I was exhausted; he’d spun an elaborate web of logic and reason around me and I couldn’t move.
‘So whatever you’re doing, Dom, you’re going to stop,’ said Dad, getting some mongrel in his voice. ‘I dragged this family out of the gutter and nobody’s going to let it go back there again.’
All I could think of was running barefoot in the thin air of the Rift Valley.
‘So let’s go home,’ said Dad, taking me by the arm.
I went to put the book back, but he said, ‘No, it’s yours now.’
I followed him as he set the alarm, as he locked up his office. ‘I’m not even going to ask how you got in here.’
‘It wasn’t easy,’ I said.
Dad’s Porsche was parked right outside. We got in and he hammered it through the town and he hammered it over the range, through all the twists and turns. I mean, really hammered it. I remembered how I used to think he was a useless driver – he had been a useless driver – but that was yet another lie.
He was a gun.
It felt both exhilarating and relaxing, like I was literally in very safe hands.
When we were about a hundred kays from the Coast, on a long straight piece of the freeway, he pulled into a parking bay.
‘Toilet stop?’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit sick of driving.’
What, so we were going to sit here in this stinking parking bay while he had a nanna nap?
‘Why don’t you take the wheel for a while?’ he said.
Um, because I’m only fifteen.
Um, because I don’t know how to drive.
Um, because I don’t even have my learner’s.
‘Seriously?’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he said, opening his door.
‘What about the coppers?’
‘Superfluous to our needs,’ he said dismissively.
What fifteen-year-old boy wouldn’t want to drive a 911, a car that appears on every one of those best-sports-cars-ever lists, a car that all the revheads on Top Gear like? So I got behind the wheel, and Dad taught me how to drive.
In the beginning it was pretty ugly: bunny hops, gears crunched, nosebleed braking, but I soon got the hang of it.
‘You’re a natural,’ he said. ‘Open her up a bit.’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘The road’s empty,’ he said. ‘Kick her in the guts.’
While the Rolling Stones sang ‘Hot Stuff’ I kicked her in the guts, the needle creeping past 100km/h, 110km/h, 120km/h, 130km/h.
When it touched 140km/h, I eased my foot off.
‘Come on,’ said Dad. ‘Let’s go for the ton.’
‘The ton?’
‘Yeah, a hundred miles an hour; it was always the magic number when I was your age.’
‘So what’s that, around one sixty?’ I said.
Dad nodded. I pressed my foot down, the needle crept past 150km/h, getting closer and closer to 160km/h.
My father had killed three people: Bag Lady, Francesco Strangio, and Francesco Strangio’s dad.
He was a murderer. He was a monster.
But when I looked over at him, the dashboard light soft on his face, that’s not what I saw.
I saw my dad smiling at me.
I heard my dad saying, ‘That’s the ton, I reckon, Dom.’
And we blasted into the night, my father and I.
WEDNESDAY
OLD MAN’S FUNERAL
The next day I woke late. Lying in bed, I came up with plenty of reasons not to go to old man Taverniti’s funeral. As I lay in my bed, I came up with plenty of excuses why I shouldn’t. As for all the revelations of yesterday, I’d managed to keep them at arm’s length. Actually, it hadn’t been that difficult – it was like they didn’t want to bother me too much, either. The only thing my mind seemed to want to engage with was this idea of me running in the thin air of the Rift Valley of Kenya.
Why not? I thought.
The benefits of high-altitude training are indisputable. And I already had a headstart with the ugali. And as Dad said, I was pagato, I could do absolutely anything I wanted to do.
Hungry, I went downstairs, where everybody was dressed and ready to go to the funeral.
‘Wow, you’re wearing black,’ I said to Miranda. ‘That’s so unusual.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Mom.
‘Haven’t you heard? Black’s actually the new black.’ said Miranda.
Dad looked up from his iPad and rolled his eyes.
