Hidden River (Five Star Paperback) (24 page)

“I’m sorry. He sounds like a bastard,” I said.

“Yeah. He was, still is, probably. I don’t want to talk about it. What did your parents do?”

“My parents were both teachers, math and English. Dad’s retired, Mum’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, uh, what did your mom die of? I mean, if you don’t mind…”

“She had cervical cancer, it was misdiagnosed for a while and when it was diagnosed it was probably too late, they tried some alternative treatments, but those things don’t work,” I said simply.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “How old were you when she died?”

“I was eighteen, it was my second year of university, it was really hard, my siblings were in England and my dad was doing all this political shit, Mum was practically on her own, it was awful, really. She was tough, though, she said we should all get on with our lives.”

“I’m so sorry,” Amber said, and stopped for a minute to give me a look of real sympathy. She touched my hand again. I squeezed hers.

“My poor mother might as well be dead,” she said, her face sad with the memory.

“What’s the matter?”

“She’s only sixty-eight, but she has early-onset Alzheimer’s, hardly recognizes me, it’s awful. Charles had her flown out here to Denver, to a wonderful place. Oh, my goodness. Actually, I don’t want to talk about that, either, it’s terrible.”

I nodded sympathetically. But sharing that had brought me closer to her.

“To be honest, I don’t really like it here in Denver that much,” she offered after a while. “It’s a poor excuse for a city.”

“If you don’t like it, why do you stay?” I asked.

“Oh, Charles has to be here, for political reasons, you wouldn’t really understand. All politics is local in this country. We have to be here.”

“And does Charles have political ambitions?”

“I suppose so, don’t we all?”

“Not me. You don’t really hear about many national figures coming out of Colorado, though.”

“No, no, you don’t, the last was Gary Hart and we all know what happened to him.”

“The girl on the boat, that scandal thing,” I said.

“
Monkey Business,
” she said.

I swore inwardly, for we were already back at the van. Everyone else there, Charles beaming, wearing Dockers, deck shoes and a button-down Oxford shirt. His hair gelled. He looked younger, like the millionaire commodore’s wanker son at a yacht club function. And of course he
was
a millionaire’s son and he
was
a wanker. I had to bite down a real hatred for the man. He bounded over, kissed Amber, shook my hand.

“Well, folks, hope you’re ready to party,” he said.

“What is it, Charles?” Amber asked excitedly.

“We just signed our ten thousandth member,” he said, and gave her another big kiss.

“That’s wonderful,” Amber said, her face lighting up with pleasure.

“It is, ten thousand members and the timing couldn’t be better. Momentum is what we need right now. And we have it. Ten thousand members, if we could use the mailing list and hit them up for a hundred bucks a pop, we could have a million dollars in our PAC before anyone else even begins to raise money….”

Charles suddenly realized he was being indiscreet. He looked at me and forced a grin. He turned to Amber, kissed her again.

“Darling, Robert and I have been thinking, we’re going to have a big party, honey, tell me it’s ok, but the offices are so boring, I was really thinking we could go to our house, it’s big and nice, comfortable, everyone would love it, but if you don’t think so, we could go to the offices, tell me what you think?”

“If that’s what you want, Charles,” Amber said a little reluctantly.

“Terrific, I’ll tell Robbie and Abe,” Charles said, and ran back to the others.

“So we’re going to your place?” I asked Amber.

“It’s not as clean as I would have liked, the maid only comes every other day, I hope we’re not embarrassed,” Amber said.

* * *

Amber was not embarrassed. The house was spectacular. An Edwardian pile on Eighth and Pennsylvania, the heart of Capitol Hill, a block from the governor’s mansion. Easily six thousand square feet, with a big open-plan living room decorated in what I took to be southwestern style: Indian artifacts, prints, throw rugs, pastel furniture. A Georgia O’Keeffe painting of an adobe house. Pottery that looked to be pre-Columbian. It must have cost a bloody fortune, which meant the brothers couldn’t really have been as poor as Klimmer claimed, although wealth is a relative thing. Perhaps they weren’t that well off in comparison to their fabulously wealthy father. But even so, all of us humble campaigners were awed.

