The Midnight Promise: A Detective's Story in Ten Cases

by Zane Lovitt

  ‘Do you have lime juice?’ I ask.

  The barman stands slowly, looks at me with no expression. Then he says, ‘Hey?’

  ‘Lime juice. From limes. Do you have limes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I need a double vodka tonic with lime juice in a tall glass. Is that all right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I turn to Troy. He’s pulled his hood up over his head and seems to be staring at the table top.

  ‘Troy,’ I say.

  He doesn’t respond.

  ‘Troy,’ I say again. I need him to look up so that the barman will be able recognise him. If it comes to that.

  Troy does look up. His eyes are barely open and he still looks like he’s going to puke.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head, lowers his eyes again.

  ‘Troy,’ I say, louder.

  His eyes come back to me, wider this time. It’s my own fault, but I hate it when people are scared of me.

  ‘I’m going to get you a juice. Is an orange juice okay?’

  He nods softly.

  I turn back to the barman. ‘And one orange juice.’

  He keys this into the register.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be feeling too good, poor kid,’ I mutter. The barman just nods, takes my money, sets about making the drinks. I’d hate to rely on him as a witness. He has blond tips and a goatee and he’s so disengaged it’s possible he’s under hypnosis. Working in a hotel like this might do that to you.

  There’s a middle-aged loner at the table by the door. Maybe she’s seen Troy, maybe she’s not the observant type. But that will have to be good enough.

  I set the drinks down on the table and sit opposite him, drink in gulps. His orange juice gets no attention. I survey the emptiness beyond the plate glass. The hotel’s name, The Royale, is written vertically above me, a little gaudy for such a narrow city street. When I look at Troy, he looks away, his hands in his pockets, skinny frame almost rigid.

  ‘I’m sorry I hit you,’ I wipe a drip from my chin. ‘But I can’t have you hurting yourself. Not right there in front of me.’

  ‘Why do you fucking care?’ It’s dry and full of hate, but it’s the first calm thing he’s said. His eyes flit between the scar on my head and the table.

  I take another long drink. ‘Because I’m the one who’d have to stop the bleeding, put you onto the floor and pump your heart for you. For one thing, I’d get blood all over my clothes. I’d have to get your tongue out of your airway, keep it out of there while I called an ambulance. Then I’d have to give you rescue breaths. Mouth to mouth.’

  I expect him to recoil, but he doesn’t. He says, ‘No one’s making you.’

  ‘Not true. If you stuck a knife in your heart with me watching, and if I didn’t do anything about it, the cops would want to know why. And your parents would sue me. Or they’d sue the guy who got me this job. He’d be angry with me and I don’t want to make him angry. He’s been good to me.’

  Troy stares with his studiously sleepy eyes back at the table, tips back in his seat, unmoved. He’s probably heard a few speeches in his short life.

  I finish the tall glass and weigh it in my hands. The ice cubes inside crash against each other, the familiar rattle of finality. You have finished your drink, sir. What are you going to do now?

  I say, ‘It’s different, though, if I’m not there.’

  From my jacket pocket I take out the room key, drop it onto the table in front of him. He tips forward on his seat. ‘What?’ His voice croaks because of all the screaming he’s been doing.

  ‘The man at the bar, he’s seen you. He’ll say you left, went to the elevator, I stayed. I can say I thought you just went upstairs to get your bag. Then I go back up, wondering why you’re taking so long, find you but it’s too late. I call the ambulance and do some pilates until the police show up. The whole thing’s over good and quick and I don’t have to try and…whatever.’

  ‘Don’t fucking dare me to,’ he says, his eyes steady. ‘I’ll fucking do it.’

  ‘I’m not daring you. You want to, so I’m giving you the chance.’

  His face seems to lose its contempt. He picks up the key and looks carefully at it, like maybe I swapped in a fake one. Then his eyes come back up to me, big and hazel and intense, like maybe I’ve been swapped in for the guy who just smacked him across the face.

  I lean forward, lower my voice.

