Stealing Picasso

by Anson Cameron

  When the phone call ends Mireille puts her hands on her hips and looks out of the window to the kids playing on the beach. She’s bemused. The gods have conspired against her, but still boys and girls shout and splash each other as if this world was suitable for play.

  ‘Now the outlaw motorbike gang of hoodlums have Turton. They kill him if we do not give them the painting.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Harry throws his ice cream to the floor. ‘Who stole the fucking painting? They’ve got no right …’

  They are silent a long while. Then the conversation again.

  ‘We give the painting back,’ Harry ventures.

  ‘They kill Turton,’ she answers. ‘Laszlo kills us.’

  ‘We give it to them.’

  ‘The police find us. Or Laszlo does. He will soon know there is another. The black market is small like a grocery store. Whoever he sold his painting to will soon know it is a forgery. Then Laszlo will come.’

  Harry lowers his face into his hands and groans. ‘It’d have been better if he was never born.’

  ‘Turton?’

  ‘Picasso.’

  The underground locker room at Spencer Street railway station is a facility little used by the public for storage but greatly loved as a urinal. Its air is dense with a fug of piss and Pine-O-Cleen. Down a concrete ramp there are four aisles of green metal lockers large enough to hold luggage. In the first aisle two long-haired students, one in a sports coat and the other a t-shirt, both with pen drawings on their jeans, are sitting astride a bench rolling a joint. They stop when they see Harry and Mireille. Making no attempt to cover it, they stare insolently. What they are doing may be illegal, but these guys abide by morals, not laws. Mireille smiles and Harry nods apology as they move into the next aisle.

  This aisle is empty. Halfway down they stop and Mireille hands the cardboard tube to Harry. The lockers are stacked three high. He opens the door of a mid-height locker, puts the cardboard tube inside, closes the door again, inserts twenty cents in the slot, turns the key, pulls it out as the coin drops and reads the number on the key. Two two seven. ‘Two twenty-seven,’ he whispers to her. He lays his forehead and forearms against the cold tin of the locker and tries to hold back a sob.

  ‘I don’t think they’ll give him back, Mireille. If he’s tried to rip these guys off, there’s no way he gets away with that.’

  She puts her arms around him from behind and kisses the back of his neck and whispers, ‘It will be okay. Most people, the dreadful things they say they will do, they will never do them.’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘You get to be a Stinking Pariah by doing the dreadful things you say you’ll do. It’s how you get in the gang.’

  Harry rings Turton’s Pakenham number. Bam Hecker picks up the receiver and listens. ‘Who’s there?’ Harry asks.

  ‘A disillusioned cubist,’ Bam tells him. ‘Give me a number.’

  ‘Let me speak to Turton. I want to know he’s okay.’

  ‘Say something, Turton.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You hear that – “Say what?”’ Bam asks. ‘That was him saying, “Say what?”’

  ‘Locker number two twenty-seven at Spencer Street station. The painting’s already in there. You can let Turton go now.’

  ‘Well, now. No. I need an art connoisseur to verify the veracity of the masterpiece, so I’ll be taking Turton with me. If the painting’s there and he verifies its veracity, then Turton has the key to the city. If it isn’t there, or it isn’t as advertised, he better grow some gills real quick.’

  As the three bikies motor in from outer suburbia towards the CBD, other Stinking Pariahs swing in off side streets and out of car parks until a school of them are riding together, muscling motorists aside – a war party. In their midst, on the back of Bam Hecker’s Roadster, with his arms around Bam’s waist, helmetless, with his cheek laid on the Stinking Pariahs’ coat-of-arms on Bam’s jacket and his eyes clenched tight shut, is Turton Pym, an artist, not widely known.

  When they pull up outside Spencer Street station they remain seated astride their bikes, spread across the footpath surrounding the concrete ramp that leads down into the locker room. They light cigarettes and deadeye civilians. Bam, Turton, Larry Skunk and Wal Wolverine Symonds dismount.

  ‘No one goes down there,’ Bam tells the war party. They move down the ramp, jostling Turton between them, pushing him and poking him, slapping his back, a buddy they are sharing a joke with.

