I'm Dying Here

by Damien Broderick

  §

  I was tooling fast up Doncaster, about to swing left along Bulleen Road. The Holden bounced a bit on the tram tracks but otherwise clung admirably to the road surface. Australia’s own car, I thought with pride. Or was it made by the Japs now? Were they a great and powerful friendly nation? I couldn’t remember the answer to either question. Really I’m not that patriotic. They didn’t do a hell of a lot for me when I was stuck in Seattle shooting human growth hor­mone and lifting God’s own pallet of weights each interminable day. They didn’t even bother telling me my wife was pregnant.

  I waited at the lights, and took the opportunity to stare at the small but perfectly formed Palm Pilot screen. Squinting, I saw a sequence of shots of something quadruped coming out from under a roof, a little thing mounting it, the animal moving into the pad­dock. Apparently it bolted, judging from its varied positions and attitudes in the next shots. A chopper descending into one corner of the frame. Then in the street. Along the highway, I guessed. A tragic incident with a bus. The rest I’d seen already.

  The lights went green and I went with them, my mind dazed. I put my foot down and surged through the last of the failing rain. At this rate, Monday could turn out to be gorgeous. Melbourne weather, four seasons in a day.

  A few cars were creeping onto the thoroughfare now, but the tram tracks were empty. I was dying for a McMuffin, and fries with that.

  I turned into Sharon Lesser’s street. No sign of a police car, but that just meant the cop on patrol was lying low. Either that or off slaking his hunger and thirst with an Egg McMuffin and Giant sized Coke. I pulled up a few houses short of the house.

  “Not the Prince,” I said speculatively. “Not the Sheikh himself, he wouldn’t bother owning it. Culpepper. Wheeler & Dealer to the great and the potentially murderous.”

  “Now, now,” my wife said, hammering away at the keyboard. “No need to tar a whole nation with the misdeeds of a few dozen well-heeled terrorists and a thousand richly funded madrasses teaching a vile and violent ideology and condemning any woman who dares to drive a car or speak to a man she’s not married to or—”

  “I see we’re of one mind,” I agreed. “But who was watching Culpepper’s pied à terre, and why should the watchers care one hoot or sparrow fart in hell about a camel trotting around in the Dandenong mountains, for Christ’s sake, or Allah’s, or whatever the fuck?”

  “Federal police.” Juliet sat back from her keyboard looking pleased as punch, as happy as if she’d dug out the info herself. “And not just the usual lads in Canberra, it looks like the local equivalent of the NSA.”

  “The National Security Agency? In Maryland, right?”

  “Spies to the world, yes. Or rather, on the world. The details were encrypted, of course, but Cookie turns out to be an ace when it comes to encryption.”

  “Should we get out and continue this conversation with our....” I trailed off, and found myself laughing. “The encrypted orca,” I spluttered. “The orca in the crypt. My lord, I wonder if Culpepper has a sense of humor after all?”

  “Sorry, Sherlock, I have no idea what you’re babbling about.” She turned to a look at her window. A tired cop in uniform was rapping at it. She ran down the glass. “Yes, officer?”

  “I’ll have to ask you what you’re doing here?”

  “Having a conversation with my husband. I believe that’s still legal?”

  “He’s just keeping an eye on the grrls,” I said soothingly to Jules, “and it’s bloody late.”

  “Of course he is, and I shouldn’t tease. Thank you, constable. I’m Juliet Cimino and this is my lawfully wedded, Recherché Purdue. You can check on the radio with HQ if you like, or ask Cookie if it’s okay for us to come in. Jonquil Lesser, that is. The poor girl who was kidnapped.”

  The cop consulted a notebook, shielding it with a raincoated arm from the last of the drizzle. The pale sheets fluttered in the torch light. “That’ll be fine, Madame, we have you listed here. Go ahead, please. Do you know you have a broken front right indica­tor lamp?”

  Juliet squeezed her eyes together for a moment, but opened them brightly almost at once. “Thank you for that information, constable. I’ll have it seen to the moment my local service station opens. And thank you for your consideration. Tom, let’s not stand on ceremony.”

