by Bowes, K T
“Hey, put the word out, will you please Alex?” Logan asked and the crackly voice issuing from the phone was that of a jolly man.
“Oui, mon frère,” he answered jovially, speaking in the only other language aside from Māori the children were permitted to use growing up, French; the real Du Rose origins. “How soon?”
“Like, yesterday,” Logan’s voice sounded severe across the miles.
Alex grunted in reply. “Hey,” he added quickly as a sixth sense told him his cousin was just about to disconnect the call. “I’ve got some plans for the business. When are you next up?”
“Soon hopefully. I’ll flick you a text.”
“Sweet. Right, I’ll talk to the cuzzies and get our man pushed to the surface. Au revoir.”
Consequently and due in part to his generosity, most of the family owed Logan in some way or had at some point been indebted to him. Logan was usually their last resort, not because of any judgemental spirit in him, but because of the shame of a family member having to know the intimate financial blunders made by another. As the last bastion, Logan kept bankruptcy from the door of two of his uncles and provided food or rent money for other relations on more than one occasion. Some of it he got back. Some he didn’t.
One of the uncles lost his business a couple of months after Logan’s generous input, a café which went belly up with a hiss and a roar. Alex bought him out and Logan willingly put up a stake to get it going. Ten years on and it was a reasonable investment, not fantastic, but running at a profit. The other uncle managed to keep his venture afloat, giving Logan a limited stake in the company which eventually earned a big contract and went from strength to strength. It was currently one of Auckland’s biggest and well known interior design and decorating firms, with a plush showroom in the central business district and decent dividends squirting quarterly into Logan’s account. The business creamed its profits from the millionaire homeowners on the North Shore who wanted something of the Hollywood in their master bedrooms and living rooms. Whilst this particular uncle wanted nothing to do with either Alfred or Miriam, he conversed fairly regularly with his major shareholder, who just happened to be their son. The innocent looking shop front covered in swags of delicately printed material was the place where Logan had first encountered the Chinese Triad gangs, taking him into a world he had not previously known existed. Consistently wiping out the foot soldiers collecting protection money, Logan earned respect and a relationship with the formidable Mr Che.
“Call in Che,” Logan’s uncle said, his voice tinny against the sound of a sewing machine whirring in the background.
“No!” Logan replied. “I want to deal with Laval myself. I need him to have a head left on his neck to talk to!”
His uncle laughed and scolded someone with his hand over the receiver. “You know some of these people I employ don’t actually know what they’re doing!”
“You probably shouldn’t tell me that,” Logan laughed. “Seeing as I’m trusting you to make it all work.”
“Ah, whatever!” the surprisingly sprightly eighty-year-old man scoffed. “I’m your favourite uncle and I make you a fortune. When do you want the renovations to the motel units to start? I need to book it in. This designer is so good, I need to timetable her months in advance.”
“Summer,” Logan replied shortly. “But if you’re retiring, don’t leave me high and dry, thanks. I’ll still expect the same kind of service.”
The old man said a filthy English word that made Logan recoil in the driver’s seat. “Geez Uncle! Stop listening to those grandkids of yours. You don’t know what you’re saying, man!”
His uncle laughed uproariously and Logan shook his head. The old man was too close to the end of his walk to change now. “I don’t know how you get away with it, talking dirty to millionaire’s wives!”
“Well, not for much longer,” his uncle called down the line. “Oh, Che says he expects to see you soon. He’s interested in those assets you have in the city and wants to make you an offer.”
“Na, I’m not selling.” Logan squirmed at the thought of the envelope Hana found. “I’m not ready.” He rang off as a peel of laughter broke out in his workroom and he started shouting. Logan smirked to himself. The delicately made curtains and furnishings were largely produced by the old man’s daughters and grandchildren nowadays, including a gifted cousin of Logan’s in his thirties. Uncle liked to lean against the work benches and talk on his mobile phone and frequently, someone stitched his shirt tails to a random piece of material on purpose.
