Take a Life

by Phillip Gwynne

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘I need something to bite down on.’

  She grabbed a tartan scarf and I fed some of it into my mouth.

  And then Imogen did it: she clamped my shaking wrist with one hand, and with the other she sliced deep into the back of my hand with the scalpel. I bit down hard on the scarf, and the scream didn’t get any further than that. Immediately, blood started welling up out of the incision. Imogen was ready; she flooded the incision with disinfectant, mopping up the blood.

  ‘I can’t see,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to open it a bit.’

  She did that, spreading the wound with her latexed fingers, and this time there was nothing the scarf could do, tartan or not. The scream escaped, instantly turning Imogen’s bedroom with its girl colours and girl smells into some sort of House of Horrors.

  ‘I can see it,’ she said excitedly, tweezers hovering. The tweezers delved into the cut. Another scream joined the previous one.

  ‘It’s not coming, it’s sort of stuck,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to cut just a bit more, Dom.’

  ‘Do it, Im. Do it.’

  The scalpel went back into the incision, and the scalpel cut some more, and this scream made the previous two seem weak, half-hearted.

  Again the tweezers, and this time a triumphant, ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Be careful,’ I said. ‘Don’t drop it.’

  Imogen was careful, placing the blood-smeared microchip on a tissue, putting it into a small ziplock bag. ‘Do you mind if that stays here with you?’ I said.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, as she set to work on my wound, dousing it with disinfectant and using butterfly closures to stop it gaping.

  ‘You promise to get it stitched?’ she said.

  ‘I promise,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow, when it’s all over.’

  She went to wrap a bigger bandage around my hand, but I said, ‘No, I don’t want them to suspect anything. A small one like this they might miss, but not something like that.’

  She went with just an ordinary bandaid.

  ‘And would you have a Panadol?’ I said, wondering if that could possibly have any effect on the skyrockets of pain that were shooting from my hand.

  ‘I can do better than that,’ she said, and she disappeared from the room for a couple of minutes, returning with a small pill container.

  ‘Mum’s,’ she said, shaking two out onto her palm. ‘These should help.’

  I took the pills and tossed them down my throat.

  ‘Don’t you need some water?’

  ‘It’s my superpower,’ I said. ‘Pills without water.’

  I checked my watch: ten forty-five. ‘Im, I just need one more thing,’ I said.

  She reached under her pillow and brought out her dad’s watch.

  ‘You’ll get it back one day,’ I said. ‘But right now it has a job to do.’

  Remembering what Mr Ryan had said about DNA traces, I used some of Imogen’s disinfectant to swab it clean and then put it in a fresh ziplock bag.

  ‘I have to go now,’ I said, going to kiss Imogen on the cheek. She turned her head towards me, however, and our lips met.

  We kissed, and then she drew away.

  WEDNESDAY

  KRYPTONITE

  As Luiz Antonio drove, sun splashed in through the window. I was actually a bit put out – if everything went to plan, this was going to be the most tumultuous of days, and I guess I’d expected some correspondingly tumultuous weather: the rumble of thunder, flashes of lightning, that sort of thing. Meteorologically, this wasn’t so outrageous, either, because according to the weather report there was a huge low pressure system skulking around the coast. But here it was all sunshiny.

  We pulled into the carpark of the Gold Coast Necropolis. I’d been there so many times I reckon I could’ve started my own business: Dom’s Spooky Tours.

  ‘If I’m not back in half an hour,’ I told Luiz Antonio, ‘maybe you better come and look for me.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  As usual, he hadn’t asked any questions. I wondered if he’d been born without an inquisitive gene. Or if it was something he’d lost along the way. Whatever the case, I guessed it was for the best – ask no questions, get told no lies, that sort of gig.

  Backpack on my back, I followed the now very familiar path towards the now very familiar crypt. Without the good old cloak of darkness I had to be extra careful. I’d brought my lock-picking tools, but take it from me, there is no unsuspicious way to unlock a crypt door. I decided that I just had to go for it – if somebody happened to come along I would skedaddle.

