Hidden River (Five Star Paperback)

by Adrian McKinty

  Charles and Mrs. Mulholland look at each other. Robert picks up the photocopy of the résumé and takes his glasses off to examine it.

  “What part of Ireland are you from?” Charles asks.

  “From Belfast,” I say.

  There is a slight pause, then Robert coughs.

  “You’re here studying at Red Rocks Community College?” Charles says.

  “That’s right.”

  “If you’re a student you won’t be able to work full-time?” Charles says.

  “Well, my schedule is pretty flexible,” I reassure him.

  “Is this your first time in America?” Mrs. Mulholland asks.

  “I came once before, traveled around a bit.”

  “Very different from Ireland, I would expect,” Mrs. Mulholland says.

  “Oh, yes, very different,” I say. “It’s actually warm in summer, which we don’t get much.”

  “We went to Ireland, didn’t we, Robert?” Charles says.

  “Charles, we’re a little pressed for time, if I could bring it back to—” Steve tries to say but is interrupted by Robert.

  “Dublin,” Robert says.

  “Yes, only Dublin, but it was charming,” Charles muses.

  “It’s a nice city,” I agree.

  “I’d like to go,” Mrs. Mulholland says to Charles.

  “Mr. Mulholland, please, we have a lot of people still to see,” Steve says.

  “Mr. O’Neill,” Charles says, “look, I’ll cut right to it. We’ve had a bit of a, well, a bit of a tragedy. We lost one of our most trusted personnel just last week, and we’re actually desperately shorthanded at the moment. Not just because of the move, but because of the, er, anyway, what we’re really looking for are enthusiastic, intelligent people who understand the ways in which environmental policies have been manipulated and want to see common sense prevail. You don’t have to agree with us one hundred percent politically but you do have to understand where we’re coming from and be willing to bring our message to the public.”

  He smiles at me, looks at Robert, and waits for my response. He’s smooth, smug, likable.

  “Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Mr. Mulholland, I had never heard of your organization until very recently but I’ve read your brochure and your ideas seem very sensible. Although I’m not an American, I do agree that the environment shouldn’t be preserved like a museum but that land and forests should be developed in manageable ways that balance the needs of nature with the needs of people,” I say.

  “We also need p-people who will get on with other people, it’s a small environment, we need to bring everyone together as a t-team,” Robert says, speaking expansively for the first time today and it’s a surprise because he has a slight stutter. A stutter, though, does not mean a thing, it is no reflection of an inner life, revealing neither guilt, nor shyness, nor anything. It reveals nothing except maybe a disinclination to become a public speaker and perhaps not even that—Demosthenes and Churchill both stuttered.

  “If we took you on a trial basis, could you come tonight?” Charles asks, running his long fingers through his hair.

  “Yeah, but why in the evening?” I ask.

  “Because that’s when people will be home from work,” Charles tells me.

  “Perhaps Abe didn’t explain, this will primarily be an evening job, will that be a problem?” Steve asks.

  “Not at all,” I say.

  “Do you think you would fit in here?” Mrs. Mulholland asks.

  “I do, it seems like an exciting opportunity to get in at the start of an organization. I like challenges and I think I would like this one.”

  The table looks at one another, sighs. I get the impression that I’m the first normal person they’ve interviewed today. Not easy finding student-age workers in July in Denver. Indeed, nothing must have been easy at the moment. They must have been swamped, really. Moving to Denver and having to deal with the deaths of two of their key employees.

  “Well, maybe we’ll see you tonight,” Charles says.

  “One or t-two more questions?” Robert asks Charles.

  “We are very pressed, Robert,” Charles says.

  Robert bites his lip.

  “Ok,” he says.

  “Wonderful to meet you,” Mrs. Mulholland says, and everyone thanks me for my time.

  Steve sees me to the door and says in a stage whisper:

  “I think I can say with all honesty, Alex, that we’d like to welcome you to the family.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and walk out into the bare reception area to wait for the formal decision.

