“Listen, Alex,” Pat whispered, “I told them John had been murdered by a burglar, ok? Crackhead, looking for dough, ok? I told them Areea would have to tell the police what she knew, that she would get arrested, that they all would get arrested, deported. That they have to help if they don’t want to go back to fucking Ethiopia.”
“What the hell are you doing, Pat? What are you doing with John?”
“We’re going to take John to the big trash Dumpster from that building renovation on Fourteenth. Throw him in, cover him up with garbage bags, timbers. They empty that thing every Friday, take it right out there to the landfill in Aurora. With any luck, he’ll never be found.”
“Fucking hell, Pat, there must be some other way.”
“No other way, Alex. We can’t get the cops. You’ll be questioned, arrested, I promise you, I know the system. Areea will be questioned, arrested, they’ll deport her and her family, you’ll get done for homicide, I’ll get fucking evicted. It’s the only way.”
“I don’t know, Pat,” I said.
“Did you drink that gin?”
“No.”
“Go do it now, go do it.”
I found the Bombay Sapphire bottle, poured myself a half a glass of gin. Pat left. I poured myself another glass, resisted the temptation to let ketch take over and sort this one out by itself.
When I stepped outside the apartment, the Ethiopians and Pat had John in the corridor and were maneuvering him down the stairs. He was wrapped like a mummy, in five or six sheets and blankets. No blood was soaking through, which wasn’t surprising considering how much he’d bled in the apartment.
“John, oh God, I’m so sorry,” I found myself saying.
“Alex, if you’re going to help, you got to pull yourself together,” Pat said.
I walked down the hall. Of the Ethiopians only Simon spoke good English. The father said something to me and Simon translated.
“A bad business,” he said, as if discussing a fall in the stock market or a war in a far-off country.
“Yes.”
“Just like with O. J. Simpson’s wife,” he said.
I glared at him. Clenched a fist. Pat put his hand on my shoulder.
The two big Ethiopian boys looked at me with expressionless faces. Maybe they thought I had killed him, or Areea had killed him in an argument. Anything…
“Alex, if you want to help, take the front, my place, and I’ll direct traffic,” Pat said.
I took Pat’s place at the front of the body. John was well wrapped in blankets, but I could feel his legs.
We walked him down the five flights. There were four of us. Surprisingly easy. Too easy, it should have hurt more. We paused in the lobby.
“I’ll check the street,” Pat said. He went out onto Colfax.
“We have to hug the shadows and get quickly around the back of the building. We’ll be exposed in the street for about thirty seconds,” Pat said.
I had no idea of the time but one thing was for sure, there wouldn’t be many random cop cars going by. Cops seldom came around here, almost never at night. Still, a taxi or bus driver might alert the authorities.
“It’s all clear,” Pat said.
We carried John outside and walked with him around the building to what Pat had called a Dumpster. We froze as a car drove past on Colfax, but it didn’t stop. Simon muttered something to his brother. I hoped they weren’t going to leg it, leave us with the body.
We heaved John into the skip and Pat told Simon to lift his brother in there so he could cover the body with debris. Matthew, the older boy, climbed up the side of the skip and lowered himself in, and spent a few minutes covering John with garbage bags, bits of wood and debris from the building. We stood there, looking foolish, feeling guilty. Matthew climbed out and gave us the thumbs-up.
We walked back to the apartment building.
“I have to see Areea,” I said.
“In the morning,” Pat said.
“I have to speak to her tonight,” I insisted. “It must have been terrible, I want to speak to her. While it’s fresh.”
“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.