  For somebody with my now considerable lock-picking experience, this one was pretty straightforward, and I was inside in less than a minute.

  I had to go through the same grisly process that Gus and I had endured, except there was only one of me. Now that I knew all about Locard’s principle – every contact leaves a trace – I’d brought disposable gloves to wear.

  I made slow progress, but eventually was able to slide Mr Havilland’s coffin out far enough so that I could open it.

  Poor Mr Havilland, I thought, looking at what was left of him.

  But I remembered what old man Taverniti had said, or what Dr Chakrabarty had translated: he got too greedy, that one. I would never, ever tell Imogen that her father had been corrupt. But if I did what I intended to do, it seemed inevitable to me that this would come out. I hesitated.

  And then put the Omega Speedmaster back where I’d found it, around Mr Havilland’s left wrist.

  I was no longer a grave-robber – it felt right.

  Again I noticed the cigarette butts inside the coffin. I’d seen Rocco Taverniti smoking at the funeral. When I’d visited the Labor Party office, I’d seen an ashtray on Ron Gatto’s desk. And my father didn’t smoke, and never had, as far as I knew.

  That felt reassuring – maybe Gnocchi hadn’t been there, after all.

  I slid the coffin back in. Replaced the little door. Just when I was thinking how well it was going, how Professor Sod was keeping his law to himself today, there was the scrape of a key in the lock.

  They’d found me – I was still owned. What would they do? My fight or flight (or maybe even both) instincts were ready and raring to go.

  The door opened. An old Italian lady who looked like she’d just come from that piazza in San Luca poked her head in and said, ‘Mi scusa.’

  I didn’t need any more opportunity than that. ‘Mi scusa,’ I said, squeezing past her, but then I remembered something: I took out my iPhone, went to Maps and stored my current position. Then I hurried back down the path. I checked my watch: forty-six minutes. Why hadn’t Luiz Antonio come looking for me?

  When I went outside, his taxi wasn’t even there. I rang him. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Heading towards you,’ he said.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘But you could’ve told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That you went back to Halcyon Grove.’

  What? But then I got it – of course, Luiz Antonio didn’t know that I’d removed my tag! I got something else: having two Dom Silvagnis was a very powerful thing; more powerful than I’d thought. I just had to work out how to use it to my advantage.

  He took half an hour to return; it was pretty annoying, because I had so much to do.

  ‘Back to Halcyon Grove?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘The Block.’

  It was time to unleash the blogs of war!

  WEDNESDAY

  WHO LET THE BLOGS OUT?

  It was after two when I arrived, and it was just as I hoped: Hound was at his usual Wednesday meeting at Cozzi’s.

  I could’ve done all this at home, but I’d figured that by using Hound’s network and IP addresses I would remain more anonymous.

  I powered up my work computer. I put in my earbuds. I put on Rage Against the Machine. And I put it on really really, loud. Miranda’s favourite band – phooey! Her love for Rage Against the Machine
was nothing compared to how I felt about them.

  Ron Gatto, local member for the Gold Coast, was my first target.

  I didn’t know much about politics, but from what I’d read online, Ron Gatto seemed to have a real talent for ‘dodging bullets’, as one journalist put it. The betting scandal. Dodged. The credit card scandal. Dodged. The lewd text message scandal. Dodged. I wasn’t firing bullets, though. I was launching drones that would take him out wherever he was.

  I created a blog in WordPress, and gave it a very simple title: ‘Ron Gatto, Member for Gold Coast – Crook?’

  My work checking the credit rating on Hound’s scumbags had given me some pretty useful skills. And when I re-examined the data I’d downloaded from the Labor Party mainframe, I found out a few interesting things about Ron Gatto. For example, he kept two sets of personal MYOB accounts. I could tell that one of these sets was entirely for the benefit of the tax office. The other set, however, detailed a whole lot of extra income that came from various companies up and down the coast. I googled some of these: just as I’d expected, they were all involved one way or another in tendering for government projects. I’m no accountant, but this income was looking a lot like kickbacks to me. I posted this data to the blog.

