And so Josef, sure that Lee was up to it, took him around to meet Marcel, who laid a hand upon the kid’s knee and said he might have something, like he was granting a wish. It was always the same routine and there had been a part of him that wanted to bundle the kid out, tell him to get a real job and forget all this ever happened. But Lee had shrugged in acquiescence and that was it—a career determined by indifference.
So Marcel gave Lee things to do, small things, collecting trivial amounts of money and running errands. Nothing complicated. The Stella thing was supposed to be simple: an old man living alone, a bag of money stashed somewhere. Not so much; this was the kid’s first real job, after all. Maybe rough up the old Jew a little, just to make sure he didn’t squeal. Josef did the legwork, checked things out. Lee was now his charge and he had a certain stake in him working out. Surely he couldn’t have got it so badly wrong? But if he thought he could get away, then the kid was sorely mistaken.
The motel reception stank of old air freshener. A plant drooped in one corner. From a room somewhere behind the counter came a television’s low burble and an accompanying grey flicker. Canned laughter. There was a path worn into the orange carpet between the front door and the reception counter. As he made the short trip, Josef thought of all the shoes that had made these exact same footfalls, how he himself was contributing to the history of the old dump. He tapped the bell on the counter and there was an intimation of movement from out the back. A muttering.
Sylvia surfaced like a pale fish from the gloom. Her eyes were at a permanent squint and her mouth set tight, sealing the tomb of her face. She approached and placed her wiry hands palm-down on the laminated counter. Her breath smelled of talc and her voice was thick with suspicion. Yes?
Sylvia. It’s Josef.
Sylvia peered at Josef for a second before her features softened, but only slightly. She pushed a stray curl of bleached hair from her forehead. Josef? Jesus. Haven’t seen you in about a hundred years. Should have recognised you straight away, you’re still wearing the same suit. You got old. Where have you been?
Oh, you know. Just walking around. Up and down.
Everything alright, you old gypsy?
Yeah. I’m fine. How are you?
Oh, you know. Can’t complain. Well I could but, you know, who’d listen?
Josef leaned in conspiratorially. He didn’t have time to play these tired games with Sylvia, but she sometimes needed a little softening up before she talked. Besides, it was a relief after dealing with that bitch at Stella’s place. He attempted a smile. I’d listen.
Yeah, right. But would you care?
Josef straightened to his full height. Probably not. But it might make you feel better.
Since when the hell are you in the business of making people feel better?
A lot can happen in a hundred years.
It can. But it doesn’t. Not in this life, anyway. Maybe another time. People like us, we don’t change. We go through the motions, that’s all.
Their eyes met briefly before they looked away, embarrassed at sharing this shred of truth. Sylvia coughed wetly and dabbed at her lipstick with the clump of damp tissue always balled in her claw. She looked down at Josef’s feet. Anyway, what can I do for you? You got no luggage.
I’m looking for someone.
Oh yes.
Young guy called Lee.
Sylvia nodded and slowly lit a cigarette. Too slowly. Her entire body seemed to swell with smoke when she inhaled. He tried to remain calm. You seen him? Is he here?
What’s he look like?
He tried to sound offhand. Young. Dark hair. Skinny. Wounded maybe.
Oh.
You know him? Which room? He’s got something of mine.
Nah. He’s gone. Checked out last night.
Gone? What? Where?
Dunno. Him and that fella he was with. Sylvia waggled her cigarette in the air and spat out a scrap of tobacco. She coughed into her fist and patted her measly chest before serving up a half-lit smile. Her bearing shifted; she knew something more.
Was he bleeding? Hurt?
Sylvia took another drag of her cigarette and made a don’t-know-if-I-can-remember face.
Who was the other man?
Don’t know. Big guy. Sort of like a bear, he was. Might have been, you know, that quack—
What quack?
Another elaborate shrug. Dunno. Can’t think of his name right now. Been in the papers for skipping bail. Dope fiend.
Josef ran the back of one hand over his lips, inhaling the small smell of himself. Checked out last night? What time? Any idea where they were headed? Anything?