If Logan’s jilting at the altar by Caroline at the start of the year had raised scorn rather than sympathy, his commanding voice on the end of the phone swiftly dispelled any doubt to his family members about who was in control. Logan slapped the steering wheel in anger at the memory of the land his father so easily handed over to Rueben Du Rose. Logan had been perfectly able to float his own aborted wedding debts, but Alfred panicked and sold off a significant section of land without telling him. It was never his father’s to sell. “Dad, you’re an idiot!” Logan fumed. “She gifted it to me!”
Without even disturbing his immediate family, Logan flushed out Tama within half an hour. Through the most reliable branches of the grapevine, he arranged to meet him down at the café on Wellington Street Beach. Tama was there at four o’clock, looking both shifty and flush, two bad signs to Logan’s experienced mind. But at least he was intact, which would have been highly unlikely if Che’s men had done the flushing.
If the boy thought he was going for afternoon tea, he was very much mistaken. He sat outside at one of the tables as close to the patio heater as he could possibly sit, without igniting himself. He looked smart; new jacket, trousers and shoes and his regulation school-short-hair growing out. Logan watched warily from the car for a while, making sure Tama was unaccompanied and then pulled up short on the curb and beckoned his nephew into the vehicle with a crook of his finger.
They drove for a little way, saying nothing. Logan was comfortable with silence but could tell Tama was not. The teenager shifted in his seat and tapped an irritating beat on the sill of the passenger window. Logan travelled out the bottom of town and into the back roads. He was aware of the time and his need to be back to collect Hana for five o’clock, so didn’t go as far away as he might have liked. He pulled into a layby which the council used for storing huge mounds of grit and sand for roading. Nosing the Honda between two large mountains of grey metal stone, Logan felt confident it couldn’t be seen from the main road. So he killed the engine and turned sideways in his seat.
Logan was perfectly relaxed as he observed the uncomfortable young man. Tama behaved like a coiled spring, looking shifty and nervous as he reached for the door handle. He gave it a tug, realising too late that without changing his position, Logan had activated the central locking. Tama grappled at his crotch like he wanted to wet himself, noticing too late the flicker of amusement which crossed Logan’s face like a cloud scudding across the sky. Logan took a long hard look at his watch and Tama’s small resolve crumbled. The teenager suddenly knew what it felt like to play with the big boys. “You know I couldn’t stay at school after the...the Anka thing. She left me. So I got a new job with this guy who collects debts...” he blurted. “It pays well and it’s not like I’ve got that many options. I didn’t know one of the debts was your mate, that teacher called Lomax. But once we were there, I had to follow through. Otherwise...” Tama didn’t elaborate on what would happen otherwise. He didn’t need to.
Logan looked out of the windscreen into the grit mound, slowly shaking his head. “Tama, Tama, Tama,” he said. “You can’t help some people, can you? I paid your school fees. I paid for you to live in the school boarding house and when that didn’t work out, to go into a home-stay with a nice family and what did you do? Told a load of crap to a mate’s mother, laid her and then screwed up everything. For me.”
At the crude mention of his teenage affair with Anka, a staff member at the schoo
l and formerly Hana’s best friend, Tama’s face took on a hard look. He balled up his fists, hissing through his teeth, “I really loved her. It would have been fine if...” he broke off.
The truth was; he hadn’t in his immaturity worked out yet who to blame. Never himself. It would never be his fault. Young as he was, barely eighteen, he had pride and arrogance which dodged the blame at all cost. Confused and enraged, he acted in the only way he knew how. He took a sideways swing at his uncle. It was half-hearted and pathetic and he shouldn’t have been surprised when the sharp fist met with a strong, cupped hand which easily deflected the intended blow. The sound it made was a slap, echoing inside the car’s interior. Tama had banked on a deflection but found his hand gripped so hard, his fingernails were pushed painfully into his own palm.
