Kick Back

Eight

Monday, and Sugarfoot Younger still felt bad. He got up late, taking his time, hitting the street late, just before lunch. The traffic was heavy, the Customline hemmed in by mugs in suits in the company Holden. On Victoria Street he leaned on the horn for effect, then searched the dial for some decent music. If it wasn’t easy-listening crap it was new-wave crap. Eventually he found something to match his mood, Roy Orbison singing ‘Only the Lonely’, the Big O’s voice cutting in and out because it was coming from fucking Geelong.

Matched his mood because even with having the weekend off he felt depressed. His body ached. He kept trying to get a mental grip on Wyatt, put him into some kind of perspective so he wasn’t a threat, but the picture kept slipping away.

In Elizabeth Street he stopped at a speed shop and bought twin air horns for the Customline. Got some looks-blokes admiring the restoration job he’d had done, the glossy chrome and duco and the white-wall tyres. The personalised plates: CUSTOM.

He wasn’t going to bust a gut getting to Bargain City. For old time’s sake he cruised past the Vic Market, throttling back, letting the Customline mutter past the donut trailers, the stalls where on market day you had overweight men and women in track suits, and foul-mouthed sorts scuffing along in moccasins, and ethnic guys with blow-waved hair, handkerchiefs stuffed down the front of their stretch jeans.

The thing about your ethnic is, he doesn’t trust banks. Just one of the many possibilities Sugarfoot intended to explore when he finally broke with Ivan and went freelance.

He stopped to let a garbage truck back out of the fruit and vegetable section. He had lifted his first wallet at the Vic Market, felt up an ethnic chick in a jeans stall while her old man was serving a customer, scored his first line of coke from some Asian kid, who’d told him there was a Melbourne Triad and what to expect from it if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

But that was back in his small-time period, working with mugs who only had a limited range-like they’d do burglary but they wouldn’t do arson, kind of thing; not to mention this one guy who couldn’t control himself and always had to have a crap at the scene. Sugarfoot wound his way through to Footscray Road, saying aloud, ‘You’re a long way past all that, Sugar.’

There’d also been his Pentridge period, but that had been due to monumental bad luck. Everything had been going along sweet-six dole cheques, a bit of bag-man work, a bit of distributing, day manager of an escort agency. And then it all collapsed in a heap. He’d run up a couple of debts, bugger-all really, but the heavy boys came round and said he could either drive for them, just the once, settle his debt, or end up another statistic of the Portsea rip.

‘Crass stupidity,’ the trial judge said. No way known. He’d been set up, or someone had tipped the Feds off. Eighteen months in Pentridge.

He learned how slowly time can pass. He’d been expecting gang rapes in the showers, vicious guards just a gun and a uniform away from prison themselves, ‘invitations’ to be bum-buddies with some guy with AIDS. But the real punishment was time and tedium: up at the same time every morning, back to the cell at the same time every night; the meagre time allotted for showering, shaving, eating, exercising; the long hours at some sweatshop sort of job; the same juvenile crap on television every evening, chosen by the lifers and the long-sentence boys whose brains had turned to prison porridge. What really got to him was the simple lack of natural light and natural darkness-wherever he went they had an electric light on, bright during the day so the guards wouldn’t miss anything, dim at night but leaking into his cell, his brain, nevertheless. Sugarfoot had wondered how he would survive the eighteen months, was thankful they hadn’t given him longer, and knew he was never going back.

He came to Williamstown Road. The lights were against him but the dickheads were trundling across the intersection like they were out for a Sunday drive, so he leaned on the horn, turned left in front of them, and opened up along Williamstown Road.

He parked at the back of Bargain City and walked through to the showroom. Leanne, who helped in the mornings, was trying to talk some dickhead into buying a vacuum cleaner. ‘The cord goes in here,’ she was saying. Sugarfoot stood next to her until she looked up.

‘Ivan in?’ he said.

‘He’s at an auction. Be back by lunchtime.’

Beautiful. Time to do some Wyatt groundwork. But just as Sugarfoot turned to walk away, Leanne said, ‘He wants you to move those rolls of carpet out the back. He says they’re starting to pong.’

Things like this could break the camel’s back. Forcing himself to stay cool, Sugarfoot said, ‘No worries. By the way, you got the key?’

‘The key?’

‘Yeah, the cupboard.’

She turned to the customer and pointed to a box on the floor. ‘It comes with all the attachments,’ she said. Turning again to Sugarfoot, she said, ‘The key’s in my top drawer.’

‘Ta.’

‘But don’t forget he wants you to move those carpets.’

‘No worries.’

The customer said, ‘You sure it works all right?’

‘Like new,’ Leanne said. ‘Our technician tests everything before it’s put in the shop.’

Fucking technician. Ivan with a rag and a screwdriver. Sugarfoot went into Leanne’s tiny glassed office, found her keys, and walked through to the storeroom at the rear of the shop.

Ivan kept ‘SOLD’ and ‘SALE’ stickers, price tags, receipts, invoice books and files locked in a grey steel cabinet. Anything else he needed to know he carried in his head. Sugarfoot was hoping that addresses and phone numbers were not in this category.

Among the files and records he found a small box of filing cards labelled ‘contractors’. The cards listed names, contact information and brief comments. The card with Wyatt’s name on it simply said ‘messages via Rossiter’ and ‘works with Hobba’. Hobba’s card carried an address in Flemington and the words ‘works with Pedersen’. Pedersen’s card carried an address in Brunswick and the words ‘works with Hobba’.

There was also a card for Rossiter. Sugarfoot wrote down addresses for Rossiter, Hobba and Pedersen, locked the cabinet and returned the keys to Leanne’s desk. She was counting out change to the customer, who stood frowning in doubt at the vacuum cleaner coiled in a carton at his feet.

She looked up at Sugarfoot as if surprised to see him there. ‘Don’t forget you have to do the carpets.’

‘It’ll have to wait,’ Sugarfoot said. ‘I have to go out.’

‘But Ivan’ll go mental.’

‘Too bad,’ Sugarfoot said. Jesus Christ she pissed him off sometimes.

He turned his back on her and picked his way through the scungy tables and armchairs, liking the way his cuban heels snapped on the old floorboards. Behind him, the customer was saying, ‘Thirty days’ warranty isn’t much.’

And in front of him Ivan was just coming in. ‘You done those carpets?’

‘My ribs hurt,’ Sugarfoot said. ‘Could be cracked.’

Ivan was going to walk past him, busy man with his finger on the pulse, but then he stopped, showing concern. ‘The carpets can wait. Did you do like I said, take it easy over the weekend?’

Sugarfoot shrugged.

Ivan said, back to business again, ‘Stick around. You might be doing a job with Bauer later’

Bauer. Now that was big time.