day clothes, but he had wrapped a huge duvet about him. It wasn’t cold, I felt the chill more than most and it wasn’t bad, so Pat must have been really feeling under the weather.

“Drink?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“What?”

“What are you having?”

“I’m drinking rum and coke, it’s a nostalgia thing,” he said.

He poured me a glass, and I sat on the sofa in front of the TV.

“What’s on?” I asked him.

“You ever see the Tonight show?”

“Yeah, once or twice, I think,” I said.

“Used to be good, now they got those Dancing Judge Itos on all the time,” Pat said.

I had no idea what Pat was talking about, but he switched over to Letterman anyway

“What was that?” Pat asked during a commercial.

“A beer ad,” I said.

“No, I heard something,” Pat said.

I listened, but I couldn’t hear anything. Letterman came back on. A few minutes later we both heard a girl’s scream.

“What the hell was that?” I said, getting up.

“You better check it out, tell John to keep his woman under control, and if it’s a bad scene come back,” Pat said calmly.

A bad scene. I trudged down the corridor, got my key, but the apartment door was already open. Even in the ambient light coming through the windows I knew that it felt wrong. Something smelled bad. There was something the roaches liked.

I hit the light switch. Blood on the doormat and floor tiles and a smeared blood trail that led from the front door and down the hall. Someone had been stabbed or shot, had fallen, had lain there for a moment, had dragged himself backward down the hall.

“John,” I said. I ran in.

The blood pooled in the living room in an ugly, confused mess that led to the bedroom.

“John,” I called out.

I heard movement.

I skidded into and opened the bedroom door. It smelled like a butcher’s yard. I turned on the light. Blood everywhere, on the bed, on the floor, on the walls. John, leaning halfway out the window of the fire escape. He was naked, there was a hunting knife sticking out of his chest, sticking out of his heart. John had tried to pull it out, but it was a six-inch serrated blade.

Incredibly, he was still breathing.

Tiny, impossible, desperate breaths.

Blood on his tongue, forming bubbles. Blood in his eyes, hair, everywhere.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand.

I sat on the floor, next to him, my jeans soaking up John’s blood. I took his cold, naked, gore-coated hand.

“John,” I said.

His head turned to look at me. He was trying to speak. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t breathe. He was in pain, shock. His mouth moved, blood trickled out of it, his teeth coated, his lips dyed.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I tried to pull out the knife. But the pain writhed through him. He thrashed, gasped. I took his hand again. I wanted to run away. I couldn’t look at him.

I had seen crime scenes before. I had watched my mother die. But I had never seen anything like this. Not the murder of a friend, his body warmth still leaving him. I pulled him close. I held him.

“Pat,” I screamed down the hall, “Pat.”

John’s eyes glazed. He started to convulse.

“John, I’m going to call for help, I’m going to go get help,” I told him.

“Sssssstay,” he managed, heroically, to say, and his dead man’s hands held me tight.

I looked at the knife. No, no sense trying to remove it. Wouldn’t help. The blood from his chest wound was a trickle now. I pulled him closer. I held him. Oh, God, John, I am so sorry. I got you into this. I got you into this. His body shook, shuddered, he reached for what? The window, the closet, something.

“What is it?”

He pointed.

“What is it?”

His arm reached out and fell, his head slumped forward onto the window ledge.

He was dead.

I looked at him. The knife, his white face. I closed his eyes.

A whimper.

And I turned to look at the closet.

Areea.

I opened the closet door. Crouching there. Naked. Covered in his blood. She was terrified. She screamed when she saw me. Stood, pushed past me, I tried to grab her.

“Wait, what happened? Tell me what happened!” I yelled at her.

Her breasts, her long arms and legs, all soaked red. It looked like she’d just given birth. She slid past, dry-heaved when she stepped over John, ran naked across the living room and down the hall. I went after her, slipped on John’s blood, skidded, fell heavily on my side.

“Wait,” I called after her, “what the fuck happened? Wait.”

She didn’t come back. I got up and ran down the hall and then halted. No point. No fucking point. I stopped there and looked at the footprints in the blood. Hers, mine. No one else’s. The murderer had not followed John into the apartment. Not even a hint of an extra footprint in the fresh blood trail into the apartment.

And I saw how it was done.

The murderer had knocked at the door, John had got up, walked naked down the hall, opened the door, been stabbed once, immediately, in the dark of the landing. The killer, of course, didn’t know that I lived with a roommate and assumed that the figure at the door was me. One massive puncture wound, right in the heart. John had had no chance. He’d fallen backward into the apartment. The killer had bolted down the stairs, run out of the building as fast as he could. Not a professional hit. A professional would have stepped into the apartment to confirm the identity, removed the knife, cut John’s throat, and taken the murder weapon with him.

An amateur, who not only killed the wrong person but had run away so quickly he couldn’t even be sure that that person was dead. Maybe someone who had only one hour’s sleep in the last forty-eight. Maybe someone who was exhausted, had just driven back from Aspen and was told by his wife that I had to be gotten rid of.

So I had fucked it up with Amber.

I had said something. Given myself away.

But what, what had I said? Not the time. Think about it later.

“John,” I moaned, and found that I was weeping.

I went back into that terrible room.

His head was resting on the window ledge. He looked so uncomfortable I lifted him and put him on the bed. I was utterly drenched with blood now. His eyes, horrifically, had opened again.

I closed them a second time. Sat there. Stunned. Frozen. Minutes went by, perhaps hours.

“Poor Areea,” I said.

