Shiflon waggles his shaggy head, and turns away from me, saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ grabs two stools and passes one to me. ‘He did like this place.’ He perches on a stool, and so do I. The kitchen is out of the 1950s — checked linoleum, pale-green cupboards with glass windows and green Masonite bench tops. There is a present-day coffee machine in one corner.
‘But when I saw him towards the end, he would have liked any place except home.’
‘He was scared?’
‘I thought you knew him, man.’
‘Not very well. I certainly didn’t know he was into any of the stuff I now think he was into.’
‘Really? He told me you were his closest friend. The only man he could trust. Apart from me.’
‘If that’s true, it’s pretty sad.’
‘It’s true. That’s why he had me send you the boxes. You did get the boxes, right?’
All I hear is had me send you the boxes. ‘Seven of them. You sent the money?’
‘It was money?’
‘Yeah. In one of them.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose.’
‘So why did he do it? Why did you?’
Shiflon sighs heavily. ‘Let me see. I’ve known Tito forever: since art school. Best buddies. Kindred spirits, you know? But when we left, his work got really popular, everyone wanted it, and he started charging a fortune for it. Became a bit of an A-lister, or whatever you call it. He changed — got sucked in by the high life, hanging with rich people, doing what rich people do. He was into the booger sugar, and the punt, and it took hold. Turns out he was a gambler. Would bet on anything at any time. Started to get into some trouble. He married one of the rich girls, and things just got worse. So she decided to get him out of town. Fresh start in the country — you know the deal.’
‘Elaine told me the same story.’
‘Elaine?’
‘Tito’s wife.’
‘Yes. She did? That’s good. Anyway, he was straight for a while. Got in contact. I told him about the clays out here, and he started visiting. We kind of got our vibe back on, you know?’
I nod that I know.
‘You want a cup of coffee? It’s good — the real thing.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘I think I’ll have one. It is excellent for my thought energy. Do you mind?’
‘Go ahead.’
He walks across to his machine, and begins the process of grinding a small amount of beans and then pouring them into the machine. For a moment I think he’s forgotten that he’s explaining something to me. But he returns to his stool with his cup, and continues. ‘And then the bad guys, who’d lent him money for his dice-rolling, offered him a line of credit or something, and he got back into it. Didn’t tell his wife. He lost all the money, of course, and so they had one over him. You don’t like coffee?’
‘I do. Just not at the moment.’ I’m thinking I should have said yes just to keep the peace.
‘So then he had to tell his wife, maybe thinking she would bail him out again. But they didn’t want his money, or his wife’s money. They wanted him to make some pieces for them. Seemed like a pretty good deal to me. I mean, they could have kneecapped him, or pulled out his toenails, or something.’
I make a noise of agreement.
‘Then, one night, he comes in here, desperate and all shaking kind of thing. He told me he’d got himself in a bad position. Bad dudes were forcing him to do shit stuff.’ He looks around, giving me the sense that someone else might be listening.
I am nodding, keeping myself in check, because Shiflon is giving me all the answers in one sitting. He’s taken a deep drink of his coffee, and smacks his lips. I’m pushing my mad thoughts about human ash in pottery to one side so I don’t miss anything Shiflon might share with me.
‘He never told me what was going on, but he asked me to mail the boxes to you. He dropped them off here, and then he drove in front of a truck.’ The whinny returns.
‘The bad guys didn’t kill him?’
‘Don’t think so. The road-train driver was in a bad way after it. He wasn’t a killer. Mind you, it’s very hard to tell these days.’ He gives me something like a knowing look.
‘And Tito asked you to send the boxes?’
‘I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything for a while. Just hid them in the back room, and tried to forget about them.’ He sniffs his coffee, and the pleasure he gets from this is clear on his face.
‘Is Elaine involved?’
‘Nah. He thought she was the greatest, and hated the fact he had put her in this position, you know, because of his gambling and everything. She came and saw me after the accident. Came and saw everyone round here.’
I nod supportively, unwilling to ask a question that might put him off-track.
‘I didn’t tell her I had the boxes in my own house,’ I say.
He finishes his coffee, adds an ‘Aah’, and puts the cup down on the bench.
‘But then one day, out of the blue, they just started to freak me out. Like they had an energy of their own. You ever had that happen?’
I try to suggest I sort of have, but he’s not listening.
‘I have. Plenty of times. They were talking to me, warning me that bad shit would happen if I didn’t do something. I guessed sooner or later the gangster dudes would come looking for me. They haven’t yet.’ He trains those eyes on me for a moment, expecting something. Does he think I’m with the Vasilievs?
‘Then the wife rings me again, like a couple of weeks ago, and starts questioning me about boxes. I hadn’t told her anything about them. She just came up with it.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I said I thought I remembered Tito saying something to do with mailing the boxes to someone, but I didn’t know who.’ He suddenly shakes his head fiercely. ‘That’s not true. I told her Tito said he was going to mail the boxes to you.’
I feel my heart turn over. Elaine had been waiting for me to receive the boxes. She knew all along. Shiflon looks calm and unburdened. He’s told the story he’s been wanting to tell for months.
