Ghost River (16 page)

‘I can't drive,' Sonny offered. ‘I ride my bike. Or walk. Don't I, Ren?'

Before Ren could open his mouth Foy punched him in the stomach. Ren moaned and fell against the back of the seat. He felt the warm piss run down the inside of his thigh.

‘Please don't talk, son. Not a word, if it's more bullshit.'

Foy pulled a black-and-white striped beanie out of the bag and stuck a finger through one of two slits that had been cut into it. ‘You left this behind, Sonny.'

‘It can't be mine.'

‘Of course it's fucken yours. Put it on your scone and let me see how it looks on you.'

‘It's not mine. I barrack for Carlton. Same as my dad.'

Foy leaned across the seat and took a swipe at Sonny. He threw his head back and Foy's fist grazed his chin. ‘Fuck it. I'm jack of this. Let's see how you go down at the station.'

Brixey walked out of the shop, trailed by Spike. He stuck his head in the back door. ‘You two okay?'

Both boys were too afraid to answer. Brixey looked Foy in the eye like he wanted to spit in it. ‘What are you doing with my workers here?'

‘None of your business. They're coming with us for questioning.'

‘They are my business. They work for me and I need their help in the shop. Now. Come on, Sonny, you haven't finished the nightly count. You too, Ren, I need you to clean up.'

Before either boy could move Foy jumped out of the car and chested Brixey. ‘I told you, mind your own business. These two are wanted.'

‘Wanted?' Brixey laughed. ‘Come off it. They're just kids. If you want them at the station for questioning, you'll need to give me time to close up the shop. I'll vouch for them and be sure they get there. I'll bring them along myself. With my lawyer.'

Foy gritted his teeth. Brixey refused to back off.

‘I said I'll bring them in, if there's a need. What are they supposed to have done? These two are minors and I'll be speaking with a lawyer on their behalf. I'm entitled to know what your interest in them is.'

Foy dragged Ren out of the car, followed by Sonny. ‘We'll be having a catch-up, Brewer.' He pushed Sonny with an open hand, got back in the car and ordered the driver to leave.

Although it was a cold night Ren took his jumper off and tied it around his waist, embarrassed by the piss stain on his jeans. Brixey blocked the shop door. He wasn't letting the boys inside until he got a couple of answers. ‘What have you two been up to?' he demanded.

‘Nothing,' Sonny said.

‘Bullshit. That prick is right about one thing. You're lying. Look me in the eye. And don't lie to me or I'll give you near as good a kicking as he'd have done. You been thieving from people, Sonny?'

‘No.'

‘You sure?'

‘Honest, Brixey. I don't steal.'

Brixey turned to Ren. ‘Is he telling the truth?'

‘Yep.'

‘Good. Then I don't want to know any more than that. Whatever it is, you've got yourselves on the wrong side of the wrong man. Foy hands out beltings for sport and has his claws in every business along this street. You better hope he finds something more lucrative to occupy his time.'

‘What about your lawyer?' Sonny asked. ‘Maybe he could help us out.'

Brixey wrapped an arm around Spike. ‘You're my brief, Spike. What can you do to save these lads?'

‘So what did you do?' Ren asked Sonny, walking home from the shop. ‘Try driving off with a bulldozer?'

‘I couldn't stop thinking about that big hole they're digging. I took the bolt-cutters from behind the toilet and cut through the fence at the compound and tried to break the padlock on one of the sheds.'

‘Why the shed?'

‘It's got this sign on the front, that explosives are kept inside. I wanted them.'

‘Explosives? What were you gonna do with them?'

‘Blow up the machines.'

‘You're crazy, Sonny. You wouldn't know how to use explosives. You'd have blown yourself up first.'

‘Nearly did. I couldn't break the lock with the bolt-cutters. I found a metal bar and tried to smash it. Didn't work either. I gave up and climbed back through the hole in the fence. Then I remembered I left the bolt-cutters behind. I was searching for them when I saw one of the dozer doors was open and the keys in the ignition. I got in, turned the motor over, put my foot down on the pedal and drove straight for the shed. Plan was to knock it over, but then the steering wheel locked. I went straight past the shed and drove through the fence on the other side. I had to jump out of the machine before it rolled and slid into that big hole.'