They had stabbed John at the door and he had crawled down the hall and Areea had screamed and we had heard her. She had held him and as he gasped for air, she had opened the window and then she’d heard me coming in.

She’d been frightened, thought it was the killer coming back. Hid.

It had all happened in a couple of minutes. Even if she hadn’t been panicked, frozen by fear, and managed to call 911 immediately they couldn’t have helped him. A puncture wound in the heart.

Where was she now? Downstairs, cowering in her apartment, showering, composing a story that she had been there all night.

What to do? I was dripping blood, making everything worse.

Pat.

I went to the bedroom, stared at John, sat down again. I kicked off my bloody shoes, grabbed a pair of sneakers and put them on. I carefully made my way across the bedroom and skirted the blood trail. I walked to Pat’s and knocked on his door.

He opened it. He took a look at me, staggered back into the apartment, dropped the remote control.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he said. “What the fuck happened?”

“They murdered John,” I said.

“Oh my God.”

“They killed him,” I said.

“Fuck. Who? Who murdered him? Are you ok?”

“I’m ok.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pat said.

“Areea was in there, she’s downstairs, hiding, I don’t think she saw anything,” I said automatically.

“Alex, who killed him?” Pat asked.

“Charles,” I said.

“Who’s that?”

“The guy I’m after,” I said.

“You better tell me everything,” Pat said, “but first we’ll go down and see if he’s really dead. You civilians don’t know shit.”

Pat followed me along the corridor. John was really dead.

“You should never have moved him,” Pat said. “The cops will book you for sure.”

“I didn’t do it, Pat,” I said.

“I know. Charles did. Whoever the fuck that is. Ok, ok, what are we going to do? Ok. First things first. Are we calling the cops? We’re not calling the cops, is that right?”

“I don’t know, Pat,” I said.

“They’ll book you, Sonny Jim, better tell me who Charles is, what you got on him.”

I took a breath and told Pat everything. Everything. From the very beginning. Me, the peelers, the ketch, Commander Douglas, Victoria Patawasti, Klimmer, the lacrosse team, Maggie Prestwick, Charles and Amber Mulholland. I was good at giving a précis, it only took five minutes.

“You’ve no proof of any kind?” Pat asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s my fault, Pat,” I said.

“It’s not your fault. It’s ok,” Pat said, trying to digest all the information I had thrown at him, trying to think. His face was alert now. He held himself upright.

“Jesus, Pat, it’s a nightmare,” I said.

“So you’re an ex-cop, huh. I knew you were something. And John’s dead and Areea’s terrified, right, ok. Ok, what do we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Ok, ok, this is what we do. You get up and go to my apartment, go straight to the shower, don’t touch anything, get in, take a shower, take your clothes off in the shower, leave them there. Shower and get the blood out and when you’re really clean, do it all again. Use a towel to dry off and leave it in the bath with the bloody clothes. When you’re done, pour yourself two fingers of gin. Ok? You did good not getting any blood down the corridor.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going downstairs to talk to Areea, she’s bound to be messed up. Talk to her, talk to her family. Tell them it was a burglar but if we want to keep the cops out of it, we gotta take care of this ourselves. They don’t want the cops as much as we don’t want the cops. They’ll get questioned, passed on to INS, deported. We gotta take care of this in-house. Tonight.”

“What do you mean, Pat?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about a thing, we’ll take care of this, no one else involved,” Pat reassured me, suddenly becoming stronger before my eyes, taking on something of the old DFD lead paramedic, someone with responsibility for other things than himself. But even so, I wasn’t convinced.

“I just assumed we’d call the cops,” I said.

“Alex, listen to me, they will arrest you, they’ll say you were jealous of John and Areea, you’re covered in his blood, you have motive, opportunity, I swear to you, there’s a very good chance you’ll go to prison.”

“If I tell them about the Mulhollands….”

“They won’t believe you…. Christ, Alex, you should know that, the cops want simplicity, there’s a simple explanation for everything. This isn’t a big fucking conspiracy, this is a simple case of homicide. You can get those knives anywhere.”

“I have an alibi, a witness.”

“Who, me? Come on. You were his roommate, he was fucking the girl you loved, you killed him with your own knife. At the very least, you’re going to jail. I suppose you don’t have fifty grand for bail?”

“No.”

“Alex, listen to me. You’re fucked.”

I nodded, too tired to debate it, too tired to see if it was the right thing to do or not. I went to Pat’s, stripped, soaped myself, showered. Sobbed up against the wall. Found one of Pat’s robes, put it on, went down the hall. Walked back into the apartment. No one there. The smell of blood, vile, pervasive.

I trudged downstairs. Knocked on the Ethiopians’ door.

It was open. I went in. Pandemonium. The whole family up. Pat talking to Mr. Uleyawa, the sons beside him, aghast, afraid, Simon translating what Pat was saying. Areea, wrapped in a blanket, curled on the sofa in the fetal position. Her hair soaked. She had showered or bathed. She’d been terrified but she wasn’t stupid, she’d gotten that blood off her.

A bucket sat beside her, she had been throwing up. Her mother and grandmother stroking her hair as she shivered and wept.

She gasped when she saw me.

“Areea,” I said.

“Get out of here, Alexander,” Pat said, “I’m taking care of things.”

I walked over to Areea. She backed into the cushions, afraid of me for a moment. The grandmother tried to stop me from touching her. I knelt by the sofa. I could smell blood on her still. Or maybe that was my imagination.

I touched her hair.

“It must have been terrible,” I said.

She sobbed. I let her cry for a minute. The conversation in the room ceased.

“Areea, I’m sorry about this, I’m very sorry.”

