The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  Florica, Oscar thought.

  She checked her watch, then reversed back down the lane. Unless she’d disappeared through a back entrance, she’d never come out; her burned bones were somewhere under the ash.

  The printer began a staccato zip-zipping.

  “Thank you,” Oscar said.

  He heard a metallic click and turned to face Stuart.

  The little man was holding the big pistol. Its hammer was cocked back. Oscar was unsurprised.

  “How do I know you won’t tell anyone I’m here?” Stuart said.

  Oscar watched him. “You don’t.”

  The gun shook a little in Stuart’s hand. Large-caliber revolvers were, Oscar knew, quite heavy.

  “I don’t want to lose all this,” Stuart said.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

  “I think I could keep this going for years.”

  “Could do.”

  “So why should I take the risk and let you go?”

  Oscar shrugged. “I might be missed.”

  Stuart shook his head. “You don’t look like the kind of guy people miss. In fact”—his little mind was ticking—“I’d be surprised if anyone knows you’re here.”

  Oscar nodded and stood. “Then I’ll go about my business, and you can make up your mind.” Oscar turned his back on the other man and went across to the AV rack where the printer was. He felt the eye of that enormous pistol staring, and his skin crawled. “Killing’s not like you see in the movies, Stuart. It’s messy, especially with a rhino gun like that. Slug’s as wide as your thumb. No matter where you shoot me, it’s going to punch through and take a whole lot of cargo with it. Hit me in the head and you’ll be picking skull and teeth out of your ceiling all weekend.” He picked up the print of the ponytailed man from the printer tray. He turned and faced Stuart. “Hit me in the chest and you’ll be finding bits of spine in the room next door. Either way, you’ll need new carpet; there’s a good six liters of blood in a man my size, and that cannon there would let most of it out. And then you have to get rid of the body.”

  Oscar stepped forward. The little man’s stubby finger was on the trigger. The gun remained aimed at Oscar’s chest but was shaking: the huge muzzle wavered an inch side to side. Oscar slowly reached and took the big pistol and uncocked the hammer.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Oscar said as he tucked it into the small of his back. “I don’t know if I could shoot a man, either.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” Stuart asked quietly.

  Oscar clapped him on the shoulder. “Stuart, you only pointed a gun at me. You’re one of the nicest people I know.”

  Oscar hurried to his car, excited.

  Stuart had spoken about being arrested.

  Now Oscar remembered where he’d seen the ponytailed man.

  The key was where it had been hidden for the past thirty years: beneath a potted maidenhair fern beside the newel post of the back stairs. Oscar unlocked the downstairs door and smelled damp rot and mold. Most of the water had drained away, leaving only dark puddles around the concrete washtubs and in a low corner. Out of habit, Oscar flicked on the bare suspended lightbulb. It remained dead. He went to the workbench and carefully lifted the box of newspaper clippings outside into the sunlight.

  In a few moments, he held the clipping he was looking for.

  The yellowed newsprint had a halftone photograph of Sandro Mariani leading away in handcuffs a laughing young man. There was no caption, no body copy—only the headline reading “Killer Remanded. Full Story page 5.” In the black-and-white picture, Sandro Mariani was Oscar’s age now, making the clipping around thirty years old. Although the crim’s hair was short and dark, and the hair of the man who carried the wrapped idol from the fortune-teller’s door was ponytailed and gray, one thing was clear: they were the same man.

  Chapter 26

  Intravenous tubes, catheter tubes, oxygen tubes. Looms of wires. Spots of blood on bandages holding cannulas and on the white sheets near the elbows. Despite the web of conduits, Sandro was asleep. It seemed strange to Oscar that this withered person, this barely alive thing, had dominated his mind for nearly thirty years. Quietly terrifying; terrifyingly quiet—then explosive.

