Bring Back Cerberus

by Phillip Gwynne

  Once inside I ignored the front counter and made for the stairs, taking them two at a time until I reached the first floor.

  Just as I was about to knock on the door to Hound’s office, it opened and a man, similar in size and scariness to Hound, came out.

  He looked up at me, but obviously wasn’t impressed with what he saw because he looked straight back down again and kept walking.

  ‘Hi,’ I said to Hound after I’d entered his office.

  He indicated a chair: sit down.

  ‘So you reckon you don’t know where Zolton-Bander is?’ he said from behind his desk.

  ‘I wouldn’t have a clue,’ I said. ‘And like I said, I’m willing to take a lie-detector test to prove it.’

  ‘Great!’ he said, opening a drawer in his desk, rummaging inside.

  I scanned the walls, taking in all the photos of Hound de Villiers toting firearms of various sizes and destructive power.

  A photo I hadn’t noticed before caught my attention; in this one Hound was with a person, rather than an AK-47, his arm around their shoulder. And it wasn’t any old person, it was the Treasure Hunter himself: E Lee Marx.

  ‘You know E Lee Marx?’ I said.

  ‘We go way back,’ said Hound. ‘Back to Army days.’

  ‘He’s South African?’

  Hound smiled. ‘Yes, not something he likes to broadcast, though. Not television-friendly enough.’

  ‘So you saw The Treasure Hunter?’ I said.

  ‘Load of old bollocks,’ he said. ‘I told him that when I was talking to him last week.’

  ‘You talk to him?’ I said.

  ‘Every now and then. Like I said: we go way back, us two.’ He brought out an iPod-sized device from the drawer. ‘Hold out your hand.’

  He strapped the device to the wrist of my right hand. Two wires led to adhesive sensor pads which he stuck to my palm, and a third wire ended in a pulse meter which he clipped onto the end of my forefinger.

  He plugged the device into the USB port of the iMac on his desk.

  ‘Okay, you ready?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Is your name Dom Silvagni?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘Do you have three heads?’

  ‘No,’ I answered.

  If only exams at school were so easy.

  Now that he’d calibrated the machine he said, ‘Do you know where Otto Zolton-Bander is?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, confident that the device would tell him that I wasn’t lying.

  ‘Okay, then,’ he said, reading from the screen, ‘maybe you don’t know where he is, after all.’

  I smiled at him and his excellent machine.

  ‘Okay, let’s try this one. Did you hack into the Diablo Bay Nuclear Power Station’s computer system?’

  I’d suspected a trap, but I hadn’t expected it to be sprung so quickly.

  ‘Who told you that?’ I said.

  ‘Just because I got no respect for the cops, doesn’t mean I don’t have a couple on the payroll,’ said Hound. ‘Did you hack into the Diablo Bay Nuclear Power Station’s computer system?’

  ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism,’ I said.

  ‘What in the hell is that?’

  Though I was aware of all those photos of Hound with all those guns, though I could remember just how easily he’d zinged my head, I was also aware that I couldn’t just be the scared little guy – I had to show some guts, some major ’tude.

  ‘I believe it’s the longest word in the English language,’ I said.

  I unclipped the pulse meter from my finger, removed the sensors from my palm and, yanking it loose from my wrist, tossed the lie detector onto his desk.

  As I did, the cover of the battery compartment fell off. There were no batteries inside.

  I looked at Hound and he had this sort of guilty look on his face, like a small kid who has been caught doing something wrong.

  ‘Why are you so desperate to blackmail me?’ I said.

  ‘Tell me how you did it, how you hacked into their system. That place has a goddamn triple-A security rating.’

  ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism,’ I said.

  ‘So why’d you want to turn off the city lights like that? You some sort of hippie, are you, Dom? Some sort of dope-smoking, tree-hugging, muesli-eating freak?’

  I gave my standard answer.

  I could see the colour rising in Hound’s face – it was probably time to lose the ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ thing.

  ‘What do you want me for anyway?’ I said.

  ‘I want you to help people help themselves.’

