Chapter Ten
Tom and Tuesday hired a rickshaw at Rose Bay and an Irish lackey trundled them like a wheelbarrow of potatoes down William Street towards the smoky city.
In the streets around them the daily nuances of life continued; the newspaper boys shouted the day’s headlines from their soap boxes even though they had no newspapers to sell and armed police (not because they carried machine guns like the soldiers but because they were in fact walking arm in arm) strolled contently along the Bay jogging path, tipping their caps at the ladies. Kangaroos milled in packs, begging at the cross lights, their fat tails hanging over the gutters like lethargic snakes and spirals of children shrieked after rubber tyres which tumbled onwards from the prod of their sticks. Through the clouds of smoke, row upon row of burnt rooftops and collapsed walls in North Woollahra displayed their exclusive foundations as though they were Monopoly squares.
Tuesday leant back in the rickshaw, her hands under her buttocks, overly careful not to brush against Tom. She rubbed the hot and peeling leather beneath her fingertips. A rickshaw is not nearly as jarring as one might think, thought Tuesday. It has a lull to it much like the rocking of a mother’s arms. And so decadent to boot. There’s something about being pulled along by one’s fellow man that makes one feel like a king or queen and yet gives life such a visceral feeling, much more so than the turning of a car key in an ignition. It was like being thrust back into the 1700s, Cinderella on her way to the ball.
Tuesday squinted into the smash light. The city air today was a soft blanket of rose pink with curling crimson ribbons and it smelt like melting crayons. Why couldn’t Sydney be like this all the time? Must it go back to being so clinical and character draining and boring when the drought was over? The city looked so alive with chatter, alive with life. A city that could have once been epitomised by the image of a windscreen on a freeway was now the Western world’s China. Hundreds of people around her sat their work satchels on their bicycle handlebars as they wobbled their way to work. There was always time for a coffee in the gutter or a chat in the speak-easy circles in the city parks. Tuesday half-closed her eyes.
Why couldn’t Sydney be like this forever?
“We’re here,” said Tom, nudging her.
They jumped out either side of the rickshaw and hurried into the cool foyer of Ginny’s old building. Inside the lift Tom and Tuesday waited while soot-covered faces entered and exited from floor to floor, the white skin beneath everyone’s eyes reminding Tuesday of sunburnt ski bunnies. They were the only two people continuing on to Level Seventeen and they stepped out alone onto the familiar cream carpet that Tuesday remembered. The huge picture windows reflected their shadows and the city smoke, like last time, pressed against the glass.
It was obvious that Anthea had been up here again, this time along with her unwilling troops. The same drag marks from the water coolers that had led to her garage trap door were here in lines leading from the lift. There was a lingering smell of goanna breath, the flotsam and jetsam debris of little blue and red wires embedded in the carpet, and the trampling footprints of eager men.
What really gave it away however, was the outline of a burnt body on the floor, still smoking, with a tiny piece of charred rubber jandal next to it. And indeed, the trampling footprints of Anthea’s men appeared to trample away from the outline with much haste. Tom picked up a singed piece of paper from the carpet near the lift. It read ‘1kg 5kg 10kg’.
“Looks like this was a practice run. This time the man, next time the building.”
Tom looked around the vast empty floor. A large white crack ran across one of the picture windows but otherwise the building structure was intact.
“This building belongs to Mr G, right?” Tom asked.
“None other. First developer to install fire escape chutes, first to introduce ceiling coffee straws to workstations, and the first to hide video cameras in the ladies showers and sell the tapes on the internet.”
“It wouldn’t look too unusual for the developer’s wife to frequent his own buildings. She could pass without question.”
“So let’s find out where his other building masterpieces are.”
“Let’s go.”
Tom and Tuesday walked to Mr G’s display room in silence. Tuesday felt no need for words but maybe their comfortable silence was some sort of test of their fledgling relationship and they were failing dismally. Perhaps they needed Bill to be the droopy piece of dead wood keeping them away from each other. Maybe they needed Swan’s two taut breasts propping them apart like they needed two holes in their head – the holes that ran to the inner ear and were necessary for balance and hearing.
Maybe if they removed these antagonistic people, they would find that these two dead beats were the lifeblood of their whole relationship and without them they were just Tom and Tuesday, ordinary people without any fight. Without any passion.
