by T M Heron
When he’s gone, I stand up and look out over the city, and marvel at his contacts. A white ferry is gliding into the harbor, almost iridescent in the glare of the winter sun. It cuts through the waves as if the three-meter swell is non-existent.
I shake my head in disbelief.
16
It’s been two weeks since Kaleb Perry was arrested, and it still disconcerts me that the police can get it so wrong. I didn’t expect to be caught for Belinda’s murder, but it never occurred someone else would be arrested. I’d assumed it would remain unsolved, like the Park Rape Team escapades.
I’d like to have booted Ava out straight away, but gut feeling dictates this would not be a good move. I calculate another month of being together with her will make a convincing period for a legitimate relationship.
Today is Secretaries Day at Bakers. The day we’re meant to bestow gratitude and appreciation on our secretaries. As if their work involves matters of national security, rather than typing and all the statutory breaks and rights some bureaucrat in government with no appreciation for capitalism dreamed up.
I’ve got no option. Every other partner and associate is taking their secretary to lunch. Most of the secretaries have already received big bunches of flowers. Brilliant people that they are, the partners have managed to turn it into a pissing contest. I’d rather undergo chemotherapy than buy flowers for Jo. But unwritten firm protocol dictates that taking her out to lunch is a given.
Over the last two months Jo has recovered from our little set-to about her calling the police. She hasn’t overstepped the mark again. And today she’s looking excited over lunch. Has the bitch forgotten what I said?
I’m going to have to take Jo to a good restaurant. I may look stingy on the flowers front, but I can’t lower myself to eating somewhere menial. If I do that I might as well start shopping at malls. And where does it end from there?
I try not to think too hard of all the people around who will have chic suit-wearing secretaries who look as though they have MBAs. I try to ignore Jo’s joy which lingers over the office area like smog, permeating everything.
Fortunately I have a trump card. I’m not taking just Jo to lunch. I’m also inviting Eliza. To my knowledge this initiative is thus far unheard of. And while I look characteristically benevolent there’s an underlying message I’m hoping Jo will appreciate.
Further to this theme I’ve decided to take them to the best restaurant I can book us in to. Marcel’s. No one at Bakers goes to Marcel’s without everyone immediately finding out. The information is often invaluable, with significance to the wider firm. It normally means someone is about to land a lucrative contract, propose, or has cheated on their wife.
Once inside Marcel’s every table has a separate room. It reminds me of a brothel, but I’ve never shared this observation — although maybe now Mel would appreciate it. The separate room thing is propitious because I won’t have to suffer the indignity of dining, in the public eye, in the company of, well, of Jo. We’ll walk in together. We’ll disappear from view. We’ll leave.
◆◆◆
Our waiter, while young, manages to give the impression of having seen everything in his time. He is suitably deferential. It could be worse.
Jo understands nothing on the menu. She sits with a stolid frown of concentration and runs a sweaty finger down the page. I worry she is going to ask if Marcel’s do crab bites and wedges. My waiter friend would probably understand. He probably thinks Eliza and I are here with our mother and I wish I could correct this erroneous impression.
I let Jo order scallops on a bed of squid ink without advising her squid ink looks like exactly that, ink. No doubt half of it will end up down her dress.
Eliza orders truffle dumplings and I order the aged eye fillet. Boring, but it is winter after all. And Marcel’s gift is in taking everyday food and making it extraordinary. I don’t give anyone the option of entrees. This is going to be as quick as possible.
Our waiter brings out Marcel’s famed bread. Jo looks past the saucers of olive oil and balsamic vinegar as she desperately searches for butter. I ignore her and turn my attention to Eliza, and this is how it is to be for the rest of lunch.
Eliza and I discuss work mainly. An administrative staff member who is interested in work — what a novelty. As often is the case with things one dreads, lunch is turning out to be better than I’d anticipated.
Things go quickly wrong at what should be the highlight. Eliza has excused herself for the bathroom. Euphoric at my undivided attention, she’s drinking far more of the wine than she should. Jo and I sit there, bathed in mutual distrust. Then our waiter appears, balancing three dishes just as easily as he would five.
