Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) (19 page)

“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 tell 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.

Charles finally stops, distributes maps, sends everyone out, tells Abe to take care of Elena, tells me to wait in the back, kisses Amber, sends her with Abe. He pulls on a tan jacket and gives me an umbrella. It’s hardly raining now, and I say it’s ok.

“Take it, this isn’t like Ireland, it might really start pouring later, we need it, a good downpour,” he says.

I take the umbrella, but the rain has already gotten under the plastic cover on my clipboard, dampening the fact sheets—nothing I can do about it. Charles grins at me and we walk over to the first house. He seems younger now. He likes doing this.

I look around. It’s a fairly affluent area. New cars, and the houses have big gardens and fences. The difference from Ireland is that the houses are made of wood, not brick.

“Ok, Alexander, this is how it goes down. Each person is to get one zone to cover in an evening. Usually it’s about a hundred and fifty houses. Average you can get is about seven members an evening. Seven out of a hundred and fifty, but at the others you can leave leaflets, so it’s still doing a bit for the cause.”

“What town is this?” I ask him as we walk toward the first big house in the street.

“It’s called Colorado Springs. Nice place, the Air Force Academy’s here. Good hunting ground for us. Ah, there they are.”

Three men come out of a dark green Range Rover. Two are in hooded raincoats carrying a camera and a boom mike, the third is wearing a baseball cap that says Broncos on it. They are all in their thirties. Charles does not introduce me and this pisses me off a bit. He shakes the Broncos guy’s hand.

“Bill, I thought you wouldn’t show up because of the rain,” he says.

“Typical, first rain we’ve had in months, but it’s good for us, shows your dedication. Main problem’s the light, we’re losing light fast, Charles, I think we should get started.”

“Ok, what do I do?” Charles asks.

“You do your normal thing, and don’t worry about us,” Bill says.

“Ok, come on, Alex,” Charles says to me, “just ignore them if you can.”

We walk up to the first house.

“Now, Alex,” Charles says, “I’ll do the talking and you just watch. Later I’ll let you do a couple of houses on your own. But for now just let me show you how it’s done. We’re in a pretty affluent area as you can see. Volvos and BMWs, so I’m gonna ask for hundred-dollar memberships and, if it goes well, maybe try for a couple of life memberships. That’s five hundred dollars. We’ll see. Are you ready? Are you psyched?”

“Yeah,” I lie.

“I said, are you ready?” he says more loudly.

“Yeah,” I say with more enthusiasm.

We go through the gate and walk up the driveway, crunching our shoes in the gravel. The camera crew follows us and starts filming. Next door a dog starts barking and in the living room a TV comes on. It’s cold and I suppress a shiver. Charles pushes the doorbell and pats me on the back.

“It’s gonna be great,” he says, grinning from ear to ear and for some reason giving me the Spock “Live long and prosper” sign from
Star Trek
.

“Great,” I say, giving him Churchill’s V for victory sign as a response. Charles beams, unaware that the V sign means something totally different back in my neck of the woods.

Man in his late thirties comes to the door. Charles gives him the rap. The man resists, looks at the camera crew, baffled, Charles keeps at him for a painful amount of time and finally the man agrees to join the CAW at the thirty-five-dollar rate.

We do two dozen more houses and Charles signs up two more people, leaves leaflets at the rest, smiling the whole time. Bill stays behind with the ones that were cooperative and gets them to sign a release form, then races to catch us up again.

“You think you can do a door on your own now, or do you want me to stand there with you?” Charles asks.

“I can do it,” I tell him.

“Great. We’ll try down this street, might be a little trickier. I’ll do this side, you the other, meet at the end, ok?”

I nod. It’s a side street, Toyotas and Hondas, rather than BMWs and Volvos, but it still looks ok. Mock Tudor houses, some with gardens, picket fences.

My first house, I ring the doorbell.

No one home, I write “N/H” on the clipboard.

I walk down the path of the second house, knock the door.

“Coming,” someone says.

The door opens, and it’s an elderly man in his seventies. Pale, white, wearing a dressing gown, smoking a cigarette.

“Hi, I’m from the Campaign for the American Wilderness and we’re in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save the ancient forests…. Er, is this an issue that concerns you at, er, all?”

“The what?” the man says.

“The CAW, we’re an environmental org—”

“Nope,” the man says, and closes the door in my face. I hear him muttering as he walks back down the hall.

I write a zero beside his door number.

Next house. One-floor bungalow, painted a kind of frostbite blue. Creepy-looking dolls in the window. In this house there’s a screen door and a porch. I open the screen door, it shuts behind me, trapping me between the two doors in the tiny porch. It’s filled with potted plants and an enamel plaque of a fat man drinking beer that says on it “Bavaria the Beautiful.”

A black woman comes to the door. Early fifties.