  The two university students on the bench, nearing the end of their second smoke, ogle the three Stinking Pariahs as if they are Orcs stepped from a tale of Middle Earth. ‘Well met,’ one of them says, which makes the other giggle. Bam kicks the guy who spoke in the chest and he slams to the floor. Lying there with a fractured sternum, he coughs scarlet bubbles into his cupped hands and studies them, amazed. Larry Skunk takes hold of the guy who laughed and slaps his face. He is loading to hit him again when Wal steps between them, frees the guy from Larry Skunk’s grasp, leans down into his face and whispers, ‘You are this close to bein’ a boa-constrictor in Larry Skunk’s head.’ He holds up a thumb and forefinger to show him how close. ‘And you don’t wanna be one. Piss off. Quick. Hurry.’

  The two students scarper up the ramp, the one helping the other, who is hunched, brightest blood still bubbling at his lips.

  ‘This way. Here’s eighty, eighty-three, eighty-nine. They go up from here.’

  Bam follows the rising locker numbers around the corner into the next aisle until they are standing in front of 227. He pats Turton in the small of the back. ‘Big moment for you. She’s either in there … or she isn’t. You trust your mates?’

  Turton nods, uncertainly. Holds up his left hand showing crossed fingers.

  From the front bar of the Hub of Rails across the road from the train station Harry watches the war party arrive. He lays back his head, swallows his beer, crosses the room to the payphone in the corner, takes a scrap of paper from his pocket with a series of numbers on it and dials the City West watch-house.

  ‘City West police station, Constable Godfrey speaking.’

  ‘You guys want a big, big scoop?’

  ‘I sit here all week waiting for them, sir. What type is it?’

  ‘I mean a big break?’

  ‘Can I help you with something?’

  ‘No. I’m going to help you solve the crime of the century. A big feather in your cap, a promotion. All of that. The stolen Picasso, Weeping Woman – want to know where it is? Where it will be for the next ten minutes?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Locker two hundred and twenty-seven at Spencer Street station.’

  ‘Two twenty-seven.’

  ‘For another ten minutes.’

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  He hangs up and rings Russell Street headquarters.

  ‘Russell Street police.’

  ‘You guys want a ginormous tip-off?’

  ‘A what?’

  After Russell Street he calls St Kilda Road.

  ‘St Kilda Road police station, Constable Widnerpool.’

  ‘Constable Widnerpool. Listen. I’m about to give you the biggest leg-up of your career. How does “Chief of Police Widnerpool” sound?’

  When he hangs up he smiles in spite of his fears. He has a vision of cops charging down the front steps of various police stations, holding onto their caps and their batons, making time. He sits in the front window of the Hub of Rails to wait for them, the cavalry that will save Turton Pym.

  Bam leans against locker 227 and begins winkling a tyre lever back and forth between the door and the doorjamb, trying to get it deep enough to grip the door. ‘Shit.’ A metal lip stops it. He takes a step away from the locker, then comes forwards fast and pounds it amidships with the heel of his Johnny Reb boot. A sound like a car crash rolls up the ramp to the street. The door shows a crinkled concavity around a black heel-print. The lock has held, but the gap between door and doorjamb has widened.

  About to in
sert the lever and pop the door, Bam pauses at the sound of urgent footsteps coming down to them. They listen to Low Billy Low’s echoing run until he appears at the end of the aisle. Catching himself slightly afluster, Low Billy Low takes a moment to regain his cool. He leans on the lockers, one hand up high, inserts his smoke in his mouth. ‘Filth’s here. About a hundred the bastards. It’s a set-up.’

  Upstairs the sound of a ruckus begins. The war party is buying them time. Bam turns to Turton, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You little bastard. What the hell are you trying to do? The filth? Jesus Christ, Turton. You dumbed-out here, baby.’

  ‘Hey, Bam. I didn’t …’

  Bam points at locker 227. ‘Is she even in there?’

  ‘I’d like to think she is.’ Turton smiles weakly and nods, confirming his belief she is in there.

  Bam swings the tyre lever down on Turton’s head and he drops as if switched off. Bam stares down at the unconscious pile of limbs. ‘Well, tell her I said hi.’

  ‘Tape him. And leave two two seven closed for now. It’s not the time to be caught in possession.’

  Working fast, as if bulldogging a calf before a cheering crowd, Larry Skunk wraps Turton’s ankles, then his wrists, and then his head with duct tape. Leaving the half-spent roll of tape dangling from the back of his neck, he leaps to his feet and throws a hand in the air. They shove Turton into locker 228, beside the Weeping Woman, sitting upright, with his legs pushed hard up against his chest so they can close the locker door. Bam searches his pockets for a twenty-cent piece. ‘You guys got twenty cents?’ They pull Turton from the locker, locate twenty cents in his purple waistcoat, and put him back. Larry Skunk drops the coin into the slot and turns and takes the key.

