Rock Solid

by Paul Slatter

  She looked at him, frowned and said, “Took himself all the way downtown and parked under a picture of himself instead of driving to the police station or even perhaps calling them on his cell phone?”

  They were both right and she knew it, even if Chendrill was stretching things a bit. The police woman, who liked riding shotgun on the night shifts because more things went down, was also wondering what the guy had said to piss off the cabbie that bad. Loving the fact she’d got the chance, at last, to meet the legend that was Charles Chuck Chendrill she said, “People are saying it was you who’d worked out who killed Daltrey, you know that don’t you?”

  Chendrill smiled. He liked her and could see she was not a by-the-book type of person and used her brain. Normally he would have skirted around it, but he answered truthfully, and nodded to the screen, ‘You’re not wrong and the truth is I’m lucky to be here.”

  The police woman answered him and pushed the envelope a little further, “And you know what happened to the Russian?” Chendrill smiled. He did, then giving her a look and pointing again to the computer monitor, the picture of the cabbie there half out the window with his field hockey stick, he said, “Yeah and he had nothing to do with it.”

  ******

  The sun was just breaking, filling the city with fresh new light as Chendrill drove back towards Dan’s. The crazed cabbie had been told off and sent home with his tail between his legs. Chendrill had the police woman’s number in his back pocket—though he knew he’d never call. The woman saying before he’d left, “All’s good with Dan, as long as it’s the first and last time it happens.” Then she’d given him the slightest of looks that sent instantaneous blood flowing south to a place where, due to the pills, there was already plenty of activity, and handed him her card. “But if there’s anything else you might like to talk to me about, then you’ll find me here.”

  But he wouldn’t call—even if she was super fine, he thought as he drove, heading into the rising morning sun. He wouldn’t call, no he wouldn’t, no not at all, he wouldn’t—no, no, he wasn’t going to call.

  He reached Dan’s home, parked up behind the Ferrari, and opened the front door; and although he had done nothing wrong, he felt a small wave of guilt wash over him as he saw Trish standing in the hallway in her dressing gown with her eyes all red from crying. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

  She came to him and held him tight, saying, “This monster had hold of Dan in his room and I burst in and stopped her.”

  “What?”

  “This woman came back with Dan and attacked him and I threw her out.”

  Chendrill asked, “Where’s Dan?”

  “He’s asleep, he just came upstairs, drank a pint of milk and ate all the cheese, then went to sleep. He didn’t even take a shower.”

  But Chendrill did. And as he stood there tired and naked with the water running down his body, he wondered what on earth Dan had gotten into this time to upset his mother so badly. He got out and stood naked in the bathroom with a towel against his chest and looked in the mirror, his dick still like a drooping rocket halfway from lift off. Reaching down, he picked up his jeans and pulled the Asian police woman’s card from his pocket, looked at it once and then ripped it to shreds, throwing it into the toilet and flushing it out of harm’s way. Then, with his dick still at half mast, he walked naked into Trish’s bedroom, got in next to her, and fell asleep holding her in his arms.

  Two hours later, the phone rang, and he answered to an irate Sebastian saying, “Chuck there’s an emergency—Dan’s stolen a car.” Chendrill’s first thought was what’s new there? Then he wondered how the hell Sebastian had heard about it, as he believed he’d already put the incident to bed.

  He said, “How did you find out about that?”

  Sebastian said, “It’s on the news, Chuck.”

  And then they came in, Chendrill driving the Aston back downtown, Dan sitting there still in his mum’s flip-flops and a creased shirt, not speaking with Chendrill saying, “Your mum was crying, told me you’d been attacked.

  He had, he thought, but kind of in a good way, except for the fact his face was sore as hell. But what the woman had done with her mouth, he wouldn’t mind that again, even if his balls did hurt. He was right, he thought, about what he’d thought earlier—no doubt about it—it was better than the jar of liver or that pound of Brie his mum won in the raffle at work that time. Dan said, “Yeah.”

