Take a Life

by Phillip Gwynne

  ‘Who’s this singing?’ I asked Hound.

  ‘Rodriguez,’ he said. ‘He was very big in South Africa when I was growing up.’

  ‘What was South Africa like?’

  ‘For a white kid like me, it was a paradise,’ he said. ‘But maybe you should ask a black person the same question, they might have a different answer.’

  We pulled into Cozzi’s, parking in the loading zone. As we got out I noticed that quite a few of Cozzi’s customers were looking at us. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased about this – it’s nice to be noticed – or a bit embarrassed – I’d arrived in a Hummer, Hound was in double denim, me single. In the end I figured that as Hound was my employer, I had to show some solidarity, so I walked alongside him. My spurs jangling.

  After ordering our drinks inside – triple espresso for me, Earl Grey tea for Hound – we went outside.

  ‘There they are,’ he said, pointing to a table where the Cerberus Three – Nitmick, Guzman and Snake were sitting.

  ‘They’re your associates?’ I said, thinking of the first job I ever did for Hound: nabbing Nitmick, sending him back to the monkey house. Hound’s only answer was a big old wink.

  ‘Gentlemen …’ he said, approaching their table.

  If the Cerberus Three held any grudges against me for effectively scuttling their project, they didn’t show it. Not even Nitmick.

  ‘How’s Eve?’ I asked him.

  ‘Up the duff,’ said Guzman, jumping in before Nitmick had a chance to answer.

  This initiated a whole lot of up-the-duff jokes, not all of which I understood. Still, it felt pretty cool to be sitting there, in this circle of business associates. Far, far away from any graves.

  After a few minutes, two other associates joined us – noted criminals, the Lazarus brothers. Again, I felt a bit nervous, because the last time I’d seen them, the mild-mannered Luiz Antonio had made them both look like a couple of big girls’ blouses.

  But again, they didn’t appear to hold any grudges. In fact, one of them even said, ‘That wog taxi driver mate of yours, he’s pretty handy with the kung fu, eh?’

  ‘I think it’s technically capoeira or even Brazilian jujitsu,’ I said.

  After about twenty minutes of conversation, which seemed pretty much to consist of swapping insults, Hound said, ‘Okay, gentleman, let’s get down to business.’

  He took out his phone, a Styxx Charon, swiped some screens and put it down on an empty seat. I could see the recorder app running.

  ‘Somebody’s got to take the minutes,’ said Hound. ‘Okay, who wants to start?’

  Nobody wanted to start, and I could guess why: me. ‘I can make myself scarce if you like,’ I said to Hound.

  ‘Nonsense, you’re part of the team now,’ he said, looking around at his associates, daring them to oppose him. ‘Look, if nobody else wants to get this underway, I will.’

  He took a delicate sip of his tea.

  Cracked his knuckles.

  And said two words: ‘Yamashita’s’ was the first one, ‘gold’ was the second one.

  A feather would’ve been overkill; you could’ve knocked me down with something that had much less substance.

  ‘But that’s gone,’ said a Lazarus. ‘Those two kids got away with it.’

  The associates exchanged looks – That’s what we heard, too.

  But Hound smiled a knowing smile. ‘It’s not what my intel is telling me,’ he said. ‘According to them, it’s still very much in the country.’

  I wondered who Hound’s intel was, and wondered how they knew.

  It was Guzman’s turn to say something. ‘So what, exactly, are you proposing, Hound?’

  Hound took another tiny sip of his tea.

  ‘We’ve got a very comprehensive range of skills around this table, especially now that we have Youngblood on the payroll,’ he said. ‘If we can’t find out where that gold is, then we’re not trying.’

  ‘With all due respect,’ said Nitmick, ‘you’ve been chasing that gold for a while, without much luck.’

  Again Hound sipped his tea. ‘Fair point,’ he said. ‘But this is different. Before it was pie-in-the-sky stuff, but we know now that the gold exists.’ He looked over at me. ‘Isn’t that right, Youngblood?’

