by Alan Baxter
He drove back into town, heading towards the harbour. Nine o’clock on Friday night. Being part of Carter’s retinue meant he usually drank at Clooney’s, but he knew a couple of mates were planning to go to The Vic this weekend. Maybe he should drop into The Gulp’s other pub and talk to them. His head was spinning and he needed help. Just someone to talk it out with.
He parked by the Victorian Hotel, sat in the car gathering himself for a moment, then headed in. It was heaving, music on the jukebox blaring, people talking and laughing. He saw Justin and Ahmed right away, beers in hand chatting to each other. He got himself a cold one and went over to them.
“I thought you were going to a gig in Enden,” Ahmed said as all three clinked glasses in greeting.
“Yeah, kinda fell through.”
They made small talk for a while, Dace’s mind spinning with disconnected thoughts. If he could raise sixty grand in two days, he’d have done it before, that much was obvious. So the only way to do it was to take risks he would never have entertained before. But what risks?
“Hey guys, answer me a riddle,” he said when their conversation lulled. “Say you need a lot of money in a very short time. How would get it?”
Justin and Ahmed both narrowed their eyes.
“In trouble with the boss?” Justin asked.
They both knew he worked for Carter. They both knew Carter’s reputation. Everyone in The Gulp did. They also stayed well clear of the man. Justin worked in his dad’s accountants office and Ahmed was a mechanic. “Nah, just a hypothetical,” Dace said.
“Take out a loan,” Justin said.
“What if there was no time for that, like it was a weekend and you needed money fast. And couldn’t afford a loan anyway. I’m talking about a real chunk of change. Say fifty grand.”
Ahmed whistled. “If I could raise fifty grand I’d be long gone.”
The echo of his own thoughts made Dace nervous all over again. “Me too. But for the sake of argument...”
Justin laughed, shook his head. “There’s no legitimate way to make fifty grand fast short of luck. Like a lottery ticket or something.”
“Right.”
Justin frowned. “So you’d have to fucking steal it or something, dickhead.”
“Or you could, you know,” Ahmed said, nodding past Dace.
He turned to see the Stinson brothers walk in and head out into the enclosed courtyard, where they always spent their evenings. Craig, the younger sibling, was stocky, shorter than his brother, William by a few inches. Both well-muscled, lean and mean-looking. Both with straight brown hair cut short and sharp chins. They ran all kinds of rackets around The Gulp, hardcore bastards according to some, petty criminals according to Carter. But the rivalry between the Stinsons and Carter was well-known.
“What do you mean?” Dace asked.
Ahmed raised an eyebrow. “Use your noggin, mate. They fucking hate Carter. If you owe Carter fifty grand – and that is a deep well of shit, by the way – maybe you can offer them something. Tell them something for the money, maybe, or give them shit to use against Carter.”
Dace shook his head, waved one finger. “For one thing, I didn’t say I owe Carter fifty grand. For another, it would be suicide to deal with those two! What do you think I would have to give them for that kind of money, and how would that ever help me?”
“Guess you’re fucked then,” Ahmed said. “You’ll have to think of somewhere that holds that sort of cash and rob them. You any good at bank heists? The banks are open Saturday mornings.”
“Jesus fuck, you’re worse than useless.”
Ahmed shrugged, Justin laughed. Dace’s stomach curdled.
“What about the Nikolovs?” Justin said after a while.
“The who?”
“Nah, that’s a band. The Nikolovs.”
Dace sighed. “Mate, you’re going to have to be more forthcoming.”
Ahmed nodded. “Yeah, what the fuck are you on about?”
Justin took a swig of beer, then said, “Okay, this must be one of The Gulp legends that’s slipped by both of you. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. Anyway, the Nikolovs are this weird ass old Macedonian couple here in town. Proper eccentric nutters. But rich eccentric nutters. Rumour has it they don’t trust banks and sit on a fortune in cash they keep at home. Thousands under the mattress kinda thing.”
Dace grimaced. “Yeah, but this town is full of bullshit rumours.”
“I reckon this one’s true though.”
“Why?”
