Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“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.