Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

  I followed the same simple plan as the first time. When Mom dropped me off, I made slowly for the entrance. When her car had disappeared, I pretended that I’d left something behind and headed back to the drop-off zone. From there, I hurried across the road.

  This was the most dangerous part of my plan, dodging four lanes of hurtling cars, buses, trucks and various other potentially life-ending vehicles. I made it through, and sprinted on to a park, into some bushes, where I changed out of my school clothes.

  I took ClamTop out of my schoolbag.

  Open, I thought, wondering whether it would. Again, my wagging school wasn’t strictly to do with The Debt.

  It opened immediately, however.

  Available Wi-Fi Networks, it said at the top of the screen.

  I double-tapped on GRAMMARNET.

  It was a secure network, it wanted a password.

  The password cracker appeared, the little devil doing its devilish dance, the words cracking password … underneath.

  Again, it took about fifteen seconds for it to start smiling, for the words password cracked to appear.

  There were hundreds of computers connected to the network. They were arranged alphabetically, however, and it didn’t take me long to scroll down and find Mr Travers’s computer, the one he always seemed to be looking at.

  When I cloned his desktop, the Computerised Rollcall program was open, and he’d started ticking the names of the students who were present. Albrechtson. Tick. Betts. Tick.

  When he came to my name, he left it blank. I corrected that little omission by moving the cursor to the box next to my name and tapping on the screen. A tick appeared in it. When Mr Travers had finished, the ‘send data’ button was highlighted. Which meant that an automated text message – Our records show that your son Dominic Silvagni is not attending school today. Could you please ring immediately with an explanation. – would not be sent to both my parents’ phones.

  I was just about to log off when something caught my eye.

  Again, Mr Travers had his Facebook page open.

  He had 524 friends, too. Maybe he wasn’t the total loser we all thought he was.

  And he’d just made a posting.

  Bored, bored, bored. Who thought my life would ever come to this? 30k a year it costs to send a kid to this moron factory. And what do you end up with? Kids who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag.

  Wow, that’s pretty mean, I thought. Followed by, Wow, that’s some good ammo.

  I caught a bus to Surfers. Normally I never sat in the back seat because the back seat belonged to the tough kids, the bad kids. Even though this particular back seat was empty, the tough kids were an invisible presence.

  ‘That’s our seat, Grammar boy,’ they warned me with their silent voices.

  Today, however, I sat in the back seat. I’d wagged The School That Can’t Be Wagged – again – I was off to meet Hound at Cozzi’s; I was as bad, as tough as any of them.

  As the bus rollicked along, I thought of all those suckers in class right now, listening to Mr Arvanitakis going on about photosynthesis. Okay, it was pretty entertaining, because Mr Arvanitakis had a lisp: photo-thyn-thy-thy, but it was nothing compared to this.

  I hit the stop button with my elbow (just like the bad boys).

  Jumped off the bus before it’d come to a complete stop (just like a bad boys).

  And I thought about dropping a huge goozey on the street (just like the bad boys) but decided against it on grounds of public hygiene.

  Everybody knew Cozzi’s; it was one of those places that was always being mentioned in the paper, or on the news. Rarely in the food section, however. More like in the leading-underworld-figure-is-shot-outside-Cozzi’s-café section. Or the undercover-police-say-they-have-taped-a-conversation-by-the-accused-at-Cozzi’s-café-in-which-the-importation-of-a-large-amount-of-cannabis-was-arranged section.

  The café itself was tiny, a hole in the wall, but rickety wooden stools stretched out along the footpath in either direction.

  As I walked inside, Guzman passed me going in the opposite direction carrying a takeaway coffee. We exchanged pleasantries – he snarled at me, I glared at him – before we continued on our ways.

  ‘Do you do mocha lattés?’ I asked the man behind the counter.

  He was one of those stubbly men who could probably spend their whole life just shaving. You know, like the Sydney Harbour Bridge – once they’re finished painting at one end, they have to start again at the other end.