‘And the Collingwood beanie?'

‘I cut holes in it for my eyes. It was supposed to be my disguise but I forgot to put it on. It must have fallen out of my back pocket.'

A car drove past as they were about to cross the road into their street. Ren pulled Sonny into a narrow lane behind the corner shop. They waited a few minutes until they were sure the car wasn't coming back.

‘Why didn't you come get me?' Ren asked. ‘To help you break into the compound.'

‘In case I got caught. I didn't want to get you in trouble.'

‘I love the river as much as you do. You don't reckon I'd take the same risk, to save it?'

‘It's not that. I was laying on my bed thinking about how easy it had been for them workers to blow the steps above the falls. You were right all along, and so was Rory. These pricks can do whatever they like to us and we can't stop them. Breaking into the compound was nothing to do with saving the river.'

‘Why'd you do it then?'

‘To make them pay. Nothing more than that.'

‘We're the ones who will pay now. That copper, Foy, he'll come after us.'

‘Doesn't matter. You done nothing wrong and all he has on me is a Collingwood beanie. Can't arrest me on that.'

‘He won't forget, Sonny. Brixey's right. He won't let this be.'

‘What's he gonna do? Give me a kicking? I been copping those for years off my father. I can take another one.'

When Ren got home Archie was at the stove cooking sausages, which could only mean Loretta was out. She refused to let him cook the nightly meal if she was at home. She reckoned what Archie didn't burn or over-boil he suffocated with a bucket of salt.

‘Where's Mum?' Ren asked.

‘She's gone to the pictures with a couple of girls from the hospital, and then they're off to a caf in the city for a meal. It's me and you. Sausages and eggs okay?'

‘Yeah. Ta. You want a hand?'

‘You can set the table. Knives and forks. Salt and Pepper. The bread and butter. Sauce.' Archie said. ‘You're a little late,' he added.

Although it wasn't meant as an accusation, Ren bristled. ‘I was helping Sonny out, fixing a couple of bikes at the shop.'

‘He keeping his head down?' Archie asked.

‘He is,' Ren lied. ‘Working hard and saving money.'

Archie dropped a plate in front of Ren, piled with greasy charcoaled sausages and runny eggs. Just the way Ren liked them.

Archie sat down opposite him, picked up the salt container and went on talking. ‘It's just that I ran into Mick O'Reagan at the butcher's and he was asking if I heard any commotion across the back last night.'

He put down the salt, picked up the tomato sauce bottle and drenched the plate. ‘I heard nothing. What about you?'

‘Pass me the sauce, Arch.'

‘You heard nothing either?' he asked again.

‘Nah. I slept all night.'

‘It's just that Mick was saying that he heard a noise. Crashing and banging that set his dog off. Then today he finds out that somebody broke into the yard where the machines are parked for the roadworks they're doing, and crashed one of the bulldozers. Vandals, he said. You hear anything about that?'

‘Nup.'

Archie tucked into his meal. Ren thought the interrogation was over. He watched as Archie mopped up the last of the grease on his plate with a slice of buttered bread. He wiped his mouth on the dishcloth, something he'd never do if Loretta was home, and picked up the earlier conversation. ‘Mick also told me he saw you today, on the street. You never saw anything?'

‘Didn't say I never saw anything. I saw a police car down the bottom of the side street. Didn't know what they were doing there. Mick was telling me about a letter he got from his son, away in the war.'

Archie collected the dishes and placed them in the sink. ‘He said that nasty copper, Foy, was there. You've heard of him, of course?'

Ren picked up the dishcloth to wipe the table down. ‘Everyone's heard of Foy.'

‘Well, you be sure to stay out of his sights. The man's dangerous.'