  Oh yeah, there was one more fascinating thing about Ron Gatto, happily married man, proponent of family values.

  He was gay.

  Okay, maybe he wasn’t, but for a married man he sure spent a lot of money on male escorts. About a thousand bucks a month, according to one of the seven credit card accounts I examined. I wasn’t going to make a judgement either way; I’d let the wider internet community decide on that one. I posted those details on the blog as well.

  And then, using an anonymous email address, I sent the address of this blog to a few people I thought might be interested. The leader of the Queensland Liberal National Party was the first one. And the editors of the Gold Coast Bulletin, the Brisbane Courier-Mail and The Australian. And finally I thought, why not, and sent it to an email address I found for Today Tonight.

  Rocco Taverniti was next on my list.

  I took out the card Rent-a-Cop had given me; his real name was Stewart Westaway. Just out of interest I googled Stewart Westaway. It was exactly as I’d suspected: he was a middle distance runner. Not such a bad one, either, if his times were any indication.

  Again I used a phished email address. And I kept it really simple.

  The body of Graham Havilland can be found at the Tabori family crypt at the Gold Coast Necropolis, I typed. I took out my iPhone and found the coordinates I’d stored and typed those in as well.

  Then I added, Please find attached an mp3 of a conversation with Luigi Taverniti (deceased), former head of the Gold Coast ’Ndrangheta concerning the murder of Graham Havilland.

  From my iPhone I downloaded the mp3 of the conversation with old man Taverniti, the one Dr Chakrabarty had translated. I copied it and uploaded this copy into Audacity, a free audio editor. Played it a few times.

  I knew that my father was a killer, that he’d killed at least three people. Had he killed Graham Havilland, too?

  According to old man Taverniti he had. If that was the case, then didn’t he need to be held to account for his actions?

  Didn’t he need to be arrested?

  Didn’t there need to be a trial?

  Didn’t the court need to then determine whether he was innocent or guilty?

  And if he was guilty, then he would be punished – sent to jail, maybe for the rest of his life. And I would be responsible for that, for my family losing its father.

  I thought of the amazing house we lived in. The cars we drove. The stuff we bought. All the charity work Mom did. She’s the reason I’m here today, that doctor had told me. I thought of all the great times we’d had as a family. I thought of what Dad had said the other day: that I could do anything I wanted to do. Finally, I thought of running barefoot in the thin air of the Rift Valley in Kenya.

  Right then, the love I felt for my dad was so real, so intense, it seemed to envelop me, wrap me in its octopus arms.

  I turned my attention back to the screen, to the mp3. I edited it, cutting out ‘e Gnocchi’.

  ‘Ho ottenuto i ragazzi a prendersi cura di lui. Gli hanno dato un’altra bocca,’ it now said. ‘Rocco e Ron.’ I attached this edited version of the mp3 to the email. And I sent it.

  I went to the toilet, even though I really didn’t have much to offer. I washed my hands for several minutes.

  When I returned, I put the earbuds back in. I cranked the volume up to the maximum. The brutal chords hammered into my brain, the brutal lyrics extolling me to take back the power, to not put up with any more lies.

  Didn’t Dad need to be held to account for his actions?

  Didn’t he need to be arrested?

  Didn’t there need to be a trial?

  Didn’t the court need to then determine whether he was innocent or guilty?

  I took out my phone. Maybe he hadn’t been there after all, I told myself, thinking of those cigarette butts. No phishing. No phoney accounts. No hiding behind anything.

  I sent the mp3, the unedited version, to Rent-a-Cop.

  Two down, one to go.

  I brought up the document again, the one I had shown to Mr Jazy. The one he said would cause the whole coast to melt down. It didn’t seem possible that those numbers would have such power, but I believed Mr Jazy and his beard.

  Maybe what I’d done already was enough to extinguish The Debt. Ron Gatto was a goner, I had no doubt about that. But Rocco Taverniti? With his money he would hire the best lawyers available.

