Jacko

by Keneally, Thomas

  He had a jerky joviality which may have derived from something he had ingested with his morning coffee.

  So now Jacko was transmitting from the morning’s second floor of cream marble, beneath a chandelier identical to the one across the road. Many a small town would not have eaten as much electricity as that one crystal beast.

  —Goll-ee, said Jacko to camera. I’ve known cattle stations smaller than this place.

  He asked the young man the normal questions. Was he married? Were there a wife and children somewhere in the wings of this suburban palazzo?

  —No-oo, said the young man stringing out the negative! My father’s given me another year of freedom before I have to find a good wife.

  —So you live here alone? Jacko boomed.

  —Not always alone, the young man boasted rolling his eyes for the sake of remembered lusts.

  —What do you fill this place with? asked Jacko. You’ve got sheep, angoras, llamas?

  The young man thought Jacko was a hoot. Jacko said, winking at the camera, This place is big enough to be a drug rehabilitation centre.

  So that confirmed my innocent view that the boy was sniffing something. Seriously, Jacko asked, what did the young man do in this great house all on his own?

  —Ah! said the boy. I have friends over. My life’s full.

  As a demonstration of this, he indicated a table on which three telephones stood. Now he led Jacko and Clayton up the stairs, followed – I imagined – by Dannie and by cable handlers, and quickly the party were across a landing, wide as Lafayette Street, past a table with more telephones, and into the bathroom. Onyx, marble and glass. On shelves and in cupboards the young man swept open, hundreds of bottles of men’s cologne and aftershave lotion were revealed. Some were of blue and green transparent glass; some of white opaque; some like amphoras; some like shards of ice; some like fists and some like phalluses.

  —Jacko, the young man casually and loudly boasted, I don’t believe that any of your viewers has a bigger collection than mine.

  So that was the nature of Jacko’s show: some men wanted from it to trace their lost daughters; others wanted their aftershave sovereignty confirmed.

  Jacko himself was genuinely stimulated by such a collection. He picked up this and that bottle and exclaimed over its shape and inhaled its fumes.

  —You don’t realize, he told the boy. The quantity of design talent that’s gone into making these things.

  —Really excellent! said the young enthusiast at his elbow.

  —I mean, what is it? Jacko asked. A little bit of rubbing alcohol, a little astringent spirit, ladies and gentlemen. And yet these bottles give it special significance. Aftershave is the rhinoceros-tusk powder of the modern world. And again, folks, like our and other shows, the triumph of design over substance!

  Jacko’s great virtue was that he meant these enthusiasms. The western world was still full of wonders to him, since he had been sheltered from it in childhood. Stammer Jack and his head stockman had nineteenth century habits and would never have used such fripperies as aftershave. As I would discover, Stammer Jack did not even use such authentic mid-twentieth century amenities as antibiotics.

  So this boy’s massive array of astringent nonsense enlivened and astounded Jacko. Other media people would have had to pretend to be enlivened and astounded.

  —My god, said Jacko. All this marble, all this glass, all this aftershave … and how old are you?

  —Twenty-two, confessed the boy. He spread his arms. I’m here, girls!

  —A house like this! said Jacko. At twenty-two!

  —My father built me this, said the boy, his eyes insanely coruscating. My father built a pigeon pair either side of the street.

  Jacko confessed that he and Clayton had just been trying to break into the identical house across the street.

  —That’s it! the boy said. My father and mom live there.

  Jacko stamped his big foot.

  —No! This is the kiddies’ wing? No! Can I join your family?

  —Big brother, said the young man, embracing Jacko.

  —I’m going to ask the main question, said Jacko. But first I want to see your most exotic shave lotions, young man.

  The boy was quick to oblige. He showed a bottle of South Korean lotion in the shape of a ginseng root. A Chinese version: a Chou En Lai-like rebel, fist raised, the sickle-shaped lid fitting into the fist. An Italian bottle in the shape of a forearm, a Colombian bottle in the shape of a bird.

  —This isn’t the only stuff you’ve got here from Colombia, is it? said Jacko, winking at the camera. I thought I heard someone out-of-shot, perhaps Dannie, cough sharply. A warning.

