I'm Dying Here

by Damien Broderick

  I returned to the Hume and its endless stream of traffic, while the cop tailgated us until he got sick of the sport and roared past, hot on the tail of a FedEx truck with attitude.

  Culpepper was eying the Esky. I kicked it further away from him toward my door. “Kindly return my telephone,” he said. He had audacity enough, you had to give him that.

  “Yeah, shove it right up his arse sideways,” Share said.

  §

  I swung the limo around at the next opportunity and tooled back toward the city. Balwyn seemed the place to be, since that’s where the boys had taken the incontinent orca. I fished out Culpepper’s phone, started to key in Mauricio’s number with my thumb. Share was perched uncomfortably between the two seats; she plucked the phone out of my hand. There wasn’t much I could do without relinquishing the steering wheel, not a good move on the Hume.

  “Calling for take-out?”

  She ignored me, and I heard her own voice tinnily telling her that she wasn’t able to come to the phone just now and asking her to leave a message. This was a bit worrying; Mauricio shouldn’t have had any trouble entering the place and settling Cookie, he had Dago with him for the lock and Chook’s heft at a pinch.

  “Rodolph, if you get home before me, call back at this mobile.” She peered at the envelope where she’d written Culpepper’s num­ber down earlier, then repeated it. “We shouldn’t be more than half an hour. If there’s a van full of thugs trying to get into the house, invite them in. They’ve got poor Jonquil with them, and she’ll need a bath and something to eat. Love you.”

  “The pool boy?”

  “I’m expecting my husband back from Kuala Lumpur within the hour. He’ll have something to say to Mr. Culpepper.”

  “You misunderstand my motives,” our kidnapper explained in an aggrieved tone. “We share a common interest. I would prefer to be let off near my club, these clothes reek of your daughter.”

  Share was still holding the phone. Her vicious backhander caught him on the cheek. Blood flowed. He made no cry, which impressed me a bit.

  “If you’ve quite finished with the instrument—” He held out his hand, ignoring the gash in his face which leaked slowly down, I saw in a quick glance, into his impeccable collar.

  “Call Mauricio for me, Share.” I gave her the number. Princes Park had a few joggers doing their circuit in the cooling night. I turned left at Cemetery Road West, heading past the university colleges, my ruined accommodation and offices not a dozen blocks behind me. Melbourne General Cemetery passed on the left be­hind its tall iron fence and its tall sentry trees, closed for the night. These days I was haunted by the dead.

  At the Lygon Street lights Culpepper tried to open the centrally locked door, but I reached behind Share and squeezed the back of his neck with my left hand. He yelped a bit. Share held the phone to my ear. “What the fuck, Mauricio?”

  His voice was clear and crisp without the marble and steel to block it.

  “Things aren’t as neat as we’d hoped they might be, matey. Listen, why the fuck haven’t you been answering your phone, anyway?”

  “It’s a long story. You didn’t make it to the Lesser mansion, I take it?”

  A heavy sigh. Mauricio Cimino was a man of sensitivity and you could sense his frustration and disappointment with the world. “Oh yeah, no trubs. Jonquil showed us where the key was hidden, but we didn’t need it. The front door was wide open.”

  “Rodolph,” I said. “But he isn’t answering the phone.”

  “Rudolph’s the husband?”

  “So it seems.”

  “Little wonder he’s not picking up, mate. Some bastard’s blown half his head off.”

  §

  We ripped lickety-split but just under the speed limit up the Eastern Freeway, through the green urban wilderness and sports grounds of Yarra Bend, and tooled along Harp and Belmore into Balwyn. I said nothing to Sharon Lesser about the death of her husband, because I knew it would make driving difficult and prob­ably get Culpepper stirred up as well. I wondered who he’d been speaking with when I’d activated his call-waiting signal. Or was Rodolph Lesser’s messy exit sheer coincidence? I don’t like coinci­dences. I don’t believe in them. It’s bad feng shui.