“Alex, don’t,” Pat said, cautioning me about saying anything.

Areea put her arms out and I leaned in and hugged her. No, not blood. She smelled of shampoo and skin, she had been scrubbed raw. We held each other for a minute. Her wet hair dripped down my back. Pat began speaking to Simon again in low tones, Simon translating it for his dad in singsong Ethiopian.

“Areea, listen to me, listen to me, did you see anything?” I said. “Did you see who did this?”

Areea shook her head.

“Tell me, tell me what happened.”

Her mother gave her something to drink from an opaque glass. She swallowed it. She looked at me and tried to smile a little.

“John and I were in your bed,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “What happened?”

“We were sleeping, we were falling asleep.”

“And then?”

“There was a knock at the door. John thought it was you, he said: ‘Silly bugger’s dropped his keys.’”

I smiled at her.

“And then what, Areea?” I asked gently.

She grabbed my hand and held it tight. So tight that it hurt.

“John got up, he left the bedroom, he closed the bedroom door. He walked down the hall, he did not come back. I did not hear anything, at first. I wondered what was keeping him. I thought he was talking to you. I waited for five minutes. The fan was on in the bedroom, so I could not hear him and then I did.”

She burst into tears.

Pat came over, touched me on the shoulder.

“Alexander, you’re doing yourself no good here, I’m trying to get this organized, you’re dripping wet, you should go back upstairs,” he said, calm, sensible.

“In a minute, Pat, in a minute,” I said.

Pat gave me a significant look. He didn’t want me to say anything. He had made a story for Simon and he didn’t want me to mess it all up.

“I’ll go back in a minute, Pat,” I said.

Pat walked back over to Simon and began talking to him again, urgently, explaining something, telling them what happened and what they were going to have to do.

“Areea, tell me,” I said.

“John was at the bedroom door, he had crawled all the way from the hall, he was bleeding. He could not speak. He could not say anything. He was bleeding. The knife. Oh my good God. Oh my good God.”

She cried again. I let her. She shook.

“I am sorry, Alexander, I was so frightened. I was too frightened to leave the bedroom. I helped John inside. I held him. I was too frightened. I know I should have called the ambulance. John was dying. I was so frightened.”

“It’s ok, Areea, they couldn’t have helped him, the doctors couldn’t have helped him. He had lost so much blood, there was nothing any of us could have done.”

“No, no, no, it was wrong, I should have got Patrick and used his phone, I was so frightened, I am so sorry, I am so sorry,” Areea said.

“No, it’s ok,” I said.

Areea began digging her nails into my hand and then abruptly she let go and began digging her nails into her own face. She began screaming. Her mother tried to stop her, she was writhing on the sofa. Her mother and grandmother held her down. Pat practically lifted me to my feet.

“Alexander, can’t you see you’re making things worse here? Go upstairs, Jesus, look at you, there’s still blood in your hair, I told you to have two showers. Go, now.”

Areea was sobbing and I wanted to hold her and tell her it was ok. My fault, not hers. My fault. My stupidity that had got John killed. My carelessness. It was nothing to do with her. Pat frog-marched me to the front door of the apartment.

“Listen to me, Alexander, I am a sick man, but if I have to drag you up five fucking flights I will, now get the fuck out of here,” he seethed at me, furious.

I went upstairs, took Pat’s advice, had another shower. The hot water was gone. It was cold. I relished the pain of the freezing water. Pat was nowhere to be seen. I put on a pair of his jeans and a T-shirt. They were too big for Pat now and too big for me. I walked out into the hall to see what was happening.

Pat, two of Areea’s brothers, and her dad, carrying John’s body, wrapped in sheets out of the apartment.

“Alex, get out of here,” Pat said.

“What are you doing, Pat?” I said, panicked, frightened, protective of poor John.

“Alex, leave this to us, fuck off,” Pat said.

“No, Pat, what are you doing? The police,” I said weakly.

“Hold on, boys,” Pat said. He took me by the arm and led me back to his place.

“Listen, Alex,” Pat whispered, “I told them John had been murdered by a burglar, ok? Crackhead, looking for dough, ok? I told them Areea would have to tell the police what she knew, that she would get arrested, that they all would get arrested, deported. That they have to help if they don’t want to go back to fucking Ethiopia.”

“What the hell are you doing, Pat? What are you doing with John?”

“We’re going to take John to the big trash Dumpster from that building renovation on Fourteenth. Throw him in, cover him up with garbage bags, timbers. They empty that thing every Friday, take it right out there to the landfill in Aurora. With any luck, he’ll never be found.”

“Fucking hell, Pat, there must be some other way.”

“No other way, Alex. We can’t get the cops. You’ll be questioned, arrested, I promise you, I know the system. Areea will be questioned, arrested, they’ll deport her and her family, you’ll get done for homicide, I’ll get fucking evicted. It’s the only way.”

“I don’t know, Pat,” I said.

“Did you drink that gin?”

“No.”

“Go do it now, go do it.”

I found the Bombay Sapphire bottle, poured myself a half a glass of gin. Pat left. I poured myself another glass, resisted the temptation to let ketch take over and sort this one out by itself.

When I stepped outside the apartment, the Ethiopians and Pat had John in the corridor and were maneuvering him down the stairs. He was wrapped like a mummy, in five or six sheets and blankets. No blood was soaking through, which wasn’t surprising considering how much he’d bled in the apartment.

“John, oh God, I’m so sorry,” I found myself saying.

“Alex, if you’re going to help, you got to pull yourself together,” Pat said.