  —Now big question! All this marble and shaving lotion doesn’t come cheap eh? What does this wonderful father of yours – I love the feller already – what does he do for a crust?

  Regular viewers of Jacko knew by now that for a crust meant for a living. Reverse bloody imperialism, mate, Jacko would tell you proudly. Bringing the tongue of Burren Waters to the unwashed.

  —He works in sanitation in New York. He’s a servant of the public.

  —Geez, does he own his own truck yet?

  The young man rolled his eyes.

  —He’s got friends who own plenty of trucks.

  More questioning, and the boy, blinking in the manic afterglow of whatever he had taken into his body, admitted that he too was an employee of the Department of Sanitation, but the family were honoured to number among their closest friends, Sanitation Commissioner Giacomelli, a maligned but very Christian man.

  —D’you mean, asked Jacko, turning arch in a way he did not do in the homes of humbler folks, these places are built on garbage?

  Viewing all this, diminished by half-processed booze and aching for a trigger of easy sentences and crystalline insight, I was not aware that lovely, darting little Dannie and Ed Durkin in the studio began crying commands into the little mikes in both Clayton’s and Jacko’s earholes. Jacko and the crew were to apologize and leave at once. Dannie was mouthing the advice she was hearing from the studio. Giacomelli was under a grand jury investigation. This kid’s name was probably Pilsano, and his father Rudy Pilsano was a target of the FBI, etc., etc., and was known as the King of Trash. Two witnesses the FBI and the NYPD had marshalled against Giacomelli were believed to have disappeared into the maw of an industrial strength incinerator. Dead at the time, of course. Nonetheless it was enough to give Dannie a panic attack over the future security of Jacko’s huge combustible body.

  Jacko therefore had Durkin yelling omens in one ear, and Clayton and Dannie making throat-cutting signals with their free hands. The sniff of danger, however, inflamed Jacko’s boyishness glands.

  —Oops, they want us out of here. We’ve violated the advertising regulations of the Sutherland Vixen network, which has an ordinance against the advertising of ginseng shaving lotion. Sorry, my young man.

  And Jacko reached out and shook young Pilsano’s hand.

  —It’s been a bracing experience.

  —Okay, okay, said the boy Pilsano, holding his hands out in front of his shoulders. Listen, I’m doing a big acquisitions trip to Asia at the end of the summer …

  In his addled brain he might have thought – at least he gave me this impression – his collection did not measure up to the world of wonders Jacko Emptor was accustomed to. I could not see Dannie’s mute cries of terror or hear Durkin issuing his orders from the studio, but I understood, despite my inexact knowledge of the politics of the Rome of the modern world, that something was endangered, that some line of peril had been crossed. Clayton’s camera was racing downstairs and out the door, where it dared turn once more to show that Jacko was the last to leave the marble hallway. His hand on the bewildered young Pilsano’s shoulder, he helped him close the door.

  —Listen, my boy, Jacko roared through the aperture, if we’re breathing, we’ll be back. You reckon you can look after the breathing part eh?

  Within the house, the youn
g man’s phones could be heard raging. As Jacko would later say, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that it was the kid’s father and half of New York’s racketeers who were enraged.

  As it was not quite time yet for the cross back to the studio, Dannie and Clayton were now making continue-talking gestures to Jacko. Walking down the garden path of young Pilsano, Jacko intoned:

  —When they reached the mountain’s summit, even Clancy took a pull,

  It well might make the boldest hold their breath,

  The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full

  Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.

  But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,

  And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,

  And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,

  While the others stood and watched in very fear.

  According to Jacko, when they all went back to the microwave truck and the limo and packed up for the morning, young Dannie came up to him, fragrant with barely assuaged fear, kissed him full on the lips, began to weep, and said, Jacko, I love you!

  And later in the morning, when Jacko got back to Thomas Street, he met a First Precinct cop emerging from Coghlan’s Fenian bar.

  —Hey, Jacko! Caught your show this morning. The boys are making book on which day you’re gonna be hit!

  Jacko confessed to me that he stopped then and took the man by the shoulder. They were of approximately equal height and so Jacko could stare into the cop’s eyes.

