I'm Dying Here Read online

  “She might come back in her own time,” the sheikh said confi­dently. “This is not a landscape where a dromedary might feel at home.” He turned aside and spoke for a time, in Arabic I assume, into an extraordinary thing, made of gold and diamond with black onyx and probably the ivory tusk of an extinct species of whale, the size of a postage stamp. He slipped it away and told Share, “I have arranged for someone to recover the creature.” I didn’t think that news would thrill her, especially if they ran a test on the maddened animal’s blood. Then again, by the time anyone caught up with Nile Fever she’d probably have metabolized all her spare calories.

  Overhead, a Channel 9 TV crew raced in their own chopper toward the devastation now well behind us. Two cop cars roared by. I wondered what sort of beat-up we’d see on the news. War on Terror reaches Melbourne Town? Surely not, too much money tied up in the man in the burnoose, too many oil wells in the hot Mideastern desert, too many delicate trade sensibilities quivering in Canberra. Share was apologizing again, and Abdul bin Sahal al Din waving her regrets aside, blaming it all on the unsophistica­tion of the local breed and his pilot’s carelessness. I wasn’t too sure which local breed he had in mind but had dark suspicions. A phone rang, and each of us pawed at a pocket or purse. It was mine. I looked at the caller ID.

  “I hope you’ve got somewhere decent for me to sleep tonight, you prick,” I said.

  “She wouldn’t come across, eh.” Mauricio was worldly wise but sympathetic. “Those Eastern suburbs bitches, fuck like ferrets until they turn 22, then it’s all tennis, swimming and bridge parties.”

  I leaned over and tapped Share on the shoulder. She shot me an irritated glance in the rear vision mirror. “Can’t you entertain yourself for a few more minutes, Dr. Purdue? The sheikh and I are making dinner plans.”

  “I thought you might be,” I said. “Count me in. I’m ravenous. I could eat a camel.”

  “Shut up. You’re a disgrace to your profession.”

  Hmm. So the cover story continued its cover. Mauricio was nat­tering on tinnily as I put the phone back to my ear.

  “—complete collapse, sorry about your paintings but the insur­ance will cover at least half the—”

  “The paintings were crap from a Kings Cross pavement daub­er,” I said. “Fifty thou should cover it. Where are you putting me up? We’re headed for the Regent, should I put it on your tab?”

  “The Regent motel in Regent, maybe.” He gave a coarse guf­faw. “Who’s we? I thought you said you didn’t get a bang out of her?”

  “I said nothing of the kind,” I told him with dignity. “We is me and Share and the Sheikh Abdul bin Sahal al Din, of Saudi Arabia a prince.”

  The two in the bucket seats had fallen silent. I could hear them listening.

  “Don’t shit me, Thomas. Listen, the reason I’m calling—”

  “I was hoping we’d get to that before we roll up the drive to the Regent. I’m thinking a nice corner suite on the fifteenth floor.” “Dream on. Vinnie was trying to find you.”

  “He’s got my phone number.” But Vinnie was too old, too mired in the twentieth century, too technologically challenged to understand the uses of cell phones. He paid extra to keep a landline on his desk with an ancient handset. It saddened me to think of the jail time I’d served for a modest evasion of an absurd sumptuary law when the telcoms pocketed billions on endless upgrades. Small beer, granted, compared to the pocket money of the geezer in the passenger seat, but still, it gave a man pause. “What’s Vinnie want, Mauricio?”

  “Annabelle’s got herself into trouble.”

  “What!” Animal’s been a dyke since she was fifteen years old. How the hell could she be “in trouble”? Yes, obviously she could get pregnant of her own free will, gritting her teeth as she did it with a living male, or more likely wielding a turkey baster charged with the stuff of life from some guaranteed HIV-free gay pal, if any, but it wasn’t the sort of thing a girl like my daughter stumbled into by accident. Oh fuck. I felt suddenly sick in my guts. Had one of the bent sons of bitches that lurk in the dark dank places she hangs out in got her zonked on roofies and sunk the pork sword? Rage and anxiety fought it out inside my soul, while my body banged about furiously in the back of the Cobra. “I’ll kill any motherfucker who got my little girl up the—”

  “Not that sort of trouble, you nitwit. She wants you to—” The connection fell out as we hummed between outer and inner city cell boundaries. I smacked the small stupid thing and the hinged portion with the microphone fell off in my lap.

