Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  She came towards them with a step that was sort of inevitable but reluctant, like she was a fish on a line baited with fate.

  ‘So what’s going on, Stan?’ she said quietly when they were all together.

  She hadn’t changed colour much – black people don’t go white, of course, but their lips go pale. So does the patch of skin under their eyes.

  ‘Am I by a window, Betty?’ chirruped Royce.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on Stan.

  ‘Just got to thinking about that passport, Betty,’ Stan said. ‘Lotta work went into it. I stood around all lunchtime to get that passport for the kid. No good to you. Thought he may as well have it back.’

  She opened her mouth, closed it again, leant down to the pile of stuff in her hands with a quickness that could have been a shrug. ‘Yeah, why not?’ she gritted. ‘Here’s your passport, Royce.’ She handed it to him, then looked back up at Stan. ‘You’re wrong, you know. I coulda made good use of it.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’ve just done a nice considerate thing, haven’t you?’

  You could see sparks flaring in her eyes, deep in. ‘Yeah, I have, Stan. What happened?’

  ‘Must’ve got my annual bout of conscience, Betty. Kid could do with the fare, too.’

  Royce had taken the passport, oblivious to all the tension going on above his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and opened it to look for stamps.

  With that breath-taking speed she had with money, Betty suddenly had two $US100 bills in her hand. She held them out to Royce. ‘Bad luck, kid,’ she said. ‘Here, you can still take a flight. Stroll over to Domestic and get yourself a trip home.’

  He was gobsmacked. He was pale, too – the blood had left his cheeks to get up into the thinking compartment. And thinking led to the penny dropping for the poor little bastard. But he didn’t say anything direct – he didn’t want to tempt fate. He just said, ‘What’s going on, Betty?’ in a whisper. And he was swallowing a lot.

  ‘Well, I got to thinking, Royce. Your pain-in-the-arse friend Dooley gave us Johnnie Walker, remember?’

  The kid’s brow folded in irritation at the irrelevance of the question. ‘No.’

  ‘To toast the fish?’

  ‘Oh … yeah. Right.’

  ‘Well, see, Royce – Toto Suisan give all their agents Seagram’s.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yeah, Seagram’s, Royce – whether they want it or not. And you drink it whether you like it or not – if you want to stay agent to Toto Suisan.’

  ‘Maybe Dooley’d run out of Seagram’s?’

  ‘You never run out with the amount Toto send you. Killed off at least half their agents with cirrhosis, I’d say.’

  ‘Jeepers, Betty, what’s a bit of whiskey got to do with anything?’ he whimpered.

  ‘It’s got to do with the fact that I don’t need to have you tagging along, kid. Dooley Morgan ain’t no agent of Toto Suisan, so I don’t need you.’

  That was harsh. The kid went even blanker, possibly close to tears. ‘You never bought me a ticket, did you?’ he breathed.

  ‘No. I’d worked this out before Stan made the booking.’ Her face crumpled momentarily into compassion. ‘But I meant it about the thirty grand, Royce. I truly did. What’s your address?’

  ‘Eh?’ The kid was in shock.

  ‘Home address. Postal zone.’

  ‘Seventy-four Brougham Street,’ he murmured.

  ‘Right, 74 Broughman, Westport.’

  There were two guys in uniform coming over.

  ‘I’ll mail ya. Promise. Bye.’

  She flung one last stinging glare at Stan, then turned, smack into the two guys.

  ‘Betty Rodriguez?’ said one.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘Airport Security.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she said. Or something like that. Stan couldn’t be too sure. Because he was walking out the door.

  ROYCE RECKONED BETTY’D had it wrong about morality having to be taught. It was the other way around. You start by believing people – it’s the easiest way. Having to second-guess everything other people did would exhaust you – the most convenient way to get on with people was to believe them. It was just common sense. Consequentially, you don’t have any defences when they cheat you. It makes you feel as stink inside as he had the day in the Doo Duk Inn with Linda. It’s not that you feel sorry for yourself – well, you do that too – but it’s just the despair of knowing what shits people can be.

  He wasn’t quite focused on what was going on with these two cops to start with, then through his mind-fog he heard one say, ‘Would you care to accompany us, Miss Rodriguez?’

  ‘No,’ Betty was replying, ‘you may accompany me, if you wish, officer, but that’s all the accompanying that’s gonna get done in this particular situation.’