  The cop peered with renewed suspicion. “Hoy, you just told me his name was—”

  “It’s a long and tedious tale, officer,” Jules said with an edge in her voice. “Sometimes he calls me Puss in Boots, sometimes I call him Recherché or Dangle Dick or—”

  The cop drew back, face reddened even in the first dim light of dawn. Perhaps it was just the pink edge of sky on his youthful cheeks. “Good morning, then, Mrs. Purdue. Have a nice day.”

  PART 9

  Gnashing her teeth in a minimal way, Juliet went ahead of me into the enclosed porch where two days earlier a man had been shot to death by his wife while I slept in her bed. I followed docile­ly, not wanting to give Jules any ideas along the same lines. I had the Esky firmly in my left hand. I wasn’t going to let the damned thing out of my sight.

  “No ferocious guard dogs, I hope?”

  I searched my memory for scraps of drunken conversation. “She used to have a pair of pitbulls.”

  My tremendously brave wife drew back, looked alarmed. “Used to have?”

  “Yeah, fear not, they were put down on council instructions after the filthy things burrowed out and savaged a passer-by.”

  “Lovely family,” Juliet said. She stepped into the porch and rang the doorbell.

  It was odd, actually. As a kid in Eltham I always had dogs. The place was more like a farm than a twentieth century suburban sub-division, although a rather inefficient and stupidly designed one, organized around the principles of cosmical energy and cow horns filled with pig shit and baked in the earth by the light of the moon. After I left home there never seemed to be time or space for the kind of big dog I wanted, a Border Collie or German Pointer. A Spotted Dick appealed to me, a Dalmation, but they were com­plete fools in a domestic setting. Well, so were the others. Maybe it was the same for Jules, I’d never seen her with either a cat or a dog. She’d slaked her companion needs upon her Sicilian family, upon me for a while, and Annabelle. Until Annabelle turned on her in adolescence. On all of us.

  “You bastard,” Animal said to me, looking over Juliet’s shoul­der from the opened door. It was a different Animal from the one in Culpepper’s limo. Short attention span, these kids. “You let Sappho run away. Into Sydney Road. I had to chase her.”

  “I know it’s late, sweetheart, but if your attitude doesn’t im­prove I’m going to have to...to....”

  “Smack me around a bit?”

  I’d never touched the child in her life, not once.

  “...To cut back on your allowance,” I said feebly.

  But I was talking to her black-clad back. We went into the brightly lighted tasteful hallway, followed her around a corner into an abruptly gloomy part of the Lesser household I’d never seen before. The décor came straight from Suicide Girl magazine.

  Two other young women in whiteface and vampire attire perched on elegant steel and leather chairs against one wall. They stared at us from mascara-rimmed eyes then looked at each other.

  “Where’s Ruby?”

  “Grime’s with Share,” Animal said. She twisted her hands. “It wasn’t her fault. And she did kill the prick.”

  “We haven’t really been introduced,” I said to Cookie.

  Jonquil Lesser sprawled in a giant bed, propped by ergonomic pillows. A large flat screen monitor was cantilevered in front of her out from the wall, and she tapped with her small fat hands at a keyboard that seemed to have had its back broken. When I looked closer it made better sense. The plastic and metal formed a shallow V pointing at her navel, so each pudgy arm came at its half of the alphabet at a right angle. I wondered why she hadn’t acquired one for her Brunswick bedroom. Still settling in there, ma
ybe. To her left a tall, wide rustic nightstand was crammed with treats: giant­sized Cherry Ripes in their crimson foil covers, a packet of Tim Tam chocolate biscuits and some Iced Vovos in a plastic bowl, the empty box from a big burger, a Mr. Coffee machine and a large mug with an elongated smiley face with huge UFO eyes.

  She looked up and her smile was wonderfully, surprisingly sweet.

  “Thanks for getting me away from that bastard,” she said. “Sorry I was such a shit.”

  “Well, the coffin didn’t look all that comfortable,” I said, and held out my hand. That made her blink, but she took it as if she were unfamiliar with the custom of shaking hands, and held it for a moment.

  “You’re Animal’s Mum, right,” she said past me. “Congratula­tions on cracking my password.”

  “She is bloody not,” my daughter said. “Me Mum’s dead. She’s some Mafia moll.”

  Juliet had been through a long, trying day and half the night. While I’ve never touched my child, I understood perfectly when Juliet turned on her heel and slapped Animal once, hard. Echoes jumped back from the deep purple walls. I understood, but I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment.

