Then Vasco straightened up. ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘How did you get the idea?’
Jed shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just came to me.’
‘You’re dangerous,’ Vasco said. ‘You need watching.’
‘Lucky I’m on your side then, isn’t it?’
Vasco scooped up a handful of river-mud and flung it in Jed’s direction. Jed ducked and, grinning, showed Vasco his crimson devil’s mouth. But the grin faded as his thoughts turned to his mother, the last four years, their uneasy truce. She was still bringing men home with her, but defiantly now, as if she wanted him to witness it and disapprove. To Jed, these men of hers were all one man, their boots shifting on the carpet, their bodies too big for the rooms; they reminded him, curiously enough, of his brother, Tommy. He stared at them and ignored them, both at the same time. He’d become an expert at the look. Ten years later it would serve him well.
‘It’s not easy living there.’ He took Vasco’s stick and jabbed at a rock.
Vasco looked at him sideways. ‘Why don’t you move out?’
‘Where to?’
‘Plenty of room at my place.’
It was winter and the air was sharp. Everything you looked at seemed cut out with scissors. The light fell in blue-and-yellow twists on the surface of the river. Jed could see Sweetwater on the far bank, a plane scorching the air as it lifted over the rooftops. He could almost feel the house shake. He could almost smell the nail polish.
He looked at Vasco. ‘What about your parents?’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘You must live with someone.’
‘My sister, but she’s hardly ever there. Otherwise there’s only Mario and Reg. But they’re both senile.’
‘Senile? What’s that?’
‘Means when you’re nearly dead. You’re still alive, but only just –’
Jed stopped listening. He was thinking of the men who were all one man doing one thing. He was remembering his mother’s face in her dressing-table mirror. He was imagining her toss his radios casually into oblivion. And he knew then that Vasco was right. But still something reached across the river, something stretched out like arms and tried to claw him back. He didn’t know what it was. He took a step backwards, slipped on the mud and almost fell.
‘Course there won’t be anyone for you to record fucking. My sister does all her fucking at her boyfriend’s. And Mario and Reg, they’ve probably never fucked in their lives.’ Vasco spread his hands. ‘So what do you say?’
Jed nodded, grinned. ‘Does it need saying?’
Vasco bought a bottle of vodka to celebrate and they drank it in the old sailors’ graveyard in Mangrove South. This was where the funeral business had first put down its roots. Over the wall, between two warehouses, Jed could just make out the Witch’s Fingers, four long talons of sand that lay in the mouth of the river. Rumour had it that, on stormy nights a century ago, they used to reach out, gouge holes in passing ships, and drag them down. Hundreds of wrecks lay buried in that glistening silt. The city’s black heart had beaten strongly even then. There was one funeral director, supposedly, who used to put lamps out on the Fingers and lure ships to their doom. Times had changed. There hadn’t been a wreck for years, and all the parlours had moved downtown (their old premises had been converted into speedboat showrooms, fishing-tackle stores), but he could see that, for Vasco, the graveyard might have peculiar significance.
Drunk for the first time in his life, Jed saw Vasco with absolute clarity, as if Vasco was outlined in mercury. Vasco was leaning against a stone, eyes shut, chin tipped, teeth bared. Then his head came down and his eyes opened wide and they were like the windshield of a car that’s never been anywhere. No record of any insects or moisture or dust. They were so wiped clean. Brutal without meaning to be, brutal and vague. It was something Jed knew about, knew by instinct, it was a quality that he possessed himself. But Vasco didn’t seem to know about it at all. He just had it. He was the dreamer who kills people in his sleep.
The next day Jed packed a small bag while his mother was at work. Just before he left he took a pen and a piece of paper and sat down at the breakfast bar. ‘I’ve gone to stay with a friend,’ he wrote. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Wishful thinking. He was pretty sure that relief would be her first reaction. One less blemish in her life. He wondered, as he folded the paper in half and taped it to the TV screen, whether Pop had left a note when he walked out on her.