  So how much, exactly, did Hound know about my involvement with Yamashita’s Gold? Did he somehow know that I’d been on the Argo when they’d found the treasure and it had been heisted by the Zolton-Banders? I decided to play it dumb.

  ‘It was all over the news,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t take that much notice.’

  As I said this, my phone beeped. I took it out, checked the message. It was from an unknown sender. It said, deal on, Y gold for 6 instalment you have 48hrs to deliver

  I looked around the table – had somebody there just sent it to me? No, of course they hadn’t. It was the text I’d been waiting for, hoping for, and it just happened to have arrived in the middle of this discussion.

  I felt an enormous surge of emotion, a surge that lifted me from the table and sent me hovering above, five hundred, a thousand metres high – I could get out of this without having to take a life!

  The surge de-surged, and I was back at the rickety little table again, back to reality – could I really pull off this outrageous plan, align all the stars that needed aligning?

  The associates talked a little bit more before Snake, his voice low, said, ‘We’ve got company, fellas. Six o’clock.’ I snuck a quick glance at six o’clock – cops. Two of them. They were pretending to be everyday Cozzi’s customers, but Snake had it right: they had cops written all over them.

  ‘So I suggest we all do some research and reconvene in a couple of days’ time,’ said Hound.

  Everybody agreed that would be a good idea.

  As we drove back in the Hummer, that Rodriguez music playing again, Hound seemed to be in a very cheerful mood.

  ‘That went well,’ I said.

  ‘I think so,’ said Hound. ‘It got them thinking, anyway.’

  I didn’t quite get his tone; it was as if he was talking about his enemies, not his associates. Which got me thinking again: how did they become his associates?

  When we got back to the office Hound said I could knock off for the day.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ve got some more work to do.’

  He slapped me on the back. ‘That’s the spirit!’

  I did have some more work to do, but it was nothing to do with dodgy men and their dodgy credit ratings.

  I tried ringing Zoe’s number, but I was informed it was no longer active. That, I could understand: if I was one of Australia’s most wanted criminals I wouldn’t have a public number either. In fact, I wouldn’t have a number at all – as Hanley had said, a mobile phone is basically a tracking device. Carry one around and you’re like one of those migrating whales with the electronic tag attached.

  I went to the Zolt’s Facebook page. He now had 1,267,987 fans.

  And the comments, as before, were numerous. Most of them were complimentary, stuff like go zolt hope your leading the good life and you sure showed them zolt you hero. But there were others that were less complimentary.

  zolt I hope you die you skum

  Here I go again, I thought, because it was déjà vu all over again, if you know what I mean. It was back to instalment one.

  Back to me trying to work out how the Zolt communicated with his sister. Back to me cracking the code they used.

  Except now it was me wanting to communicate with them.

  Could I just put a coded message in a comment up there like before and assume they’d see it? No, I didn’t think so. There’s no way somebody would spend their days wading through all those comments, no way they would eventually see mine. I had to come up with something else.

  And quickly.

  But what?

  Hound came in to say that he was going home, that his lady had prepared some sort of South African delicacy: roast zebra with all the trimmings, so
mething like that. He said I was fine to keep working and he showed me how to lock up.

  I sat at my desk, racking my brain: how in the hell do you get into contact with two people who don’t want to be contacted?

  The Cash Converters downstairs closed its doors. I texted Gus, told him to hold the textured soy protein because I was working late.

  More racking.

  It was now dark outside, and the streets were empty.

  More racking.

  I googled how to get in contact with people in hiding. But even Google, probably my best friend in the world, failed to help me.

  More racking.

  This time, I had an insight: how do people like the police get in contact with people when they don’t have a phone number or an address or anything like that?

  They use newspapers or television: ‘Could the person in the yellow beanie who witnessed the car crash on the corner of …’ sort of thing.

  But that was old, old technology. Who reads newspapers? Who watches the news? Not people my age.