  When I opened them, Animal was standing stock-still holding one hand to her cheek, looking utterly astonished. The two vam­pires watched in bloodless silence.

  “Well, shit,” she said. “Okay.” She turned and left the room.

  “Don’t mind her,” Cookie said. “Animal’s having her period. She’s always a bitch then.”

  I blinked again. Wasn’t that the vilest sexist remark anyone could make these days? Was there no sacred violation these Goth grrls would leave unspoken? Well, maybe one.

  “You’ll be from the Vagilantes, I assume,” I said to the vam­pires. “Incest Vengeance R Us, right?”

  They slitted their eyes.

  “That’s Rommie and Immie,” Cookie said from her high blan­keted perch. “They’re experiencers too. This is Mr. Animal and his wife,” she told the vampires.

  “Tom,” I said, “and actually that’s Purdue. And this is Juliet. But that’s not Purdue.”

  “G’day,” said Rommie.

  Incest experiencers, I thought. Not victims, that was too de­meaning and disempowering. Drains the agency away from the child and hands it to the brutalizer. It made sense. But some un­yielding Eltham runaway part of me that can’t stand PC claptrap thought that it was powerlessness that was exactly the vilest crime of incest, that it does suck away the kid’s agency and sense of self. “So you’re both...living with incest,” I said.

  I regretted it the moment the gibe was out of my mouth, but the grrls just gazed at me with unmodulated loathing. I got a sharp stormy look of warning from Jules. “Okay,” I said, shaking my head. “Rodolph Lesser absolutely deserved what he got, but I’m glad as hell that you young women had nothing to do with it. They still can’t lock you up for what you’re thinking, at least in Australia. Going to jail for years isn’t recommended, trust me.”

  “You can get Share off, right?” Cookie gazed at me doubtfully. “You can prove she didn’t do it?”

  “The cops are pretty sure she did do it,” I said. “Me too. Sorry.”

  “Has she got good legal representation?” Juliet asked. “We’ll arrange an excellent lawyer for her if she hasn’t—”

  “Guy called Muldoon.”

  “He’ll do,” I said. I’d heard he was drinking with a higher grade of cop than the vice squad these days. I hoped Sharon Lesser’s funds wouldn’t be attached by the court until after the disposition of the trial. For sure Rudolph’s insurance policies would all be voided the moment the beneficiary was convicted of murdering the client. They hate that. “Cookie—Do you mind if we call you Cookie?”

  “It’s my name, I loathe Jonquil, always did.”

  “Okay.” I hoisted the Esky off the floor, propped it on the edge of the bed. “You know what this is?” I popped the clamps. White fumes rushed from it, freezing cold in the conditioned air of the bedroom. I fished out my handkerchief and Rebeiro’s phone fell on the carpeted floor. I left it there, wrapped my fingers in the handkerchief, dragged out the ziploc with its solid slab of flesh, held it high. “I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

  “I am, but I’m not planning to eat that thing. Yeah, it’s the tongue they cut off Nile Fever.”

  “And it’s so important why? People have been badly hurt to get hold of this gruesome thing. Makes no sense. Nile Fever was a burned out nag your foster-mother bought from the knacker’s yard and tried to pass off as a sprinter.”

  “No she wasn’t.”

  “Yes she was, Cookie. Sorry, I was there. You can’t see it in those digital pics from the satellite because we were under the stable roof, but I fitted up that poor animal with a sugar drip. Sharon paid me to do it. Nile was a worthless piece of catfood without her boost.”

  Cookie gazed back at me with satisfaction. Queen of the hacker grrls. Couldn’t blame her.

  “Nile Fever was worth millions, Mr. Purdue. She was one of a kind. Still is.”

  “She’s dead and buried, and you’re not going to get her back from this slab of gristle.”

  In a sort of sigh, touched by sudden insight and understanding, Juliet said, “Oh my dear god. Yes they will.”

  The vampire grrls smirked. They knew already.

  I sure as shit didn’t.

  “The Saudis wanted to clone her,” Cookie told me in a forgiv­ing tone. Her fingers clattered on the keyboard and stringy images of multi-colored sausages opened on the big screen. “So do some people from the UAE. That’s the United Arab Emirates.”

  “They still do,” Animal said. I hadn’t noticed her return to the room. “She’s a super-camel.”

  “Was,” Immie said from her steel chair, shaking her head. “Was. They always kill the thing they love.”

