by Zane Lovitt
‘You better watch your mouth, skippy. The last cunt who spoke shit to me got no fucking teeth left.’ He steps closer again. ‘We don’t got no fucking black. So you better fuck off. Dumb cunt. ‘Fore I kick your cunt face in.’
An acrid odour is drifting into the shed from outside. I take a big sniff out of the air and furrow my brow, distracted. ‘Something smells funny…’ I say this loud so Jimmy will hear me clearly. Ross’s nose twitches sideways.
‘He fucking stinks of booze,’ Ross says. ‘He’s fucking pissed, hey.’
George’s right hand slaps absently against his thigh as he thinks. Now Jimmy tips forward, alert. ‘Yeah, I smell it.’ He says. ‘Phwoooh, it fucking stinks, hey. What the fuck is that?’
Another story about black is, it generates so much testosterone that your testicles stop working and shrivel up like raisins. One guy had prosthetics implanted because his real ones disappeared altogether.
I wait, try to give George a knowing smile, but my lips are trembling. I bite down and raise my eyebrows.
‘You wondering what that smell is, George?’
George tries to know what I mean.
Dramatically, I glance around the room. In the mirrors, everywhere I look, there’s me looking back.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘You fucking stink, man.’
‘Yeah. Sorry. I had a little accident. Outside. With your cars.’
That’s all it takes to get Jimmy on his feet.
‘What did he fucking say?’
‘On my way up the drive, I tripped and accidentally stupidly spilled sulphuric acid over the Pontiac and the Charger out there…’
George’s body starts to clench and spasm, as well as his face. His lips make a number of different shapes but he can’t speak.
Jimmy’s gone, running to the door. He steps out into the dark.
I glare at George glaring at me.
Just knowing Jimmy is out there, I can hear all the sounds of the suburbs. The crickets, dogs barking, a distant highway.
Then Jimmy saying, ‘Shit.’
George keeps glaring, shiny body twitching, his foot tapping the floor. He breathes even deeper.
I whisper to him, ‘I’m really sorry.’
Jimmy’s voice: ‘…Fucking shit, man…’
George’s eyes close.
Now is when his nose starts to bleed.
I whisper to George, ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
Another rumour about black is, it makes you forget stuff. One guy at an ATM got so frustrated trying to remember his pin number, he punched himself repeatedly in the temple and gave himself a haemorrhage, right there on the footpath.
The first blow doesn’t come from George. It comes from Jimmy, who re-enters George’s shed, makes an angry beeline from the door to the back of my head. I make a beeline to the floor.
The alcohol in my system makes my head swim more than it otherwise would. I rise onto my elbows. Jimmy can barely speak.
‘The duco’s…the duco’s fucking melted off…off both them. This cunt’s fucking wrecked them, man. They’re fucking wrecked.’
On that last word he stamps down on my face with his sandal.
‘Let’s pour acid over him,’ says Ross. ‘That’s what we should do. We should pour acid over this cunt.’
‘Is he a cop or what?’ Jimmy asks.
George doesn’t answer. He’s staring at me, trying to remember who I am. He wipes a trickle of blood from his nose and I realise my nose is bleeding too. Because of Jimmy’s sandal.
Eventually he murmurs, ‘How come I know this cunt?’
‘You know him?’ Jimmy asks.
‘He’s not a cop…’ George scowls. ‘I can’t fucking…’ He comes down over me with both hands on my collar, raises me to his face. Some of his blood splashes across my cheek and the rest of it he sniffs back.
Face to face, it’s only him holding me up.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he says. ‘How come I know you?’
My right eye is swelling already. I know that feeling. There’s blood running into my ear.
‘Miresha Yusedich was my client.’ With as much fake pride as I can muster, I say, ‘I’m the guy who put Spiros away for eleven years.’
The scowl disappears from his face, then his hands loosen and I’m on the floor again.