I walked down the hall. Of the Ethiopians only Simon spoke good English. The father said something to me and Simon translated.

“A bad business,” he said, as if discussing a fall in the stock market or a war in a far-off country.

“Yes.”

“Just like with O. J. Simpson’s wife,” he said.

I glared at him. Clenched a fist. Pat put his hand on my shoulder.

The two big Ethiopian boys looked at me with expressionless faces. Maybe they thought I had killed him, or Areea had killed him in an argument. Anything…

“Alex, if you want to help, take the front, my place, and I’ll direct traffic,” Pat said.

I took Pat’s place at the front of the body. John was well wrapped in blankets, but I could feel his legs.

We walked him down the five flights. There were four of us. Surprisingly easy. Too easy, it should have hurt more. We paused in the lobby.

“I’ll check the street,” Pat said. He went out onto Colfax.

“We have to hug the shadows and get quickly around the back of the building. We’ll be exposed in the street for about thirty seconds,” Pat said.

I had no idea of the time but one thing was for sure, there wouldn’t be many random cop cars going by. Cops seldom came around here, almost never at night. Still, a taxi or bus driver might alert the authorities.

“It’s all clear,” Pat said.

We carried John outside and walked with him around the building to what Pat had called a Dumpster. We froze as a car drove past on Colfax, but it didn’t stop. Simon muttered something to his brother. I hoped they weren’t going to leg it, leave us with the body.

We heaved John into the skip and Pat told Simon to lift his brother in there so he could cover the body with debris. Matthew, the older boy, climbed up the side of the skip and lowered himself in, and spent a few minutes covering John with garbage bags, bits of wood and debris from the building. We stood there, looking foolish, feeling guilty. Matthew climbed out and gave us the thumbs-up.

We walked back to the apartment building.

“I have to see Areea,” I said.

“In the morning,” Pat said.

“I have to speak to her tonight,” I insisted. “It must have been terrible, I want to speak to her. While it’s fresh.”

“In the morning,” Pat said again.

Pat was a mess. Unemployed and unloved and abandoned by his friends and dying of AIDS, but at this moment his head was clearer and he was made of sterner stuff than me. I bowed to his common sense.

“Of course,” I said.

All of us walked up the five flights. The Ethiopians went into my apartment.

“I’ve told Mr. Uleyawa that they’re going to spend as long as it takes cleaning up the blood, not that you’ll be staying there anymore, not that anyone will be staying there anymore. But just to be on the safe side,” Pat said.

“Why won’t I be staying there?” I asked.

“They know where you live, asshole. You’ll be staying with me tonight, out first thing in the morning,” Pat said. “I have a place in Fort Morgan, it’s a one-room, it’s full of my old shit, but you’ll be safer there. Get you on the first bus.”

“Gotta thank the Ethiopians,” I said.

“No, don’t say too much, they think we’re doing it for Areea, we’re covering up for her, for all of them, don’t disavow them of that notion, we don’t want them talking. Ok?”

We went to Pat’s. He poured me a large whisky but I didn’t drink it.

“She told him, Pat,” I said. “She told him, Pat, she didn’t have any qualms, I mistook her, I didn’t see it, Jesus, she must have told him, too much of a coincidence. I don’t know what I said. I said something, I fucked up, I killed him.”

Pat put his fingers on my lips, showed me to his bed. I was too exhausted to protest. I boiled some ketch, injected it, crawled into his bed, and stared out the window at the sky over the park, stared all night until the black slowly evaporated and the stars went out and the ugly gray dawn stretched its tentacles across the sky….

The bus to Fort Morgan left at ten. It was nine-thirty, but I had to see Areea before I left. Pat was opposed.

“No time,” he said, helping me on with my rucksack.

Downstairs. A knock. Her mother led her out. She’d been crying all night. She looked terrible. Where the blood had been, her hands and arms scrubbed raw.

“Areea, listen to me, I need you to understand that it wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done, you understand that, don’t you?” I said.

Areea didn’t say anything. She stared at me. She opened her mouth but then closed it; her expression spoke volumes. She, for one, did not believe Pat’s story about a burglar. In the night she had absolved herself of blame. She had placed it where it belonged. On my shoulders. Areea’s cold intelligence had seen through everything, cut to the quick of things. She looked at me for a hard minute. Her eyes burned. I let her go. Backed away. Closed the door. So there I was, indicted. Given a responsibility I wasn’t sure I would be able to fulfill.

In any case, I had to leave.

The bus station. A scout around for cops. None.

The bus.

Denver slipping behind me, with all the farce and horror and catastrophe; desiccated sunflowers on the plain, drying prairie, the South Platte River. I slept.

“Fort Morgan, Colorado,” the driver said.

I got out.

The I-76, the river, a sugar factory, and unemployment were the salient features of Fort Morgan. Too far to commute to Denver, too close to the city for a thriving motel strip or highway spill-off trade. It had nothing much going for it. No mountains, no scenic beauty. Drugstores, diners, a couple of bars, depressed-looking, prematurely aged farmer types.

Pat’s apartment was in an old redbrick building next to a large graveyard that ran beside the highway and the river beyond. One room. A dirty window, a working phone, a sink, a hotplate, a mattress on the floor, and everywhere a whole shitload of gear Pat had stolen from the Denver Fire Department. The guy had lifted everything: a uniform, a first-aid kit, two fire extinguishers, six pairs of fire-retardant gloves, a respirator, smoke bombs, burn cream, boots, and the pièce de résistance: a Kevlar vest that the firefighters wore when putting out fires in riot areas. Some handy stuff there for the motivated individual.

