Black Teeth

by Zane Lovitt

  All of this is in my head and I say, ‘Pardon?’

  Rudy is sangfroid, like he’s had time to really come to terms with it, how betrayed he’s been. The tiny eyes don’t dance, the broken tufts of hair don’t beg for sympathy.

  Rudy’s serious face says, ‘Hold out your hands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it!’

  I do it. Slowly draw them from my pockets and present them, palms up. Wait to be asked to turn them over. When he does, am I going to run?

  ‘I’ve got something for you!’ Rudy declares.

  Out of nowhere he drops a wooden box into my waiting paws.

  Beth beams on.

  A chess set. Folded closed and fastened by a metal clasp. It rattles in my hands. Rudy must see the relief in my face, thinks it’s joy.

  ‘Yeah,’ he guffaws. ‘That’s the one I played with…with my dad.’

  And despite the adrenaline in my system, my certainty two seconds ago that the charade was over and I was about to be set upon by at least one demented maniac, what I’m thinking is: Your father’s dead. How did you know to bring a gift?

  ‘Oh.’ My eyes flash at Beth, who appears slightly confused by my confusion.

  ‘It’s to say sorry,’ she says.

  ‘Beth told me…’ Rudy says. ‘About how you only just met with… up with your father.’

  ‘Riiiiiiiiiiiight,’ I perform comprehension. ‘Thank you so much. I’ve played chess a few times, but never against a person.’

  ‘I mean…’ Rudy flusters, flaps his genuinely tattooed hand in the air to help him think. ‘I mean, you can play draughts with him. I don’t know if the chess bits are in there.’

  And I’m like, ‘Okay.’

  ‘It’s very thoughtful of you, Rudy.’ Beth stands and clasps her hands at her waist like a governess. ‘It’s very thoughtful of him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I glower at my stupid chocolates.

  ‘I think you should say sorry, Rudy.’ She gently touches his shoulder.

  ‘I did! I am!’ Outraged by her implication that he didn’t, isn’t. Then he cools, remembers his script, the one she wrote for him. ‘I mean…’ And he faces me straight on. ‘I want to be friends.’

  It sounds rehearsed, but still he means it.

  ‘I want to be friends too.’ I attempt to match his seriousness. ‘This means a lot to me.’

  Perhaps for the first time ever, Rudy holds my eyes.

  ‘Now Rudy…’ Beth’s voice is so wholesome I almost laugh. She pats her handbag. ‘Remember we have these DVDs to return.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Remember, you said we had to.’

  I say, ‘I have to go anyway, Rudy. But before I do, can you and I have a word in the kitchen?’

  Rudy doesn’t nod or answer but rather turns straight for the hall and I follow, don’t risk a glance at Beth, enter the kitchen and catch a glimpse of the refrigerator. Who knows what strain of swine flu percolates within, but on the door there’s a photograph of Cheryl Alamein—the same photo Rudy held up on the front page of the Daily Sun nine years ago. Beside it is pinned a flyer for a local tradesman, from back when this house had a use for tradesmen, then a lost dog poster with the Alameins’ home phone number and a picture of Busby the cocker spaniel. Who abandoned Rudy in disgust, according to Piers. Who Rudy never stopped searching for, according to Beth.

  I can’t linger at this museum too long, usher Rudy into the pantry.

  The shelves are unstocked and blotted with dirt, stencilled in by the jars and the tins and the life that once filled this space. At some point Rudy cleared them out, which didn’t eradicate the stink of old mushrooms.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.’ This is a reaction to the trepidation in his face. ‘I just had to check. Are you still on for Friday night?’

  ‘You mean…Glen Tyan?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Rudy nods in big motions.

  ‘Yep. Yeah. I’m going to do it.’

  ‘You know it’s very dangerous, what you’re planning. I mean… Anything could happen.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I mean…It’s dangerous for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Rudy, you could die.’

