Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

  I heard the guard say, ‘Ms Eve Carides?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ she replied.

  ‘Mr Nitmick is waiting for you.’

  It was her – Pixel!

  She disappeared through the door.

  The maximum time for a visit was only thirty minutes, so I decided to wait for her. I found a magazine to read. When Pixel reappeared, she was crying mascara-speckled tears.

  I stood up and followed her as she made for the exit.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, holding out a handful of tissues.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, dabbing ineffectually at her eyes.

  When she’d finished she handed me back the now-sodden mass of tissue.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I came into your shop a few weeks ago.’

  ‘The boy with the fakeroony?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty sure I can get Andre out of here.’

  I had no idea what to expect. Indifference? Astonishment? Maybe even violence?

  But that was not what I got: she took both my hands in hers – they were soft and fleshy – and said, ‘Hallelujah, let’s pray and give thanks to Jesus.’

  I closed my eyes while she prayed in a voice that seemed all breath. ‘Thank you, Lord Jesus, for bringing this angel to me today to help guide me in this, my hour of need.’

  When she’d finished she said, ‘Okay, shoot. How do we spring my man?’

  I shot, telling her how I thought we could spring her man.

  When I’d finished she said, ‘It’s a miracle!’

  ‘But remember,’ I said, ‘Andre has to tell me what I need to know.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Pixel. ‘Andre does everything I tell him to do.’

  I went outside and rang Hound’s number.

  He answered straightaway.

  ‘It’s me, Youngblood. I’m at the jail,’ I said. ‘You said the other day that maybe Nitmick could get bail again.’

  ‘I don’t want to big-note myself or anything, Youngblood, but if there’s one person who could get that tub of lard out from behind bars legally, it’d be me.’

  ‘In that case, I’d like you to bail him for me.’

  ‘You must be mad,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  I ignored his question and said, ‘If you bail him I’ll forget about that work you were supposed to do for me.’

  ‘What work’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Remember, my friend Imogen, her father? The deal was that you’d look into his disappearance.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Hound, but it was obvious he’d done absolutely nothing about it. ‘Anyway, that ain’t enough,’ he added. ‘Bailing Mr Nitmick is going to take some doing.’

  ‘But you just said that if anybody can do it, it’d be you.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it won’t take some doing.’

  ‘I could do some more work for you,’ I said. ‘Guzman’s okay, but he sure doesn’t have my skill set.’

  There was a pause at the other end and I knew I had him.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I might even get him out tomorrow morning if I pull a few strings.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said.

  ‘And Youngblood?’

  ‘Yes, Hound?’

  ‘You owe me, now. You owe me big-time.’

  What’s new? I thought. Is there anybody I don’t owe big-time?

  TUESDAY

  THE OCTAGON

  ‘And your parents are definitely okay with this?’ said Luiz Antonio as I got into the taxi. He was wearing a Silva da Silva cap. A Silva da Silva T-shirt.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, which was only half the truth because Mom wasn’t okay with it at all.

  She wasn’t okay with the UFC.

  ‘It’s absolutely disgusting,’ she said. ‘The government should ban it.’

  She wasn’t okay with me going to the casino.

  ‘It’s just not the place for a fifteen year old,’ she said.

  ‘I’m pretty sure the venue has a separate entrance,’ said Dad.

  She wasn’t okay with me going out on a Tuesday. ‘It’s a school night!’

  And she wasn’t okay with Luiz Antonio. ‘Who is this man he’s going with?’ she said. ‘This taxi driver?’

  But Dad came to my rescue. ‘It’s fine, dear,’ he said.

  ‘But –’ said Mom, but that was as far as she got because Dad, his tone more forceful this time, said, ‘Dom has to do what he has to do, okay?’

  Mom looked at Dad. Dad looked at Mom. There was a whole lot of unspoken stuff going on between them. Eventually Mom said, ‘Just be careful, okay?’

  As we drove along the Gold Coast Highway towards the casino, people were waving to us all over the place.