Jimmy nods vigorously. ‘Yeah. I remember. His name’s John something. He’s a fucking arsehole.’
I slowly rise back to my feet.
‘Not anymore,’ I say. ‘I lost my licence.’
‘He came here, right?’ Jimmy’s voice rises to a shriek. His excitement merges with the black in his system. ‘He’s fucking trespassing. We can do whatever we want.’
‘Yeah,’ says Ross. ‘It’s trespassing, George? Isn’t it?’
Jimmy says, ‘Yeah, it is. Let’s fucking…Let’s fucking…’
George slowly nods. We hold each other’s eyes and he’s squinting, as if there’s something inside me he can’t see properly.
I say, ‘Do these fellas know it was you who killed Osman Yusedich? Do they know you let your brother go to jail for it?’
On my way here tonight, I thought that comment would be what finally tipped George over the edge. He screws his mouth into a ball and I can hear his teeth grinding together.
Judging by Ross and Jimmy’s reaction, they either knew the truth about George or they’re so high on black that nothing can distract them from the prospect of destroying me with their bare, giant hands.
George’s whole body is ticking energy. I wink at it.
‘I hear your brother’s good in the showers. If you know what I mean.’
George sucks in a long stream of air through his nose.
I say, ‘They love him in there. They’ve got him doing all kinds of stuff.’
For all I know there’s been no kind of assault on Spiros Angelis. But speaking the truth isn’t what I came here to do.
I’m not expecting George to go straight for my groin but that’s what he does. What he finds there he grips and after a moment of trying to wrench it free he hooks into my guts with his other arm and I double over and then a knee strikes me twice across the skull and I go down again.
They pile in. Leather sandals and naked fists strike in succession, so fast and so intense that I can’t even push up to all fours.
Then George tells them to stop. And they stop.
In the numb silence it’s my balls that hurt most.
George leans over and he says slowly, ‘What did you say, cunt? About my brother? I would like you to repeat it because I didn’t hear you.’
I get up to my knees and I reach out and get George by the buckle of his leather belt, pull him a couple of weak inches closer.
‘I said, what they really love about Spiros is how he cries out for his mother while they’re fucking him. They say that makes it so much sweeter.’
There’s nothing in his eyes when I look up at him and smile.
He whispers, ‘You’re fucked now, cunt.’
George shudders and waves his hands for Jimmy and Ross to move out of the way. They move.
George takes me by the collar, holds me bent over and runs me across the room, my feet scraping against the floor. Looking up, there’s me hurtling towards me. I can hear George screaming and someone else is screaming and just before my head collides with its own reflection I see my eyes and I see that the other person screaming is me.
2
There are two of them, a tall one and a short one, both in their late twenties and both with a heavy layer of acne on their necks like an infection one contracted from the other. The short one is ginger-headed, freckle-faced, neckless and about as Scottish as a person can be without an accent. The other is obviously Italian but he also talks like he was born here, sports close to a full growth although it’s only midday. Despite all this, the uniform makes them look like brothers.
The short one says, ‘Had you had dealings with George Angelis prior to Sunday night?
’
The tall one says, ‘You knew the bloke, right? At least tell us you knew the bloke before you wrecked his car for him.’
They’re talking to me as I stare at the ceiling. Ceilings in hospitals are covered with power points. I’ve been here three days, but until this line of questioning I never noticed the power points. I’ve got an icy sheet pulled up to my chin but it’s no defence against these cops.
‘I’d never met George before,’ is what I say. And that’s the truth.
Until right now, I’ve had this entire ward to myself for all of those three days. Propped in a corner bed, I’ve watched the sky through the window to my left, or I’ve watched the TV that’s bolted to the roof, or I’ve watched the heads move past the windows in the doors at the far end of the room. Between here and there has been a sea of empty beds, which has meant solitude, which has meant paradise. Now, most of the beds are hidden from view because the curtain is drawn on the bed next to mine. I don’t remember anyone moving in there, but twenty minutes ago I woke up to find myself in a private little grotto these uniforms are using for an interrogation room.
