Burning Down

by Venero Armanno

  ‘You’ve got eyes.’ Carmelo placed the backpack over the untouched invoices and bills on his desk. ‘Diego, take a rest and let Bobby handle this place from now on. You’re lucky to have a son like him. But neither of you’ll get anywhere unless you get Junior off your back. I added the extra. It’s all there.’

  ‘And in return I put a stop to a love affair.’

  He watched Carmelo shake his head.

  ‘People like you and me, we’ve got no right to get in the way of what our children want. We’ll let the kids sort themselves out.’

  ‘Then why do you do this?’

  ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Diego.’

  ‘I could have been a better man.’

  ‘It’s never too late.’

  Diego considered Carmelo’s face, the set of his expression.

  ‘Take that money back where it always belonged. There can be good years ahead.’

  ‘For both of us, Carmelino.’

  Diego saw his friend didn’t want to talk any more. Their eyes met and that was enough.

  …

  Leaving the bistro, Charlie knew his body was going to ache for days, if not weeks, and his head, well, how long did it take a man his age to get over that most stupid of things, a hangover? Through the morning Holly had stayed with him. She’d cooked him something to eat from his own refrigerator and she’d made him her version of his special water, using what she found in his kitchen. When he’d tried to kiss her she’d said his name once and moved away. He understood. Or thought he did. Then she’d had to go home so she could have dinner with her boy. After that, she’d come all the way back to Kulari.

  ‘Holly … you’re here, but what about your husband?’

  ‘I asked Peter not to stay with us. He’s got a flat. He needs to live there while we talk some more. That’s going to take time. Then, I don’t know.’

  ‘Ricky’s happy his dad is back?’

  ‘Ricky says he hates his father.’

  ‘Maybe that’s something he needs time to get over.’

  ‘Maybe, Charlie. But Ricky says he prefers you. He told me he wishes you were his dad.’

  Charlie had felt himself rocked by that. Such an incredible thing, but one you just could not let be.

  Holly was waiting for him now in her Toyota sedan, parked in a side street down from the bistro. A Top 40 tune was on the radio, turned low. He eased his aching body into the passenger seat.

  ‘Did it go okay?’

  He nodded, preoccupied. She had her half-serious smile and reached for his hand. He thought the warmth of that touch and the light in Holly’s eyes would never fail to make his heart beat faster. Her eyes were very clear, the violet somehow lighter in hue. He longed to kiss that smile, the corners of her mouth, but knew he would have to be patient. As Holly started the car and drove him home he understood there was still one thing he needed to do.

  …

  Alone again, Diego no longer wanted the three fingers of brandy and he didn’t need to check the money in the backpack. Maybe instead just a short prayer of thanks to God and the saints who decide everything, and to a man he’d known so many years without knowing at all. Instead, he walked to the telephone, dialling a number he knew by heart.

  ‘Really, Diego? Well. It’s like a miracle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Junior, just send someone for the money.’

  ‘My two most trusted lieutenants are a picture of misery.’ Diego wasn’t certain if the man spoke with uncharacteristic humour, or if somehow there was a taunt in his voice. ‘I have to say they’re completely unready for public consumption. Why not come visit?’

  ‘It’s your money. Collect it yourself.’

  ‘I detect an undertone, and that disappoints me. Don’t you understand that the larger part of me has wanted far greater success for you with the horses?’

  ‘All the same, I won’t come.’

  ‘Young Roberto expects you will.’

  Diego had to force himself to ask, ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Listen to me, old friend. After last night’s debacle, would you expect me to not bring proceedings to a close? You promised payment in full yet my best men found themselves tricked and soundly beaten. Now you make the same promise all over again.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘I did advise you of this, Diego. Your boy remains my insurance. So here he sits, awaiting your pleasure. If the money’s correct, you’ll both waltz home.’

  The connection died. Diego’s gaze shifted to the waiting backpack. Wasn’t it just minutes ago he’d realised something crucial?

