Chapter 8
It was a mellow Cross afternoon, a Saturday which tempted the aged into unlocking their shutters; one that allowed the yapping midgets a run in the park, where inert bodies lay on the grass, drying out among the barnacles of pigeon faeces.
McLuhan had shuttled from one place to another since his arrival in the morning. He visited whores and drug merchants, spending his family’s money in a self-indulgent spree. As he lounged vacantly against a huge Moreton Bay fig, his eyes followed the sallow and sunken faces of nightlife, dream-like floating by, all pimples and pancake. Across the street, leather jacketed heroes sat sentinel astride their gleaming Hondas. On the pavement, under the spotty cafe umbrellas, muted heads with television eyes stared at nothing. Life was an amorphous slump over the tables.
A heavy dose of amphetamine had hurtled McLuhan through the day and now his languor was apparent to the big man in the grey suit. McLuhan’s sense of timing had warped and, except for the regular chiming of his wristwatch, he had no accurate perception of the passing of the hours.
His pocket still contained the phial of pills that gave his heart a jump. Imitating a cough, he fetched some pills and managed to spill them into his mouth. They bounced inside his parched gob, exuding a bitterness that made his face pinch like withered lettuce.
It was when he bent to suck water from the bubbler that the big man in the grey suit exchanged a few brief words with another of his kind. The girl with the purple buttocks and matching spiked hair was dipping her toes in the fountain when McLuhan looked up. He gazed at her with nothing on his mind until his view was interrupted by the big, brown, friendly eyes that bore into his.
‘What’s doin?’’
Gerry the Doorman in crocodile shoes extended his hand and ruffled McLuhan’s hair. He was vibrant and his moustache grew into his nostrils and quivered with every breath.
‘Gerry!’ McLuhan smiled with his teeth. ‘Shit eh? Wacha doin’ ya self?’
‘If it wazzen Saddy, I’d be shiftin’ me fat arse down ta Bondi.’
‘Ya goin’ ta work later?’ McLuhan’s eyes were invisible dots in the sun.
‘Nah!’ Gerry spat at the ground. ‘Got the fuckin’ khyber from work, mate.’
‘Why?’
‘Eee doan like losin’ dough, that cunt.’
‘Who?’ Lamont was sewing threads together.
‘Tseridis, the fat bastard.’ Gerry spat again. Then he smiled. There had been a slight frantic tic in his eyes, but his face now relaxed. He encouraged McLuhan for a stroll and they moved out of the park toward the navy base down the street. They crossed to the other side, passing within inches of the big man in the grey suit, and after a small journey, found a nondescript coffee lounge nestling beneath a plane tree.
Mario’s was nearly empty, as usual, except for the sour faces above the dominoes. The cappuccino machine hissed and a pizza aroma hung tantalisingly in the air. A thin, creased woman in a blue and white apron piled dishes into a sink and sprinkled detergent on top of them. She glanced at Gerry with a worried frown and returned her head to her task.
‘Yasu, George!’ Gerry approached the rear. ‘Ti kannis?’
George was sitting at a vinyl table. A racing form was spread untidily in front of him. He dragged his eyes up toward Gerry and nodded with difficulty. He ignored McLuhan. His foot swung reluctantly and pulled the rear door open.
‘Ya got a tip tidday, George?’ Gerry asked before the door swung shut. Already the man had begun scribbling on the racing form, as if the world were to end after the next race.
‘A Greek owns Mario’s?’ McLuhan observed for observation’s sake. His stomach was a cauldron of effervescence as the drugs went to work on his organs.
‘Nah!’ Gerry replied quickly. ‘Doan cha know?’
They walked along a narrow hallway to another door that opened to a sumptuous baccarat school. Ornate chandelier hung low from a blackened ceiling. The walls were covered with deep blue paper, quite in contrast with the thick pile coloured blood red. The effect was striking.
The clientele were casually dressed and at home in the room. Nasal tones of a race caller droned for six old men sipping wine, six old men sitting apart from the bustle of the baccarat pits.
‘Don’t I know what, Gerry?’
‘Wassup?’ Gerry was showing that panic in his eyes again. He broke away and headed for the bar. Obviously taking his time the doorman leaned his elbow heavily on the counter while his right leg stamped exaggeratedly on the floor. ‘Chrrryyyst! Where za footrail, Nick?’
*
When Gerry slipped quietly from the room, McLuhan was in no condition to notice. The doorman had been coaxing him into a tequila-coma. McLuhan’s motor activity was extraordinarily high and no one wanted to be near him. He had become demented and his clay had been moulded to the fate of the afternoon. By evening he was a pariah, a lip-chewing wild-eyed lunatic whose abusive behaviour drew smiles from the big man in the grey suit.