  ‘What I said about puncturing your breast plate, I meant that. If you want to do it right, get the blade in behind your adam’s apple, from your right hand side, then wrench it out longways. You’ve got to do it in one quick movement though. That’ll cut your carotid artery and your oesophagus, and there’s no coming back from that. Understand?’

  There’s a moment while he absorbs, then he nods quickly.

  I stand up. ‘You’re not going to have long, so be quick. And for Christ’s sake leave the door unlocked.’

  I carry my ice cubes to the bar, set down the glass. The barman is stacking the fridge again, hasn’t noticed me. When I peek over my shoulder, Troy is staring at the key in his hand.

  I say loud enough for the barman to hear: ‘All right, Troy. You go get your bag and I’ll wait here for you.’

  This gets the barman’s attention and he approaches. When I look back to Troy, he’s moving through the tables, back towards the elevator.

  ‘My friend’s just getting his bag,’ I say to the barman. I do my best to smile. ‘But I think I’ve got time for one more, don’t you?’

  He mixes it for me with his characteristic mindlessness and I take it back to my seat, opposite Troy’s lonely yellow juice. I keep a watch on the entrance to the hotel, just in case he tries to run for it. But I don’t think he’ll do that.

  I finish my drink in one long draught and as I lower the glass a minuscule speck of liquid splashes back against my face. It hits the scar on my head. Makes it sting.

  I’m about to go back up to the room when I see a big blue car come around the corner at the far end of the street. Instinctively I’m up and away from the table, out of the car’s view, sheltering behind a thick pillar. I make myself as thin as possible.

  The car chugs past, slow enough for Leo to get a good look at the hotel. But for all I know it’s a rockabilly hipster letting a blind man cross in front of him.

  When I chance a look, the vehicle is gone. Magically. I might think I was hallucinating except that I’m two drinks down now, enough to keep me sharp. I didn’t see the driver, maybe it wasn’t even a Valiant. But here I am, hunkered under a Matisse.

  If it was him, he must have followed me up from Melbourne. He did well for me not to spot him, but I guess I’m a little rusty. And now he’s parading his big dumb car down a Sydney street where it barely fits. I guess he’s a little rusty too.

  But if Troy’s dead upstairs I guess none of this matters anymore.

  I take the elevator to the third floor and I try to make it seem like a casual saunter along the hallway back to room 302. I knock gently.

  No sound from inside.

  Maybe he’s done it.

  The plan is that I should go inside, but I can’t seem to take my hands out of my pockets to turn the handle. I wait several seconds for that to happen. Eventually I hear the tone from down the hall and I seize the handle and push inside before the elevator doors can open.

  Troy sits on the bed. Hands clasped in front of him, almost praying. He jerks his head up, pained and squinting, trying to read my reaction to how he’s still alive. I shut the door and approach slowly, glance around for where the knife might be.

  It’s on the carpet in the corner, unbloodied, still greasy and brown. There’s a brown smear on the wall above it. He must have thrown the knife and there’s where it hit.

  ‘I suppose it sounds stupid,’ Troy says, fidgeting with the webbing in his hand. ‘It’s just…I can’t handle the sight of blood.’

  As he speaks he lowers his he
ad again, lets the hair fall protectively across his face and thrusts his thumb into his palm like he’s trying to stigmata himself. But when he sweeps his hair away and suddenly he’s looking at me, his eyes don’t hold any agitation. He’s already forced it back, beyond anything I can see. The bland expectancy in his face is like he just asked me to renew his gym membership.

  None of them was ever not bluffing.

  I peer through the peephole. Whether that was Leo coming out of the lift really does matter now. But the corridor is empty.

  4

  It’s night. Beyond our headlights there’s just the reflectors on the road and the shifting shades of black that are actually the trees and the sky. Sometimes there’s a spark of something more—the lit window of a farmhouse through the sticks or a fire that doesn’t burn bright enough to reveal the people who must be tending it. For an hour now the only other vehicle on the road has been the distant pair of fat orange headlights in my mirror. I’m not driving fast, just under the speed limit, but that car’s keeping its distance. It’s too dark to see what kind of car it is.

