Greenlight

by Benjamin Stevenson

  ‘The cops think?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jack shrugged.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Consistency applies to human nature just as it does to wine.’ Andrew patted Jack on the shoulder. ‘It’s either all truth or all lies, Jack. It can’t be half of each.’

  Jack felt like one of Andrew’s employees. Was he really being lectured? Those business books and seminars had gone to Andrew’s head.

  ‘Too bad,’ Andrew said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘To see him walk free. Maybe he’ll kill again. Next time it’ll be some other poor woman.’

  Now Andrew was just needling, and Jack was starting to hate him again. It must have been easy to talk down to the whole town from up here.

  ‘Eliza worked here. Yet you don’t know anything useful.’

  ‘I know as much as you do,’ Andrew said, and Jack didn’t know if that meant he didn’t know anything, or he knew a lot and wasn’t telling. ‘No one even knew she was missing until she got found. The backpackers come in, they pick, they hang out together, pull beers at the Royal or the Globe, and then they just wander off when they feel like it. If I had a bottle of wine every time I was a man down at six a.m. and then found out for some reason they were in Toowoomba – well, I’d need another cellar. There’s no need to come skulking around here, by the way. I’ve already offered you my services.’

  ‘I wasn’t skulking.’

  ‘It’s gotta be all lies or all truths, Jack. My wife was soaked through. There’s muddy footprints here. You weren’t over for a cup of tea. You must have scared the hell out of Sarah, if she came outside to find you there. Curtis definitely killed Eliza. I’m sure of it.’ There was a hushed serenity to his tone. ‘Alexis, I didn’t really know her – maybe it is a copycat. I’m not your enemy, Jack.’

  ‘How are you sure he killed her?’

  ‘I just am. Okay? I know him. I was a cop for a long time. Let’s call it my gut instinct.’

  ‘My gut’s good too,’ Jack lied.

  ‘Well, then, we’re agreed.’ Andrew looked into the chamber. ‘Tell you what, I know it’s been hard. Locals aren’t exactly welcoming around here. I should have stepped in earlier, I suppose, but I’ll vouch for you. They’ll lay off. Then you can get on with the real job: putting Curtis back where he belongs.’

  ‘Finding the killer is the real job. Whether Curtis is involved or not,’ Jack said. It didn’t escape him how badly Andrew wanted Curtis in jail. It seemed so personal.

  ‘Sure, yeah.’ Andrew thought a second, then spread his arms towards the vault. ‘Tell you what. I’ll give you a peace offering. Choose a bottle.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Choose one’ – he swept an arm across the racks – ‘out of my collection.’

  ‘I thought some of these were worth thousands?’

  ‘Some are. Others are worth much more. Go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Jack.

  ‘You don’t know a lot about wine, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it’s fair, because it’s a lucky dip. You won’t be able to rob me blind. We’ll see what you get.’ He smiled, a lecherous carnie kind of smile. Roll up, roll up. Choose a bottle. Any bottle. ‘It’s a game,’ Andrew added. ‘What’s life without a few thrills?’

  ‘That one,’ Jack said, pointing to a bottle on the middle of the middle shelf; as inauspicious a place as any, he figured, where the wine couldn’t be too expensive. The last thing he needed was to feel in Andrew Freeman’s debt, though perhaps he already did. He felt odd around him, the power dynamic. The way you feel meeting your boss’s boss. Not shy, that wasn’t it. But reserved. Andrew made him feel uneven.

  Andrew clicked his tongue and picked up the bottle. He held it up to the light, tilted it at Jack.

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Not much of a drinker, you say?’

  ‘If it’s expensive, it’s fine. I don’t need one.’

  ‘If I play, I play fair.’ A grand smile erupted on his face, and then he was shoving the bottle at Jack’s chest. Couldn’t be rid of it quick enough. Jack clutched it with both hands. Andrew shouted like a carnie. ‘This one it is!’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Just don’t sell it, okay? It’s to enjoy.’

  The door sighed on its hydraulic hinges as Andrew closed it. He headed across the cavern to the stairs, clack clack clack. The message was obvious. Jack’s visit was over.