  My face must’ve done a pretty good job of conveying my incomprehension, because Hound immediately launched into an explanation. ‘Most of my clients are good people, Dom. Good people but they’ve just strayed from the path. I see it as my job to get them back on the path. Sometimes they forget that. They forget their court appointments. They forget their repayments. They forget their debts. So I have to find them. Remind them. Get them back on that path.’

  ‘I still don’t see how I can help,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a technological world we live in, Dom. Everything’s interconnected. I employ the best I can find, but I’m just not sure Guzman’s got your skill set.’

  ‘Guzman?’ I said.

  ‘My tech guy.’

  ‘So why didn’t you just ask me if I wanted a job like any normal person?’ I said.

  Hound shrugged and said, ‘Do you want a job like any normal person?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘But maybe we could arrange some sort of contra deal.’

  ‘Contra deals are good,’ said Hound. ‘Keep the taxman’s big nose well out of it. What did you have in mind?’

  I began telling him what I had in mind and Hound leant back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

  When I’d finished Hound said, ‘I reckon we might just have ourselves a deal, Youngblood.’

  ‘Youngblood?’ I said.

  ‘Youngblood,’ he said. ‘From now on you’re Youngblood.’

  WEDNESDAY

  NITMICK

  Wednesday, and there was still no sign of The Debt, of the next instalment.

  Stop thinking about it, I ordered myself. But you can’t tell yourself to stop thinking about something, it just makes you think about it more.

  But what you can do is think about something else. Like the race. Like running.

  During Maths, while the teacher droned on about Pythagoras and his theorem, I did some excellent arithmetic on my calculator. My PB for the 1500 metres was 4.01.4 minutes, which was an average speed of 6.21 m/sec. My PB for the 800 metres was 1.57.2 minutes, which was an average speed of 6.83 m/sec. So if I could maintain my 800 speed for the entire 1500 metres I’d do it in 3.39.6 minutes! In 1957, 3.39.6 would’ve broken the men’s world record.

  During biology, while the teacher droned on about the carbon cycle, I thought about lactic acid. During strenuous exercise the body derives energy by breaking down stored glucose. Which causes production of a substance called pyruvate. Which, in the absence of oxygen, is converted to lactate. Which causes acidity in the muscles. And that horrible thighs-on-fire sensation I always got in the third lap.

  During English, while Mr McFarlane droned on about the ancient Japanese poetic form known as the haiku, I actually listened to what he had to say. And when he gave us ten minutes to compose our own haiku, I actually put pen to paper.

  ‘And do you have something wonderful to share with us today, Dom?’ he said, not even bothering to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘I do, actually,’ I said, standing up.

  Adopting my best poetry declaiming voice, I read from the piece of paper:

  ‘Run fast as I can

  Running running running fast

  As fast as I can.’

  Just as I finished, and the first snickers started, there was a knock on the door.

  The red-haired kid entered, the one who use
d to have an neck brace but was now sporting an eye patch. He said something to Mr McFarlane.

  ‘Dom,’ said Mr McFarlane, his eyes falling on me. ‘You’re to report to the front office immediately.’

  I got up, conscious that all my classmates were looking at me thinking, ‘What trouble is Silvagni in this time?’

  And maybe some of them were also thinking, ‘Why does Silvagni, former goody two-shoes, always seem to be getting into trouble these days?’

  ‘Do you know what it’s about?’ I asked the red-haired kid with the eye patch as we hurried back along the corridor.

  ‘Hey hombre, I’m only the messenger,’ he said.

  ‘So what happened to your eye?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t even begin to ask,’ he replied.

  When we got to the office, Mr Iharos, the vice-principal, was waiting for us.

  He was definitely not wearing a you’re-in-big-trouble look, so I relaxed a bit.

  But not for long.

  If I wasn’t in trouble, who was? At Grammar they don’t just drag kids out of class for any old reason.

  ‘Is my family okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Dom, that’s something you better ask your uncle,’ said Mr Iharos.

