And I guess you could see vestiges of that. There was a mudbrick building, its middle collapsed like an unrisen cake, which looked like it might once have been a sort of community centre. And next to this there was a playground, or what was left of a playground – the skeleton of a slippery dip; a swing set without swings, a single rusty chain dangling.
There were no street signs anywhere, no street numbers, just a maze of tracks, so the only way to find Mrs Bander’s place was to ask. The first person I came across – a boy about my age but about five times my size – was sitting on an oil drum, spooning Milo from the tin into his mouth.
‘Hello,’ I said.
He eyed me suspiciously, before spooning some more Milo.
‘You couldn’t tell me where Mrs Bander’s place is, could you?’ I said.
‘You’re right, I couldn’t,’ he said.
The second person was bent over the open hood of a car. He looked pretty wrecked – scrawly tatts, greasy hair, stained clothes. In contrast, his car – I think it was some sort of Monaro – was spotless, like something you’d see at one of those muscle-car rallies.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
He looked up, a spanner in his hand.
‘Why, you fart or something?’ he said, laughing.
‘Could you tell me where Mrs Bander lives?’ I asked.
‘Depends,’ he said.
‘Depends?’
He rubbed his thumb against his fingers.
Toby had ripped me off, the Hound had ripped me off, now this grease-monkey wanted to rip me off as well.
No way, I told myself, as I kept on walking.
The third person I asked was a girl. She was around Toby’s age and was sitting on an old car seat reading a book. At her feet was a dog even mangier than the others I’d seen, and behind her was an old school bus that was up on blocks.
‘Hi,’ I said.
She looked up. Even though her long hair was in Heidi plaits and the glasses she was wearing were lopsided, I could still see the family resemblance.
She must be the Zolt’s younger sister, Zoe.
‘Do you want to talk to my mother?’ she said.
‘If I could.’
‘She’s probably still in bed.’
I glanced at my watch: it was past eleven.
‘She usually doesn’t get up until midday,’ said Zoe Zolton-Bander.
My phone buzzed, so I took it out of my pocket. It was a message from Imogen: where r u?
‘Is that the new model iPhone?’ Zoe asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
She brought out an older model iPhone from her pocket.
‘This is mine,’ she said. ‘It’s truly pathetic.’
‘You want to check out mine,’ I said. ‘Got some sweet apps.’
I showed her one I knew she’d like – the fake-a-call app.
‘I wish that would work on my phone,’ she said.
‘It will,’ I lied. ‘What’s your number? I’ll SMS it to you.’
She hesitated, and I’m sure I could see a flicker of distrust on her face.
‘Or I can Bluetooth it if you like,’ I said.
‘SMS it,’ she said, before reciting her number.
I tapped the digits into my phone and stored them under Zoe.
Gotcha, I said to myself.
As I SMSed her the app I knew wouldn’t work on her phone there was a hoiking sound from inside the bus. Then the flush of a toilet.
‘Mum’s up,’ said Zoe.
A tough-sounding voice came from inside the caravan. ‘Where’s my goddamn coffee, Zoe?’
‘Already in the microwave, Mum.’
Silence, during which I imagined Mrs Zolton-Bander finding her coffee, taking a gulp.
Then: ‘Who you talking to out there?’
‘Dom,’ I mouthed.
‘Dom,’ said Zoe.
‘Dom who?’
‘Silvagni,’ I mouthed.
‘Silvagni,’ said Zoe.
‘Any relation to the Bobby Silvagni the bookie?’
I shook my head.
‘No,’ said Zoe.
‘Good for him, then. Bloody prize rogue, Bobby.’
I was feeling pretty pleased that I wasn’t related to a bloody prize rouge like Bobby Silvagni when Mrs Bander said, ‘Then who the hell are you, Dom Silvagni?’
‘I’m the president of your son’s Facebook fan club,’ I called out.
‘President of your son’s Facebook fan club’ was Hound’s idea. I didn’t like it then, and I still didn’t like it.
Mrs Bander appeared, coffee cup in one hand, laptop in the other. I’d seen photos of her in the paper and online, so I thought I knew what to expect.
And she looked just like those photos: streaky blonde hair parted down the middle, falling onto her shoulders; huge rectangular-framed sunglasses and puckered mouth. She was wearing a leopard-print top, black trousers and ornate earrings.
But she was wearing something else I wasn’t expecting: a sort of presence, an authority, that immediately made me feel like a little kid.
She handed the laptop to her daughter and said, ‘Can you get my emails for me? Bloody computer’s been playing up.’
Zoe threw me the tiniest of smiles. I knew exactly what she was saying – old people, why are they so hopeless with technology?
Mrs Bander turned her attention to me, staring at me for what seemed like ages, not even bothering to disguise the fact.
Eventually she said, ‘Well, you’re certainly better-looking than that tub of lard Bobby Silvagni.’
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, but then I remembered the mug I’d bought.
‘This is for you,’ I said, handing it to her.
After removing the wrapping, fingernails flashing, she turned the mug upside down.
‘What does that say?’ she said, handing the mug to her daughter. ‘Can’t read without my glasses,’ she explained to me.
