“I think what stops a lot of people isn’t right or wrong, it’s fear of being caught,” George said. “If people thought they could get away with it, there would be a lot more murder. Where I think the denial comes in, is that people delude themselves into thinking they won’t get caught.”
“Good point. So there are two denials going on at the same time.”
“Yeah. So you really think Natasha was murdered?”
“I’m sure leaning that way. A lot of people wanted her out of the picture. It’s just figuring out who had that weird psychological ability—and the sheer will and drive—to take it from thought to action.”
We were quiet for a minute, Mad John was still humming softly, and in his hum I heard his love for the river. The first stars were growing visible; I wished Josie was with us.
“What was your mom like, George?” I asked.
“Oh, she was pretty great. She was pure Brooklyn Irish, tough and sentimental. After my dad died she worked two jobs—it wasn’t easy. Of course she liked her whiskey, and a man now and then. There were five of us kids and Friday nights were everyone’s favorite, school and work were over, she’d pour herself a glass of whiskey, put opera on the record player, and make us dinner of baked potato, Le Sueur baby peas from that silver can, and frozen fish sticks. We’d all sit around the table laughing and talking, then she’d shoo us kids out to the street to play. I think she liked being alone with her whiskey, her opera, and her memories.”
“Did you come out to her?”
“When you grow up on the streets of Bay Ridge, there are no secrets. I told her when I was thirteen.”
“What did she say?”
“‘I don’t give a shit’.”
“Sweet and simple.”
“Yeah. She loved me good, Janet. You know, she lived to see us all out of house, on our own, I think she was proud of that.”
“Time to cross the river,” Mad John said.
I loved watching as he deftly oared us across the river like a gallant gondolier. There wasn’t another boat in sight and in the dusky light it felt like we were rowing into a dream.
We reached Goat Island, it came to a rocky tip but otherwise looked pretty much like the rest of the shoreline. There was a low rock shelf and Mad John steered us to it. He hopped off, grabbed his rope, and pulled the raft close. George and I stepped onto the island with our gear and then Mad John hauled the raft onto land and into a thicket, out of sight.
“Follow me,” he said.
He knew the island well, we clambered up a narrow path to reach the rocky spine. We came to a large clearing pocked with holes that looked recently dug and hastily filled. Mad John stopped and looked around sadly. “This is a sacred spot.” He closed his eyes, held up his hands, and did a few rounds of gibberish chanting, no doubt invoking Native American spirits—and maybe Insane River Rat spirits, too.
After a bit, he shook himself out of his mini-trance, “Come on.” He led us a little ways through some straggly woods until we came to a large rock outcropping. He led us around the side and there was a cave. He ducked inside and we followed.
It was low-ceilinged, dark and dank, slithery and creepy and … yuk. Sleeping here would feel like sleeping inside a fish.
“Home sweet home,” Mad John said with his first smile of the day.
“Can’t we just sleep outside?” I suggested.
“No! The thieves might spot us and retreat. This way we can hear them and surprise them!”
George, ever practical in spite of himself, had already begun to lay out our sleeping bags and make a little nest. Mad John lit a couple of candles and before I knew it there was something Huck Finny and romantic about being in the cave. Sort of.
We had a nice picnic dinner thanks to Abba, sang Bye Bye Blackbird and a few other standards, and by then it was pitch dark.
“Time to wait,” Mad John said, blowing out the candles.
I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to ignore the lumpy-bumpy terrain under me. No luck. I mean, isn’t the whole point of evolution so that we don’t have to sleep on the ground? The idea of doing it voluntarily just seems so … regressive. It was going to be a long night.
But we were here on a mission and these were my buds so I resigned myself to the situation. As my eyes got used to the dark, I saw that the walls of the cave were glistening and there were large bugs crawling on them. Yippee.
“Are you okay?” George whispered.
“Oh sure, I love spending the night inside Moby Dick’s bile duct.”
“Zen it out. But I mean are you okay okay? You seem distracted these days.”
“George, I’m cold, clammy, my hip is pulsing with pain, and this place is Bugapalooza, I’m in no mood to get all deep.”
There was a moment of silence and then he asked, “How’d it go with Josie up in Troy?”
“Will you and Abba back the fuck off about Josie, please?”
“Shhhhh!” Mad John hissed in a fury.
George smiled at me like a third grader admonished in class, I had to smile back. If Mad John had been my homeroom teacher, I probably would have done better in third grade.
Then we heard it—a scraping sound, a boat being pulled out of the water, onto the island’s rocky shore. Mad John motioned us up to the front of the cave and started up a series of birdcalls; some avian amigos answered him. I quickly realized what he was doing—making noise to cover our movements.
Peering out from the mouth of the cave, I made out—through the brush and trees—the dim beam of a flashlight moving up from the river toward the clearing.
Mad John led us slowly out of the cave, all the while carrying on his birdcalls. We inched closer to the clearing from one direction as the beam of the flashlight approached from another. When we were about ten feet from the edge of the clearing Mad John motioned us to stop and crouch, hidden in the brush. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding so loudly in my chest I was afraid the thief would hear it. I took out my phone to take pictures.
