Coach looked at her watch.
‘Christ, I’ve got a class to get to!’
‘Me, too,’ I said.
We walked together back up to the main building.
As we were about to go our separate ways, Coach said, ‘And thanks for the workout. I don’t think I’ve run that fast in years!’
The Labor Party office was easy to find.
It was an otherwise ordinary-looking building in an ordinary-looking street except for the two enormous pictures of Ron Gatto, the longstanding local member, that took up both of the windows.
I guess you have to be pretty confident about your looks before you get them blown up to that size.
No volcanic pimples about to erupt, no crazy nose hair, no stray snot.
But Ron Gatto had the look of man who was pretty confident about everything: his looks, his golf game, his electoral majority.
Seeing him like that, larger than life, immediately reminded me of the last time I’d seen him in real life, in Nimbin, walking with my dad and Rocco Taverniti and another man, speaking in Calabrian.
I stepped inside and there were even more large photos of Ron Gatto, longstanding local member. As well as all sorts of political propaganda: the Labor Party is great, the Labor Party is wonderful. Ron Gatto is great. Ron Gatto is wonderful.
‘Mate, can I help you?’ asked the man at the reception desk.
‘Hello,’ I said, my voice loud and clear. ‘My name is Dominic Silvagni, I’m from Coast Boys Grammar, and I’m here because I’m currently doing an assignment on the history of the Labor Party in the Gold Coast area.’
The man looked at my face, at my school uniform, back at my face, and said, ‘Really?’
‘Absolutely!’ I said. ‘And I’m aiming to get an excellent mark.’
I’m not sure what role I was playing, and why exactly I was playing it, but now that I was in character, I had trouble getting out.
‘Is there anybody I could speak to?’ I said.
‘Well, Joy’s your woman,’ he said.
I figured that Joy must be Joy Wheeler, the woman who had sent the less-than-encouraging email to Imogen.
‘I’ll just see if she’s free.’
While he went back to see if my woman Joy was free, I took the opportunity to, as we say in the business, case the joint.
Because the way I was seeing it, if I couldn’t personally coax Imogen’s data from Joy Wheeler, and if ClamTop didn’t work, then I’d have to resort to less subtle methods, like break-and-enter.
I don’t want to brag or anything, but Diablo Bay, Fiends of the Earth office, Hound’s office; you name it, I’d broken it and I’d entered it.
But straightaway I could see that this place would be a challenge.
It was an electronic fortress, CCTV all over the place, and I could tell that it was all good-quality stuff, not some crappy DIY kit bought off eBay.
I guessed there were two ways of looking at this: either they were really, really cautious or they really, really had something to hide.
If I did have to break-and-enter, it wouldn’t be easy.
Was I willing to take that risk?
The man returned with Joy Wheeler.
It didn’t take me long to realise that Joy Wheeler should have been charged with false advertising because there was nothing joyful about her at all.
She had one of those emoticon faces that seemed to be stuck in frown mode.
And when she talked she had a habit of taking what I said, sticking a question mark on the end and then handing it back to me.
‘So you’re doing some sort of project, are you?’
‘So you go to Grammar, do you? So your name’s Dom, is it?’
Eventually I decided it was time to go on the attack.
‘Are your records all electronically archived?’ I said, thinking that if they were I might be able to access them with good old ClamTop.
For a second I thought she was going to say, ‘So you’re asking me if all our records are electronically archived, are you?’
But instead she said, ‘The Labor Party of Queensland takes its rich history very seriously.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ I said.
It was a pretty innocent comment, but I could see that Joyless Joy thought otherwise, that she took it as a challenge, because she said, ‘Come with me, please!’
I followed her into a windowless room that was obviously some sort of library: there were shelves crammed with books, overflowing filing cabinets.
Another woman, also pretty joyless, was placing a newspaper clipping on a scanner.
She looked up when we entered.
‘How we going with the digitisation, Helen?’ said Joy.
