by Steve Toltz
The only problem was that the establishment of the democratic cooperative, the fulfillment of Harry’s dream, seemed to inflame his world-class paranoia. You couldn’t get behind him! He’d slide against the wall, and if he was ever in an open space, he’d spin like a top. He panicked in crowds, and when he was caught up in the throng, he’d really go into violent spasms. The funniest thing was when he had to take a piss outdoors. He wouldn’t go behind a tree, because his back was exposed; Harry leaned against the tree facing out, one hand on his dick, the other holding a .45. And at home he rigged up bells and ropes so you couldn’t enter his bedroom without setting off an alarm. He checked the newspapers every day to see if he got a mention. He flicked through them frantically, eyes bulging.
“Don’t underestimate the value of the daily news,” Harry said to me once. “It’s saved many a wanted man’s skin. The police are always trying to prove they’re making progress: ‘Oh, we have a sighting here, we’ve picked up this clue or that one.’ Put that together with the public’s indefatigable hunger for news that has nothing to do with them, and you’ve got the best thing for a fugitive out on a crime spree. You think I’m paranoid? Check out the general public. They demand up-to-date news on investigations because they think the authorities are holding out on them, hiding information about criminals who are in their backyards with their guns and cocks out, ready to party.”
He accused the others in the cooperative of harboring mercenary thoughts. He said he could smell greed on all of them; he said it clung to them like beads of sweat. “A thousand dollars in your hand isn’t good enough?” he’d scream. Harry predicted that their little Greek senate would go down in flames. Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal. The cooperative was getting into constant disputes over the share of profits and the distribution of dirty jobs like filing the serial numbers off a thousand stolen cameras. Its members were learning that, like their manifestations in whole countries, profit-driven democracies create imbalances, encourage greed and impatience, and because no one’s going to vote to be the one who cleans the public toilets, lead to faction-splitting and ganging up on the weakest and most unpopular members. Moreover, Harry smelled that anonymity was frustrating them. That’s how Harry discovered everything, through his nostrils. “You’re the worst!” he’d say, pointing at Terry.
“Mate, I didn’t say a word,” Terry said.
“You didn’t have to! I can smell it!”
And maybe he could smell it. What did Harry once say about long-term paranoia earning a man telepathic powers? Maybe he was really onto something there. Maybe Harry was seeing the future. Or maybe he was just stating the bloody obvious: that my brother had ideas, and those ideas were going to destroy him and everyone along with him. To be honest, though, it wasn’t obvious to me then. I just didn’t see it coming. Well, maybe Bob Dylan was wrong. Maybe you do have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Second Project
Normally, there is your life, and you turn on the television and there is news, and no matter how grave it is, or how deep in the toilet the world has fallen, or how relevant the information might be to your own existence, your life remains a separate entity from that news. You still have to wash your underpants during a war, don’t you? And don’t you still have to fight with your loved ones and then apologize when you don’t mean it even when there’s a hole in the sky burning everything to a crisp? Of course you do. As a rule, there’s no hole big enough to interrupt this interminable business of living, but there are exceptions, grim instances in the lives of a few select unlucky bastards when the news in the papers and the news in their bedrooms intersect. I tell you, it’s a daunting and appalling moment when you have to read the newspapers to find out about your own struggle.
It started far from home. One morning headlines shouted that key players in the Australian cricket team had been caught taking bribes from bookmakers to underperform in international matches. It was big news, perhaps bigger than it deserved, mostly because if sport is Australia’s national religion, as it has been said, then it was like all the Christian fundamentalists finding out that God made the trees and mountains without first washing his hands. It rocked a lot of cores. There was public outcry and mass disappointment and saber-rattling and everywhere people said it was disgusting and rotten and corrupt and an unremovable stain on sport. The voices on the radio bayed for blood. They wanted to hear the snapping of necks: the necks of the bookies and the necks of the real traitors, the players themselves. The politicians cried for justice and vowed to get to the bottom of things, and even the prime minister promised “a thorough and exhaustive inquiry into corruption in sport.”
For me, this sporting scandal was mere background noise. I was too preoccupied with my own problems: my mother was dying and shutting herself up like a mad queen, my father was disappearing into a bottle, and my brother was tearing through the world with a gun in one hand and an ax in the other.
The next Saturday that Terry and I met at a game, it was Australia vs. Pakistan. There had been a question as to whether it would still be on, considering the scandal, but the innocent-until-proven-guilty technicality meant it was going ahead as scheduled. The sky was bright and the air full of spring—the kind of day that lulls you into a false sense of security, but I still felt the apprehension I always feel in groups of thirty-five thousand people apt to pool their collective fury at a moment’s notice.
When the players walked onto the field, the crowd started to boo like mad, because these were the men implicated in the scandal. Some of the players ignored the crowd, while others gave the fuck-you sign, the one where you use both arms. It was a hoot. I love booing. Who doesn’t? Some of the boos were chock-full of fury, while others were more lighthearted boos mingled with laughter. Beside me Terry didn’t make a sound.