Jo’s eyes wander over the dishes. Eliza’s is the dumplings, and this is obvious. Jo’s eyes rest briefly on the eye fillet, before with sinking realization she takes in the three juicy large scallops. Sautéed to perfection, afloat a blackened sea of squid ink. I can hear her brain in motion as it tries to explain to her stomach that until she can get back to the office, and buy a bag of burger rings, lunch will consist of three scallops.
Then a diminutive figure slithers into the room. Jo gives out a small scream. Dukie is incapable of looking normal. He is hideous on so many levels I’m amazed he functions.
For a moment I am stunned. The room swims before me, and I just sit there and say nothing.
“Frank,” says Dukie. “Dukie needs to talk to Frank.”
Jo gawps.
Dukie stands there. He’s here in the room. But still I say nothing. My mind refuses to accept this reality. It finally offers up coincidence as the best explanation.
I found Dukie where you find everything that is fetid and tainted: an internet chat room. I contact him by a prepaid phone. After each new outing I give him a different phone. He is incapable of contacting or knowing me.
After my decision to end Park Rape Team activities Dukie slipped from my mind and ceased to exist. Yet here he is.
“Frank?”
I look desperately at Jo. “He’s obviously confusing me with someone else,” I say quietly, in the most respectful tone I’ve ever used with her. “Please excuse me.”
I take Dukie’s stumpy wee arm and lead him to the furthest corner of the room, away from Jo. Much like the paint-throwing incident at Bakers, I sense she’s enjoying this.
“Dukie has a girl,” bursts out Dukie before I can say anything.
“Look, that’s great you’ve found a girlfriend. But what the fuck are you doing here?” I say. I tighten my grip on his arm, already wanting to have my hand sanitized and my suit dry-cleaned for having touched him.
“Dukie has a girl,” he says again. “For Dukie and Frank.”
If I could opt out of life, about now is when it would happen.
“What? How did you find me here?” is what comes out of my mouth.
“Dukie followed Frank from Bakers.”
My soul sinks. Just to hear the name of my firm on Dukie’s lips. I’m about to ask Dukie how he knew I worked at Bakers before discarding it as now irrelevant. “The girl,” I say. “Let her go.”
Dukie shakes his head, and I see the beginning of a stubborn belligerence on his face. “Girl has seen Dukie. Dukie wants girl. But Frank always goes first.”
Holy Christ. They’re never meant to see either of our faces. There are so many ways to accomplish this.
My mind goes into damage control, but not as coherently as I’d like. “Okay, okay,” I say. “Meet me at six tonight at the Botanical Gardens. Park behind the cricket pavilion. Don’t get out of your car.”
“Who was that?” says Jo.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I doubt he knows who he is either by the look of him. He reeked of supermarket wine.”
“He looked like he knew you.”
“He called me Frank, Jo.”
Eliza arrives back from the bathroom. “Jackson just got accosted by a homeless alcoholic,” says Jo.
The rest of lunc
h passes in a daze.
17
I drive to the railway station and pay for an all-night parking ticket. In the public toilets I change into grey track pants, and a Victoria University hooded sweatshirt. The public toilets at Wellington station are always well maintained and meticulously clean, which is a credit to the city council.
I wear a dark brown, battered, leather jacket over the sweatshirt. With trainers and a sports bag I look just like any other man on his way to rugby practice.
It’s windy outside but not raining. It’s not as cold as I anticipated. I probably didn’t need the leather jacket.
It’s starting to get dark, and the lights on the bus are dim. It’s peak traffic hour and people cram onto the bus, doing their best to queue jump, shouldering in front of one another, kids not giving up their seats for old ladies. Just about everyone looking at their phones. No one looking at anyone else. Survival of the fittest.