“Hi, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to preserve the ancient forests of—”

“Wait a minute,” she says, “I’ll get my husband.”

She goes off and calls into the back room. She returns to the front room and closes the door. Meanwhile, the kitchen door opens and a man wearing dungarees comes down the hall. There is oil all over his hands, and he’s sweating. His eyes are opaque gray and dead tired.

“Whadda ya want?” he asks suspiciously.

“Hi, I’m from the, uh, Campaign for the, uh, Wilderness, we’re in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save the forests.”

“Yeah?” he says, and I show him the literature on the clipboard. The pictures of the trees before and after deforestation. The quotes from logging company executives and politicians. The list of endangered species in the Amazon.

“What are you selling?” he asks gruffly.

“Nothing. I, er, I’m campaigning to save the trees, the old growth forests. There’s only—”

“Do I have to pay anything?”

“No, not really. It’s a—”

“Ok, where do I sign?”

I give him the clipboard and he takes a pen out of his lapel pocket and signs the sheet next to his door number. He gets oil all over the acetate cover.

“Ok?” he says.

“Yes, and if, er, you’d like to, um, make a donation?” I say to him, with a great deal of embarrassment.

“No, don’t think so.”

“Ok, well, thanks again.”

“My pleasure, glad to help.”

I turn and walk down the path. He closes the screen door behind me.

Shit, I say to myself, and mark zero on my sheet. I walk to the next house. I ring the bell and no one answers and I write down “N/H.”

No answer in the next four houses and in the fifth house an Asian girl comes to the door, wearing a Girl Scout uniform.

“Are your parents in?”

“Not allowed to talk to strangers,” she says bravely, and shuts the door.

I turn and walk back down the path. Smart kid, I say to myself.

Next house, no one home. Next house, no dice. Next house, old white guy in a crumpled suit, standing behind a patched screen door.

“Rain, finally, cool us down,” he says.

“Yeah, listen, I’m in your neighborhood tonight campaigning to save—”

“Blue steel .44,” he says. “Used to have that.”

“What?”

“You know what gun I got now?”

“No.”

“A Walther PPK,” he says, his eyes narrowing.

“Really?” I say.

“Uh-huh. Never be too careful opening the door to strangers,” he says.

I look down and I notice, sure enough, that he’s holding a firearm in his left hand, bouncing it there on his hip.

“You know who has that gun?” he asks.

“Uh, no. No, I don’t.”

“James Bond. That’s James Bond’s gun,” he says, and gives me an off-putting smile.

“Well, that’s terrific, thank you very much, I’ll have to go,” I say.

“What do you want, boy?”

“I just wanted to leave you a leaflet, here you are.”

“Are you Scottish?”

“Irish, Irish. Well, look, thanks very much.”

“Irish, Scottish, isn’t it all the same thing?” he says.

“No, no, quite different. Well, thanks anyway, have a good night,” I say hastily, and back down the path.

When I meet up with Charles at the end of the street, I have signed up no one. I don’t tell him about the man with the gun in case he thinks I’m hysterical. But I take twenty bucks of my own money and pretend that I got two donations of ten bucks each.

“That’s pretty good, Alex, that was a more difficult street, tough test. Look, we’ll do a few more houses together and meet up with the others, ok?”

“Where’s the film crew?” I ask him.

“Oh, they ran out of light, but I think they got enough for tonight,” Charles says.

He doesn’t elaborate about who they were or what they were doing, so I let the matter drop.

Charles takes us back down to a more affluent street and I wonder if this was all a deliberate ploy to blood me on a lot of rejections to see if I got downhearted.

Sure enough, back in the richer street we get three more memberships and even a life membership.

The rain has eased and when we pick up the others, everyone is excited and happy. They’ve had a good night and a third of the money they raised will be going to them. We drive back to the city, everyone talking, laughing. We stop for pizza in a grungy-looking place on a slip road close to the highway.

We scrunch together several tables. The lights flicker. The pizza bakes.

Charles is in high spirits. He talks and, eventually, the attention turns to me, as the new boy.

“Alexander, what would you be doing right now in Ireland?” Charles asks.

“Well, it’s five a.m. there, so I’d probably be sleeping,” I say.

“No, no, no, that’s not what I mean, what do you do over there, at night, for fun, are there pizza places like here?”

“Uh, not that many and they’re expensive, pizza is more of a restaurant thing,” I say, a bit disconcerted to be the center of attention.

“So what would you do?” Charles asks.

“Go to the pub, I suppose,” I say.

“Are the pubs really full of musicians and music and stuff?” Amber asks.

“Some of them, but most aren’t, they—”

“I was in this pub in Dublin and it took forever for my pint of Guinness to come, I thought they’d forgotten about me,” Charles says. “They were so slow.”

“It’s supposed to be slow, Guinness has to be poured very slowly,” I explain.