When the captain came out to bowl, there wasn’t just booing but hissing, and people started throwing things, like beer cans and shoes—their own shoes! One of the spectators jumped the fence, ran onto the field, and tried to tackle the captain. Then a crowd spilled out too. Someone blew a whistle, and the game was clearly over when Terry turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” I thought he meant “Let’s go home,” so I agreed, but before I knew what was happening, Terry was bolting down the grandstand toward the cricket oval. I tried to follow, but for a long time I couldn’t see him in the madness of the crowd that had come from all sides and blocked the teams’ exit. It was all very tribal and nerve-jangling. You know how rioting mobs are.
Then I heard some yelling that was different in character from the stock murmuring of the furious mob. I saw what they were looking at, an image that has never left the inside of my eyelids: Terry had pulled out a gun and was pointing it at the Australian captain. Terry’s eyes were wide and clear, his face refreshed, as if he’d just bathed in crystal waters. He wore an uncharacteristic look of self-admiration. The mob watched on, frozen. They wanted to run, but curiosity wanted them to stay. Curiosity won. Police were fighting their way down the grandstand steps when my brother shot the captain of the Australian cricket team in the stomach.
I don’t know how we got out of there. I remember Terry seeing me in the crowd and waving. I remember running. I remember Terry laughing and suggesting we split up and just before disappearing into the crowd saying, “Let’s see if he can underperform his own death!”
There was no bigger story in Australia, before or since. Not even the Federation got as much press. And the worst thing was, they had pictures. Someone took a beauty of Terry standing there, eyes shining, arm outstretched, the gun held out in front of him and a friendly smile on his face, as if he were about to give the captain an amiable piece of advice. Every newspaper and television station ran that picture. From then on, he was a wanted man. This was the real beginning of Terry’s infamy.
Our little
town was inundated with police and reporters. The reporters were a nuisance. They wouldn’t take “Fuck off” for an answer. The police were irritating too. They asked me all sorts of questions, and for a while I was under suspicion. I admitted having gone to the game with my brother but said I’d lost him as soon as he ran into the crowd. No, I said, I didn’t see the shooting. No, I said, I hadn’t heard from him since. No, I said, I didn’t know where he lived. No, we weren’t close. No, I didn’t know who his friends or associates were. No, I didn’t know where he got the gun. No, I didn’t even know he had a gun. No, I didn’t expect to be hearing from him again. No, if I did hear from him I wouldn’t call the police, because after all, he was still my brother. Yes, I had heard of obstruction of justice. Yes, I knew what being an accessory was all about. Yes, I would be willing to go to jail, but I’d really rather not.
The police gave my mother a good grilling too, but she wouldn’t answer their simplest questions—when the chief detective asked, she wouldn’t even tell him the time.
Terry could never come home again. That was the thing that killed my mother. She cried inconsolably, and from then on slept most nights in Terry’s old bed. She made one of his favorite dishes every mealtime, and, perhaps to punish herself, she stuck the newspaper article with Terry’s picture to the fridge under a pineapple magnet. She obsessed over that picture, even going so far as to measure it with a ruler. One morning I came down and saw my mother studying it. I said, “Let me throw that away.” She didn’t say anything, but when I reached over to take it she elbowed me in the stomach. My own mother! Later, around four in the morning, I woke to see her sitting at the edge of my bed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you remember William Wilson by Poe? And The Double by Dostoyevsky?”
These were books she’d read to me while I was in the coma. I remembered them perfectly, almost word for word.
“I think Terry has a double,” she said.
I shook my head and said, “I don’t think so.”
“Listen to me. Everyone has a double somewhere in the world. That’s what’s happened here. Terry didn’t shoot anyone. It was him, the double!”
“Mum, I was there. It was Terry.”
“I admit it looks like him. That’s what doubles are. Look-alikes. Identical look-alikes. Not look-a-little-alikes.”
“Mum…”
Before I could say any more, she was gone.
So where was Terry? At Harry’s? The next morning at breakfast I decided to go see for myself. When I stepped outside I saw that the reporters had gone home, but on the bus to the city it occurred to me I was probably being followed. I peered at the cars on the road. Sure enough, I saw it: a blue Commodore following. I got off at the next stop and went into the movies. It was a comedy about a husband who dies but comes back as a ghost and haunts his wife whenever she looks at another man. Everyone was laughing but me; I found it grotesque, and it made me really hate the dead, the selfish pricks. Two hours later, when I stepped into the sunshine, the car was still there. I knew I had to lose them, to “shake my tail,” so I ducked into a shop. It was a tailor’s. I tried on a black dinner jacket and I looked good but the sleeves were just a little too short. Out the window, through mannequin legs, I could see my blue hound dog. I asked if they had a back entrance, even though I wanted to use it as an exit. They had one. In the alleyway there was another Commodore, only this one was white with leather seats that I could almost smell. I fast-walked it down the street and looked for another shop to duck into.
The whole day passed in this way. It was very, very irritating. I just couldn’t shake them. They seemed always to guess my every move. Dejected, I caught the bus back home and decided I’d try it again when the Terry Dean story had died down a little, when it wasn’t so fresh. It had to peter out eventually, I reasoned. The public has attention deficit disorder. It’s famous for it. But what I hadn’t figured was that the Terry Dean story wouldn’t stop there because Terry Dean wouldn’t stop there.