I take the bus to the Straddle Street storage facility in Newtown, alighting several stops ahead and walking the remaining five hundred meters. I pay for this storage facility annually, in cash, under the name of Richard Cornish. Once inside, I discard my sports outfit and change into my old-man disguise. I feel a little sentimental as I change, which is silly. But the last time I wore this was for Belinda.
I drive the Maxima parked there to my second storage facility, also in Newtown. This is much smaller than the first and holds the rest of my disguises, and a selection of the most illegal substances I own.
I chose this facility carefully. It’s as cheap as chips. No one with anything of value to store would even consider it, so it will probably never get broken into. Management seems to be of the same opinion: the surveillance cameras are a joke. They’re of video-camera vintage, and don’t even point at the entrance. Plus, the building is wood. If ever anything went wrong for me, the first thing I’d do is burn this entire outfit down.
I slip on latex gloves and pull out a full-body gorilla suit. I ordered it several years ago from Australia. New Zealand doesn’t always stock clothes in my size, and for party disguises it’s even worse.
I love this suit. It’s my absolute favorite. I don’t want to waste it on anything Dukie-related. When I ordered it I rather fancied myself doing some kind of solo abduction in it. What a stir. How surreal for all concerned.
But now, circumstances dictate there is need for the gorilla suit. For a start, it’s fully lined with a strong shiny type of rubber. Put it on and you’re wearing a latex glove all over. No chance of leaving any kind of DNA behind. Just fur. No chance of anyone identifying you — the only thing visible is your eyes. And even then, barely.
I also theorize the gorilla suit will obscure people’s impression of my height. They’re too busy being overwhelmed and confused by the overall picture, and everyone knows gorillas are big.
I sadly stroke the gorilla suit with my latex-coated hand. The face is so realistic it makes me wish I had a pet gorilla. It’s a crime to waste it on Dukie. But the reality is Dukie has become my number-one threat. Worse than Belinda ever was. Not only does he know everything we’ve ever done, he knows where I work. And he’s just lost his last semblance of controllability and gone out and abducted another girl, uninstructed. Fuck.
I fold the gorilla suit into a wrinkled shopping bag, exactly the type you’d expect an old man to carry. Then I drive to the Kelburn look-out. I park and walk down through the Botanical Gardens to the cricket ground. Dukie’s van is parked near the pavilion. I shuffle up to it, stooped over like a really old man. Although it’s dark there and no one is around, there has never been a more important time not to be careless.
“Where’s the girl?” I snap, sliding in beside Dukie.
Dukie gives a start at my outfit. He thought an old man had just climbed in beside him. Frankie,” he says when he recovers. “Girl is in back of Dukie’s van.”
I resist the all but uncontrollable urge to backhand him across the face. “Don’t call me Frankie,” I snarl. “My name’s Frank.”
I look around. Still no one. The gods are looking out for me. “Drive over under those trees.”
We’re much less exposed under the trees. I leap out and open the back doors of the second van, dreading what Dukie may already have done. There is no one there. Just a crumpled blanket.
I’ve never had a tension headache before, but I’m starting to feel some strange sensations around my temples. I rip open the driver’s door, yank Dukie out and throw him on the ground. “She’s got away, she’s not fucking there, she’s escaped, you stupid prick!”
I whisper this, but really I want to scream.
Even in the darkness Dukie manages to look hurt. “Girl is in Dukie’s other van, Frank. Dukie has three vans.”
Relief floods through me, although it’s not the most convincing relief I’ve ever experienced. “Where’s your other van? Where’ve you got her for God’s sake? Do I have to spell everything out?”
He gets up, skirts around me, and gets back in the van. “Girl is parked at Dukie’s house. Girl saw Dukie by mistake. But that’s okay. Dukie happy. Dukie keep this one.”
“Keep her. What are you talking about? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
I force myself to take a deep breath. Why am I getting so carried away? Of course Dukie isn’t going to keep the girl. This whole mission is damage control, and that damage is Dukie. And now, I guess, as she’s seen him this girl is also collateral damage.