  I dislike the sight of blood, too, and not only my own. A man with a record like mine can’t afford to be seen around blood, not the kind that’s hard to explain at any rate. Blood bank contributions, that’s fine, proof of redemption and community spirit—in Austra­lia, at least, where you can’t sell a quart for your next hit. A pint of claret from the flared nostrils of a bloke pummeling another beefy bloke in the ring, that’s fine too. But the cops look askance when they come by and find you swanning around the living room of a Balwyn household with an emotional widow, an obese and shriek­ing daughter, and a brain-splattered and only freshly ex-husband.

  PART 4

  Déjà-vu set in with a thud as we approached the Lesser establish­ment down a street of mature trees and well watered lawns. The bourgeoisie keep themselves neat and tidy in the suburbs. But the crime scene tapes and the flashing lights reminded me of home. So did the detective who appeared to be in charge. I parked the hearse and got out.

  “You again, Purdue,” the cop said. It wasn’t a question and this evening he seemed to have remembered my name. “You’re a bit willing. And what the hell’s that you’re carrying? Think this is a party?”

  “Willing? Rebeiro,” I said with a nod, having no trouble at all remembering his. I swung the Esky negligently. Whatever it con­tained, I wasn’t leaving it with bloody Culpepper.

  “The fucking hearse. You appear to be carrying a coffin. Ambu­lance chasing’s one thing, but this is macabre.”

  “A coincidence,” I said.

  Share climbed out of the driver’s door. Culpepper stayed put, looking haughty. He had no wish to invite police attention.

  “This is the widow,” I said to Rebeiro.

  Share sent me a look of disbelief and shrieked.

  “How do you know she’s a widow?” This was very definitely a question.

  “My landlord told me.”

  “Fucking Cimino. I thought we’d got his phone off him.” He glanced back at the house.

  So Mauricio was still in situ, along with his relatives and thug Chook presumably. He would not be pleased with me. “That’s the guy. Now if you’ll excuse us....”

  “This is a crime scene, Purdue. No one crosses the tape. Madam, would you please calm down and tell me your name.”

  Share, still shrieking, ignored the cop and lifted the tape. In a flash she was across the nature strip and through her front gate. Two uniformed cops grabbed her on the path and escorted her, kicking and screaming, back to the tape.

  “Where’s my husband? What have you done to poor Rodolph, you bastards?”

  “Take it easy, missus....”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  A woman cop with her hair in a bun joined the fray. Between them they managed to get Share into the back seat of a parked police Ford. The woman cop got in the back as well and could be seen talking to Share in a sensitive and caring fashion.

  “Counseling,” Rebeiro said. “Grief management.”

  “You all been on a course or something?”

  “Shut up, Purdue.”

  I turned and looked at the hearse. Rebeiro did too. Culpep­per had abandoned the passenger seat and was bumping himself across toward the driver’s door. No, he wasn’t, the bastard was slamming the limo into reverse and making a getaway. I checked my pockets with incredulous futility. No keys, you moron, Dago hotwired the fucker, you’d locked the keys in the crypt with the heavies. Obviously not; Culpepper had them tucked in his own expensive suit pocket, along with his cell phone. With a screech of burnt rubber the hearse went into a tight U-turn, mounting the na­ture strip with a violent shudder and broadsiding across the grass. A couple of seconds later the tail lights were disappearing towards the city. Rebeiro watched impassively.

  �
��You’re not planning to book him for speeding, then?”

  “Who’s that prick?”

  “Felix Culpepper.”

  “Fucking Stonecraft,” Rebeiro said.

  “Who?” It rang a small bell, like a cow high on an alpine pas­ture on the next mountain over. I don’t follow the social pages closely, though. Or even the law court stories, these days. A nag with an inside chance, a bottle of decent red and a bit of tucker a man can sink his teeth into, some well-heeled nitwits eager to pay good plastic money to learn about the forces of the ancients and the best geometries to placate them, a frustrating visit now and then to see my wife Juliet, that was enough.

  “Frank Stonecraft, QC. Counsel for the defense. They keep him in a cage and feed him raw meat and let him out to defend Toorak scum like Culpepper. Ever been cross-examined in court, Purdue?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “Just hope and pray you don’t become a material witness to this can of worms. Go and sit in the back seat of that Fairlane, wait for me.”