‘Actually, in the end, I didn’t mail the boxes. I drove them down to you. Took me three trips. Crazy shit. Didn’t want the bad guys tracking me down when they worked out where they were mailed from. But I did mail the letter.’
‘Letter?’
‘Yeah. To a…Costello family.’ He screws up his face like he doesn’t remember.
‘You told Frank Costello about his brother?’
‘I wouldn’t know. It was just a letter Tito gave me. I never looked inside. I swear.’ Shiflon suddenly looks panicked. ‘Was it important?’
‘No. Just like a get well card or something.’ Shiflon does not need to know any more than he already does.
‘Cool,’ he says.
I’m wondering if this can be real. Would Tito really have given someone like Shiflon all this responsibility? Maybe Shiflon has appropriated the things Tito told him about and now somehow thinks it happened to him. I change tack, figuring that if his knowledge is stolen, then a different angle might show him up.
‘Does a guy called Ben Ruder have anything to do with all this?’
At this, he gets up and walks over to a kitchen drawer, making strange growling noises. His back is to me, but I can see him pulling something out of the drawer, something that fits in his hand. He turns and faces me, pointing a small-calibre pistol.
Without saying another word, he scrunches up his face and pulls the trigger. The bullet goes nowhere near me, and wangs into the wall behind. A piece of gyprock breaks away, and slides down the wall. Shiflon says, ‘Sorry, man. I’ve decided I can’t trust you.’
I hit the floor, and he opens his eyes and looks around. He sees me, and repeats the exact process: scrunches his face, and fires. This one embeds itself in the lino, lifting
one of the squares upwards as it does so. On hands and knees, I scramble across the floor to a couch that I try to use as a shield.
‘I’ve got to protect myself.’ He’s yelling it now.
He fires again, and this time knocks out the light. Glass and sparks shower the room. That’s enough for me. I am out the door, screaming ‘Help’ and diving through the thick foliage of the tree to the front seat of my car.
The car starts, and I back up the road at a crazy pace, which doesn’t put Shiflon off, and neither does the fact that we’re out in public. He is firing at me in that optimistic way, bullets spraying all around me, echoing off the buildings, but none of them doing any harm. I’m out on the main street, over-revving the motor and gone, and I can hear him still shooting. I turn onto the dirt, looking back to see if he’s following, or if he’s got an army of friends out to give chase. There is no sign of him or them. My heart is pumping so hard my hands are hot. The ute fishtails in the loose gravel, and I tell myself to steady up or I’ll die in a car crash like Tito did.
Did Shiflon just tell me the truth, or was it another game? He certainly isn’t a practised assassin. If he’s taking orders from the Vasiliev family, then I have just confirmed that I received the boxes. But more likely he’s just taking orders from a fried, paranoid brain. So I drive, nonstop, my pulse at its peak, for nearly three hours, barely blinking until I reach a good-sized town called Bogan, where I think shooting in public would be frowned upon. I stop at a clean, colourful service station, fuel up, use the toilet block, and then go to pay my bill. There is no one in the shop except the young guy behind the counter. He is in high spirits, but I can’t help thinking he knows what has just happened to me, and has probably had a call from the Vasiliev family telling him to keep an eye out for me.
‘How’s it going?’ he asks, almost humming his pleasure as he takes my card. He has ‘Kent’ written on his bright shirt.
‘Good, thanks.’ I don’t want to invite any attention.
On a small TV behind him, a young woman inexpertly reports a shooting incident in the village of Willi. ‘See this?’ he says, indicating the screen with his head. ‘Didn’t think there’d be enough people in Willi for a shooting incident. You know that saying about shooting a rifle down the main street, and not hitting anyone? That’s Willi for you.’ The primitive nature of other western towns is terribly amusing for Kent.
‘Yeah, crazy.’ I check that the vision has nothing of me, or my ute, or Shiflon. It doesn’t. It is simply shots of the main street, the post office, and the stiff-limbed young reporter. At least someone in Willi thought shooting in the street was unacceptable.
‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, taking my card back, keeping a tight rein on myself. I would like to bolt, out to my ute, get in, lock the doors, and gun it.
He says, ‘Have a good one,’ in a happy way, and I walk out calmly. I turn my phone back on but it is out of service.
I am driving again, breathing, leaving the quiet streets of Bogan behind. I am calming down, but wondering if the Vasilievs will see the report on Willi. It is on a regional station, and the city stations don’t always pick up regional stories. A shooting in Willi where no one got hurt and no one was robbed probably isn’t hot enough to make it to the next level.
My phone returns to service with a voice message on it. It is Elaine, claiming to be ‘just checking in’. But this time, despite the extra throb I get in my blood when I hear her voice, I am circumspect. I don’t know what is going on, but something definitely is, and Shiflon has just confirmed she is part of it.
The phone rings as soon I click off voice messages. It is Marko, and I nearly say that if he’s going to ring all the time I’m going to change my number, but he jumps in.
‘Where are you?’
‘On my way home.’
‘From where?’
‘Just a little trip to clear my head.’
‘Right. There’s an article in the media about the Costello family burying Fatboy, or at least having a memorial service for him. It was supposed to be private, a secret, but some journalist got wind of it. The family did a DNA test on the ashes, and someone in the clinic leaked the information.’