Reason kicks in and I contemplate that a painless death at my hands is a far better fate for this girl than if, unbeknown to me, Dukie had abducted her and tried to keep her as his girlfriend. It’s her lucky day, if you reframe your perspective.
For obvious reasons this job will be less likely to be immediately discovered if performed indoors. As soon as I realize this, a nervous tic starts above my left cheekbone. It’s not a rape, I tell myself, but claustrophobic thoughts race through my head regardless.
“I’m going to get in the back of the van and get changed,” I tell Dukie. “We’ll go to your place and get her. We might as well take her inside if she’s going to be your girlfriend. Remember to not drive over the speed limit, like I told you. How far away is your house?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
Dukie says this proudly, happy to be providing me with a reliable fact. I frown. My tic flutters wildly. I was going to tell him to take the back roads. I’d assumed he lived in one of those depressing, low-rent suburbs skirting the city.
“Well, drive carefully.” Although an accident may solve both of my problems.
18
I’ve changed into the gorilla suit and am anxiously peering from behind the grubby curtain that covers the back window when Dukie drives into a well-lit parking basement. We’re now in a well-kept building the middle of the city.
Dukie parks at the service lift. We’re meant to be at his house. What the fuck he thought he was doing bringing this woman to what can only be his place of work I have no idea. I hurriedly inspect the basement for security cameras, but there are none in the service-lift area.
Dukie lets out a wild shriek of fright when he opens the back doors and sees me in my gorilla suit. I wonder briefly what it must be like to live in his mind.
“What are we doing here?” I ask. My voice is muffled through the mask. The basement is windy and cold, but it’s hot as hell in this suit.
“This is Dukie’s place. Frank see girlfriend. See, in Dukie’s other van.”
We’re running out of options because the girl has heard noises. She’s screaming and turning herself inside out trying to escape from the parked van.
I open the back of the van. “Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot you in the stomach,” I say hurriedly.
It works like a charm.
I take a quick look at Dukie’s first solo effort and chide myself for being disappointed in the numerous ways he’s let himself down. What did I expect?
For a start, she’s not a girl. She’s at least th
irty-eight. Next, she’s not sexy — in fact, she’s more than likely a lesbian. Her hands are tied to a railing above her head and she’s sporting an Afro under each pit. She’s wearing a homespun-looking vest and corduroy pants. Her shoes are those expensive, sandal-type hybrids you see tourists parading round in. She looks like the sort who ventures into wildlife areas appreciating nature, identifying native birds and selecting herbs and shit. Which is probably exactly what she was doing when Dukie caught her.
Feeling stupid, I cautiously re-adjust my mask. Nature Woman has partially chewed her way through the bag that was over her head, and I don’t want her to see even the tiniest part of my face. Dukie wrestles her out of the van, which up until a moment ago she was struggling to exit. She’s hyperventilating, and when she sees me in my suit her eyes become wild and desperate. She’s covered with blood, sweat, semen and dirt. Dukie lost his internal battle with waiting for Frank to go first.
We put another bag over her head. She struggles, and it’s with great difficulty we carry her to the service lift. The lift doors ding closed.
“Scream and I’ll shoot you,” I say again.
Once the doors close Dukie starts excitedly humping against her. He knocks her head against the wall of the lift a couple of times as we ride up. Pointless violence, but I don’t have the energy to verbalize this. I’ve misjudged Dukie terribly. I knew he was violent and oversexed, but he has a whole raft of sadistic tendencies I never saw coming.
I stare in horror when the service lift opens. It’s not a workplace, but an apartment. Surely it’s not possible he could live here. It looks like a Saudi prince should be living here. The rooms are elegant with tall ceilings. Elaborately decorated, they are spacious to the point of absurdity. His apartment looks at least twice as expensive as my villa.
When I recruited Dukie off the internet, from what I could gather through our initial correspondences he lived in a sleazy dive in one of the dodgiest areas of Wellington. In my mind he led a sub-optimal existence in a dank little bedsit with no natural light. How could he have money? But if this is where Dukie lives, then he has grossly misled me. Who has deceived whom?