‘Almost there,’ said Helen. ‘The sooner we get this stuff off site, the better.’
Joy threw me a triumphant look, but I’d already seen enough to know my next move would include ClamTop.
‘Look, I’ve probably got more than enough information to start with,’ I said.
And that’s exactly when longstanding local member Ron Gatto walked into the room.
Obviously this Ron Gatto wasn’t as big as the two Ron Gattos outside – I mean, there was no way his face was two metres wide – but he still had an enormous presence.
It was almost like he was radioactive, because he had these waves coming off him, and like radioactive waves they were dangerous.
‘What’s going on here?’ he said.
After Joyless Joy explained what was going on, Radioactive Ron fixed me with a look.
‘What did you say your name was?’ he demanded.
‘Dom,’ I said, thinking that it was probably a good idea to keep my surname well out of it.
‘Dom,’ he said, rolling the word around in his mouth. ‘So let me guess: you’re like Prince, or Madonna, or Warnie, you’re that famous you only need the single moniker.’
As he said this, he threw Joy a look and she responded with a stuttering laugh. Joyless Joy laughed!
Okay, Mr Gatto, if that’s how you want to play.
Now I wished his face was two metres wide, because I wanted to study it, see what his reaction was when I pulled the pin on the grenade and said, ‘My surname’s Silvagni.’
But there was no reaction, nothing. The blankest of poker faces.
‘Silvagni?’ said Joy. ‘I’ve seen that name in the archives somewhere.’
Ron Gatto’s paw grabbed me by the shoulder and he said, ‘Why don’t you come into my office, and I’ll show you some stuff. The Labor Party of Queensland has a rich history of which we are immensely proud.’
Which is exactly what I did.
Most of the rich history he showed me was about the many and varied accomplishments of the Gold Coast Labor Party under the stewardship (his word!) of Ron Gatto. But I didn’t absorb much of what he was saying, because I kept thinking about what Joy had said about the Silvagni name. As far as I knew, we were the only Silvagnis on the whole Coast, but when had my family ever, ever been involved with the Labor Party?
It was time to get out of here. I thanked Ron Gatto and I thanked Joy Wheeler and I thanked the man behind the counter and walked back onto the street. As I did, I noticed a parked fire truck and a small crowd gathered around an open manhole.
‘Well back, please, folks,’ said a man in a yellow fluoro jacket.
He peered into the manhole and said, ‘Any luck, Mal?’
‘There she is,’ said Mal from somewhere in the drains. ‘Here, pussy! Here, pussy! Gotcha!’
There was a cheer as a bedraggled cat appeared, handed from Mal to Mal’s workmate and then to its owner.
And Mal himself got a round of applause as he appeared, a huge cat-saving smile on his face. The two men pulled the cover back on the manhole and made for the fire truck.
On the bus on the way home I googled Silvagni and ALP.
All I got was an Italian mountain climber called Claudio Silvagni who had managed to climb all the major peaks in the Alps in o
ne season.
So I put Gold Coast Labor Party instead of ALP, but I got nothing.
No connection at all between Labor and Silvagni. I recalled what Miranda had said, that Google wasn’t the friend I thought it was, that it censored results.
Surely not, I thought.
But what if it had no results to censor? What if the information had been censored before Google even got its electronic hands on it?
Instead of heading straight through the door of our house, I diverted to Gus’s house. He wasn’t in the kitchen or his office, but I could hear the doof-doof sound of techno from the garage and I knew he must be in there. I know what you’re thinking: Gus likes techno? When he’s lifting weights, yes.
The garage door was open.
‘Gus,’ I called through it. ‘It’s me.’
‘Enter!’ he said.
There was nothing sophisticated about Gus’s gym: a bare concrete floor, a few benches, bars and free weights. And a boom box belting out techno.
Gus was spread out on the bench, one foot on the ground, hands on a bar lumpy with weights, ready to press. I did some mental arithmetic: seventy kilos, including the bar! What, at seventy-four years of age, was Gus trying to prove?