Logan’s face didn’t change at all. His grey eyes bore into Tama’s, flickering slightly as they hardened to the colour of the grit piles surrounding them. Tama began to squirm under the pain of it and risked raising his other hand. “We’re seriously gonna do this, are we?” Logan smirked and batted it away easily. He turned Tama’s fist around painfully on his wrist, bending it backwards. It was an old trick and Tama knew what was coming, but Logan was too strong. Tama’s own fist swung back out of his control and punched him squarely in the eye. Then Logan let go. It stung unbelievably hard on account of the jagged ring Tama had newly acquired on his middle finger. Its expensive stone ripped into his eyebrow, causing a decent gash.
Logan remained immobile, watching the cut begin to ooze. He let Tama collect himself and then ordered him, “Start talking. If you get any blood in this car, there’ll be trouble. And if I have to give you another slap, I’ll make it count!”
Tama coughed the lot in the space of five short minutes. His story held no surprises for Logan, who had already worked most of it out following the catharsis with Bodie. He ejected Tama from the vehicle without laying another hand on him, leaving the boy to walk the five kilometres back to town. He drove away with a heavy heart but without a single backwards glance. “Stupid boy!” Logan exclaimed sadly to the empty vehicle. “You sure bit the hand that fed you this time.”
Tama stumbled back to town, a broken man. The visit to the Gordonton house had been a complete surprise to the teen. It was only when he saw Logan’s Triumph Spitfire peeking out of the open garage where Boris had slung his car, he realised there was a connection to his uncle. He recognised the teacher at the same time Boris recognised him. He still didn’t understand what was going on, but Logan hadn’t even given Tama the chance to act as an inside informant. “He doesn’t trust me enough,” Tama complained to himself as darkness descended around him. “But I’m family!” The memory of his whanau burned into his soul; a father who despised him, a stepfather who loathed him and an uncle who felt betrayed by him.
As Tama crunched along the rough verges back to town, the mud crept up his new trousers and stained his shiny shoes. The boy was angry to discover hot tears leaking from his eyes. Logan’s words had cut him deeper than he would ever admit, even to himself. “Bring them near me or my family, Tama and I will find you and kill you myself! Stay away from us, all of us. You never turn on whanau - I taught you that myself! Don’t use our name. Du Rose is too good for you.”
Tama stumbled along, the gash shedding drops of blood onto the jacket which was new that morning and bought from a roll of cash that had felt so good in his wallet. He earned it. Kane Du Rose taught him to be good with his fists and he inwardly thanked his dreadful substitute father for that at least. “Not like you gave me anything else,” Tama sniffed and wiped his nose on his new sleeve. So they were too good for him were they? He felt as though he was dispossessed and ripped up from the root. Tama had spent a lifetime looking up to Logan Du Rose and grief bit at the fringes of the young man’s jaded heart. Logan’s final words as he reversed the car out of its space between the gravel, had come through the open window. “We’re done!”
It echoed and repeated itself in his head as he tramped along Cobham Drive. Growing up, Logan showed more interest in Tama than all the others put together. He taught him to ride, shoot and muster the stocky white cattle from the mountains. When he struggled in school, Logan gave him extra lessons whenever he was back home visiting Miriam and Alfred. Then he sent him to one of the best private schools in the country; no expense spared.
When Tama started seriously getting into trouble, Logan fortuitously turned up to teach at the school. It was the loss of Logan’s favour which cut Tama to the quick. The Du Rose name was the only good thing in his short life and Logan had withdrawn its use and taken it back. He was the bastard son of Michael Du Rose, who didn’t even want to know him and Tama’s birth certificate bore the surname of a mother who shot through one night before he was a year old. The name ‘Tama’ meant ‘son’ in Māori. Logan was the only one to ever bother showing him how being someone’s son might feel. The irony was not wasted on Tama. Not good enough, not good enough. The words reverberated around his brain, inflicting a knife wound with each repetition. Not good enough. Tama picked up his pace. He would show him.
At the start of the city limits, the young man began to run. He was meant to be on a job at five-thirty that evening and should be picked up from the café. Each step forward strengthened his resolve and hatred boiled up inside him. By the time he got back to the café he was sweating and ruffled.
