A Croc Called Capone

by Barry Jonsberg

  Mum, on the other hand, went straight into protective mode. True, she was badly shaken. I could tell by the way her lips were set in a thin white line. She clasped Dyl to her so tightly on the minibus you’d have needed a crowbar to pry him loose. He winked at me from the folds of Mum’s dress. I tried to wink back but I was numb and my muscles wouldn’t work.

  The resident doctor winkled Dyl out of Mum’s arms and checked him over. According to the doc, Dyl was fine physically, but it was possible delayed shock would set in. He explained that it’s not uncommon for people who have undergone a really nasty experience to be fine at first and then fold into trembling blubber later when the mind finally grasps what has happened. He ordered Dyl to rest.

  Dyl wasn’t keen on resting. It’s something he’s avoided all his life. But one glance at Mum’s face convinced him it might be wiser to follow instructions. Or maybe he was worried she’d do her impersonation of a human vice again. I went with him to our cabin and Mum tucked him into bed. She ran a hand through his hair.

  ‘You get some sleep,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Dyl.

  Mum didn’t react to his slip of the tongue. Perhaps, like me, she put it down to delayed shock.

  We closed the cabin door and joined the rest of the family at the resort bar. Dad ordered something strong for him and Mum and soft drinks for me, Rose and Cy. I don’t think I’d ever seen Mum drink anything other than a very occasional glass of wine. Now, she took a glass of dark amber liquid and downed it in one. Dad got her another. The five of us sat around a table and for a while no one said anything. Then Dad broke the silence.

  ‘I think we should see about getting a flight home.’

  I nearly said something. I didn’t want to go home. More to the point, I knew Dyl wouldn’t want to go home. He’d be devastated. And, when I glanced at Rose and Cy, I could see the same reaction in their faces. But Mum jumped in before any of us could react.

  ‘Of course we must go home,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else to do. That poor boy. And his poor parents. Oh, my God.’ She bit at the corner of a fingernail. ‘What will his parents say? We’ve only been here a few hours and we’ve nearly killed him. What kind of people are we?’

  ‘Mum,’ said Rose, ‘it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was an accident.’

  But Mum wasn’t in the mood to hear that. ‘Don’t be stupid, Rose,’ she yelled. If the circumstances had been different I would have been happy. It’s not often Rose cops any kind of criticism. But clearly the sunbeams radiating from her bum were undergoing an eclipse.

  ‘Your father and I are responsible for Dylan,’ Mum said in softer tones. ‘That is the deal we made with his parents when they agreed to let him come along. To look after him. To make sure no harm came to him. To ensure precisely that no accident happened. And we failed. There can be no excuses. And now we need to get him back to his parents. It’s the very least we can do.’

  ‘Your mother is right,’ said Dad. ‘I don’t think we’ve any other option.’

  I said nothing. There was no point. Anyway, I was worried someone would ask me what I’d seen out there on the boat. Everyone was making the assumption Dylan just slipped off the side. Only I knew that it was really his own fault. Who, in their right mind, would climb onto a railing and lean out over a man-eating crocodile? No one. But Dylan had never been in his right mind. If my parents knew him as well as I do, they’d realise this was completely normal behaviour.

  I wasn’t going to tell them that, of course. Dyl is barking mad, but he’s my mate.

  So I wandered off down to the beach, while Mum and Dad went to the front office to make arrangements. I’d have gone to the cabin – I was sure Dyl wouldn’t be asleep – but I knew I’d be in serious strife if I was seen. Anyway, I needed quiet time.

  Not that I got it. Blacky appeared at my side almost as soon as I reached the water’s edge.

  ‘Wotcha, bucko,’ he said.

  ‘Hey, Blacky,’ I replied. ‘Wassup?’

  ‘From where I’m standing, just your head up your own butt.’

  I wasn’t in the mood, so I didn’t say anything. I picked up a couple of flat stones and skimmed them across the ocean’s surface. It was lovely here. I’d miss it.

  Blacky sniffed around a patch of sand and then cocked his leg up against a washed-up branch. I watched the thin yellow stream dwindle and die.