The short one says, ‘Yeah, Mister Angelis claims that you inflicted the damage to his car. With acid, sort of thing. That right?’
Demetri, slouching on the dressing table beside me, says, ‘John’s in no condition to be interrogated regarding anything for which he might later be charged.’ He glares past his bushy eyebrows at the tall one. ‘You know that.’
What I’m in no condition for doing is anything other than sitting in this bed and watching that TV. Someone must have switched it off while I was asleep. This is the first time I’ve seen it switched off in all these last three days and I’ve been watching it all that time: I can tell you exactly when each network schedules a current affairs show or a news bulletin. All that terrible stuff, you can’t help but think that whoever it happened to deserved it. I even caught a glimpse of George Angelis, a story on how the AFP had seized a pile of illegal steroids.
The short one says, ‘Did you have any prior knowledge of…of the Federal Police?’
‘Prior to last Sunday night? Yes, I had heard of the Federal Police.’
‘I mean, of their intention to execute a warrant.’
‘No.’
The tall one says, ‘You didn’t get a tip-off from someone? Like your mate, Detective Burke?’
‘No. And he works for Victoria Police.’
‘So it was just a coincidence that you were there at that time?’
‘Yes.’ That’s the truth, too.
‘Come on, matey. For real. How did you find out?’
You’d think they’d go easy on someone with this many stitches in his forehead. My scalp is shaved and my eye sockets are swollen from the surgery, so I look worse now than I did when I arrived at this place, unconscious and bloodied. Today the swelling is starting to recede, leaving a grey patch where my cheekbones should be. I look pitiful, but I hadn’t expected these cops to doubt me. At least, not the parts that are true.
‘He’s already answered that question,’ Demetri says, examining his fingernails.
Last night I saw Demetri on the TV. He was interviewed about a criminal trial that ended a month ago. They overlaid the interview with footage of Demetri exiting the County Court, following his client: a middle-aged woman with blonde hair and dark roots who high-heeled her way along William Street, ignoring the questions yelled by reporters, ignoring the cameramen who ran to get ahead of her. What the stations love to do is play the footage of her when she was first arrested, covering her face with her jacket as she was driven into the city holding cells. They played that repeatedly over the interview with Demetri. It makes her look so guilty. Who cares that she was acquitted.
Next to me, Demetri wriggles against the wonky white cabinet. If he peeked behind it he’d see the bottle of whisky I’ve got stashed back there. I was surprised when the nurse agreed to smuggle it in for me, but I guess they get weirder requests than that. I guess they’ll give the patients anything to keep them manageable.
Demetri says, ‘Did they find what they were looking for?’
The short one says, ‘Hey?’
‘Your mates in the raiding party.’
The short one looks at the tall one, makes his fucking-lawyers face.
Before Demetri got here, these two had already filled me in on what happened Sunday night. In between telling me over and over how lucky I was to be alive, enough times that I almost apologised for it, they said that three men were in the process of beating me to death when nine federal officers sauntered into George’s enormous shed at the end of George’s enormous driveway and suggested that, rather than beating me to death, these three men should instead provide access to areas of the property listed on the Magistrates Court warrant the officers had brought with them. This list included the attic above George’s gym where George kept a commercial quantity of blaxitarine. According to them, George snuck in a good last kick to my groin and stomped to death my mobile phone before he was properly restrained and charged, but I didn’t notice because I wasn’t conscious. If I’d been conscious, I could have told George that a commercial quantity of blaxitarine means jail.
‘Has it occurred to anyone to charge Angelis with assault?’ Demetri asks.
‘There’s plenty of time for that, matey,’ the tall one says. The way he says it, he’d sneak in a good last kick to Demetri’s groin.
