Rockoholic

by Skuse, C. J.

  As I’ve mentioned before, I have a tendency to do stupid things. In my short sixteen years, I have inadvertently caused two fires, been cut free from a toy car, been arrested for damaging public property, and caused a semi-serious road accident while in the process of liberating fifty farm turkeys. But this is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  I’m first in the queue when the bank opens. I take out the full amount I’m going to offer the BFD, but I only take half of it around to his place that morning. I stuff the other half under my mattress. My dad always used to tell me that in poker games he would always start low with his stake until he knew “the lay of the land” or, rather, knew how good the other players were. So that’s what I’m doing. Though in my case, I’m lowering my stake until I know exactly how dodgy the BFD is.

  The outside of Duncan Buzzey’s flat is about as skeezy as skeezy gets. It’s right at the end of Albert Lane, which looks like Knockturn Alley on a bad day, and the door looks like it’s been kicked in. Mac would go ballistic if he knew what I was doing, if he knew I’d been within ten feet of this place. But here I stand, pressing the intercom, admiring the “F” and “C” words scored into the brickwork. There’s Coke cans and condoms jammed up the gutter, it’s cold and pissing with rain, and somewhere in one of the flats opposite I can hear a baby screaming at the top of its lungs — it’s that kind of vibe. I’m sick with nerves. Buzzey’s a lout. He’s done time for theft and drug dealing. He’s everything I hate about the human race kneaded into one fat, flatulent lump.

  “Murgh?” comes the scratchy response from the intercom.

  “I need to speak to Duncan Buzzey,” I say, very slowly.

  “What scratchy want?” His voice sounds like he’s eating something crunchy.

  “I need to speak to Duncan. It’s urgent.”

  “Nah, fumph off.”

  The receiver clicks down. I look back up the lane to check no one’s around. I grab hold of the moon rock in my jacket pocket with one hand and press the button hard again until it stops buzzing. Come on, Buzzey, I’m buzzing you. I’m not going to stop buzzing you, Buzzey. . . . buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . .

  “Whaaat?!”

  I exhale. “I’ve got money.”

  A scratchy silence follows. The receiver goes down. Buzzzzzzzzz. The door clicks open.

  I push through the door, and pick my way through a stack of unopened boxes and packets. The stair carpet is greeny-gray and thick with clumps of mud and tiny bits of gravel. A cluster of mismatched sneakers lies in the corner of the first-floor stairwell, worn down at the heels and holey at the toes. I start slowly up. The walls on either side of the stairs are orange. There is no banister.

  At the top of the stairs, the walls turn the same color as the stair carpet, gray-green, and I can see a TV flickering in a room to the right. I’m stupid to have come here on my own, I know I am. I know, I know, I know. But it’s the only plan I’ve got.

  “Who are you?” says the garbled phone voice, clearer now. The TV is loud but I can just about hear him. He’s sitting in a moldy brown armchair facing Car Booty. I move across into his line of vision, seeing as he makes no effort to look around at me. He’s a huge, hulking boy-man in a stained green T-shirt. He has a tray on his lap with three foil containers on it — one for rice, one for curry, one for a cracked-up popadam.

  “Hello, Duncan.”

  Duncan looks at me again, for a longer time, up and then down. I only went to Nuffing Comp for my last year of school, so I didn’t know that much about him. All I knew was what Mac had told me. Despite this, he still recognizes me. “You used to go to Nuffing Comp, din’t ya?”

  “Yeah. Someone told me you could help me out with something.”

  He looks me right up, then right down again. “Oh yeah?”

  “Your dad,” I say, my mouth dry.

  “I ain’t nothing to do with my dad. If you’ve come here from the Chronicle or summing, I ain’t saying nuffin’.”

  “No, I’m not from the paper. It’s not about your dad . . . as such. But it’s about what he did.”

  “I don’t know anything about it, darlin’.”

  “You must.”