‘That’s no good.’ I’m feeling like an intrusion from the media is probably the least of Frank’s concerns.
‘Mate, don’t you see? If I know about it, the Vasilievs will have known about it the minute it happened.’
I’m still not really with what he’s on about, and I nearly say, Got to go.
‘If the Vasilievs know about it, they will probably have found out, by pressuring Frank, where the ashes came from. So, mate, if you’ve got any more boxes, or even if they just think you’ve got more boxes, they’re going be sending someone after you, and this time it will probably be a professional — someone competent, someone who can actually do the job.’
I push out one long breath, finally understanding Marko’s concern. I could tell him he doesn’t know the half of it, but I don’t see how that would help anything.
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah, shit is right.’
‘It’s okay. I’m going to give them back their bones.’ The idea has just jumped into my head: a kangaroo in the top paddock. ‘Ben Ruder is involved with them, so I can just stick them in his mailbox, and everything will be cool.’
‘Ben Ruder is involved?’
‘He’s Tito’s cousin, and … I don’t know.’ And I don’t know. My dislike of him has made me leap to conclusions that have no basis, except for the fact that he’s a turd.
‘This is all just too far-out, isn’t it? Next thing you’ll be telling me there are bodies buried all over your farm.’
‘No. There’s not. All I’ve got to do is return the bones, and everything is cool.’
‘So you do have more ashes.’
‘I do.’
‘Bloody hell. Get rid of them. If Ben’s not the one to take them, I’ll find out how to contact the Vasiliev family and tell them I found something of theirs.’
‘Oh, terrific plan, Marko. Then they’ll probably send your bones to me in some fucking beer stein.’
He almost laughs.
‘Well, that’s one solution,’ he says, and is quiet. I don’t fill the space. Then he offers, ‘Do you reckon something like this ever just gets “cool”?’
‘Never been involved with something like this before, so I don’t have a clue. Just doing my best.’
‘Righto.’ Marko’s probably immune to my shit attitude, but you’ve still got to give him points. ‘I’ll talk to you later when I’ve had a chance to make sense of this stuff. Be careful,’ he says.
‘What did you mean by your fine-bone china thing?’
‘Nothing. Just my imagination getting away from me.’
‘Yeah. So what was it?’
‘Well, you’ve got a bloke who makes pottery, a neighbour with boxes of ash, and some gangsters who want pottery made for them. Fine-bone china was literally made using a certain amount of bone from animals. I just thought … stupid, really.’
‘Yeah. Stupid.’
After I stop talking to Marko, I suddenly realise I am dangerously tired. I’m only two hours from home, and the sun hasn’t even set, but I can’t drive any further. I pull off the road into a roadside rest area protected by yellow box trees, kill the motor, put my seat back, and fall asleep. I sleep for hours, waking occasionally, but never able to properly open my eyes.
And then, in the small hours, the sound of someone crawling through the grass jerks me fully awake. Buzzcut and the Vasilievs have tracked me down and are going to liquidate me on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. I slide down low in my seat. The noise stops. I inch up and try to look over the window. The sound starts again, but this time there is snuffling and snorting. I sit up and look out into the gloom.
A feral sow and her suckers have found so
mething interesting in the grass next to my ute and are rooting up the soil. So much for bravery. I open the door and shoo them away, but there is no chance of a return to sleep. When the pigs have disappeared, I take a walk, relieve myself, and make sure my head is clear for the drive.
I hit the road again, taking it slow and telling myself there is no rush, aware that I am just about on peak hour for roadside kangaroos.
14
By the time I reach home, the sun is starting to make itself known, and I realise how glad I am to be back. The line of the horizon, the particular colours and smells, are more of an unacknowledged part of me than I ever realise. It isn’t just a piece of real estate that my family has owned for a long time. It’s part of me, or maybe me it. I take a shower, and lie down on a fairly clean bed. I just have to breathe and not think too much. There is so much in my head, and so little of it makes sense. And except that my life is threatened, I’m not sure that I really care. But I can’t sit on my verandah and drink beer for the rest of my life. I put on some of my safe music, and drink the rest of the cheap white wine, and then some, but I don’t fall asleep. Not for long, anyway. The morning is too bright — my body clock might be screwed up, but it still thinks sleeping while there’s daylight is wrong.
I think the morning I’ve had deserves a beer. I take one from the fridge, and sip it like a connoisseur. Somewhere in the mush of my brain I am putting two and two together.
I sit down at the computer, and I tap in ‘Sven Gzhel’ and ‘Bryan Lomonosov’ into the search engine. I expect to be directed to crime story sites where the gruesome deaths of individuals with these names are reported. Instead, I find listings for two types of Russian porcelain. ‘Sven’ and ‘Bryan’ are crossed out in the search list. It is just Gzhel and Lomonosov that have created the responses. Both have been around for some centuries, but neither mentions fine-bone china.
I find my phone and run through the contacts, looking for Mrs J’s number. I call it, and she answers with a calm, slightly amused tone. It’s as if she thinks anyone who would bother to call her must be an idiot.
Boxed Page 17