  An hour later. Charles giving me the tour of the CAW offices. Showing me everything, apologizing for the mess. CAW occupies the entire tenth and eleventh floors of the building. They have twice the space they had in Boulder and it still looks very empty. There are about a dozen employees in cubicles and several others in offices. Charles introduces me and I do my best to remember names. Charles is taller than me, he smells of a light masculine musk. I’ll have to find out what it is. His accent, too, is peculiar, it’s very difficult for a non-American to separate out American accents besides the obvious ones like the Deep South, or Boston or Chicago. It’s slightly Anglicized, though, with a twang, did he go to England for a few years? Perhaps that’s the way they teach them to speak at Harvard or prep school.

  “And this is a portrait of Margaret Cheverde, our honorary president, she’s the daughter of an Italian prime minister. Of course, that’s pretty meaningless, in Italy they let everyone be prime minister for a week or two,” Charles says, laughing at his own joke.

  I laugh too. He has two nervous twitches: he keeps turning the white gold wedding ring on his finger and he keeps running his hands through his hair. I’m no Freudian, so I don’t figure either means anything.

  When we’re done with the tour of the chaotic eleventh floor he tells me what the job will be tonight.

  “Tonight, Alex, myself, Abe, and Amber will be taking a van of campaigners out to the sticks, you know, going door to door, trying to drum up members. I haven’t actually done it for a while, but it’ll all fall into place,” Charles says, grinning.

  “I’m sure it will,” I agree.

  “And look, I don’t want you to be disturbed or anything, there’s going to be a film crew following me around tonight. I know it’s a dreadful bore, but it’s one of those things we have to endure, you know, for publicity.”

  “A film crew?” I ask, surprised.

  “Yes, don’t worry, we’ll just carry on as if nothing’s happening and they’ll do their job, keep out of our way, sorry it has to be on your first night, but it’s just one of those things.”

  We talk some more about tonight, but he keeps looking at his watch. Before he goes, though, I ask him about Mrs. Mulholland, whom Klimmer didn’t mention at all as a staffer. He laughs and says that Amber isn’t supposed to be here at all, she’s just helping out for the next couple of weeks because they’re incredibly short-staffed. She’s a wonder, he says, and I can’t help but agree. Does she know she’s married to a murderer? Or that her brother-in-law is a murderer, or maybe it’s both of them. Or maybe she knows and doesn’t care. Or maybe she’s Lady Macbeth behind the scenes. Charles stops talking. My eyes must have glazed over for a moment.

  “Everything clear?” he asks me with a look of concern.

  I nod. “Everything is great,” I say with enthusiasm.

  “Good. I’ll get you your clipboard and your fact sheets and then Abe will get you to fill in your tax details and show you how to doorstop and how to do the rap. Tonight when you go out, probably Abe or myself will be looking after you, so you’ll have a good time. Is there anything else you want to ask?”

  “Uh, no, just, I don’t know, about money, maybe?”

  “Oh, sure, hasn’t Steve told you?”

  “No.”

  “Ok, you get a third of all the money you make over quota. Quota is eighty-five dollars. If you make under that, you get a flat
rate of forty percent of what you raise. But don’t worry about that. Most people make about three fifty a night, which means they get, what’s a third of that?”

  “One twenty.”

  “One hundred and twenty, that’s not bad, is it?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and I’m doing the sums in my head. One hundred dollars is about sixty pounds, which isn’t bad for a couple of hours’ work. Not bad at all. Thinking about this cheers me up again. Abe comes out of the office with a clipboard and some fact sheets. He’s a kid my age, fat, ginger bap, wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt. I talked to him briefly earlier. Seemed ok.

  “Ok,” he says, “let’s get you started.”

  Charles departs, casually swinging his key ring, Abe brings me into his office, sits me down.

  “He told you everything?” Abe asks in a New York accent.

  “Yeah, although he was a bit vague and mysterious about personnel problems. Some kind of tragedy?”

  “Oh, shit. Look, Alex, Charles wants us to draw a line under it, look to the future and all that, but I should tell you that we had two terrible things happen to us in the last month.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I ask.

