Through the Cracks (17 page)

F
or breakfast Adam had a Kelly Gang Grill. His fingers got greasy eating it. The orange juice was watery. Billy blew his cigarette smoke out the corner of his mouth, up and away from the table. He’d ordered scrambled eggs.

‘Jason’s a real proper snob,’ he said as though they’d already been talking about him. ‘Doesn’t know any different. He thinks some of the stuff he’s been through is hard. It’s hard to him; nothin’ to compare it to.’

‘I thought he seemed nice.’

‘Did you?’ Billy said brightly. ‘He is, you know. He couldn’t help out just ’cause he couldn’t. I know that. If I was him I don’t suppose I’d wanna jump in boots and all with someone like me either. At least he came. He coulda said don’t ring me. And he didn’t . . . Did he?’ Billy asked as though suddenly unsure.

‘He said ring when you’re normal.’

‘Yeah. He said that. And he could’ve said never.’ Billy snuffed a laugh. ‘But hey – never gonna be normal.’ He grew serious, looked down at his eggs. He hadn’t touched them. They’d gone cold. ‘Jase has got this thing about him, like he’s calm inside or something. Did you think that?’

Adam nodded.

Billy looked away. He took a final deep drag of the smoke, put it out.

‘You finished yet? We good to go?’

The sky was cloudy. Warm wind gusted. Adam was wearing the cap. He had the backpack. The gun was back inside it. The money was under Billy’s waistband.

Boxing gloves and barbells were painted on the cement-block walls of the co-op. Windowless buildings and narrow laneways surrounded it. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere. Traffic congestion, the roads they’d walked along, turns, tram lines, tunnels and lights all merged as one singular activity behind Adam, one dull noise. Bacon, eggs, toast, sausages and orange juice churned in his stomach. Steel grates covered the ground-floor windows of the co-op. A roller door sealed off the front entrance. The steel backdoor was locked. Billy knocked on it. When no one came he stood on top of a bike rack and threw a squashed Fanta can at the top storey window. The can bounced off the glass. The small window wound out. It wound back in.

A man dressed in football shorts unlocked the steel door. He squinted in the morning glare. His hair was dirty blond, long at the back, short at the top. He wore grey moccasins.

‘Mornin’.’

‘How’s it been, Hog?’

‘Ah, ya know.’

‘Much been happening?’

‘Nothin’.’

Adam walked in behind Billy. The lights downstairs had not been turned on. Hog went around flicking switches. Hallways lit up, the office in the corner illuminated, the Solo sign on the drink fridge blinked to life, and a plastic pair of red boxing gloves hanging from the ceiling glowed from within. In the main room were two boxing rings. The corner posts were padded. The ropes had springs attached. Through into the smaller rooms were weight benches, weights and foam mats on the floor, an exercise bike and a boxing bag.

‘Gonna take a piss,’ Hog said.

‘You mind if I go out back?’

‘Go for it.’

Hog scuffed down a hallway and disappeared up some stairs. Adam followed Billy. They went past the office, down a corridor and through a swinging door into the kitchen, turned on the light. There were gloves and padded helmets on the table. On the bench, alongside the tea and coffee, was a box filled with bandaids, bandages, creams and bottles of antiseptic. There was a tape deck on the stove with cassettes scattered around it. The floor had not been swept. Every room in the place smelled the same – old shoes and disinfectant. It was like a hospital had set up camp in the bottom of a shoe bin. Billy reached up into a cupboard and brought down another box of medical supplies. He took out a lunchbox container and sat down at the table with it, took off his jumper, made room in front of him.

Adam wandered around to the other side of the table. On the wall was a pin board covered in photographs. Snapshots of men and boys fighting in the rings, photos of black eyes and injuries, bloodied grins, sweaty beaming faces, middle fingers close to the camera, a man with his head over a toilet bowl, two men fighting in pink tutus, and a photo of Billy with a mouthguard in, gloves on, hands together on top of his head, muscular, enviably strong. A corner section of the board was dedicated solely to Billy. There were pictures of him when he was younger, pictures of him on the exercise bike, playing pool, a photo of him on Hog’s shoulders, arms raised, cheering, his legs dangling down the front of Hog’s chest.

