by Ted Dawe
‘You know we talked about putting your angel out there? Out somewhere special? Remember?’
‘I’m tired, Maus. I jus’ got back.’
‘Have one of these.’ He held up a pill bottle.
‘No more pills. Not tonight.’ She closed her eyes again. He was a funny little dude but he meant well.
But Maus wouldn’t give it a rest. ‘I reckon Sunny might like it.’ He waited.
Now she opened her eyes. ‘Sonny doesn’t like anything I do. Maus, Sonny doesn’t like me. Face it.’
‘It’s not that, sis, it’s jus’ that you don’t do anything, eh. You don’t bring anything, eh. That’s what he reckons anyway.’
Tui thought for a while. ‘When someone just doesn’t like you, they always find a reason, that’s what I reckon.’
‘You can get your Seventh Angel up where I got my tag, I reckon things will happen, you’ll see.’
He always looked so young when he was pleading. Sweet. The brother she never had.
She sat up. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s move it, Maus. Let’s take the Seventh Angel to the World.’
Sonny stuck his head up.
No wonder there was no answer.
Empty.
He’d heard Maus come back. Now he’d gone out again. Taken the stuck-up chick with him. He swung up quickly and began to dig through the little heaps of clothes and junk. Nothing.
Stopped to think.
Checked out the mattress. There was a split in the side. Put his fingers in.
Felt something.
Dug it out.
Three tinnies with a rubber band round them.
Score!
Not quite a tweak, but it would soften the P jag. Kept him up for days. Maybe then he’d go out and find them. Check out what they were up to.
Got to keep one jump ahead.
Shem and Looey paused by the corner. Shem looked across. No change. Or was there? There was a sort of plank set-up. Ran along the front of the cabin.
‘Was that plank there?’ he asked Looey.
‘Didn’t see it.’
‘Shall we wait and watch for a bit?’
‘When’s our next time check?’
‘Seventeen minutes in Grey Lynn.’
‘Better go and do that one. Build up some down-time. We’ll need it if we get into a Maus hunt with Ronnie.’
‘True.’
Maus came back. ‘They gone. It’ll be sweet.’
‘Shit Maus! I dunno. Heights get to me a bit.’
‘Don’t look down. It’s not a big drop anyway. Reckon I could jump it, no sweat.’
‘Yeah? Well I couldn’t. I’d break my legs.’
Maus looked around, eyes flashing this way and that. ‘Tell you what, I’ll run that ’lectric cable behind you. Make you feel better. Something to hold onto, too.’
Tui sighed, and reluctantly moved forward. Maus was smart. Always had a way.
Gigi was on her corner when Sonny got there. She and Britney were lighting up. She struck her pose when she saw him coming.
‘What’s happenin’, Sugar?’
‘You seen Maus?’
‘Hmm.’ Fake disappointment. ‘Why you want to know?’
‘Just a feeling. You seen him?’
Gigi put a hand on her hip. Struck a thoughful pose. ‘I saw him and the schoolgirl a while ago.’
‘Where?’
‘Up that end. Maus had his tag bag.’
‘And was he was hangin’ out with his tag hag,’ added Britney.
They chuckled. Liked the rhyme.
Sonny said nothing. Headed in the direction they pointed.
‘See that?’
Shem nodded.
‘Swear they was women.’
Shem grinned. ‘That’s what they all say.’
‘What’s with the coconut?’
‘Pimp maybe.’
‘True?’
‘Hey check this out!’
There was Maus and this chick doing a big face on the front of the cabin. Balancing on the sort of plank set-up. Had a rope behind them.
Shem and Looey killed the lights and backed up.
This time Geronimo was ready.
Sonny saw the security guys. Two of them. Then this third guy arrived in a big black pick-up. Him. Seen him about. Enforcer for the clubs. Sonny dropped back into a shop doorway. Couldn’t get much closer without being spotted. Pity Hemi wasn’t here.