  Apart from those headlights, the whole world is me and Troy and a conveyor belt of animals pulverised on the bitumen. Possums and wombats and kangaroos, crushed and forgotten by an endless stream of humans.

  About half an hour ago Troy asked me to pull over so he could throw up. He said he always got fucking motion sickness in a fucking car at fucking nighttime. I glanced at those orange lights in my rearview and suggested he vomit into the clean-up bag that hung from the glove box. It was wrapped in red cellophane that matched the deep red in the rental company’s logo, and through the cellophane you could make out the words: FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE.

  So Troy vomited into the bag. After that he just flopped there beside me, listless, while the whole car stank of sick. I suggested he take the antidepressants that his mother gave to me to give to him. They’re called Lexaprine and I was surprised that he took them without protest. He didn’t ask why I refused to pull over. I’d tell him there could be someone following us, but that might make him throw up again.

  Now the listlessness has worn off and he’s playing with the cellophane, pinching it between his fingers and rubbing it to make it squeak, huddled forward like he would be if his arms were only as long as his wrists. He’s been doing it for a while and mostly it hasn’t bothered me but the only other sound is the metallic whisper of the engine and now he’s getting the knack and that squeaking is making me grind my teeth. When I realise how tightly clenched my jaw is I raise a hand and say, ‘Cut that out?’

  Immediately he thrusts himself back in his seat, jerks his head to face the window, making it obvious he was squeaking the cellophane so that I’d be annoyed, so that I’d tell him off, so that he could be annoyed too. He turns to look at me, challenging. His quiet resentment has evolved into plain old resentment. After a long stare, he says, ‘You’re fucking weird.’

  He waits for me to ask why, and when I don’t, he says, ‘Telling me to go kill myself.’

  We drive over the remains of something big with wings.

  ‘I didn’t tell you to do anything.’

  ‘You told me how. You helped me. Man, that is fucked up. Do my parents know how fucked up you are?’

  ‘Right now I think they’re more concerned with how fucked up you are.’

  He goes back to playing with the cellophane, quietly now, focusing hard on it. ‘My mum’s a fucking slut,’ he says, half-mumbling.

  Then he says, with forced humour, ‘Want to hear a joke? What’s the difference between my mum and a bowling ball?’

  I don’t answer.

  ‘You can only fit three fingers in a bowling ball.’ He laughs through his teeth.

  I’m hoping that’s the end of the talking. He seems to ponder his own words for a while. There’s just the sound of the car slipping along the road and the soft buzz in my head that seems to be the sound of the headlights trailing behind us. We go past a lumpy kangaroo, dragged to the side of the road by the thoughtful motorist who ran it down.

  ‘So you do this, like, for a job?’ he asks, louder than necessary. Instinctively I decelerate, in case he’s about to flip out.

  ‘No. I’m unemployed.’

  ‘Well, what did you do before you were unemployed?’

  ‘I was a private inquiry agent.’

  That makes me smile. Whenever I used to tell people that, no one knew what it meant. That’s not why I said it, it was genuinely what I thought my job was, but having to explain it gave me some control, depending on who I was talking to and why. Troy doesn’t know what it means but he doesn’t want to show that because he thinks it’ll make him look dumb. He nods.

  ‘How come you don’t do that anymore?’

  ‘I lost my licence.’

  His face slackens as he thinks.

  ‘Want to hear a joke?’

  ‘I’d rather we didn’t talk. I need to concentrate.’

  ‘Why does my mum wear underpants?’ He doesn’t wait for me this time. ‘To keep her ankles warm.’ And he snorts.

  We drive over two foxes, parallel, like one of them couldn’t bear to live without the other. Though what’s more likely is one fox was eating a dead fox and got hit by a car because he didn’t see it coming because he was distracted because the other fox was so delicious.

  Troy says, ‘How did you lose your licence?’

  ‘Something bad happened.’

  ‘Is that when you got that scar on your head?’

  ‘No. That was something different. I don’t want to talk about my job. I don’t do it anymore.’

  ‘If you don’t do it anymore then why the fuck are you here?’