Two men in dark glasses, each with his pitch-black wavy hair combed in the style of the forties, moved gradually to McLuhan’s side and whispered hoarsely.
‘Take a walk, pal!’
Their message was slow in reaching the brain of young McLuhan who was beginning to vibrate. His eyes filled with madness and violent red rings. ‘Why don’t ya go and screw ya selves, ya fuckin’ bigheads!’ he screamed.
There was not much he could do in the circumstances. His arms were pinned behind his back and he was being walked to a side door where the big man in the grey suit was waiting.
‘In here!’ ordered the big man in the grey suit.
McLuhan was pushed headfirst into a musty storeroom. As he landed heavily against a stack of crates, he heard one of his bones snap. He had felt nothing. At least the noise was there; a brittle personal noise which registered weakly in his befuddled brain.
He tried to lift himself from the splintered crates but a boot caught him under the chin. His head crashed against a sharp corner of a crate and his body reeled crazily to the floor. He tried to shout but his jaw was stuck. The arms that swam the northern beaches and cuddled the cuties on the sand were useless to him now. Desperately, McLuhan frog-kicked his way into the wooden crates, his head and arms limp and cumbersome.
The big man in the grey suit waved his men away from the grotesque form of McLuhan. The boy was all feet. The top of his body ploughed into the space between the rows of crates as his legs strove to push himself away. Then the big man bent and gripped an ankle.
McLuhan was jerked into a clearing and tipped over. He watched from the floor, dizzily, as the pointed toe of a boot swung viciously to his head. He tried to protect his face but his muscles would not respond. They were caged in uselessness. The pointed boot was well aimed; it nicked McLuhan’s left eyeball from its socket.
It hung on his cheek by a grisly thread of tissue for a few seconds before another boot popped it like a small balloon. McLuhan glared stupidly out of one eye at his assailants. Trussed by the paralysis of his upper body, he tried to get out of the way of the boots that came crashing down upon his head. But his nervous system had failed. Slowly, his other eye closed as he drifted away from consciousness.
‘Dump him!’ came the order from the big man in the grey suit.
‘Where?’
‘Find cement.’
The two men in dark glasses carried McLuhan’s mangled body out through the service entrance to a waiting car. The boot was open and McLuhan was trundled inside. The car’s engine started and revved for a while before the vehicle drove off.
*
An hour later the ex-wrestler opened the door to his pokey office behind the two-way mirrors and sat himself in his specially built chair. He picked up his pen and began writing in a book. His gnarled hands gripped the pen in a clumsy squeeze. There was a knock on the door.
‘Come.’
‘They tole me yawanna simmee, Mr Tseridis?’ grovelled Gerry. In the presence of his employer the doorman reduced his size by bunching his shoulders and bending at the waist. His head remained frozen in a gesture of utter meekness.
‘Gerry!’ beamed the ex-wrestler in an expansive mood. ‘You did good today.’
‘Yeah, Mr Tseridis.’
‘You see, Gerry, I don’t like mistakes. My people should not make mistakes. Never!’ Tseridis’ voice rose in pitch.
‘Next time ... next time ... ’ Tseridis paused effectively and the doorman appeared to fold further into himself. ‘ ... next time, Gerry, you look careful ... you watch the customers ... you say good night to the people we like ... our friends ... you say fuck off to the people we don’t like, neh?’
Gerry the Doorman nodded solemnly and uncurled slightly as a slight tide of optimism swept through him.
‘Now you got your job. You make mistake ... ’ Tseridis glared malevolently at his doorman and wagged a fat finger in the air. ‘You make mistake, but you fix it for me. This is good. You prove something. Now your family ... they very happy now, neh’ Later I give you some present for your wife ... she give you plenty jiggijig, neh? You go buy something for your children ... make them all very happy, neh?’
‘Yeah, tanks, Mr Tseridis.’
‘Okay! You go now. Come later. This time ... okay ... you know better. Neh? Maybe – make you in charge of security? Here and Mario’s? Neh? More better money, neh? Now you go!’
‘Yeah! Seeya, Mr Tseridis.’
As the Maori opened the office door he heard the big man’s voice rasp.
‘Gerry! You keep your mouth shut, neh! Tight! Like cunt of nun, neh?’
Gerry the Doorman nodded politely and closed the door behind him. ‘Shit!’ He walked sombrely through the Club 69 and out the front door, knowing he had secured, for a little while at least, his position of trust on the door.
