Black Teeth

by Zane Lovitt

  And the teenage waiter, with his gelled hair and shiny face, he said, ‘What?’

  ‘Someone needs to talk to you real quick.’ I tried to seem apologetic.

  The waiter wiped his hand on his apron and took the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence. Then he said, ‘Spatafina’s.’

  His unibrow formed a deep V on his forehead like a highly inconvenienced Klingon warship. He said, ‘Anderson Street. Yeah. 91 Anderson Street, Kensington.’

  How I explained this to Marnie is: I didn’t look at Marnie.

  The boy said, ‘Around nine on weekdays. Fridays and Saturdays it’s later. Sundays we’re closed. Yeah. Sundays we’re closed.’

  Then Tyan said something that made this kid laugh with his whole body, mouth wide and teeth out like a psychopathic puppet. New information: Glen Tyan can make a person laugh. It flooded me with jealousy.

  The waiter said, ‘Well I wouldn’t know anything about that… All right…Cheers, mate.’

  He waved the phone at me and I received it, still emitting apology-vibes, but the boy forgot me instantly and slouched away. I put the phone to my ear.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Come and see me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look…’ His tone had settled. ‘Please.’

  A word so gapingly unexpected that I couldn’t find a response. Genuine vulnerability. From this guy. I stammered and glanced at Marnie. Her arms raised either side of her like a shruggie. Her face told me to get off the fucking phone.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘I can’t right now.’

  His voice cracked and he took a moment to swallow. ‘I need you to help me, Jason.’

  Was that the first time he’d said my name? Gooseflesh prickled my arm. I felt my excitement in the back of my shoulders and fought against that feeling, said, ‘Let me call you later.’

  ‘I know you’re in a shit about last night. You’ve got to admit, it’s strange this happening the same time you show up. Just show up out of the blue. So of course I’m just…I’m careful.’

  ‘Strange that what has happened?’

  ‘I don’t know…’ A long, agitated sigh. ‘There was someone in my backyard.’

  ‘You should call the police.’

  ‘Come over. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a long fucking story, mate. Just come over. I haven’t been able to sleep. I’m going nuts.’

  ‘You understand I’m out? I’m having dinner—’

  ‘Please, matey.’ So imploring you’d think he was mocking me. ‘If I am who you think I am, you can help me just once, can’t you?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Can’t you?’

  Now, in the food court, we spot each other. Tyan’s pudgy frame rises on the escalator in exactly the outfit he wore yesterday. He approaches, watching me watch him. How disappointing it must be, to think this weedy dork is his own flesh and blood. Every few steps he shoots a glance to his left or right, analysing the people. I try to relax. I’m not going to speak first. I will wait for Tyan to start speaking.

  14

  Tyan angles a chair to face the way he came, grunts loud as he sits, murmurs something that might be ‘Thanks for coming’ with that coconut-husk voice. I don’t say ‘You’re welcome’, just shuffle my chair across so that we’re not seated side-by-side. I do it noisily. Then Tyan says:

  ‘How did Helen die?’

  It is not how I expected him to open. I shift and scratch at my shoulder.

  ‘Umm…It’s called pulmonary fibrosis. Her lungs kind of went bad.’

  Tyan nods. But like he’s got any idea what he’s nodding at.

  ‘Did you say it was last year?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She would have been, what? Fifty-nine?’

  ‘Fifty-two.’

  What passes behind his eyes, I don’t know if it’s Tyan remembering her or just pretending to.

  I told Marnie that I had to see a client, that it was an emergency. I waited for her to say something but she just glared, shook her head, offended. On my way out I heard her say, ‘Have fun.’

  So here we are. Me and Tyan. Having fun.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tyan says. ‘I lost my old man when I was your age. No mum around. No brothers or anything. I know it’s…’ He frowns, hopeless. ‘…shithouse.’

  This genuine emotion is another surprise.

  I don’t want to talk about Mum so I ask, ‘Are you married?’