  ‘Your parents needed you to come home quietly and I know how to do that.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ he says feebly.

  We’re approaching a service station, one of those miniature cities with fast food restaurants and trucks lining the carpark. It isn’t exactly bustling at this late hour. If that is Leo behind us, his Valiant is going to need petrol soon enough.

  Troy senses my thoughts. ‘Is there someone after us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  We pass the rest stop and I slow down to get a good look in the mirror. As the orange headlights reach the carpark the full body of the machine is illuminated. A long, cornflower blue Valiant rolls into the driveway, headed for the pumps. I can’t see the driver. Even so, I press hard on the brakes and pull onto the mud shoulder.

  ‘Stay here,’ I say.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Shouldn’t be long.’

  It takes only a few seconds. I run back along the highway, spot the Valiant at the pumps. No sign of Leo. I scurry past the gas tanks and the ice machine, get a view inside through the glass. A skinny blond figure all in black is waiting in line. If that is Leo, he’s even taller than I remember him. Casually, I walk to his car, squat and use the corkscrew on my keyring to drill into his front tyre. After a heady moment of pushing and wrenching, the black rubber hisses at me with relief. When I get back to the car, Troy says, ‘What the fuck, man?’

  I bear down on the accelerator, refocus on the road ahead. I hope we can find a motel before Leo catches up.

  ‘Is it something to do with my mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Then Troy says, ‘What do you call my mum with a runny nose?’

  I exhale.

  He says, ‘Full.’ But he doesn’t laugh this time. He hunches forward again, fiddles with the cellophane that hangs from the glovebox. I let the awkward silence seep into the cracks that are starting to show in his bullshit façade. Then I say, ‘You know, you could give your mum the benefit of the doubt. The jury found her not guilty.’

  ‘She is guilty.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Just because they make jokes about her at school—’

  ‘I do know. I saw her.’

  We’re going so fast I don’t want to take my eyes off the road. But I have to, for a moment.

 
; ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw her. With Tyler. In the darkroom at school.’

  ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did they do when they saw you?’

  ‘Mum was really angry. You’re not supposed to go into the darkroom when the red light’s on, but I didn’t know. I don’t do art. I just like to go to the darkroom sometimes. She said they were developing pictures, but…’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was pulling his pants up when I came in. Her shirt was unbuttoned.’

  He hasn’t taken his eyes off the red cellophane. After three more seconds I realise there’s no point driving like this now. I ease my foot off the accelerator.

  ‘Did you tell anybody?’

  ‘Nuh.’ Troy shrugs.

  ‘They want you to give evidence. In court. Do you know that?’

  He shrugs again.

  I say, ‘Do you think you can talk about it in court?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Another shrug. He still doesn’t look at me. ‘I don’t care.’

  I wait for him, don’t speak, give him the space to volunteer more. He doesn’t, and silence becomes our default.

  We drive over a koala. Maybe a koala. Car tyres, one after the other, have rendered it a mess of grey fur and dried blood and a ribcage. The people keep coming, me and everyone else, each of us gives it another trampling, transforming it into something more than just dead.

  I don’t know what time it is when we cross the Murray. The water is black and quiet, so much so that the only way I know we’re crossing it is there are ‘no diving’ pictograms lining the road, and then I realise the road is actually a bridge. On the south side is Victoria and a roadsign that says WELCOME TO YARINDARRA, held up by two long metal stilts angled comically back from the road like the sign is meant more for aeroplanes than for cars. Almost definitely this was caused by a car colliding with the stilts, but if you needed proof, there’s a bunch of dying daffodils in pink paper taped to one of them and the other has a football jersey dangling from it, orange and blue and clean, seemingly new. I slow to look at these items as our headlights pass across. I bet the local TV news covered it and said it was a senseless waste and I bet it failed to mention the hypocrisy of small town culture that combines a motor-vehicle fetish with a collective alcohol abuse problem and then wonders why its teenagers finish up mutilated and facedown in puddles of their own shit and blood. The local news probably didn’t mention the shit and blood either.