  The wind had picked up outside, the rain now slanting sideways, cutting at any exposed skin. Andrew popped the collar on his jacket and zipped it up. Jack had no choice but to wear it, stinging pellets whipping his bare arms. He put a futile forearm over his brow as they waded to the house. He could hear the vines creaking on their stakes, rustling as if a thousand people were whispering together. He followed the reflective silver stripe on the back of Andrew’s jacket. Then they were standing on the deck, shaking dry like dogs. Jack realised he’d been clutching the wine tightly with his spare hand. Maybe it was valuable. Or maybe he’d imbued it with false value just because Andrew Freeman had given it to him. He imagined pegging it against the wall, watching it burst in a star of blood-red, sliding down the corrugated iron in lumps, and laughing his way back down the hill.

  Andrew scraped his shoes on the mat and levered them off. His socks left prints on the dark wood. Jack just stood there, shivering, unsure what to do.

  ‘You can’t walk down in this. Even with fog lights, no one’ll see you.’ Andrew said.

  Jack agreed, but said: ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘No way. Hang on.’ Andrew disappeared inside with the clatter of a flyscreen. A minute later the door swung inwards and a white handtowel was flung out. Jack managed to catch it between his chin and shoulder. He pushed it against his face, breathing into the warmth and dryness. Andrew reappeared, wearing sneakers, his jacket replaced with a polar fleece. He was holding keys.

  ‘Right.’ He nodded.

  They battled through the wind and sleet to the Forester. Jack hopped up and down while Andrew leaned over from the driver’s seat to unlock his door. The rain slapped the car and rolled off the windscreen in sheets. Andrew sat for a second, as if wondering if it would ease. Then he turned the car on and flicked the wipers. It wasn’t any better. He cranked the wiper speed, tsked, and upped the speed again. Still barely a difference. Jack rubbed the back of his neck with the towel.

  Andrew drove slowly down the hill, no more than ten, coasting in first, pressing the brake with a small whine whenever the roll picked up too much. He had fog lights and high beams on. It felt like sailing through a reef, slow and cautious. The visibility was so low that street signs grew out of the fog within metres, seemingly out of nowhere. Andrew guided the car on the road by the roughness under the wheels.

  ‘The pub’s fine,’ Jack said, once they were in town. He knew they were getting close because a single red glow pierced the mist a few hundred metres away. Jack couldn’t see the traffic light itself, just the red mist around it in a sphere. It flicked from red to green.

  Andrew pulled into the kerb. He clicked the hazards on just to be sure, which ticked like a watch and seemed to bounce backwards off the mist and rain as if some laser grid encased them. The rain pounded down all around. Nothing but them in the world, no sense of time or the town in this drowning car.

  ‘I can’t take this,’ Jack said, offering the bottle.

  Andrew shrugged. ‘You won it,’ he said, though his eyes stayed on the road. ‘That particular bottle, it doesn’t need ageing. It’s all right to drink as is.’

  ‘I didn’t win it, Andrew. I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘You can. You will.’

  Jack had no more fight in him than that. He opened the door and the rain roared in, spraying the seat. The gutter was a river. Nothing for it; he sacrificed his left ankle and hopped to the kerb. Two hurried steps and he was under the awning. The Forester hadn’t
moved. Water corralled and eddied in around the tyres. Jack imagined the main street awash with red, those currant currents, bleeding from the Freemans’ gouged silos. Surely it hadn’t been as dramatic as that, but he was a filmmaker, after all.

  Jack turned, but there was a soft clunking behind him. Andrew was knocking on the glass. He wound down the passenger window halfway. He was leaning across, one hand on the wheel, his elbow in the crook of the passenger seat.

  ‘Open it when he goes back to jail,’ Andrew yelled above the rain. ‘Then you’ll deserve it.’

  The door to the pub was locked. Jack checked his phone. It was just past ten. He knocked, just in case. Nothing happened.

  Jack still had the small towel Andrew had given him. He scrubbed it roughly through his hair once, then, satisfied, laid the face-washer on a dryish patch of concrete. He sat. His back on the pub wall, legs scooted up, his body folded in an N. The rain hammered down in a curtain. Fingers of water pried under the awning. Jack flicked a cigarette butt, too close to him, sending it into one of the streams, where it spun and spun and spun before wafting back past him on the tide. He propped the gifted wine next to him and leaned his hands on his knees, watching the rain. He still couldn’t get a handle on Andrew Freeman. There was something about him. Something missing behind his eyes. Something fake.