  Oscar had seen his father in action only once. At sixteen, Oscar knew Sandro’s work shifts, and had caught the late-afternoon train into the city and crossed Roma Street to police headquarters. By then the desk sergeants knew him well enough to wave Oscar through the back corridors to the adjoining watchhouse. In the watchhouse drive, a standard unmarked cop sedan was parked, engine running, and he recognized Sandro’s partner, Vic Pascoe, a man with features so rough and hard you were glad to look away from them. Pascoe was helping out of the car a young man whose huge arms and bare back were a forest of tattoos: grinning skulls and nude women and wolves. The felon’s wrists were handcuffed, and Oscar could just glimpse Sandro through the sedan’s rear window, his face seemingly suspended in reflected orange clouds. Suddenly, Vic Pascoe was on the ground and the tattooed man was running. Where he thought he’d get to, Oscar didn’t know—the gates at the top of the drive were ten feet high and frosted with razor wire. Oscar was standing between the escaping felon and the gate. Then the felon’s eyes turned to him. Oscar could see the difference machine in the man’s head take him in, add him up, and spit out an answer: if Oscar got in his way, he’d kill him. Oscar was so startled that he froze. An instant later, the tattooed man’s eyes widened in surprise as his feet left the ground. Sandro Mariani had moved so quickly that Oscar hadn’t seen him. He pulled the bigger man down and put his knee on the felon’s blueprinted neck. Sandro’s open hand waited in the air above the man’s nose like a hawk on a thermal, ready to strike. He regarded the tattooed felon with an expression that looked to Oscar like mere curiosity.

  “Take me home.”

  The dry voice pulled Oscar back into the present.

  Behind the clear plastic mask, Sandro’s mouth was a hyphen. He opened one eye. Oscar was shocked at how sunken it looked: a dull thing held loosely in ash-gray flesh.

  “How are you, Dad?”

  Sandro licked dry lips. “Take me home.”

  Oscar shook his head.

  “Your mother would take me home,” Sandro whispered. His eye roved over Oscar’s face, disappointed.

  “She’d tell you to grow up,” Oscar said.

  Sandro took a few breaths. Each was short and laborious.

  “They want to cut me open,” he said. Every word was an effort. He drew an unsteady finger down his sternum. “Fft. Like a corpse.”

  “They’re going to fix your heart.”

  “Henh. What’s the point?”

  Oscar looked at the lines on the heart monitor: weak ripples, like misty raindrops on a pond. “We want you to get better.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me.”

  Sandro rolled his head a little and opened the other eye, too, fixing Oscar with a stare. A cynical, unhappy stare. “Don’t”—he caught a breath—“lie.”

  Oscar blinked. “It’s not a lie.”

  Sandro’s eyes closed, and his breathing steadied. Slow, shallow breaths. Just as Oscar was convinced that he was asleep, he spoke again. “Did you. Find them?”

  “Who?”

  The old man’s eyes remained closed. “Your. Real. Parents.”

  Oscar stared.

  He’d run away at fifteen. He tracked down the foster homes he’d lived in ten and more years earlier. He visited maternity hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, cemeteries. At every turn, he was stymied by the same thing. He was only fifteen. His legal parents were Sandro and Vedetta Mariani. Come back when you’re eighteen. Oscar slunk home, penniless, thin, smelly. Despite Oscar’s overtures over the next twenty years, despite Vedetta’s whispers in her husband’s ears, Sandro never forgave him for this act of betrayal.

  “I never tried again,” Oscar said quietly.

  Sandro’s eyes opened a little. They hunted for a moment, the
n found Oscar’s. Oscar could see they were exhausted.

  “You’re ashamed,” Sandro whispered.

  “What?”

  Sandro grunted. “I’ve … heard you. Say you’re not … Italian. Ashamed.” Sandro swiveled his eye to Oscar. “Of me.”

  Oscar was stunned. Yes, he had said that, but he hadn’t meant … and he realized that he wasn’t sure what he’d meant. With those words he had been trying to hold tight to something intangible, to some sense of self that had no foundation and no currency. Oscar felt water drop on his hand. His cheeks were wet.

  “No, Dad.”

  Sandro’s breath shuffled, caught. He looked away from Oscar, and his eyes began to flutter closed.

  “Dad.” Oscar wiped his face and reached into a pocket; he unfolded the old clipping of Sandro and the laughing man. He squeezed Sandro’s wrist. “Dad? Who’s this?”

  Sandro blinked, and his eye took a long time to focus on the newsprint. But when it did, a hard glint appeared there.