  But he was all over Coast Home Loans, his name was on everything. How could he get out of that? But Dad’s name was there also; not as prominently as Rocco Taverniti’s, but he was still a major player.

  I leant back in the chair, tuned back into the music.

  No more lying, demanded the lyrics, over and over again.’

  I created another blog in WordPress. This one I called ‘Coast Home Loans = Ponzi Scheme’. And below that I posted the contents of the document I’d shown Mr Jazy, the one he’d said was enough to cause a meltdown. As before, I emailed the address of this blog to the editors of the major newspapers.

  The blogs of war had been unleashed; in the meantime I had a race to run.

  I stood up, turned and found Hound standing right behind me. I took out the earbuds, cursing myself for having them in and not hearing him sneak up on me like this. This was Scary Hound, the one who had caused my head to ring like a bell that day.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he said.

  ‘I was just catching up on some work,’ I said.

  His eyes scanned the screen. He sat down, clicked on History, saw what else I’d done this morning. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ he kept saying. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’

  If there was a time to take him out, it was now, while he was engrossed in the screen, while his back was to me.

  ‘Ron Gatto is the best thing that ever happened to the Gold Coast!’

  I looked around for a possible weapon; there was a sad-looking pot plant in the corner. I could smash him over the head with that.

  ‘This joint was a joke before he took over,’ continued the outraged Hound.

  Or what about all those guns in his office – surely one of them was loaded?

  Who was I kidding? I was so not the taking-somebody-out sort – Brandon had shown that. Hound knew it too, arrogantly keeping his back to me like that. But the blogs of war had been unleashed and there was no restraining them now. Over Hound’s shoulder I could see that already the blog was generating traffic.

  ‘I’m ringing Ron right now,’ said Hound, taking out his phone.

  I wasn’t the taking-somebody-out type, but I was the running type. Not running as in ‘running away’ but running as in ‘running to’. Running to whatever future I had just created.

  So this was the end of my job, which was sort of sad – it had been
my first proper one. But if I stayed working for Hound I would inevitably become like him: arrogant and cynical and bent.

  It was time to run.

  But I did have one more thing to say. ‘Hound?’

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘Triple denim is so not okay.’

  I took off, out of the office and down the stairs, and straight into a wall of Lazarus. The two of them, smoking.

  ‘Hey, what’s the big rush?’ said one of them.

  Quick thinking was needed. They, obviously, didn’t know that I was in total disgrace. Not yet, anyway. I noticed the flash of silver in his hand.

  Keys.

  ‘Hound asked me to get something out of the Hummer,’ I said.

  ‘Sure, Bloodyoung,’ he said. Nice try, meathead.

  I took the keys and hurried over to the Hummer and unlocked it and got into the driver’s seat. Keys into the ignition, engine started. But unlike the Porsche, it was an automatic. I’d sat in the front seat of Mom’s BMW enough to know what the deal was, however.

  I stuck it into drive, and was about to move off when Hound appeared at my window. He was holding a gun, and it was pointed at me.

  Hell!

  And he was so the taking-somebody-out type.

  But then I remembered something: Hound bragging about how his Hummer was totally bulletproof, even the windows.

  Either he’d been lying (not unusual) or he’d been telling the truth (less usual). There was an easy way to find out.

  I put my foot down.

  As I did, I braced myself, expecting the shattering of non-bulletproof glass and the disintegration of a non-bulletproof head.

  Nothing, except Rodriguez – was that his name? – started singing about someone called Sugarman.

  For once, thank god, Hound had been telling the truth.

  WEDNESDAY

  HUMMER

  Despite being only fifteen, despite being behind the wheel of one of the most ludicrous cars on the Gold Coast, I didn’t feel that conspicuous. I’m not sure what it was – the tinted windows, perhaps. Or the fact that there was so much vehicle around me. It actually reminded me of the night I drove the bulldozer, the night I rescued Zoe Zolton-Bander from her own uncle.