It was pure chance that Nathan ever got to know Tip. The city had worked hard to keep them apart. Nathan grew up in Blenheim, a garden suburb on the west shore. Tip, on the other hand, came from the east, some housing project way past Z Street. Definitely the wrong end of the alphabet. Though their swimming styles were just as diverse – Nathan slipped through the water, leaving hardly a crease behind; Tip thrashed it into an angry froth – it was the water that brought them together. They both swam for a team known as the Moon Beach Minnows. They trained three evenings a week in the outdoor pool on Sunset Drive, swimming lap after lap while Marshal, the team coach, patrolled the poolside in his maroon sweatsuit and his snow-white sneakers, booming their times through a rolled-up copy of the sports paper. Between them, they won most of the junior competitions.
One Wednesday, in practice, Nathan raced Tip over one hundred metres and beat him by almost five seconds. He touched the curved tiles at the end of the pool and, rolling on to his back, watched the planes float down through the soft brown sky. The margin of his victory surprised him. His time had been good, but not that good. Tip heaved his hard white body out of the pool and stood with his towel draped round his shoulders. Then he turned his head to one side and spat clear through the wire-mesh fence fifteen feet away. Part habit, part disgust. Nathan grinned. Somehow Tip never left any spit hanging on the wire, it always seemed to soar right into the darkness that lay beyond.
‘I saw you, Stubbs,’ Marshal bellowed.
Tip nodded. ‘Sorry.’
Down in the pool Nathan still had a grin on his face. Tip noticed it, and winked. Maybe they came from different parts of town, but they both knew an old woman when they saw one.
Later that night Nathan left the building just ahead of Tip. While Nathan unlocked his bicycle, Tip stood on the steps, his towel still coiled around his neck, his lips grey in the sodium lights. Nathan could smell the chlorine on his skin.
‘So how come you always ride?’ Tip said. ‘Most people, someone comes for them.’
Nathan shrugged. ‘I like to ride.’ It wasn’t strictly true. He had no choice. There simply wasn’t anyone who could’ve picked him up. Dad hardly ever left the house, and Fosca, the new au pair girl, didn’t know how to drive.
‘Where d’you live?’
‘Blenheim.’
‘Blenheim? Jesus. Long ride.’ Tip must’ve known this already. He was just checking. ‘So what’s your old man do?’
He’d be expecting millionaire or something. Mention Blenheim, that’s what people always thought.
‘He doesn’t do anything,’ Nathan said.
Tip pinched his nose between finger and thumb, flicked his hand at the wall, and then sniffed. ‘What d’you mean, he doesn’t do anything?’
‘He doesn’t do anything. He can’t. He’s disabled.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Tip looked at the ground, then he looked at Nathan again, sidelong. ‘What kind of disabled?’
Tip was trying to look casual, but Nathan could see he was curious. An old man who was screwed up, that was credentials. It was like that plastic grown-ups had. Amex, Visa, Mastercard. It said something about you, it got you into places.
‘He’s only sort of got about half of each lung,’ Nathan said, ‘and he’s had most of his ribs cut out.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, and he’s got an orange disc in his car. Means he can park anywhere.’
Tip nodded. ‘Cool.’
Nathan almost pinched his n
ose between finger and thumb, as Tip had done, but he thought he might get it wrong. He just sniffed instead. ‘What’s your old man do?’
‘He doesn’t do anything either.’
‘How come?’ Nathan said. ‘Not disabled, is he?’
This would probably have started a fight if he’d said it a week ago. Now it drew a slack grin out of Tip. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He used to work in the docks. Got laid off a couple of months back.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nathan chipped at a weed with his shoe. He hoped it looked sort of sympathetic.
‘Yeah, well.’ Tip stared off in the direction of the football field. ‘I got to be going. See you around.’
The next week, after training, Tip asked him if he wanted to go eat. He hesitated. The nights he went swimming, Dad always waited till he got home and then they ate supper together. But he couldn’t say that to Tip, it wouldn’t make any sense, so he just nodded.
‘There’s a pizza joint in the neighbourhood,’ Tip said. ‘We could walk.’
‘Sure.’ Nathan had never had pizza before. Dad didn’t approve of it.