“Lots of little things, but here’s an example. When I was going out with Tracy Briggs, her dad’s a plumber, yeah. She told me about how he had to install a new hot water heater outside their place. While he was at it, he had to replace a bunch of pipes in the back yard to cope with their roof runoff or something. Anyway, the bill ended up being nearly three grand. Old man Nikolov asks Briggs how much, and Briggs writes up the invoice, expecting a bank transfer or something in a few days like normal. Except Nikolov looks at the bill, tells him to wait and goes inside. He comes back a few minutes later with the full amount in cash.”
“That is a bit strange,” Dace said quietly.
“We hear stuff at the accountancy office too,” Justin went on. “I don’t give much of a fuck, but Dad keeps an ear to the ground. He said they’ve never used a bank in town, never used any of the local area accountants for their taxes or anything like that. Dad’s convinced they’re loaded and hoarding cash.”
“Why are they so eccentric anyway?” Ahmed asked. “I mean, not using banks doesn’t make someone a complete weirdo.”
Justin laughed. “That’s barely the surface of it. You know that house halfway up Tanning Street with all the guinea pigs in cages all around the front yard.”
Ahmed frowned and shook his head, but Dace said, “Yeah, I’ve seen that place. That is fucking strange.”
Justin smiled and nodded. “That’s them. Old man Nikolov is sometimes in Woollies, but all he ever buys is milk, white bread, and tinned sardines. He apparently has a deal with one of the farmers out on the Gulp Road for bales of hay once a month or so. To feed all the fucking guinea pigs, I expect.”
Dace’s mind began to race. He knew the house Justin was talking about. An old couple sitting on a pile of cash. It might not be sixty grand, but it might be a good start towards it. Maybe enough to show good will and buy more time with Carter. And he could go tonight, just an hour or two to plan. But he needed to change the subject. No one would have overheard them in the busy pub, but even his two mates thinking too hard on it was risky.
“Robbing a weird old Macedonian couple,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m glad you two aren’t in any crime syndicate. Honestly. Another beer?”
They grinned and raised almost empty glasses, and Dace went for another round. After taking his time with that one, he said, “Well, the gig tonight was a blow out, and much as I love your company, gents, I think I might take an early night.”
“On a Friday?” Ahmed asked.
“It’s been a long week. And I can’t really afford to get drunk, so no point staying here.”
Justin looked at his phone. “It’s only ten.”
Forty-seven to go, Dace thought, but kept his expression as neutral as he could. “I’ll see you guys later.”
Outside, the spring night was warm and fragrant. The salt of the ocean and sweet, cloying night pollens filled the air. Several people were about, a short queue at the noodle shop a few doors down grabbing a last-minute feed. The place stayed open until ten on Fridays and Saturdays. Times like this The Gulp seemed almost normal, not such a bad place to live. Usually. Right now, Dace felt as though he stood on a precipice, his toes over the edge and the rock beneath his heels beginning to crack and crumble.
“Fuck,” he spat softly, and got in his car to drive home and prepare.
Forty-five minutes later he was beginning to buzz with a combination of stress and adrenaline. Underlying it all was a building fatigue. It wasn�
�t yet eleven pm, but he felt as though it were the early hours of the morning and he’d been out all night. He stood in the lounge of his small one-bedroom flat on Kurrajong Street and stared at the stuff laid out on the sofa. Leather gloves, thin for driving, which had been a gift from his grandmother years before and were still tagged together as they had been in whatever shop she bought them from. He’d never imagined using them, but also never thrown them out. He was thankful for that now. Next to them lay a rubber Freddy Kruger mask that went right over his head and neck with a skirt of rubber to tuck into a shirt or jumper. It was part of a Halloween costume from a couple of years before. He had no balaclava like the arseholes who’d robbed him, so this was the best anonymity he could manage. Once he’d decided on that, he felt like keeping the theme, so next to the mask was a baggy red and green striped jumper. The Freddy mask had come with an oversized glove with plastic finger blades, so he’d asked his mother to knit the jumper for him. He’d shown her stills from the movie and she had been thoroughly horrified, but like any good mother, she’d indulged him. The jumper was exactly like the one in the film, right down to the ragged neck and cuffs. The combination of mask, glove and sweater with a pair of dark brown cargo pants with big pockets and black work boots was perfect for Halloween. The pants and boots sat on the sofa too, but the Freddie blades would stay home in favour of the driving gloves.