  Before I could utter ‘My uncle?’ or ‘What uncle?’, my uncle stepped out from Mr Iharos’s office.

  My uncle was wearing an expensive suit. An expensive watch. My uncle really looked like he could be my father’s non-existent brother.

  But I’d only ever seen my uncle once before.

  Leaving Hound’s office yesterday.

  I looked at him, and then at Mr Iharos, and the words ‘He’s not my uncle’ were there, poised on the tip of my tongue like a diver on the edge of the high board at the Olympics. The diver flexed. The diver was about to take one step forward. The diver turned around and walked away.

  ‘Uncle,’ I said, ‘I hope it’s not bad news.’

  ‘We’ll discuss it on the way out,’ said my uncle, turning to Mr Iharos. ‘And thank you so much for your understanding. I can see that David made the right choice sending his boys to Grammar.’

  As my uncle and I walked away he whispered, ‘You done good so far, just keep your trap shut until we get outside.’

  ‘Of course I will, Uncle,’ I said.

  I had a new-found respect for Hound’s capabilities; it wasn’t easy to get a kid out of Grammar during school hours.

  His Hummer was parked in a side street.

  Looking inconspicuous. Not!

  ‘Nice work,’ he said to my uncle, who kept walking up the street, to disappear into another car.

  I got into the back seat of the Hummer.

  Hound was wearing his office clothes: a black fishnet T-shirt that revealed some scary pectoral development, black fingerless gloves like those cyclists wear, and black bands around each tattooed bicep.

  ‘This is Guzman,’ he said, pointing to the person in the passenger seat. ‘My techie guy.’

  Guzman was in his twenties, but he was tiny, with tiny little bones. In one hand was a takeaway cup of coffee that had the name of the café it’d come from – Cozzi’s – written on it. In the other was his phone: a Styxx, of course, the brand of choice for most tech-heads.

  ‘Hi, how it’s going?’ I said, extending my hand.

  Guzman ignored it, however. Preferring, instead, to fix me with a stare of such malevolence it would have caused the instant demise of any animal smaller than a canary. Or even a canary if it had pre-existing condition, like a weak heart.

  ‘You ready to boogie?’ said Hound.

  ‘Look, you may have overestimated my abilities,’ I said.

  A snort of derision from Guzman.

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Hound. ‘You found the Zolt, you hacked into Diablo Bay.’

  He was right: I did find the Zolt, I did hack into Diablo Bay, but that was different, that was The Debt. And this was … actually what was this, apart from some dumb contra deal I’d made?

  Hound handed me a manila folder. ‘Here’s our client.’

  ‘Andre Nitmick,’ I said, reading the name scrawled on the front.

  ‘Also known as Andrew Nitmick, Andy Mickets, and so on,’ said Hound.

  I opened the folder to reveal a photo of Andre Nitmick. He didn’t look much like a criminal. More like the bassist in a heavy metal band. One who liked to eat a lot. Under the photo was a copy of Andre Nitmick’s criminal record, or what there was of Andre Nitmick’s criminal record. Unsolicited sending of bulk email, identity theft, fraud, and he didn’t seem to be a particularly careful driver.

  ‘He’s not exactly public enemy number one, is he?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be fooled – major player,’ said Hound de Villiers. ‘The rat didn’t turn up for court, so he owes me a packet.’

  As he spoke he glared at Guzman as if he had something to do with this.

  ‘I’m just not sure how I can help,’ I said.

  Another snort from Guzman.

  I was starting to wonder if he could actually speak in English, or only communicated using snorts of varying modulation.

  ‘We’ve got a fair idea where the rat is hiding,’ said Hound. ‘We just need to flush him out.’

  Guzman shoved a laptop in my direction.

  ‘Got all the software you’ll need on there,’ he said. ‘Brutus, RainbowCrack, PacketStorm, John the Ripper, Nmap, NetStumbler, WireShark.’

  So he could talk. Sort of. I’d never heard of any of these programs and wouldn’t have a clue how to use them.

  I knew Hound wasn’t going to believe me if I said this, though. As far as he was concerned, I was the black-hat hacker from hell.