  How ridiculous was it that he’d gone up to the Freemans’ in search of some kind of drug lab? Ironically, he’d been right. Andrew just dealt a legal drug. Jack thought of the sign inside the pub: AUSTRALIA’S MOST EXPENSIVE DRUG. That was a safety and addiction campaign, but the point stood. The value of a single vault in that cellar must have been mind-boggling. Jack wondered what the value of Andrew’s ‘gift’ was. He took out his phone and searched wine collectors. Articles about taste and culture were replaced by articles about investment and valuations. These weren’t bottles of wine, Jack realised, they were retirement packages. More articles. There was a listing of two bottles of 1959 Dom Perignon selling for $42,350 each. Fuck, he breathed. So much for not being in Andrew’s debt if his bottle was anywhere close to that. Jack was out of his depth, he’d turned down house wines above $6. In his twenties, one of Jack’s friends would buy goon-sack wine by the dollar, and squeeze the crinkled silver scrotum into reused bottles, before taking them to parties. He’d smile like a smarmy bastard when friends complimented him on his taste, which, inevitably, they always did. Jack just heard the stories, of course. He didn’t go to dinner parties.

  The Freeman winery wasn’t designed for people who carried two glasses back to the table because Happy Hour was ending. It wasn’t designed for people like him. Not for people like the Wades either. He kept scrolling through articles. Wine could be sold at auction too, he learned. Jack picked up the bottle. He chewed a nail, thinking. He picked it up and looked at the label, looking for the date. It didn’t look that old. 1961. Fuck. Penfolds Grange. He’d heard of that. Double fuck. If you’ve heard of it, you can’t afford it. He itched to search the value, but resisted. He couldn’t stomach owing Andrew something, and knowing how much the bottle was worth brought it out into the light and made it real. Just don’t sell it, okay. It’s to enjoy. It occurred to him that this might even be a bribe. He felt like Don Corleone had bought him a sports car. With a body in the trunk.

  There was a rattle behind him. Alan Sanders leaned out, examined the storm, then clocked Jack.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have pegged you as an alcoholic.’

  ‘I got caught out.’

  ‘It’ll turn on you,’ Alan agreed, thought a second. ‘We’re not open yet.’

  ‘I’m happy here.’

  ‘Mate, you’re not happy anywhere.’

  ‘I’m content, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alan looked out at the sheets of rain, listened to it skittering on the awning like poured rice. ‘This does suit you. But get inside, you idiot.’

  Inside, the bar was, of course, empty. Despite having not opened for the day – and therefore, Jack assumed, being at its cleanest – a dandruff of potato chip crumbs flaked the carpet, and sticky, glossy circles varnished peeling laminate wooden tables. The fungal, yeasty smell hung dark over everything. Jack knew the sommelier’s word for it now: the bouquet.

  Alan offered him a beer, said he had a few things to do, but could fix Jack some lunch when the kitchen opened later. Jack declined the beer, saying he was happy – or at least content – to wait out the storm in a booth by the wall. Alan insisted on at least turning on the television. ‘Because otherwise you’re just too goddamn creepy.’

  In the booth, Jack scrolled through more wine articles. There were millions of dollars there, certainly enough money to kill two people over, but how was Curtis affecting Andrew’s business? Why would he need him out of the picture?

  The Royal was open proper now, Alan pacing behind the bar, clearly wondering if people would come in with the storm. It started with a couple of sodden tourists, their day trips ruined. Alan brightened. Then the deluge came, and the bar was as busy as Jack had ever seen it. People clogged the doorway, shaking coats and furring their hair into spikes.

  Mary-Anne came in. She winked at Alan. Was there something there? It was easy to forget the people in the town were real people, not just extras in his movie. Of course Mary-Anne would have a man. It might as well be Alan.

  There was an ad for Vanessa Raynor’s talk show on the television, with footage of Ted Piper promising another interview. He was really milking this. Break someone else’s nose this time, buddy, Jack thought. Just as he thought this, the advertisement replayed – in slow-motion, those hacks – Ted launching into Jack.

  ‘Credit to you,’ said Mary-Anne.