  ‘Well, boyo,’ he said. ‘You’re back earlier than I expected, but that’s all to the good. Ready for our trip?’

  ‘No. What’s the point?’

  ‘The point, mush, is that you have a mission to fulfil.’

  ‘Well, you can forget about the mission, tosh,’ I replied. ‘I know you know what happened to Dyl today. You can read my mind, after all. There’s no chance of me and Dylan doing anything without being supervised by Mum, Dad and probably thirty hired bodyguards. And that would be true even if we weren’t on the point of leaving anyway.’

  ‘There are no flights out today, boyo. This isn’t Sydney, in case you hadn’t noticed. The earliest you’ll be leaving is tomorrow night.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, tosh, you still have time to do some good. But time is running out now. Your dipstick mate has made sure of that.’

  I skimmed another stone. It felt like I was carrying a heavy weight. This holiday was finished before it had properly begun. The truth was beginning to sink in.

  I had no enthusiasm for anything.

  ‘Look, Marcus,’ said Blacky. His tone was unlike any I’d heard from him before. ‘I know you’re sad. But this mission is important. If you don’t do something now, you’ll regret it later on. When you get home. You have a chance to make a difference. Take it. While your mum and dad aren’t around to spoil it.’

  Did he call me Marcus?

  I skimmed another stone and thought it through. Blacky had a point. Feeling down shouldn’t stop me doing the right thing. Maybe – just maybe – I could salvage something from this disaster. Plus, I was curious about Murray Small. What was it Blacky had said? That he’d show me what Murray got up to on those bushwalks. And I had nothing better to do.

  ‘Okay, Blacky,’ I said. ‘You win.’

  ‘I normally do, tosh. I normally do. Follow me.’

  He took off down the beach. I chucked my remaining pebbles on the sand and followed. Despite everything, I felt my spirits lift. It wasn’t every day Blacky was sympathetic to my feelings. It wasn’t any day, come to think of it. He’d called me Marcus. He knew I was sad and felt sorry for me.

  ‘Don’t get used to it, mush,’ came a voice in my head. ‘I’ll sink to any depths to get results.’

  We didn’t stay on the beach long. After a couple of hundred metres, Blacky climbed a dune and disappeared into stunted bush. I had difficulty keeping up. Judging by the foul smell I was wading through, he was using his bum as a super-turbo-charger.

  ‘Blacky!’ I yelled. ‘Not so fast.’

  ‘No time to waste, tosh,’ he replied. He did slow down a bit, though.

  The bush thickened and the ground underneath grew soggy. Once or twice, my feet sank into soft mud and I had to pull them free with sucking sounds. Pools of water were all around, as were strange trees with roots that bulged from their trunks and snaked down into wet earth.

  ‘Mangroves, mush,’ said Blacky. ‘Fascinating things. Ancient. Pity your lot have bulldozed so many to build shopping malls, multi-storey carparks and high-rise apartment blocks. Still, progress, huh?’

  I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about the environment. Anyway, a disturbing thought had struck. I gazed around a threatening landscape. The air was thick with moisture and the whine of mosquitoes. I felt as though we were a million kilometres from another human being.

  ‘Is it dangerous out here, Blacky?’ I asked.

  ‘Dangerous? No, tosh. Safe as houses.’ He paused. ‘Apart from … hey, never mind. Come on. Not much further now.’

  I didn’t
budge.

  ‘Apart from what?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Just … you haven’t got any open cuts on your legs or feet, have you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘Then don’t worry about it.’

  That was it. I wasn’t going any further until he told me. Blacky sat on a small hummock amid the wetness and fixed me with his pink-rimmed eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ he said finally. ‘It’s just that there is a bug in the earth that can get into your bloodstream through small nicks in the skin. It only comes to the surface when it’s wet.’ I looked around at the flooded land. ‘Little possibility of getting infected, though. You’ve more chance of being struck by lightning.’

  I didn’t point out that with my luck I’d probably experience both. I simply let a glowing image of a question mark float through my mind.

  ‘It’s called meliodosis,’ Blacky continued. ‘Can be a teensy-weensy bit nasty.’

