K Road

by Ted Dawe

  Brett paused for a while. Then he turned to the coffin again. ‘He’s gone now … to where we’ll all go … just sooner than most.’ Then came the raised fist. ‘I salute him.’ He stood there for a moment, looking angry and defiant, then sloped off and sprawled in the front pew.

  At this point, Rabbit and Flash walked over and stood next to Bryce Gillan. Everyone else squirmed around in a sort of stunned unease. No-one seemed willing to speak after that. Flash guessed there wasn’t much left to say. The celebrant walked back to the altar to regain control. After a sequence of softly muttered prayers and hymns everyone spilled out onto the footpath. There was a big drive-in bay built to facilitate the easy entrance/exit of the hearse. All the guys who used to be at school together gathered at one end. There was a tense period of cautiously extended hands and then muttered greetings. This was the first time most of them had seen each other for years. Certainly there had been none of that Old Boys stuff. Reunions. Watching the firsts play on Saturday mornings. When they left, they left. That was it.

  But now there was something there. A need to gather, as though to take stock. Brett Delauney seemed to put out a general invitation on impulse. Asked them to come around to his apartment after the wake. Have some drinks. He said he needed an hour to organise something and handed out business cards.

  Flash and Rabbit waited with the others milling around, trying to connect with each other. Pick up where everything had left off, years before.

  It might have been the attraction of a penthouse in the Phoenix Building, or maybe it really was the nostalgia that funerals spawn, but within the hour the collected remnants of Class 7A3 made their way to Brett Delauney’s.

  23 ROOM AT THE TOP

  Brett hadn’t wasted his time. In the half hour or so since the funeral he had managed to assemble an impressive pile of liquor, mixers, smart drinks and beer. The penthouse was a place made for parties. Just off K. Road. Big lounge leading out to a wrap-around balcony. Views out past North Head all the way to the Coromandel.

  What is it about reunions that dictates the same old doublespeak? ‘What have you been up to?’ Meaning, what job do you do? ‘You look great!’ Meaning, God, what a shock! ‘Do you still see …?’ Meaning, are you in a relationship? ‘Do you remember old…?’ Meaning, let’s dig up my story. ‘I’ve often wondered what happened to you.’ Meaning, I’ve never thought about you since that day…

  Brett was not surprised to find that Bryce had gone on to the police. There was something about rugby that tied in with being a cop. That and having been a prefect. Bryce had this bossy streak even when they were in the third form. It was a bit surprising, though, to hear Evan was one too. He was one of the heaviest dope smokers of their year. A real sucker for getting wasted and then doing the outrageous. He was the guy who had run through the dormitories of the girls’ school that time, completely naked. It was the sort of thing some guys would have done in a group or late at night, but Evan did it alone at 4.30 in the afternoon. He was of course caught and suspended for a week, but the action gave him a legendary status that no-one ever managed to top.

  Evan was blown away by the apparent wealth that Brett flashed around. Everyone had known that he came from ‘difficult’ circumstances. Father a famous dead crim. The couple of times he’d gone to Brett’s place he’d been shocked that people could live that way. The filth, the disorder, the complete absence of any adult backstops. The whole house stank of booze, sadness and neglect. He felt a new respect for Brett after that: learned that not everyone started from the same point. That some kids had a lot more put on them at an earlier age than he did.

  ‘So Brett. Where did this all come from, man?’

  ‘A bit different from the last time you were in my house. I guess you could say I joined a new team.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Brett looked around the room as if making some sort of assessment, then he turned back to Evan. ‘I remember seeing this biker once, when I was quite small, he was one of my mother’s chain of boyfriends, I think. He had this tattoo. It said “Born to lose”. It stuck in my head. You know how some things do. Things that seem to apply to you. I took it like some sort of message from the gods. “Born to lose”. That was me. So I changed teams.’

  ‘What’s your new team? “Born to win”?’

  ‘No. You missed the point. I had to change my destiny. It stuck to me like filth but I saw beyond it. It didn’t have to be that way. There were other paths and I took them.’

