Hidden River (Five Star Paperback)

by Adrian McKinty

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

  “Oh, a Marple, of course,” she says.

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

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

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

  “You doing the whole street?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “How much they give next door?”

  “They weren’t home.”

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

  “Really?”

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

  “Is that a fact?”

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

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

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

  “Who?”

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

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

  I smile at the woman.

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

  “What is it you want?” she asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She nods glumly.

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

  She shakes her head.

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

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

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

  Amber knocks on the screen door.

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

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

  “Dude, where’s the pizza?” he asks.

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

  The kid looks at her and shakes his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What was going on there?” she asks.

  “The kids were stoned,” I tell her.

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

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

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

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

  Amber is furious.

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

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

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

  “So where do you come from?” I ask.

  “Knoxville,” she says after a pause.

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

  “It’s in Tennessee,” she says.

  “Cool,” I say, “it’s a cool place.”

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

  “A lot,” I say.

  “Like?”

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

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

  “Did you go to Graceland?”

  “Yeah, we did, it was so boring.”

  “Did you see the toilet?”

  “What toilet?”

  “Where Elvis died.”

  “Elvis died on the toilet
?” she asks.

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

  “Well, I didn’t,” she says, laughing.

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

  “I thought you were Irish,” she says.

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

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

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

  “What about Dollywood?” I say.

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

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

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

  “It is.”

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

  “Yeah?” he asks.

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

  “That a fact?”

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

  “Trees?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “This is getting us nowhere,” I protest.

  “I know,” she says.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why not?”

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

  “Not really.”

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

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

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

  “No, never heard of it,” I tell her.

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

  “Yeah, worked out great,” I say.

  She looks at me. Laughs.

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

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

  “So Tennessee,” I say.

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

  “What happened to your accent?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yeah?” I say, gently mocking her.

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

  “You met Charles at Harvard?”

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

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

  “You’re quick,” she says.

  “No, not at all,” I say.

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

  “He was a professor?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “So I believe,” I say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No.”

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

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

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

  “So what, did they steal their stuff?”

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

  “Yeah.”

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

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

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