New Australian Stories 2

by Aviva Tuffield

  But then the bartender says, ‘What can I do you for?’ with that same good-natured smile and there’s no hesitation in his voice or eyes. So what do I know.

  ‘I’m looking for the Boatswain’s Club,’ says Tomlinson. ‘Isn’t it around here?’

  The bartender scratches his nose. ‘The what, sorry?’

  ‘The Boatswain’s Club. Do you know where it is?’ It’s a voice like he was raised by foghorns.

  ‘My word,’ says the bartender. ‘You’re on foot, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No problem.’ He points emphatically, stretching his hand as far back and away from his body as it will go and waving a finger out there. ‘You go six blocks along Russell Street until you hit Victoria Road. You go two streets west along that until you come to Locust Street, where you take a right. It’s a laneway, really. Go all the way to the end. The Boatswain’s Club is on the corner there, next to the Parkway-Spruce Hotel.’

  Tomlinson squints. His eyes twitch, one at a time.

  ‘So … six blocks along Russell, left onto Victoria, right onto Locust.’

  ‘It’s a popular place. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘All right. Thank you.’

  ‘No probs, bloke.’

  The exchange is over in all of thirty seconds, then the bell above the door rings again and Tomlinson is gone. Back into the rain. I watch his umbrella open and float away past the window.

  Then I look to the bartender, waiting for him to look back.

  When he does, he misinterprets my face. ‘You want another?’

  ‘Why did …’ I’m about to ask the obvious question, but then I don’t. Instead, I say, ‘Sure.’

  He pours me another. There’s silence while he does it. Then he goes back to drying the glasses from the dishwasher.

  In that rain, walking that distance, it’ll take Tomlinson about twenty-one, twenty-two minutes to get where he’s going. The bartender, he’s not doing these calculations. Even as I watch him, serenely shelving mugs, he might already have forgotten about the stranger who just came and went, carrying a red umbrella.

  I ask, ‘Do you know who that was?’

  ‘Who? That bloke?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is he famous?’

  ‘Kevin Tomlinson?’

  He doesn’t recognise the name either.

  ‘Spac Attack Tomlinson?’ I offer.

  This time he scowls and his gaze drifts past my ears. ‘Sounds familiar,’ he says. ‘What’s he famous for?’

  ‘He’s a psychopath.’

  ‘You mean, like, he’s a footy player?’

  ‘No, he’s a real-life psychopath. And a thief.’ I take a sip, glance back to the door. ‘And it looks as though he’s doing well for himself.’

  The bartender slows the polishing of the glass, comes almost to a stop. His eyes search the floor. After two seconds of thinking, he snaps out of it, looks back at me.

  I say, ‘He stabbed his home-economics teacher in high school, spent five years in a youth prison, got out and made a career robbing houses, and somewhere along the way he blowtorched his own nipples off. He’s got a tattoo on his left arm that says Rebecca. He’s also got Hepatitis C, mild narcolepsy and once he won twenty-seven thousand dollars on a horse named Rent Arrears …’

  I drink. The bartender doesn’t move.

  ‘… which is what it says on his right arm.’ The bourbon roars in my throat.

  ‘How come you know so much about him?’

  ‘I used to know this kind of stuff for a living.’

  ‘Were you a cop?’

  ‘Not really. I worked privately. The first client I ever had was someone Tomlinson robbed. At least, the police said it was Tomlinson. We never found out for sure. This was a long time ago.’ I laugh to myself, feel the passage of time right in my stomach the way a boat feels rust.

  The bartender keeps polishing, pretending he isn’t worried about what’s just happened. I’ll let him pretend for a while.

  ‘They invited me along to a raid on Tomlinson’s flat. I was supposed to identify a stereo and TV belonging to my client. But I never got to do that.’

  I expect stealth, but they just walk up to the door and knock. It’s about as not like the movies as it can be. Seven uniforms plod along the second-storey catwalk, one of them’s even whistling, and when they get to his door they knock politely and wait, in the midday sun, for it to open.