  —Are you fellers serious? I’ve got a young wife.

  —As evidence, the cop explained, what you got this morning is kind of graphic in regard to opulence. I can imagine prosecutors getting mileage from it. And I’ll tell you what for free. That jerk-off shaving lotion kid is definitely for detox and drug rehab now. The Mob will lock him away in there and he won’t get out till he’s cleaner than Mother Teresa.

  Jacko was worried enough to go over to Coghlan’s and drink with the First Precinct boys, just so that any ambushers would know that he was a friend of detectives.

  —Well look, a cop told him. You’ve got an interesting statement about assets there, in your interview with the kid. The houses belonged to his father, so he said. I wouldn’t mind guessing the records don’t disclose that. So we’ve got that on tape now. And then the thing about being very close friends with Giacomelli. You’ve been a helluva inconvenience to the Pilsanos, Jacko. But they’re not stupid enough to take on the media.

  —Is that what I am? asked Jacko.

  Jacko even called my wife and asked her could Lucy share our second bedroom with our visiting journalist daughter? But divine Lucy heard of the plan and baulked, laughing at Jacko and bringing her clenched hand down emphatically upon his muscular forearm.

  —The one you should be worried about, she said, is Dann-ie!

  She put emphasis on both syllables and uttered the name with a New York breathiness, part Italian, part Ashkenazi Jewish.

  Dannie was so enamoured of Jacko that she did not hide it even on the mornings Lucy went out in the limo with Jacko to meet the microwave-dish truck. Or maybe it was partly Dannie’s strategy not to hide it, since New York girls were tough that way, scarily forthright.

  I watched Lucy teasing Jacko and wondered if she could be so wise so young, or whether it was naiveté, whether she was still in the playground of James Ruse High in the west of Sydney, kidding about love as they say. Her high school was named after a convict, James Ruse, a sheep thief who had nonetheless learned farming in the west of England and who became, on a ticket of leave land grant, the continent’s first private agriculturalist. A man no doubt less serpentine and less full of cunning than Dann-ie.

  6

  On the evening of my writing classes at NYU, I would allow myself an hour of television, Judge Wapner or Superior Court or Jeopardy. During this indulgence and at the height of Jacko’s search for Sunny Sondquist, I would see Vixen Six promos every half hour. Is Sonny Sondquist the Anodyne Kid? Have you seen her? Join Jacko Emptor in his quest …

  Despite all the noise, I had already heard from Jacko that in some sense the quest had reached a halt. There was, to use Jacko’s terminology, viewer excitement, but no more credible sightings.

  At a loss, Jacko had interviewed Bob Sondquist again. Returning from this interview, he called me and asked could I meet him at the usual place, the Odeon on West Broadway.

  As always, I should have been pleased that Jacko was filial enough to consider me a fit client of the place. But I needed to teach that night and was not in the frame of mind for a bar where everyone drank Finlandia vodka and spritzers and boutique water. The old problem: there were few ugly or aged Odeon clients, and my taste today was for the ugly and aged.

  —Come on, he begged me in a tone I had never heard before, however familiar the idiom was. Be a sport. I’ve had a shit of a day eh. Depressing as hell. I need to wash my damn mouth out with some honest vodka.

  And so I ran down to the corner of Lafayette and found a disgruntled cab driver headed uptown, who didn’t want to go around the block and who was even more outraged when I told him, No, not Broadway itself. West Broadway.

  As I arrived, I was pleased to see that the young, rich, immortal and fragrant had not yet turned up in pernicious numbers at the Odeon. Jacko sat alone at the bar, and he half turned and watched me come in. He had little more than a grimace for me, and his greeting was mumbled.

  —I might get some sleep tonight, he told me then. It was such a rare proposition to hear from Jacko’s mouth!

  His mannerisms were abnormal. He put first his chin and then his brow in his big hands. Then he raised his head, blinked, took up his vodka, and sipped briskly and medicinally.

  —Well, I asked. What’s the matter?

  —What’s the matter, he repeated. And he drank again and told me.