  A shrug. That’s all he offers. I wait, give him time to speak. To insist that he doesn’t want to die. To announce that he never really planned to kill himself with Beth’s car. To conclude that this is all a stupid idea and what he really wants to do with his life is parkour.

  But he says nothing. Just waits for whatever else I brought him here for.

  ‘You know…’ I say, ‘I used to play draughts with your dad. In the clink.’

  He subjects me to another gaze of utter disbelief.

  ‘Only we called it checkers,’ I say.

  ‘Who won?’

  This is what Rudy wants to know.

  ‘Ummm…He did. Mostly.’

  ‘He used to beat me too.’ He’s visibly defeated.

  ‘Did you ever visit Piers when he was inside?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He shrugs and stares at the ground.

  Sixteen. He never tried to visit his father.

  ‘All right. I’ll be in contact Friday, to let you know that the policy is active. Sound good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. Right now I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll call you Friday.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We emerge from the kitchen like two guilty toddlers. Beth stands and swings the handbag onto her shoulder.

  Our march continues out the door and Rudy scrapes at his patchy hair like the DVD place is somewhere special. I put the draughts board under my arm, my right arm this time, my right hand still safe in my pocket, feel the chillsome air and use it as an excuse to hurry away, wave goodbye, give Rudy another meaningful nod, tell Beth it was nice to meet her. The pair hike off towards Montague Street and I reach my car. Get in. Even start the engine. Even drive around to the other side of the block.

  Then I park, take my gloves and jacket this time, jog along Montague, see their huddled shapes moving away to what I assume is a clutch of shops. After this, after they seem to be well and truly settled into their journey, I turn back onto Grand Street, back through Rudy’s front gate and push my hands in and up against the glass of the window angled to the front door. The one Beth unlocked while I was in the pantry with Rudy.

  54

  I’ve cracked the glass, can see it in the top corner now that I’m inside and locking the window. A slight crack, not enough to notice at a glance, a tiny testament to how long these frames have been shut, their function forgotten. Just lucky my hands didn’t tear through and bleed on the carpet.

  My footsteps on the carpet smack loud because I’m here alone and in secret, also because some segments have worn through to the plastic weave. In the kitchen I sit at the glass table after brushing off a chair which sends toenails and whatever crap showering to the floor. Above me the telephone is secured to the column and I consider it like a blank canvas.

  After talking with Tyan last night I thought spoofing a caller ID was the solution, being simple enough software and I could do it from my flat. But sooner or later this will all be reviewed by the Homicide Squad, maybe even the Cyber-Crime Department, and I have to assume even they can unspool a trick like that.

  Then I thought of suggesting Rudy make the call himself. I considered that for a nanosecond. Rudy would misstep, panic, mention my name or Beth’s or Tyan’s, and then everything would become four times more complicated, maybe impossible. If I do it, I can hang up before I say anything stupid.

  The likelihood is that I’ll be asked to leave a message and I run through it out loud before picking up the receiver. I found her number on the Daily Sun website, wonder how to say her name as I listen to the ring, resolve to use only her first name.

  She answers. At least I think it’s a she—a buzzy monotone like she’s talking
through gauze.

  ‘Nina Chiancelli.’

  ‘Nina,’ I say. ‘This is Rudy Alamein.’

  Nothing from her.

  ‘Do you remember me?’

  A shuffling on her desk, like I’ve caught her watching porn. Then calm.

  ‘Sure, I remember you, Rudy. How are you?’

  ‘Okay.’ I soften my voice as best I can. For all my success at lying, I’ve never been much of a mimic. But she’s got nothing more than a memory of thirteen years ago to compare me to.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ she gruffs, too friendly. ‘What…what have you been up to, darl? I was sorry to hear about your father.’

  ‘I’m just calling,’ I cup the receiver to talk even more softly. Even more like Rudy. ‘Because I have something to…I want to tell you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The background noise cuts off. She’s shut her office door.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I thought it was unfair. How you treated me.’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘You put me on the newspaper, on the front page. Saying that my dad should confess.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm…’

  ‘I never said that. I mean, you told me to say that.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I did, darl.’