  I’m at the back of the group, hanging so far behind you’d think I lived in this block of flats and I was just curious. The raiding party eye me with indifference. Some of them smirk at the distance I’m keeping, some of them don’t try to hide that they’re smirking. Some of them, I can tell by the way they chew their gum, are freaking out just the same as me.

  We all know whose home this is.

  The door opens, and it’s a woman, her hair pulled back tight, and there’s lots of green shadow around her eyes. It’s obvious she hadn’t bothered looking through the peephole because she makes a face when she sees who’s out here.

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’

  The senior constable at the head of the group, the name on his pin reads Gant. He offers her a folded sheet of paper and says, ‘Becky, we’ve got a warrant to search this flat. Is Spacca at home?’

  ‘No, he’s not here,’ she says back, louder than she needs to.

  ‘You’re going to have to let us in.’

  Already other officers have their hands on the door, ready to push it open.

  Her lower jaw is stuck out in thought, like she’s actually wondering whether to take on these men hand-to-hand. It’s a perfect, fraught moment. Then she rolls her eyes, drops her hand from the door and disappears.

  The uniforms pour into the flat. As I creep towards the doorway I take a final look around to make sure Kevin Tomlinson isn’t coming up behind me with an axe. This catwalk is one side of a courtyard, and the doors and windows of the other three sides are peppered with faces, craning at doorways, peeking through half-drawn curtains. They’ve come out to see the cops finally catch up with the madman who lives next door.

  It’s a dim, barely furnished place and I’m at the entrance to a short corridor. At the other end, Tomlinson is sitting on a torn-up couch, drawing on a water pipe. Two officers approach and he draws harder, sucking back as much smoke as he can before they reach him. When they do, and when they wrench the bong from his grasp, he exhales up into their faces. The big bad wolf blowing down a house.

  I stay right here at the door.

  I don’t know what makes me look over, but when I do I see that the couple in the far corner of the lounge are kissing. They can’t hear what I’m saying. They’re caught up in their own story.

  ‘So what happened then?’ the bartender asks, watching me. He’s still drying that same glass.

  ‘Well,’ I say, scratching my head, ‘what happened then I had to piece together after the fact. I saw it, but I couldn’t hear it. I only found out later what was actually said. And it got recounted at the trial. But I don’t know if what was said really matters in the end.’

  ‘So … he went on trial?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But you said they didn’t find the stolen stuff.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ I say, sipping frugally from my glass. I look up at the ornate wooden clock above the bar. Beside it there are two bottles of Old Forester. One of them is half empty, the other unopened. A bottle like that, he and I could get to be good friends.

  ‘There was nothing there. And I mean, apart from a few of Tomlinson’s things, the place was outright empty. There was a quarter ounce of marijuana on the coffee table but, as it turns out, Tomlinson didn’t go on trial for that either.’

  It’s been three minutes since he left the Fountainhead.

  Senior Constable Gant, he’s trying to hide his disappointment, angling the bowl one way, then the other, like it contains an unimpressive stool sample. Around him the other uniforms would be turning the place upside down if
there was anything here to do that to. They wander aimlessly, checking behind furniture and under loose flaps of carpet, trying to seem busy.

  ‘It’s a hell of a parole violation, Spacca.’

  ‘Big whoops.’ Tomlinson is still on the couch, his eyes stained red with the drug. He wears a flimsy tattered singlet showing the words on his arms. His shorts are shiny green and gold, crowning skinny, impossibly hairy legs. The choppy fuzz that grows out of his face is caked with food and it’s wet from who knows what. Becky sits next to him, marginally more clothed, eyes still green.

  She says, ‘It’s not his mull, it’s mine.’

  ‘No kidding.’ Gant is barely listening. He puts the bowl back on the table.

  ‘Yep,’ says Becky.

  ‘Yep,’ says Tomlinson, grinning.

  Becky adds, ‘I bought it and I own it, which makes it mine, right?’ She knows the script.