  Was she talking to him? ‘I’m sorry?’ he said.

  ‘You can take a punch.’ She nodded up at the TV.

  His hand went to his face, rubbed it. Maybe he could take a punch, but he sure wished people would stop hitting him.

  ‘Wish I was on the telly,’ Mary-Anne said, mostly to herself, and then shuffled off.

  A schooner of beer clunked down in front of him. Jack was about to remind Alan that he hadn’t wanted a beer, when he looked up and saw Brett Dawson. Brett was standing awkwardly, not wanting to sit. He clinked his glass against the rim of Jack’s. Cheers.

  Brett raised his glass to his lips. Expectant. Jack picked up his own glass, raised it in reflective salute, then took a sip.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Jack. He wasn’t sure what else Brett wanted him to do. He looked nervous, like he had something to say. Andrew had said the locals would lay off. He knew Andrew had influence, but this quickly? Did he have a favour phone-tree? Brett’s unease made sense now. Jack could see it: a kid, pressured by his mother, pushed onto the playground to make friends. You never know. You might like him.

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’ Brett fumbled for the words. ‘I didn’t know you already had one.’ He nodded at the wine.

  ‘That’s for later,’ Jack said, turning the label away, in case Brett twigged how expensive it was.

  ‘Right. Well . . .’ Brett, clearly exhausting his small talk, wasn’t sure what to do.

  ‘Do you want a seat?’

  Brett took the offer with relief. They sipped their beers in silence.

  ‘I’m not here to make things worse,’ Jack said, after a time. ‘Though I know it doesn’t seem like it.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’ Brett’s voice was phlegmy with the beer.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Which one are we talking about?’

  ‘I didn’t know the lawyer. But the girl, yeah, well, she used to pick for Andrew, didn’t she? I can’t say I met her, personally, but the pickers, they float around town a bit. Some stay here at the pub, if they work shifts. Others at Mary-Anne’s. So you see ’em round, know ’em by eye. Especially the Brits, they stand out like beacons.’

  ‘Why do they stand out?’

  ‘They get so sunburnt they glow. Like beacons.’ Brett s
aid again, as if that analogy was his only source of wit.

  ‘You like Andrew?’ Jack said, figuring if Brett was being forced to talk to him he might as well push it.

  ‘Yeah. Well, everyone does. Don’t you?’

  ‘He’s a generous man.’

  ‘He is. That restaurant was lots of work for me and the boys.’

  ‘A big job like that though, would need better—’ Jack saw the quick jerk of Brett’s head. ‘Sorry. I mean different experience than what’s in town. Architects and engineers, that kind of thing. No offence, but he’d have to bring some people in.’

  ‘That’s the thing about Andy, he respects the town. He needed a few outsiders, but he kept us on board anyway. I was site foreman. I never had a proper job site before, let alone be foreman of it.’

  ‘And you rebuilt the Wade restaurant as well, for Curtis?’

  ‘Yes. Well, half. The knockdown of the old site was paid for by Whittaker. The last bloke. And then Curtis hired us to build his new one.’

  ‘But you did do the entire job even if two different people hired you?’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ Brett conceded, as if suspicious of being tricked. ‘If you want to say it like that.’

  ‘And Whitti— what was his name?’

  ‘Whittaker.’

  ‘Whittaker paid you to put concrete in the cellar. To ruin the ground?’

  ‘That’s not my fault. I’m just the hired hand.’

  ‘I’m not blaming you.’

  ‘Yeah. Whittaker had a chip on his shoulder about knocking down the old one. It was his family business, so it meant a lot to him. Like if you knocked down my motel.’

  ‘You still made thirty-five grand off his revenge.’

  ‘Are you saying I ripped him off?’

  Brett shifted at the hip. Took a drink.

  Jack raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘I wouldn’t dare. But tell me, if you’re not ripping anyone off, why’d you smash the Wades’ windows?’

  ‘It wasn’t just— Who told—’ Brett shook his head, resigned. ‘Because he’s a stingy fuck,’ he said. He looked up and saw Jack didn’t believe him. ‘I was short, okay? I thought the build would be a bigger job than it turned out being. Nah, fuck that, actually, he needed it to be bigger job, but he let us go before they finished. It was like he just gave up.’