  Wow, I thought. Everybody’s real friendly tonight.

  Then I realised: Old-school derr-brain, you’re in a taxi!

  The vacant light might have been off, but it was still a taxi, and they were obviously in short supply. We pulled into the casino carpark, got out, and joined the people making for the entrance. The majority were men, but there were a few woman as well, all of whom seemed really well endowed in both the hair and the bosom departments.

  Either Dad had got it wrong, or Dad had lied, because the venue didn’t have a separate entrance to the casino. You went up the same marble steps, through the same doors, but instead of going straight ahead, you turned to the right. Went up some more stairs. I showed our tickets to the usher and he showed us to our seats.

  It was such a relief to see Andre Nitmick there, squeezed into his seat, doing the cryptic crossword in the newspaper.

  Getting him to agree to this meeting had been so stressful.

  ‘What about at the train station?’ I’d asked him over the phone after he’d been bailed. ‘Like they do on the movies.’

  ‘No can do,’ he’d said.

  ‘We could hire a boat, go out into the middle of the river?’

  ‘No can do,’ he’d said.

  ‘Robina Mall, then?’

  You guessed it: no can do.

  ‘You have to meet with me,’ I’d said. ‘It’s part of the deal.’

  ‘Deal schmeil.’

  ‘How do you think Pixel would feel if you went back inside?’ I’d said.

  Nothing from Nitmick, and I knew I was onto something.

  ‘I think Pixel would be very upset,’ I’d said.

  Finally he said, ‘Okay, let’s meet at the UFC this Tuesday night.’

  ‘You’re into the UFC?’ I’d said, picturing Nitmick with his hundred-plus kilos of finely chiselled flab.

  ‘Of course, who isn’t?’ he’d said. ‘Besides, it’s perfect. There’s a lot of people. It’s noisy. And it’s the last place they would expect to find me.’

  When you talked to Nitmick a lot, which I’d had the misfortune to do lately, then you became accustomed to ‘they’.

  ‘They’ were reading all his mail.

  ‘They’ were tapping all his phone calls.

  I’m sure he thought ‘they’ were also there when he went to the toilet, monitoring his every movement.

  Nitmick was wearing a Brock the Rock T-shirt, and a Brock the Rock cap. I introduced Andre to Luiz Antonio and the two of them immediately launched into a discussion about the relative merits of Brock the Rock and Silva da Silva. A discussion that soon turned very technical. Apparently both fighters were undefeated. While Brock the Rock’s strength was his striking with an eighty per cent success rate, Silva da Silva was the takedown expert with an incredible eighty-eight per cent success rate!

  Luiz Antonio and Nitmick kept on talking until two fighters entered the Octagon and the preliminary bout started. And when that finished a new one started up.

  By the time the main bout began I hadn’t had a chance to say one word to Nitmick. When Brock the Rock and Silva da Silva started laying into each other, the two men jumped up on their feet, screaming their support. But there again, so di
d most of the people in the stadium. Especially the women with the really big hair/bosoms.

  ‘Rip his head off, Rock!’ yelled the one in front of us.

  By the third and final round, there was blood everywhere: all over the canvas, all over Brock the Rock, all over Silva da Silva.

  Nitmick’s face was a violent shade of red, his voice hoarse from the relentless yelling. And Luiz Antonio had reverted to his native Portuguese.

  ‘Matá-lo!’ he screamed. ‘Matá-lo!’

  It was the last few seconds, both fighters were totally exhausted, but they still managed to swing wild punches in the general direction of one another. When the final bell sounded, the two fighters embraced, collapsing into each other’s arms, performing a strange staggering dance around the Octagon.

  There was tumultuous applause, everybody in the stadium on their feet clapping. Including me.

  And then a hush, as the referee announced the winner: ‘It’s a draw!’

  The first one in UFC history, apparently. And Nitmick and Luiz Antonio embraced each other, as if they’d been the ones who had just beaten each other to an honourable pulp.