I stewed in the cramped Fort Morgan apartment for a week. One hundred degrees every day and a dry mistral from off the endless plain, dust from Mexico when the wind blew from the south and from Canada when it switched to the north.

I bought chili and dumped it in a pot. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I was waiting. I was letting time slip by. I knew I wasn’t going back to Ireland now. I mean, it could have been easy. I could have disappeared and never have had to deal with him or her again. I didn’t know why they wanted me dead, I had no proof of anything, I wasn’t going to the police with that thin tissue of suspicion and innuendo that would have gotten me laughed out of any precinct house. What was going on in his head? Did Charles think I knew more than I did? But if so, he must have known I wouldn’t have fucked around, I would have gone straight to the peelers. I had nothing. Why bother to kill me? It made no sense. But then it’s hard to know what goes on in the brain of a psychopath. Regardless, I could have vanished, I’m sure he thought that I was dead, he had stabbed me in the fucking heart. No report in the paper, but that didn’t mean anything. Jesus, I could be lying there still. Anyway, I was dead. And I could have stayed dead and they would never have thought of me again.

Pat had three books in his apartment: The Man in the High Castle, Respiratory Injury: Smoke Inhalation and Burns, and the I Ching. I read the former two and rolled the latter and the forty-second hexagram had nine in the last place. Misfortune: Do Not Act.

But it nagged at me.

What had I said to Amber that had finally blown the gaff? What had I done? And what about the lack of proof? If I knew anything, what game did they think I was playing? Did they think I wanted to blackmail them? Was that why I’d said nothing, I was biding my time, positioning myself to be the new Alan Houghton?

I used the phone. I had Pat now as a confidant. Pat took more interest in the case than John ever had. He was sharper, too. Pat had heard of the Mulhollands. He was fascinated by the whole business, especially the murder of Margaret Prestwick.

He reckoned that Charles had just panicked. Amber tells him I know about Victoria, I’m not who I say I am. He realizes I’m after them, panics. Whether I have enough evidence to go to the police is irrelevant. The congressman’s resignation announcement coming up. The water cannot be muddied. I must be stopped….

Gothic, but probably true.

Whatever the reason, Charles had read me completely wrong. That’s not how I would have done things. I would have kept my mouth shut. I would have built my case slowly and steadily and then when I really had something, some actual, honest-to-God proof, I would have given it to the peels, gratis, let them handle it. He had read me wrong and Pat was probably right. Charles had freaked. Decided he had to finish it that night. Exhausted, nervous, resolved.

Colfax. That goddamn broken lobby door. Five flights. John with a knife in the heart. Charles, you fool, if only you could have taken a day’s rest. Slept on it. You would have seen sense. No reason to kill me. John didn’t have to die in my place. I had nothing. If I had, you’d have been in goddamn handcuffs. You and the wicked queen, too.

A week. A long week. I was running out of ketch. You couldn’t get smack in this cow town. And at the end of it, I had thought enough. I was resolved.

I told Pat what I was going to do.

And once again, he was the voice of reason. And as I plotted and as I planned every day, he told me to forget it and to let it go.

But I couldn’t, not now. It all had led to this. I had to see him in person, that was the only way. I had to. Why? What would I do when we met? Kill him? I didn’t know. But I had to bring things to a head. I had to see the fucker. Had to. A compulsion. A madness.

Pat raged, fumed.

He told me to take the weekend to think it over before I did something so dumb. And Pat was a wise person and I would be a fool to ignore his advice and I did think it over, but I knew I was going to do it.

I told him.

Again Pat begged me to reconsider, but he knew it was too late and once he’d heard my plan, he resigned himself and decided that he should help, so at the very least I wouldn’t get topped as easily as John.

“Sit tight,” Pat said, “I’ll be on the next bus up.”

I met Pat off the bus. The ride had been rough on him, he was pale, sick. I cooked him Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. He ate some of it. Opened his overnight bag. Removed a bottle of gin and a.45 automatic Colt pistol.

“This is for you,” he said, giving me the gun. “It was my dad’s. Army issue. He was a lieutenant in World War Two. I’ve checked it, I shot it at the range. Works good. Anything closer than fifty feet. Blow their fucking head off.”

“Thanks,” I said. I felt better about it, I had a gun and a Kevlar jacket. I’d be safe. We went onto Pat’s narrow fire escape, looked at the graveyard and the river, and talked.

“What makes you think he’ll come alone?” Pat asked, pouring gin into a coffee mug.

“Oh, he has to. This whole thing has been about blackmail. He can’t involve anyone else. He’ll come alone, it wouldn’t make sense for him to bring in other people now,” I said with confidence.

“Take the gun, and wear that Kevlar vest, he’ll try to kill you,” Pat said.

“I know,” I said.

A bright hot plains — Colorado afternoon. Blue sky. We walked together to the pay phone outside Walgreen’s. Pat accompanying me at a snail’s pace, but insisting on going in a last ditch effort to dissuade me. I dialed the number. I got through to the Mulhollands’ answer phone. Read from my piece of paper:

“I want to meet. This is a one-time-only offer. You didn’t kill me. I am not dead. You fucked up. You know who this is. I want to meet on my turf. Alone. Tomorrow night, midnight, the cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado, the shelter in the center of the graveyard. Alone.”

I hung up the phone.

The next day. A thunderstorm came in about ten o’clock. Thunder and sheet lightning that shook the whole building. It began to hail, golf-ball size.

“Nasty,” I said, looking out the window, just for something to say.