  “Nah, them immigrants, that was all me dad, all me dad, that was.” He sniffs and moves the tray onto the coffee table in front of him. There’s a bald patch amid his otherwise thick, greasy ginger hair and for a second I think I see something scuttle across it. I hope to God it’s my mind playing tricks. “What’s it to you, anyway? You want a pet Romanian or summing?”

  His arm moves to the back of his chair and he crosses his legs in a proper bloke-crossing-legs pose.

  “No, I don’t want to bring someone into the country, I want to get someone out.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “Nothing. He’s not a criminal or anything, he just needs to leave. I can’t tell you any more.”

  “Bad, is it? Done someone in?” He leans over to the right for the lager by his chair, his fat fingers like baby legs. He knocks back the dregs of the can, then half-crushes it and throws it toward a trash bin by the TV, already over-flowing with half-crushed lager cans. There’s newspapers all over the floor, too. I double-check for signs of Jackson, but they’re old newspapers by the looks of them.

  The massive wodge of money in my jeans pocket may as well be a hot coal, I’m so aware of it. “I can’t tell you,” I reply, getting irritated. “Can you arrange it or not?”

  “How do I know you ain’t bugged or summing?” he says, rearranging himself in his underpants and getting fairly out of breath in the process.

  “I’m not, I swear! Believe me I don’t want to be here! I just need to get someone right out of the country as soon as possible and I’m willing to pay. So will you help or not?”

  “I gotta check you ain’t bugged first. Take your top off.”

  “Good-bye,” I snap and march straight back through the living-room door. I can hear him laughing. I want to run back in there and shove what’s left in that curry container right over his melon head. I want to tip up the coffee table and throw it against the wall. But I don’t. Because I need his help. And for some reason, I still think, even as I get to the top of the stairs, that he will help me. I’m two steps down and I hear his voice again.

  “All right, all right, I was only having a laugh wiv ya, weren’t I?” Hur, hur, hur. “How much you got, then?”

  I troop back in slowly. “Five thousand.” He barely raises an eyebrow. At this point, I take out the money. “I can give you two thousand five hundred for any customs documents he’ll need and the same again for travel costs and stuff.”

  “Ain’t possible,” says Buzzey.

  “I know for a fact your dad brought two women over from Romania for half that!” I shout. I’d looked it up on the Internet that morning.

  “Yeah, well, that was a few years ago. We been through a little credit crunch since then, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Yeah, I had noticed,” I say, still clutching the money, scanning the dank brown room heaving with junk, clutter, and dust. There’s a definite dark brown shadow in the far corner that could or could not be a cat turd.

  “I been signed off sick,” he says, leaning back, yanking his trousers up over his spilled belly.

  “Off skiving, more like,” I mumble.

  “Uh?” he says. He’s helped himself to another mouthful of popadam dipped in cold, greasy curry. He itches the second of his three chins with a yellow-stained finger and reaches for the remote to change channels.

  “Can you help me or not? Can you get him out quickly and quietly and never tell a soul about it or not? I haven’t got time to play games.”

  I’ve never seen anyone flick through TV channels quite so fast, but he eventually settles on 60 Minute Makeover and goes back to his popadam. He knows full well I’m on tenterhooks. He alternates between staring at me and the envelope. Crunch, crunch, crunch. “Where’ve you
got five grand from, then?” he eventually says through a spray of crispy bits.

  “My grandad. Charlie McGee. He died a couple of weeks ago. He left an inheritance.” I gesture to the envelope. “This is it.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Took a bit of a tumble, din’t he?” I start out the door again. I don’t want to hear it if he starts on about Grandad. “That all he left ya?”

  I turn back. “Yes,” I lie. I wasn’t about to tell him exactly how much he’d left me. He’d want all of it.

  He leans forward in his chair. “You give me five, and I’ll see what I can do. And that’s a discount. I usually ask for ten. You caught me in a good mood.” He holds out his baby-leg fingers to take the envelope.