The beam appeared at the edge of the clearing. It was impossible to make out the person holding it. Then the flashlight was placed in the crook of a tree branch, its beam shining down on the clearing. It was a man, a tall young man dressed all in black, his face hard to distinguish. He was carrying a shovel and he began to pace around the clearing, looking for a place to dig.
Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized who it was.
He stuck his shovel in the ground.
Mad John cocked his head: time to make our move. I shook my head “no,” an adamant desperate “no.” I had bigger fish to fry than the theft of artifacts. Mad John looked at me, uncomprehending. I raised my camera and took a shot. The flash lit up the clearing, the thief looked up in shock, I took another picture. He fled, crashing through the brush.
“Let him go!”
“No!” Mad John said, taking off in pursuit. I lunged and tackled him, we rolled around on the ground, he managed to get out of my grasp, but it was too late to catch the thief, we heard oars splashing in the river.
“What the fuck!!” an enraged Mad John demanded.
“I’m sorry but I had to do that. That kid won’t be back after that scare, he knows we’re on to him. And these pictures are going to help me catch Natasha’s killer.”
“How?” George asked.
“Trust me.”
Mad John and George gathered around as I pulled up the pictures of Collier Denton’s “handyman,” Graham.
THIRTY-ONE
The next morning I went over to Chow for breakfast and hung out in the kitchen while Abba cooked, I always got a kick out of watching her, she was like an athlete or a dancer. The place was even more crowded than usual.
“Is there something going on in town?” I asked.
“Not that I know of.”
I filled her in on what had happened on Goat Island and how I planned on using the photographs to force a little more information out of Collier Denton, who I was going to visit la
ter in the day.
George rushed into the restaurant clutching a copy of the day’s New York Times. He stopped in the middle of the place and let out a deafening, “Hallelujah!”
Abba smiled at me and said, “Somebody got laid last night.” Then she stuck her head through the pass-through, “Take it down a notch, George, it’s too early in the day.”
“So you haven’t seen it?” he asked.
“Seen what?”
He headed into the kitchen and folded opened the paper. “There’s an article on the Hudson Valley in today’s Times. Listen to this: ‘In one of those serendipitous finds that makes travel writing so rewarding, I happened upon Chow, an unpretentious eatery in the village of Sawyerville. The setting and ambience are down home with a dose of quirk, and the food is nothing less than a revelation. My BLT redefined the classic with fresh-grated horseradish and herb-crusted local bacon on rye toast that could barely contain its multitude of caraway seeds. My lunchmate went into raptures over her sage-flecked chicken potpie, and as for the coconut-pecan-blackberry cake, well, heaven can wait.’”
Abba burst into a grin. Now Abba is not the grinning sort so when they do come, well, the world lights up.
“This calls for a party,” she said. “Saturday night. Here.”
“You are definitely going to need more help around the place,” I said.
“I’m counting on you for that,” she answered with a sly grin.
“We’ll see.”
“I gotta run, chicklets. Antonio is putting me on a real full-size horse this morning!” George said.
“That’s great, where?” I asked.
“Stop condescending to me.”
“All I said was ‘where’.”
“As soon as I bring up the love of my life, you reduce me to some drooling obsessive.”
“Well, George, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you in this infatuated state.”
“Infatuated state? You’re reducing my passion to an infatuated state? Abba, will you please inform Janet that our friendship is officially over, and that I never want to see or speak to her again.”
Abba nodded.
George puffed himself up and added, “Now I’m going to go and mount Bingo.”
“Wait a minute, isn’t Bingo the thirty-two-year-old horse that lives at the Catskill Farm Animal Sanctuary?” Abba asked. “The one that’s blind, deaf, and barely ambulatory?”
Pearl appeared at the pass-through to pick up an order.
“Pearl, will you please inform Abba that I am no longer speaking to her,” George said. With that he turned and marched out the door.
Abba and I smiled at each other. A young couple came in, clutching the Times.
“Get ready for the deluge.”
“Remember: I need your help.”
“Yeah-yeah.”
“And do you still want to work the Clark Van Wyck fundraiser tonight?”
“I do. What do you think of him?”
“You know, he seems on the up-and-up to me. He’s from an old Valley family with not much money left, but his wife, Alice, has serious bucks. So he’s too rich to be a hack, he really loves the Valley, and his green mania seems sincere. That wife is another story.”
“Oh?”
“She’s the power behind that carbon footprint. She’s one of these noblesse oblige liberal types—it’s her family money that’s bankrolling him and she’s very tough and savvy. She’s the one who hired the fancy downstate talent that came up with the New New York thing. Hey, I kinda like the old New York. I don’t trust her as far as I can asana.”
I took all this in. “Yeah, I definitely want to work that fundraiser.”
THIRTY-TWO
When I got home I called Chevrona.
“Has the stream been searched?” I asked.
“I put in the request and pushed pretty hard, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Everyone is confident this was an accident or a suicide, and with our budget cuts …”
“Are you confident?”
There was a pause. “You’re very persuasive, Janet. I’ll push a little harder.”