  “Naville. Bert … Naville.” Sandro’s eyes narrowed, and they shifted to Oscar’s face. “Dead. A jail fire.”

  Oscar frowned. Burned. He remembered Sandro and his empty bottle of grappa and Sandro’s toast to a dead man.

  “When was that?” Oscar asked. “Dad?” Sandro’s eyes were drifting shut. Oscar squeezed his hand. “Dad? Where did they send him up?”

  “Road.” Sandro’s voice was an arid whisper. “Boggo.”

  Then his old mouth was ajar, and the breaths came shallow and even.

  Boggo Road. Maximum Security.

  Chapter 27

  Yes, they sent Mr. Naville here when they began winding down The Road.”

  The deputy manager’s name was Hamblin, and considering his girth he set a fast pace. Oscar kept up as Hamblin strode along the wire-shrouded walkway between concrete yards. He had apologized to Oscar for the rush, but he was about to head a weekly management-team meeting; their boardroom was being remodeled, so they had to use a garage on the far side of the compound. A uniformed correctional officer trailed ten paces behind. Dark, jade-hued clouds prowled the horizons like a dog pack, but right now the jail was in sunlight, and a thousand tinier suns sparkled off chain-link fencing and the sharp blades of the razor wire. Cell blocks were low affairs with silvery roofs. The place glittered like a town woven from metal. This was the maximum-security complex built more than twenty years ago to replace the nineteenth-century Boggo Road Gaol.

  Hamblin chuckled and his large body jiggled. “Yes, coming here after The Road, Naville musta thought he’d landed in Club Med. Cunning little rock spider.”

  Naville had earned the title of “rock spider” after being convicted of the deprivation of liberty and murder of a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Her dismembered body had been found in a weighted suitcase at the bottom of a dam. Naville’s molestation of the girl included carving what the prosecution described as “occult markings” into her breasts, buttocks, and inner thighs. At trial, Naville had not said a word.

  “I had to hand it to him. He survived thirty years in max. Not bad.”

  “More like a cockroach than a spider,” Oscar observed.

  “Touché.” The deputy manager pointed a fat finger pistol at Oscar and clicked his tongue.

  They passed a yard overlooked by watchtowers where two hundred or more inmates moved in bored discontent. There was barely room for each to sit or stand, yet they’d somehow made space in the middle of the yard for a compressed game of football. Those not in the game played cards or chess; or smoked; or watched Oscar, the deputy manager, and the screw stride past.

  “So, Naville’s dead?” Oscar asked.

  “I’m afraid so.” Hamblin’s tone became somber. “A good six weeks ago—right, Tom?” He glanced behind at the stone-faced officer, who nodded once.

  Hamblin explained that Albert Naville was working in the prison laundry when one of the industrial dryers caught fire; no doubt the prisoner’s own fault: he should have been checking the machines’ filters for dangerous buildup of flammable lint. “The fool had managed to hand-truck a bag of soiled linen in front of the fire doors. A bag so-high.” The man’s fat fingers hovered at his shoulder. “No one could get in, and he couldn’t get out.”

  “He was in there alone?”

  “Naville was a longtime man. Earned the right to work alone.”

  They passed another yard as empty as the first was full. In the middle, a gang of three prisoners was constructing a podium from which struck tall posts supporting a stout crossbeam.

  “A gallows?” Oscar asked.

  The fat man wagged his head and laughed. “I know, I know. Legislation’s not even through Parliament yet. But we both know it will be, right?” He winked at Oscar. “And it doesn’t hurt to keep the boys busy. Busy with their hands, and busy with their heads. Sight like that gets them thinking about behaving.”

  “May I see the laundry room?” Oscar asked.

  “Of course.” Hamblin slowed like a liner coming in to dock. “That’s it right there. Or it was.”

  They were at a bend in the walkway, and dead ahead was a section of yard enclosed in temporary fencing lined with green shade cloth stenciled with an oval logo: THATCH CONSTRUCTION. Behind, it was easy for Oscar to see the yellow arm of a back-end loader knocking down the last part of a brick wall, its inner face black with soot. Burned brothel. Burned butchery. Burned prison laundry. Coincidences? He felt Hamblin’s attention turned on him like a radar dish, listening in, waiting.