“Yup,” Pat said. “On the radio they said it would be freezing rain and hail. Whoever heard of such a thing in July? It’s El Niño, that’s what it is. Won’t do any good, though, we need six months of sweet Jesus rain, need it bad.”

“I know,” I said.

“But look at that. Can’t see for shit out that window. I won’t be able to check the cemetery. Dumb-ass plan. I knew it. I bloody told you. You’ll be on your own,” Pat said grimly.

“I’ll be ok.”

Pat muttered and made some coffee. We watched the clock. Midnight crept around.

“Well, I better go,” I said.

“Can I just say one thing?” Pat asked.

“Aye.”

“This won’t solve anything,” Pat said, his melancholy eyes teary, sad.

“Pat, I’m going to get this fucker, he killed my best friend, I have to do this, I have to bring things to a head.”

“You don’t have to do anything, Alex,” Pat pleaded.

“I do,” I said.

“Why not just go home,” Pat said.

“No.”

“What do you possibly think you can get from this?”

I thought for a moment. What did I want? I wanted to confront him, I wanted to yell at him, I wanted him to confess, I wanted him to go to the police, to turn himself in, I wanted to see his face, I wanted closure, I wanted him dead. I wanted a million things.

I put on a sweater, a coat, the Kevlar vest, and a wool hat to keep out the rain.

“Are you sure he’ll be alone?” Pat asked.

“He has to come alone. This is all about blackmail. They can’t involve anyone else. You’ll see,” I reassured him.

“Be careful,” Pat said.

“I will.”

I left the apartment, walked downstairs. I crossed the street to the main graveyard entrance. Went in. My plan was to skirt the tree-lined stone cemetery wall on the river side. It rose to a dense woody embankment overlooking the graves and from there I could see everything, yet because of the trees I couldn’t be seen. Charles wouldn’t know that. He wouldn’t know Fort Morgan. He’d show up, go to the shelter in the center of the graveyard, wait for me, but I’d already be there watching him.

I inched along the wall. The hail had become freezing rain. Pitch black. I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me. I stopped in the trees fifty feet behind the shelter.

Midnight. A few minutes after.

A figure in a white coat. Too small to be Charles. Who? Amber? He sent you to do the dirty work? He sent you to clean up his mess?

I watched her. I waited. She came closer.

Amber. Is that really you? I kept behind the trees. Had to be her. I smiled. I moved nearer, still hidden by the undergrowth. I slithered down the embankment until I was only twenty feet away, cloaked by the trees and the night.

“Amber,” I said.

She didn’t hear. She leaned on a hooped pillar, provided for people to tie up their horses.

I said it louder: “Amber.”

She spun around, looking at the graves, and then she peered into the thickets of dense wood, staring right at me, not seeing me. The hood on her coat up, but definitely Amber. No one else had that poise. That deep embodiment of sex. One of the main weapons in her arsenal. And as I stood there looking at her, thinking of that, gazing at her, it came to me and I knew what the mistake had been. What a naive boy I was. From Ireland. From the sticks.

“Amber.”

“Alex?” she said. It was her.

“Amber, I know now what I did wrong,” I said.

“Come out, come down here and talk to me like a civilized person,” she said with self-assurance.

“It was that remark, that joke. Wasn’t it?”

No reply.

“That Kama Sutra twenty-one joke. Goddamnit. You froze up after that. And you told Charles. And he came to kill me.”

“Come out of there and talk to me face-to-face,” she said. Cool, icy. I liked that.

“Kama Sutra twenty-one. Victoria said that to me once. Victoria Patawasti. She said that as a joke to make me laugh. To relax me. A joke against herself. You know, because she’s Indian. But she said it to you, too, didn’t she? You slept with her, didn’t you? You fucked her to get her to tell you her password. Or if not to tell you, to give you information to work it out? I’m right, tell me I’m right, Amber.”

“Come over here and I’ll talk to you, I can barely hear you,” she said, quiet and calm. Of course she wasn’t going to confirm or deny anything in case I had a tape recorder. I knew that.

“‘Carrickfergus,’ you kept saying. Was that it? Does that ring a bell? Was that her password? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares. It doesn’t matter. You got it somehow. Seduced her, got her to trust you. You were Charles’s whore. And it was more than just the password, he wanted to know if she could be bought.”

“You must be drunk or something, Alexander, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I want to help you, I think you might be mentally unbalanced, you’re talking nonsense, come down here, come out of there, I can help you,” she said.

I barely contained my anger.

“No, you stand there and fucking listen to me,” I said.

“But I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m really sorry, Alexander, you’re out of your mind,” she said softly, patronizingly, like a social worker or a nuthouse nurse.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Alan Houghton, the first obstacle. Victoria Patawasti, the second. And you seduced her and she wasn’t sure, but you’re so goddamn beautiful. You fucked her. Probably with that strap-on dildo you used to have.”

“That’s disgusting, you must be drunk or on drugs or something. Please, Alex, believe me, I have no idea what you’re saying,” she said.

“Liar. You fucked her. Charles told you to do it. Maybe it was her first time with a woman, she was nervous, so she made that joke. That same fucking joke. Her on top, you below. ‘That’s position twenty-one of the Kama Sutra,’ she said. And stupid me. You remembered it when I said it.”

“Oh, my God. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re quite delusional,” she said, calm and lovely and irritating.

“When I did that Kama Sutra joke, you knew I’d slept with her too, that I knew Victoria Patawasti, that I’d slept with her and that I’d come to avenge her, to seek you out.”

She didn’t speak, she didn’t budge, she stared at me, silent, unmoving. Infuriating.

