by Paul Slatter
Sebastian stayed quiet for a moment and then taking another deep breath said, “No, Alan was taking the horse to a race out on the island. Alan was driving the vehicle which was pulling the trailer. Anyway, Alan said there was one in the Range Rover around his legs and he freaked out, started swatting it because he was wearing shorts and they went off the road and into a ditch. He said the trailer twisted over and ended up resting against a tree.”
Chendrill stared at Sebastian for a moment. A mosquito took them off the road? It didn’t sound right. He asked, “And were they hurt?”
“Alan was okay because he was wearing his seat belt—this other guy was knocked out though, Alan said he thought he was dead.”
“What about the mosquito?”
“Oh well, who knows if it survived Chuck. They only live a week or so anyway.”
Chuck waited a moment, then asked, “No, what I mean is it true about the mosquito?”
“Yes Chuck, they can give a nasty bite, you know that.”
“What about your horse?”
“He said it was ok, but when he got to the racecourse, the horse was dead.”
“So you lost your stake in this horse?”
“Yes Chuck.”
“And anything else?”
“Like what Chuck.”
“Like who was this other ‘Partner’?”
“No, nothing like that, he was straight, Chuck—though I do admit I was jealous as hell. But no, nothing like that. Alan was so upset Chuck, I remember him calling me and crying.”
“And?”
“And, that was it, apart from Alan being sick with worry about it, and then not long after he started getting sick, Chuck. I think it was the stress of it all. Then he got really sick and the man disappeared and I thought that was the end of it. But at Alan’s funeral, when I was in a daze, someone came up and shook my hand and I didn’t know who he was until he said quietly in my ear, ‘you still owe for the horse.’”
“The same guy who was downstairs?” Chendrill asked quietly.
Sebastian shrugged, shaking his head, saying, “It’s a blur Chuck, the whole thing—maybe?”
“And Alan passed on eight years ago?”
Sebastian nodded, closing his eyes, as the whole event replayed in his mind like a nightmare.
Chendrill gave him a moment before saying, “Well it looks as though this is what it could be all about.”
And as always Chendrill was correct, but just how far things were about to go, he could never have imagined.
Chapter Five
Dan made it home and for the first time in his life, he didn’t stop off at the fridge before tiptoeing down the stairs. The last thing he needed right now was twenty questions from his mum, especially with his dick hurting the way it was.
Quietly so as to avoid the squeak that always gave him away, he opened the door to his room and slipped inside to see his mother sitting on the bed looking at him with red eyes. She said, "Have you seen Chuck?"
He hadn't. After a moment, he said, "Why, did you hit him?"
She had. Maybe it was a hit borne from any one of the old movies she’d sat up watching in the early hours in the morning when insomnia was a part of her life, a slap that had come hard and sharp right across the face.
She said, “Why would I?”
“Well he ain’t in here, so somethings gone on,” Dan answered as he walked past her wondering if she’d been nosing about the place.
He sat at the bench Sebastian had bought him so as he could carry on with his electronics while Sebastian’s company exploited his looks, picking up a circuit board and staring at it for a moment as he heard his mother say, “So what have you been up to?”
“Rehearsing for this stupid film your boyfriend has got me involved in.”
“Really—where?” Tricia said, perking up at the thought of her son being in a movie.
Dan didn’t look back, saying only, “It’s stupid Mum, so don’t go phoning all your friends or you may get egg on your face.”
“Who were you rehearsing with then?”
A tricky one this one, Dan thought, as he looked to the desk. Maybe someone had called and told someone at Slave and they’d called his mum, telling her he’d been sleeping with a sixty-year-old who still had nice tits.
He said, “Why’d you ask that?”
Tricia stared at her son sitting there in his room with his back to her, all hunched up the way he used to be when she knew he’d been raiding the neighbour’s kitchen and they’d been over to complain.
She said, “What have you really been doing—have you got a girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” his mother asked with a smile. Then she said, “Do you think I’ll get to meet this one— how old is she?”
From what he could work out, Adalia Seychan was sixty-two, so if he reversed the order he’d just be able to claim dyslexia like he used to at school when he got bored.
So, as he turned and faced his mother, he said, “Twenty-six.”
“That’s a little old for you, don’t you think?” And for a moment Dan thought that in the process of trying to be clever, he’d actually said Adalia’s true age—until his mother, putting his mind to rest, said, “Well I should be grateful for that, at least she’s not the same age as the one you brought home a few nights back.”
Then she asked her name and Dan sat there for a moment thinking, his mother sitting there still on the bed now with a smile saying, “You telling me you don’t know her name?”
And Dan answered, “It’s not really that kind of a relationship.”
“Really—what kind is it then?”
Dan thinking quickly and saying straight back, “What are you doing in my room anyway?”
Tricia stared at him, this son of hers, who was now getting fan mail and drove a Ferrari, but still lived in her basement.
“It is my home you know.”
“Yeah well it’s my room.”
Tricia stood and headed for the door, she’d been down this road before and knew the argument off by heart and the only reason she was down there in the first place was because for the first time in a long while she felt lost and alone and wanted to be close to the one person who belonged to her 100%, the one person she loved unconditionally even if she had just found the nice soft rayon sock she’d been missing for weeks all crispy under his bed.