  Tyan pushes air out of his nose. ‘No. I told you last night—’

  ‘Any other kids?’

  ‘Other kids? Mate, I’m not…’

  He laughs breathily. He doesn’t want to finish that denial.

  Across from our table a horde of adolescents rounds the corner, lured by pizza slices and dumplings and the kind of chicken burger that’s yodelling in my stomach, too many of them to be anything less than a school group and sure enough an adult woman, younger than me and somehow older, speaks with a forced smile to three or four that are lingering, waving them on towards food.

  Tyan tries again.

  ‘How do you know…I mean…How do you know I’m the one?’

  ‘Mum told me.’

  ‘My name’s not on the birth certificate.’

  ‘I know. She said that was your idea.’

  ‘We didn’t know if…if I was responsible.’

  ‘She always seemed pretty sure to me.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have been.’ Two rows of teeth clack together. His tongue flicks against his cheek. ‘You were born long after things had finished between Helen and me.’

  ‘Nine months after, in fact.’

  ‘I’m just saying there’s no way for you to be sure. Now, I don’t want to blacken the memory of your mother, but she—’

  ‘Do a test.’

  He snorts, hates being interrupted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do a DNA test.’

  ‘DNA test?’ He scoffs. ‘Do you know how much they cost? Hundreds of dollars.’

  ‘Okay, fuck it then. If it costs hundreds of dollars…’

  But even as I speak I’m leaning away from Tyan because I don’t know how he reacts to sarcasm.

  At first that distance comes over him, the same kind he had last night when he realised who I was. Like a wave of sadness he briefly has to withstand. Then, in reluctant surrender, he reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a small leather flask, unscrews the lid, thoughtful.

  ‘Even if I was the…’ He sighs. ‘I wouldn’t have been any good to you. I was a pisspot back then. Just like now.’

  He drinks a tame slurp. I’m suddenly massively restless.

  ‘What am I doing here…’ I look for a word to address him, but I can’t call him Dad, won’t call him Glen, and Tyan feels like we’re at boarding school. And who calls their father ‘mate’?

  So I finish with nothing and let the question hang.

  ‘Hey,’ Tyan puts away the flask. ‘You looked me up on the internet, right? You came and found me.’

  ‘On the phone you begged—’

  ‘Why did you do that? Why did you have to find me so bad?’

  I shrug, remove all emotion from my thoughts. All thoughts from my thoughts.

  ‘There’s stuff that would be good to know. Like, medical stuff. Like a predisposition to something.’

  Tyan shakes his head and arches his mouth. ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Prostate issues? Heart problems? Any kind of bug in the system?’

  Shakes his head again, not overly vigorous, just not interested, which I take to mean he’s not hiding some terminal defect beneath this facade of Overly Manly Man. Then he turns, stares keenly at the escalators, displays for me a bald spot at seventy per cent opacity.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  He turns back, uses the palm of his hand to rub his other palm.
>
  ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. But you can bet I won’t be going for a piss while you’re here.’

  Tyan nods, doesn’t consider this an attempt at humour.

  ‘I’m not myself, you can see. I’m edgy. Can’t sleep. The shit that’s been…If you’ve got nothing to do with it, then I’m sorry.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He twitches slightly, tips his head to the side.

  ‘Your job. Finding stuff on the internet…Or was that just bullshit too?’

  ‘It’s not bullshit.’

  ‘If I asked you to find out about someone, could you do it? I mean, could you do it without them knowing it?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Can you or—’

  ‘Yes. Within limits.’

  ‘What limits?’

  ‘I won’t break the law.’

  ‘You broke the law to find me.’

  ‘And then you attacked me and pushed me into a toilet.’

  ‘And then I said I’m sorry. I’ll pay you.’

  I laugh. ‘I don’t work for free.’

  Tyan stops rubbing his palms but can’t stop the fidgeting, seems to grimace at having to ask. ‘How much?’

  ‘Three hundred an hour. But it depends what you want done.’