  ‘So what have you been doing?’

  ‘Lots of things. Did you ever play Monopoly?’

  ‘Yeah. When I was about twelve or thirteen.’

  ‘Well there’s more to that game than most people realise. Two things. Once you get a power base it’s just a case of grow baby grow. Money takes on a life of its own.’

  He took a big hit from his glass.

  ‘And what’s the other?’

  ‘Just this, man …’ Brett stopped for dramatic effect. ‘It all comes down to throws of the dice.’

  Evan looked at Brett’s clothes. In many ways their situations were just the reverse of what they were on that visit to his house when he was 13. Evan had a credit card that never dropped more than a couple of hundred bucks below its limit. His car was a Supra Turbo that blew smoke so badly he had been told not to park it in the underground car park at work because it would set off the alarms. He shared the flat in Epsom which had hardly enough room to swing a cat. Even at work he had this inkling that his rise through the ranks was going to be a slow one. How things turned around. How he longed to know more about Brett’s rapid change of fortune. He needed any help, any clues he could get.

  Rabbit was amused to see Jake again so soon after their first meeting in so many years. He was a bit annoyed that Wilson was there too. The hanger-oner. He was really irritating, that little suck up. He knew it too, that’s why he kept close to Jake. Protection. Anything to avoid getting what’s due to him.

  ‘So, Rabbit, what’s the real work that you and Flash do? Are you just surf bums or what?’

  Rabbit had fielded this question so often. His girlfriend, Kiri, used to plague him with it … so much so that he ditched her. Too much agenda when a girlfriend pesters you on that one.

  ‘It comes and goes. We’ve had some jobs that have run for eight months and we’ve had gaps nearly as big. There’s the dole office, what Flash calls our sponsor. It pads out the times when maybe we aren’t chasing the buck as hard as we should. The rent gets covered. We eat. The Holdens come and go. We get by.’

  ‘Do you guys flat together?’

  ‘We’ve got half a house in Sandringham. The front’s an Indian dairy and you can smell the curry from their kitchen right through the concrete block walls.

  ‘What about you, Jake? I couldn’t really get a fix on were it stands now.’

  ‘A bit of this, a bit of that. Shit happens. Things turn up. Don’t want nothin’ that ties me down. Job, girlfriend, whanau.’

  ‘Wilson?’

  ‘Yeah. He calls himself Cujo now. His street name.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘He thinks he’s the man.’

  ‘What’s with that?’

  ‘I made this promise to my mother that I would look out for him. I’ve almost kept it, but he’s heading for a giant slap, and I won’t be there to stick up for him.’

  Rabbit remembered when Jake’s mother had died. He had gone off to the tangi and been away for a couple of weeks. When he got back, old Donkey had dropped him from the squad. Jake had to sit on the reserves bench watching his team get beaten by schools that were way below them just because he had a coach who believed that Maori players didn’t get any special deals.

  ‘It’s the same for everyone, mon. White, brown, black or yellow!’

  It must have been a saying that went over big on the veldt because Donkey said it often enough. This was what soured it for Rabbit. He began to see through the whole thing and focused more on his surfing. Best thing he ever did.
/>   ‘Want a stick of weed, Flash?’ it was Wilson with Chey and Ronnie in tow. Flash took the obligatory toke and passed it back.

  ‘Gidday you two,’ he said ignoring Wilson. It didn’t pay to encourage him, he’d start expecting to be treated like an equal. And he wasn’t.

  The two Te Panias had sure maoried up since their school days. There the tangata whenua stuff had to be sat on. They both greeted him with a hongi and their style of talk was now all South Auckland hip-hop. It was like a routine.

  ‘Hey, Flash, man, what’s the haps?’

  ‘We was arksing ’bout you las’ week, eh man. He he he he!’

