Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“I know.”

“You’ve been, but I haven’t. I always wanted to come. Did you see the bikes? On the ride in I saw two Harleys and an Indian. An Indian, can you believe it? And the cars, the cars are bloody huge. It’s just like Starsky and Hutch or—”

“John, listen, I need to score some ketch.”

John shakes his head.

“No. No, no, no. Come on, Alexander, couldn’t you use this as an opportunity to go cold turkey?” John asks. An excellent question.

I stare at him.

“No,” I say.

“Alex, if you—” but then he stops and sees the state I’m in. Shaking, pale, trying to keep down my meager stomach contents.

“Alex, ok, look. I can’t convince you?” he says.

“No.”

“Ok, if you really insist on going, go. Look, and score me some pot as well, ok?”

“Maybe. John, you’re what they call an enabler.”

“Sure. Just don’t get arrested”

“If I do, I’ll tell them you put me up to it.”

Heat. Sun. I walked down Broadway. Wide streets, flat pavements, ramps on the sidewalk. I found Colfax again. A lot of pedestrian traffic. Roasting, too, my beard itched. The Capitol Building. A statue of a Civil War soldier. The Ten Commandments.

Homeless people, desperate people, alcoholics on the sidewalk.

Ah, a scumball bar.

The bar, dark, smoky. Sun like laser light through cracks in the paint of the blacked-out windows. Very American. Budweiser signs, Coors signs, a pool table, strange things on tap. People on their own staring at shot glasses, hugging their beer. No women. Is this the right place?

Barkeep. Black guy, forty-five, bald, big strong hands that looked like they could wring your neck.

“A beer please,” I said.

“You got ID?”

“What?”

“ID.”

“What for?”

“Are you from out of town?”

“Yes.”

“You have to be twenty-one to drink here.”

“I’m twenty-four. Must people think I look older,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit, you got ID?”

“Uh, wait, yeah, I got my passport.”

“That’ll do, let me see it.”

I showed him my passport, he looked it over, I don’t how he read it, so dark in there.

“You from England?”

“Yeah.”

“Tourist?”

“Yeah.”

“Been to Denver before?”

“No.”

“You’re too late to ski,” he said, his face contorting into a disconcerting chuckle.

“I don’t ski.”

“What type of beer you want?”

“I don’t care.”

“Coors ok?”

“Yeah.”

The barman pulled me a Coors and set it down.

“Three dollars,” he said.

I gave him a five and as I’d seen in the movie, I left a dollar of the change back on the bar.

“Tourist, huh. I was born here. Native, very rare. You know what the first permanent building in Denver was?”

“No.”

“A bar,” he said with satisfaction.

“Really?”

“Yup, you know what the second was?”

“No.”

“A brothel.”

“Fascinating.”

“You know that TV show Dynasty ?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Denver.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

I finished the beer and bought another. I was getting increasingly anxious. It’s not that I needed a hit, I told myself. I just wanted one. The bar began to fill. A few more desperate types but also a party of college students. Four guys, two girls. Maybe they would know. The guys all had buzz cuts and were well muscled, they actually all looked like undercover cops, so maybe it wouldn’t be too clever asking them. It would have to be the barman. I cleared my throat.

“So,” I said, “I hear there’s a big drug problem around here.”

“You heard that?” His face frozen, revealing nothing.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“You know, pot, smack, that sort of thing.”

“Is that a fact?” he said, giving me a quizzical look.

“It’s what I heard.”

He wiped the bar and served a customer at the far end. Obviously thinking something over. Clearly, I was from out of town, he had seen my passport, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t a sting operation. Suspicious, but not a sting.

“Bar tab’s twenty bucks,” he said, coming back to me.

I owed him nothing, I had paid and tipped for each drink. I took a twenty from my wallet and put it on the bar. He lifted it and put it in his pocket.

“I heard,” he began slowly, “I heard that the biggest problem with product was behind the Salvation Army shelter on Colfax and Grant. That’s what I heard. I heard, you should say Hacky sent you.”

“Hacky sent me?”

“Hacky.”

I left the beer, grabbed my baseball hat, practically ran out into the dusk. I went east. Night was falling fast and there were many more prostitutes out on Colfax, skinny black and Latino girls who looked as if they were about fifteen. Most of them on something. Crack, presumably. They were wired, nervous, looked for vehicle trade. Pimps on the corner, big guys, little guys, enforcers, all of them obvious, unconcerned about peelers or being seen. I found the Salvation Army hostel and walked around the back. Garbage, a small fire. A dozen men drinking from brown paper bags. Older guys, mostly white.

First character I saw, old for his years, pale, thin, drinking vodka. Rotted gums and teeth, horrible smell.

“Listen, I need to score, Hacky sent me,” I said.

The man looked at me.

“You want the kid. Are you a cop?” he asked.

“No.”

“Better not be a cop.”

I shook my head, what would he do about it anyway? Breathe on me?

“Hey, kid,” he yelled, “guy wants to book you.”

The kid came from out of the shadows. He really was a child. Maybe sixteen years old. Spanish, obviously, well dressed in jeans and a black cowboy shirt. Walking slow, smoking a cigarette. Was he the dealer? If so, why was he hanging out with a bunch of indigent white guys three times his age?

He came over.

“You’re no cop. I know all the cops.”

“I know. Hacky sent me.”

“Hacky sent you?”

“Yeah.”

“What you want?” he asked, suspicion flitting around his eyes.

“Ketch, I mean, horse, smack, heroin.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know, a few grams, seven good hits.”

“What you talking about? Where you from?”

“Ireland.”

“Where’s that at?”

“England.”

“See your money,” he said, the light gleaming on his smooth baby-face cheeks.

I opened up my wallet, he looked at me. His face had a scar under the chin. I stroked my beard nervously. He took out five twenty-dollar bills, put them in his pocket, said nothing, walked off to a door, went inside. I waited for about ten minutes. Had they stroked me? Was I ripped off? It would be the easiest scam in the world. Who would I complain to? I didn’t care about the money. I wanted the goddamn heroin. Let them rip me off, just give me the bloody ketch.

The sun disappeared behind the mountains and I stood there watching the oblique light illuminate the vapor trails of airplanes flying west.

Venus came out. The sky turned a deep blue.

From the Colfax side of the alley a homeless man shambled over to me with a brown paper bag.

“This is for you,” he said.

I opened the bag, inside was a plastic bag containing a white powder. Easy to get bait and switch in a situation like this, so I opened the bag, tasted the heroin. Milky, acidic, the real McCoy.

“Where’s this from?” I asked the homeless man.

“I don’t know,” he answered. I wanted to know where the heroin had originated — Burma, Afghanistan, South America. I wanted to know its purity, but the man was drunk, he knew nothing, just the fall guy on the outside chance that I was a peeler. I put it in my pocket and jogged back to the hotel. Night. Almost no pedestrians. I took a shortcut through the grounds of the state capitol, no one paying me any mind at all.