Sylvia shook her head sadly. Can’t remember. Maybe you could read some coffee grounds or something? And she brought her cigarette to her lips and sucked on it hard.
And he didn’t say where they were headed?
I don’t ask these things.
In a car?
Yeah. Think so. The doctor’s car. Piece of shit.
To hospital maybe?
I doubt it somehow.
Josef worried at the cuff of his jacket. What was it with women, always in the fucking way? He turned and looked behind him at the jazz of traffic in the street outside. Two men in expensive-looking suits were talking beside a new, blue car. The shorter man was touching the other man’s arm to make a point. They looked like estate agents or something. White-collar dickheads. He wondered what men like that spoke about. Perhaps they were friends?
Sylvia spoke again in her husky rasp. Tell you what, though. Your friend didn’t look too good. And she mashed her cigarette butt into the overflowing ashtray, where it smouldered stubbornly with the pale and crooked bodies of others. She smoothed the front of her faded floral dress and jewellery clattered up and down her arm.
Josef faced her. He sighed and set about rolling a cigarette to buy some time. He was suddenly very tired. This day was not going well. He needed something and Sylvia was his only lead so far. Come on, Sylvia. We’ve known each other a long time, alright. We go back a long way, you and me. We’ve been around forever, too long to fall for this old routine. I don’t want to have to put the frighteners on you—
Hah! You don’t scare me, Josef. Not now.
Josef lit his cigarette, concentrated on it, wondered if the estate agents were still outside on the street.
Sylvia drew breath to speak. She fiddled with a diamond ring, ran a comb of fingers through her crackling hair. Hair you could use as insulation when she died, Marcel had once said. Or stuff it in a cushion. She smiled suddenly, revealing rows of chainsaw teeth. You remember Sammy? That night with Sammy . . . and that bozo, whatever his name was. Larry? Lionel? Something?
Leon.
Yeah. Leon. Thought we were gone then. Who would have thought.
Josef sighed. Who would have thought.
Scared the hell out of me, that one. Body in the boot for God knows how long.
Two weeks.
Two weeks, was it? Jeez.
According to the papers.
Yeah, well. Stunk like I-don’t-know-what.
Stunk like a man been dead two weeks.
In a boot.
In a car boot. Yes.
Sylvia shook her head. In summer. Jesus, but that was close. Really thought that was the end of this old place. Not that it would have been a tragedy but, you know . . . What happened to him, anyway?
Leon?
Yeah. They execute him?
We don’t execute people in this country, Sylvia.
Oh, yeah. Course not. Too civilised.
But I heard he died. Sammy too, I think.
Sylvia inspected the back of one hand, webbed with thick blue veins. Dead or in jail, I guess.
Yes. Dead or in jail.
They stood in silence for a minute. Josef scratched at his tattoo and wondered what his next move could be. Sylvia was rubbing at her chest, around the place her heart should be, her hand like an implement, pressing at herself. She looked like she was worki
ng up to something. Finally she withdrew her hand and ran it slowly across the laminated counter in front of her. Why don’t you just let him go? Give him a chance?
Josef adjusted the cuff of his jacket. It was cold. A butt in the ashtray had begun to burn and now the whole pile gave off a junkyard smell. He sighed. We already gave him a chance. Gave him a chance and the little bastard has run off with something that don’t belong to him. And if I don’t get it back I’m in as much trouble as he is. I can’t afford screw-ups at my age, Sylvia. I’m sure you know what it’s like. Josef considered the sly old thing for a moment. He leaned in over the counter until their faces were only inches apart. He didn’t offer you anything? He didn’t give you any money, did he? Because that isn’t his money to give.
No. Sylvia sniffed. Course not. It’s nothing like that. He’s young, that’s all.
Josef smoothed a wing of his hair. You appealing to—what?—my sense of integrity or something?
Sylvia sighed. They checked out last night. Late. Don’t know where they were going, you know what it’s like around here. Lee was just dumped here the night before. Found him with his suitcase out front—
A suitcase?
Yeah.
Of what?