I wasn’t going to wait. I put on my hiking boots and me and Sputnik drove to the bottom of the Platte Clove. I parked on the side of the road, we walked into the woods until we reached the Plattekill and set off alongside its bank. I was determined to walk up the gorge just in case some piece of evidence had fallen into the stream and been washed down.
The Platte Clove gorge is some of the most rugged terrain in the East, an awesome and kind of terrifying place. In the late nineteenth century it was a tourist attraction, on postcards and in guidebooks, with a wooden staircase that snaked up from the valley floor to the mountaintop. When Catskill Park was established, the staircase was torn down and these days access to the bottom of the clove is tricky, there isn’t much parking and you have to cross private land.
Sputs and I made our way along the stream. It was pretty dramatic as the land climbed and narrowed, soon the stream was a steep fifty feet down. I hugged the trail, which at one point narrowed to not much more than a foot across. Then it flattened out and we were next to the stream again. Sputnik leapt in and took a quick swim. We passed a group of teenagers drinking beer and smoking pot—it’s nice to know some things never change.
Pretty soon we were passing one amazing waterfall after another, large pools, with ancient rocks worn down into swirly patterns by eons of water, the gorge rising on either side. The higher we got the more vertical the walls got, I could see the sunlight on the treetops above, but none reached down into the dark heart of the clove. This was a narrow ravine and it was scary, a flash flood would have swept us to a watery death, bouncing us off the boulders. If we ran into a mass murderer there would be nowhere to run. Or an escaped mental patient. Or just some perv. None of this seemed to bother Sputnik in the least, he was in his glory racing around, leaping into the water, grabbing sticks.
I walked slowly, scouring the pools and both banks for any hint of color, any unusual shape or object, anything of Natasha’s or her killer’s that might have been swept downstream. I’d heard that there was a virtually inaccessible stretch below the pool where Natasha died. After about thirty minutes of hiking, we reached it. The rock walls rose straight up, the trail ended.
I stopped on a flattop boulder that jutted out over a small deep pool and looked up at the imposing rock walls, the only sound was the rushing stream and the wind rustling the tops of the trees. This was a lonely place. I imagined Natasha’s last moments, as she was pushed into the void and plunged through the air toward the rocks below. Did she have time to feel fear? Or was she so drugged up that little registered, that she just let go?
Sputnik had made his way down to the pool and was splashing around.
“I think this is the end of the line for us, Sputs.” I sat down on the rock, took off my hiking boots, rolled up my pants legs and dangled my feet in the water. It was cold—cascading right down from its mountaintop spring—but I liked the jolt, it was refreshing and real, sort of an instant psychic cleansing. Natasha’s death was proving complicated and draining on so many levels, I felt like I was being pulled into a lot of other people’s lives and losing sight of my own. I needed this: the cold, the waterfall, the rock face dotted with iridescent patches of moss, the swaying green far above, I’m not the type to get mushy about nature, but sometimes it’s just what a body needs—I inhaled the air, which was like nectar, and felt my blood pressure drop.
Sputnik had other ideas. He galumphed around the edge of the pool and up onto the boulder, proudly holding a cellphone in his mouth.
THIRTY-THREE
I tried to turn the phone on but it was dead. Could it be revived? I wanted to get it to Chevrona ASAP. Sputnik and I made our way back down the gorge. A little ways past the teenagers, two men appeared on the trail, heading toward us. One was big, beefy, hulking, the other lean, wiry, coiled; they looked very backcountry, unshaven funky in dirty jeans, t-shirts, and baseball
caps. The closer they got, the less I liked the vibe—these two weren’t out on a nature hike. My muscles went tense, Sputnik sensed it and tensed up, too.
The trail narrowed up ahead and they stopped there and waited, blocking the way. We reached them.
“Excuse us,” I said.
“Ah, maybe not,” the big guy said. They laughed.
“You boys have something you want to say to me?”
The little one turned to the big one, “I don’t know, we got something we want to say to her?”
“Duh, let me think.”
Sputnik’s hair was up and he let out a low growl.
“Very amusing, I’m sure, but we need to get past,” I said.
“What you need is to understand that you’re fucking around where you don’t belong,” the wiry one said.
“Who sent you?”
“Kelly sent us,” he said, “She said to tell you this is her second warning. Three strikes and you’re out.”
“Yeah, back off or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else this,” the big one said, kicking Sputnik in the chest. The poor guy wailed, flew through the air, and collapsed on the ground.
I pivoted and kicked my foot up under the wiry one’s chin, hard, sending him flying into a tree. His head smashed into the trunk and he crumpled to the ground. The big guy lunged at me, I ducked, spun around, and nailed him face-on with my right fist—it hurt me more than him but it bought me enough time to plant myself and kick him in the gut. Hard. Twice. He went down and curled on his side. Blood was pouring out of the wiry guy’s mouth, he spit out a tooth and what looked like a piece of his tongue.
“Either of you assholes ever touch my dog again—or any dog, or any animal for that matter—and I’ll rip your heads off and go bowling with them. You got that?”
When they hesitated I kicked the big one in the side of his head. “I asked you a question, dickwad.”
“I got it,” he mumbled.
I took a step toward the wiry one.
“I got it,” he blubbered.
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