CHAPTER 13

Foy had frightened the life out of Ren, and he spent the following days looking over his shoulder, expecting the detective to come looking for him and Sonny. But nothing happened. The week was quiet. He helped Sonny with the morning paper round as usual, and every afternoon he walked up to the station and stood outside the pawn shop looking in the window at the cameras. He'd already saved enough money for a cheap camera, even a new one, but he wanted something better, a camera with a proper lens that would allow him to take photographs of birds in flight. He also spent more time at the public library reading all he could about how cameras worked. At first he understood nothing, but was surprised that as he read more the technology began to make sense to him.

The newsstand was always busy towards the end of the week, as was the pub. On Friday nights the boys moved through the bar selling the newspapers themselves rather than leave the stack of papers on the counter. This earned them more in tips, seeing as the drinkers had been paid the day before and at the end of the working week they were in a generous mood. The regulars who had gotten to know the boys personally sometimes tipped them without bothering to buy a paper. Vera, the owner of the zebra finches, had her own stool next to the dartboard. She was fortunate that the game shut down on Friday nights. She took the birds along to the pub with her, only drank wine shandies and always tipped when she bought a paper, but only as long as she could give one of the boys a deep kiss on the lips in return.

On the Friday night following their run-in with Foy, Ren and Sonny were sitting at the bar sharing a packet of potato chips when Roy the barman, who'd been concentrating on polishing a beer glass in his hand, casually leaned across the bar and whispered something in Sonny's ear. Ren had been chewing loudly on a potato chip and didn't hear a word Roy had said, although he did notice a solemn change come over Sonny's face. He stopped chewing and listened as Roy repeated himself.

‘You sure?' Sonny asked.

‘Sure as,' Roy replied. ‘He says that he wants a word with you. I wouldn't keep the man waiting either, if I were you. He's a busy man, Vincent.'

Vincent didn't look so busy to Ren. He was reading a newspaper, seated in his usual spot, across the table from his neckless bodyguard. The table was crowded with his cronies, swearing and arguing among themselves.

‘Is he after a newspaper?' Sonny asked.

‘Take a look, my friend, ‘Roy said. ‘He's reading the paper. It's a calculated guess, I know, but I don't think he'd be after a second one.'

‘What's he want then?'

‘Vincent don't tell me what he wants.' Roy sighed. ‘But I wouldn't test his patience if I were you. You should hop on over there before he decides to send someone across here to fetch you.'

Sonny picked up his lemon squash, finished off the glass, wiped his mouth and hopped down from the bar stool. ‘You have to come with me, Ren.'

‘No, I don't,' Ren protested. ‘It's you he wants to talk to, not me.'

‘Ren, I've helped you out plenty of times. C'mon, I need you to help me now.'

‘I don't wanna come. You must have done something wrong by him.'

‘Can't have. I've never spoken to him. What wrong could I do to a gangster?'

Roy spread a beer towel along the bar. ‘Son, let me give you some more advice. Don't be calling him a name like that.
Gangster.
We're not in the movies.'

Sonny pulled Ren off his bar stool and dragged him over to the toilet door. He pushed the door open, went into the room, turned the tap on over the sink and washed his face. ‘Fuck it. I'm really in trouble now. Last week it was Foy, and now this. Can't figure out what he'd want with me.'

‘Maybe you been swapping too many stories about Vincent with the other paperboys and it got back to him. You know how much crims hate people talking too much.'

‘Can't be that. I only
listened
to stories about him. And I told nobody but you.'

‘Sonny, it doesn't really matter what it's about. You got no choice but to front him.'

Sonny looked at his face in the mirror. ‘If he kills me, Ren, the money I've saved to get away from here, it's in my locker at the paper shop. Number seven.'

‘He's not gonna kill you, Sonny. You're only a kid.'

‘Have you forgotten about the body at the station, the debt collector with the sliced throat?'

‘Course I haven't forgotten. That's the reason I don't want to go out there with you.'

‘Help me out, Ren. You come with me and I'll let you have all tonight's tips to yourself. The lot.'

‘The lot?'

‘Yep.'

