Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“Ok, ok, let me see. Yeah, it’s just a scrape. Keep it clean, get a big Band-Aid on it, don’t pick it when it scabs over. And don’t go climbing without proper safety gear,” Redhorse said.

“The train,” John yelled, “it’s the train.”

I looked down the line.

A tiny light in the distance. John frantic:

“Look, what’s that light? Do you see that light? That’s not a truck. I tell you, it’s the train, it has to be, it’s the train, believe me. Alex, have you got our tickets? Look, it’s getting bigger. It’s the bloody train. It’s coming. Maybe it’s a house light. No, it’s it.”

The sound of an air horn, the massive engine, the bell on the crossing. It pulled in aggressively, slowed and stopped. We piled into the carriage, bumping people with our luggage and belongings, looking for seats, but it was slim pickings. The dirty train sweating with exhausted people who had just come through the desert and over the Rockies in thirty hours of Amtrak’s version of hell. Eventually, the steward found three seats together in the nonsmoking section.

Redhorse sat next to a hairy man who asked him if Jesus was his personal savior. He didn’t reply, lit himself a cigarette, took out The Grapes of Wrath, and began reading furiously.

“Have you accepted Jesus into your life?” the man asked me.

“I have,” I said solemnly, the only sensible answer on these occasions.

“That’s great, and what about you?” the man asked John.

“Well, no, not really,” John said.

I groaned.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a little bit about our Lord Jesus Christ,” the man said.

“I don’t mind at all,” John said.

Having killed someone a few hours earlier, John was obviously vulnerable at this point. I stood up and found my soap bag.

“John, I’m away to the bathroom, ok?” I said, and closed my lips very tight, which I hoped communicated my desire that he should keep his bloody mouth shut, even if the Messiah himself showed up and asked him to confess. A peeler on one side, a bloody missionary on the other. Fantastic. I was sure at the next stop a man with a lie detector would get on.

The bathroom was remarkably clean, considering the length of the journey and the busyness of the train. I found my heroin, boiled it, got a clean needle, exposed a vein, tied it off, and sank away from all this madness. The rattling train, the long tracks, the mountain air. I nodded off, slept a little, woke up as the train went over a set of points.

Back to my seat. Redhorse had gone.

“Where’s the cop?” I asked John.

“They moved him to the smoking section,” John said.

“And Jesus said unto the nonbelievers, ye must be born again, it’s not enough to just keep the commandments,” the missionary said.

I sat down. The ketch had calmed me. Didn’t matter now, let them convert John, arrest me, didn’t bloody matter.

Three in the morning when we got into Denver. David Redhorse came back and wished us a pleasant trip. I said good luck in catching killers. Without further ado, he said goodbye. So his appearance here had been coincidence after all. He hadn’t been watching the train for a couple of runaways or, if he had, he figured we didn’t seem the murdering type. And for a peeler he wasn’t a bad sort. I just hoped he wouldn’t put two and two together. Most cops can be pretty stupid, but Redhorse clearly wasn’t. I was relieved to see him go and bloody shocked when he got back on twenty minutes later.

Oh, shit, he has put it together, he’s come to arrest us, I thought, and grabbed John’s shoulder and tried to pull him up. We could run down the train, exit the next car, get back out into Denver. Probably Redhorse wouldn’t have had time to seal off the station.

“John, we have to get up,” I said.

I pulled him to his feet, but it was too late. David Redhorse walked over to us.

I took a deep breath and got ready for fight or flight. Take this wee shite easy.

“Guys, I just thought I’d come back and tell you, because I know you don’t have a sleeper, the train is going to be stuck here all night, there’s a big derailment up ahead on the line. Track’s blocked. Nobody hurt, but if I know Amtrak, no one’s going to tell you anything about it until the morning and the train isn’t going to get going till tomorrow afternoon, if then.”

“Shit,” I said.

“You boys need the name of a hotel?” Redhorse asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“The Holburn on Sherman, always got rooms, even this time of night,” he said.

“Thanks, we’ll check it out,” I said.

“Ok, well, nice meeting you,” he said.

I shook his hand and he headed off back down the track. Now I really believed that he had decided we were harmless.

“What are we going to do, Alex?” John asked.

“We’re getting off this train, that’s for damn sure,” I whispered.

Later…

It’s four a.m.

A dead time in a dead town. The prostitutes are gone from Colfax Avenue, the patrons home from the LoDo bars. Magpies, crows debate the labyrinth of alleys and deserted cul-de-sacs. The lights are on at Coors Field, but the game is long since done.

Fuck the Holburn. No way am I going there. So instead we go back to our old place, but the bastard there wants us to pay for another week, cash in advance, which is suspicious and makes me think that he thinks we’re in some kind of trouble. I don’t like it, and breezily refuse.

I explain it to John, and reading Lonely Planet he suggests the youth hostel on Seventeenth Street. On the way there, they’re delivering The Denver Post . I pay a quarter, find the story on page three.

A man fell to his death from the fourth floor of the Mountain View apartment complex on Cheesman Park today. Eyewitnesses spoke of a struggle with an assailant. “The building has been burglarized twice in the last month,” said Jean Simmons, a neighbor. Police are looking for two men said to be light-skinned Hispanic males in their twenties or early thirties. A DPD officer is believed to have shot and seriously wounded one of the assailants.

I stop reading, put the paper down. The first thing I have to do is reassure John:

“John, you can relax, a dozen eyewitnesses, three of them cops, and they have us pegged as wetbacks. Jesus Christ. That little crack in Spanish to the dude in the army T-shirt worked.”

He grins at me. “Aye. Typical. You see what you want to see. Bloody racists. Xenophobes. All burglars are fucking Latinos,” he says.

I nod. It doesn’t let us off the hook, but it helps. Maybe that was why Redhorse had changed his mind about us. Of course, I don’t tell John that sometimes the cops are tricky about what information they release. In any case, he looks visibly relieved.

An exhausting walk. The youth hostel. Overhead fans. Insomniac Swedish boys flirting with German girls. Clean, nice, inviting. John collapses into a chair, I go to the desk.

The receptionist, bald guy, sweating in a white wife-beater shirt and thinking he’s part of the Christmas story: “There’s no room at the inn, we’re full.”

“Look, we’re desperate,” I say.

“Plenty of motels out on Colfax near the airport,” he suggests.

“How far?”

“Three, four miles, I don’t know,” he says.

“Isn’t there anywhere closer?” I plead.

The man looks at me for a minute.

“Where you from? What’s that accent?” he says a little unexpectedly.

“We’re from Ireland,” I say, too exhausted to lie anymore.

“I thought so,” he says, “I thought so. Sean Dillon, ex — Denver Fire Department,” he says, sticking out his hand.

I shake it wearily.

“Alex Flaherty,” I say.