They didn’t talk much on the way. Just the ticking of Nathan’s wheels and a flat ring every time Tip swung his damp towel at a streetlamp. The place Tip knew was a biker’s hang-out called Pete’s Pizza. They sat on stools by the window and watched the bikes rip past the open doorway. The street seemed lit by the flare of a match, and it was loud with cars and screaming. Tip ordered two medium Cokes and a nine-inch Tex-Mex Special, with extra pepperoni. It was like a foreign language, a foreign country. And yet Nathan couldn’t help stealing glances at the clock. And every time he looked he could picture exactly what Dad would be doing. Seven-thirty: Dad would be sitting down to supper. Seven-forty-five: Dad would be biting his cornflakes up one hundred times. Eight: Dad would be swallowing his pills. Nathan slid his eyes in Tip’s direction. Swollen eyelids, grey lips. Hair that lay flush against his skull like animal pelt. Dad would be worried sick.
Tip caught him looking. ‘You got to be somewhere?’
Nathan shook his head. ‘No.’ He took a bite of pizza and spoke through it. ‘This pizza’s good.’
Tip nodded. He ate like he swam. He was halfway through his third slice before Nathan had even finished his first, and he was talking too – about his old man who was always on the drink these days, about the swimming trophies they were going to win, about the gang he was in.
‘The Womb Boys,’ he said. ‘You heard of us?’
Nathan hadn’t.
‘Blenheim.’ Tip put scorn into the name. ‘Might as well live on the moon.’ He explained that Vasco made the rules. Vasco was their president. ‘You know Vasco.’ It wasn’t a question. Everyone knew Vasco.
Nathan had only seen him once. Standing by a car in an alley near school. Black leather coat with IMMORTAL across the shoulderblades. Face the shape of a guitar. Moustache.
‘Sometimes we break into places and rip stuff off and sell it,’ Tip explained. ‘That’s fundraising. Other times we just kick back, drink vodka.’ He offered Nathan the last piece of pizza, then bit into it when Nathan shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Basically what we do’s sort of political, I guess.’
Nathan nodded. But it was eagerness. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘It’s what Vasco says. He says we’ve been born in a place where people come to die. He says he’s had enough. He’s declared war on Moon Beach. That’s what WOMB stands for, see. War On Moon Beach.’
Nathan was beginning to understand.
‘Like about a week ago,’ Tip went on. ‘Vasco picks up a paper on a train and reads something about a new funeral parlour that was going up in Carol Park.’ He grinned. ‘It went up all right. In smoke.’
‘You burned it down?’
‘Only the crematorium.’ Tip’s grin stretched wide across his face.
‘You burned down the crematorium?’
But Tip wouldn’t say anything else. He was one of the Womb Boys. Probably he was sworn to secrecy.
When Nathan walked in through the back door, he found Dad making his tea for the night. The clock in the kitchen said eight-thirty-five. He was over an hour and a half late.
‘Where on earth have you been, Nathan?’ Dad said. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
‘I just went for something to eat. With one of the people on the swimming team.’ Nathan kissed Dad on the cheek, then he began to undo his anorak.
‘You smell funny.’
‘We had pizza.’
‘Pizza? Who did you have pizza with?’
‘Nobody special. His name’s Tip.’
Dad screwed his Thermos shut and dried the top. ‘I just hope you’re not getting in with the wrong people.’
Vasco lived in Mangrove Heights, on a bluff overlooking the river. The first time Jed saw the house, he couldn’t help thinking of the Empire of Junk. Towers jostled with gables, beams with columns. Gargoyles leered from the eaves, tongues sharp as the heads of arrows, eyes like shelled eggs. The front garden had been planted with all kinds of trees, so the house seemed to skulk. The path to the front door crackled with dead leaves. He could smell plaster, the inside of birds’ nests, river sewage.
‘I should’ve been born in a place like this,’ Jed said, but Vasco was opening the door and didn’t hear.