  It was this: Dios y los santos lo han decidido.

  …

  He watched the Toyota disappear down his street and around the corner, then Charlie pulled away the tarpaulin covering the flat-back tray of his utility truck. He got out a mattock and his heaviest hammer. With three strikes echoing hard and sharp he knocked off the mattock’s chisel and blade head. Charlie hefted the long hardwood handle, the best weapon he could think of. Then he considered his toolbox a moment longer and collected a roll of builder’s string. He secured the ute’s canvas cover and went inside.

  Protecting himself: that one thing he still needed to do.

  Yet things were catching up with him again. His thoughts were clouding over. He pictured Holly’s face and it was so clear, then he frowned because in his mind Sistine’s wasn’t. At his piano he picked up that stolen photograph. He took it out of its frame and folded it into the top pocket of his shirt, then he walked from room to room, locking the windows and doors, trailing the string behind him and fastening it around door handles.

  When he was ready he turned out the lights and went to rest in the ancient armchair tucked in the far corner of his training room, the builder’s string secured to his fingers. His throat was dry and he needed water, but now he didn’t want to move. He considered the ageing boxing paraphernalia around him, the heavy bag off its hook and eviscerated on the floor. There were still scattered piles of notes, the money he hadn’t needed, used as stuffing for his punching bag, hidden and abused by his fists so many decades.

  He turned out the lamp at his side. In the darkness his thoughts turned back and he remembered taking the money with him the night Tracy finally asked him, for the sake of little Sissy, to get out of their lives. The guilt and shame over what he’d done to Old Terry haunted them both—this unbearable knowledge they both shared—and in the end he knew he deserved to be on his own, if only to allow Tracy and Sissy to be free of it.

  When the government changed the currency from pounds to dollars he’d spent a lonely year on the road, stopping at cities big and small, and country towns too. He’d slowly changed Old Terry’s money from the old denominations to the new, always in small portions, bank to bank so as not to raise suspicion. Maybe he should have burned it all or thrown it into the ocean, but always he’d let himself imagine that some day, far in the future, he’d win Sistine back by presenting her with a fortune.

  Wrong thinking, just wrong.

  Right at the start he’d told Diego that Sistine should never know what he’d done. Tomorrow he’d go make sure that Bobby knew it too. Sistine didn’t deserve to carry any sort of debt to him; what way was that to be a father?

  Then these reflections, and others like them, started to unravel. Thoughts became harder to grasp. There was a pulse in his left shoulder and one in his left temple, a dull ache in his chest that made him want to stay awake to check what it would do.

  Instead, despite himself, in the almost pure black of this back room, Charlie Smoke fell into a place of no sound and just about no dreaming at all.

  …

  ‘You expect me to count it? Old friend, I have trained monkeys to do that.’

  So said this prick Terence Junior to Papi. Even fr
om the floor where he’d been deposited, and kicked twice so he’d stay there, Bobby could tell that Junior wouldn’t count that money. In fact he barely looked at the backpack his father presented him. Junior asked Mike to remove it from his desk.

  ‘But it’s all there. Every dollar. Why not investigate?’

  It wasn’t that Junior didn’t believe his father, and it wasn’t that this surprising twist of Mr Smoke’s might be a trick. Instead, it was simply that money wasn’t the thing on Junior’s mind. He’d made it clear the moment Bobby had been dragged into his office.

  ‘We’ll get these contracts signed, Roberto, then all will be well.’

  ‘The contracts?’

  ‘For the bistro and its land. We’ve got the most beautiful design for a casino development.’

  Mike and Denny had picked Bobby up on his way to work. The Holden Premier had slid in front of him, and when Mike—with a face like a man who’d been hit by a truck—asked him to get in, Bobby had told him to go fuck himself.

  ‘Son, your old man’s with Junior right now.’

  ‘Let him stay there.’

  Mike observed him a moment. ‘Finally figured out what your old man’s made of?’