“Tell me I’m wrong, you bitch, you bloody bitch,” I screamed at her.

But she said nothing. Shook her head sadly. Smiled. It was the final straw.

I climbed out of the thicket. I walked down the embankment toward her. I took out the.45, chambered a round. She dropped something, a signal. Hit the deck, put her hands over her head, a glint of her white teeth grinning in the dark and rain.

The shooting started and I was hit immediately in the chest and shoulder.

I tumbled to the bottom of the embankment. Gasping. Blood over my hands. Bullets flew out of the dark, thumping into a tree a half meter to my left. Others flew by from a different angle, big and churning like machine-gun rounds. The rain poured down. It hurt to the touch. My hat gone. Amber gone. Dazed. I looked for a way out but the air was as thick as coal.

I stood again. Easy target. Petrified. I dived for cover. I got behind a gravestone. Caught my breath. A scream of objects came whistling by out of the trees. An arc of fire. A shotgun. Jesus. So that’s shooter number three: a guy above me blocking off the exit.

They had planned it out. Trumped me, checkmated me. They had anticipated that I would come early, that I would be in the trees above the shelter and along the wall. They had seen all this and had placed two assassins in the shelter next to Amber and one in the trees behind me so I could not escape. The men below had me from different angles and the man up at the wall could shoot down on me from a flanking and elevated position.

I had lost all the advantages that I had come here with: surprise, tactical superiority, the high ground.

Automatic weapons. M16s. Coils of tracer in the black sky. A hungry pack of bullets seeking me out. The cemetery far from streetlights, and Fort Morgan cloaked in low clouds. Thunder. Rain. No stars. No cars. No help.

They found me. An object smashed into me and I went down again. My eyes saw white. I bit through my tongue. I rolled to the side. I’d taken another hit. Above my left knee this time. I reached down and my hand came back with blood. Shotgun pellet. I couldn’t tell if my patella was smashed. A lot of blood. I yelled and burst into tears. Scrambled away. Pathetic. I had failed. For Victoria, for me. For everyone. I, who was so goddamn smart. Jesus. My eyes closed. She was cleverer than me. I could see that now. I had been bested. Arrogance. Hubris. I blinked. Crawled behind a big tomb bedecked by angels. The men were moving too. Getting a better position. I had to move. I slithered toward the embankment, under monuments, gravestones and Celtic crosses. A sign told me that I was in section K, block 1, wherever that was.

My head was light. I couldn’t breathe. A tunnel collapsed my vision into a single fatal exit and the downpour took on a dreadful cadence. Funereal and mocking.

I should have listened to Pat.

No, it went further than that. I had fucked this up from the start. From the very day I landed in America. And now I was going to die.

At least it would be my just desserts. The punishment for such incompetence should be death. I took another breath.

“Lost him,” one man yelled.

“No, over there somewhere,” another replied.

“I’ll go around,” said the first.

Trapped, but I would try for it. The least I could do. I got up, I staggered on. Impossible. Shambling. Ahead of me somewhere in the pitch black were steps that led to the back entrance to the cemetery, the closed gate, the wire fence. Twenty or thirty wide-spaced cuts into the side of the hill, filled with pounded stone, leveled. I could have run them in thirty seconds on a good day. Now, at night, in the middle of a storm, with a shoulder wound, a leg wound, and with at least three gunmen less than the length of a basketball court away and zeroing in on me, it would be a bloody epic. Three men, one armed with a shotgun and the others using bloody automatic rifles.

I made it up about three steps, slipped on the dirt, fell. Tumbled down the hill, slewing in the mud. My head hit the side of a cast-iron litter bin. Sickening pain, a big cut above my ear. The shotgun tore up the air to my left.

“There he is,” someone yelled.

I slithered behind a stand of trees. I couldn’t see them but somehow they could see me. Maybe they had night scopes. Or, more likely, maybe they just knew there was nowhere else I could be. I gasped for air, panicked, waited for the big hit.

The rain a knife blade. My scalp on fire. My knee screamed, my chest gurgled, the wind blew down. I threw up in my mouth. Junk sick.

I saw a storage shed for lawnmowers. I crawled behind it. Safe for a few seconds. I took a deep breath. Calmed myself. Options. I wasn’t dead yet. I had the dark. I had a gun of my own. And the rain so thick it was nearly impossible to see. The boys would have to come close to administer the coup de grâce.

I did a quick triage. I’d been hit in the chest, but the vest had protected me.

The shoulder wound was a ricochet off the Kevlar. I felt around, it wasn’t serious. I was bleeding, but no major blood vessel had been punctured and it hurt like hell — a good sign. The shotgun pellet in the leg wouldn’t kill me. I put my finger through my soaked jeans to the skin. A lot of blood, but I could wiggle my toes. My tendons and nerves were ok. All that shooting and I’d really only been fucking grazed.

More shots, yells of organization: “Where’d he go? Where’s that fucking light? Who had the light?”

Only male voices. Amber, of course, was well out of this. Back at the car. Gone. Already left town. I took out the.45. Blacked out for a second. Where was I? I was in the middle of a graveyard. Shooters above and to the side of me. Three points of a triangle and I was at the center. They were good. Pat had been right. I was an idiot, an amateur dealing with professionals. It made no sense, Amber, why would you hire three more potential blackmailers? Goddamnit, it made no sense. Forget it. Had to get out. If I could make it to the fence on the far left of the cemetery. About fifty yards. Could I walk it? I’d have to crawl. Ok. Ignore the pain. Let’s go.

Caked with filth, I slithered my way over graves, cleaning the vomit out of my nostrils, sliding carefully along the ground.