  ‘Three hundred?’

  ‘It depends what you want done.’

  ‘I need you to find out about someone.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ I say, fucking owning him for just this moment. ‘Elizabeth Cannon.’

  15

  It began last Monday night, after a party at the Darebin RSL. A detective senior sergeant was retiring and a piece ran in the Daily Sun that day, Hollywood-taping his career, calling him a legend, previewing the alcoholic circle jerk that awaited him. Tyan’s name was written up as one of the likely attendees.

  ‘The point is,’ Tyan says, ‘Anyone that wanted to know where I’d be that night would know just by picking up the fucking newspaper.’

  It’s 2012, I want to say. No one’s picked up a newspaper since 1997. But I let him continue.

  He’d drunk more than his share and he shouldn’t have driven home. Not that he thought that at the time. At the time he figured it was after midnight and the traffic would be light and he’d motor along on impulse power so he risked it. But he lost focus on the Eastern Freeway, missed the exit and trapped himself on the approach to Mullum Mullum Tunnel. Emboldened by the beer, Tyan U-turned quickly through the centre divider, narrowly avoided a utility vehicle and a motorcyclist.

  What was strange was, then a green Volvo did precisely the same thing. He saw it in the rearview. Its break in the oncoming traffic was clearer though; it didn’t almost kill someone like Tyan had.

  He watched the Volvo in his mirror as he came off the freeway and down onto Springvale Road. Couldn’t see the driver. Even at the red lights he tried but couldn’t see.

  ‘Did they want you to know they were tailing you? Like, to intimidate you?’

  ‘Nuh. I don’t reckon. They were just shit at it.’

  He wasn’t sure if this was for real or if he was paranoid with booze. Maybe his unconscious was getting nostalgic. After an evening spent carousing with other coppers, maybe he hankered for the old adrenaline, projected this desire onto a vehicle that had coincidentally chosen the exact same moment to U-turn…

  It followed him all the way home.

  By which time Tyan was halfway to the disturbed ward. He drove past his own house, around the block, all the way around and back again and parked and rushed inside. He thought that had worked. But when he pulled back the curtain on his front window, there it was, stopped on the corner, camping the house. Whoever they were, they’d turned off their lights and slumped down in the seat. But they were there. It wasn’t nostalgia.

  ‘Did they see you looking out the window?’

  ‘Nup. It’s one-way glass.’

  ‘So he doesn’t know you saw him.’

  ‘That’s right. But I didn’t say it was a he. Let me finish.’

  Whoever it was, they stayed only a minute, motored slowly around the corner and moved off at speed. They mustn’t have realised it was a dead-end because they came back, faster this time, barrelling on towards Maroondah Highway.

  ‘They drove off?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Why would someone follow you home then drive away?’

  ‘That’s obvious.’ Tyan doesn’t hide his disdain for my question. ‘To find out where I live.’

  He takes another survey of the nearby tables: mostly empty. Way off to the right the chairs are getting stacked, bain-maries wiped, floors mopped, while to our left these high schoolers maintain their petty warfare, far enough away to give us a sense of privacy. He pulls out the hipflask again.

  ‘Something you learn in the police force…’ He sips a sip. ‘The wackos that send you dead rabbits in the post aren’t the wackos you got to worry about. It’s the ones trying to sneak up on you that mean business.’

  ‘So do you have any, like, I suppose…enemies?’

  ‘There are a few names that come to mind. A few crims.’

  ‘Did you get the licence plate?’

  ‘Course I did. Mate in the traffic unit traced it for me. Registered to Elizabeth Cannon. An address in Brunswick. Young bird about your age.’

  ‘Does her name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not fucking remotely.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe she wasn’t driving.’

  ‘I think she was.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She gave herself away.’

  Tyan lets that hang, so I have to say, ‘How?’