  ‘I’ll go down for less than a month if it’s not my gear,’ Tomlinson taunts.

  Gant sighs. ‘It’s on your coffee table in your flat and you’re smoking it, Spacca, so we’ll just see …’ He catches the eyes of several other uniforms, who shake their heads, shrug. They’ve found nothing.

  ‘All right,’ he grunts, waving at one of the officers, then pointing to the pair on the couch. ‘Get them out of here. Everyone else, five more minutes.’

  The officer who strides to the couch, he’s got black hair and a crooked nose and he’s the one who was whistling on the way to Tomlinson’s door. Fast as he can he’s got his handcuffs out. He gestures at Tomlinson and says, ‘Up.’

  Tomlinson stands, achingly slowly, still grinning at Gant. Not even looking at the cop with the black hair though they’re face to face. The name on the officer’s pin is Correll, and he’s handcuffing Tomlinson, hands in front.

  What makes Tomlinson look at Correll is Correll whispering, ‘A month is long enough to make a special friend inside, isn’t it, Spacca?’

  No one else hears it. Not Spacca’s girlfriend, not Senior Constable Gant who’s turning away now, looking mournfully at his watch. Not me, standing at the door, trying to keep hidden from even the police because I’m just a reminder of what they’ve failed to find.

  Tomlinson stops grinning. He blinks twice and his eyes go dead. Correll stares back into those eyes and says, ‘I’ve heard that’s what you’re into.’

  None of us hear that either.

  But Tomlinson does.

  His face spasms, like those uninhibited moments right before you belch. His lips and eyes squeeze shut and his head jerks back and forth in tiny chicken pecks. But all his preparation is over in an instant and he lunges forward, not at Correll but at a sandy-haired giant who isn’t looking when Tomlinson rips his name pin from his breast and wheels it into Correll’s left eye.

  He might be handcuffed, but Tomlinson stabs Correll twice in that eye and once in the nose before anyone turns to look.

  Correll screams and Becky screams, but over the two of them Tomlinson screams the loudest, a throaty cackle with the psychopath right there inside it. The giant and Gant grab hold of him but he stabs Correll two or three times in the other eye before they get control of the arm holding the pin and blood is spouting like spring water from Correll’s face but he’s not making any noise now because the shock has overwhelmed him and he hits the floor and Tomlinson’s trying to get down there to hurt him some more but six uniforms are holding him up and Gant has got Tomlinson’s hair and everyone’s shouting for an ambulance or for help and Becky’s shouting that they’re all bastards.

  The way Gant pulls on Tomlinson’s hair, Tomlinson’s face is angled at me. Amid the storm of struggling and shouting, his body tense with fight, Tomlinson locks eyes with me, this little person all the way over here. For a moment.

  Me, who’s not a cop, who’s peeking around the door from outside the flat.

  Me and my boggle-eyes. Me with my myth of Kevin Tomlinson that’s been proved violently true.

  And he smiles at me, hungry and joyous, like he knows everything that’s going to happen to me from this day on. And it tickles him.

  ‘Jesus,’ says the bartender, softly. ‘How was the cop?’

  ‘Blind. And apparently he went a little nuts. I suppose you would.’

  ‘My word,’ he says, distracted. He’s been polishing that glass right through my story. But not because I’m a good storyteller.

  ‘Didn’t this Tomlinson bloke go to jail?’

  ‘Sure. He got eight years. But this all happened a long time ago. He’s back out again.’

  It’s been eleven minutes since Tomlinson left the Fountainhead. He’d have reached Victoria Road by now.

  ‘A lot of criminals act like they’re crazy,’ I say, getting ready to ask the obvious question. Properly this time. ‘Then it turns out they’re just ordinary people, only they want you to think they’re crazy. But Spac Attack Tomlinson is the real deal. A genuine maniac.’

  The bartender’s wrinkled brow furrows.