She reached the door and, turning as she opened it, said, “If Chuck calls you, tell him to call me please.”
Dan nodded, then without looking up continued as he heard the door close, saying, “Promise that if he doesn’t then you go put an order in for a box of pastries at the bakers so as you can give that guy with the van another shot.”
Dan picked up a circuit board and stared at it for a moment as he listened to his mother’s footsteps head up the stairs, hearing her call out as she reached the top, “Fuck you, Dan.”
Dan waited. It was at this point when his mother would either let it go or come back down the stairs like a swat team leader and, if she could get in the door, start throwing stuff. He looked to the door—the lock still broken from the other night when it had not had his weight behind it, as it usually did, when his mum was in a rage, and all because he’d had a woman heavier than him sitting on his face. If she was here now, hiding under the bed like he used to fantasize about, then it would be ideal and he’d have her guard the door so he could get on with working his way around this electronic governor Sebastian had installed on the Ferrari.
After all, he was taking Adalia out on the weekend in it and could do without being the slowest car on the road.
************
Mattia the Italian sat in his big empty house out at the edge of Deep Cove and wondered if his ex-wife would be making it impossible for him to take his kids to the football game in the afternoon as he liked to do.
That fucking bitch, saying to him every fortnight how they have a cold or a sore throat or they’ve got dance or whatever shit she could drea
m up just so she could fuck with him. Then the kids would see him and love their dad because he let them run riot and put on his big sovereign rings. But that was a whole three days away and, in the meantime, all he could do was wait. They’d lived on the coast out east before, and he would travel west to make his living and cause trouble when necessary. Then she’d started fucking his friend who raised chickens, and then later the guy at the restaurant who pretended to be a surfer but didn’t have a board.
Mattia had had enough of it and one day just did not come home, his wife arriving later with the kids and setting up a home again and after a while continued being a bitch. Then the lawyers came, hers giving it out in court—the man trying to look like someone he could never be, with his bad acting and fucked up monologue, demanding to know where he earned his money, trying to destroy him any and every way his ex-wife could think of, asking for the world as she sat there in her fancy dress and stupid shoes and pleaded poverty to the judge who saw right through them both. Mattia had sat there quietly listening to his ex’s lies and her accusations of cruelty, planning how he’d make her weasel of a lawyer eat dog shit.
And on a summer’s day, as the birds circled high in the sky above the park next to Mattia’s new home, the court’s divorce process all done and long forgotten, he’d done just that. Hitting in the kidneys the man with the acid tongue who wished he could be more than the ambulance chaser he was, he said to him in a mimicking tone the same words he’d heard him say, “And I put it to you sir, you are not reputable, you are not a business man, you are nothing more than a thug, a degenerate, a parasitic man who lives off the need and discomfort of others.”
And as his ex-wife’s lawyer lay there distraught with pain from the blow to the kidney and the knee in his back, he felt the sovereign covered fingers he’d looked down upon with such disdain hold his mouth open and force foul smelling dog’s shit onto the tongue that had spouted a full week’s worth of vile accusations. The man who had so much wanted to sound like Tom Cruise, squirming and unconsciously kicking his feet as he choked and gagged and vomited as his body ejected the grass and faeces whilst he listened, hearing his own words coming back at him and knowing right there and then that there could be no recourse because everything he’d said about the man who held him tight to the soggy wet ground beneath him suddenly appeared very true.
************
The stripper at the club had been correct as Mattia did lend money and his rate was good he felt, decent enough, fair and only a little above what the banks charged for a fancy credit card that would let you fly somewhere nice for free as long as you kept on spending—except such privileges were long gone for the people who came to him. For Mattia’s banking plan was as simple as the rules which defined them. You could borrow as much as you want for whatever you want, be it to pay the rent, or for drugs, or booze, as long as you paid it back along with his fees.
The math clear and understandable to all. Money was available to anyone and was paid out in $100 blocks, each $100 cost $25 which came straight off the top of the $100 just borrowed, if $100 was actually needed then two $100 blocks could be purchased at a price of $25 for each, getting the customer $150. On top of this was another $25 a week fee per $100 block for the next eight weeks, including an additional $25 fee payable on the eighth week when you were due to payback the $100 block to close the debt—rounding the last week out at an even $50—then you were done and clear, unless you couldn’t meet the $150 repayment and had to just keep paying the weekly $25 fee until you could, which many did.
No point in strangling someone when you can just choke them slowly time and time again. After all, they’d always fuck up in someway or need another fix. Let them borrow. Let them pay back three and a half times what they’d borrowed, and let them come back and do it again. Better that way than spending the day frustrated and breaking legs, chasing your own greed.
Those days of chasing and beating were all long gone now though, days spent when he was young, working the street, learning the ropes as a side kick to a guy who thought he was connected because he had a friend who truly was—a guy in it more as an excuse to hurt people than for the money. This guy with his tattoos and arms like legs from steroids that made his dick shrink, crying like a baby and pissing his pants as he hung from a meat hook up in the attic of Mattia’s uncle’s pool hall after calling Mattia a wop and a spick cunt once too often and over stepping the mark. The guy whose name Mattia sometimes forgot even though he was his first kill, the muscled up Roid Monkey crying as he bled to death and disappeared from this world unnoticed.