  They saunter up out of the locker room into a lavish scene of police brutality. A cop shoves a Stinking Pariah with his fingertips in his chest and the Pariah takes a dive, holding his face as if brutally assaulted. Another cop lays a hand on a Pariah’s shoulder and he drops as if pole-axed by falling masonry. There are Stinking Pariahs rolling on the ground and hunching foetal, moaning and begging, declaring harassment, swearing police brutality, demanding names.

  This pantomime of assault is infectious. Everywhere outlaw bikers collapse, lie prostrate, roll, grasp at wounds, and cry like babies, each trying to trump their brothers with a grander hysteria.

  ‘No more, no more.’

  ‘Stop. Please. Mercy, I beg you.’

  ‘For God’s sake – my heart, my balls.’

  Ignoring this faux massacre, Bam and his lieutenants mount their bikes and kick them alive. The ruckus dies, as Stinking Pariahs pick themselves up, dust themselves off, disengage, even apologise for the misunderstanding, and promise no hard feelings. One claims his injuries are miraculously healed and this, too, is infectious.

  ‘I’m healed.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘My ruptured testicle. It’s a miracle.’

  ‘It’s the Lord’s doing.’

  ‘Or vitamins. I’m taking a supplement.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘The Lord, then.’

  The police, though they know a variety of fraud has been perpetrated on them, are elated to watch the outlaw bikers hightail it at illegal speeds through the traffic. It feels like victory if you don’t look at it too hard, and, as victors, they don’t. They are not in any way dishevelled by their engagement, but they tuck in their shirts and hitch up their trousers, straighten their caps. And then they march down into the locker room to await the minister. He has been called and is on his way, to be the one who recovers the masterpiece for the people.

  Harry moves down the ramp after them holding a nonchalance on his face and a canvas satchel under his arm. He is a commuter about to store some luggage. He checks the first aisle. In the second he smiles and nods at the milling posse of coppers before locker 227 and gets told to move on. In the third he asks, ‘Turton?’ aloud, before covering his mouth. Turton is nowhere to be seen.

  From the front bar of the Hub of Rails Harry has watched the police arrive, and barracked for them while they skirmished with the Stinking Pariahs. He has marvelled at whatever martial art or secret-police-pressure-point-technique they were using as they disabled those bikies and laid them low. He has shouted, ‘Yes. Hit the road, you chickens,’ as the Stinking Pariahs are forced to scarper without their hostage. His plan has worked. The timing is perfect. He has placed the Stinking Pariahs and their hostage down in the locker room and then tripped an avalanche of law on top of them. He has saved the deluded little bastard. Who barely deserved it, double-dipping their crime, trying to rip off violent criminals.

  But where is Turton? The stupid bastard should be here, pulling at his sideboards, apologising, calling himself an old fool, and begging forgiveness for his greed.

  ‘Turton? Turton?’ he whispers to himself, sounding it aloud for its meaning, testing to see if it still means what it did only minutes ago. ‘Turton?’

  It is night-time. They have the music turned off, listening for his approach. So when Marcel Leech knocks on the armour-plated door of the Stinking Pariahs’ headquarters, all eyes turn to Larry Skunk. Everyone knows this is his gig, his mess, his little buddy. The place goes pin-drop still. He feels the eyes, feels their expectation, their excitement. A virtuoso is about to perform. He slaps his own cheeks sharply a few times, shakes his head as if seeking clarity, cracks his knuckles in the silence. They smile. A genius is going through his warm-up. He sits up on the pool table and takes a swig of beer and nods to Low Billy Low to open up.

  Marcel peeps the sheepishly smiling head of Michael Jackson around the door. ‘I have the money. Most of it. I’ll get the rest,’ he says in Michael’s falsetto.

  ‘Use your own voice. Stop pretending to be him. Speak in your voice,’ Larry Skunk tells him.

  ‘I … I can’t. I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Well, I got to tell you, I’m sick of hearing Michael Jackson come out of you.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry, Larry Skunk. Is Turton …’

  ‘Put the money on the table.’

  Marcel crosses the room with an overnight bag and puts it on the pool table. ‘Most of what’s missing is the airfare. With a good excuse for not flying I can get a refund on that.’