“I like that we can walk together without needing to speak a word,” Tom murmured. “Swan fills up every silence with chatter and when she finally loses steam she starts to hum.” He laughed.
A fissure of intense pleasure ran up Tuesday’s spine. Those two dead beats were going to get dropped faster than her brothers in the school beach volley ball line-up. Kicked out of the picture quicker than a goal by Stuart Maxfield on the run on his last bounce fifty metres out from the posts. Trodden on as decisively as Japanese rugby players in a scrum against any competing nation in the world.
Tuesday laughed with relief. “I know.”
They continued to walk in silence for the rest of the trip, nothing but retarded smiles across their faces and shy glances at one another, followed by the sort of sickening giggles that cupid strikes into the hearts of the love struck.
The bell tinkled above Mr G’s door as they pushed it open into the white interior. The Forehead sat behind her counter but was obviously too pushed for work to raise the bottom half of her face over the counter towards them. This could have been because lines one to six were ringing in unison on the telephone or it could have been because the Forehead was in actual fact, quite evidently, dead.
Tom and Tuesday stared at her.
A hail of bullet holes scarred the wall map behind her and peppered her body like worm holes in a drought-ridden apple. She looked surprised. Clutched in a death grip between her fingertips was a bottle of red Mavala nail polish. She’d made it to the index finger on her left hand.
There was a bustling and rustling coming towards them from the corridor beside her and before they could do anything but root themselves to the spot, Mr G burst into the room carrying a roll of black garbage bags.
“Hummph,” he said when he saw them. “Hummph!”
“What happened?” Stuttered Tuesday.
“Whadaya mean, what happened?” Said Mr G sarcastically, tearing off a bag. “I dunno, I had the fucking room redecorated in fucking 1930’s Mafia style COMPLETE WITH DEAD FUCKING SECRETARY!”
He drew a bag over the Forehead’s forehead and tugged it down to her neck. He sighed. “Goodbye, Suzie.” He shook his head. “It’s so fucking hard to find staff who don’t fucking leave after the first year.”
Tuesday was about to point out that perhaps Suzie hadn’t had a choice in the matter but Mr G gave her a look that stopped her in her tracks.
“It was a shoot-out.” He ripped off another bag with his stubby fingers. “That goddamned bitch and her ponytailed faggots came in here peeling off bullets like hot cream slipping off my girlfriend’s breasts. Which was precisely what I was involved in there in the back room when these amateur gun-toting freaks took out poor Suzie here. By the time I’d wiped the cream off my chubby cheeks and pulled up my pants, they were gone.”
“But why?” Tom asked. “What’s their beef with you?”
Mr G shrugged. “Here, Tom. Give me a hand.”
“Give you a hand?”
Mr G poked Suzie’s arm. It was as stiff as cement. “Jesus!” He grimaced and pulled Suzie back by her grey shoulders. There was a snap and her shoulders dislocated like a thumb popping out of a mouth. “Waiting!” Mr G yelled, nodding to the black garbage roll.
“Er. Shouldn’t we call the police or something?” Tom asked, his face white. “You know, give her a decent burial.”
“All my staff get decent burials! Every single one of them clothed and buried decently under six feet of concrete.”
“But doesn’t she have a mother? A father?”
“So! Were they paying her $22,000 a year plus overtime and tea money?”
“Well, no.”
“Exactly.” Mr G bent Suzie’s back straight until it snapped. Her blood-riddled hair swung in matted dreadlocks below the garbage bag which looked like an executioner’s hood. “My pay, my say. I can’t have the cops sniffing around here. There’s a grave out the back that I haven’t even filled in yet.”
Tom swallowed and retreated towards the door. “Look, uh, we have to dash, don’t we Tuesday.”
“Dash? Yes we do. We were in the middle of following Anthea, weren’t we? And we need to…uh, catch the camel express in two minutes.”
“Thirty seconds,” corrected Tom. “Thirty seconds. We just ran in to pick up your wall map.”
Mr G narrowed his eyes. “You were following Anthea?”
Tuesday nodded. “Oh, yeah. We think we’re onto a sure thing. Of course, we’re running out of money…”
Mr G dropped Suzie’s shoulders and she fell to the desk with a thunk. “You a tell me straight away if you find anything?”