A man in a singlet top and rolled-up trackpants came in through the swinging doors. He stopped. He was flushed and out of breath; he put his hands on his hips and puffed.

Billy put out his cigarette and unwound the bandage from his arm. ‘How’s it going, Nuts?’

‘Billy.’

Nuts looked at Adam, looked over his shoulder into the hallway. ‘Hog know you’re here?’

‘Yep.’

Nuts got a drink from the tap.

Adam eased a kitchen chair out. Lowered into it. He slid the backpack off and nursed it on his lap. Billy glanced across. He opened his hand in a calming gesture.

Nuts drank a full glass, poured another, rested it against his chest and breathed some more. ‘Better day out there today than yesterday.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hog let you in?’

‘Why?’

Nuts took a towel from the back of a kitchen chair and wiped his face with it. He took a key from his pocket and hung it on a nail in the cupboard door. ‘No reason. What have you done there?’ He nodded at Billy’s arm.

In the shoebox were suturing supplies and small winged bandages. Billy was laying a selection of them out. Billy let Nuts see the wound.

‘Holy crap.’ Nuts leaned close. ‘Oh man . . .’

‘Bit worse than I first thought. Didn’t hurt much when I did it.’

‘The big ones don’t.’

‘Been hurting a lot since.’

‘Big ones do.’

‘You reckon Hog will give me some antibiotics?’

‘Not if you didn’t do it here . . . He let you in?’ Nuts pinched his nose and propped on the table edge. He wiped the sweat from his legs.

‘Why do you keep asking that?’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like Hayden’s looking for you?’

‘Nup.’

‘He’s
really
looking for you.’

Billy had laid out about ten thin sticking plasters. He pushed the lunchbox away and got up to look in the bigger first aid kit over on the bench. He took out a small dark bottle, shook it, put it down, kept on searching. ‘I don’t give a shit.’

Nuts lowered his voice. ‘That’s kinda what I’m gettin’ at, others do.’

The two of them looked up at the ceiling.

‘I think you better pack that to go,’ Nuts said.

‘When did he come?’

‘Yesterday arvo. Came back three times. Was here at lock-up. Sat out the front in his car for an hour or so after. See what I’m sayin’?’

‘What does he reckon he wants?’

‘Wouldn’t say, just that he has to see you.’

Billy sat at the table with the things he’d taken from the first aid kit.

As Nuts left he said, ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you fair warnin’.’

‘Nuts,’ Billy called. ‘Could you give us a hand with this?’

There was no answer. In amongst the gear on the table were open packets of jellybeans. Billy reached into the nearest pack. Fished out the black ones. He chewed, uncapped a bottle of antiseptic.

‘Give us a hand, kid?’

Adam had to flush the cut with saline. He squirted it from a thick syringe. He had to paint the wound, inside and around it, with Betadine. He’d pulled up a chair beside Billy. The slash was freshly bleeding. It gaped. Adam dabbed the blood away. Billy’s forehead was down against the table. His feet wriggled beneath the seat.

‘The money doesn’t mean much to you, does it?’ Billy said while squirming.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The money isn’t the biggest thing for you.’ Billy winced when Adam touched a particularly tender spot. After a breath he continued. ‘You’re not thinking about it, because you don’t have to think about it. But it means a bit to me.’

Adam sat back to indicate he’d finished.

Billy straightened and looked at what he’d done. He blew on it, touched it to feel if the Betadine was dry. It was still sticky.

‘Thing is – we stole that money. Tell anyone about it and it gets taken off us. Stealing is stealing no matter who you steal it from. You can’t very well mosey up with four grand in your pocket, can you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m telling you, you can’t. If they find out about it, it’s gone. Without the money, I’ve got no way of getting out. If you want your half, I can keep it for you, but I’ll have to keep it for a while, until everything blows over.’ He ran his finger down the table surface, next to where he’d put the small sticky strips in a row, spaced how he’d like them spaced on the cut. He held his arm out straight. The wound pulled in. ‘Neat and tight.’