They walked out of the toilet. Ren followed Sonny across the bar-room, looking down at the grubby carpet and counting the cigarette burns. Vincent had his head in the paper and an ear cocked to one side, taking in every word around the table. Ren was able to get a closer look at the scar on the back of the bodyguard's head. It was uglier up close. Not the perfectly round circle it resembled from a distance. The scar formed the letter C, carved roughly into the man's skull. Smaller holes were dotted around the scar, as if his head had been mistaken for the dartboard on the other side of the room.

The men sitting either side of Vincent were locked in an argument. ‘I'll tell you what, Rodney,' one of the men yelled across the table, ‘you want the fucken car back, go and pick it up yourself. You said right here at this table last Thursday night,' he knocked on the table with the knuckles of his fist, ‘if you can get five hundred for it, take five. And now you're telling me it wasn't enough. If you're unhappy about it you need to sort it out yourself. But before you do, make sure you're wearing deep pockets. He'll want compensation.'

Ren recognised Rodney as the man who'd been with Vincent at the meeting with the Greek from across the street. He had deceptive puppy-dog brown eyes. He wagged a finger across the table. ‘I never said a word about five hundred. You must be fucken deaf, Clive, as well as fucken stupid. The car was worth double that. Fuck, I paid fifteen hundred for it less than a year ago and haven't driven it around the block. Get it back, you say? He'll have ended it by now and spread it round. Be like trying to put a thousand piece jigsaw together. Fuck that. That car is worth nothing to me now. You took five off him. The only collecting I'll be doing is prizing the other five from you. And that'll be like pulling fucken teeth.'

‘You're getting fuck all from me. I did you a favour.'

Rodney turned to the bodyguard. ‘You were here, Joey. Did I, or did I not tell this fuckwit last week, sitting at this table, to ask for a ton and do not, under any circumstances, bottom out below eight hundred dollars?'

Vincent looked up from his newspaper, over at Sonny and Ren, and then back at the circle of men at the table. ‘Knock it off, Rodney. You're giving me a headache. And we have visitors.'

Joey, the bodyguard, slowly turned his body towards the boys. His head moved with it, as if it were bolted to his neck. Ren noticed he had more scars on his face, each of them a mess. He sniffed the air like an old dog on the hunt for prey.

Vincent neatly folded the newspaper and rested it on the table. He ordered Clive to give up his seat to Sonny. ‘Over here, son,' he said, quietly.

Sonny snailed his way to the chair and stood behind it. Vincent patted the seat. ‘Take a rest. Can I get you and your friend a lemon squash?'

‘We're okay,' Sonny croaked. ‘We just had one.'

‘Well, you wouldn't want to make a pig of yourself by having a second, would you?'

Sonny slowly sat down and shrank into the seat.

‘I've seen you around,' Vincent said. ‘You're Teddy Brewer's kid.'

‘Yep,' Sonny croaked again.

‘Joey, get the poor kid a drink of water or something. Sounds like he's got a terrible sore throat. You got a cold or something, kid? Maybe you been out late at night? No good for anyone with the weather we've been having.'

Joey stuck a hand in the air and clicked his fingers. Roy was standing at the table within seconds. Joey ordered another round of drinks for the table and two glasses of lemon squash for the boys.

‘I know your old man,' Vincent continued. ‘Have known him a long time. Teddy used to come in here like clockwork every afternoon. I could have set my watch by him. Your father is a man of habit, Sonny. You know that?'

‘Nup. I don't.'

‘He is. Unfortunately, he has one bad habit. Working on the hot-mix. Fucken thirsty work that. The poor bastard got too thirsty, didn't he? He went downhill in a rush, your dad.'

The others at the table sat quietly listening to Vincent, as if he was royalty. He wrapped a large hand around Sonny's neck and gently shook him. ‘Where's your manners? I need you to look at me, son, when I'm talking to you.'

Sonny turned to face Vincent.

‘That's better. And now I need to ask you a very important question. I need a true answer from you. Nothing like the shit you been trying to sell to that cunt, Foy, over the break-in the other night. I heard all about that fuck-up. Now, I need to know where he's got to, your dad. He hasn't been seen in here or on the street for some time now.'