“Of course.”
He waggled his finger slowly. “Cause keeping Mr G in the dark is a very bad thing.”
Tom didn’t doubt it. Tuesday didn’t doubt it. And if Suzie was alive and had the power of doubt, she wouldn’t doubt it either.
Mr G pulled out a wad of fifty dollar bills and licked off twenty of them with his chubby fingers while Tuesday untacked the bullet-ridden map from the wall behind him. She rolled up the blood-splattered paper and waited quietly by Mr G’s elbow as he frowned through his money. There was an odd thing Tuesday noticed on the desk by Suzie’s motionless hand. A rolodex card had a blood-smeared finger print on it and unless Suzie had been inclined to ring out for Sushi in between dying, it was probably the print of one of Anthea’s men.
“Do you mind if I take a look at something?” Asked Tuesday, reaching for the rolodex without waiting for Mr G’s reply.
“Hummph,” snorted Mr G, concentrating.
Anthea’s men were certainly amateurs. Tuesday didn’t have to be black to follow the trail. On each card that contained the address of one of Mr G’s buildings, someone had used their bloodied index finger to underline the alarm code. Beside Suzie’s cold, blue fingers was a pad of paper and indented on the top page was the copied list of twelve addresses and codes and below in faint, scrawled handwriting - ha, ha, ha, ha !
“I just need to borrow some notepaper,” said Tuesday, ripping off the top sheet of the pad. “Record taking and all.” She picked up a plastic pen inscribed with the Georgeopoulouissis and Sons’ motto. ‘Buy G and S - If you wanna live another day in paradise.’
Hmmm. Catchy.
“Whatever,” grunted Mr G, “here’s da money.” He gripped Tuesday’s wrist as she reached for it and it was like being gripped by fear. He bent down and blew his Sara Lee whipped cream come Come breath all over her face. “And I wanna results this time!”
Tuesday grimaced under the cloud of foul air. “We understand. You have my word, we won’t disappoint you.”
But of course, they did.
“Good thinking, Tuesday,” said Tom, holding the indented list of addresses up to the light, “but these buildings are all over the city. We’ll have to split up. I’ll take the western side if you take the eastern.” He ripped the list in two and handed her the bottom half.
“When shall we meet back?” Tuesday asked him.
“About four pm? At the dribbling boar in Macquarie Street.”
“Okay. Wish mobiles still worked though. What if something happens to you?”
“I’ll be safe,” Tom answered, none too convincingly. “What about you? You’re the one in danger here, Tuesday. Authors are notorious for getting the female protagonist to fuck everything up.”
“But what if she knows that,” replied Tuesday, “and makes the male protagonist fuck up instead?”
“Or she might guess we’re both onto her and make Esther the bumbling fool.”
Tom and Tuesday stole a glance up at the sky. If only they knew what the author was thinking but all they could see was the drifting yellow smash of the city around them and the odd pigeon self-combusting.
They looked back at each other. Tuesday shrugged. “Don’t worry, Tom, I’ll be on my guard and if I find Esther, I won’t do anything until I meet up with you – unless I see an opportunity for escape of course.”
Tom nodded. “Good luck then.” He held his hand out awkwardly and Tuesday shook it.
They took a step back but it was like one side of a magnet trying to distance itself from the other.
“So bye.”
“Bye.”
“Keep safe.”
“I will. Look after yourself.”
“You too.”
“Back at the dribbling boar at four pm.”
“Okay.”
“No later.”
“No.”
“Goodbye then.”
“Bye.”
Tom and Tuesday stood in the exact same place, having not moved an inch. It was only when Tuesday sneezed violently over Tom’s arm and they both made yucky faces that their hands broke apart and the spell was broken.
For a few minutes Tuesday watched Tom stride resolutely down George Street until his tousled head disappeared into the masses. A few girls from the post-teen brigade turned as he passed, giggling flirtatiously.
Tuesday chewed her thumbnail. She had the same feeling now she had when she was five, when she offered dead Jiggles a bowl of Snappy Tom and his little shrunken head had fallen face first into it and not moved and her Dad had said that Jiggles was just off his food and turned Tuesday’s shoulders around and said she could watch whatever she wanted on television and why didn’t they have KFC for dinner?