“One, two, Freddie’s coming for you,” Dace muttered, and a slightly deranged giggle escaped. “Three, four, hope you haven’t locked your door.”
He had no idea how to break into houses. If they’d left the back door unlocked and he could sneak in while they slept, he would be happy.
Beside his outfit – disguise? – was a large carving knife from his kitchen. It terrified him to look at it. He’d done some less than savoury things for Carter over the years, but nothing explicitly violent. Carter preferred a personal hands-on approach to any violence that needed doling out, thankfully. Dace had once joined in with a beating, but even then he’d only thrown in a couple of half-arsed punches while Carter and Stephen did the large proportion of the work. But if the Nikolovs weren’t asleep, or if he woke them, he would need something to enforce his authority. And he might need to wake them and force them to tell him where the money was, but he hoped not. With any luck, waving the knife around would be as violent as he needed to get.
He also had a small Maglight torch, one of the six-inch models, and he’d put fresh batteries in it. Perfect for snooping around quietly in a house at night. The last item was a plain black backpack. He hoped to fill it with the cash the Nikolovs apparently had stashed away, but he could also take other stuff if there wasn’t enough money. If they had laptops or something, maybe he could sell them at the pub on Saturday night. He’d be hard pressed to raise sixty grand with stolen household items, but desperation drove his thinking.
“They’ve got the money,” he said to himself, willing it to be true. “They’ve got more than I need stashed somewhere, and I’ll sneak in while they’re asleep, I’ll find it without waking them, and I’ll sneak out again. Easy as.”
He swallowed down a rill of panic, nodded to himself. Let that be true. He changed into the Freddie outfit, cut the tag from the driver’s gloves and slipped them on. They were good quality, thin leather like a second skin, and fitted well. He put the mask, torch and kitchen knife into the backpack and sat on the sofa. His phone said 11.15pm. How long should he wait? An old eccentric couple were likely to be early to bed, early to rise sort of people, right? 1am, he decided. He’d leave at 1am and be back by 2 with all his problems solved.
He turned on the TV, poured a generous shot of Wild Turkey to steady his nerves, and stared at Friday night bullshit programming while he waited.
At 12.20 nervous energy drove him up from the couch. He didn’t dare drink any more, and he could wait no longer. It was only about a five-minute walk to the end of Kurrajong Street where it met Tanning at a T-junction. About another five minutes south along Tanning would take him to the house with the guinea pigs in the yard. The spring night was cooling but he didn’t need the sweater. It also occurred to him that he would look obvious in it if anyone drove by and saw him. He pulled it off and stuffed it into the backpack, then peeled off the gloves and put them in his hip pocket. He’d put it all back on, and the mask, when he got to the house.
What the hell was he doing? For a moment, he nearly bolted back inside. Then Carter’s voice echoed through his thoughts again. I know your parents well, and where they live on the north side of town. And your sister visits often, even though she lives in Sydney now. Something to keep in mind.
He couldn’t be responsible for the death of his whole family. The idea had floated through a couple of times in the hours since Carter’s ultimatum. Once or twice he’d thought maybe he could live with it. His parents were in their late 60s, retired. Not old by any means, but not young. His sister was a pain in the arse most of the time. But then he would quickly shake off the thought. He loved them, even his fucking sister if he was honest. He couldn’t let them die, much less be responsible for their deaths. He had to at least try to save them.
With the bag slung over one shoulder, he set off along Kurrajong, downhill towards the junction. He crossed the road before he passed The Vic at the end, kept his head down and hurried right onto Tanning and walked quickly up hill, past the medical centre, past Carlton Beach on the other side of the road. A group of four people stood in the park behind Carlton Beach, not far from the play area. An old man, a middle-aged man and woman, and a young girl he recognised from Woollies. Strange bunch to be there so late at night, he thought. They all looked pale in the light of the moon, standing still, staring out at the ocean. But Dace was too distracted to think much on it and kept walking.