Now that I saw everybody there like that, I forgot all the excuses. I wanted to be with them. Or I didn’t want to be by myself. Either way, the result was the same – I scoffed my cornflakes and had a quick shower and got changed. Taking Miranda’s lead, I dressed in black too. Then we piled into Mom’s car and made for the church.
It was one of those magical Gold Coast days, one that makes you glad you’re where you are and not where old man Taverniti is.
The footpath outside the church was already crowded. Dad had been right – every wog, wop and dago on the Gold Coast was there. If nothing else, the old man’s death gave them a chance to catch up again, swap sugo recipes.
Dad and Mom went into total meet-and-greet mode. ‘And these are our three children, Miranda, Dominic and Toby.’
Eventually Rocco Taverniti made his way over to us, a cigarette in his hand. He looked, I don’t know, coarser or something. He took a last greedy suck of the cigarette and flicked the butt into a gutter.
You pig, I thought. The next rain would wash that butt down the stormwater drain and into the open ocean where some poor little Nemo fish would eat it and die a horrible fishy death.
Dad and Rocco hugged, Italian-style, and when they came apart tears glistened in both pairs of eyes.
‘He loved you like a son,’ said Rocco to Dad.
‘He was like a father to me,’ said Dad.
Wow, I thought. They really need a new scriptwriter.
They talked some more, but I didn’t hear what they had to say because Mom dragged me away to meet some people I would probably never see again.
After that had finished, I saw Rocco and Dad shaking hands. ‘We’ll talk,’ I heard Dad say to Rocco. And then Rocco did a strange thing: he tousled Dad’s hair, like you do to a kid, and he said, ‘Aye, Gnocchi.’
When he’d gone into the church, I moved closer to Dad as we followed suit.
‘Did Rocco just call you Gnocchi?’ I said.
‘Sure,’ said Dad, laughing. ‘It was the old man’s nickname for me – I couldn’t get enough of the stuff when I was a kid.’
The service was starting and people hurried inside to their seats.
Not me, though. I stayed where I was. Soon I was the only one left on the footpath.
The weather was still perfect, not one cloud spoiling the sky’s unbroken blue. And the soft breeze smelt like the sea.
Rocco Taverniti had killed Graham Havilland.
Ron Gatto had killed Graham Havilland.
And David Silvagni had killed Graham Havilland.
They had killed the father of my best friend, they had given him ‘another mouth’. And all I could do was dream of running in the Rift Valley.
A bushfire of anger swept through me.
I took out my wallet and found the business card Rent-a-Cop had given me. I took out my phone. I punched in his number and was about to hit dial, when I stopped. Was this the way to do this? Tell a cop about the coffin in the Tabori crypt? Play him the recording on my iPhone?
By doing that, would it achieve my aim: would it extinguish The Debt?
All war is deception, said Sun Tzu.
I deleted the number, digit by digit; this wasn’t the way to go about it. I sat down in the gutter. I needed some legal advice, but not from a cop. I scrolled through my contacts, stopped at the one I wanted. Hit dial. He answered straightaway.
‘Dom! I was asking myself if you’d ever call me!’
‘Sorry, Mr Ryan,’ I said. ‘There’s been a lo
t going on. But I need some advice and wondered if I could talk to you.’
‘Over the phone?’
‘I think it’s better if we actually meet,’ I said.
‘Sure, I’m having a mental health day today – why don’t you just pop in?’ He gave me the address, and I put out my hand to hail a taxi.
Mr Ryan’s apartment building was right on the beach, one of those enormous white highrises the Gold Coast is famous for. I rang the buzzer and Mr Ryan answered immediately. ‘Is that you, Dom?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come right up,’ he said, and there was a click as the door unlocked.
As I took the lift, I wondered if I’d been a bit hasty. I mean, what did I know about Mr Ryan? He was a teacher, he’d been a lawyer. So what?
Maybe he was part of The Debt too?
Maybe I was walking into a big old trap.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
Dom, you’re getting paranoid. The ’Ndrangheta in chinos?