  ‘How nasty?’

  ‘Well, not bad. After a while your arms and legs fall off. Then you die … If you’re lucky.’

  ‘Well, gosh, Blacky,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness it’s only a teensy-weensy bit nasty. I thought I might be in trouble there for a moment.’

  ‘Nah, mush. You’re much more likely to be bitten by a snake.’

  I was on the point of moving forward again. I stopped.

  ‘Snake?’

  ‘This is the Territory, tosh. Home of some of the most venomous snakes in the world. But I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. After all, it’s the crocs you’ve really got to watch out for.’

  ‘Let me get this straight, Blacky,’ I said. ‘Apart from a bug that makes bits of you drop off and deadly snakes and man-eating crocodiles, this is a completely safe place?’

  ‘Well, of course there’s also …’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to know. Lead on.’

  Suddenly, I needed to get out of there.

  This river wasn’t as broad as the one we’d been on for the croc cruise. Blacky and I stood on the edge and looked at the body floating a few metres from shore.

  ‘This is the doing of your mate Murray,’ said Blacky. ‘Your “reasonable guy”. Tell me, bucko. Does this look reasonable to you?’

  The crocodile’s pale, almost white, underbelly bobbed gently. Its short arms floated to the side in pathetic openness. I don’t know which emotion I felt first: sadness or anger.

  ‘He shot it earlier,’ Blacky continued. ‘When you guys were on the cruise. Trouble is, he didn’t kill it cleanly. It was sunning itself on the bank when it took a round in the head from a high-powered rifle. Got into the water. Tried to swim away. Murray couldn’t get to the body, so he just went off in search of other prey while this croc took half an hour to die.’

  It took me a minute to find my voice.

  ‘But it’s illegal. He’s a doctor!’

  ‘Yes. And a big-game hunter. This is what he does for kicks, tosh. Not just here, but all over the world. Africa, South America. He’s killed lions, elephants, all manner of animals. Endangered? Doesn’t matter to him. If it’s big and wild, he wants to kill it.’

  I badly needed to sit down, but the ground was wet and we were very close to the bank. Suddenly I became aware of what might be lurking under the surface of that slow-moving river. I moved back a few paces.

  ‘I don’t get this, Blacky,’ I said. ‘Murray Small arrived yesterday. He couldn’t have brought a rifle with him and it’s a helluva way to the nearest gun shop. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘He has money, boyo. Lots of money. It’s not difficult to arrange for a couple of other guys to come here in a four-wheel drive with all the equipment he needs. Another thing you must understand. He isn’t interested in skins or heads on the wall. His accomplices take whatever trophies they want from the slaughtered animals. He just likes the act of killing. And it means there’s no evidence to connect him with the crime.’

  I couldn’t take my eyes from the crocodile’s body.

  ‘And here’s a coincidence, mush. That’s Al’s brother floating out there.’

  ‘Al?’

  ‘Al Capone, the croc that nearly chomped your twonk of a mate. He is not going to be pleased.’

  I ran my hands through my hair. There were so many things I couldn’t get straight in my head. My hair was one of those things, but I didn’t bother about that then.

  ‘How do you know this stuff, Blacky?’ I said. ‘I mean, all that about him killing lions and elephants. You couldn’t have seen that with your own eyes.’ Then again, I thought, he’d managed to smuggle himself onto a plane to get here. I had a sudden image of Blacky in a gondola, sailing down a canal in Venice. Blacky in a pith helmet in an African jungle. Blacky taking a snapshot of the Taj Mahal.

  ‘I gather information, tosh,’ he replied. ‘I am the hub of a national and international confederation of animals. There’s not much that goes on in the world that I don’t know about. Think of me as a masterspy. I send agents out into the field. I plan operations. I …’ ‘Yes, okay, Blacky.’ He was so full of hot air, it was a wonder he didn’t float. ‘I get the idea. And now what?’

  ‘Now, tosh, you stop him. Before others die.’

  I thought about Murray and people like him all over the world. Bringing death, not just to individual animals, but pushing whole species to the brink of extinction.

