Also by Phillip Gwynne
The Debt
Instalment One: Catch the Zolt
First published in 2013
Copyright © Phillip Gwynne 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library
of Australia
www.trove.nla.gov.au
ISBN 978 1 74237 843 5
Cover and text design by Natalie Winter
Cover photography: (boy) by Alan Richardson Photography,
model: Nicolai Laptev; (free running & jump) by Getty Images
Set in Charter ITC by BT 10.5/17pt by Peter Guo/LetterSpaced
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Goldie,
for your help
CONTENTS
THE CICADA FEELING
HOSPITAL
ZOE AGAIN
HINTERLAND
IT’S A RAMBUTAN, YOU CRETIN
THE JOHNNY DEPP MARKETING MACHINE
SERIOUS GOOGLING
PREACHER’S
ESCAPE FROM WARD C
GREEN TEA AND LYCHEE
THE EXCURSION THING
ZE TRANSFORMER
TAI CHI, TO FU AND WI-FI
BREAKTHROUGH PIZZA
FIENDS OF THE EARTH
TO WAG THE UNWAGGABLE SCHOOL
SPEAKING IN TONGUES
DELIVERY BOY
AIN’T NO TOWELHEAD
THE DODDLE
GETTING OFF EVEREST
DEARTH HOUR
GENERATOR Y
THE STATE TITLES
SKIN ON SKIN
’FESS UP
THURSDAY
THE CICADA FEELING
‘Don’t look, Dom,’ I told myself as I ran past Imogen’s house.
But I couldn’t help myself: I looked and she wasn’t there and I had this cicada feeling. I call it that because sometimes around our house there are all these cicadas. Except they aren’t really, because when you pick one up, it’s empty, just a shell, and it collapses in your hand.
The cicada feeling.
When I reached the main entrance to Halcyon Grove, Samsoni, the security guard, said, ‘You’re better off running inside, Mr Silvagni,’ which is what he always says.
I was about to say what I always say – ‘No topographical variation inside, Samsoni’ – but I hesitated.
Maybe Samsoni was right, maybe I was better off running inside today, lap after lap of the perimeter of Halcyon Grove.
Outside, bad stuff happened. Outside, white vans came up from behind and you lost four minutes of your life.
Outside rednecks shot at you.
Outside …
‘No topographical variation inside, eh, Mr Silvagni?’ said Samsoni.
‘No, there isn’t,’ I said, and continued running.
A few minutes later, I heard footsteps behind me.
Who in the hell is that? I took a quick look over my shoulder, my pulse quickening.
It was a balding man in a bulging tracksuit. Despite all his huffing and puffing, he certainly didn’t look like any Big Bad Wolf. I slowed down, however, and let him shuffle past. Usually I wouldn’t let this happen. I’d shift up a gear and show him the bottom of my Asics. But The Debt had made me paranoid, so paranoid that I let Chrome Dome have his moment of middle-aged glory. And I imagined him at work, later in the day, bragging to his colleagues.‘There’s this kid, right, thinks he’s pretty hot, but I sure showed him a thing or two.’
I finished my run, but instead of going over to Gus’s house for breakfast I went straight back to my bedroom.
As usual, the ClamTop was sitting on my desk. As usual, it was shut, clammed tight.
One of the cardinal rules of The Debt is that absolutely nobody is allowed to help you. But surely Dad could answer general questions, I thought. Like how long between instalments.
I found him on the treadmill doing his workout, watching one of those morning shows on the plasma. A spokesperson from Earth Hour was talking about their upcoming event.
‘A lot of businesses here on the Gold Coast are right behind us,’ she said. ‘And we urge your viewers to turn off their lights as well. Remember, it’s only for an hour.’
‘That date again?’ asked the interviewer.
‘Saturday the twenty-fifth of March,’ said the woman.
‘Maybe even the residents of Halcyon Grove could find the off switch this year,’ said the interviewer, chuckling, enjoying his own joke.
He held up an aerial photo, taken during last Earth Hour, of Halcyon Grove with lights blazing; it looked like something from Star Wars, a spaceship hurtling through deep, dark space.
I turned my attention back to Dad. He really had a terrible running style: shoulders hunched, body leaning forward, an excessively pronated gait.
It’s not as if I was going to tell him that, though. And it’s not as if the treadmill was either.
All it did was offer encouragement, in this annoying Califorian voice. ‘Congratulations! You have reached your first programmed goal! Keep up the good work! Champ!’
‘Hi, Dad,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Great to see you, buddy boy,’ he said.
When my dad said, ‘Great to see you, buddy boy,’ you knew they weren’t just words tumbling out of his mouth, you knew he really meant it.
‘Can I ask you a question about The Debt?’
Immediately, Dad stopped running. The treadmill wasn’t happy.
‘Great run! But you haven’t reached your second programmed goal! Champ!’
A look of irritation appeared on Dad’s sweat-sheened face.
‘You know I can’t –’ he started, before I cut him off by saying, ‘It’s just a general question.’