  Which was all very amazing. Except that I still hadn’t managed to say anything to Nitmick.

  ‘Under World,’ I whispered to him after he’d released Luiz Antonio.

  ‘Men’s,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Toilet.’

  I followed him there.

  The toilet was full of men, and the sweat of men, and the smell of men, and men’s excited talk: what a great fight it was!

  I stood next to Nitmick at the urinal. He unzipped. And though I didn’t have the urge, I also unzipped. I mean, it would’ve been pretty weird not to – there aren’t a whole lot of other reasons for standing at a urinal.

  ‘So you like apple pies?’ he said.

  We could’ve been in the middle of the river. Or at the mall. Anywhere, really. Talking about the Cerberus. Instead we were in a crowded, stinking toilet talking about apple, stupid, pies. I hated Nitmick. His paranoia. His insistence that we meet here. But what choice did I have?

  ‘Yes, I like apple pies,’ I said.

  ‘The new type?’ he said. ‘The type nobody’s tasted?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘They’re not available at the shop yet.’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ I said. ‘I went to the shop the other day. They even get angry when you ask for one.’

  Nitmick smiled knowingly at this. ‘They do, don’t they?’

  ‘So if they’re not available at the shop, where can I get one?’ I said.

  Nitmick looked around, swivelling his body as he did so. Not a great idea when you’re unzipped.

  Eventually, when he was satisfied that there was nobody eavesdropping on our potentially government-destabilising apple-pie conversation, he said, ‘You’re better off making one yourself.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Absolutely. Much easier that way. Really, there’s only three basic ingredients.’

  Three basic ingredients?

  I thought about it: case, screen, circuit board. He was right, three basic ingredients. And I remembered the emails I’d read between Nitmick and his two coconspirators, SheikSnap and LoverOfLinux, how I’d had the sense that they each had a task to perform.

  ‘And they’re available locally?’ I said.

  ‘More or less,’ he said.

  Then I got it: that PDF I’d seen on Nitmick’s computer: ‘Authorised Component Suppliers’.

  ‘Okay, can you email me that PDF?’ I said. ‘Sorry, the list of apple-pie suppliers.’

  Nitmick zipped up, hitched up his trousers.

  ‘Look, kid, I told you I would’ve done the time no problem. But I was lying. That place was terrifying. Now that I’m out, I intend to stay out. Pixel and I, we want to get married, have kids. I’m going to get a proper job, a Joe Citizen’s job. Maybe move into numismatics. No more hacking for me. No more criminal stuff.’

  ‘But …’ I started, before he cut me off.

  ‘There is no PDF,’ he said. ‘I trashed my hard drive.’

  With that, he washed his hands at the sink, adjusted his glasses in the mirror and walked away from me.

  As Luiz Antonio drove out of the carpark even more people were waving at us. One man actually pulled a handful of notes out of his pocket and shook it in our direction.

  ‘I don’t mind if you want to pick up a fare,’ I said.

  Luiz Antonio laughed.

  ‘When I first came to this country, I never refused a fare. Now, though, I know you can’t always be working.’ He pressed a button on the car stereo. It was that song again.

  ‘Bad head and sick feet?’ I said.

  ‘Sim,’ said Luiz Antonio. ‘You have a good memory.’

  I looked at the faded photo on his licence that was affixed to the window. In it he had long hair, a handlebar moustache. He looked like a member of that cheesy band my mum liked, the Eagles.

  ‘So do you have kids?’ I asked.

  ‘Three,’ he said. ‘And five grandkids.’

  ‘Do they live on the Coast?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re back home, in the Cidade Marvilhosa.’

  The fingers of his right hand tapped a pattern on the dash, before he said, ‘I came here because the military was in power in my country and it was safer for me to get out. But then I got used to living here, and my family got used to me not living there.’

  The sick feet song finished and another one started.

  ‘What’s this song about?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s a very sad song,’ he said.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Sadness has no end, but happiness does.’