  The two guys had sort of manoeuvred themselves so they could cover any sudden move by Betty. The one in front of her was a short Maori guy; he was doing the talking. ‘We have reason to believe you may be an illegal alien, Miss Rodriguez.’

  ‘Alien!’ quacked Betty, with a harsh little laugh. ‘What, a Martian or something?’

  ‘We believe you may have been aboard a Japanese squid boat.’

  ‘Oh, you believe that, huh?’ She swung to face Royce and sheesh, her eyes were blazing like a Gorgon’s! Then she turned back to the Maori guy. ‘And would this belief have been implanted by a call from Westport?’

  ‘We don’t divulge …’

  ‘I was abducted!’

  ‘We’ll sort all that out. Now, if you’ll just …’

  ‘Listen, just suppose I was this illegal alien, what are you gonna do with me? Huh? Deport me, right? Deport me to my last known place of residence, right? Well, that was Tokyo, and here in my hand is a ticket to Tokyo, so why don’t you just let me go?’

  The Maori guy paused one beat, then said, ‘The system doesn’t work like that, Miss Rodriguez.’

  ‘And why the hell not?’

  He paused two beats this time. ‘We have to establish that no New Zealand laws have been transgressed. Now if you’ll …’ He reached out his hand.

  ‘Don’t you touch me!’ barked Betty. She swung to Royce again. ‘Enjoying yourself, kid? Don’t. I’ll get this sorted and I’ll be back.’

  And they herded her away to a grey door behind the counters.

  ROYCE BELTED ACROSS the foyer. The girl behind the counter Betty’d been at gave a smile she didn’t really want to do. ‘Any luggage, sir?’ she said.

  ‘No. I mean – no. Not that. That woman that’s been taken away is illegal. You know that because you must’ve told the cops.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t …’

  ‘No, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, the ticket she’s got belongs to me. She tricked me and didn’t buy me a ticket and was going to pinch my fish. By rights I should be allowed in her seat.’

  ‘I’m sorry sir, that can’t be done.’

  ‘But you’ve got my fish in your hold and someone has to be with it.’

  ‘Have you got a ticket, sir?’ She was glancing over his shoulder. There were two people waiting behind him. Stuff them.

  ‘I’ve got that one.’ He pointed to the grey door with AIRPORT SECURITY on it. ‘That’s my ticket in there.’

  ‘Next,’ said the girl. She had been quite pretty until about now.

  ‘Look, please, if you don’t let me on, the fish will go without me.’

  ‘What fish, sir?’

  ‘It’s in your hold – of your plane going to Tokyo.’

  ‘That’s not my department, sir. I deal with passengers and baggage, not cargo. Freight deals with cargo. Now if you’ll …’ And she leaned past him to give the unwilling smile to someone else.

  ‘Well, where’s Freight?’

  ‘You can’t deal with them, sir, it’s off limits. Next.’

  ‘Look, the ticket’s been bought; it’s paid for. The illegal woman won’t be using it so there’ll be an empty seat on the p
lane. Why can’t you just give it to me?’

  ‘Sir, I will have to call the authorities if you don’t move on. There are people waiting.’

  Jesus! Royce slumped on the counter, looked up and said, ‘Okay. Well, can I get my fish back, please?’

  ‘Freight is nothing to do with me, sir.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  BENJAMIN ROSS DIDN’T like Qantas. So this problem downstairs he was hearing about on the phone was the best thing’d happened to him today. ‘An’ they kicked the kid out, huh? Har har har. Right. I’ll take it from here, Angela, thanks.’

  Benjamin manoeuvred around his mighty desk, across his wide carpet to the door. ‘Back in five, Brenda,’ he said to his secretary, and strolled from the plush side of the terminal, down modern stairs to the old side of the terminal. The Qantas side. Up the battered wooden stairs to the office of Tom Liner. He didn’t like Tom Liner.

  Tom was in. In his dingy office, a third the size of Benjamin’s. No view, no panelling – and sure as hell no on-site TV studio.

  ‘Hi, Tom, thanks for your time. I’m hearing you’re having a passenger problem downstairs.’

  Tom raised the eyes in his big bloodhound face without raising the rest of it. ‘I’ve got about seventy staff to deal with passenger problems, Benjamin. You yourself have about two hundred.’