  A part of Bobby had wanted to say, ‘Yes, he’s a liar and a fool. I have no respect for him. Feel free to kick him into eternity.’

  Yet he heard himself say, ‘Don’t you dare hurt him.’

  ‘My kid wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire,’ Mike told him.

  Really? For all his bad decisons, Papi has always loved me.

  ‘So, are you coming?’

  And just like that he’d climbed in, to help a father who needed him, even if he didn’t deserve helping, and in that moment Bobby had felt good about it.

  Then, at Junior’s, he’d found Papi wasn’t there. It had been a simple ruse to make sure his father would come. They’d thrown him to the floor, kicked him in the ribs. Mike had then shoved him into a corner, all of them waiting in Junior’s office. And when he arrived, Papi had come straight over to Bobby mumbling and holding his face.

  ‘Have they hurt you? What did they do to you?’

  Papi, just get us out of here.

  But the old man’s face had been so stricken, as if reality had finally registered. Before Papi could help him to his feet Mike and Denny had dragged Papi over to Junior. They’d thrown the backpack he’d brought with him onto the desk.

  ‘It’s everything including the extra plus all the interest.’

  A massive debt repaid in cash, and look how it makes no difference whatsoever.

  ‘Here’s the contract,’ Junior said. ‘Let’s enjoy our ceremony. Drink?’

  ‘Never. This is wrong. You’ve got your money. I don’t owe you anything else.’

  Bobby saw Junior’s eyes flick toward Mike and Denny before his father even finished speaking. They dragged Bobby to his feet, then swung him into the opposite wall. He felt his head bounce off the rendered concrete. He crashed back to the ground but this wasn’t impressive enough, not for the point Junior wanted to make. So they pulled him up again and swung him into the next wall. He tried to speak but couldn’t. Bobby saw his father staring wide-eyed, first at him then at Junior, like a dog that doesn’t know how to appeal against its master’s cruelty. A line of spittle fell from Papi’s mouth onto the front of his pale blue shirt.

  Then his father wept as if every wall inside him had broken, and he did indeed appeal to his master, to Junior. ‘My bistro … for my family … it’s all I have left …’

  ‘You don’t have anything left,’ Junior spoke. ‘Sign and save your boy.’

  ‘My answer … it doesn’t change …’

  ‘One last time. Your boy will suffer. We do our best to defer from hurting you, friend, because an injured man’s signature might find reasonable contest in court. Personally, I’m confident with politicos and police officers, detectives and the like, but the judiciary … So let’s move to our contract in triplicate, initials placed where they belong. And I’ll want a neat hand-written letter from you too, Diego, expressing gratitude at so profitable a sale. This way our negotiation is bulletproof, and we keep Moreton Bay for sightseeing and fishing. All right?’

  ‘No, no, no, you just won’t understand. I have a secret. Something I’ll share with you if—’

  ‘What is it?’

  Terence Junior considered Diego a moment, then removed his wire-framed spectacles and made a small production of giving them a precise clean with a soft cloth.

  ‘One thing you have to know, Diego. Attempts at cleverness can only result in greater annoyance.’

  ‘I want—I want to make a bargain with you.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You have the debt paid. It’s there in front of you. I will keep my bistro. You’ll never bother me or my son again.’

  ‘In exchange for what? A little more money? Some useless secret?’ Junior shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t think so.’

  ‘In exchange for the answer to the question of my great friend. Your father.’

  Junior held up his spectacles, gazed through a lens, and gave a final wipe before replacing them.

  ‘What answer?’

  ‘You still don’t see?’

  ‘I believe you’re suggesting you know who my father’s killer is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’ve known this all along?’

  ‘No. I’m loyal. I would have come straight to you.’

  Bobby saw the way his father now tried to project an air of confidence, that quality he’d carried every day of his life. And his voice was stronger, as if he could see himself taking the upper hand.