  Chendrill waited for more, but it did not come. So, he said, “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And is there anything else you want to tell me.”

  “About what?”

  “About the fact your mother was crying?”

  “What, are you my fucking dad now?”

  Chendrill waited, wondering if this was what being a father to a teenage boy was like, then said, throwing it out there, “I think your mother, maybe, would like me to be.”

  Dan said, “That was quick—she was with the baker longer.”

  Chendrill took the hit from the kid, who was worried about his mother, then said, “Thanks, next time you steal a car, you better know this—I won’t claw you out of every bucket of shit you get yourself into, even if I’m with your mum or if that’s what Sebastian’s paying me to do.”

  Dan looked at him, thinking, shit. Then he said, “I never stole nothing.”

  Chendrill slowed the Aston to a stop, pulling up along Hastings next to a second-hand car dealership that Chendrill knew had a history of being no better than Dan and said, “Why was that guy chasing you with the field hockey stick?”

  “Because he didn’t like me,” Dan said.

  Chendrill closed his eyes and took a deep breath thinking, well thanks for clearing that up. Then he said, “Maybe you’d like to elaborate?”

  Dan stayed quiet, looking at the cars, wondering if they were any good. Knowing Chendrill was not going anywhere till he started talking, he said, “The guy doesn’t like me ’cos he drives around all day and night round town seeing me naked, it rubs him up the wrong way, it’s a religious thing.”

  Chendrill got it—sometimes over the last week, he’d been feeling the same way. It was nonsense though. He said, “Maybe this is the same guy you spoke of earlier, and the reason he’s been looking for you is that in the past you’d run on him and he recognized you, how about that?”

  Dan said, “How’d you know that?”

  Chendrill replied, “Because I was also young once—and you just told me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Archall Diamond had it all worked out. There was a tide that turned at midnight and he’d decided the dentist was going to be on it. It was risky because people were still out at that time along the river fishing and fucking in their cars, so he’d have to pick his moment. Also, there was the issue with this Chendrill—the ape who drove the Aston.

  What he thought he’d do is get the truck loaded with what he needed beforehand and attach a small winch, then he’d put two wooden planks in so he could drag the fucker up if the dentist was too heavy. Getting him on his own was going to be the hard part. The last thing he needed to do was Taser him in the backroom surgery of the basement suite and take a chance that Alla was going to find out and have it cause problems in the relationship, which he knew it could. This is why he’d given up that idea. What he needed to do was be slick and shrewd, which he knew he was—after all, he’d done the birdman and got away with it. But if it got out he’d done the dentist, then people would be putting two and two together and he’d be getting a rep with the ladies he didn’t need, especially if things didn’t work out with Alla, which happens—he knew that.

  There was a lot to think about. The caveman days of bashing a love rival over the head with a rock were long past. Man had evolved and the consequences involving a woman’s feelings needed to be taken into consideration—he was, after all, a ladies’ man.

  ******

  Rann Singh walked around his new ranch home that was once his grandfather
’s for what seemed now the hundredth time. But now he’d gotten off his ass and found the money to buy it back; only no one was coming and he was alone. All the work he’d done, all the nights of following those sad fuckers around the East Side, helping them convert their ways to the good—all via cash transactions—was worthless. Yes, he had the ranch with the view he was already bored of, yes, he had the African village and the fields that stretched out to the forest, but he didn’t have his granddaddy to come and enjoy it with him, and he was bitter.

  Yes, he’d been around the village talking to his workers he’d be paying a pittance to, and he’d played with their children as they hung on his arms and legs as he walked through smiling and enjoying them, but it couldn’t break the heartache. He walked back out to the deck, kicking out at nothing, and stared at the mountains, looking at his Land Rover, considering taking another trip into town to see the estate agent with his limp wristed handshake to ask him when he’d be delivering his zebra like he’d promised. He’d been their twice earlier, thrashing the Land Rover through the gears and thinking it was going to roll on the corners, telling Joseph he couldn’t come because it was going to get nasty.