The look of annoyance was replaced by a forced smile.
‘Of course, son.’
‘How long did you have to wait between instalments?’
Dad dabbed at the sweat on his brow with a small white towel.
‘A couple of weeks,’ he said. ‘Pretty sure it was a couple of weeks.’
Dad stepped off the treadmill, and the treadmill responded by saying, ‘Great workout! Hope to see you again soon!’
‘I know this Debt thing has thrown you a bit, and I can’t blame you,’ said Dad, throwing an arm around my shoulder. ‘I was pretty much the same when it happened to me. But do you know what: The Debt is not necessarily an imposition. What I mean to say is, it’s not necessarily a burden. In some ways, it’s an opportunity. Turn adversity into advantage.’
Right, so it was an advantage to be forced to pay off a debt that your great-great-great-great-grandfather incurred?
It was an advantage to live under the constant threat of amputation?
Especially for a runner like me.
‘Like Gus?’ I said, thinking of his stump a
nd prosthetic leg.
‘Dom, I know you love your grandfather,’ said Dad, and then something else came into his voice, a kind of steel, and he said, ‘But it was me who dragged the family out of the gutter, not him. You got that? And it’s your job to keep us out of it.’
A look came over his face, like he was recollecting something from long ago.
‘My hands are bloody but unbowed,’ he said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically fragile.
But then he seemed to pull himself together.
Checking his watch, he said, ‘Better get a move on, Tokyo stock exchange just opened.’
THURSDAY
HOSPITAL
All day at school Dad’s words kept echoing in my head: ‘my hands are bloody but unbowed’.
But were they his words? It just didn’t sound like something he’d say.
So I did exactly what teachers do when they think a student has plagiarised something: I googled the suspect phrase. And all that came up was this poem Invictus which included the line: my head is bloody, but unbowed.
I figured that maybe he’d done it at school or something and he’d remembered it incorrectly.
No big deal.
Besides, I had other stuff to think about, like how to get to the coin shop after school.
It proved to be really straightforward: after one bus and a bit of walking, I was standing outside the Coast Coins and Stamps: Your One Stop Shop For All Your Numismatic & Philatelic Needs.
I guess I’d been expecting someplace bigger, more modern looking, something that was like its website, but the shop itself was somewhat small and somewhat shabby.
I could feel the coin’s weight in my pocket, the coin Otto Zolton-Bander aka the Zolt aka the Facebook Bandit had dropped in our swimming pool from a light plane.
Of course, I’d researched it on the net. No matter where I started: Google, Wikipedia, various coin websites, I always ended up at the same place: the coin was a 1933 Ultra High Relief Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle.
According to Wikipedia, there were 445,500 of these $20 coins minted, but they were never circulated and were all melted down by the US Treasury.
All except for two official specimens and an unknown number that were stolen from the US Mint.
So far twenty of those stolen coins had been discovered and in 2002 one was sold at auction for US$7.59 million. Yes, that’s right: US$7.59 million!
Was I walking around with US$7.59 million in my pocket?
I was pretty sure the coin wasn’t real, however. Because according to my research there were a lot of replica 1933 Ultra High Relief Saint-Gaudens Double Eagles around. And this had to be one of them.
Didn’t it?
Except I couldn’t find anything on the coin that said it was a replica.
According to Wikipedia, some of these replicas had copy stamped across the eagle’s abdomen, or some sort of seal under the US motto on the reverse. My coin, however, had neither of these.
Which was the reason I was standing outside the somewhat small, somewhat shabby Coast Coins and Stamps while two debating teams were going at it in my head.
But what it if is the real thing? said one team. Won’t Dom get arrested or something?
But it can’t be the real thing, said the other team. Do you really think a fifteen-year-old kid is walking around with US$7.59 million in his pocket?
In the end both teams figured the best thing to do was just go inside and ask.
Especially since, according to Coast Coins and Stamps website, their ‘absolute discretion’ was assured.
As soon as I entered the shop I had ‘somewhat dusty’ to add to ‘somewhat small’ and ‘somewhat shabby’.
So ‘somewhat dusty’ that I sneezed several times.
‘Gesundheit,’ said the woman behind the counter, looking up from the book she was reading.
The title, I noticed, was Great Shipwrecks of the World by E Lee Marx. I recognised the name because last week I’d seen a program on the Discovery Channel all about him, the world’s greatest treasure hunter.
I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t expecting a woman.
Especially not one like this, dressed in velvet, swathed in scarves, eyes ringed with kohl, a crucifix with a very crucified-looking Jesus hanging around her neck. She looked like the fortune teller who set up her stall at the psychic fair that took place every month at the Chevron Heights shopping centre.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘How can I help you?’ she said, putting the book on the counter.
‘Um,’ I said. Followed by another ‘um’ and yet another ‘um’.
All the time the woman smiled encouragingly at me with her fortune teller’s face.
Eventually it worked because I was able to coax something apart from ‘um’ out of my mouth.
‘I have this coin,’ I blurted.