  ‘This kid, they tell me, comes hustling up to our counter saying, “Follow that plane! It’s pinched my fish.” Har har har. You’re priceless, you Qantas people – pinching a kid’s fish. Har har. What next, eh, Tom?’

  Tom raised his whole face now. Hauled it upright and sat back in his non-ergonomic chair. ‘Jesus, Benjamin, is this the sort of tit-arsed issue the CEO of a major airline involves himself in?’

  Benjamin turns his back to look at framed photos of Qantas aeroplanes in the sky. Jumbos. (So why we got DC-10s? The prescient philosophers of Air New Zealand rush out an’ buy this ‘monarch of the skies’ – along with Sabena, Air Afrique an’ a coupla half-arsed banana republics. Rest of the bloody world buys Jumbos.) He turns back to Tom, his spleen enlivened. ‘Haven’t used my studio in a week or two, Tom.’

  ‘Holy cow!’ spurted Tom Liner. ‘I can’t believe this! Look, you go use your TV studio, Benjamin, and get your pathetic, vile, blackmailing arse out of my office!’

  Benjamin turned. ‘Yeah, might just do that, Tom.’

  ‘You know,’ growled Tom Liner from under his brow furrows, ‘when I’m watching you making your puke-making, irrelevent, dicky-licking little plugs for your airline on TV, Benjamin, I often wonder why you don’t just franchise the Mickey Mouse Club?’

  ‘Har har, good one, Tom, that sure stung; that smarted, all right. Yeah, I think I might just arrange to have a little on-air muse about unattended baggage and its attendant dangers. Whadda ya think, Tom? In the light of increasing international terrorism, we at Air New Zealand have developed a stringent set of rules on unaccompanied baggage – we wouldn’t dream of letting anything in our holds go unattended. So you’ll understand my astonishment to find that our friendly rival has no such consideration for the safety of its passengers …’

  ‘You always were a below-the-belt semi-gangster, Ross, and you always bloody will be. Okay, the kid can have a seat. Now get out!’

  ‘Oh, no no no, Tom, that’s not it at all.’ Benjamin approached the fuming Qantas boss. ‘The kid is highly disillusioned with Qantas, Tom. He doesn’t want a seat with you any more. He just wants his fish. He wants his fish to go where it’s gotta go with a decent airline. Now, why don’t you get your freight people to drop it over to my freight people, pronto pronto, eh?’

  Benjamin Ross strolled from the old side of the terminal to the new. His day broadened into pleasurable brightness. ‘Get me Seb Mooney, will you, Brenda?’ he said as he re-entered his cavernous office.

  Benjamin Ross didn’t like Seb Mooney.

  ‘Hi, Seb, how’s it going, buddy? Good, good. Listen, Seb, gotta little item that’ll brighten up your show tonight … Full programme? What you got on, then, Seb? Helen Reddy, right. Richard Hadlee. A dog that saved a baby. What sorta dog, Seb? Newfoundland, I see. You sure the baby wanted saving? Har har har. Now listen, Seb, I think no more than three minutes live. That can’t be too much to fit in, with a bit of tweaking? Eh? … Eh?!’ Benjamin can’t believe his ears. He thumps his massive totara desk. ‘Now, listen here, Seb Mooney. In front of me on my desk here is a $60,000 rental car bill, racked up by lazy, self-important TV employees, which from the kindness of my heart I might just pay, cos you can’t. Now I think sixty grand for three minutes on-air time is a pretty competitive deal, don’t you, Seb? Yeah. And tell the crew to bring a toothbrush and passport. They’re going to Tokyo tonight.’

  HE STILL GOT a bit nervous, but you could use it – push out, don’t get imploded by nerves. The young boy, um … he glanced at his notes, Royce Rowland, looked a bit edgy. But that was all right; Benjamin would do a bit of the fatherly thing – that always looked good. Good-looking kid, too. The girls’d be squealing when they saw him.

  Bars and tone, countdown, now: ‘Well, hello again, folks, from Air New Zealand, with a little story I’m sure you’ll enjoy. This is Royce Rowland, a young man all the way from Westport. Ever been on TV before, Royce?’

  Shook his head; curls bobbled, squeals in the living rooms of the land.

  ‘No, I bet not; not too many cameras down there on the Coast, eh? Har har. Well, folks, Royce has caught a record-breaking fish: a tuna – a fish so big you just won’t believe. Now, Royce is not a mercenary boy by any means, but if he can get this fish to the market in Tokyo – what was it called again, Royce?’