  Abe tells me all about Victoria and Klimmer, explaining that they’ve caught one of the killers and are looking for the others. He tells me not to bring it up with anyone at CAW. He seems a bit upset, especially talking about Victoria, and I’m considering him an empathetic ally when he adds that one of the worst aspects of the whole thing is that now he can’t wear his Warren Zevon “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” T-shirt around the office.

  “Is there anything else before we get down to business?” Abe asks.

  “Well, Charles said there’s going to be a film crew following him tonight,” I say.

  “Yes, yes, there is, he tell you why?”

  “No, he didn’t, said it was publicity.”

  “Well, if he didn’t tell you, I can’t tell you,” Abe says.

  “What’s the big secret?” I ask.

  “We’re not supposed to discuss it, in fact, I’m not even supposed to know, so if you don’t mind I’d like to leave it there, ok?”

  “Ok,” I say, not minding because Abe looks like the sort of guy who couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

  Abe pops the fridge, gives me a Coke, and explains the “rap.” Tonight we’re going to be asking people about the preservation of the old growth forests of North America and if this is an important issue to them. The rap has to be memorized. He does it for me a few times and I believe I’ve got it:

  “Hi, my name is Alexander O’Neill, I’m from the Campaign for the American Wilderness, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to preserve our ancient forests, is this an issue that concerns you at all?”

  If they say no, I’ve learned a set of answers, if they say yes, I’ve learned answers. It’s like a computer program.

  “No, I’m too busy,” Abe says.

  “Well, sir, this will only take one minute of your time, one minute to preserve our nation’s heritage,” I say.

  “Good,” Abe says.

  Abe role-plays me through a set of situations. A woman with a baby, a man on a phone, an angry man, etc. Always in every situation I am to be “closing the loop,” bringing the conversation back to the issue of preserving the old growth forests but allowing for logging in the managed forests, highlighting the shortsightedness of the Greenpeace policy of no development, explaining that logging companies plant more trees than they cut down, further explaining that Congress is choked by environmental pressure groups and that a voice for Wise Use, commonsense use of our natural resources is sadly lacking.

  All the time he’s talking, I’m thinking about the Mulhollands. Charles—funny, nice, Robert cold but sympathetic, Mrs. Mulholland, Charles’s wife, the beautiful mirror of Victoria. A troika of evil? Hmmm. Maybe I was way off. Way, way off.

  * * *

  It’s six o’clock, we’re on a clogged highway heading south. We’re in a van. Over a dozen of us. All white, students, bubbly, irritating. No blacks, Asians, or Mexicans. Only one person I recognize from this morning’s set of interviews. Both of us new hires have been introduced to all the others. The others can’t be that veteran either, considering CAW only moved here a couple of weeks ago.

  Charles is driving, and beside him in the front seat is Amber, twisting her hair into little ringlets, not being coy, just bored. Beside me in the back is Abe and another girl, who told me her name but I’ve already forgotten it. She’s young and skinny and looks like a student.

  I don’t see the film crew and I wonder if both Charles and Abe were joking about that.

  As we drive through the traffic, Abe keeps asking people to do tonight’s rap. He doesn’t ask me, which is good, because I’m still trying to remember it. That and all the facts and the angles. First question you’re supposed to ask is whether the issue of the forests concerns them. Second question (while you pretend to fill something in your clipboard) is their political affiliation. If they’re a Republican, you talk about waste, how the mining companies and timber manufacturers are going bankrupt; if they’re a Democrat, you talk about deforestation and why we have to cut down the tropical rain forests, because nutty environmentalists won’t let us use our own forests for managed growth. The tropical rain forests have a hoard of untapped medical potential. If a Democrat woman opens the door, you’re supposed to tell her about the breast cancer drugs they found in the Amazon. If it’s a man, you’re to talk about prostate cancer or heart disease. Whatever’s relevant to the person at the door. The most important thing of all, Charles tells us, while he’s driving, is always to be closing the loop.

  Charles shifts lanes expertly and looks at us in the rearview mirror.