‘Coins are my absolute passion, so you’ve come to the right place,’ she said.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a fake,’ I said, my hand in my pocket feeling the coin, its smoothness, the weight of it.
‘Well, if it is I’ll soon let you know,’ she said.
‘Here it is,’ I said, putting the coin on the counter.
She didn’t even bother to pick it up before she said, ‘Yes, that’s a fakeroony, alright.’
‘You can tell already?’
‘Yep. There are quite a few Double Eagles coming out of China, Korea. Some very nice ones too. But that isn’t one.’
Okay, it was exactly what I expected, but I couldn’t help but feel gutted.
The woman continued. ‘There’s the eagle’s eye for a start – it shouldn’t be black like that.’
‘It shouldn’t?’ I said, and now I was actually feeling a bit ashamed of my fakeroony Double Eagle.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ I said, scooping up the coin and putting it back into my pocket.
‘No bother at all!’ she said. ‘Great to see a young person with numismatic interests. If you find something else I’d love to see it.’
She handed me her business card. Her name was Eve Carides, Numismatist.
I thanked Eve Carides, Numismatist, and left.
My phone rang. Zoe calling …
It was actually a bit of a shock to see her name, because I hadn’t heard from Zoe since the Zolt and I had left her at the airport on Reverie Island.
And immediately I wondered if her call had something to do with the Double Eagle, the coin her brother had dropped in my pool.
‘Zoe!’ I answered.
‘Where are you?’ she said.
‘I’m on my way to Mater Hospital,’ I said.
The line dropped out.
I rang her back but she didn’t answer.
Weird, I thought. But then again, Zoe was weird.
Fortunately I was able to catch a bus at a nearby stop that took me directly to Mater Hospital.
Through the front doors, third floor, turn right, turn left, turn left again, past the nurses’ station where Siobhan, the really nice Irish nurse, was writing something on a chart.
‘Here he is now, our favourite visitor,’ she said, smiling up at me.
‘Any change?’ I said.
She shook her head.
I continued on, and knocked softly on the door.
‘Come in,’ came Mrs Jazy’s voice.
I went in, and Imogen was sitting there, next to Tristan, her hand on his hand.
Imogen who hadn’t talked to me since Tristan’s accident. Imogen who hadn’t replied to one of my texts or one of my emails. Imogen who no longer stood at the window and waved at me when I went past her house on my morning run. That Imogen.
‘Hi, Imogen,’ I said, thinking that she would have to say something to me now.
But I was wrong, because all she did was look away and turn her attention back to Tristan. I didn’t know whether Mrs Jazy knew exactly what was going on, but she threw me a sympathetic look nonetheless.
‘Siobhan said no change,’ I said to h
er.
‘The specialist this morning was very happy,’ said Mrs Jazy.
I sat on the opposite side of the bed to Imogen, reached out and put my hand over Tristan’s other hand. It felt cold. Dead. But all the machines that were connected to him were making lots of reassuring noises, the monitors displaying reassuring numbers.
‘I better get going,’ said Imogen, getting up.
‘Thanks so much for coming,’ said Mrs Jazy.
‘See you around,’ I said as Imogen walked past me.
She glanced at me, our eyes met, and for the briefest of moments it seemed like she was going to say something. No such luck. She continued on out the door.
Five minutes later the door opened and Mr Jazy appeared, carrying flowers and containers of what smelt like Thai takeaway. His beard, once so abundant, like old-growth forest, now looked thin, overlogged. And his eyes seemed to have sunk right back into his head.
‘Those inept police finally found my Merc at the Reverie airport,’ he said. ‘Apparently it was used by that young man Zolton-Bander.’
Here we go again. Feign complete surprise, Dom.
I feigned complete surprise.
‘Really,’ I said. ‘Is the car okay?’
Once upon a time, and not so long ago, I didn’t have to do this stuff: feign complete surprise, tell endless lies. But now, ever since The Debt, it seemed like that’s all I did. It seemed as if my whole life was driven by it.
‘There was some minor damage,’ she said. ‘But the police have impounded it for forensic testing.’
Forensic testing!
Of course, they’d find pieces of me in the car: hair, skin particles, whatever, and then my DNA would end up on a central database somewhere.
And if I’m ever DNA-tested in the future and they run a database match they’ll find out I was there!
‘Are you okay, Dom?’ asked Mrs Jazy.
‘Can you please text me if there’s any change?’ I said, getting up.
‘Of course I can,’ she said.
Mrs Jazy stood up and it was hug time.
I knew I couldn’t deny her one, not with her son comatose in the bed, but it really was pretty excruciating.
I mean, it wasn’t my fault that Tristan was like he was: I didn’t make him steal that Maserati, I didn’t make him drive it like a madman. No, it wasn’t my fault, but if we hadn’t gone to the Zolt’s lair, if we hadn’t been shot at by Red Bandana, then I didn’t think Tristan would be in a coma right now. So it wasn’t my fault but it was my fault. When Mrs Jazy had finished her hug, I said goodbye to both of them and hurried out of the door.
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