What was up? It was Maus they were watching. But why? What was the big deal?
One of the guards had this huge ring of keys. They were in.
Then it happened.
The banging. The screaming. Maus screaming. The chick shoots out the gate, down Queen Street. Maus still in there. Screams stop. Just banging.
With the jacket in his hand, Geronimo walked over to where the other two stood. They didn’t say anything but you could tell they didn’t like it.
‘Don’t sweat it, he’s still alive.’ He stuck his bloody fingers through the holes in the back of the jacket. There was gold paint on the arms, too.
‘This is fucked anyway, but I had to get it back. Scorpion jacket. Can’t have little street trash running around in it.’
Shem walked over to where the kid lay to check he was breathing. He glanced at Geronimo. ‘Might put a call through, it’s a long time till morning. Say he’s fallen.’
Geronimo gave him the ‘whatever’ shrug and they walked back to the gates. He turned to Looey and said, ‘What happened to the chick?’
‘I gave her a slap and let her go.’
‘Should have hung onto her. Could have done with a chick.’ As he walked back to the pick-up Geronimo was aware that he was being followed. Several times he stopped, looking in shop windows, trying to get a glimpse. It was no good. It was like the spook was invisible. Gave him the creeps.
The pick-up was parked in its special place. Tucked in behind the shops. It was a relief to see it. Untouched, waiting for him. Safe haven. He threw in the jacket and climbed in after it. The V8 fired straight away, so he sat there lighting up. Just as he was about to move off, something made him look to his left. At the window, filling its frame, was the spook, holding the flat blade of his knife against his own neck. The cigarette fell from Geronimo’s mouth as he offered up an involuntary yell.
The truck powered out of the alley, fish-tailing onto K. Road. Inside, Geronimo fumbled for the burning tip, drenched in fear and anger.
20 THE ‘TO BE CONTINUED’ CATEGORY
D.S. Willets sat in his car over the road from the scene of the explosion, running through what he already knew. Everyone wanted instant results, perfect process, infallible juries and long sentences. It would make a good manifesto if he ever stood for parliament. But this was a tedious process and it couldn’t be hurried. Rushed investigations were always shown up later. First in the court room, and then in painful detail in the newspaper.
Every crime scene contained the fragments of a story. It was like stumbling on to the bits of an enormous china ornament but it wasn’t as easy as that. The pieces would be mixed with pieces of other ornaments, and of course you could bet that the really important chunks wouldn’t be there at all.
He looked down the street. All these houses would be worth at least three, four times what his apartment would fetch, even on a good day. Wooden castles that cried out ‘We are people of substance. We have done something with our lives.’ Maybe they had started off with a good little pile. Rich olds. Maybe they had found some sweet spot in the money river where it stuck to them. It was certainly a mystery.
Why was it that he had scraped together so little capital? He was 38. He had been on the top pay band for going on nine years, worked more overtime than anyone at Central, and yet none of it seemed to stick. An eight-year-old car. A mortgaged apartment. Child support payments. A share in a race horse. That was his lot.
Anyway, these people. What had he found out about them? Tony Winters imported furniture from Indonesia. He supplied a nu
mber of smaller merchants who sold it on from short lease warehouses and open containers all over the city. His wife, Glennis, was the former NZ women’s amateur golf champion. They have – or he should say had – three children. They all lived at home although it seems that only one was on site when the ‘event’ took place.
Why a bang? Two main causes of bangs. Bombs or P kitchens. Mustn’t assume either too early. The clandestine speed lab was the most likely scenario, though. That cat piss smell had become pretty familiar. Labs were springing up everywhere. Like cancers.
Time to step back now and wait for the forensic boys to do their stuff. Throw a bit of hard science at it. Time to go back to Central and form a team.