Yeah, right.
I knocked on the door, and Mr Ryan opened it, and he was wearing … a sarong! I think it had frangipanis on it. Not just a sarong, also a lilac T-shirt, but it was the sarong that demanded my attention.
‘You’ve caught me in a casual moment,’ he said. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Water would be great,’ I said.
Mr Ryan’s apartment was nice – large and airy, with views straight out over the Pacific Ocean.
There were a lot of photos on the walls: Mr Ryan graduating as a lawyer, another one of him graduating as a teacher, and all sorts of group photos. It seemed like my old Civics teacher belonged to a lot of organisations.
He came back with a glass of water and we sat on the balcony. Mr Ryan in a sarong, the beach spread out down below; it was so not the day to talk about what I wanted to talk about. So we sat there for a while and just sort of smiled benignly at each other.
‘What’s boppin’ ya pod these days?’ I eventually said.
‘Well, inspired by your good dad, I’m still exploring the Stones’ back catalogue. Untold riches there. Yourself?’
‘Rage Against the Machine,’ I said. ‘Mostly their first album.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not familiar with them,’ he said. ‘In what genre would you classify them?’
‘It’s angry music,’ I said. ‘They’re pretty pissed off.’
‘Fascinating. I’ll have a listen.’ Finally Mr Ryan said, ‘Is there anything on your mind, Dom?’
‘You’re a lawyer, right?’
‘Well, I was.’
‘And so you know about criminal stuff?’
Mr Ryan nodded.
‘Murder?’
He adjusted his sarong; I so wished he’d go and put some chinos on.
‘I’m no expert, but maybe I can help you,’ he said, and I could detect the change in his tone; this was no longer about boppin’ ya pod.
‘So what if somebody found a body?’
‘Okay, well, that’s not unusual; bodies are found much more frequently than you’d think. And in all sorts of unusual places.’
‘What if the body was, like, more than ten years old?’
‘Again, not unusual. Especially in more remote areas where there aren’t as many people around.’
‘What if there was something suspicious about where this body was found?’
‘How suspicious?’
‘It was found buried in a crypt where it had no right to be.’
Mr Ryan looked at me hard. ‘The question, as a lawyer, I would ask is this: how do you know it had no right to be there?’
‘Because I know whose body it is.’
‘You have identified a body that is more than ten years old? How? Dental records? DNA?’ There was a toughness to his voice now.
‘No, he was wearing a watch with an inscription on it.’
Mr Ryan whistled. ‘That’ll do it.’
As soon as he said this, I realised how dumb it had been to grave-rob that Omega Speedmaster.
I was also starting to wonder how smart it was divulging all this stuff to Mr Ryan.
He could very well be The Debt!
After Hanley, you’d think I would’ve learnt my lesson.
‘So if the police found such a body, what would they do?’ I said, figuring it was okay to just ask questions.
‘They would look for evidence of foul play. The obvious things are bullet holes, of course. Hands or legs bound. That sort of thing. And they would look for traces of a third party. Evidence of another person’s involvement.’
‘What sort of evidence?’ I said.
‘There’s a famous law of forensics called Locard’s principle – basically what it says is that every contact leaves a trace. In this day and age, it’s all about DNA. Blood, even the saliva on a cigarette butt would be enough.’
‘Even after more than ten years?’
Mr Ryan nodded.
I drank my water and looked down at the sea, at the surfers bobbing in the waves.
‘Whatever is going on, Dom, I strongly advise that you get the police involved.’
That definitely didn’t sound like something The Debt would say.
I thanked Mr Ryan and was getting up to go when I noticed something: one of the group photos was from an organisation called Gold Coast Youth Alliance, an organisation I knew Mom was involved in. I walked over to get a closer look and, sure enough, Mom and her big hair were in the photo. Not only that, she was standing next to Mr Ryan.
‘So you know my mum?’ I said, changing my mind yet again – he was The Debt!