The BMW waited for him, the Chinese driver impatiently flicking open the lid of a Zippo lighter. The car glided out of its space even before Tama’s last foot was properly in and the door clicked shut heavily with the pressure from the sudden forward movement.
Du Rose Legacy
Chapter 6
Logan was safely back at school and in the front car park before five o’clock. He sat with the radio on but didn’t listen to the blather of the guest speaker. His thoughts were about a small, brown-skinned boy back home, who had crumbled under all the odds stacked against him. The problem with Tama was he had never honestly known who he was. Logan had been pained by Michael’s ineptitude as a father and his overriding selfishness where Tama was concerned. Raised on the farm next door, nobody seriously doubted who Tama’s true sire was, even though Michael had vehemently denied it until it was public knowledge.
So, Logan took the boy on himself, invested in him as best he knew how with time, money, effort and concern. He shook his head, annoyed at himself. He even named Tama in his will. He made a quick call to Liza on her mobile, finding her temporarily in Auckland. It took less than three minutes. Liza Du Rose was a powerful woman and almost never wasted words. She had done once, when her heart was softer but not anymore.
Logan updated her on the latest with regards to Boris and also instructed her to get one of her menials to freeze his current Last Will and Testament. “I’ll do a new one and email it to you for drawing up. You can forge my signature, you’ve done it before.”
Liza was brief and curt, busy, literally running out of the door to catch a plane to Wellington. “Sod off Logan. Sign away your own empire to your little English doll.”
“Hey, quit that!” Logan snapped. “I love her. Get over it.”
“Whatever,” was Liza’s retort. Her final question hit Logan in the guts for a different reason altogether. “How did it go, signing in at the police station this morning?”
Logan lied that it was fine and rang off, swearing at himself. “Bloody idiot!” He smacked the abused steering wheel, making the Honda shudder. “How could I forget? Give Odering an excuse to get a warrant, why don’t ya?”
Hana emerged from the main doors once she saw the Honda parked waiting. She had no desire to hang around the car park alone. The long, classy, cashmere coat she borrowed from Sheila, flapped around her calves in the gathering wind and her small baby bump protruded underneath the pile of file boxes she carried. Her cast looked awkward and clumpy on her delicate right arm, but using it was becoming much more comfortable. Logan leapt from the car and took the files, laying th
em on the back seat and giving her a lingering kiss before letting her into the passenger side. Her lips were cold against his warm ones and he put his hands either side of her face, wanting to be as close to her as possible. Logan held his wife tightly, closing his eyes into her hair and recognising the deep, burning loyalty he had for her, knowing he would be willing to die for her if he had to. And if they got their way, he might have to.
“I love you, Hana Du Rose.” He smiled and rubbed her cold fingers in his, withdrawing them to steer the vehicle. Logan pulled out of the gates and turned right instead of left, heading into town. Hana looked at him quizzically but decided not to question it. His mood seemed heavy and unbreachable. Logan pulled up outside the police headquarters building, an ugly concrete monstrosity which screamed the reality of ‘sick building syndrome.’ It may have been beautiful in the 1960’s, but possibly not even then. “Don’t worry,” her husband said calmly to her, “I need to check something.”
Hana waited with the car in the twenty minute parking restrictions, but locked the doors with the remote for her own peace of mind. It wasn’t the nicest place to be, especially not as it grew darker. She noted with pleasure it was only just getting to dusk, instead of pitch black as it was a few weeks ago. It proved spring was coming. It would be going the other way in England. They would be clinging onto the last vestiges of summer, enjoying the final weeks of it still being daylight at nine o’clock at night.
For the first time in years Hana wondered about her brother; where he was and what he was doing. Was he looking up into the sky somewhere, thinking about her? Somehow she doubted it, but a tiny piece of her hoped so. She dismissed the notion. It was her pregnancy making her sentimental and silly. Mark made it quite clear when she married her Sikh husband that he sided with her Anglican father. He never wanted to see her again.