  Dannie, he said, had put a research assistant onto scanning microfilm of regional newspapers for the period of Sunny Sondquist’s childhood. During Bob’s military career the Sondquists had lived in Florida, in Page, Utah, and in Connecticut, and Dannie had got from the military records the dates of all these postings. She had done it because she just didn’t feel that four-square Bob with his competent use of his new throat box was the good citizen he affected to be.

  —That’s Jewish, you see, Jacko told me. If you present them with a good WASP, trim-bellied and square-bloody-shouldered, they just won’t take him on face value eh. They’ve been slaughtered by that sort of bugger since the crack of history. They know there’s got to be something wrong.

  Another sip.

  —Why do people have kids? he asked me, without expecting me to respond, even though I had a child of my own. He certainly didn’t wait for an answer.

  —So Dannie found it there. These awful bloody stories in the Salt Lake papers fourteen years back. Bob was in the quartermaster corps. And he was cooking the books some way. He had deals going with contractors and the sort of people who supply arms in quantity to paramilitary idiots of various bloody stripes. And his company commander knew all about it, for years, but took no action. And the question all the investigators asked was why he took no action eh. Was he in it? You know. Was the bugger in it? He did receive sweeteners from Bob, in part monetary. But you couldn’t guess what the main sweetener turned out to be?

  —No Jacko. I couldn’t.

  Though I did repent of my brusqueness when I saw no smile from him, saw him simply pinch his left eyebrow with his forefinger and thumb. Such serious fastidiousness of gesture had its own weight.

  —The main sweetener, said Jacko in his resonating murmur, was that Bob gave his company commander his own beloved daughter, Sunny. Honest to Christ! She must have been eight or nine years old.

  I was struck to silence. I listened to the riot of innocent traffic beyond the Odeon’s glass walls.

  —Can you imagine that scene? asked Jacko. Can you imagine it? I’m such
a bloody innocent, I think that Dannie promising to dress up as an SS woman and screw my ears off is the big bad world. But this stuff is the really big bad world. Christ’s blood, mate … Christ’s blood hasn’t reached some of these bastards. Nor has poor bloody Sunny Sondquist ever been out of the big bad world eh. Can you imagine what he said to her while he drove her round to the captain’s place? All the normal fatherly advice turned on its head eh – like Be a good girl.

  Jacko shuddered and, of course, drank again. He dropped his voice lower still.

  —Why did Bob approach you like this? I asked. Well, not you … the other people at CBS or NBC or whatever? When he had this in his background?

  —He thought we wouldn’t research him. And let me tell you, others wouldn’t have. That’s Dannie for you eh. Dannie’s work. I tell you there’s such bloody evil in this country. No way I’d raise kids here. I just wouldn’t. There are zones of bloody, bloody evil in this place. They believe the founders were the Pilgrim bloody Fathers. I think the founders might’ve been fucking Satanists. Why here, mate? Why the Bermuda bloody Triangle of malice?

  If his sadness hadn’t had such authority, I would have raised – not for the first time – the old, tired, always valid argument about whether Live Wire, and television as a whole for that matter, didn’t feed into the unspeakable triangle he was speaking of. Was television the tree from the old garden, here as nowhere else? Did television make evil by daily raising the possibility of evil? Did it provide an up-till-now unthought-of option? Did it say, Lock up your women. Above all, guard your children! Even, and particularly, from yourself!

  Or then again – a defence Jacko but, above all, the networks put up – did it act as a crucial valve on the pressures within the soul? Did it burn up the accumulations of methane which people like Jacko believed to rise in mad clouds off the swamps of the nation’s Calvinist and obsessed-with-destiny spirit?

  —So, Jacko breathed, Dannie and Durkin want me to hang on to this nifty little bit of info and save it for later on in the search. For now, they’ve made me go up there and talk to Bob about what sort of kid she was, and how she got her flare for bloody spelling bees. Well, I can tell you now how she got it. I can imagine the poor little bugger spelling for all she was worth on the way to and on the way from that bloody captain in the quartermaster corps. Northern Utah? It’s right there, right in a big zone of bloody malice. No wonder she only visited that old bastard Bob Sondquist when he was flat on the recovery table and couldn’t speak.