Each sticky strip was individually wrapped. Adam peeled back the paper.

‘We made a deal. I’m gonna stick by it. I know you’re nervous about fronting up. But more than ever you’ve gotta be quiet about me. If you start saying one thing, it leads to the next thing. Cops are pretty good at that. They won’t ask the obvious stuff. You can be telling them something without realising you’re telling them. You’re better off not saying anything about me at all.’

Adam put the first strip on. He began unpeeling all the strips, so that they were ready to go, one after the other. Billy lowered his head again while Adam put them on. They held fast when Billy sat up, bent his elbow and moved his arm around.

‘That feels good. Thanks . . . It’s just . . . we don’t get looked at the same way. They could blame me for the shed burning, for Kovac, for everything. Depending on how much they work out, it could be real tricky for me. Thing is, no matter what, they’d take the money, and I can’t lose it.’

He cut a long piece of gauze to cover the wound, snipped off bits of tape, took a roll of bandage, unfurled the end, cut another short length of tape, stuck half to the bandage and the other half to his bicep, and began to wrap his arm.

‘If not for that, if not for the fire and for hitting Kovac, if not for the stolen cars . . . taking you out of the hospital . . .’ He smiled, tight-lipped. ‘Let’s face it, I was never gonna be able to take you in.’ He motioned around the room. ‘But this isn’t me walking out on you, is it? This isn’t me hiding from you. Down the track, hopefully, it’s not gonna matter so much – the money, Kovac, the shed and that. The cops won’t ask forever. I brought you here to show you that I’m not going back on what I said. This place, and Scotty’s, they’re ways that you can always find me if you need me. We made that pact and I meant it. If I didn’t think it was going to work out with your family, I wouldn’t be saying you’ve gotta go and be with them. You’ll be okay, though. If it all goes wrong, if you do need help, you can come and find me. But they’ve been looking for you. You’re a missing
kid
.’ He laughed at the way he’d put it. ‘I’ll be gone for as long as I reckon it takes to blow over. Keeping low.’ He smiled and swiped Adam’s head. ‘Yeah?’

The weight on Adam’s chest, the same weight from when he’d left Monty and Jerry, was back. He looked at Billy but couldn’t look at him – looked through him, tried to imagine him not there. Couldn’t imagine it.

Billy took his jumper from the table and put it on. Swept the small bits of rubbish from the sticking plasters into his hand, scrunched them, threw them in the bin. He returned to the first aid kit and the bench.

‘So not a word, hey? Just keep saying you don’t remember much. They love that sort of shit anyway. There’s a station in the city. A big one. I’ll take you and show you. All you’ve gotta do is walk in and say you think you’re the kid from the market. I’m telling you, everyone is gonna be real happy you’ve turned up. That’s all that’s gonna matter and all they’re gonna care about.’

It occurred to Adam then that Billy was perhaps
too wise
. Not a faker, but he’d done too much, seen too much, his mind took on too many possibilities, created too many outcomes, for him to trust in a simple thing or believe a straightforward thing might happen. His life without a backroom had its own problems and traps. Billy’s world made it hard for him to shut everything out and focus on one thing. Behind the brown of his eyes he was making so many calculations. More than Adam could fathom. The most Adam could guess: Billy was about to run. Patched up and ready to sprint.

‘I won’t tell them about you, Billy.’

‘Thanks. I actually believe you.’

‘Can I ask the police about Monty and Jerry?’

‘Not real sure that’s gonna work. What do you want to ask them?’

‘If I can find out if they’re all right.’

‘How about I promise to go and check on them for you?’ He rubbed the palms of his hands together. Keen to go. Time to move. ‘I’ll make sure the dogs are okay. But you’ve gotta leave me out there to do that. A deal?’ He held out his hand to be shaken.

Adam would have preferred that they hugged. Such was the pull to do it, Adam had to plant his feet, tense his tummy, lock his spine, all to stop from reaching out, holding on, clinging tight.