  ‘Either you order a proper coffee or you go to Starbucks,’ he said, except he didn’t exactly call it Starbucks.

  I felt like he’d seen straight through my newly acquired back-seat bad-boy persona to the little rich kid beneath.

  ‘Can I have an espresso, please,’ I said.

  His expression still hadn’t changed, so I added, ‘Make it a triple shot.’

  He smiled at that, calling out my order to the barista in a language that was not Italian. It sounded like the language Saïd Aouita, Noureddine Morceli and Hicham El Guerrouj spoke.

  ‘So you’re not Italian?’ I said.

  ‘Where’s the law that says only Italians can make good coffee?’

  I really wished I could’ve rewound the last five minutes.

  ‘Do I need a number or anything?’ I asked.

  ‘Just take a seat, Snake’ll find you.’

  I went outside, found an empty stool and waited.

  Two kids, a boy and a girl, both around my age, sat down at the table behind me.

  The first one I knew: it was Brandon.

  But this Brandon was thinner than the Brandon who I’d seen at the hospital, at the cinema, and at the arcade.

  ‘Needle and the Damage Done’, I told myself, thinking of the Neil Young song Mr McFarlane had used in one of his English classes.

  His companion was the girl who’d been with him on the first two occasions: short dark messy hair, pale skin, big eyes; she looked a bit like an anime character.

  They looked at me. I looked at them.

  But then Snake – tight jeans, sharp boots, retro bumbag – found me, just as the man said he would, and I turned my attention to the coffee he handed me.

  ‘That’ll kickstart your day, amigo,’ he said, taking out his phone from the bumbag, swiping pages like crazy.

  ‘That the new Styxx Charon?’ I said.

  ‘Totally kicks butt,’ said Snake. ‘Can’t keep my hands off it.’

  ‘Order, Snake,’ boomed a voice from inside the café and Snake shoved his phone into his bumbag and took off.

  Jobs, I thought, they sure do get in the way.

  The first sip of my triple-shot espresso and a bomb exploded in my mouth. It was hot and it was bitter, and the caffeine rush almost knocked me off my tiny wooden stool. I managed to register that Hound had arrived, his black Hummer pulling up in a No Parking zone. He got out and there was a hell of a lot of denim: denim jeans and a denim shirt and a denim jacket.

  In my world, in my school, even double denim was a serious crime; you got sentenced to a dead leg for that, or your underpants full of slushie. But this was triple denim – triple denim! – and nobody seemed to care.

  Everybody, it appeared, knew Hound. There was a lot of blokey interaction – complicated four-part handshakes, rib-cracking backslaps – before Hound eventually got to me.

  ‘Drinking the real stuff,’ he said, indicating the cup.

  ‘Proper coffee,’ I said. ‘You want me to get you one? Kickstart your day, amigo?’

  ‘Can’t stand the stuff,’ said Hound. ‘No good for the nerves.’

  Snake appeared with a cup of tea on a saucer and handed it to Hound. Hound sat down on a stool and took a delicate sip.

  Two large men in large suits approached.

  ‘Hound, we need to talk,’ said the taller of the two.

  ‘This is my associate, Dom,’ said Hound, standing up.

  I stood up to shake each man’s hand and sat down again
.

  They started talking to Hound, but although they spoke in English, I didn’t really understand a lot of what they were saying.

  ‘Coast Home Loans’ I got. How could I not? They seemed to have an office on every corner. But when they started talking about an associate of theirs who was ‘well out of his depth’ and was being ‘leant on’ I got totally lost.

  Hound said that he’d do some digging.

  The three men shook hands and there was a flash.

  I looked around to see a man standing half on the road and half on the footpath, with a camera pointed towards us.

  Another flash.

  The photographer ran across the road and got into a waiting car.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Papers,’ said Hound. ‘For the social pages,’ he added, with a smile.

  ‘Do you think I’m in it?’ I said, thinking that it wouldn’t be such a good look for somebody wagging school.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hound. ‘But don’t worry, they’ll Photoshop you out.’