Reaching the leafy suburbs, Brett was amused to see all the foot traffic. He paused to let a group of about 30 middle-aged runners cross the road, all of who were emblazoned with yellow YMCA tees and obscenely short shorts. It struck him that it was like a freak show, a circus turn, every possible shape and size staggering along the footpath fighting off the effects of the soft lifestyle. He wondered for a moment if he would be doing that if he ever made 50. ‘God, I hope I die first,’ he thought out loud.
These thoughts came to an abrupt stop the moment he rounded the corner into Calvin Crescent. The road was blocked off about halfway down. There were fire engines, cop cars, people standing around. He pulled over and climbed out.
They seemed to be focusing on Jamie’s house but there was no sign of damage. He walked over and stood by the yellow, fluttering plastic tape.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked an elderly jogger in a lime green tracksuit and a dark blue towelling head-band.
‘They say it was a bomb. I heard it from the waterfront.’
‘Arabs?’ asked Brett, ironically.
‘Could be,’ said the jogger, ‘could be. I reckon we’ll be the next target.’
They watched a detective walk over to his car and sit in it making notes.
Brett heard the Arab hypothesis being passed down the line.
This didn’t help him much. There was nothing to do now but pursue Ozzie, his last hope. A car drove up to where these uniform cops were controlling traffic. Brett wandered over to where they were talking, hoping to pick up a few clues from the horse’s mouth as it were. He sidled up to where the pigs chatted through the open window. It was hard to hear anything without looking nosy.
Across the road there was a guy in a car. Plain-clothes cop. It was as though he sensed Brett staring at him. Their eyes met and immediately there was a flash of recognition. Brett turned away. Shit, it was Willets. He turned and walked back into the small bunch of people by the tape, hoping to merge in this crowd, to somehow disappear. Perhaps Willets hadn’t clocked him, it had been a while since he’d been picked up. He looked back over his shoulder. No-one in pursuit? Good. Back to the car. That was too close for comfort. It was going to be one of those days where everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
As he reached the door of the Porsche he heard the sound of a car engine behind him.
‘Hello, Delauney. Fancy meeting you here.’
He turned. It was Willets’s grinning face peering up from the car window. About as warm as a smiling pit bull.
‘Just happened to be in the neighbourhood?’
Brett was speechless. Anything he said would sound like a lie.
‘Hi there, Detective.’
‘Why do you run from me? Do I smell, or is there some other reason?’
‘I’m not running, I’ve got stuff to do, that’s all.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘Private stuff.’
‘Do you know who’s down there?’
Brett shook his head.
‘A young man called Jamie Winter. Or bits of him.’
Brett stared back blank-faced, giving nothing away.
‘About your age. Know him?’
Brett shook his head.
For a while the two of them froze right where they were, each searching the other’s face for signs of uncertainty or advantage.
Brett scrutinised Willets. He was a mean-looking bastard, one of those middle-aged guys eaten away by anger and jealousy. Over the past few years Willets had pulled him a few times but nothing had stuck. He hadn’t even managed to charge him with anything. That’s what cops were like: dumb but really determined too. It was like this cop hoped that one day, Brett would feel this powerful compulsion to confess to every known crime in the universe. And then Willets would get that promotion, or whatever it was that motivated cops, and live happily ever after. But for the moment there he was: balding; crappy Hallenstein’s suit that looked as if it had been slept in; stinking of all the viciousness that went with failure.
Then Willets said, ‘Jump in, champ. The street’s no place for a talk like this.’
‘Rather not. My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange men.’
‘A funny guy! Just do it!’
‘I don’t think so. You want to ask me something, fire away. You want to take me places in that Holden, you better be ready with a charge.’
‘Are you trying to teach me police procedure?’
‘I reckon someone should.’
Willets showed signs of anger. ‘I don’t like you. Having to talk to you at all is one of the downsides of the job. But like they say, you shouldn’t work in the sewers if you can’t bury your arms in shit now and then.’