Twenty of us in here easily, but we hardly filled the space. Charles ordered a crate of champagne and food deliveries from several restaurants. We all mucked in, setting a table with caviar, French cheese, Mexican dips, hot plates, paté, and the like. After a couple of minutes I found Charles, gulping from a flute of champagne.

“Wonderful house,” I said, “just the place for a future congressman.”

“What?” he asked, grinning merrily.

“You’re moving into politics, I hear,” I said.

“Alex, walls have ears, I see. Don’t breathe a word of that. Please. But yes, it’s an exciting time, a very exciting time. You know, Robert thinks they’re going to ask me to give a speech at the GOP leadership seminar in Aspen on the sixteenth. I don’t know how I’ll manage it. Can you imagine, six months ago no one had heard of CAW. We couldn’t buy publicity and now, well, I hate to bring it into the realm of the personal, but things are looking up for me. I should have listened to Amber a long time ago.”

Charles was getting a little excited. I got him another champagne.

“So Amber wanted you to go into politics?” I asked, handing him the glass.

“She’s very clever, Amber, did I tell you how we met? Completely by accident, although I’d sort of known her before. Teacher-student relationships, frowned upon, you know. Anyway, yes, what a time. The first thing was to move CAW from Boulder to Denver. It seems like years rather than weeks ago. Couple of setbacks. We had those two terrible tragic incidents. Good God.”

His tongue was really loosening, but before he could tell me any more Amber appeared, took Charles by the arm, and tried to lead him over to the window.

“Sorry, Alex, she said, there’s something we have to take care of.”

“No, don’t go,” I said, “I never get to talk to the big boss anymore, this is my big chance to weave my way into his consciousness.”

“Yeah, what’s so important, darling?” Charles said.

“Well, I think we—someone knocked over a glass of champagne, you know what that will do to the carpet,” Amber said.

“Oh my God, Amber, leave it, this is a party, Rosita will do it tomorrow. Not tonight, we’re celebrating,” Charles said.

“Do come on, Charles,” Amber insisted.

They both disappeared and, try as I might, I couldn’t get into conversation with either of them the rest of the night. The best I could do was Robert, who was not drinking and indeed looked quite somber. He was talking to Abe about politics. I joined the conversation.

“Mind if I butt in? I find the American political system fascinating,” I said.

Robert looked me up and down as if deciding whether I was worth speaking to.

“And, Alexander, are you from the North of Ireland or the S-South?” Robert asked.

“The North,” I said.

“And that’s part of the UK,” Abe said.

“Yup.”

“So you vote for the London p-parliament,” Robert said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Interesting. Alex, we were just talking about the elections, here, n-next year,” Robert said.

“They vote for the president and the House and the Senate,” I said.

“No, not the Senate, Alex, only a third of the S-Senate,” Robert said.

“But it will be the big year,” Abe said, “a presidential election year. The GOP candidates are already battling it out. Dole will win, of course.”

“I know, how could you miss it, it’s in all the papers,” I said.

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t read the p-papers. Or they read exclusively about O. J. Simpson. Only about fifty percent of people eligible to vote actually vote in this country, I think in Ireland it’s around seventy to eighty percent.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Dole will lose,” Abe said, “and Charles will help pull the party back to the center, we’ll all do well out of this.”

Robert looked at Abe as if he were saying too much.

“Oh, I’ve told Alex about August sixth, we can trust him,” Abe said.

“Good heavens, how many other people have you t-told?”

“Just Alex.”

Robert turned to me.

“Alex, p-please don’t say anything to anyone. Abe should never have told you. We d-don’t know for certain that Wegener is going to announce his r-retirement, it wouldn’t do to j-jump the gun.”

“He’s retiring, Charles’ll have the drop on everyone, the state chair wants him, the GOP needs him. Nobody should forget that this is the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, not just Reagan and Bush,” Abe said.

“I’d rather you didn’t t-talk about this,” Robert said.

Abe looked a little put out.

“Ok,” he said glumly.

“You too, Alex,” Robert insisted.

“Won’t breathe a syllable,” I said.

“Robert, can I have a word?” someone asked.

Robert excused himself and headed across the room. Abe was embarrassed and made an excuse to leave me too.