  ‘Tsukiji.’

  ‘Right, Soo – yeah, that’s the place – he can raise the money to replace a fishing boat that got damaged recently. Royce wants to help out an old fisherman who hasn’t got the money to cover the costs of repair to his boat. Now, like you, I reckon Royce deserves all the help he can get, and Air New Zealand is certainly going to do that. Isn’t that right, Royce?’

  Nods, curls, squeals in living rooms.

  ‘Well, there’ll be no difficulties here, Royce. I have here for you a return economy class ticket on a DC-10 flight tonight, via Hong Kong to Tokyo! Whaddaya say to that?’

  The little shitbag didn’t say anything. Just sat there, looking like Shirley Temple, gawping at him.

  ‘Lost for words, eh, Royce? Har har. I don’t blame you, son. Look, you just have a nice flight, Royce – Air New Zealand will look after you every inch of the way. And your fish, of course, har har. And good luck with your sale in Tokyo …’

  ‘What about Sydney, Nadi?’

  ‘Aha! No worries there, Royce. The Air NZ DC-10, flying at eighty-four percent of the speed of sound, gets you direct to Hong Kong. Our new flight schedule, Royce, is the first in the world to get you to Tokyo with just one short stopover!’

  ‘Is Hong Kong more than eight hours?’

  ‘Well, it’s nine hours if I remember’ – where was this little shit’s gratitude? – ‘but total stopover time has been cut down, on Air New Zealand, by over six hours!’

  ‘Can I go in the cargo hold?’

  What? What the fuck was going on here? Who was this bloody kid? What was he trying to do? ‘What’s that, there, Royce? Har har. Um – I beg your pardon? Cargo hold. Ooh, no, Royce. Har har – Air New Zealand’s far too conscious of your safety and comfort to let you travel in the cargo hold!’

  ‘You’ve got to put more ice in after eight hours, otherwise the fish will warm up and get flesh burn.’

  ‘Oh, I see, I see. Look, there’s no way we’ll let your fish get burned, Royce. I’m sure it’ll be completely unharmed on arrival. If anyone can get your fish to Tokyo without burning it … Hell – I mean gee – we spent $270 million to make sure you’d get to Tokyo six hours faster than anyone else, har har har …’

  ‘Can it come in the cabin?’

  Benjamin Ross could see black waves strobing in front of his eye
s. He knew he was sweating. He could see himself sweating in the monitor over there – sweating on live, prime-time television. Was this kid from hell or something? Was he being paid by Qantas to do this? The item had gone on way longer than three minutes – where was the bloody wind-up call? ‘In the cabin? The fish? Gosh, Royce, that’s a … a big thing to ask.’

  The tinkly voice of Sally Arthur came over the airwaves – they’d cut back to the presenters in the studio. There she was, smiling so sweetly it made you sick. ‘Well, Mr Ross? What’s it to be?’ she gushed. ‘Are you going to grant Royce his wish or shatter his dreams?’

  He put a smile on his lips that from the inside tasted of bile: ‘Well, Sally, you, like everyone else, know Air New Zealand’s not in the business of shattering dreams. And by hokey we’ve never stepped back from a challenge, either! … Okay, Royce, we’ll arrange for your fish to be stored down the back of the plane out of the way so you can get it safely to market. If anyone can get it to market, Air New Zealand can, eh? Har har.’

  HE’D KICKED THE little shit out of the studio. Now he faced the crew. ‘Okay, stand away from those cameras, this is off the record. You arseholes listening?’ The pale but defiant faces of the presenters filled the studio monitors. They nodded. ‘Right, now hear this. Don’t you ever mess with me again. I don’t want any mention of this – and forget the trip, this topic is embargoed. There will be not a pixel more coverage of this fiasco. If one adverse word of this situation appears on TV – or in any form of media for that matter, you’re all dead meat!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘GOOD EVENING, CAPTAIN Baines.’

  F/O Don Tapps. Good. Greg Baines liked his co-pilot to get to work ahead of him. ‘Evening, Flight Officer.’ He’d flown this route twice with Tapps and had been reasonably impressed. University degree as well as air force background – and most reassuring of all, his hobby was rifle shooting. It was nice to know you had a crack-shot next to you on the lunatic visual descent into Hong Kong.