‘RBY Enterprises,’ read Zoe.
‘We’re not getting a cut of this, are we?’
‘No, we’re not,’ said Zoe, handing the mug back to her mother.
‘Thieving ratbags!’ said Mrs Bander.
And I have to admit, I rocked back a bit – I wouldn’t want to be one of those thieving bastards if she got her long, glossy nails on them.
‘Can you show him them prices?’ she said to Zoe.
Zoe tapped away at the keyboard and then showed me the screen. A Word document read:
Newspaper interview $500
Newspaper interview (with photo) $650
TV interview $2000
Tour of Otto’s Bedroom $250
‘I wasn’t really after an interview,’ I said.
‘Then, darling, what are you doing here?’ said Mrs Bander, handing her daughter a pouch of tobacco.
‘As you are probably aware, there are now almost a million and a half fans on your son’s Facebook fan page, and every one of them is hungry for new information about him,’ I said.
Zoe rolled a cigarette with nimble fingers and passed it to her mum. Mrs Bander put it between her lips, lit it with a lighter, inhaled deeply, then blew two perfectly shaped plumes out of her nostrils.
‘All the charges are there,’ she said, pointing at the laptop.
‘I don’t think you understand –’ I started.
‘Look, you think I came down in the last shower or something? All the numbers are there,’ she said.
‘Okay, I understand,’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘I’m very sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘You know, I didn’t think this app would work on my model,’ said Zoe, engrossed in her iPhone.
‘Nice to have met you,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
What I really wanted to do was run as fast as I could out of here, past the greasy mechanic, past the Milo-scoffing fat kid, all the way back to the main road.
But I didn’t, I just walked quickly.
When I got back to the Hummer, Hound had all his h
i-tech surveillance gear out.
‘You stir the pot?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Okay, let’s see what happens.’
As if on cue, a message flashed on the screen of his laptop: Outgoing call to … 0400 230592.
‘She’s ringing somebody on her mobile,’ said Hound.
‘Hello, Sage,’ somebody answered.
‘Look, I know you said we had to play a waiting game with these movie …’
As the conversation progressed, Hound taking in every word, I zoned out.
He’s tapping the wrong phone.
The Zolt wasn’t communicating with his mother on Facebook. Because the Zolt’s mother was computer illiterate – there was no way she had posted those Facebook entries. And, besides that, she just didn’t seem like the sort of person who would be that concerned about her son’s welfare.
No, he was communicating with somebody else.
Somebody who was computer literate. Who was much smarter. And kinder.
His sister.
That’s whose phone he should have been tapping.
Still, I had to sit there for another hour while Hound listened to the wrong person having the wrong conversations.
Eventually, when the traffic to Mrs Bander’s phone stopped, Hound said he’d drop me off where I was staying.
STOLEN CAR
Just as Hound stopped outside the Jazys’ front gate my phone beeped.
Text received from Zoe, it said.
I opened it, but there was nothing there.
That was weird, I thought, but I didn’t think any further about it because Hound said, ‘I guess this is your stop, kid.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, but it was a reflex thanks, the kind my parents had taught me to say after somebody had done me a favour.
I went to open the car door when this ham of a hand slammed into the side of my head. It was so unexpected, so random, it took me a while to find any words.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘Just keep it real, okay, partner.’
I stumbled out of the Hummer with my head ringing, my ear stinging. Keyed the entry code in and went through the gates. Mr Jazy was coming towards me, and he looked upset: angry face, angry facial hair.
‘Where the blazes have you been, Dom?’
‘I went for a run.’
‘You’ve been gone the whole morning.’
‘It was a long run.’
‘You realise that when you’re staying with my family I’m responsible for you. I really can’t have you taking off like that, without letting anybody know where you are.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Jazy,’ I said, and I really was sorry, he was really worked up. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘So you’re okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m totally fine.’
‘Well, that’s the main thing,’ said Mr Jazy, putting his arm around my shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s enjoy the afternoon’s festivities.’
There were cars parked on both sides of the drive, including Mr Jazy’s big classic Mercedes 450SEL 6.9, but one in particular was attracting a lot of attention. A group of men were standing around, stroking it, talking to it, lavishing it with car-love. Apparently, it was a Maserati Quattroporte. Apparently, it was worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
I went inside, had a shower. As I was getting changed, Imogen’s voice came from the other side of the door. ‘Dom, you in there?’
‘Come in,’ I said, buttoning up my shirt.
Imogen came in and immediately I could tell that something was bothering her.
‘This accident that Tristan had yesterday?’ she said.
‘That’s right, the fall,’ I said, wondering how much she knew, if Tristan had told her something.
‘You guys weren’t doing drugs or anything, were you?’ she said.
‘No, of course not!’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s just that Tristan seems a bit, I don’t know, over the top.’
‘What’s new?’
‘No, seriously. There’s something weird going on.’
I was starting to feel a bit guilty about Tristan, a guilt I didn’t get – he’d agreed to go to Gunbolt Bay, I hadn’t forced him; and he’d pushed me off the boat, hadn’t he?
I guess you can’t argue with how you feel, though, and I felt guilty.