The next day there was more news, and more police and more reporters. The two bookies named in the affair had been found shot dead in their apartments. Witnesses had seen a young man of Terry’s description leaving the scene. In the newspapers and on the radio, language used to describe Terry Dean indicated a subtle shift in public opinion—he was no longer a “lone madman.” He was now a “vigilante.”
Meanwhile, the eyes of the nation were fixed sharply on the inquiry into corruption in sport, which was being conducted with uncustomary speed. It had escaped nobody’s attention that any bookie or cricketer named in the report would become a potential target for Terry Dean, Vigilante at Large.
The report of inquiry into corruption in sport was released and made a matter of public record. It named names. Three more cricketers were mentioned: some for throwing games, some for passing on match information. More bookies were named too. Everyone was on guard. They were put on twenty-four-hour police surveillance. The police thought they were ready to catch Terry, because if they had deduced one thing, it was that he had started something he felt he had to finish. But Terry was one step ahead of them.
The thing was, no one really paid close attention to the inquiry into corruption in sport. They read about the cricketers and waited eagerly for Terry to make his move. But the prime minister had promised an exhaustive inquiry, and they delivered an exhaustive report that also contained sections and subsections detailing corruption in horse racing, rugby league, rugby union, Australian rules, soccer, the Commonwealth Games, lawn bowls, snooker, cycling, rowing, boxing, wrestling, yacht racing, hockey, basketball…If it involved an Australian running or sweating or handling balls not his own, it was in there.
The first time Terry showed the breadth of his passion was with the murder of a jockey named Dan Wonderland; he was found beaten and forcefed enough horse tranquilizer to kill a stampede. I gazed searchingly at the photograph of this man whose life my brother had taken, in the hope of seeing something evil, something that rose up out of the picture signaling unequivocally that the fucker deserved to die. It was taken after winning a race, and in it Dan Wonderland was beaming and holding up his arms in triumph. Even if I hadn’t known my brother had killed him, I’d have seen something infinitely sad in the face of this jockey, the look of a man who has just achieved a lifelong dream only to realize that his dream was really nothing special.
The next day there was another killing: middleweight champion Charlie Pulgar, who’d taken a very obvious dive in the ring, falling when, at the sound of the bell, his opponent smacked his gloves together. With Terry’s help, Charlie Pulgar took his last dive—off the roof of his seventeen-story apartment building into a steady flow of traffic.
Just as investigators started anticipating Terry’s next moves, he changed tactics once again. The inquiry into corruption in sport had also uncovered a phenomenon seeping into the world of professional sport: performance-enhancing drugs. With a little detective work, Terry ascertained who was purchasing and administering them: the coaches. Men who had always worked tirelessly behind the scenes shifted from the background to the foreground; their square jaws and haggard faces appeared more and more in the papers, as one by one they turned up dead.
But the most dangerous aspect of Terry’s crusade was that, understandably, the bookies did not go quietly. Their links to the underworld guaranteed them guns and protection, and reports of gun battles in the backs of restaurants and bars filtered through the news. Terry had broken the last of Harry’s laws—not only was he as far from anonymity as a person could be, but he had won the ire of the criminal world. He was not just on the ladder, he was shaking it. Along with the state and federal police, the criminal superstructure wanted him dead.
My parents dealt with the situation in their own way. Rather than face up to the awful truth, they extended their delusions about their son. While my mother doggedly pursued her double theory, my father put a positive spin on the whole dirty mess, turning rationalizi
ng into a high art. If Terry shot a policeman in the leg, my father praised his mercy for not going for the heart; if Terry shot a policeman in the heart, my father praised his aim. To hear him talk, his son’s eluding the police was evidence of his brains, his craftiness, his blanket superiority.
Lionel Potts was calling me five times a day, begging me to come to his house and give him updates. As I read him every newspaper report, he would remove his dark sunglasses. His dead eyes seemed to see for miles, and he’d lean back and vigorously shake his head. “I know a great lawyer—he’d defend Terry. I’m only sorry I didn’t recommend him last time. I was a little pissed off. He did blind me, after all. Still, this lawyer would be perfect for him.” I sat listening to Lionel go on and on, gritting my teeth. I couldn’t stand it. As crazy as it sounds, I was overcome with jealousy. Terry was doing something with his life. He had found his calling; insane and bloodthirsty as it may have been, it was still a calling, and he was pursuing it vigilantly.
Every morning I ran to the corner shop for the newspaper to read about his atrocities. Not all his victims were dead. The snooker player who allegedly sank the white after the black accidentally on purpose only had his right hand broken, and strangely, he, along with some of Terry’s other victims, came out in support of Terry’s crusade. Through a public emotional hazing, they confessed their sins and said that Terry Dean was cleaning up an institution that had once been pure but had become soiled by the lure of big money. They weren’t the only ones.
Sportsmen, commentators, intellectuals, talk-show hosts, writers, academics, politicians, and radio shock jocks—everyone was talking about sporting ethics, ideals, heroes, and the Australian spirit. Terry had jump-started a dialogue in the nation, and all the sportsmen and -women were on their best behavior.