My grandfather hoisted the bar from the rest and started pumping. The first seven lifts he did easily, a study in style and economy of power. He struggled a bit with the eighth lift. Struggled even more with the ninth. And on the tenth lift his elbows remained bent, the bar hovering only a few centimetres above his chest.
‘You right, Gus?’ I said, worried that those seventy kilos were going to crash back onto him. ‘You need a spot?’
The answer was a grunt so loud it out-technoed the techno. And slowly Gus lifted, willed the bar upwards, every muscle, every fibre in his arms straining. Until the bar dropped back onto the rests with a seventy-kilo clang.
Gus sat up. ‘Not bad for an old codger, eh?’ he said, his face brick-red from the exertion.
‘For an old codger,’ I said.
I’d thought that Gus had lost his leg because he hadn’t been up to it, because he, unlike Dad, hadn’t had what it took to repay The Debt. But it occurred to me that maybe I had this wrong: Gus had been totally up to it; he lost his leg because of other reasons.
‘Hey Gus, were us Silvagnis ever involved with the Labor Party?’
Gus laughed and said, ‘Lucky you didn’t ask your father that question.’
‘I’m asking you,’ I said, getting some of that seventy kilos of iron in my voice. ‘Were we?’
Gus sighed and got up from the bench.
Now that we were eye to eye he said, ‘I’ve told you before, but now I’m begging you: please stop digging, Dom. Because if you don’t, there’s going to be hell to pay.’
‘Okay,’ I said, but Okay I didn’t think, because a terrible thought had found its way into my head. Did we Silvagnis somehow have something to do with the disappearance of Mr Havilland?
THURSDAY
SCHOOL BREAK-UP
It was the last assembly for the term and Mr Cranbrook was in his element, perched high up there on the podium, microphone in his hand.
‘Boys,’ he said, and lots of other stuff as well, but I was so not tuned in to Radio Principal.
There were too many other frequencies out there competing for my attention. Like Radio What Am I Going to Do in the Holidays? And Radio Did I Really Make the Right Decision Not Racing? And Radio How Am I Going to Bust into the Labor Party Office?
I was so tuned in to these that I didn’t notice it when it started.
It was only because the other kids around me started reacting that I tuned out of all those stations and tuned in to what was happening inside the Great Hall. Or more specifically, outside. Because there was a clattering sound from above.
‘Jesus, what’s that?’ I said.
‘I reckon somebody’s throwing rocks,’ said Charles.
Now I got it: the Great Hall was actually close to the main road. A few times previously some kids – I assumed they were kids – had lobbed rocks on the roof. And even those few rocks had made an incredible sound. But this was more than a few rocks and the sound was actually pretty scary.
‘Calm now, boys,’ said Mr Cranbrook.
SPOs were swarming all over the place now. But why were five of them headed in my direction?
‘Dominic Silvagni?’ said one of them. I nodded. ‘We’re getting you out of here,’ he said.
Before I could say anything, they’d surrounded me in a carapace again and smuggled me out of there and into the principal’s office.
Within a few minutes, a posse of authority arrived: there was the de-podiumed Mr Cranbrook and Mr Iharos and Coach Sheeds and Mr Theissen.
‘Who in the hell were they?’ I said.
‘Language, please!’ said Mr Iharos.
‘Given the circumstances, the use of “hell” might not be so inappropriate today,’ said Mr Cranbrook.
Mr Iharos didn’t say anything, but he looked peeved.
‘They’re the same people who were here the other day,’ said Mr Cranbrook.
‘But what are they protesting about now?’ I said.
Mr Cranbrook and Mr Iharos exchanged looks.
‘Dominic, though we fully support your decision, we do wish you had warned us that you intended to retract your withdrawal.’
‘Retract my withdrawal?’
‘Yes, your withdrawal from the team to go to Rome.’
‘But I didn’t retract anything,’ I said.
More looks were exchanged.