  They watch … YouTube!

  So I needed to put something on YouTube that was going to go viral and get Zoe or the Zolt’s attention.

  I took out my iPhone, scrolled through the photos, and – lo and behold – there it was, the video I’d taken that day of the two of them heisting the gold with the stolen helicopter.

  Yeah, right.

  I’d done no such thing, taken no such video.

  More racking.

  More racking.

  More racking.

  Now my brain was hurting and I was thinking that it was time to go home. And I was doing just that, getting ready to leave, when something occurred to me, something pretty fundamental.

  I didn’t need the real video!

  What I needed was something that people would think was the real video.

  Armed with this insight, my friend Google and I got to work.

  It wasn’t that difficult to find the appropriate footage: footage of gold bars, footage of helicopters, even some footage of the real Argo. And there were plenty of photos of the Zolt to splice in.

  I downloaded FileLab, a free video-editing program, and got stuck in. Not having had much experience with editing before, it was slow going, but eventually I had something I was sort of happy with.

  Especially the ending, a chopper wobbling off. (This chopper eventually crashed, but of course I didn’t use that bit.)

  Now for a snappy title, also a must according to the experts. I decided on The Zolt Gets the Gold.

  But it still wasn’t quite working.

  Of course, something else all the experts agreed on, a stonking soundtrack was a must. Something to do with gold, then. It didn’t take me long to find it, from that James Bond film – Goldfinger – sung by somebody called Shirley Bassey. It was about a million years old, but it was perfect.

  Now it was ready.

  I hit the upload button and away it went.

  When it had finished I went to some other sites, including all the fan pages, and cross-posted the link. But just as I’d done this, I had a thought: how would Zoe and Otto know that it was me? How would they know that I wanted to contact them?

  Of course, the code!

  I left a comment under the clip, a comment that would only make sense to the Zolton-Banders – or maybe some True Blood fanatic.

  came via last mail

  dracula no monster

  Phew!

  I checked the time – it was past ten. How was that possible?

  I looked out the window.

  And I got scared.

  Last night, I was up to my elbows in human remains. So what – the dead, as scary as they are, can’t really hurt you. But out there, on those dark, dirty streets, were people who could really hurt you; they were the real vampires, the real werewolves. I was speaking from experience, from when I’d broken into this office during the first instalment.

  I’ll call a taxi.

  But as soon as I had that thought I discounted it – I was an adult, working at an adult’s job, not some scaredy-cat kid.

  I’d ride home. Really, really, really fast.

  I followed Hound’s instructions and locked up the office and carried my bike downstairs.

  Only one more door to go, but I would be on the street when I locked it, my back facing the wrong way.

  What choice did I have?

  Putting my bike behind me as a sort of shield, I locked the final door. Now I was ready to get the hell out of here.

  ‘Hey kid, you after something?’

  The owner of this voice stepped out from the shadows. I knew him: he was the one I’d stabbed in the leg with the lock pick that night. But did he know me?

  ‘Nah, I’m pretty fine,’ I said, trying to keep it casual.

  As I threw my leg over the bike, I could see the look of recognition appear on his face.

  ‘Hey, I know you!’ he said.

  ‘So what?’ I said, stepping hard on the pedal, knowing that he had no chance of grabbing me now. ‘You cretin!’ I added for good measure, and that’s when my bike came to a crunching stop and I tumbled to the ground. I knew exactly what had happened, because it had happened to me once before at primary school, when Bryce Snell shoved a stick in the spokes of my bike.

  I jumped to my feet and got ready to run, but he was on me already, and I felt the sharp point in my back.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, holding up my hands like I’d seen a thousand people do on a thousand TV shows. I could see now that in fact there were four of them: vampires, werewolves, creatures of the night.

  ‘Your wallet?’ hissed the one wielding the knife.

  ‘I work for Hound, you know,’ I said. Suddenly I was Billy Connolly, Eddie Murphy and everybody in South Park – they cracked up laughing.