He crossed onto the east side of Tanning Street as he passed St Augustine’s Primary. He didn’t remember exactly where the guinea pig house was, only that it was somewhere between the school and the Ocean Blue Motel.
Most of the houses were single storey, 60s and 70s homes like his parents’ house on the north side of town. Some weatherboard, some brick, most with metal roofs. He glanced into each low-walled front yard, looking for the stacks of chicken wire cages. He heard the whiffling and caught a scent of hay right before he came to the place. Cages three deep along both wooden side fences and up against the brick house. A single storey row sat along the front garden wall, brick only a metre or so high that had been plastered over, but the whitewashed plaster was crumbling away in places. The house was run down, certainly not the sort of place a rich person would inhabit. But it did look like the sort of place that might belong to people who hoarded their money. The window frames were painted pale yellow, but the paint was peeling. The corrugated steel roof had more patches of rust than clear metal. Half a hay bale sat on the scrubby grass in the centre of the small front yard. Guinea pigs by the dozen scratched and whistled plaintively in the cages.
Dace ducked back and saw that the house next door, entirely clean and well-maintained, had a large frangipani tree in their front yard, casting a pool of shadow. He hopped over their wall and scurried into that darkness and crouched down, heart beating hard. For a couple of minutes, he watched the footpath and the street, kept glancing back at the house behind him. Nothing. No one about, not even cars passing.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, then blew it out slowly, his cheeks filling. “All right, Dace. You got this. Let’s go.”
He pulled out the Freddie sweater and put it on, then the thin leather gloves. He slipped the kitchen knife into the large thigh pocket of his cargoes, careful to wedge the point into one corner so it didn’t stick his leg, and put the torch into his hip pocket. Then he put the backpack on properly over both shoulders and took another deep breath as he held the rubber mask in both hands.
“You got this,” he said again, and pulled the mask over his head. It was well-detailed with all Freddie’s burn scars. He tucked the skirt of it into the ragged
neck of the sweater. It smelled of rubber and old sweat, rough and a little tacky on the inside. The fit was fairly good, lining up well with his eyes, but he still lost at least fifty per cent of his peripheral vision. His breath was suddenly hot and close, despite the small mouth hole.
He checked the road out front again, making sure there were no cars or pedestrians, then hopped over the wall to the footpath and immediately ran along two metres and jumped back over Nikolov’s wall. There was a path down the side of the house, deep in shadow, and he hurried into it. As soon as the darkness covered him, he slowed to a creep, heart racing. Committed to the course of action now, he tried not to think. When he got to their back yard, four times the size of the small patch out front, he paused in surprise.
There were more cages here, dozens of them, row upon row like supermarket shelves, cages stacked four deep. They were all weathered wood and half-rusted wire, had obviously been here for years. They were as packed with guinea pigs as the ones out front, there had to be hundreds of the small rodents, all kinds of size and colour. Most were still or sleeping, but some scuffled and nosed around. Another hay bale sat in one corner of the yard, and a large wooden shed filled the far back corner, its door slightly ajar.
Dace looked long and hard at the shed and wondered if maybe the Nikolovs would keep their money hidden in there. It would make things so much easier. He stayed in the shadows of the rows of cages and crept up to the shed. The last third or so of the garden, it turned out, was given over to vegie beds. He saw carrots and parsley and tomatoes and a variety of other things growing there. He slipped into the shed and stood in darkness, holding his breath, listening. Nothing except the scratching and whistling of the guinea pigs outside.
He took the Maglight from his pocket and twisted it on. The shed was crammed with tools for gardening, sacks and barrels of food. Some had vegetables no doubt harvested from the garden outside. A couple had pale brown cylindrical pellets, presumably a kind of feed for the animals. He dug an arm into each, carefully feeling around in case anything had been concealed under the food. Nothing. The shed smelled earthy and rich, paradoxically both enticing and slightly sickening. It only took a few minutes of searching to learn there was nothing for him there. He sighed, twisted off the Maglight, and moved cautiously back outside.