  ‘How’s death sound? As an excuse?’

  Knowing no prayers, Marcel begins to silently incant the names of his mother and father. Joyce Mabel Batterby. Neville Leo Leech. Joyce Mabel Batterby. Neville Leo Leech. Joyce Mabel Batterby.

  It has been noted that Larry Skunk is blessed with a hallucinatory psychosis that transforms the people he is beating into beasts and ogres, so he feels no compassion for them. It makes people easy to injure and helps keep him unerringly violent. But to Larry Skunk’s surprise, when he beats Marcel, Marcel doesn’t turn into a werewolf or a paedophile or a crocodile, or any damn thing at all. He moans in pain and whimpers in fear of the place he is going, and he remains Marcel. This disconcerts Larry Skunk. Shit. It’s not as easy to beat Marcel as to beat a hyena or a boar. He can’t understand why Marcel won’t do the honourable thing and change into a monster. He blinks in wonder. Maybe, he thinks, Marcel has already become the worst thing possible. Worse than crocodiles, paedophiles or werewolves: a friend who cheated on me.

  Larry Skunk, with his fellow Stinking Pariahs looking on, is struggling to bash Marcel with the flair, joy and sincerity he usually brings to the task. He feels clueless. His mojo has been snatched from him. He is afflicted with a confusing pity. He begins to call out the name of a different enemy with each blow he lands, hoping, thus enticed, Marcel will metamorphosise. ‘Wolf.’ A blow lands softly. ‘Rottweiler.’ Another inadequate blow. ‘Hell’s Angel. Gorilla. Nigger. Slope. Commie.’ But Marcel doesn’t change into any of these things and Larry Skunk’s blows become less regular, less forceful, until they are hardly slaps. Marcel eventually opens his eyes and looks up at Larry Skunk and asks, ‘What?’

  ‘You,’ replies Larry Skunk.

  Marc
el, realising Larry Skunk’s predicament, apologises.

  Larry Skunk stands above Marcel, looking down at his friend panting. The Stinking Pariahs watch on, amazed and saddened. They are witnessing the end of a giant. Low Billy Low, in order to put Larry Skunk out of his misery, steps forwards and touches the muzzle of a .357 magnum revolver gently to Marcel’s temple. He’s about to pull the trigger when Larry Skunk tells him, ‘Hey.’ Breathing hard, he looks around at the other Stinking Pariahs. ‘What’s mine’s mine. I’ll do it out the Brooklyn tip. I don’t need an audience. I’ll do it out there.’ They all know he is lying, but as he hauls Marcel to his feet and pushes him towards the door, nobody moves to stop him. This is sad. This is just sad, what can happen to a man.

  Holding Marcel by a wrist he pulls him onto his bike behind him. He can feel Marcel’s fingers on his ribs this one last time. His anger turns into speed and they ride into the night fast. He is finished with the Stinking Pariahs. He has no family now. Something inside him has gone haywire. A millstone of pity, or compassion, or love, or some damn thing, has hung itself around his neck.

  On a dark street in Coburg, with silver tram tracks thinning away to a distant neon of shops, Larry Skunk slows and pulls up onto the footpath and kills his bike. ‘Get off,’ he tells Marcel. Marcel stands by the bike, waiting. Larry Skunk leans forwards and brushes raindrops off his fuel tank, the snarling skunk painted there. It’s an inappropriate skunk now, he thinks. I need a more magnanimous skunk. A Mother Theresa skunk. A Red Cross skunk. A handing-over-Christmas-parcels-to-orphans skunk.

  He begins talking softly, staring down at the fuel tank. ‘When some Joe Shithead sees us, the leather and long hair, riding round giving the finger to every bastard, he thinks we don’t have feelings. He thinks we’re hard-hearted. Can’t be hurt. Well, that’s all right. Joe Shithead doesn’t know us. The way we look serves a purpose there. It’s a barrier that keeps a nice distance between Joe Shithead and us. He can never know what’s inside our hearts. What good things live there. ’Cause it’s against our interests to let him know.’ He runs the raindrops on his fuel tank together with his gloved forefingers. ‘But I let you see through the leathers and the hair and the tatts. You know my heart, man. You knew how it would hurt me, you stealing from me.’ He reaches with both hands to rub his eyes. ‘Don’t you have a set of rules of right and wrongdoing? Shit. You want me to write some out for you?’