  I did as I was told, there didn’t seem anything better to do. As I walked across to the Fairlane I looked into the back of the marked police car. Share was sitting forward, her head in her hands. The cop had her arm around her shoulder. I wouldn’t know, of course, but Share’s shock and grief looked a bit ersatz to me. It’s a good word, ersatz. If we used it more often we’d understand the world better.

  §

  I waited for some time in Reberio’s Fairlane. It smelled of stale to­bacco. I propped the Esky on my lap and thought about opening it and having a poke about but this didn’t seem the propitious time. It’d be my luck to find it packed with cocaine in little baggies.

  There was a lot of coming and going: cops, forensic, ace report­ers. They kept the TV crews at bay somehow. I watched Mauricio and the boys troop out of the house and drive their van away. Ap­parently not under arrest. An ambulance arrived and a gurney was wheeled up the front path. It didn’t return with the deceased. It returned with Cookie. Poor girl—first imprisoned in Culpepper’s dungeon and then confronted with the mangled remains of her dad. It’s a hard life, my heart went out to her. My heart returned fairly smartly to my chest. Cookie was lying back on the gurney laughing and wise cracking with the ambos, all ten tons of her. You’d think she was being taken for a hay ride at the village fair. The women in the late, lamented Rodolph Lesser’s life were tak­ing his demise with reasonable fortitude. Very reasonable fortitude indeed.

  “Oh,” I said to myself, three or four innocent little fragments falling together belatedly into a disgusting picture. I wondered if Share had made the same connections. She must have done. “Oh, fuck,” I said, still out loud. “Poor kid.” Nobody heard me, but then nobody was there to hear me. Not that it would have mat­tered. People never pay any attention, that’s what’s wrong with the world.

  §

  I dozed off. I’d had a hard day. Rebeiro and some mate of his jolted me awake by climbing into the front of the Fairlane and slamming both doors. I rubbed the side window where my snoozy breath had fogged the glass, looked at the scene of the crime. The tape had been rolled up. The house no longer blazed with light. Most of the cars had gone, including the one in which Share had been experiencing the first flush of widowhood. The cops said nothing to me, but started the car and drove us off with the un­hurried casualness of men who are just doing their job.

  Fifteen minutes later we were in an all-night truck stop on the Dandenong Road. Rebeiro and his mate favored straight black coffee and French fries with tomato sauce. I ordered up big, I was incredibly hungry. We sat in a booth in a far corner where there weren’t many other customers and those that were either found reasons to move away fairly smartly or were too stoned to un­derstand anything they might overhear. It was a clean well lighted place. And it wasn’t a cop shop. Unless Rebeiro and his mate were wired, nothing would go down on the record.

  “It’s all in the distribution, is what I hear,” Rebeiro said.

  “Sorry?”

  “If you don’t get the exposure you might as well’ve not made the flick in the first place. Unless all you are going for is the nega­tive gearing.”

  “You’ve lost me, Rebeiro,” I said.

  “I’m talking about your career as a film producer, Purdue. Re­member? You make movies. You were making one this afternoon, outside a smut shop in Cooloroo.”

  “Dracula,” I said. “Art. Any nudity will be artistically respon­sible. We have a panel of clergymen vetting....” I trailed off. Some­times my mouth is its own worse enemy.

  “There’s a village bobby out Cooloroo way who became so excited about his little burg being the location of a major movie that he reported the license number of your meat wagon to State Emergency. And then what happens, Purdue? What happens is that an hour and a half later this cinematic hearse of yours turns up at the scene of a major crime, complete with the widow of the deceased male person. And this happy event occurs a mere twenty four hours after the headquarters of your mystic bullshit scam is destroyed by a stolen semi-trailer. I think you’d better start telling us something convincing, Purdue. Forget the vampires and the art flicks.”

  I looked at the detective and his poor dumb sidekick. Ignorance shone from every pore of their hard, unshaven faces. What about the camel, I wanted to say. What about the mutilated ship of the desert by the side of the road? Don’t you guys watch the news—does a helicopter crash mean nothing to you? But I’m a modest man, I didn’t wise them up. I kept the story simple so they could understand it.