  Blacky was right. It was wrong. It was evil. The killing had to stop.

  But how?

  ‘I can’t do everything, boyo,’ said Blacky. ‘Try using that flabby thing you call a brain.’

  I tried, but couldn’t get past the fact I was a smaller-than-average eleven year old and Murray Small had the build of a larger-than-average rugby prop-forward. Plus he had a gun. It was hopeless.

  Impossible.

  And that was when the idea hit me.

  Blacky cocked his head.

  ‘That might just work, mush. That might very well work. Amazing. The human brain does function. Follow me.’

  And he took off into the bush again.

  It was twenty minutes before we heard the first gunshot, another ten before we heard voices.

  Blacky and I slowed down. We moved from tree to tree, trying to sneak up on them. Not much of a problem for a small dog, especially one who was also apparently a master of disguise, but tricky for an eleven year old whose feet kept getting stuck in foul-smelling sludge. The cover wasn’t great here, either, and the land was so flat there was no chance of peering over a convenient hummock, the way they do in movies. Luckily, the men were busy dragging something up to a ute that was totally smeared with red dirt and brown mud. They were concentrating so hard that Blacky and I managed to sneak closer without attracting attention.

  It was Murray and a couple of other guys with long beards. Rifles were propped against the ute’s tray. One man had a long hunting knife in his hand. I slipped behind a tree and peered around the trunk. Even though I was still some distance away, I could see what they had been dragging.

  It was the head and skin of a large crocodile. They must have gutted it where it had been shot. Now they spread the remains onto the ground by the ute.

  Images flipped through my mind. Al’s brother, his short legs splayed in death, bobbing on the river. Then Al himself, gliding alongside the tour boat. Powerful jaws. Cold eyes.

  Terrifying.

  Yet so beautiful.

  I realised I’d stopped breathing. My hands were clenched so tightly that when I uncurled them, my nails had left crescent-shaped gouges in my palms. I exhaled slowly, calmed the anger surging through my blood.

  I needed a cool head.

  Blacky and I silently agreed on what must happen. Timing was crucial. We ran through it one more time. Then he slipped off across the wet land, crossed the thin trail on which the ute was parked and disappeared into the bush on the other side. I waited.

  ‘Hey, Murray,’ one of the guys called out. ‘What about a photo of you with your kill?�
��

  ‘Nah, mate,’ said Murray. ‘Not into souvenirs.’

  ‘Oh, go on.’

  ‘Mate, I said no. I’m not taking the chance of being identified should some photo fall into the wrong hands.’

  The other guy laughed.

  ‘You worry too much.’

  ‘I worry enough,’ snapped Murray. ‘And if you don’t like it you know what you can do. I can always take my money elsewhere. Mate.’

  The man with the knife lifted his hands. A few drops of blood fell from the stained blade.

  ‘Whoa, man,’ he said. ‘No offence, okay?’

  At that moment an unearthly noise floated through the bush. A howl that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. If you were imaginative you’d think it was some spirit moaning in inexpressible agony.

  Luckily I’m not imaginative. Anyway, I knew that it was Blacky.

  The men were startled. They grabbed their guns and moved to the other side of the ute, out of my line of sight. This was the time to make my move. I slipped out from behind the tree trunk and sprinted towards the ute. Sprinted is a slight exaggeration. Given the muddy earth, ‘oozed’ might be a better word. But I made it to another tree approximately twenty metres from the men.

  This tree had a dense canopy of broad leaves. Equally importantly, it was easy to climb. Blacky’s howls suddenly ended, as if a stop button had been punched. I tucked myself into a fork in the branches and looked through a gap in the leaves.

  Perfect. It was unlikely I would be seen from below. You would have to make a special effort to peer into the branches and there’d be no reason to do that. I unclipped my digital camera from the belt of my shorts – the same camera I’d taken along for the croc cruise – and looked through the viewfinder. It wasn’t a top quality camera. The zoom function was, to be honest, crap. But, at this distance, I was confident I would get a picture of Murray that would be recognisable, that might hold up in a court of law. I turned the camera on and waited.