  ‘I assume it’s also got Zatopek on it,’ I said, giving the name of the champion Czech long distance runner of the forties and fifties.

  ‘Zatopek?’ repeated Guzman. ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Really,’ I said, feigning surprise. ‘You’ve never heard of Zatopek? Well, I guess it’s not the most user-friendly program. It’s used by your more elite hacker.’

  ‘You can download it, can’t you? It must be online somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘Download Zatopek?’ I said as if this is the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. ‘It’s on my computer at home. We’ll have to go get it.’

  Guzman mumbled something.

  ‘If the kid needs his hardware, the kid needs his hardware,’ said Hound, starting the Hummer and pulling out onto the street.

  We took the entry ramp onto the freeway and he turned the gangsta rap on the stereo up to a volume that could be most usefully described as ‘pumping’.

  As we slalomed through the traffic I realised something: despite not really having a clue what I was doing, despite not having received the third instalment, despite hanging out with the scariest human being I’d ever hung out with, I was actually, sort of, kind of, having fun.

  WEDNESDAY

  PHISH WEAK

  Picking up ClamTop wasn’t an issue. I knew that Mom wouldn’t be home, that she always spent Wednesdays at the office of her charity, the Angel Foundation.

  I got Hound to park outside the Halcyon Grove gates while I went in to get the hardware.

  There was a van, Komang Pool Cleaning written on its side, parked in the drive of our house. As I kept walking, the pool guy came into view, scooping the leaves from the pool’s glittering surface.

  I was used to seeing different pool guys of all shapes, sizes and leaf-scooping ability, but there was something familiar about this one.

  As I got closer I could see why. The ponytail. The diminutive runner’s physique. The baggier-than-baggy shorts. The pool guy was Seb!

  Seb my old running mate. Seb who I’d totally lined up for a scholarship at my school. Seb who hadn’t even bothered to turn up for the interview. Seb who I’m pretty sure had set me up at Preacher’s Forest. Seb who had been in that white van after the first running of the state titles. Seb who I hadn’t heard from for ages, who even seemed to have ditched his old phon
e number. And here he was, scooping leaves out of my pool.

  No, it can’t be, I kept telling myself as I got closer.

  But it was him, all right.

  Seb, I wanted to yell. What the hell are you doing? Get the hell away from my house!

  But in the end it was just too weird seeing him like that, too random, so I said nothing, and hurried inside to get ClamTop.

  When I came back out, Seb, and the van, had gone.

  As I got back into the Hummer Hound said, ‘So what does a house in there set you back?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, and it was the truth because I really didn’t know.

  ‘Ball park?’ said Hound. ‘One mil? Two mil?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘You’d have to ask my dad.’

  Hound thought about this for a while and said ‘Too far from the water for my liking. My place, I got the ocean at the front door and the river at my back step.’

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  As we sped away from Halcyon Grove something occurred to me: would the ClamTop actually work?

  I mean, this wasn’t strictly The Debt, was it?

  Well, if it didn’t work it didn’t work. It wasn’t as if I was going to lose a leg over it.

  I’ll give Hound one thing: he sure knew his way around the Gold Coast, especially the spaghetti of freeways between the coast and the hinterland. And although the Hummer had sat nav, Hound didn’t take any notice of it. In fact he seemed to take pleasure in doing exactly the opposite of what it suggested.

  ‘Take the next turn right,’ said Sat Nav.

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ said Hound.

  We jumped from one freeway to another and in no time at all we were in Southport. Hound parked opposite the rat’s nest, a multistoreyed apartment building with a high wall around it and a security entrance.

  ‘Why don’t you just bust in?’ I said to him. ‘Like the cops do on TV.’

  ‘Because we’re not cops on TV,’ he replied. ‘We’re private investigators and we don’t have those powers. Especially not in this country, this nanny state. We have to work smarter.’

  ‘I’m not even armed,’ he continued, reaching under the seat and pulling out a can of Mace. ‘This is all I carry.’