Raines, a twenty-year DEC employee who’d clawed her way up the ranks from summer intern to Deputy Director of Communications, returned to the conference table and leafed through the last four pages of Carlyle’s report. He had examined all three volumes of the American Canoe Association’s River Safety Report and concluded that while there were often a half-dozen serious accidents a year on stretches as difficult as the Hudson Gorge, “two guides had never died in the same year.”
The phone rang. “It’s Elliot. What’s up?”
“I’m in the Executive Conference Room. It’s the only place that’s not bugged.” The room had cost a quarter of a million to trick out. It had an eighteen-foot teak conference table, a mahogany credenza, three overhead projectors, two computer-linked light screens, a plasma TV, and a state-of-the-art lectern with video-conferencing capabilities. It had been completely renovated because some up-and-coming young bureaucrat had wanted to demonstrate his loyalty to the new Republican regime.
Abel Elliot marched in five minutes later. He was dressed like a Deputy Commissioner: pale gray suit, yellow tie, off-white shirt, and tan, hand-stitched loafers. Someone in DEC’s field staff thought he was gay, but two former secretaries, now exiled to an office in Buffalo, knew better.
“I’m sorry to hear about your guides,” he said. “Where did it happen?”
“On the Indian River.”
“Where’s that?”
“A hundred miles north of here and twenty west of Warrensburg.”
Elliot was a policy guy who did everything he could to avoid “walking through muck” as he called it. After picking up his Yale law degree, he’d gotten this job because he’d spent over a decade running campaigns for the state Republican Party.
He grabbed the phone. “Send in two coffees, please. Black.” He turned to Raines. “Who’s running the preliminary investigation?”
“Guy named Richard Carlyle. He’s a former guide but now a criminologist at the university.”
“Seems like a strange choice.”
“It lets us show the environmental crowd we’re on their side.”
“Come on, Karen. They’re not paying us to protect birds. We’re the firewall between the timber people and the tree huggers. The only thing we’re preserving is the governor’s ability to win the next election.”
“Carlyle’s just our point man for now.” She gestured to the folder on the desk. “You want to see his credentials?”
“You handle the case. Leave me out of it.” Elliot glanced at his daily schedule. “Any chance these accidents will cause problems for us or the Commissioner?”
“I don’t see how. Our forest rangers in District Four were doing their jobs and the guides had both passed their licensing exams.”
“Any way we can lay these quote-unquote unfortunate events on the outfitter?”
“Probably not. He has a spotless record. His father may be a problem, however. He’s got political connections all over the state and in Washington. You know the drill. We give him permits to build those malls of his and he makes financial contributions, through third parties of course, to our candidates.”
“We can’t seem helpless.” Elliot pushed his coffee away. “Wagner, the Congressman for that district, says tourism’s dropping.”
“I promise. The news will not get more toxic.”
“When will this mess get cleared up?”
“A crew is checking out the site of the second death today. They should be able to give us some answers soon.”
“Is Carlyle going with them?”
“We had to convince the university to set him free for a few days.”
“What’s his angle in all this?”
“He was sitting right next to the first guide who died.”
“Let me know as soon as you get some news.”
Raines knew she was being set up. If the department were held responsible for these two deaths, Elliot would demand her resignation.
He stood up and walked to the door. “The paper said it took that first one forever to drown.”
“That’s not the worst part. Fifty people watched it happen. You want to go up there and examine the site?”
“I’m not a river person, Karen. You know that.”
“What do we do if the investigation shows that the department is at fault?”
“We make Carlyle the fall guy. He’s the common denominator, a person who goes on only two trips the whole year, and a guide dies on both of them.”
“If it comes to that,” Raines said, “it could work.”
Nine
Tuesday noon
“He cut your boat to ribbons?” Leo Wells asked.
“Into little pieces is more like it,” Carlyle said. “I thought we’d have to spend the night out there.”
“What finally happened?”
“Two DEC rangers found us. They were pissed as hell that we didn’t tell them what we were doing.”
Carlyle was sitting across from Wells in the Acropolis Diner in Albany’s derelict port district, a maze of food warehouses, scrap metal yards, body shops, and oil storage tanks.
The Acropolis was all brushed aluminum and fake leather, but since cops had begun stopping by every four hours, street kids quit robbing the place at knifepoint.
Gus “Teddy” Theodorakis, the owner, thought of himself as a comic running this joint only until his breakthrough moment on the “Tonight Show.” “This menu,” he told his customers, “is my masterpiece.” He’d named the lamb kebob “El Greco” and claimed that the Greek salad would put huge stones on Michelangelo’s David.
Because he was due back at the ranger station in Ray Brook at noon, Wells was wearing work clothes: a Gore-Tex parka, down vest, plaid shirt, and hard-shell plastic mountain boots.
“I like your gold-rimmed glasses,” Carlyle said.
“It’s the existential look. Women find it irresistible.”
“You look beat. What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ve been up all night with Jack.” Wells’s father had been diagnosed with dementia five years ago.
“How long’s he been in a nursing home?”
“Three years. He went from an appellate lawyer to a ghost overnight.”
“Jesus.”
“Let’s drop it.” Wells dumped three sugars in his coffee. “You and Beth still in the city?”
“We’ve got a place outside of town now.” Carlyle wiped his glasses. “How come