‘Have you checked your emails lately?’ said Coach Sheeds.
No, actually I haven’t, because your school has a policy about checking emails during school hours.
‘Do you mind?’ I said, taking out my iPhone.
‘No, of course not,’ said Mr Cranbrook.
Mr Iharos looked even more peeved.
I clicked on the Mail app.
Checking for mail …
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
I scanned the emails.
Your decision to retract …
After much discussion …
Reinstate your position …
Our investigation shows that the original withdrawal email was indeed ‘phished’.
Suddenly, the room felt as cold as a freezer.
The Debt had doctored the photo because they wanted me to go to Rome. Now they’d phished these emails to stop me withdrawing from the team.
I remembered what Zoe Zolton-Bander had once said, that I was ‘so owned’.
Yes, it was a pretty common expression: it seemed like everybody was ‘owned’ nowadays.
A surfer falls off his board; the wave ‘owned’ him.
Some kid got sick; the flu ‘owned’ him.
But I really was owned; not only was The Debt reaching deeper and deeper into my life, they were controlling it, too.
Now I noticed that four sets of eyes were on me, waiting for some sort of explanation.
My first instinct was to deny it.
No, of course I didn’t withdraw!
But imagine the hoo-ha that would result from that – a full freaking enquiry.
And what if the school somehow got close to The Debt? That just couldn’t happen.
‘Oh, that retraction of that withdrawal,’ I said, not quite believing how utterly lame I sounded. ‘It was sort of spur of the moment.’
‘Spur of the moment?’ said Mr Cranbrook.
I don’t think he quite believed how utterly lame I was sounding, either.
I nodded.
There was silence in the room; nobody knew what to do.
I thought of Father of Rashid, the handshake he’d given me last night because I’d done the ‘honourable thing’.
Mr Theissen shot his cuffs, adjusted his tie.
‘Here’s how I think we should handle this,’ he said.
I could see why he got to wear expensive Italian suits: he knew exactly what to do.
>
When he’d finished, Mr Cranbrook looked at me and said, ‘Okay, then our first priority is to get Dominic out of here safely.’
‘I need a word first,’ said Coach Sheeds.
Here we go, I thought. The big speech from Coach. How disappointed she was with me for changing my decision. How she thought I was made of better stuff. But I got nothing of the sort.
Instead she gave me a whole lot of logistical information about the trip to Rome.
‘I assume you have a passport,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course,’ I said.
‘Well, as long as your parents agree, you’re off to Rome!’ she said, slapping me on the back.
And I couldn’t help buying into it – I was off to Rome. To run! To compete!
Then the five SPOs took me down to the back of the school where there was a car waiting to drive me all the way home.
THURSDAY
A GRATE WAY TO DIE
It didn’t seem possible, but the next morning at nine-thirty I would be joining the team at Brisbane Airport where we would board a plane bound for Rome, Italy.
As you’d expect, Dad was totally fine with it; he even said that I didn’t have to worry about money, he’d keep my card topped up. Mom was less fine with it, but Dad soon brought her around.
‘He’ll be the first Silvagni to visit the old country,’ he said.
‘You’ve seriously never been to Italy?’ said Toby, obviously shocked that his own parents had not visited the land of the fabled tiramisu.
Mom and Dad exchanged looks.
‘Not technically,’ said Dad. ‘But we might’ve sneaked over the border during that last ski trip to the Alps. The way your mother skis, you never know.’
Ski humour, like golf humour, is pretty much wasted on me.
Besides, I was still coming to terms with how I felt about going to Rome. I contain multitudes. I shouldn’t be going, I lost the race. I contain multitudes. I should be going, I was a better runner than Rashid. But cutting through all that was one absolute – The Debt had spoken.
And I still hadn’t talked to Imogen.
Instead of playing the usual country-and-western song: my baby done left me but I still look at her contact details, I played another one: my baby done left me but I’m gonna try to ring her.
Fetch the Treasure Hunter Page 4