  ‘There was this Fijian dude playing for counties. He had the wickedest side-step … made the Waikato team look like monkeys …’

  ‘Quick as, bro …’

  ‘Yeah anyway, Chey says that could have been you, man …’

  ‘The eight foot side-step at thirty ks …’

  ‘Other guy left standing not knowing where you is …’

  ‘Like you been abducted by aliens …’

  ‘Under the sticks …’

  It took him a while to tune in. He’d forgotten how they slipped in and out of this rapid-fire tennis match of shared conversation. It was like it had been wired in at birth.

  ‘I gave all that stuff away after school. It’s surfing now. Surfing gets to the places other sports can’t reach.’

  ‘The bottom of the ocean?’

  ‘Collecting tuatuas with ya mouth, man …’

  ‘There are easier ways to travel, bro …’

  ‘The twelve foot tinny does it for us …’

  ‘Pulling snapper out of the Manukau …’

  ‘Getting us a feed …’

  Ronnie was wearing this shiny new leather jacket with a gold scorpion pin in the collar. Flash reached over to touch it and then stopped short.

  ‘What’s this? You gang guys now?’

  ‘Yeah? Well, Ronnie maybe,’ said Chey out the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Scorpions ain’t a gang, man. We’re just a group with similar … ah interests, eh,’ he giggled.

  ‘He’s not the government grants committee, man,’ said Chey to Ronnie, and then he turned to Flash. ‘I just write the letters, get the funding. Me and Pearlie, my woman, are cultural consultants.’

  ‘What’s that involve?’

  ‘He travels to all the Pakeha schools and gives them their Maori medicine.’ They both exploded into giggles again.

  Paul Du Prez avoided the alcohol. He had the suspicion that something was going to come out of this party. Something that would allow him to go to Merv and convince him that he should follow this one through, buy a break from court reporting and do some feature writing. These guys had been a couple of years ahead of him at Grammar. They were a famous year, and the younger kids treated them like gods. It was odd to see what five or six years had done to them.

  Brett was the one who really interested him. His rise and rise had made him famous. Always being photographed in the weekend papers, hanging off some TV name. Seemed to be in some sort of partnership with Mike Osbourne. Sleazy old Ozzie, the King of K. Road. The gossip was that Brett ran the party drug division, but it had to go further than that. It would take a truck-load of rave pills to live in a joint like this.

  He saw Bryce Gillan standing by himself. Odd how a real straight like Bryce would end up partnering someone like Evan.

  ‘We meet again, Bryce.’

  ‘Didn’t know you knew this guy.’

  ‘Brett Delauney? Don’t really, just some of the others here. How about you?’

  ‘We were all in the same team once. That was a while ago. What do ya make of Brett? Of this?’ Bryce indicated the apartment, with its white carpets and furniture, and clear air space outside the windows.

  ‘Doubt if you score this lot by playing by the rules.’ They both looked across to Brett who was in an intense huddle with Wilson and Evan. They seemed to hang off his every word.

  ‘What’s it like working with Evan? He used to be so crazy, hard to believe he’s on the side of law and order.’ It was sort of a leading question and he could tell that Bryce had been asked it before.

  ‘He’s a good cop. You need someone a bit crazy when you’re rushing into a house in Glen Innes, unarmed, after a domestic call out. You like to do that?’

  Paul said nothing. Knew he’d pushed too far.

  It was the sort of party that no-one wanted to leave. Not just because of the free drinks and luxury, but because they all knew they would never be in this sort of gathering again. That time was already propelling them in different directions, like a fragmenting solar system. Soon they would leave each other’s orbits forever. But by the time it was three in the morning there were just five people left. Brett, Evan, Ronnie, Jake and his little shadow, Wilson.

  24 OZZIEMANDIAS

  When Ozzie arrived home that night his heart sank. The red light high on the corner of the house was blinking. He spotted it as soon as he got past the electric gates. He tooled slowly up the driveway and brought the Lexus to a stop in front of the bank of panelled garage doors.

  Instead of triggering the doors and driving in, he switched off and stared sadly at the light blinking endlessly under the eaves high above him. Each pulse gave a blood red wash to the towering front of the big house, picking out the bay windows and the tiled, Spanish-style porch.