  We all stared at her for a moment, considering this absurd piece of poetical wisdom. Rommie nodded, she’d heard that too.

  I cleared my throat.

  “Share imported a super-camel, whatever that is, from the middle of a war zone, yes, that makes a lot of sense. Then she got me to dope it with a crude race track technique, so she could sell it back to some prince of the desert?”

  “They’re chromosomes, aren’t they?” Juliet said, ignoring me. On the screen, the sausages squirmed. Alongside them, a window opened up with endless lists of letters pouring down it at high speed. Just four letters, stuck together every possible way. UUAC­GGTCTTCAAGTCA. On and on. “Ah yes, Genome Project,” my wife said happily.

  “They’ve been mapping lots of animals now the Human Ge­nome is completed,” Cookie said. “The rat and the dog were done a while back.”

  “And now the Saudis have done the camel,” I said.

  “Yes, but that’s not where I found this dataset. There’s a depart­ment of CSIRO that’s cloning endangered species. They’ve been working on camels.”

  The Aussie science research heavies? Shit. “You mean the camel was nicked from a government research center?”

  “I think it’s a sort of corporation these days, Tom,” Juliet told me. “Has a Minister of the Commonwealth in charge, though. What they used to call a quango.”

  “Isn’t that an endangered species from Rottnest Island?”

  “That’s a quocka, you fool. A quasi-non-governmental some­thing or other. Nominally independent.”

  “Oh.” I do like having my mind improved.

  “Let’s say ‘borrowed’ rather than ‘nicked’,” Cookie said, after waiting for us to finish our loveplay. I felt she might have a future in diplomacy. She’d need to shed a few kilos, though, or air travel was out. “Rudolph’s dear friend Culpepper has his ways and means.” She was snarling. “Pity she didn’t blow his head off while she was at it.”

  “He’s on his way to the lock-up even as we speak,” I told her with considerable satisfaction. “Of course the bastard will be sprung the moment his Q.C. arrives. Or one of the legal minions, more likely. At least that
won’t be until noon.”

  “He’ll get a rude shock next time he looks for his gambling soft­ware.” A kind of contained rage flushed Cookie’s slabs of chubby cheeks. I had a mournful image of her lying in the blackness amid her own stinking wastes. Culpepper must have thought it was his perfect opportunity—scare off Cookie and make a point to Sharon Lesser in one blow. What a damned fool. “I’ve deleted the lot. Then I’ve hunted down his backup codes and poisoned them. Prick. Fucking prick.”

  “Sharon didn’t choose her men wisely,” Juliet said.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” I said. “There was nothing be­tween us.”

  “Not even a sheet,” Juliet hissed. The vampires watched this adult badinage in disgust.

  “Jesus, Jules, I was pissed as a newt. I mean, I didn’t even hear the gun go off.” Except, I realized, as a nightmare memory of Mauricio smashing his bloody enormous truck through my front door. Fuck, I still didn’t even have a place to lie my head down. And I badly needed to. I was grainy with exhaustion.

  “I’m sure the court will listen to your explanation with the greatest interest,” Juliet said. “But Cookie, why would anyone want to clone the creature? Why not put it out to the stud or whatever they call it in the racing game? Breed from it?”

  “That’s the long and tedious way,” Cookie told her. “Nobody does that any more, especially in Saudi. No one wants to tie up their prime racing animals for a few years having babies. They harvest the ova.”

  “Ah. In vitro fertilization.”

  “Test tube camels,” Immie said in a high silly voice, and started giggling.

  “Carried in the womb by more contented camel cows, yes, I get that. But,” I said loudly, to show that I’d caught up and even jumped ahead a move or two with my brilliant detective feng shui mind, “nobody from the Commonwealth Scientific and Bloody In­dustrial Organization was planning to race Nile Fever, were they? Here or abroad.”

  “Wouldn’t work, in vitro from her ova. She was a mule,” Juliet said. “Right?”

  “Sterile, yep.” The images on the screen jumped back and forth, and the cursor highlighted stretches of colored sausage. It was all just an abstract display of the butcher’s red-lit meat tray to me. “See? They’ve used knock-in genes at these loci.” Cookie sent me a long-suffering glance for the slow of thinking and the terminally ignorant. “Knock-in’s the opposite of knock-out, see?”