  I thought of Gus, his leg taken from him. His dead brother. I thought of how Imogen didn’t talk to me any more. I thought of The Debt: how was I ever going to pay this instalment?

  It was pretty spot on, I thought.

  Sadness has no end, but happiness does.

  ‘I want to get out here,’ I said.

  ‘But …’ started Luiz Antonio, but I didn’t let him get any further. I just had to get out of the taxi.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please drop me off right here.’

  He pulled into the kerb.

  I got out.

  And I started running, not taking any notice of where I was going. Just running, eating footpath.

  Away from all that endless sadness.

  WEDNESDAY

  COZZI’S

  I had one of those nights.

  Twisting and turning, wrestling with the sheets.

  In my head, a procession of images, each more horrendous than the one before. Ending, as usual, with the most horrendous of them all: my leg, freshly amputated, twitching on the ground, while a geyser of blood spouted from my stump.

  I woke, cold and sweaty, and stayed like that as the first tentacles of light reached into my bedroom.

  When my iPhone alarm went off, the Baha Men once again lamenting the lack of canine-related security, I got up and went for my customary run.

  But this morning not even the run had its usual calming effect. The nightmare lingered, twitching stump, geyser of blood.

  So from the Coast Home Loans office I pushed it hard, insanely hard.

  And when I arrived at Gus’s house, red-faced, gasping for breath, he was not happy.

  ‘What in the hell are you doing?’ he said, checking the numbers downloaded from my pulse meter. ‘Your BPM was sky-high.’

  ‘This stuff tastes like crap,’ I said, pushing the bowl of ugali away.

  Actually, it always tasted like crap, but usually it was the crap you ate because it was good for you. Today it was just plain crap.

  ‘I’m going to have a proper breakfast at home,’ I said, getting up.

  Mom was alone in the kitchen and the juicer was juicing. Carrots, beetroot, celery: you wouldn’t believe the stuff she fed it. And always, at the end, a great big kn
obby knob of ginger.

  ‘You know about the dinner tonight, darling?’ she said, sipping the resulting concoction.

  ‘The dinner?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve told you twice already,’ she said, a note of irritation in her voice. ‘There’s a few people coming, mostly from inside.’

  By ‘inside’ she meant from inside the walls of Halcyon Grove.

  ‘And Toby’s going to do his ice-cream, of course,’ she added.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The Jazys are bringing Tristan along,’ she added. ‘The doctors want him to start doing normal things.’

  It just didn’t seem fair: if Tristan could start doing normal things, why couldn’t I?

  ‘Wouldn’t exactly call green tea and lychee ice-cream normal,’ I said, and immediately regretted my words.

  ‘That’s not the green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head, is it?’

  ‘Are you asking me if I’m jealous of Toby?’ I said, and I was ready for a fight.

  I still hadn’t quite got my head around what had happened on Saturday: had my own mother set up that thing at the café? Was she somehow involved with The Debt?

  I could see Mom tense, the knuckles on her hand holding the glass whiten. But then something seemed to come into her face and the knuckles returned to their normal colour.

  ‘Let’s just all have a nice time,’ she said, finishing her concoction with a tiny smack of her lips.

  ‘I’m going to get ready for school,’ I said, making for the stairs.

  My phone rang. It was Hound.

  ‘Gotta job for you,’ he said, his voice full of gravel.

  ‘Good morning to you too.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at Cozzi’s at nine-thirty.’

  ‘I’ve got school today.’

  ‘Lose it,’ he said, then he hung up.

  Weirdly, I felt relieved. There was no training today so I’d been half-thinking of wagging school anyway, and Hound’s phone call had sort of legitimised it. I figured that his job probably wouldn’t take long, half a day at most, and then I could spend the rest of the day on The Debt.

  Grammar was The School That Can’t Be Wagged. Grammar was unwaggable. Except I’d done it twice already, the first time with Clamtop, the second time without.