Vincent shifted his chair closer to Sonny, who couldn't keep his eyes on him any longer. Sonny looked across the table at Ren. He'd never seen such fear on Sonny's face before. Vincent tightened his grip on Sonny's neck and shook him a little harder. ‘Where's he got to?'

Ren opened his mouth before he knew what he was saying. ‘He went away and left Sonny by himself in the house. He's disappeared and nobody knows where he is.'

Everyone at the table turned to Ren. Except for Vincent, who didn't bother looking up. He patted Sonny on the back, stood up, pushed his chair into the table and stuck his hands in his pockets.

‘Come with me, son. There's something important I need to show you. You and your mate. Both of you. Follow me. Don't worry, I'll have your drinks brought up.'

Rodney stood up and opened a door directly behind the table. The bodyguard was about to stand up as well. Vincent smiled at him.

‘What are you doing, Joey? Take a rest. We're dealing with a couple of kids here, not hired killers.'

He slapped Sonny on the back. ‘You're not gonna kill me, are you, son?' He laughed. ‘Rodney, grab the young mascot and bring him along for company.'

Vincent led Sonny through the doorway, marched him to the end of the hallway and up a narrow staircase winding its way to the top floor of the hotel. Ren couldn't move quickly enough. Rodney stopped, waited for him to pass and pushed him in the middle of the back. As they walked along a second hallway Ren could see that the doors on either side were open and the rooms were empty, except for mattresses stacked against the walls. At the end of the hallway Vincent took a key out of his pocket and opened a door. The room had bare floorboards, a beaten leather couch against one wall, and a table in the middle of the room with a pack of playing cards and a telephone sitting on top. A noisy refrigerator hummed away in the corner and a single window looked over the street.

Vincent nodded towards the couch. ‘Take a seat and make yourselves at home.' He dragged a chair away from the table and sat in front of the boys. He stared at Sonny for several minutes without saying a word. Rodney walked over to the window, pulled a curtain to one side and looked down on the street. He turned and nodded at Vincent and lit a cigarette. Ren could feel his heart thumping in his chest, convinced it was beating faster than the day he stood on the ledge of Phoenix bridge in the moments before he jumped. Sonny couldn't keep still. His legs were shaking and he was scratching his head like he had nits.

Vincent finally spoke. ‘You like a good story, Sonny?' he asked.

‘I guess so.'

‘Well, let me tell you a beauty. Your father, he came to me some time back. Told me he'd got himself in a heap of trouble. I've never seen a man as desperate as he was that day. Sweating and shaking, he was.'

Vincent tilted his head to the side and stared at Sonny. He couldn't work out if Vincent was waiting for him to say something or was examining his bad eye.

‘You're shaking,' Vincent said, putting a hand on Sonny's knee. ‘You nervous?'

‘Nah. I'm okay.'

‘Good. Don't worry yourself over me. Your fucken daddy dropped you in the shit and I'm going to help you out of it.' He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Sonny. ‘Take a look at that and tell me what it is.'

Sonny took the piece of paper from Vincent and looked down at it. It was a carbon copy of the same rent receipt Rory had shown Loretta the night he had turned up at Ren's door.

‘What is it?' Vincent prompted him.

‘It's a receipt,' Sonny answered.

‘Good. Now let me tell you why I have it in my possession. You're dad came to see me. He sat on the couch, right where you are now, and begged me to help dig him out of the hole he was in. He said he had a rack of debts, gambling and drinking money, and had got himself a long way down on the rent. The landlord had been round to your place and said he wanted the rent back-paid in full or your father and you would be out on your arse. A week's grace the landlord give him. Fuck me. There's no grace in that. Vultures. When the week was up the landlord sent some heavy around to put the threateners on him. Fucken dog. Your old man have a word to you about that?'

‘I knew he'd run out of money,' Sonny snivelled, ‘but he never said nothing about owing back rent. Or anyone threatening him.'

Vincent took the receipt from Sonny and slowly tore it into thin strips as he spoke.

‘He wouldn't want you to know, I suspect. Have you worrying over it. He owed money all over town. That's why he come to me for help. He sat there and broke down and cried, didn't he, Rodney?'