  Standing there outside the agent’s window and spitting on the ground, waiting for him to come in even though it was a Sunday. Wondering where he lived and leaving heavy messages on the guy’s answering service in English and Swahili. He’d promised it and he could take it out that fucking fat commission he’d earned off the South African asshole who’d called him a Choot and given him a shotgun but no cartridges to go with it.

  But the South African was another issue—the first was the zebra, and he wanted it.

  He walked back into the ranch and into the main bedroom. It was a huge room with log walls and a king size bed in the center. Overhead, a fan wafted the mosquito net he’d so often dreamed of sleeping under, dreaming of laying with the windows open listening to the night and feeling the breeze coming off the mountain on his face until he slept, dreaming of waking to the call of morning birds as dawn broke. But not now. He looked under the bed and saw Joseph hiding there, sleeping, just as his grandfather told him he would often do, but even this wasn’t funny now. He kicked the bed, waking Joseph, and followed him back out onto the deck as he scurried off, disappearing out the back.

  He stood there for the longest time, thinking about it all without moving anything except his tongue and lips as he spat, not caring anymore if his phlegm hit the wooden deck or the whitewashed rocks of the garden below. The lawyer with the big mouth would be getting a visit soon. He’d tell him, he’s going to die—that’s what happens here in Africa, or whatever the prick had said, standing there with his briefcase and soft suede beige desert boots like these Brit colonials all like to wear, like they were the fucking elite. Yeah, he’d get a fucking visit too, he’d tell him to cough in for the zebra and to stop being a fucking prick mouth piece.

  Soon it was dark, the birds going to bed, the village children not long after, some fires still burning, lighting up the side of the huts as the women finished cooking. Rann’s dinner was still on the table, half eaten where Joseph had left it along with the Tusker beer that was long drank. It would be sorted tomorrow, he thought, by this time tomorrow it would be done. He’d be up early with the birds in the morning and head straight into town to catch the estate agent before he’d put the key in the lock of the front door, and whisper in his ear that he had till the end of the week to get a zebra on his lawn as promised—and it had better be a young one, he didn’t want something on its last legs that couldn’t outrun the kids, or he’d be coming back to stick the Land Rover through the shop window.

  Then he’d see the lawyer, and tell him what he thought of his boots and his smart mouth. But the real issue was that South African cunt who’d been stupid enough to call him a Choot and leave his forwarding address in the living room. Bad move, you fucking Nazi fuck. Rann was coming after him right after he’d been to see the lawyer. He’d better have the engine running on that plane, Rann thought, because it was going to be a long old ride to the coast; and by the time Rann was there, he wasn’t going to be in a good mood whilst he’d be standing on the doorstep of his waterfront mansion in Mombasa asking that fuck to repeat the exact words he’d said to him as he’d left the house the day before. He’d see if the man had the guts to do it, to look him in the eye and call the guy who’d just given him $200,001 cash for his house a Choot.

  And that’s exactly what he was going to do.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been standing out there in the darkness staring into nothing, oblivious to the mosquitos and the sounds of the village as it finally settled, the fires dying, their warmth and golden light fading as just the ambers glowed.

  He went into the bedroom’s en suite bathroom and got ready for bed. He took a shower and tried to calm down. The water was still warm from the fire Joseph lit just before dusk under the forty-five-gallon drum that contained water out back. He finished and dried himself with a towel so old he wondered if it went back all the way to his grandfather’s time there before that Nazi with the big mouth had cheated the place from him.

  Rann walked to the bed and lay down. He looked up at the mosquito net knotted above him hanging from an ornate hook dug into a thick wooden rafter above. He could stand on his tip toes and get it down, stretch it out around the bed, protect himself from the mosquitos hiding in the shadows waiting for him to sleep so they could swoop down and take his blood. But what was the point? What was the point of any of it, being here laying on the bed his grandfather no longer wanted and that had been home to a guy who’d just called him a cunt?