  “Will you goddamn settle down in back?”

  “Pull over, Share.”

  She put her foot on the accelerator. “Don’t be ridiculous.” “This is my fucking car. Pull over and let me drive.”

  “I’ll do no such thing. You’re an angry man, Dr. Purdue, and I can understand your anxiety, my firm will certainly be prosecuting you to the full extent of the law for the misfeasance your veterinar­ian malpractice has wrought in respect of our prime racing camel Nile Fever, and I cannot too strongly advise you—”

  The sheikh gave me a manly grimace from behind the edge of his burnoose and handed me his own elegant phone. It looked like a shrunken iPhone. But there was no display.

  “Speak to it,” the sheikh said. “Speak carefully, like myself it understands English but not always Australian.”

  “I seem to have come out without my Filofax. How do I get directory assistance?”

  “Just ask the program, it is quite capable,” the sheikh said. He didn’t have the look of a man who spent much time talking with directory assistance, or looking up the telephone directory either.

  “Get me Vincent F.X. Mannix,” I said.

  “Vincent F.X. Mannix, 35a Wilson Lane, Brunswick, Victoria, Australia?” the phone said in a soft female American accent. “That’s the old goat,” I said.

  “Please answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

  “It’s bloody him, all right?”

  “Please answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.”

  “Yes. Fucking yes. Christ.”

  “Hold the line, please.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, “There is no line, this is a mobile.”

  “Hold the line, please.”

  “Who’s this cretin I’m speaking to?”

  “A telco AI pod,” the sheikh said. “In Bangalore.”

  “Good God, no wonder it sounds like something out of a Ste­phen King movie.”

  “That’s Bangor, Maine, you oaf,” Share told me, eyes on the road. “Bangalore is in India.”

  “The new computational center of the free world,” the sheikh said. There was pride in his voice, as if it was all his doing. For all I knew maybe it was. Free world, that was a laugh. I recalled a current affairs special on TV, a sickening little program about fifteen school­girls getting burned to death in Mecca. The righteous religious po­lice fucks outside wouldn’t unlock the doors for them, because they weren’t wearing their scarves. I really hate watching TV.

  “I have to talk to India to get a connection to Brunswick?” “It’s a global village,” the sheikh said.

  The phone purred like a cat with cream. After a few seconds Vinnie’s voice said, “Yup?”

  Before I could answer, the smooth, female American voice said, “Go ahead, please. Have a nice day.”

  “Who the fuck’s that?” Vinnie said.

  “It’s an Internet site in India pretending to be a country switch­board operator in 1920,” I said. “Nostalgia chic. The shock of the old. Ignore it, Vinnie.”

  “Tom? Just where are you, in bloody America or bloody India?”

  “Halfway back from the Dandenongs, mate. Our camel’s done a bunk.”

  Wait a moment, Vinnie didn’t know about Nile Fever. “Quit bullshitting me. Animal’s in trouble.”

  “So Mauricio said.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it, Tom? She needs you, she’s your daughter.”

  “What sort of trouble are we talking
about?”

  “Girl trouble.”

  “Period cramps? Tell her to talk to her quack.”

  “One of her friends....”

  “...her lesbian mates.”

  “Yeah, one of them. Could be dead, Tom.”

  “You don’t die of period pains,” I said.

  “A lot you know,” Share said from the front seat.

  “Shut up, this is private. You can die of PMT, I’ll give you that, especially if you’re the bloke in the picture.”

  “Animal wouldn’t say,” Vinnie told me. “Just said she needed you.”

  “Okay, Pops,” I said. “I’ll drop round and see her.”

  “You do that, Tom. She’s a good girl at heart. You should try to be a bit more of a father. Take an interest.”

  “See you, mate.”