She had a bad feeling and she just couldn’t shake it.
At four p.m. Tuesday was waiting by the boar and feeling not so much bad as besieged. The fountain was crowded with Japanese tourists and Tuesday had been politely requested with a continual gesture of waving hands to take photo after photo. She still had three disposable cameras and a Nikon to press while trying to keep an eye out for Tom.
None of the buildings on her half of Mr G’s list had held any more interesting features than they usually did for Tuesday, just more of the same wrist-slicing workstation monotony masquerading as valuable services to society and apartments suitable for one person if they slouched and didn’t wear any shoes and where being able to flush the toilet from the bed had been a selling point.
One interesting feature of all these buildings beside the fact that Mr G favoured round column supports which looked like they’d be in style anywhere else in the world except for Australia, was that Anthea Yialousis had indeed been to all of them.
If there were two things Uncle Bob had taught her, one of them was that he liked vaginas, however women he could take or leave (mostly leave, in the form of his bottom on the end of their foot), and the other was that, when tracking, always start behind you.
Tuesday hadn’t really understood his tracking philosophy until today but now she realised that maybe he meant that solutions had a beginning in the past, or that good trackers stay behind everyone else then sneak up to the front when nobody’s looking to take all the glory, or that literally he had liked to start behind her because he liked her behind.
Whatever he meant, none of it was any help. The bits of Anthea that Tuesday had discovered were so obvious, she might as well have left a trail of bloody footprints, which she had.
Tuesday followed one blood-splattered stiletto point to another. Sometimes Anthea’s footprints wound down to a basement, or up to a vacant office floor, or to an apartment complex gym – in short, wherever it was completely devoid of people. Her footsteps would typically turn around in a circle, wander to any windows, then traipse bloodily to the next address on Tuesday’s list.
It was as if Anthea was casing out the joints. No bombs were left taped to the exercise bikes or shoved into the ceiling ducts or left in the middle of an empty room. And more importantly, no Esthers were sitting tied to chair, gagged and forlorn, and wrapped in dynamite.
Tuesday took one last photo on behalf of the Japanese tourists then slipped away to the back of the crowd. It was four thirty p.m. and still no sign of Tom.
At five p.m. Tuesday thought that maybe Tom had said five p.m. instead of four p.m. and she would wait just another fifteen minutes.
At five fifteen she wondered if he’d meant four a.m. instead of four p.m. but knew in her heart of hearts that she was clutching at straws.
At five thirty p.m. she tore off a piece of paper from her list, wrote down where she was going, and left it under the boar’s foot in case Tom turned up. There was only one place to go - the only address she knew on Tom’s list, the one she’d first seen on the rolodex beside Suzie’s limp hand.
When Tuesday started off it was still light but come nine o’clock she knew the lemon sky would turn pea green with white clouds rolling off it like steam. When that happened it was dangerous. It was impossible to see in the city at night since the lights lit up only the smash itself. The fluorescence of the city had been Sydney’s last comfort but had in the end locked hands with a hundred different kinds of effluence and settled fast in the East Coast basin like murky water in a puddle.
Some said that at night, mirages of eighteenth century taverns with bulging breasted barmaids blew up right in front of you, that solid buildings shifted like the bobbing torches of policemen, that night club goers had been found collapsed in Hyde Park, weeping, blind, and distressed. There were strange lights in the smash, they sobbed, strange lights that followed them.
Tuesday ran down Castlereagh Street as fast as she could, keen to find Tom before night fell. The heat clung to her body as delicately as a hug from a sumo wrestler and condensation dripped down her face on the inside of her mask. The wind had gone with the rain, the two lovers run off hand and hand to England. It was as though Australia was a dying old man. Caught up in the throes of a terrible fever, a fever that would break him or be broken.
The address that Tuesday arrived at was a fence. Stretched around the block was a green corrugated iron barricade topped with barbed wire knots and criss-crossed with menacing signs - ‘Warning - Fierce German Shepherds Hunt In Packs,’ ‘Caution – Premises Patrolled By Inmates From Long Bay,’ ‘Danger – A Georgeopoulouissis And Sons Mafia Stand-over Project.’