  I watch him now, with his big happy shirt and his big friendly nose. This big man with his big pores, he’s wiping the same glass like he’ll get three wishes if he just does that for long enough. I bet I know what one of those wishes would be.

  I say, ‘So?’ And rest my face on my hand, propped on the bar.

  He looks up from the floor, glares back. ‘What?’

  I have to raise my head from my hand to speak. ‘Why did you give him the wrong directions to the Boatswain’s Club?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘You sent him to the Blue Fandango.’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head urgently, laughs. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘The Boatswain’s Club is on Piermont Avenue, not Locust Street.’

  He laughs again, shakes his head. Shrugs, shakes his head again, shrugs again. ‘That’s what I told him. I told him Piermont —’

  ‘You sent him to the Blue Fandango. A bondage club. A bondage club that’s got a sign right there on the street that says: No Women, No Straight Men.’

  ‘No …’

  ‘All right,’ I grunt. My elbow slumps off the bar. ‘But when Tomlinson comes back and stabs you in the neck with that umbrella of his, don’t go telling me then you didn’t —’

  ‘I used to work at the Boatswain’s Club,’ he blurts, gripping the wooden edge of the counter, staring at it.

  That cuts my annoyance short. I sit up.

  He’s finally stopped polishing that clean clean glass. He says, ‘It’s one of those pretentious joints, right?’ His voice has lost that friendly, lawnmower tone. ‘Like when you buy a pack of cigarettes and the bartender opens them for you and pulls one out of the pack. I was always crap at sucking up to patrons … I hated it. And they sacked me. Some teenager with big boobs got my job and now I’m stuck pouring drinks in this shithole.’

  A car horn bleats right outside and a shrill voice responds, ‘Fuck off.’

  The bartender doesn’t seem to hear them. He says, ‘People come in here all the time looking for the Boatswain’s Club, but I send them to that faggot bar instead because … Just to get my own back, you know?’

  His words hang there, glued to the air around us.

  He says, ‘I guess you think I’m a bloody idiot.’

  ‘My word,’ I say.

  I take another sip, then another small one, and I shake my head, try to change gear.

  ‘It’s no big deal. He’ll get lost in the rain. Someone will give him directions. He’ll find his way to the Boatswain’s Club.’

  The bartender nods, trying to believe it. His tongue works back and forth across his bottom lip, seeking reassurance. He says, ‘Maybe he isn’t that crazy anymore.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  He waves the glass in the air as he speaks. ‘Maybe prison sorted him out. Maybe he got treatment. He looked good, yeah? Well dressed. Maybe he’s a normal person now.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  ‘Like you said, all that … that stuff …’ And he points at
me. ‘That was a long time ago, right?’

  But even as he speaks, his eyes skip over to the door, wondering if it’s about to open.

  I say, ‘A long time ago. Yes.’

  He nods, satisfied, then turns to shelve that glass with the rest. He reaches it up to the wooden mantel above the register.

  The girl over in the dining area laughs, a shrill giggle that’s not too loud — but it’s enough to make the bartender flinch.

  He drops the glass. It smashes on the floor.

  For a moment he doesn’t move, like he’s paralysed while standing. Then he lowers his hands to his knees and he stays like that for several moments.

  The rain isn’t getting any lighter. If anything it’s more intense. The noise of the street is like a meteor approaching.

  I finish the last of my drink. ‘I can go find him for you.’

  At first he doesn’t respond, still bent over like there’s something on the floor that’s more interesting.

  Then, softly, he says, ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will you do if you find him?’

  ‘Spin him a line. Get him to the Boatswain’s Club. Make sure he forgets all about you.’

  Slowly, he straightens up and rests himself on the bar. ‘You can do that?’

  Not being able to hadn’t occurred to me. I say, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’

  I try not to smirk. ‘I’ll do it for that bottle of Old Forester up there on your top shelf.’ I point.

  He turns to look. When he turns back he’s thinking. ‘Will you get to him in time?’

  I say, ‘He’s probably on his way back here right now. But he shouldn’t be hard to find.’