  “No, half now, half later. Please.” I’m saying please so as to appeal to his better nature. He must have one, somewhere, beneath all the fat.

  He holds up his filthy yellow hands. “That’s the deal. No half-arsed two thousand now, two thousand later crap. You give me five grand, I’ll get him into Europe without the pigs sniffing around him. I’ll do the whole lot.”

  “What’s the lot?”

  “Everything. I’ll get ’im out, get everything ready . . .”

  “What, like a passport?”

  He wipes the back of his hand across his nose. “Depends what I can sort out, dunnit? It’ll be professional and all that. International driver’s licenses, dummy credit cards, passports. Stamps for the passport so it’ll look used.”

  “It will?” I say. “And you’ll get him as far away as possible, you won’t dump him in the middle of the North Sea or . . .”

  “I’ll get him as far into Europe as he wants to go. Well, my associates will.”

  “Your associates?”

  “Well, yeah. I’m just the organ grinder, I got monkeys for things like that.”

  “What if I don’t . . . really trust you?”

  He shrugs. “Ain’t my problem.” He shovels another scoop of curry on a crisp of popadam into his gob. “You can’t have that many options if you’ve come to me. So are we in business for five grand, then, or what?”

  I rub the moon rock in my hoodie pocket, waiting for the voice in my head to tell me what to do. I try to listen to my heart; that’s what people say in movies, don’t they, when they’re not sure about something. But my heart’s just doing its usual beat thing and I don’t understand what that means. However, my head is telling me not to trust this guy with a Monopoly note, let alone five thousand of my grandad’s money. I have to be sensible about this. I have to be Mackenzie about this. So I say no.

  “No. I can’t give you five thousand pounds just like that. Two thousand five hundred now, for the documents, same again when I hear from him when he gets to Europe.”

  “I ain’t buggering about with all that.”

  “Fine, let’s forget it, then,” I say finally, stuffing the money back in my pocket and turning to leave again, this time for good. My head is a whole mosh pit of new worries. I am completely out of ideas as to how to get Jackson out of the country. I wasn’t too pleased with my idea of approaching the BFD, anyway, but now even this option is out, due to his total unwillingness to strike a deal. I guess I’m not one of his usual teenage boys who’d sell their own feet for a tenth of weed.

  I reach the fourth step down this time and I hear his voice call out.

  “Oi!”

  I don’t move. He wants this, he’s got to waddle and get it. I keep walking, slowly down the staircase. I am standing on the bottom step when the voice comes again, at the top.

  “I can have the papers by tomorrow.” I turn. I look up at him. “I’ll need three passport pictures of him by tonight. And a name.” I nod. “I can have it all in place by Friday.”

  “The quicker, the better.”

  He picks at his teeth. “It’ll take as long as it takes, darlin’. These new biometric passport chips make it well ’ard to clone. And you can’t just shove a new photo in ’em, you gotta have it digitally imaged. It ain’t a walk in the park.”

  “I don’t care. Just get it done, OK?”

  “It’ll be done, don’t fret your little head. Just get me three pictures of your mate, the one who’s ‘not a criminal,’ all his details and his new name. I’ll set everything up first. You breathe a word to anyone that I’m helping ya, no more Big Friendly Duncan.”

  I pull the money bundle out my jeans for the last time and hold it at arm’s length to him. “Half now, half when I get the papers?”

  He nods and his pudgy, yellow-nailed hand reaches out and takes it.

  And then I’m down the stairs and out the door and I don’t look back. I keep walking until I turn the corner of the street into an alleyway, which leads into the High Street, and it’s here that I break down. I clamp my hand to my mouth and sob. The cry is in place of the fear I had to suck up walking into Buzzey’s flat. It’s losing my grandad’s money on the longest long shot in history. It’s five thousand pounds going toward a drug industry that’s put Jackson in this hideous situation in the first place. And it’s for Jackson himself. Because I know, if only Duncan can pull this off, I’ll never ever see Jackson again.