Certainly there was a great deal of snarling and saliva-hurled barking in the distance on the other side. The only gate in or out was padlocked with nothing but a finger-wide gap in between its huge doors. In the crack all Tuesday could see was dirt on the ground and what looked like the back of a bulldozer. Tuesday crouched down on her hands and knees and peered underneath the fence. More dirt.
Even if Tom had come here, how had he got in?
Tuesday walked around the block once more. There was no way over without tearing a jugular vein and no evidence that anyone had. There was no way through the gate without a key for the padlock and no sign that it had been broken or tampered with. Tuesday finished back where she’d begun.
Tom had probably not been able to get in either and gone to check out the other properties. But Tom wouldn’t leave it at that would he? He’d find a way in somehow.
It was then that Tuesday noticed it.
A manhole lid in the footpath in front of her jutted up slightly over the concrete as if someone had lifted it up recently and jumped in and not pulled the lid back over completely. Tuesday stared down at it. It was heavy and rust-coloured with strange initials etched on it. Where did it lead? Tuesday didn’t know anything about building engineering but guessed that maybe the building needed sewerage and ventilation and that this was one or the other.
Tuesday hesitated. What if she climbed down and couldn’t get back out? But Tuesday figured the worst that could happen was that she’d be discovered by workmen in the morning when she screamed for help. She waited for a pedestrian to pass and then pulled up the heavy manhole lid.
Tuesday could lift it up a mere millimetre, but it was enough for her to be able to shove the lid across the concrete. She peered into the exposed hole. Below her was a square space lined with old brick. Not very deep. About half her height. She twisted her neck left and right. The dim floor sloped gently downwards and was bone dry but it was impossible to tell if it led anywhere.
Tuesday hopped down quickly, pulled the lid back over her head as far as she could, and discovered her first problem. It was pitch black. Only a coin slot sliver of light fell through the lid above her, hitting the dusty brick beneath her knees. The Sydney City Council, quite rightly, did not provide lights in underground holes for people who per chanced to fall in. Tuesday clicked on her face mask night glow and an eerie red light lit up the darkness for a couple of centimetres wherever she turned her head. Fairly confident that the brick walls held no surprises for her, Tuesday crawled forward on her hands and knees into the musty darkness.
She was in a tunnel for sure. The solid, dry walls on either side of her kept going and going, leading downwards. The tunnel didn’t appear to have been used for anything for quite some time. Daddy long legs quick-footed over her fingertips and the air felt cooler and smelt cleaner than the air outside. Tuesday tried to keep her bearings as the cobble-stoned tunnel wound left and right but the only thing she was sure of was that the tunnel sloped ever downwards and that it was curling ever so slowly around on itself.
After a while Tuesday glanced at her wristwatch. She had been crawling for half an hour with only her own Darth Vader breath for company and the only anomaly she had seen was the gradual appearance of fist-sized holes at irregular intervals along the wall. If she looked into one, all she could see was that it was a funnel leading upwards. The bottom of it was grooved, as if it had once been a viaduct for water. There had been no change in air temperature when she’d held her hand up to the hole. She must be very deep underground now.
Tuesday plodded onwards, deciding that since it was six forty-five p.m., she would crawl on for another hour and then make her way back up to the surface. No sooner had she thought that, than the wall ended abruptly in front of her. Tuesday groaned.
She could not believe it! She felt along the dead end for any loose bricks or weak joints but there was nothing. A solid brick wall ended her journey. She was encased on three sides by the tunnel with nowhere to go but back! Tuesday sat on her haunches and sighed. It had been a silly idea anyway - thinking she would magically pop out somewhere on the building site so conveniently! Instead, it had all been a waste of time.
Tuesday took a deep breath, sat down on her bottom, and stretched her legs. Oh well, she supposed she had better get going. Her breathing was getting laboured with the lack of fresh air and she pushed the ducts on her face filter until they were open wide.
In fact, she felt rather odd. Her shoulders seemed to be quivering and dripping with saliva. Her chest rose up and down with a strangled huskiness. Her mouth blew dog breath on the back of her head. And her bottom snarled.
The hair on the back of Tuesday’s neck stood up. She stared at the brick wall blankly. Please, God, do not let there be a vicious guard dog holed up behind me. There was a pitter-patter of paws and a hairy wet nose edged closer to her head and growled menacingly. Slobber dripped over her shoulder blade and onto her breast and hot doggy breath gurgled with rage in her ear.