  Oscar asked, “What happened to his body?”

  “Seared, then baked.” Hamblin chuckled. “I don’t know what they do with the ashes. I’m sure you can find out.”

  “Was there an investigation into Naville’s death?”

  “Naturally.”

  “And?”

  “And the tribunal decided we shouldn’t leave men, even longtimers, to work alone in any prison industry. Rap on the knuckles, my bad.” He tapped one fat hand with another and grinned.

  “Were there any other deaths on the same day Naville died?”

  Hamblin looked back. Despite the jolly grin, Oscar could see careful intelligence in the narrow eyes. “You know, I’d have to look into that.”

  “Could you?”

  “It will take time. Leave me your contact details; I’ll call you when I’ve dug through the records.”

  Time was one thing Oscar could not afford, but he pulled out his business card and handed it over.

  “One last thing and I’ll get out of your hair,” Oscar said. “I need a photograph of Albert Naville. Right away, if I could.”

  The deputy manager watched him, smiling. Oscar could almost see the scales in the man’s mind shifting, finding their level.

  “Yes, sir, we can manage that,” he said carefully. “Might be a few years old. We only snap them when they shift complex or get themselves injured.” He looked over Oscar’s shoulder at the correctional officer. “Tom, would you be a treasure and zip to the office, fetch a copy of the latest photograph of the late inmate Naville? Get Detective Marino here what he needs?”

  Oscar watched the officer retreat along the walkway. Alone, the officer collected a hailstorm of catcalls from the prisoners. Oscar glanced at the sky. Heavy, greenish clouds rolled over the sun, painting the prison with a palette of gray. Even above the hydraulic digger, Oscar could hear the hammering of men working on the gallows. He saw Hamblin watching the timber construction with a sparkle in his eye.

  “They worry about overcrowding here. Don’t know why they do. Everything’s going to work out fine.”

  At the correction center’s reception, Oscar stared at the color photograph of Albert John Naville. The inmate was looking at the camera. Although he was smiling, not laughing as he’d been in the photograph with Sandro, Oscar could see the same gleam of mad delight. His hair was gray, and a profile shot showed a red rubber band holding it back in a ponytail.

  “That all?” asked the correctional officer; the man
’s face was stone.

  “Naville’s belongings, from his cell,” Oscar said. “Did anyone claim them?”

  “I don’t know.” The officer didn’t move.

  “Could you check?”

  The officer gave Oscar a stare as cold and dangerous as a ski jump, then retreated into the back office. He returned a few minutes later and dropped a small plastic bag onto the counter.

  Inside were half a dozen items. A safety razor. A plastic comb. Roll-on deodorant. A toothbrush. A stub of a pencil, and a small spiral notepad—just the front and back cards: every page in between had been torn out, leaving just their confetti remainders trapped in the spiral spring. Oscar held the gray-brown cardboard of the back card on an angle to the light. The ghostly impressions of words intersected and blurred; only three were legible: “charcoal” and “cinnamon incense.”

  Oscar looked up to thank the officer, but he was gone.

  Oscar’s car accelerated onto the highway. The clouds were now rolling over the sky like Titan’s chariots, as green as a storm sea and dropping hailstones that clanged on the hood and shattered on the asphalt like tiny bombs. Cars and motorcycles began to race for the cover of underpasses and bridges. An ice stone the size of a golf ball smashed onto Oscar’s windscreen.

  He was determined to get back to the city, though what his next step would be he didn’t know. Oscar was leaning forward as he drove, his left foot tapping with nervous energy. Naville hadn’t died in that laundry fire. He’d escaped. He’d found a way out and was killing again.

  Sandro had arrested Naville in 1983 for homicide. Now Naville was out again, and young people were dying once more. Someone had spirited the killer out of prison, leaving another inmate to burn in the prison laundry in Naville’s place. Once out, Naville had found Florica at the markets, commissioned her to make him an idol, and then incinerated her. Naville had been jailed for mutilating and murdering a teenage girl. Penny Roth had been mutilated and murdered.