  He closed his eyes and listened to the darkness as the crickets sang their night song. The breeze gently blew the leaves in the trees. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow he’d sort out these people who had mocked him, reneging on a deal that was nothing to them but everything to him. He thought of that guy with the plane, laying there five hundred miles away on a mattress loaded with money. Tomorrow, tomorrow he’d extinguish the rage that roared within him. If he was lucky, the bodyguard would be there with the South African, and he would get tough and come at him, so Rann could show him how to fight.

  And closing his eyes, he listened to the night, breathing the mountain air that swept through the forest and across the fields that he owned deep into his lungs. He let it out slowly, over and over, just as his Sensei had taught him during his training days, until his body had unconsciously taken over—breathing until he relaxed, allowing him control enough to permit sleep, despite the rage that surged within. But when sleep eventually did come, it was a sleep fitful and turbulent, filled with angry dreams of conflict that shook him into semi-consciousness hour by hour until at last, at four a.m., he awoke from a dream in which the world was shaking and opened his eyes to find five Africans who’d come in off the mountains holding pangar machetes in their hands standing there around his bed in the darkness.

  Rann Singh’s Sikh god Guru Nanak was looking out for him.

  ******

  Charles Chuck Chendrill stopped the Aston outside of the house in Burnaby with its basement suite where he’d first met the dentist named Dennis who’d lost his licence because he’d married a woman who was a whore and she’d destroyed him. The last time they’d spoken, things were good again between them, and there had been talk of a new future in the remote Northern Territories, where some of the inhabitants wanted to keep hold of their remaining teeth. “It would pay well,” he’d said to Chendrill, and Chendrill had felt happy for him.

  Closing the door quietly, he walked down the driveway and knocked on the suite’s side entrance and waited, the lights on but no TV. Stepping back, he stood in the darkness watching the light on the curtains, the basement suite apartment appearing still within. Then he saw movement, someone at the window, then another, a figure coming from the back room moving towards the window that looked out towards the front road. The curtain moved slightly and then the figure crossed, casting a huge s
hadow through the front door as it opened. Chendrill stepped forward out of the shadow, “Dennis, who are you hiding from?”

  But he wasn’t hiding from anyone—the idiot who was sniffing around his wife was already sitting inside.

  Archall Diamond sat in the living room with a pair of Ray-Bans on as though any second the sun may come out, even though it was night-time. The ‘gangsta’ sitting there gawking at Alla while Dennis messed about in his bullshit surgery. Moments before he’d just been about to lean in and ask her to leave her husband for him so he wouldn’t have to kill him, giving her the option before things went too far, when he’d heard the door and felt irritated at the interruption, sneaking a look and shitting his pants when he saw it was Chendrill’s Aston Martin.

  Seeing Chendrill, Dennis smiled. “Chuck, just the man I wanted to see. How are you?”

  Dennis let him in and Chendrill looked at Archall as though he knew he was there all along.

  “I was about to call you about a problem that is developing,” said Dennis.

  And he had been, the gangster guy with the stupid tooth was becoming a pest. Chendrill smiled at Alla and sat himself down at the kitchen table where he always sat, guessing Archall Diamond was the problem. “Well I’m here now, what’s up?” Dennis just stood there, not knowing what to say.

  Already knowing the answer from putting two and two together, Chendrill asked, loud enough for everyone to hear, if it was Dennis who’d fixed Diamond’s front tooth.

  “Yes, it looks really good.”

  Chendrill looked at Dennis, unsurprised that the man was doing backstreet work now that he had his mind in gear and imagined he had a set up out back. Looking past him, he saw Alla, who still managed to look gorgeous, despite living through her own hell. Archall sat opposite her in his sunglasses, mesmerized by the beautiful woman sitting politely with a blanket across her lap. Archall and Patrick are the same, though, Chendrill thought—both men were transfixed by the woman and neither was half the man her husband was.