Tuesday sat frozen in front of the brick wall. She had nowhere to turn. Did guard dogs ever get tired? Was it just a waiting game? Would he go to sleep sometime in the next three days?
But of course humans aren’t good at waiting or doing nothing. When it comes to a life-threatening situation, humans are likely to do the silliest things just to do something. And what Tuesday did, was ever so slowly turn her head away from his muzzle.
If a German Shepherd has four paws planted firmly behind you and is growling in a manner that suggests he’d quite like to take your ear off, thank you very much, making a move, Tuesday discovered, does not place one in a better position.
The guard dog jerked his face around to hers, his snarling muzzle coming within an inch of her nose. Against his great shaggy neck a metallic tag glinted in the darkness.
Great. She was about to be mauled to death by a guard dog called Flower.
Tuesday knew that he was looking straight into her eyes, and that if she could do anything right, right now, it would be to look anywhere but into his.
Tuesday slowly moved her eyes away from him and upwards. Oh, for heaven’s sake.
There above her head was the shadowy edge of a vertical tunnel as wide as this one. How far up it went, she couldn’t tell.
The German Shepherd growled louder. Don’t even think it, he seemed to be saying. You’re mine.
What would James Bond do? Wondered Tuesday. What would Austin Powers do? What would her mother do? Of course! Please God, forgive her.
In one quick movement Tuesday clenched her fist and king-hit Flower’s nose. It seemed to have as much effect as a mosquito might on the trunk of an elephant but Tuesday didn’t look back. She hurled herself upwards as quick as she could and braced herself against the shaft wall but she wasn’t quite fast enough. Flower recovered from his surprise, chomped down on her dangling foot, dug his paws into the tunnel floor, and proceeded to eat her.
Tuesday screamed and there was a frantic scrabbling noise above her head.
“Tuesday?”
Tuesday strained to look up.
Tom’s head popped out from a side tunnel in the vertical shaft, his pale fingers clasping the edge of the drop.
Tuesday yelled with relief. Thank God Tom was here to the rescue!
“Can you keep it down?” He asked politely. “They’re not far away.”
Tuesday glowered at him. “No, I can’t keep it fucking down!” She hissed. “I’m attached to a fucking German Shepherd!”
“Oh.” Tom propped his legs against the shaft wall and dangled his arms down to hers. “Sorry.” He pulled as hard as he could and Tuesday began to rise up the shaft below him. Along with Flower.
Tom strained with all his might. “God, Tuesday, you’re uh…weighty.”
Tuesday clenched her teeth. “That’s because the dog is coming along for the ride, Tom.”
“Oh.” Tom peered past her. The jaw of a determined German Shepherd clung to what had been Tuesday’s ballet shoe but which was now plastic shreds. The rest of the dog hung down the shaft, unmoving, its back paws a metre off the ground. Flower’s eyes snapped onto Tom’s and he glared at him, his top lip curling in a quiver.
“Bad dog,” said Tom mildly.
Flower opened his mouth. “Wo..!” And promptly dropped like a stone to the tunnel floor, “…of!” He stared up at them, angry to have been duped, and jumped up and down below Tuesday’s toes like a grasshopper gone mad.
Tom pulled Tuesday over the ledge and onto the tunnel floor beside him.
“Are you alright?” He asked, his face peering upside down over hers. Their eyes met. “Er…okay. No need to answer that.” Tom added hastily, darting backwards.
Tuesday sat up. Her right foot throbbed but otherwise she had all her toes. A perfect indent of Flower’s dental work bruised the plane of her foot beneath the slobber.
She swivelled around and looked about her. The tunnel forked here. A gaping black hole looking like a giant’s mouth sucked out the murky light to her left but Tom was instead hurrying fast down the cobbled bricks behind her, down a tunnel where the darkness seemed more grey than black. Tuesday caught sight of Tom’s shadowy bottom disappearing away from her. She crawled hurriedly after him.
The tunnel lightened ahead of them and when Tuesday crawled around the last corner Tom was kneeling in front of a thin wire grate, the light streaming past his face in cubes, his fingers through the gaps.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” Tuesday whispered.
Tom put his hand over her shoulder and rubbed her arm. “That’s okay. How’