************
The heroin addict who once fronted a band and thought he was cool now played the guitar in a doorway these days outside Granville Street station told Chendrill pretty much the same regarding the Italians’s pricing structure, except he’d left out the bit about the $25 he’d started paying to the guy for one block—though he couldn’t remember why.
Chendrill had seen the Italian in his cowboy boots reach into the ex musician’s guitar case at the same spot the day before as he’d followed the man to the strip bar. The Italian helping himself to a wad of change. The Guitar player happy for the $100 in cash Chendrill had dropped off, not because he liked the tune but because he wanted info. It was a quick $100 the heroin addict had already spent in his mind as soon as he’d seen the note hit the inside of his guitar case, paying back the loan shark and taking out another two blocks to convert Chendrill’s $100 and the change he’d gathered whilst banging out a shitty version of Purple Rain straight back into a quick $150.
The heroin addict happy, taking the hundred bucks but wishing Chendrill would fuck off now, as he could feel the ground move underneath him because a train was coming in. Not looking Chendrill in the eyes now that he had his money, the man spoke fast in a manner that would suggest that Chendrill was little more than shit on the heel of one of his second-hand shoes.
“Listen the guy doesn’t keep books okay. Keeps it in his head you know. Mental stuff, like he’s got a Chinese accountant stuffed behind his ear. But look, if you need more, go look, you know, because there’s a lot of people know him better and I don’t know much else and I got fans that needs to hear me okay.”
“Really, you’ve got fans?”
“Yeah,”
“You’re saying you’ve got people getting off that train down there just so they can come up the stairs and listen to you bang out a load of nonsense?”
And before the man could answer, the first of the commuters came out from the swing door. Chendrill watched as the man’s head went down and like magic his grimy fingers blasted out the opening chords from ‘Stairway to Heaven’ from a small battery powered amp that had seen better days. Raising his head, the musician quickly glimpsed the commuter as he walked away and looked to Chendrill. Chendrill said, “Maybe he doesn’t like Led Zep?”
Then the door to the Skytrain that now went underground opened and not missing a beat, the musician who’d once played at the Yale went straight back to the beginning. Stepping back almost in a vain attempt to shield himself from the noise, Chendrill watched as the commuters came and went without a glance or a care for the man who held onto the chords just a little too long.
Chendrill pulled another two twenty dollar notes from his wallet, stepped back over and dropped them in the musician’s empty guitar case. Then just as the man finished, said, “You’ve got to be kidding, why do you keep playing the same song?”
The heroin addict saying straight back, “People love it.” Then the guy said, “The man you’re after, he’s loaded—I don’t think there’s a person I know who doesn’t owe that fucker cash.”
Chendrill stared at the musician thinking how they were similar ages and lived in the same city but were both in different worlds.
Then the guy said, “Do us a favour though and don’t fuck with him as there ain’t no one else around who gives his rates, others’ll fuck you if you’re late but he won’t, all he does is make you go st
and in line and buy tickets at the arenas for his friend who’s a tout. Unless you just don’t pay or even do that, then I think you’re in trouble.”
Unable to take ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for a third time, Chendrill left the guy and carried on. The big man moving through the streets in his Hawaiian looking like a canary feeling cool. The stadium was not far away and the football was about to start in an hour. The Whitecaps would be heading out there to get frustrated with the ref as they played their rivals from Portland in the south. The touts were all standing around like sharks in a crowded sea on a holiday long weekend, holding their tickets like geishas. Chendrill knew most of them and told each one he’d buy four in a row at centre pitch if anyone could tell him where the Italian with the rings who sells money in blocks lives.
One of them waited and, leaning in, said, “If you buy them from me you won’t need an address because he’ll be sitting ten rows down from you.”
The kids were already there with Mattia the Italian, all in primo seats on the sideline when Chendrill sat down at the edge of his empty four in a row. The Italian watching every kick and screaming at the Whitecap’s coach, as his kids, not watching the game, took turns running up and down the stairs with ketchup on their chops still holding their fries.
Chendrill sat there in amongst hundreds of fans, watching the Italian who sold money in blocks of a hundred losing it over the goings on of the game, the crowd oohing and applauding every shot their heroes missed and shouldn’t have. Despite his big mouth, Chendrill could tell the Italian knew football, and, forgetting about the kids, kept telling the ref to fuck off and the strikers to get a real job, or to get back to the Roxy.
Chendrill waited till halftime and for the Italian to pass him as the man came back down from the concessions and sat himself down, loaded with pizza for the kids and two beers for himself. Waiting for the Italian to stuff half a pizza slice into his mouth, Chendrill then got up and moved down the aisle to the bottom, taking one of the kid’s empty seats and slipping in next to him. The Italian taking a moment to notice that the big man was there and then just as he clued in, Chendrill said, “So how many blocks does Sebastian String owe?”