  ‘You told me what to say and you knew I wasn’t…couldn’t argue.’

  ‘Now, that’s not fair. If I helped you put into words—’

  ‘It is fair. It is fair.’

  ‘Nobody put a gun to your head, Rudy.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I say. In those words I am more myself than Rudy. ‘I was susceptible. You suscepted…suscepted me.’

  ‘Yeah, all right…I’m sorry you feel that way.’

  ‘But there’s something else I’ve got to say.’

  Silence now. Standing by.

  ‘What happens on Friday night is justice. Don’t…I don’t want you to think it’s because I’m crazy.’

  ‘What’s going to happen on Friday night?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I let the drama of that hang in the air, then:

  ‘Just remember that I do this of my own volition.’ Not a Rudy word. ‘I mean, like, on purpose. Not because of drugs. Not because I’ve been tricked into anything the way you tricked me. What happens on Friday is…is important.’

  ‘You have to tell me more, darl. I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘You’ll know. After Friday. A toothbrush can be…can change everything.’

  I roll my eyes. Was that a step too far?

  ‘Is this about the rumours I’ve heard, Rudy?’

  My ear goes cold.

  ‘What…What rumours?’

  ‘About your mother’s death.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I heard on the grapevine that there’s some kind of evidence? Relating to her murder?’ She’s trying to prompt me. ‘Something that’s yet to come to light. Or at least, the police haven’t found it yet. Does that sound right to you?’

  ‘What do you mean? Like…’

  ‘That’s all I know. It’s come to me kind of obliquely, but maybe it’s true. Is it true?’

  Is this a bluff? An attempt to get Rudy talking?

  ‘What kind of evidence?’

  ‘I’m saying I don’t know—’

  ‘Does it prove that…What does it prove?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought you might know. It’s just a rumour I heard—’

  ‘Tell me exactly what you heard.’

  ‘Just that there’s something out there, darl. Supposedly hidden. Why don’t you and I meet up and talk—’

  ‘Just remember what I said about Friday.’

  I hang up.

  My ear hurts from pushing the receiver too hard against my head.

  Whatever sunshine there’s been is gone for good and the wind picks up and the house groans like an old man mewling for sympathy. I drop my head in my hands to think.

  What the fuck was that about? It’s half impossible to know and half definitely proof that Rudy killed his mother. Did he tell someone years ago? Leave a bloody fingerprint behind? How does it take thirteen years to come up?

  Or Piers said something. To someone inside before he died. But that wasn’t evidence. It wasn’t a thing yet to be discovered. Did Piers have proof before he went on trial? Was he hiding more crap in his workshop? Maybe Ken Penn has something squirrelled away in that tiny room where he lives, something that explains how certain he is of Rudy’s guilt. But then why not share it with the world?

  And there’s Beth. She might have pried the truth out of Rudy if she ever cared what the truth was, hung onto it until whatever grift she was running required Rudy to be imprisoned.

  Or maybe it’s the standard Nina Chiancelli line that keeps her sources on the hook.

  But among all the possibilities that swirl and shiver in the dank of the kitchen, watching me slump and glower at them, the one verging on self-evident is that it’s Rudy himself. Concrete proof that he killed his mother and he keeps it under his bed because he’s Rudy and he’s crazy and somehow the word’s got out and no one’s cared enough to follow up. Because he’s Rudy and he’s crazy.

  My eyes scan the kitchen, come to rest on the sideboard and I’m out of the chair, darting to it, pulling on the drawers and the cabinet doors: crockery mostly, silver-yellow cutlery and water jugs. One drawer is crammed with hundreds, maybe thousands of lacker bands, strung together in a single rubbery rope. A rope that could wrench me out of a million panic attacks. Rudy with thirteen years to kill.

  I run out the back door and into the yard, run the path to Rudy’s bungalow.