  I exhaled slowly and relaxed as much as I could in the nar­row confines of the luggage compartment. No bun in the oven for Animal after all, unlikely as that had seemed. The delights of grandparenthood receded. A good thing too, I was far too young to be a granddad, I still had the best part of my life ahead of me. I handed the slender phone back reluctantly to the sheikh, wonder­ing how he’d react to a request for a loan. Not just of the phone. I was skint. With my feng shui headquarters now reduced to rubble, my chances of earning anything in the near future seemed slight. The monthly repayment on the Cobra was a month overdue as it was. The Easy Finance man had already been round, making easy threats. It occurred to me that it might be time to relinquish the vehicle completely, go a bit Gandhian in the material possessions stakes.

  I told Share, “Drop me in Brunswick, will you? Same place as last night. You can keep the car for the moment. Use it until the Audi’s back on the road.”

  “The Audi, Purdue, is worth its weight in scrap metal and you know it. The only ‘road’ it’ll ever get back on is the road to oblivion.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, hang onto the Cobra for the time being.” “I might just do that.”

  Too right. Let the fucking sheikh pay the mortgage.

  §

  I don’t often visit Animal. The notice on the door at the top of the stairs—Well Cut Your Balls Off—is a powerful disincentive to pa­ternal contact. This time things were different. She needed me, and a father always wants to be needed. Plus I needed a place to stay. Animal and a shifting population of girlfriends live above Vinnie’s shop. Vinnie himself lives two streets away with an old crone called Mrs. Murphy who is the Czar of all the Russias’ great great grand­daughter when she is not being a reincarnation of Cleopatra. As she once pointed out to me when I questioned the apparent contra­diction, there is no reason why Cleopatra couldn’t have been rein­carnated as the Czar’s great great grand-daughter. It seemed quite proper, actually. Maintain the bloodlines down the ages.

  §

  I waved a hand at the departing Cobra, wondering if I’d ever see it again, and entered Vinnie’s shop. Vinnie prides himself on running a ships’ chandlers with pawn broking facilities. What he actually sells is stuff that has fallen off the back of a truck. I pushed the door open and listened with pleasure to the ting. There’s nothing electronic about Vinnie’s door’s ting. Opening the door compress­es a powerful spring, then trips a hammer that slams into a ship’s bell. The bell in question belonged to the S.S. Windermear which sank off Portsea with the loss of all hands in 1897. Vinnie himself looted it from the wreck in 1951. On the back wall of the shop a picture hangs of Vinnie all dressed up in his 1950s diving gear. It’s been a long time since Vinnie last went swimming.

  “That you, Tom?” Vinnie looked up from the form guide.

  “You can see it’s me,” I said.

  “You’re standing in the light.”

  “You’re blind.”

  “I’m not as young as I was.”

  “Never a truer word,” I said. Actually he looked quite chipper, for an ancient wreck of a man.

  “Didja see your house on telly last night?”

  “No,” I said. “I never watch television. I prefer the opera and the company of heart-breaking women.”

  “I could get you a nice little set. Friends’ price, of course.”

  “You’re not my friend, Vinnie,” I said. “You’re Animal’s pre­tend grandfather. The preferential price still applies, though, I hope.” Annabelle actually still had two sets of grandparents, Patty’s mother and father and mine, but Patty’s parents hated me with a passion and I loathed mine and everything to do with them. She once told a little friend that Vinnie was her fairy grandfather, which caused his eyes to narrow before he gave a gruff laugh and tousled her hair fondly. She might have been the only person ever to mistake Vin for a fairy.

  “You see all sorts of interesting stuff, you should try it,” Vin­nie assured me. He keeps a small set behind the counter. It’s never switched off and the sound is never above a whisper. God knows what the deaf old coot actually gets from it. “Take this morning,” he said. “One of those helicopters collided with a camel.”

  “It’s worse than the National Enquirer,” I said. “You’d believe anything.”