  When the two men had gone we sat down again and Hound pointed to my coffee. ‘You want another one of those?’

  ‘No, I’m right,’ I said, my nerves jangling like the school caretaker’s keys.

  ‘Okay, let’s get down to business.’

  ‘Let’s.’

  ‘It’s Guzman,’ he said. ‘I reckon he’s dudding me.’

  ‘Dudding you?’

  ‘I’m not sure how, but I’ve just got this hunch.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do?’

  Hound took out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote three phone numbers down. ‘These are his numbers,’ he said. ‘But from what I understand, he mostly uses the last one.’

  Then he wrote an address under that.

  ‘And this is where the maggot lives.’

  He handed me the paper and stood up.

  ‘I want you to find out what he’s up to, Youngblood.’

  As I watched him get back into his ridiculous Hummer I really wished I’d said something. Something like: ‘This wasn’t part of the deal.’ Or, ‘I’m not going to do this.’ Or, ‘Even tough guys like you can’t get away with triple denim.’ Okay, forget the last one. But I’d already decided that I wasn’t about to start snooping on Guzman. I didn’t like him much and he probably was dudding Hound, whatever that meant, but that was none of my business. Besides, there were debts and there was The Debt. If I didn’t snoop on Guzman, Hound might dob me in to the cops, he might even beat me up so badly that he’d smash all my teeth and I’d have to survive on protein shakes for the rest of my life, but he wasn’t about to take my leg away from me.

  It was time to concentrate on getting that Cerberus.

  I went to pick up my bag and it was gone. So too had Brandon and his girlfriend. I rushed into the café.

  ‘Somebody took my bag!’ I said to the man. ‘And I’m pretty sure I know who they were.’

  ‘Well, you probably should’ve taken better care of it,’ he said.

  I thought about ringing the police, but decided that was probably not the best idea for somebody who was currently wagging the unwaggable school.

  I rang Hound instead, describing Brandon and the girl to him.

  ‘I’ll make some calls,’ he said.

  Ten minutes later I received a text from Hound: sit tight. Sure enough, five minutes after this, I saw them coming down the street, Brandon with my bag slung over his shoulder.

  ‘That’s mine!’ I said, moving towards him.

  Brandon coughed, a hacking cough that seemed to make his whole body shake.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said the girl, putting her hand out to stop me. ‘We’re here to give it back to you.’

  There was nothing anime about her voice – it had a sort of toughness about it, a voice you think twice about messing with.

  ‘It’s okay, PJ,’ said Brandon. ‘I can handle this, eh?’

  PJ, I thought. I wondered if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Brandon and PJ, it had a pathetic sort of ring to it.

  Brandon coughed again, this one less shuddery than the last, before he put my bag down at my feet and said, ‘Didn’t know you was connected.’

  Neither did I.

  ‘What is that thing, anyway?’ he said.

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Looks like some sort of computer, eh?’

  ‘Oh, that thing. It’s a, um, prototype,’ I said.

  Brandon stood there looking at me with his deep-set eyes, scratching at a scab on his elbow.

  ‘What?’ I eventually said.

  ‘Thought you might have something for our trouble.’

  ‘You just stole my bag!’

  ‘But we brung it back, didn’t we?’

  ‘Come on, Brandon,’ said PJ. ‘Leave him alone.’

  Good idea, I thought, looking at PJ.

  She had a sort of half-smile on her lips, as if she found it all a bit amusing.

  And I guess she had a point. Expecting money for returning a bag you’d stolen – as Peter Eisinger would say, Brandon had some chutzpah.

  I took some coins from my pocket – there was about five bucks – and handed them to Brandon.

  Okay, I would have preferred to hand them to her, but it was Brandon who’d asked.

  ‘Wow, last of the big spenders,’ said Brandon.

  As for PJ, she gave me a wink.

  Which was pretty weird because nobody, and I mean nobody, under the age of about a hundred and five, winks.

  And I almost winked back, but I didn’t.