  But instead of answering he arches back in his seat, distracts himself with the worrisome school teacher who moves slowly past our table. She watches her students the way he watches her—brimming with distrust. As she nears a furtive group of boys, all of them chewing too much food for their tiny mouths, Tyan’s glare fades and, after lingering on her a moment longer, his eyes come back to me.

  ‘She reported the car stolen. About six o’clock, earlier that same night. She did that on the internet.’

  This last point he makes as if we should be surprised.

  ‘But then, the next morning, yesterday morning, she calls up her local copshop and tells them the car’s back, right back in her parking space, where it was nicked from. A constable went over and did a report, said the driver’s window was smashed and the honey pot was chewed to shit.’

  ‘The honey pot?’

  ‘The key ignition. Someone tore it up with a sharp tool, they said.’

  ‘So it wasn’t her. Someone nicked her car and followed you around.’

  ‘But here’s the thing…’ He puffs his cheeks into a ball and slowly exhales. ‘And I swear this on my life. There was no smashed window when I saw that vehicle.’

  This puzzles me, but I’m reluctant to reveal that, so I nod gravely.

  He says, ‘I guarantee it. She drove past my house. I saw all the windows. None of them were broken.’

  ‘So…the damage happened after you saw the car?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So she followed you home and the car was nicked after that?’

  ‘Maaaaate…’ A chuckled slur, like he’s amused by how ashamed he is of my stupidity. ‘The vehicle wasn’t stolen. This Elizabeth character wants to shift focus, in case I clocked the car, which I did, so she gets in first and says it was boosted. Plus, if there’s a police report, she can claim the damage on her insurance. Oldest trick in the fucking book.’

  ‘But if it’s a ruse, why park it back in her own space? Why not leave it blocks away? Or suburbs away?’

  Tyan’s amusement evaporates. He fidgets with the lid of his flask.

  ‘Don’t know. To make sure it didn’t get nicked again. Or pissed on by a dero.’

  ‘So, are they, like, going to arrest her?’

  ‘Christ, no.’

  ‘I just thought, you’
ve got friends in the police—’

  ‘This isn’t their problem. I just asked someone to trace the plate and even that was pushing it. I didn’t tell him what happened. Cops have got more important things to worry about than my bullshit.’

  The high schoolers are leaving. Their plates and leftovers have magically vanished and they’re ambling to the escalators, leaving only Tyan and me and the cleaners to close out the place.

  ‘So what about tonight?

  Tyan shrugs, looks away again.

  ‘I don’t know. I thought I heard someone in the backyard.’

  ‘No sign of the Volvo?’

  ‘No Volvo. No people. Just me standing out there like a prick in the wind. That’s the real problem. I’m not sleeping. I’m seeing shadows. Like with you last night. I need to find out who Elizabeth Cannon is. Can you do that?’

  Those big watery eyes look out with something like helplessness.

  ‘How do you spell her name?’

  ‘Normal Elizabeth. Cannon like a ship’s cannon.’

  I write this into my phone.

  ‘What’s the plate number?’

  Tyan recalls it without having to think. ‘E-L-O, three seven one.’

  ‘And what’s your budget?’

  More vulnerability. Eyes like teardrops.

  ‘What’s your quote?’

  I pause, but this isn’t shrewd negotiation; Tyan just doesn’t know how long it takes to google someone.

  ‘I’ll cap it at two-fifty. Call it family rates or whatever. And it gives us a reason to see each other again.’

  Tyan seems pleased.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. And if I am…the bloke you think, it’d be good to spend more time together, right?’

  Then he says, rubbing his satisfied palms down his breasts and without a trace of irony, ‘Well, I best be heading home.’

  16

  It’s the next morning and I should be working. I intend to be: my candidate files are out on my desk, mellowing beside my two-day-old, freshly microwaved coffee. I’ve turned my heater down to keep a crispness in the air, keep me alert. This is how a day starts that usually ends with some light Call of Duty and a fully-compiled dossier; doubly necessary now that Albert Kane and Roach wants to announce its harvest next week.