Suddenly someone shouted triumphantly: “There he is.”

They turned a dazzling portable spotlight on me. One of those with thousands of candlepower.

And I knew if I didn’t move I was a dead man.

An M16 threw fire at me from the trees. I struggled to my feet and ran for the fence, ignoring the pain from the pellet above my knee. The rain made it difficult to see, to get purchase on the ground. I slipped and fell between the pillars of a massive tomb. Bullets smashed into the marble, sending chips everywhere. I ran for the fence, dodging between graves, taking cover between granite tombstones. Shots and fire overhead. A man in front of me. I was heading straight for him. His back to me, a big dark shape in the night and rain.

An automatic rifle churned up the mud ahead of me, smacking into granite, tracer bouncing everywhere, like fireworks.

“Frank, stop shooting, you’re going to hit fucking Manny, Frank, cut it out,” a voice yelled.

I ran toward the man.

“Jesus, Frank, didn’t you fucking hear me? Stop shooting.”

The M16 abruptly stopped.

“Manny, Manny, he’s over there, he’s right there.”

The voice was yelling desperately, behind me and over to my left. The big light came full on me again.

“There he is, Manny, turn around.” Another voice.

“Where?”

“Manny, he’s right there, at that big cross behind you.”

Manny, in front of me, turned at last when we were fifteen feet apart. White guy with a beard and a flat cap. Soaked through. Probably waiting here for hours. He began raising his shotgun. He hadn’t kept it leveled because he hadn’t wanted water to get into the barrels.

That’s what killed him.

I straightened my weapon, pulled the trigger. Pat’s big Colt banged. Flame from the heavy barrel. I’d cleaned it, but this weapon hadn’t been fired in combat since the Battle of the Ardennes. I screamed, charged him. Ran into the dark, shooting. Half a clip. Like an insane man. Blinding flashes from the.45. When my eyes cleared, no sign of Manny, he was down.

Yellow fire all around me from the M16s. The Fourth of July and Guy Fawkes night and a riot drill and every other nightmare rolled into one.

I could see gravity in the parabola of the tracer. The bullets smacking into the wire fence around the cemetery. Ringing off the concrete walls, bouncing a thousand feet into the air.

I ran like a shit-kicker now. I sprinted to the cemetery fence. I needed both hands, so I dropped the.45. I climbed over the five-foot wire mesh, fell to the ground, scrambled across the car park on the other side.

More tracer, more bullets. M16s in the middle of the town. But this was Fort Morgan after midnight, during a thunderstorm. Empty.

I kept running. The car park was well lit up. They found me easily in the lights and shot at me but the shots were wild, they rang and screamed off the railings, and the shooters didn’t focus them properly. They were excited, not taking their time.

I saw a Volkswagen camper van parked on an overlook near the river.

I yelled. “Help, is there anyone there? Help.”

I ran to the van and banged on the window. Bullets slammed into the side of the vehicle, puncturing tires and windows. Glass and metal shards smacking into me. A bullet careened off the Kevlar vest, knocking me to my knees.

“Fucker,” one of the men screamed behind me.

I got up and turned to see two men climbing over the cemetery fence. They had shoulder-strapped their rifles. Bearing down. Big men. White guys. Heavy, but tough. Where had they come from? All the trouble they took to silence a simple blackmailer in Denver, and Charles somehow hires three professional killers to shoot me?

I ran past the sugar factory, the Walgreen’s, a video store. The shops all closed. The street deserted.

“Come back, you fucker,” they yelled, shooting pistols now.

A bullet clanged into a stop sign. I ran on, wounded, slowing as they gained.

Only one thing for it now.

Only one way out. The river. I cut across the deserted I-76.

I sprinted to the end of a lane and vaulted over the safety railing that led to the embankment over the South Platte. I stole a final look back. They were still shooting at me as they ran.

I took a breath, jumped.

A moment in the river-cooled air.

I landed in the water.

Sank like a fucking stone….

Coldness.

Smothering, death-bringing cold. Annihilating, electrocuting cold. The air crushed from my lungs.

My body writhes. Shots in my wake. I gasp for breath. I swallow greasy, frigid water and sink and am rocketed downstream. I fall through the poisons and heavy chemicals toward the choked sandy bottom, clutching, screaming, down-down-down.

I touch bottom, I’m dragged along rocks.

My blood freezing, my eyes open.

So this is how it ends.

In this river. With these gray claws and ash tide. The Platte with its hard line and dead current. This river. Like the gun, to the Mississippi, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic. This river. To its black, tenebrous heart. And I go to you and I see you in the dark. I see your traces along the trail that you have beaten to the Great Perhaps. And are you there, Victoria, and are you there, Mum? It’s cold, it hurts. And I smile. This river. This time.

But no.

Not yet.

That will come.

But not yet.

My fingers find the Velcro straps of the Kevlar vest. I pull them, the straps loosen, the Velcro rips, the vest falls off me and I tumble upward to the surface. I suck a desperate breath, float for a minute in the fast-moving water, before smacking into a rock on a sandbank. I lie there for half an hour.

Wade across the shallows to the bank.

Walk.

Shivering, oblivious to the rain, shoulder wound, leg wound. Two miles back to Fort Morgan. Empty streets, neon signs, and not another human soul.

Adrenaline fighting against blood loss and exhaustion.

Three floors to Pat’s apartment. The door.

“Help me,” I manage and Pat turns, horrified, toward me.

And I fall at his feet and slip into that other realm where things made sense and the guilty suffered and equity lived and we all were saved.