  ‘Terence, we have … we have an opportunity to strike a bargain … one that will satisfy the both of us.’

  Something finally flickered to life in that grey face. The man’s practised artifice fell away. Junior stood from his chair, his eyes no longer so large behind those lenses. Instead, they were small and sharp as stones. He reached with one hand to open a drawer.

  ‘Don’t you mean you’re very cleverly holding to ransom the most valuable information possible?’

  In Terence Junior’s hand now, a blackjack, heavy and professional. Without missing a beat he cracked it across Papi’s face, striking just beneath his right eye socket.

  Bobby heard the crushing of that cheek. His father’s head rocked back, though his great body managed to remain upright in the chair. Junior handed the blackjack to Mike as he continued to address Papi.

  ‘Next, watch the way your son’s skull will cave in, Diego.’

  His father tried to hold the side of his face, but he couldn’t quite touch it.

  ‘The man who supplied this,’ Papi said, reaching forward and touching the backpack, his voice now wet and whispery. ‘He confessed. Confessed to what he did.’

  Mike stood over Bobby, ready to strike.

  Junior shook his head, meaning Mike could relax. Bobby watched Junior go to his bar and pour Dimple into a tumbler. He passed it to Papi. His veneer of friendly authority had returned, but when he took a glass of his own whisky Junior drank deeply enough to make Bobby wonder if alcohol was his weakness.

  ‘I don’t expect this to be a trick, Diego.’

  Junior slid the contracts toward Papi and placed what appeared to be an expensive fountain pen into his right hand. Bobby felt an overwhelming sadness as Papi took a moment to turn in his chair and give him a look of solidarity—this was the end, their future was gone. His father turned back and signed the three copies. With great patience Junior showed him every changed clause and page that needed to be initialled. Not quite done, Junior then dictated a note of grovelling thanks. Bobby watched as his father committed it to paper.

  ‘Shaky signature and handwriting, Diego, but who’ll blame you your years, or the damage done through so many triumphs in
the ring?’ Junior considered the short letter, then asked, ‘Does your cheek hurt?’

  Papi didn’t reply. Junior gave him a greater shot of Dimple and poured one for himself, big enough to empty the bottle.

  ‘Take your son and enjoy your golden years.’

  ‘And Carmelo Fumo?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Charlie Smoke.’

  Junior sipped his whisky to the end. ‘Escort them out,’ he told Mike and Denny.

  Bobby felt himself pulled to his feet. Denny helped his father from the chair. Just before they were pushed from the office into the cavernous stairway of the unlit warehouse, he saw Junior at his bar, unscrewing the top from a fresh whisky bottle. Bobby took his father’s hand. He felt Mike shove him forward. Uncertain of what would happen next, Bobby pulled Papi into the cool night air.

  …

  Then, only minutes later, Diego felt relief coursing through his body as he drove his boy away from Building 4 and the entire warehouse district. They’d been released; they were free. The pain in Diego’s broken cheek concentrated his mind all the way to Sissy’s apartment block where he parked the car and looked up at the façade, so cheap and old. His son could do better. He would do better, one day, as a man out on his own. Yet he wouldn’t have the bistro, and maybe no loving father’s wisdom to rely on either.

  ‘Bobby? Is that you?’ Sistine’s voice was scratchy on the intercom.

  ‘It’s Papi, mi alma. Can you come down?’

  She did, fast, and Diego tried not to make too much of the horror in the girl’s expression. What was she saying now? Something about having her poor mother’s car. She’d drive Diego and Robertino to the hospital herself, not wait for an ambulance … Diego didn’t really want to think about such pragmatics. His cheek continued to throb, and something felt sharp inside, but there was no need for concern.

  ‘Take care of my boy.’ He patted Sistine’s hair and couldn’t help smiling. What a lovely, lovely girl, from childhood to now and surely ever after. A credit to Tracy, if not Carmelino. Yet he heard himself say, ‘Do you know your papà is a good man?’

  ‘What?’