  “Ok, folks, everyone’s favorite time, the getting-to-know-you questions,” Charles says.

  Some people groan.

  “Tonight we’ll do favorite superhero and why. Alex, Elena, you go first, of course, since you’ve just joined the family,” Charles says.

  “Don’t make them go first, honey,” Amber says. “They should go last.”

  “Ok, you’re right. Abe, you first,” Charles says.

  “Uh, Spiderman,” Abe says, “because he’s an ordinary guy, lives in Queens, I visited his house, it’s a real address in Forest Hills, ’course Peter Parker doesn’t live there.”

  “Ok, thank you, Abe. Favorite superhero, Michael,” Charles asks a tubby kid in sandals and brown T-shirt.

  “Does the Bionic Man count?” Michael asks.

  “Yes, of course, and why do you like him?” Charles asks.

  “I don’t know, because he did cool stuff,” Michael says.

  Charles goes around the van, getting everyone talking. By the time they get to me, the only superhero left is Batman. I give them my theory about the Batman TV show and U.S. presidents:

  “The Penguin is obviously a caricature of FDR, there’s the accent, the cigarette holder, et cetera. The Riddler is Richard Nixon, the energy, all humped over. The Joker is Jack Kennedy, the big grin, weird accent—”

  “Who’s Catwoman?” Mrs. Mulholland asks, suddenly interested.

  “Jackie, sexy, dark-haired,” I say.

  “She wasn’t sexy,” one of the kids says.

  “She was back then,” Charles says, and gives me a grin. I can see that he’s thinking we made the right decision hiring this kid.

  We finish the superheroes and Charles tells us that we have to remember the rap and be always closing the loop.

  He makes us chant “Always be closing the loop,” and no one seems to think this is particularly embarrassing. Charles continues: “Remember, everyone, always be closing the loop, even if someone is arguing with you, always be closing the loop. Bring it back to the issue of how they can help and how they help is by joining the Campaign for the American Wilderness at fifty dollars a shot. If it’s too expensive, point out that that’s only a dollar a week and if they still don’t budge t
ell them we’ve a special reduced membership for thirty-five dollars a person, so they could join on their own, not at the family level, and still be doing their bit. Also, if it’s a flashy house, maybe a Mercedes in the drive, you can ask for a hundred-dollar membership or a life membership for five hundred dollars. You get one person to become a life member and you’ve made yourself a hundred and fifty dollars in one evening.”

  In the front, Mrs. Mulholland is reading a novel with a deerstalker on the cover, Sherlock Holmes, presumably. How can she read without getting carsick?

  It would be nice if they paired me with Charles tonight, Robert tomorrow night. Get a handle on both of them. I smile and shake my head. Eejit. Here I am, still trying to solve the bloody case. After all that’s happened.

  “Bumps,” Charles says from the front, and we go over a couple of ramps. The van jolts. At a traffic halt a man wipes the van window with a squeegee, Charles smiles, winds his window down, says thank you and gives him a dollar.

  Finally, as we start to get really moving, Abe turns to us and says we’re getting closer and gets us to repeat the rap. We all have a go and I manage to get through mine without too much trouble. Next, Abe gets us to pretend that we’re in actual “door situations,” some difficult doors, some easy. People who don’t speak good English, older people. I practice my rap a couple more times and he tells Charles that we’re well prepared.

  Charles finally pulls the car off the expressway and we’re in a small mountain town with houses instead of apartment buildings. I thought we were only doing the city and suburbs, but this is clearly no longer Denver.

  Darker now and all the streetlights come on with a pale yellow color. We stop outside a police station and Charles runs in. Abe explains to me that this is because we have to let the cops know we’re out collecting, in case there’s any kind of trouble. We’re allowed to knock on any door we want according to the law, though if we’re asked to leave someone’s property we have to do so.

  Charles comes back to the car. It’s spitting down now and rain is streaking along the windows, blurring the town and everything else. He puts the car into gear and we go off. If I had killed someone a few weeks ago, would I be able to run into a police station? Yeah, I probably would, again, it means sweet fuck all.