  This crazy big house, with all its rooms, its quirky levels, its solidity: how he loved it. Acquired dollar by dollar from long nights in the clubs and the parlours. Through endless deals. By being one step ahead. By watching his back. Now his sanctuary had been broached. This house, the place where he was able to quietly renew himself, was now part of that other world too. It wouldn’t be the same again. He felt like crying.

  He looked down at his hand and noticed that he had taken out his cell phone, as though he was going to ring someone. Who? His friends? What friends? He didn’t have friends, he had associates. The cops? What a laugh. How they’d love the excuse to pore over this place.

  Wearily, Ozzie swung out of the Lexus and climbed up the broad steps that led to the front door. He braced himself for what he knew must lie before him: the broken lock, and the chaos of ripping and smashing that these kids went in for. He’d read about it, he’d seen it on TV often enough; now it had happened to him.

  At the top of the steps he was surprised to see everything in order. The door securely locked. The racks of spiky succulents on each side undisturbed. Perhaps it was just some malfunction. These gizmos were really sensitive. A decent sized rat could set them off. He stood briefly in the tiled portico and looked out on the sprawling suburban houses below him. All quietly tucked up. Mr and Mrs Joe Normal, snoring away in every house, dreaming about the big mortgage, the better car, the private school, the secretary’s arse. All those things that bubbled away beneath the surface.

  Once inside he was on edge again. There could be someone in there now, waiting, looking for the chance to jump him and get on with their business. He turned the light on in the passage and looked through the dark wooden archway. Further along, where the open doors fed off, the scene appeared orderly. So far so good. In the kitchen he took a large vegetable knife from the block and moved on through the rest of the house. No, all clear. He’d been lucky. False alarm. Everything just as it should be. All his things untouched. The porcelain figures. The delicate furniture that he had gradually gathered since his mother died. The art work, those early New Zealand watercolours, on which he considered himself an expert. He moved from room to room, bathing in the gradual sense of relief. His spirits rose. Nothing had been touched, nothing was out of place. In the darkness of his office his answerphone blinked. The only sign of life.

  He went back to the front door and disarmed the key pad. According to the glowing screen, three rooms had been entered. It didn’t make sense. Either all the lights should be going, or maybe just one. It was as though someone had walked straight into his office and th
en back out again. Without so much as a right or a left. And it had happened at 10.40 this morning. Just after he left: he had heard the 10 o’clock news when he got into his car. Nothing made sense. He looked at his hands. They were shaking. He was in shock. Fuck it, he was in shock. He wasn’t given to anger, but this made him angry.

  He went to the sideboard in the lounge and poured himself a hefty slug of scotch. Below the big picture windows he stared at the lighted room of his nearest neighbour. It was where the nosy cow lived. The one who watched him swim in the mornings. And there she was, looking up at him now. Gloating. He gave her the finger. It was impulsive. He regretted it immediately and walked back into the body of the room.

  From the lounge he could see the soft green flare of the answerphone. A message for him. Big deal, when wasn’t there a message for him?

  He walked in and hit the play button. His chest tightened. It was Vercoe. The refined voice. The bloody calmness of it. The sarcastic friendliness.

  ‘Ozzie? Miles. Such a hard man to run down. (Chuckle.) You do work too hard, you know that? Why am I ringing? Well you’ll never guess what lies here on my desk. It’s a ledger. Of sorts, anyway. Or should I say it’s a photocopy of one? Someone else holds the original. Money in money out, you know the sort of thing. My grandfather used to always say, “Watch the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves”. Well, here I am watching your pennies. Look, I won’t go into details now, I don’t know who else listens to your messages. Is there a Mrs Ozzie these days? We need to meet. Talk through things. I think this book is the beginning of a new chapter for all of us. Ring me and set up a time. And by the way, young Brett Delauney sends his regards. He seems to be a young man with a future. He is now, anyway. Bye for now.’