He did that thing, that mouth-open-and-close-like-a-fish thing bad liars do when they’re about to let rip with a major one.
But he just didn’t have it in him. ‘Yes, I know your mother very well. We’ve worked together on a lot of projects for disenfranchised kids. She’s an incredibly capable woman.’
Something occurred to me.
‘Did Mom ask you to look after me?’ I said, thinking of all those times that Mr Ryan had come to my rescue.
‘She’s an incredibly capable woman,’ said Mr Ryan, with a half-smile.
So she had asked him! I felt a surge of affection for my mum – maybe I hadn’t been as alone as I thought I’d been as I’d battled to repay those six instalments.
As I took the lift down I took out my phone.
Already a plan was forming in my head.
I ran my fingers over the back of my hand.
There was something that needed to be done right away.
And I knew just the person to do it.
WEDNESDAY
DEBUGGED
When I rang the doorbell, Imogen answered. Her face was so white.
‘Where’s your mum?’ I said. Imogen shrugged. ‘Where?’
‘In hospital,’ she said.
‘Is she okay?’
‘She took all these pills. She had to have her stomach pumped.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday.’
Something occurred to me. ‘On your father’s birthday?’
Imogen nodded. I felt like such a heel – Imogen deserved several truckloads of sympathy, but I’d come here for something else. ‘The chip in my hand?’ I said.
‘I need to lose it now.’
‘I don’t know if I can do it,’ she said.
‘I don’t know if I can, either. But it has to be done.’ I took her hand it and squeezed. She squeezed back. ‘It’ll be okay, I promise you,’ I said, and I wanted to promise myself the same thing.
Still lightly holding hands, we went upstairs and into Imogen’s room, locking the door behind us.
That familiar smell, girl smell; those familiar colours, girl colours. Imogen was playing with her hair, twisting it tighter and tighter.
‘I don’t have a lot of time,’ I said.
More twisting.
‘These are the people who killed your dad, Imogen.’
She looked at me hard. ‘What happened to you, Dom?’
‘You saw – I got branded. Either you do it or I’ll do it myself.’
A change came over her face, her posture stiffened, and she moved over to her desk. When she came back she was holding a scalpel, the one she’d used on the frog.
I took the ultrasound image from my pocket and held it out to her. ‘That’s it there,’ I said, pointing to the image of the microchip that was buried deep in my hand.
She went into the ensuite bathroom and returned with some white towels, a bowl of what I assumed was warm water, and a bottle of disinfectant. She laid one of the towels on the desk.
‘Okay, if the patient would like to pop his hand here, we can begin,’ she said, lightness returning to her voice.
But now it was me, so gung-ho one second ago, who was having serious second thoughts about this. Wasn’t there another way?
Actually, no.
I spread my hand on the towel. Imogen turned on the desk lamp and adjusted it until my hand was bathed in light. She swabbed it with the disinfectant. For somebody whose only previous surgical patient had, as far as I knew, been a dead amphibian, she was remarkably professional. She took the ultrasound image and used the point of some scissors to make a small hole in the middle of the microchip. Then she placed it over my hand, making sure it was a perfect fit. Using a felt-tip pen, she made a mark on my hand.
‘Stay there,’ she said, and once again she disappeared into the bathroom. This time I could hear water running, and she returned wearing latex gloves and a surgical mask.
‘Are you sure?’ she said.
‘Maybe you could do my appendix while you’re here.’
Not the funniest joke, but it did the job: we both relaxed a bit. Until she took out the scalpel, that is, and replaced the old blade with a new blade. It looked so shiny, and so sharp, and so unambiguous – this thing was made for one thing and one thing only – that I couldn’t stop looking at it, imagining the pain it would cause me.
‘Dom, you’ve gone really, really white.’
‘Do it, Im.’
‘You’re shaking!’
‘Do it, Im.’
‘But …’
‘Do it, Im.’
She turned to my hand.
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