‘I’ll go and have a talk to him,’ I said.
The Jazys’ charity barbecue was a pretty big deal. More cars were pulling up, and there were at least twenty boats hanging off the pier. A band was playing. There was face-painting for the little kids. A bouncing castle. Pony rides.
Tristan, wearing just board shorts, was standing at the end of the jetty, looking out over the water.
It was a pretty weird pose, sort of heroic, the type of pose you’d adopt if you thought somebody was watching you.
But nobody was watching Tristan except for me, and he didn’t know that.
‘Hi, Tristan,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?
‘You know, I woke up this morning and I realised something: I almost got killed yesterday,’ he said, and there was something in his voice, like a mixture of joy and pride.
I was pretty sure they hadn’t been shooting to kill, that if they had been we’d both be feeding the prawns right now. But I wasn’t going to tell Tristan that.
‘It was a pretty wild ride,’ I said, wondering why I wasn’t feeling whatever it was he was feeling.
‘You ever heard of Nietzsche?’ said Tristan.
‘Of course,’ I said, though the truth was I’d only heard the name, I didn’t have a clue who he was.
‘Nietzsche said that for exceptional people, the usual rules don’t apply.’
‘Right,’ I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Imogen was right, there was something unhinged about Tristan.
He looked at me, smiled a blazing smile, and said, ‘Become what you are.’
And then he hugged me. I’m not kidding, a great big squeezy hug.
‘That was the best day of my life,’ he said.
Further weird conversation was prevented by the buzzing arrival of not one but two helicopters. I hurried around to the other side of the house just in time to see them land within a few minutes of each other on the lawn. From the first one alighted Cameron Jamison, the man who’d given me a lift that morning. The second one contained my family: Dad, Mum, Miranda and Toby.
Now I knew why Mr Jazy and his facial hair were freaking out so much. Imagine if my parents had arrived and I wasn’t there, and the people who were looking after me had no idea where I was.
Big mummy hug from Mom. Big daddy hug from Dad.
Toby’s nostrils were already twitching.
‘Where’s the food at?’ he said.
But it was Miranda, my geek-genius sister, who I was really excited to see. ‘What’s with the chopper?’
‘Dad borrowed it from Rocco Taverniti,’ she said. Dropping her voice she added, ‘This thing looks even worse than I thought.’
The Jazy parents and the Silvagni parents did their mutual admiration act and I had no difficulty getting Miranda away to the back of the house, out of sight of the rest of the partygoers.
‘Imagine, he’s probably out there somewhere,’ she said, standing exactly where Tristan had been, looking out over the rippled water.
‘He’s gone,’ I said.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘You know, that sighting up north.’
Miranda scoffed at that. ‘Yeah, right. That service-station attendant has now come out and said it wasn’t him he saw after all.’
Where was Otto Zolton-Bander? Though I believed Hound’s story I also had this feeling that the Zolt was still on the island.
I figured now was as good a time as any to bring up the subject, and I’d already thought of a clever way of doing it.
‘How do you know if your phone’s been tapped?’ I asked.
‘Why?’
‘Because my phone’s doing weird things, and I thought maybe it’s being tapped,’ I lied.
Miranda raised one eyebrow, as if to say, Why would anybody bother doing that?
‘It happened to a couple of kids at school,’ I said. Another lie.
‘Okay, let’s have a look,’ she said.
‘There you go,’ I said, handing her my phone.
She inspected it, thumbs working overtime, before she said, ‘How do you feel about me jailbreaking this thing?’
‘Do you have to?’ I said, because I’d heard stories at school about phones that had been jailbroken and then became bricked and didn’t work any more.
‘Well, I need to go into the root files and that’s the only way to do it.’
As far as tech stuff went, I really trusted Miranda, but the doubt must’ve still been visible all over my little-brother face, because she said, ‘I’ll be gentle.’
Finally I relented. ‘Okay, jailbreak it, sis.’
I always thought a jailbreak would be quite an event, lots of noise, lots of action, like a real jailbreak, but this was an anticlimax.
More thumb work, a couple of peeks at her own iPhone, a reboot, then Miranda said quietly, ‘There, it’s done.’
‘But it looks the same,’ I said.
‘It is the same,’ she said. ‘It’s just that now we can have a look at the nuts and bolts.’
After ten or so minutes of doing just that, she said, ‘There isn’t a tap on your phone.’
I felt a bit guilty sending her on a wild-goose chase like that; I knew there wasn’t a tap on my phone and it hadn’t taken me long to realise that I didn’t have the necessary expertise to tap somebody else’s phone.
‘There’s two,’ said Miranda.
At first I thought she was joking, but I know that geeks like her don’t joke about geek stuff.
‘You’ve got some spyware in your phone that’s relaying all your calls, your texts, your data to a computer somewhere,’ she said.
‘But how did it get there?’
‘Did you open a text from somebody and there was nothing there?’
Zoe, the Zolt’s sister!
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That’s when you inadvertently installed it,’ said Miranda. ‘Come to think of it, they could probably turn on your phone’s microphone and listen in to this conversation we’re having right now.’
Catch the Zolt Page 13