When I saw Demetri interviewed on TV last night, I wound the volume up loud. You can do that when there’s no one else in your ward. At one point the good nurse came in, the one who bought me the whisky, and asked if I was having trouble hearing. She thought it might be an effect of the surgery. I told her that I knew the guy on the TV and wanted to hear all of what he said, because I knew nothing about the case except for what I’d read in the newspapers. When she realised what the case was, she shook her head and tut-tutted, ‘Oh, she didn’t do it. Those kids are having everyone on.’ Then she waddled away, leaving me to sip my whisky and watch the TV all alone.
The short one says, ‘On the night in question, had you been drinking, or any drugs…sort of thing?’
‘I might have had a couple of drinks.’
‘Celebrating something?’ the tall one asks.
‘Just life.’
He says, ‘Can you at least tell us what you were doing there at George’s gym?’
I’m thinking about the interview I saw on TV last night because I don’t want to think about the one that’s happening right now.
The reporter who took the interview introduced the story like this: ‘A year ago, Belinda Norman was a well-respected art teacher at St Ninian’s, an exclusive private school in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. Since then, Belinda’s world has fallen down around her.’
And again, there was Belinda in the backseat of the police car, jacket up to her face. Slow-motion. Dramatic music.
‘Last month, a jury found Belinda Norman not guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse with two male students. Her victory was short-lived, however. The very next day, civil proceedings were launched in the Federal Court by lawyers acting for the boys seeking damages for psychological injury. The writs allege that Norman engaged in a sexual relationship with the then-year-ten boys late last year, and as a result, the students suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.’
The TV showed two boys loitering outside the County Court, both in suits, their faces blurred.
‘With that trial beginning only five days from now, I sat down with Demetri Sfakiakopoulos, Belinda Norman’s solicitor, to find out more about the case that has transfixed a nation.’
What this journalist means is that the case has transfixed the nation’s news media. If Belinda Norman were even remotely unattractive, this would be another sad story buried on page eight among the overseas riots and the celebrity marriages. But these two boys claim to have scaled the Mount Everest of the male libido: sex, repeatedly, with their desirable high school teacher.
Old men in editorial positions are transfixed, so the rest of us have to be too.
There was Demetri in his crisp charcoal suit, wispy white hair and bulbous nose, smiling awkwardly. Offscreen, the reporter said, ‘Mister Sfakiakopoulos, thanks for joining me.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he croaked. Then he coughed. You could tell he was sitting on the bottom edge of his jacket so it didn’t bunch around his shoulders. He’s done this kind of interview before.
The reporter asked, ‘Hasn’t this question already been decided in the criminal courts? Why are these proceedings any different?’
Demetri smiled. He’d been tossed a sitter for starters.
‘Because the standard of proof is lower in civil proceedings. Rather than prove the case beyond all reasonable doubt, which, as we all know, is the standard of proof in a criminal case, in these proceedings the allegations need only be shown to be likely on the balance of probabilities. It’s an easier standard for Belinda’s accusers to attain. Proving guilt is very difficult in a criminal trial.’
And I thought to myself, tell that to Spiros Angelis.
I say to the tall one, ‘I know George’s brother, Spiros. He’s in prison. I was asking after him.’
‘Why not just go visit him in prison?
‘I kind of helped put him there. I don’t think he’d be happy to see me.’
The short one asks, ‘What’d you expect to find out?’
‘Nothing.’ My voice is a hoarse whimper. I’ve hardly spoken at all in the three days I’ve been here. I look the tall one right in the eye. ‘I guess I was after some kind of closure.’
There’s a creak and a rustle from the bed next to mine. The curtain wraps all the way around that bed, cocooning whoever it is, trapping them inside our soap opera.
I guess I can’t play the television as loud as I want from now on.
During the interview with Demetri they played a clip of Paul Norman, Belinda’s husband, addressing the media pack after Belinda’s acquittal. He had a naturally dishevelled look and a flushed complexion and it was more than the strain of the trial that you could see in his eyes. I picked him for a committed drinker.