  Its door is wood and frosted glass, not locked and when it opens I reel at the pong of the bedroom. My old bedroom at Mum’s used to have this smell and she used to pinch her nose whenever she came in, remark with that nasal voice how she could think of

  A woman appeared wearing a uniform. A nurse or an orderly. She asked Mum if she was hungry and Mum held up her little sign that used to say ‘Strewth, Cobber!’ and now said ‘No’. Then she fumbled for the other sign, the one that said ‘Thank you.’ But the young nurse had already smiled at me and left.

  Mum whispered something and I leaned in, ‘What?’

  ‘Single,’ was her softly spoken word.

  ‘Single?’

  ‘Boyfriend’s…run off,’ she said.

  ‘Mum, you really think—’

  ‘She likes bad boys.’

  Ah, I thought. This old punchline. When I was fifteen I built a metronome at school and then I stuck it in a friend’s locker and left it ticking. Also, I rigged it so the ticking sped up when the locker was opened, and I attached a car battery to it and a whole lot of wiring. I thought I was a comic genius. But the whole school had to shut down and the bomb squad came. I spent the night in youth detention.

  Mum loved to remind me of this.

  I was about to roll my eyes when she suddenly lurched for breath and I gripped her hand and I could hear that ticking, fresh in my ears. Then I was crying because there was literally nothing else I could do.

  nothing better than Empty Nest Syndrome. All that’s here is a single bed and a dresser that’s unused. There are no clothes, hardly some belongings. After a discreet ransack I’m left with the conclusion that Rudy’s stuff is upstairs.

  Before going there I open a rear door to reveal a bluestone laneway, overseen by the bubbled windows of apartments crowded together, accessed to my left where it curves around the houses of Montrose Row; to my right it’s a dead end. This is where Rudy brought the Volvo, if Beth’s story is true. This is where Rudy came the closest so far to joining his father in that big tapas bar in the sky. White cloud doesn’t drift by but holds entirely still.

  I climb the narrow stairs to a second floor the size of a living room, furnished with a single pile of junk, all the way to the ceiling, to the small skylight in its centre. Mostly clothes, that awkward smell again, items just damaged enough to be useless: a skateb
oard missing a wheel, a graffitied street sign, a deformed plastic Christmas tree. A mountain of shit as disorderly as Rudy’s brain.

  I pick through the mess like a homeless man picking through a dumpster: food-spattered curtains, cardboard boxes filled with door handles, ladder rungs without the ladder. Eventually I return a broken tiki torch and use it to rummage, saving me the anxiety of touching Rudy’s things. At first I’m reluctant to leave any sign I’ve been here and I’m prudent, even careful. Then I determine it’s impossible for me to leave such a sign—there’s simply nothing recognisable in how this trash is compiled—and my actions become more forceful as I become more frustrated.

  From the top of the window frame a solitary cockroach watches on, its feelers whirring, wondering who this new guy is.

  With no concept of what I’m looking for, my digging becomes half-hearted. The light from the skylight is plentiful, I can see everything fine, but the mess is too dense. Rudy has never discarded a single possession, has merely set it all here as an indoor monument to lunacy.

  The thing that’s been eating at me ever since the phone call only now makes itself apparent, stops my searching, makes me gaze up at the skylight, then at the frosted window as if I could see out of it to the house. Then I toss the tiki torch and head downstairs, back across the garden.

  Surely the most likely way for anything to remain undiscovered for thirteen years is for it to be located in a place where no human has been for thirteen years.

  The house seems cooler when I come inside, the ground floor shrouded in a darkness I’d forgotten while hunting through the comparative sunshine of the bungalow. At the base of the stairs I look up, analyse each step like it might collapse beneath my feet.

  The front door is shut. Rudy isn’t home. It must be a long walk to the DVD store. Maybe I have time.

  I start climbing.

  55

  A different odour. Foetid. Almost solid. I haven’t even reached the twist in the stairs before I notice. A musty decay, not the fresh kind in the kitchen. The power of it itches my nose.