As illuminating as the conversations with Charles and Robert had been, the real shock story of the night, the real revelation, the real scoop, was to come as the party was winding down and I was on a trip to the bathroom. Never has a bog run been so profitable in my life.

Some people, it is said, keep their Academy Award in the toilet, others provide reading material in a little magazine rack next to the throne, still others attempt to affect a comedic air by plastering the toilet walls with cartoons or purchasing kitschy or otherwise risible bathroom equipment. It is more of a British thing than an American thing. Brits take equal parts delight and shame at the contemplation of bodily functions. But some Americans feel the urge to introduce levity into their bathroom arrangements. Perhaps those who have gone to prestigious Anglophile universities.

The Mulhollands had thought it a good idea to place, on their bathroom wall, framed photographs of themselves in younger days. Preferably those from the awkward teenage years. There was Charles, face covered with acne, standing beside a snowman, whose face he had also unself-consciously covered with pebble acne. There was Amber dressed in a barrister’s wig and gown, playing a male part in the operetta
Trial by Jury
. There was a grinning Charles dressed in shorts and a striped jersey standing next to a dozen other boys, in front of a massed bundle of equipment, with the legend “Governor Bright Academy Lacrosse Team, 1973.”

Under the photograph in tiny print, each boy’s full name was spelled out. Charles William Mulholland, George Rupert Dunleavy, Steven Philip Smith, Alan James Houghton…

It took me a second to recall where I’d heard the name Alan Houghton before and then it did come back. Oh yes, I remember. The missing blackmailer.

Hubris, putting a photograph like this on public display?

Not necessarily. Probably no one ever took time to read the names. But even so, I wouldn’t have done it. Perhaps Charles wasn’t as clever as I thought.

I washed my hands and face, grinned, decided it was time to go.

Robert saw me to the front door and with forced, deliberate calm, I said:

“Wonderful party, mate.”

* * *

The next morning, I skipped the Areea-John lovefest breakfast and Pat’s martinis and after a nice hit of Afghani black tar heroin I walked to the Denver Public Library and did a search on Alan Houghton. Nothing. Next I tried the Governor Bright Academy lacrosse team. A lot of stories, but the big one, the one that interested me, happened back in 1973 when Charles would have been sixteen.

The Denver Post
gave me the gist, but the
Post
itself had only two short articles and after a couple more questions, it didn’t take long before I was looking at the more extensive coverage in microfilmed copies of the
Denver Dispatch,
a now defunct newspaper that had covered the foothill communities to the west of the city.

The
Post
index had told me that an incident involving members of the lacrosse team had happened in May 1973.

Governor Bright Academy dated back to 1890, an all-boys boarding school in the southwest of Denver that, although not in the same league as Andover or Exeter, was far and away the best school in the state and indeed attracted pupils from all over the country. Bright took the boys at age eleven and kept them until they were seventeen. Academics were important, but Bright also encouraged each pupil to take part in a team sport. American football, soccer, baseball, ice hockey, basketball, lacrosse, and even cricket and rugby were offered. Those pupils who couldn’t make a team took up fencing or cross-country running or some other similar endeavor. Winter Fridays were devoted to skiing. Although Bright was a boarding school, its regime seemed to be popular with its pupils and almost half went on to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. Academic excellence was important, but sporting achievement was rewarded with scholarships and other perks.

The lacrosse team was one of the most prestigious in the school. Lacrosse is a game unknown in Ireland, so I did some side research to find out what it was.
Le jeu de la crosse
. A French-named Indian game, popular among private schools. Played by the elite, mainly in the Atlantic states and Colorado.

The incident had happened on May 1, 1973, but had gone unreported by the
Post
and
Denver Dispatch
until two days later.

Maggie Prestwick was the daughter of the stable manager. Bright had its own riding school, with a half dozen show horses and another half dozen ponies for trail hiking. Tommy Prestwick, a single father, had a grown-up daughter at college and Maggie, who lived with him in the house over the converted stable block. Tommy had a lot of responsibilities and Maggie, he told reporters, was an independent girl who he thought could look after herself. He hadn’t noticed she was missing until the morning of May 2. He called the principal, who called the police. Bright, I suspected, had good relations with the Denver police department and they could be expected to be discreet.