I don’t know. Clothes, I expect. Anyway. He was in rough shape. Had to throw the linen out, there was that much blood. Something I don’t appreciate, by the way. Been shot in the guts. Had a guy stabbed in the stomach in here once before who bled like that. You know what it’s like, right? Anyway. That was that, see you later, but . . . Thing might interest you, couple came in here real late last night looking for a room. Woman all over the place, crying and carrying on . . .
Sylvia paused. Josef watched her as she plucked a menthol cigarette from the packet, slotted it between her greasy lips, lit up, inhaled, waited for the hit, shook out the match and tossed it into the ashtray.
Seems they had stopped out on the highway at a car crash, she went on at last, obviously enjoying herself now, back to her old self after the sympathetic detour. An accident or something. Two blokes there on the road and one of them sticks a pistol into the girl’s head and tells her he’s going to kill her unless they get in the car and come back the way they came. Back this way. And not to breathe a word. Dead guy on the road already, some crazy thing, Lee and Wild by the sound.
Wild? That the quack’s name?
Oh. Yeah. That’s it. Wild.
They here now?
The couple? No. Course not. What do you think this is, a motel or something? And she wheezed right through to a gurgling cough.
And where exactly was this?
Christ. Reflux. About thirty miles up the road I think. Heading west.
The plains?
Maybe.
But that’s it?
Yeah. That’s it. All I know. Everything. She patted her chest again. What’s the deal? What’s he got?
Money.
You sure?
Josef paused. Yeah.
Well. If he had money, I don’t know what he was doing staying here. Might have been better off somewhere cleaner and safer if you ask me. And, like a machine, she exhaled a long, thin stream of cigarette smoke.
Josef turned to survey the empty motel car park and the road beyond the glass. There seemed a pause in the traffic and it was very quiet. The two men had disappeared. He couldn’t think what day it was, or even if it mattered. There was that discouraging smell of a midweek afternoon. The time when people should be returning to their families, to their cosy houses and roast chickens and the perfume of freshly bathed infants.
Sylvia shrugged and licked her lips. Well, she said with a toss of her head, I’d better get back. It was nice seeing you, Josef. I guess. Take care, old man. And she shuffled down the gloomy hallway towards the sound of the television and its chemical flicker.
Josef watched the road and the car park a little longer, aware of something surfacing within him. Sylvia had to be lying about something. It was her custom. He waited another minute before following her.
The back room smelled as he imagined it would: of cigarettes, fried foods and ancient make-up. The place was filthy, slatternly. Sylvia had her back to him, crouching at the television fiddling with the dials. When she resumed her place on the soggy sofa, she barely glanced at him. There’s no point hanging around here. I don’t know anything else. I’m tired, Josef. I got nothing else to say.
Josef remained in the doorway. His hands dangled at his sides. Sylvia sat on her green sofa with both stockinged legs tucked beneath her. On a side table was a well-thumbed television guide, an ashtray and a red lamp. The base of the lamp looked as if it were made of something heavy and solid, like brass. It offered a dull, fish-eyed reflection of the room.
A game show on the television. People jumped around and hooted. A bank of coloured lights flashed on and off and on again. Sylvia stabbed at the remote control. Grainy images of a bomb blast, a burning church, men in military fatigues hurrying civilians across a road. A burning tank, a crying infant. Some war or other. Bang. Another game show with a woman in evening wear astride a car bonnet.
Sylvia picked at a red fingernail and looked up at him. Her moist eyelashes closed and then opened ponderously, like sea anemone. Despite the raucous noise of the television Josef could hear her breathing. He stepped into the room.
When he thought about it later, Josef was unsure why he killed Sylvia. It was inevitable. Even she seemed to expect it. And when he was finished with her, he stood in the darkened room, gasping for air. Thin sweat covered his forehead. The room trembled and jerked with the grey television light. The lamp was in his hand. Its cord whipped uselessly across the floor. He was right; it was made of brass.
His mouth flooded with bile as he staggered back into the hallway with a hand clasped across his lips. He rested against the wall and retched dryly onto the linoleum floor. A soft but determined army of exhaustion trooped through him as he crouched on the floor for several minutes with his hands splayed across his thighs.
