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.
But I couldn’t, not now. It all had led to this. I had to see him in person, that was the only way. I had to. Why? What would I do when we met? Kill him? I didn’t know. But I had to bring things to a head. I had to see the fucker. Had to. A compulsion. A madness.
Pat raged, fumed.
He told me to take the weekend to think it over before I did something so dumb. And Pat was a wise person and I would be a fool to ignore his advice and I did think it over, but I knew I was going to do it.
I told him.
Again Pat begged me to reconsider, but he knew it was too late and once he’d heard my plan, he resigned himself and decided that he should help, so at the very least I wouldn’t get topped as easily as John.
“Sit tight,” Pat said, “I’ll be on the next bus up.”
I met Pat off the bus. The ride had been rough on him, he was pale, sick. I cooked him Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup. He ate some of it. Opened his overnight bag. Removed a bottle of gin and a.45 automatic Colt pistol.
“This is for you,” he said, giving me the gun. “It was my dad’s. Army issue. He was a lieutenant in World War Two. I’ve checked it, I shot it at the range. Works good. Anything closer than fifty feet. Blow their fucking head off.”
“Thanks,” I said. I felt better about it, I had a gun and a Kevlar jacket. I’d be safe. We went onto Pat’s narrow fire escape, looked at the graveyard and the river, and talked.
“What makes you think he’ll come alone?” Pat asked, pouring gin into a coffee mug.
“Oh, he has to. This whole thing has been about blackmail. He can’t involve anyone else. He’ll come alone, it wouldn’t make sense for him to bring in other people now,” I said with confidence.
“Take the gun, and wear that Kevlar vest, he’ll try to kill you,” Pat said.
“I know,” I said.
A bright hot plains — Colorado afternoon. Blue sky. We walked together to the pay phone outside Walgreen’s. Pat accompanying me at a snail’s pace, but insisting on going in a last ditch effort to dissuade me. I dialed the number. I got through to the Mulhollands’ answer phone. Read from my piece of paper:
“I want to meet. This is a one-time-only offer. You didn’t kill me. I am not dead. You fucked up. You know who this is. I want to meet on my turf. Alone. Tomorrow night, midnight, the cemetery in Fort Morgan, Colorado, the shelter in the center of the graveyard. Alone.”
I hung up the phone.
The next day. A thunderstorm came in about ten o’clock. Thunder and sheet lightning that shook the whole building. It began to hail, golf-ball size.
“Nasty,” I said, looking out the window, just for something to say.
“Yup,” Pat said. “On the radio they said it would be freezing rain and hail. Whoever heard of such a thing in July? It’s El Niño, that’s what it is. Won’t do any good, though, we need six months of sweet Jesus rain, need it bad.”
“I know,” I said.
“But look at that. Can’t see for shit out that window. I won’t be able to check the cemetery. Dumb-ass plan. I knew it. I bloody told you. You’ll be on your own,” Pat said grimly.
“I’ll be ok.”
Pat muttered and made some coffee. We watched the clock. Midnight crept around.
“Well, I better go,” I said.
“Can I just say one thing?” Pat asked.
“Aye.”
“This won’t solve anything,” Pat said, his melancholy eyes teary, sad.
“Pat, I’m going to get this fucker, he killed my best friend, I have to do this, I have to bring things to a head.”
“You don’t have to do anything, Alex,” Pat pleaded.
“I do,” I said.
“Why not just go home,” Pat said.
“No.”
“What do you possibly think you can get from this?”
I thought for a moment. What did I want? I wanted to confront him, I wanted to yell at him, I wanted him to confess, I wanted him to go to the police, to turn himself in, I wanted to see his face, I wanted closure, I wanted him dead. I wanted a million things.