‘Oh, nice …’
‘If I decide I have to talk to you, I’ll do it with a warrant, in the cells, at length … and you will not enjoy it. Your unfunny, rich-boy routines don’t cut it with my colleagues, or with the sort of guys you are liable to be sharing cell space with.’
There was the momentary stand off.
‘You finished?’ Brett asked.
‘I’ll ask you again, why are you here? Give me a straight answer.’
Brett tired of the exchange. He had things to do. ‘I know that you’ll find this hard to believe, dealing with the vermin of society like you do, but like these other good citizens, I heard the bang, saw the fire engines and stopped by to see what was happening. Nothing more. I am not an al Qaeda operative, I’m just a guy on his way to the gym.’
Willets looked at him critically. There was something about him that said he had never been to a gym in his life. The grey skin, the smoker’s fingers … but he let it pass. At least he had clocked him here, in the vicinity. If any remote connection came up, he would pull him and give him a real going over.
‘OK, Delauney, you’ve said your bit. I reckon it’s total lies – including the words “to”, “of”, and “the”. But it doesn’t matter. You’re here. I’ve seen you. That’s what counts… And before you say anything else, I’ll tell you, this conversation comes under the “to be continued” category.’
With that, the police car surged through the crowd of oglers and sticky beaks, which was increasing by the minute. Brett walked back to his car and pulled out his little diary. Nothing else to do but continue his calls. Bad luck, bad karma all the other reasons that losers used to justify their failure … not for him. Persistence was the key. Keep on going until you crack the wall.
21 SHOWDOWN AT THE OK CORRAL
When someone told Tony that Wentworth was in town, he felt a brief flutter of excitement. It was like he was back at varsity again, after all these years. Hanging out at the quad. Swapping long literary theory over slow beers. Pinning Joyce or Pound with a few well-chosen epithets. Tony had his beard again and Wentworth, he had that hair all the way down to his waist. These were the days when making a 10 o’clock lecture seemed inhuman. The days when women were so encased in an armour of feminist theory you had to circle them for days hunting for a way in.
Wentworth! He had been brilliant, the darling of the faculty and certainly one of those groomed to take his place among the luminaries. Those who lectured the stage one papers, those who were in at the birth of new critical theories. Ah, those theories. The ones that leapt feckles
sly between disciplines. That used impenetrable vocabularies.
Wentworth was the one, outraged by a mere ‘A’, who would rampage straight to the marker’s office. Anything to help that sad clod pick up on all the nuances he had missed. The allusions the lecturer had failed to connect with. I mean it was a service, wasn’t it?
Yes, Wentworth was back – from Yale or Harvard, or maybe Cornell. One of those American universities where all the lecturers were poets and novelists, maintained on a stipend, just so they could be kept alive in captivity. He had written the occasional piece for the Listener or Landfall during the intervening years, to remind our funny little country that he was alive and thriving, that he was keeping his place warm for his eventual triumphant return.
And now, there was the phone call. What could he say? He was flattered that he, Tony Watts, had been remembered, after all this time. Was it because he embodied a quality that Wentworth had missed? Had wanted to refresh himself with a certain sang froid? A certain devil-may-care brashness? Maybe it was the slim volume of poems Watts had published in his final year. Leaves of Flax. Who knows? But completely out of the blue, there he was, on the end of the phoneline, suggesting they meet somewhere for drinks and a chat.
Tony suggested Cannibal Jack’s on K. Road. Close to work, but edgy. Somewhere where the tattooed neo-beatniks hung out. Scruffy, loud, a place that said ‘you may be tied to the straight world but you’re still out there.’ Yes, beneath the three-piece suit there beat a denim heart.
He mentioned to Helen before he left for work that he might be a little late because Wentworth wanted to talk to him. Wentworth who was summa cum laude in his year, as the Yanks would say. Helen stood at the kitchen bench, baby at her hip, looking out the window at the tiny paved area that passed for a yard in their ‘compact’ apartment.