  Jackson’s sitting on his feathers reading when I get back. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which I haven’t read yet but it’s apparently about this girl who gets lost in the woods and starts to believe her hero, this baseball star called Tom Gordon, is watching over her, kind of protecting her.

  My own hero is more angry than happy when I tell him about my visit to the BFD to get him out of the country.

  “You didn’t go on your own, did you? Mac went with you or something?”

  “No,” I say. “He thought the whole BFD thing was a very bad idea. He doesn’t know and he’s not going to know, OK?” Jackson scrapes his palm over his shaven head, just like Mac does when he’s annoyed with me. Except Mac’s got hair and gel and stuff on his head so it takes a bit longer. “I knew you wouldn’t let me do it, anyway.”

  “Damn right. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You said you wanted to get out of the country. The BFD is one of those guys who know how to get you things. He’s going to get you a passport and a car to get you across. . . .”

  “Hmm,” he says.

  “You do still want to go, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says, but there’s a little note in it that indicates otherwise.

  “I’ve just paid Buzzey to get you across to Europe on Friday, Jackson. You better not be chickening out on me.”

  “You paid him already?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much?”

  “Two and a half thousand.”

  “Jesus H . . .”

  “It’s halvsies. Halvsies now and halvsies when he’s got your documents and everything.”

  “. . . Christ . . . and everything? You don’t even know what he’s gonna do to get me out of here! He’ll stiff you with some forged crap and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”

  “No he won’t.”

  “How do you know? Look, I’ll get your two and a half grand back somehow. Just forget about giving him any more.”

  “I can’t forget it, can I? There’s no other way. We either take a chance on Buzzey or we stay here and you get found by Sally Dinkley or, even worse, Grohman, and shoved back on that tour bus . . . or shoved out of it in the middle of a desert or something.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re gonna lose your money. You’ll lose your money and I’ll still be here and she’ll find me.”

  “We’re desperate, OK? You read her article that I posted through your door this morning, didn’t you? Pash has a broken nose and three broken fingers. That roadie’s on life support. That St. John Ambulance woman needs plastic surgery. You said yourself Grohman’s never going to let up until he’s cemented you into a pillar on the motorway or something. I’m not letting anything happen to you. Not when I could stop it, no way.”

  He dips his head.

  “
They’ll never leave you alone, Jackson.”

  He thinks about this. He nods.

  I get to my feet. “I’m going to find Mum’s camera. I think Halley borrowed it on her outward-bound trip. We need to take some photos of you. OK? Against that wall will be perfect.”

  He picks up The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon again. “I musta read this story a dozen times. I’m glad you got me this one. It’s my favorite of his.”

  Another day, another bullshit headline.

  I SAW SUICIDAL ROCK STAR ON BRIDGE

  Some bloke is claiming he saw a man matching Jackson’s description, in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, on the Severn Bridge, where he was “staring out to sea and thinking things over.” Usually I would be infuriated by such a lie, but it’s actually OK. It’s helping us. We need the distraction. We need people to believe he is dead. Yeah, he went to the Severn Bridge. Yeah, he was suicidal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  But there are slightly more pressing issues at hand today. It’s Thursday. I dropped the photos through the BFD’s letter box last night, pretending I was visiting Mac at rehearsal. I also gave him Jackson’s new name. I’m wondering if Buzzey will have found them or whether they’re hidden under all the packages and pizza leaflets in his stairwell. I wonder if he recognized Jackson from the photos.

  Halley’s hanging around me as I separate my and Jackson’s laundry. She’s trying to get a conversation going, swinging the microwave door backward and forward.

  “Aren’t you going to be late for school?” I ask her.

  “I s’pose.” The microwave door bangs shut. “What are you doing in the drum room?”

  “What?”

  “You go out there a lot.”

  “Yeah, I just . . . like it out there. Reminds me of Grandad.”

  “Oh,” she says and we leave it at that.