He thought suddenly of something his mother used to say—what was it? Tremblement de terre. What did that mean? Many years ago, when he was a boy. Tremblement de terre. Memory was such a strange beast, surfacing at random, from unexpected depths.
Beneath the dappled shade of an apple tree. The smell of grass and river water.
Josef held his coat back with one hand, wiped his mouth and stood up. He coughed and spat and waited a few seconds before patting his hair into place and straightening his clothes. Eventually he composed himself and strolled back through the reception, into the cold street and lowered himself into his car. He smoked a cigarette to rid his mouth of the tart flavour of vomit before edging out into the traffic.
Earthquake. That was it. Earthquake. With his family in the backyard one day, there had been an earthquake, a tremor, the only time he had ever experienced such a thing. The sleepy rumble of the planet. He must have been only ten years old. Twelve at the most. Before all this. What an amazing thing! To look at the ground with brand new eyes, his mother almost drowning in laughter while his father collected apples loosened from the tree and held them to his nose. And the leaves, shaken free from their branches, falling around them, onto their shoulders and heads, onto their laughing, upturned faces.
11
Lee stands in the yard smoking a cigarette. He is afraid, but that is nothing new; he has been afraid since his sentence began a month ago. Beneath the blue all-weather overalls, sweat moistens his armpits. At 10.00 a.m. it is already hot. The sky is pale, any colour burned out by the high summer sun.
The yard is a large, dusty rectangle dotted with struggling clumps of grass, like an impoverished primary school’s. The ground slopes down to one side. Apart from a small group throwing a basketball into a rattling hoop, there are about thirty men standing around smoking and talking in low voices. Many are shirtless. Everyone is inert, stopped in their tracks. Almost without exception their skin is the colour of clotted cream, bruised here and the
re with tattoos.
Lee spends quite a bit of time wondering how it all happened. There was the routine questioning, the court date and then suddenly he was here. The first few times he was nicked, they assigned him a social worker who talked about opportunity and socioeconomics and neglect and stuff. The social worker tried to blame Claire for what she had or hadn’t done, and asked him if he was getting enough to eat. The social worker asked about their guardian, about the accident and the death of his parents and about life with his sister. He said it was OK to feel whatever he was feeling. They wanted something from him, an expression or reaction perhaps, but he was unsure what it was.
Adjacent to the main yard is another smaller yard which is fenced off for the kiddy fiddlers and granny bashers. A beefy man called Fowler is the only prisoner in there at the moment. Simmo and Greene, each with a face as sharp as a razor blade, lean casually against the wire in the main yard and spit and swear in Fowler’s direction. Only occasionally, borne by a favourable breeze and a suitable heft, does it reach the hapless Fowler, and when it does, Simmo and Greene cheer joylessly as he wipes the dull coin of spit away with a bunched sleeve. Even at night, whispered threats stalk the tier: Hey Fowler, I wouldn’t eat your porridge tomorrow. We’re getting bleach put in. Hey Fowler, your soup taste like piss today? Even if Simmo and Greene grow tired of it, which they never seem to, there would be others to take up the slack. There’s plenty of people and plenty of time.
Lee tries not to look but finds it hard not to. It’s like watching a disaster in slow motion. Fowler stands in the corner furthest from the main yard with the fingers of one hand hooked through the wire. He looks resolute but presumably he knows what’s in store for him. He just doesn’t know if it will be a sharpened toothbrush in his neck, a slashed throat or a good, old-fashioned bashing.
The guards in the two surrounding towers are armed with rifles, even though this is supposed to be pretty minimum security, only thieves and fraudsters and junkies. The high-security boys hardly even get out of their cells these days; it’s only sleep, TV and porn for them. From the highest point of the grassy yard, Lee can just see over the wire fences and high brick wall. There are orange-tiled roofs of houses about a mile away, and the curve of a nearby service road. He’s not even sure what suburb or town it is. Now and then there is a flash of sun on a windscreen as a car drives past. It seems an incredible thing, a signal from another planet, but it’s just people going about their business, driving the kids to school or doing the shopping or something. Driving to get a fucking video. It’s cruel to build a prison so close to regular people.
The Low Road Page 7