  I reached into my pocket, took out my wallet.

  And that’s when the taxi seemed to come out of nowhere, pull up at the kerb. The door opened and Luiz Antonio was in the mix.

  The night creatures didn’t move.

  ‘This has got nothing to do with you, old fella,’ said one of them.

  ‘I wouldn’t call him that if I was you,’ I said. Again I was the world’s funniest man.

  Luiz Antonio waltzed up to the first night creature and took him out with one of those leg sweeps. The second night creature came at him and Luiz Antonio disposed of him with a sort of nonchalant ease – basically he just jabbed him in the face, and the night creature crumpled screaming to the ground.

  Two to go.

  The third night creature took off with a speed that would have had Usain Bolt concerned.

  One to go, but this one had a knife, and this one had some major attitude. I knew that he could fight too, just from the balanced posture he’d adopted. He turned to face Luiz Antonio, tossing the knife from hand to hand.

  ‘Come on, old fella,’ he said. ‘You think a bit of karate is going to frighten me?’

  I edged out of his sight, picked up the bicycle, and brought it down hard on his head.

  He collapsed and Luiz Antonio finished him off, kicking the knife from his grasp, retrieving my wallet.

  I chained my bike to the post and got into the taxi.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to Luiz Antonio.

  But I said nothing else until we got out of the Block. ‘How did you know where I was? How in the hell did you know?’

  ‘You take too many risks, amigo,’ said Luiz Antonio.

  Maybe, but despite what had just happened, despite the danger I’d been in, I was over of being owned. I was over everybody knowing where I was.

  I needed to do something about it.

  And I needed to do it now!

  ‘Can you drop me off at the hospital?’ I said.

  ‘You hurt?’ said Luiz Antonio, concern in his voice, taking in the bandage on my hand.

  ‘No, I just need you to drop me off at the hospital,’ I said. I took out my phone. ‘I’m going to text Gus, tell him I’m okay. But he probably
bloody well knows that already.’

  Luiz Antonio took the next right, towards the hospital, and ten minutes later we were pulling up outside Emergency.

  ‘Don’t bother waiting,’ I snapped. ‘I can find my own way home.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ he said. Suddenly, I felt like a bit of a grouch – he had rescued me, and here I was acting like this to him.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Hopefully this won’t take long.’

  It did take long.

  Emergency was chockers, and I didn’t do myself any favours in the triage department.

  ‘So what’s your problem tonight?’ the nurse asked me. ‘Is it your hand?’

  ‘I have this other issue,’ I said.

  ‘Can you be a bit more specific?’

  Several things – the fact that I had once been rendered unconscious and woken to find a suspicious lump on my right hand, the fact that I now tripped scanners at airports and, most importantly, the fact that everybody seemed to know where I was – had led me to suspect that I had some sort of tracking device implanted in my body.

  But I wasn’t going to tell her that, because I’m pretty sure she would’ve triaged me straight to the loony bin.

  ‘It’s, like, this issue inside me,’ I said, and I wished I’d been better prepared and googled some great condition that would get me instantly to the front of the queue, ahead of the people with broken legs and guts practically spilling out, but I hadn’t, so I had to keep going with what I had.

  She looked at me through her glasses, and I wondered if the loony bin was occurring to her anyway.

  ‘The pain is pretty incredible,’ I said.

  She typed something into the computer – maybe attention-seeking nutcase – and told me to take a seat, my name would be called in due course. The thing about Emergency is that it’s designed so the worst cases get seen to first, so you don’t necessarily get to move up the queue at all.

  After over an hour of waiting, I wondered about going home, sorting this out at a later date, but something told me that now was the right time. After two hours of waiting, I’d come up with another plan: I’d go to another hospital, but this time I would google a disease that would put me to the front of the queue, probably something invasive to do with the brain. Or that thing I’d once read about once where these people had huge maggots coming out of their skin.