  “It’s that Culpepper bloke,” I said. “I was investigating him on behalf of a client.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Purdue, but wasn’t your Private Investigator’s license revoked rather suddenly some years ago?”

  “I wasn’t charging a fee,” I said. “Anybody can ask questions. It’s a free country.”

  “And this client? For whom you were working for nix?” “My daughter.”

  “Christ, he’s got a daughter. The poor tart. So what low rent ‘investigation’ was she employing you on.”

  “I told you—Culpepper.”

  “Interested in the life and times of the rich and infamous, was she?”

  “More or less.”

  “Cut the crap, Purdue,” the sidekick suddenly snarled, leaned forward, struggling to keep his hands away from my throat. “What the fuck are you playing at?”

  “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” I said amicably. “I’m Tom Purdue.”

  “Start fucking talking, Purdue.”

  I spoke to Rebeiro, “In your capacity as soft cop, do you think you could introduce me to hard cop here?”

  “His name’s Kirkpatrick,” Rebeiro said evenly, “and if you don’t start talking, he’ll make sure you choke to death on your own quarter pounder.”

  It rose a little in my gullet. I sat back in the booth and told them all about Cookie’s abduction and the valiant part Share and myself had played in her rescue. I figured Cookie would be telling a simi­lar story wherever she was, presumably in a hospital bed. There was no point in complicating matters unduly. My companions lis­tened politely enough, although Kirkpatrick snarled and grunted from time to time just for the form of the thing.

  “And Lesser,” Rebeiro finally asked. “Why was Lesser topped with a shotgun?”

  I blinked. “Search me,” I said. “I never met the guy.”

  “You seem pretty friendly with his wife. Widow.”

  “I only met her yesterday. She wasn’t a widow then.”

  “You were seen with her on the day before yesterday.”

  “Forgive me, officer, I’d forgotten it is now after midnight.” “You’re in deep shit,” the hard cop snarled. His specialty, and I was getting used to it.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “But if I help you with your enquiries....”

  I looked at Rebeiro. I’d had mutually profitable dealings with Gabe Rebeiro before, I could have them again. Rebeiro didn’t smile. He d
idn’t say anything. But we understood each other well enough.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he said. Without another word the two cops left the booth and then the truck stop. They hadn’t paid, and nobody had brought us a check.

  I looked at my watch. It was 3.48 am and I was alone somewhere on the Dandenong Road, my car was in a cemetery car park on the other side of town, assuming it hadn’t been stolen, and I was in need of a slug of bourbon, a shower, a slug of bourbon, and a sleep. The taxi to Animal’s would cost, but what the hell. I reached for my mobile. Cursed and went looking for a public phone that worked. I left the Esky behind me in the booth. When I remembered it after called Silver Top I went back. It was still there.

  §

  In the darkness of her doorway, Grime Grrl shoved a can of mustard gas or some other illegal male repellant in my face. I was too tired. I took it from her, pushed my way ungraciously inside, found the light switch, slammed the door behind me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  She looked on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  “Look, I’m not carrying a gun or a blackjack or a small nuclear weapon.” To prove it I put down the Esky, turned out my pock­ets, threw my keys and billfold down on the table. If Annabelle wanted to pilfer a hundred bucks or so to top up her reserves, it was easier this way and would save me being woken up as she tried to sneak into the bedroom. Just to make the point absolutely clear I took off my watch and put it on the table as well. “Oh, and look—my Private Investigator’s X-Ray Specs.” I took my shades from my breast pocket and placed them on the table as well.

  Animal’s white face peered from their bedroom door, roused by my presence and my voice. Some more little pieces fell into place. I must have passed along my bad criminal genes, that’s all I can say. Or the heritage of some noble foolish templar, some horseback righter of wrongs. Annabelle, Warrior Princess.

  “I’ll sleep in the orc— In Jonquil’s room. Wake me at,” I looked for my watch, “ten thirty at the earliest.” Fuck. My skin was crin­kling up, I wasn’t as young as I’d been in the days when a couple of little white pills kept me raging all night but let me bounce back bright-eyed the next afternoon. Had that ever been the case? May­be I was bullshitting myself, an occupational hazard. “We have a lot to discuss, Annabelle. I hope you got rid of the shotgun.”