  “The camel escaped from captivity and seems to have collided with a bus filled with nuns. A write-off, the bus, they say, nobody badly hurt thank heavens. The poor animal was just running down the road, maddened by terror.” His voice became sepul­chral, and his eye uncanny. “When the authorities arrived it had been mutilated. UFOs, Mrs. Murphy says. It’s not for me to say, of course, there were no camels on board ship.” He returned to the form guide. “I believe you mentioned a camel.”

  “Talking of Animals—”

  “You’d better go up and see her. Trouble in the family.”

  Vinnie might regard all his borrowed grand-daughter’s lesbian mates as family, I’m not so sure I do. But then Vinnie probably regards the Czar of all the Russias as family. A mob of dykes would just be chicken feed under that sort of family tree. I opened the flap in the counter and made my way to the back of the shop. Apparently Vinnie had got in a job lot of Belgian camembert—six months past the use-by date and smelling of it. Gagging gently, I held my breath and climbed the stairs to the door with the wel­coming message, knocked, entered without waiting.

  Heavy curtains completely blacked out the living room, if you could call it that. A red candle burned on a low table. The air was heavy with incense, luckily.

  “Christ, Dad. Shut the door,” Animal said. “You’re letting the dark out.” I did as I was told. “Sit down, Dad. Make yourself at home.”

  It took me a few seconds to locate a chair in the darkness. And another few seconds, luckily before I sat on it, to identify the cush­ion as a cat. I picked up the cat and sat down. The cat began to purr on my lap.

  “Fuckin traitor,” a voice which wasn’t Animal’s said from the same corner of the room as my Goth daughter. “Some fuckin at­tack cat you are, Sappho.”

  My night vision was coming into play. Animal lay full length on a disintegrating couch, her head on the other woman’s lap. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Grime Grrl. Grime, meet my dad.”

  “G’day, Mr. Animal,” Grime Grrl said.

  “My name’s Tom.”

  “Whatever.”

  During a slight pause in the conversation, I stroked Sappho the cat. Sappho’s purrs began to sound like gravel in a cement mixer. The candle light glinted on the metal in Grime Grrl’s face. It didn’t appear that I was about to be offered tea and biscuits.

  “So about this missing grrl,” I said.

  “We want you to find her,” Animal said. “You being a private eye and all that.”

  “Feng shui consultant,” I said.

  “Jesus, Dad, I thought you were a private eye.”

  “That was years ago,” I said. “I lost my license, if you’ll remem­ber. You’re really not permitted to have one when you’ve been in prison. They get quite tetchy.”

  “No, can’t remember that,” Animal said. “Years ago is a bit of a blur, actually
.” I got the impression that Animal thought this was a good thing; anybody who could remember years ago was in big trouble. “Anyway,” she said, “we want you to find Cookie.”

  “This Cookie is a missing suspected possibly deceased person?” I said. “You don’t actually have a corpus delicti to show me?”

  “There you go, Dad, you can still do it. Deceased person. Cor­pus de Licketty. Fuckin ace.”

  I felt tired. “So tell me about this Cookie,” I said. “Full name. Address. Physical description. Last known whereabouts. Reasons for suspecting foul play.”

  “She’s Grime’s sister. She lives here. Only she doesn’t exactly live here now if she’s dead.” It was banter, but there was a choke in her resolutely Goth throat.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, it’s obvious, Sherlock. She isn’t here.”

  “Real homebody is she?”

  “Was, maybe,” Grime said in her flat, depressed voice.

  “Or maybe she just went out for a bite to eat.”

  “We cast the runes. They say she’s no longer on this plane.” Sappho choked, convulsed neatly, put a wet hairball in my lap and jumped off. I knew just how she felt.

  “The captain and crew have all left this plane,” I said. “I blame the air traffic controller’s strike.”

  “What?”

  “Or maybe the luggage handlers.” I found an old snotty Kleenex in my pocket, captured the hairball, went looking for the trash bin. It was neatly under the sink, where you’d expect it to be anywhere else than here. I ran cold water over my fingers. I don’t know, I’ve become fastidious living in Parkville.

  “He’s a sarcastic bastard,” Grime Grrl told my daughter.

  “Cookie’s a bit overweight,” Animal said. “She doesn’t like go­ing out in public. She’s shy.”