Vasco shared the house with Mario and Reg, his two great-uncles, and Rita, his sister. Rita was sixteen. She had a boyfriend who drove a dented white Chevrolet. She spent most nights at his place. Mario was almost eighty years old. He had the high, sloping forehead of someone from history. A Roman emperor, something like that. He had white cropped hair and ears you could’ve caught butterflies in. He spent all his time in a wheelchair. ‘There’s nothing wrong with his legs,’ Vasco said. ‘It’s just that, now the wheel’s been invented, he doesn’t see the point of walking. He thinks walking’s out of date.’
On the first evening Vasco and Jed were drinking beer on the porch when the front door opened and Mario rolled across the bare boards of the verandah and parked in a square of late sun. He sat in his maroon wheelchair, one hand cupped to his ear.
‘What’s he doing?’ Jed asked.
Mario looked down at Jed. ‘Listen.’ And he waited a few moments, his hand still cupped to his ear, and then he said, ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’ Jed said.
Mario smiled. ‘Money.’
On their way down to the pool hall that night, Vasco told Jed what he knew about Mario. Mario studied law at the university and, during his twenties, he built up an extremely successful practice. In a city like Moon Beach, there was never a shortage of business for a good lawyer, especially one like Mario who’d wisely decided to specialise in wills and probates. He’d also been something of an entrepreneur. While still practising law, he’d run a hearse-rental agency. Then, later, he’d bought into a handkerchief factory in Baker Park. Their most famous innovation was the funeral handkerchief, a plain white cotton handkerchief with a black border. Not long afterwards he patented the first black-edged tissue. He’d made millions, apparently, though nobody knew what he’d done with the money. His only extravagance had been to install an elevator in the house, so he could move between floors without getting out of his wheelchair.
‘So what did he mean this evening about hearing money?’ Jed asked.
‘It’s his factory across the river. He claims he can hear the money being made.’ Vasco looked at Jed and shrugged. ‘I told you. The guy’s senile.’
It suddenly occurred to Jed that he hadn’t heard anything about the other great-uncle, Reg Gorelli. Vasco showed him a photo of a skinny man with big ears and a handlebar moustache.
‘He’s religious,’ Vasco said, ‘locks himself in his room. You’ll probably never see him.’
The next night Jed sat next to Mario and strained to hear something. A coin, anything. Once he heard a clinking that could’ve been loose change, but then the woman from next door walked past with her dog on a metal lead.
In any case, Mario wasn’t listening to loose change. He was more interested in bills. The larger the denomination, the better. Jed would never forget the night when, just before nightfall, the last light catching on his white stubble, Mario turned to him and whispered, ‘Listen. Hear that? Hundred-dollar bill.’
Vasco had inherited the same ears. Scooped out at the top and tilted forwards, as if they’d been thrown on a potter’s wheel. But what was it that Vasco heard? Jed wished he could record it and play it back. Would it be sad, like the voices of whales? Or would it screech at you, like the brakes on subway cars sometimes? On second thoughts, maybe he didn’t want to know.
One Saturday night he was sitting in the kitchen making labels for his tapes. It was late and the house was quiet. All the lights off upstairs and Rita out somewhere. He had made a tape of Mario. There was one classic bit where Mario said, ‘Listen, hear that?’ and Jed said, ‘No, what is it?’ and Mario said, ‘Money,’ and then there was absolute silence. He’d thought of playing it to Mario, to prove you couldn’t hear money, but then he realised it wouldn’t prove anything. The silence was the same silence. Mario would hear money in it.
Suddenly the kitchen door crashed open. It was Vasco. He stood in the centre of the room, panting.
‘Why don’t you use an axe next time?’ Jed said.
Then he saw the rips in the knees of Vasco’s jeans. And the palms of his hands, red and black. Blood and gravel.
‘I got run over,’ Vasco said.
Jed stared at him. ‘What?’
‘I fucking got run over.’ Vasco didn’t seem to believe it himself. He was sitting with his hands held out in front of him, palms upwards, as if testing for rain.
Then he turned and stared at Jed, and all the skin seemed to slip down his face. ‘Scraper’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘They wanted me, but I got out the way. They got Scraper instead.’ His face began to tighten again.
‘Who wanted you?’
‘I didn’t hear it coming. I just didn’t fucking hear it.’ Vasco kicked the fridge twice, denting the door.
The Five Gates of Hell Page 5