  As I watched them moving away, two kids living on the street, I couldn’t help thinking about all that stuff we’d learnt about in Science: Darwin, evolution, survival of the fittest.

  How long had they survived on the streets? From what Mom had said, at least a year. Okay, Brandon wasn’t looking too crash-hot, but there was something about PJ.

  It seemed to me right then that if I was to repay The Debt I’d have to find a bit of what she had, a bit of the street.

  I opened the bag, took out ClamTop, made sure it wasn’t damaged or anything. As I did, something occurred to me.

  I didn’t believe Nitmick when he said he’d trashed his hard disk. But as far as I was concerned he may as well have, because there was no way I would be able to get my hands on that PDF.

  Once hacked, twice shy – he would be hyper–vigilant now, so vigilant that not even ClamTop would find a way through.

  But then I remembered something: the little flashing REC icon.

  I put ClamTop on a stool in front of me.

  Thought it open.

  Previous sessions, I asked myself. Where would it store those? How could I access them?

  Almost immediately the words Previous Sessions appeared at the top of the screen, and under that a table that detailed the times in the past I’d used the ClamTop, all the way back to the very first time, when I’d cloned Imogen’s desktop.

  But the one that interested me was last Wednesday.

  I touched that part of the screen with my finger. It highlighted – a good sign. I double-tapped on it; a screen popped up.

  It looked like a media player, with play, stop, pause and rewind buttons.

  I touched the play button.

  The list of networks for Nitmick’s apartment building appeared.

  Nitmick’s desktop reappeared.

  The PDF titled ‘Authorised Component Suppliers’ with the Styxx watermark.

  I hit pause.

  Took out pen and paper and copied the list down.

  After that I went to the email Nitmick had been about to send to SheikSnap before we phished the hell out of him.

  I wrote it down.

  If that’s the case, bolt’s got the number on ‘a mundane glove’, all mixed up, next to the tiny Phosphorus Mountains.

  Was this some sort of code or concealment?

  I tried a few things: the first letter of each word, the second letter of each word, but I got nothing. It reminded me
of something, though.

  If that’s the case, bolt’s got the number on ‘a mundane glove’, all mixed up, next to the tiny Phosphorus Mountains.

  Of course! – the clues in a cryptic crossword. Really, I only knew two people who did cryptic crosswords. Nitmick was one, but I couldn’t ask him. Not now that he was on the straight and narrow. And the second person?

  Why not, I thought, as I closed ClamTop and put it back in my bag. What have I got to lose?

  WEDNESDAY

  CRYPTIC

  I waited until school had finished before I changed back into my school uniform and ventured through the gates. Safer that way, I reasoned. There’d be fewer teachers around. But as I hurried towards Hogwarts an authoritative voice said, ‘Silvagni!’

  Shiitake mushrooms! I thought.

  But ‘Shiitake mushrooms!’ I didn’t say, opting instead for the more conventional, ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I didn’t see you around today,’ said Mr Travers.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘In fact, I marked you as absent during this morning’s rollcall.’

  ‘That’s right, absent,’ I said.

  ‘So it was with some surprise that a subsequent check of the roll gave you as present.’

  ‘That would be surprising,’ I said. Especially for somebody who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag.

  ‘Absent but present; now that’s an interesting philosophical proposition,’ said Mr Travers.

  Mr Travers was enjoying this, the same way a cat enjoys playing with a mouse before he gobbles it up. But what Mr Travers didn’t realise was that this particular mouse had some major squeak-power in him.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I have no choice but to report this to the principal.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Mr Travers, a how-dare-you-talk-to-me-like-that tone to his voice.

  ‘Because I don’t think Mr Cranbrook would like to hear his school referred to as a “moron factory”,’ I said.

  Mr Travers glared at me, then the cat released his mouse. As he slunk off, I mentally added him to my ever-growing list of enemies. Maybe Mr Travers wasn’t as formidable as some of the others, as Fiends of the Earth, or Cameron Jamison, or the Queensland Police Force, but he was still one more person I had to watch out for in the future.