Chapter 15
Hans Dorfman spoke in muffled sentences through his hamburger. He stopped occasionally and poured Foster’s into his mouth and let the swill slide noisily down his throat. His belches smelled of grease traps. ‘Look!’ he said, ‘The cunt leaves the 69 and he’s here within minutes. Usually, they tell me that he hovers a bit before scarperin’ off home to Vaucluse. And the cunt goes without his muscle.’
Milan nodded his gratitude as he adjusted his body in the back seat of the limousine. He hid his distaste for the post-prandial noises of his henchman by averting his eyes and humming a vague melody. Across the street, Mario’s was quiet. Buses had ceased to run. An occasional drunk wandered by. The lonely squandered their lives along the loop; perpetual motion for the lost, in search of deliverance, beginning with pilgrimage in Darlinghurst Road, exploring the western footpath before crossing Macleay Street and returning to the Moreton Bay fig in the park. Like sinners before the Stations of the Cross, they fulfilled their penance by trudging the footpaths of The Cross.
Each took a glance at his watch and was wary.
‘They shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Shouldn’t we be in another car? It’s advertisin’ a bit, ain’t it?’
‘I’d look out of place in another car, wouldn’t I?’
*
The black and grey van drove past, and disappeared around a corner. Soon, the tall figures came out of the side street and stepped through a few parked cars and approached the LTD. The door swung open. Max squeezed in first. Frank followed.
‘Where’s ya young bloke, Max? Tight as a nut in bed?’ grimaced Hans Dorfman from the front. His chin ran with hamburger juice.
Max nodded glumly with anger clouding his mind.
‘By all accounts this is where the atrocity occurred, my friends.’
They followed Milan’s look and deliberately fixed the details to memory. They waited behind the tinted windows of the long car, listening to the soft chatter of the radio. As the four o’clock news bulletin spoke of death on the peninsular, the ex-wrestler emerged from Mario’s and rolled his hefty body around the corner where Max had parked his van.
‘He’s on time.’ Hans noted unnecessarily. He wore a sinister face for the night.
Milan acknowledged with his eyelids.
Frank had watched the roly-poly man with interest.
Max could not care as long as someone in his fog died in pain.
Hans drummed the engine and swung the limousine in a cumbersome turn and waited by the corner for his mark. The brown sedan pulled away and cruised off into the back streets of The Cross. Hans kept his distance until his quarry halted outside an opulent Victorian mansion at Vaucluse. Metal gates slid aside and the brown sedan turned into the drive to a garage. A roller-door raised and shut behind the brown sedan. Hans drove to another street and parked the limousine discreetly beneath a flowering poinciana. He switched off the engine and the four men moved quietly back to Tseridis.
A steep winding terrace of steps cut through the front garden from the garage to the front porch. Tseridis had switched off his engine and heaved his great bulk from the brown sedan. He began his climb up the steps to the house. By the time he reached the front door his face was perspiring and his ears were filled with the noise of his over-worked heart. He fussed about inside his pockets until he produced a key. He fumbled with the lock. Panting, he pushed open the security door and entered his private domain. The door swung shut.
The house was in darkness as he moved confidently into his study to the left of the hallway. He switched on the light and dropped with a whooosh into his leather reading chair. No sooner had he relaxed when the chimes alerted him to his visitors.
‘Oihi!’ he muttered as he decided finally to answer the door. The ex-wrestler peered through the spy-hole and saw Milan Krulis alone on the porch. The little man was framed in the pastel colours of pre-dawn. Already the summer sun was sending advance warning of its arrival over the rim of the sea. It was an hour before dawn.
Driven by curiosity, Tseridis opened the door to his business rival. Immediately, the Beretta came around the corner with Hans Dorfman attached. Then two more. They ushered him back into the house and the door closed quietly.
‘Pos iste, Nikos?’ Milan opened his gambit with a wry smile.
‘Kala, Milan. What is this?’
Tseridis stood his ground against the threat from the Beretta. His hands hung loosely at his side, palms to the rear. His over-sized dinner jacket stretched against his frame, as if to verify his enormous girth.
‘Shall we have some refreshment, Nikos?’ asked Milan with deadly irony. ‘Perhaps a Mario Mickey, neh?’
‘No!’ replied Tseridis after a long awkward pause where they held each other’s eyes like two silly bulls vying for the only cow in the paddock.
‘I see you miss the point, my friend.’ Milan drifted slowly along the hallway and returned. ‘It appears you entertain some strangely wicked pursuits, Nikos.’
The ex-wrestler was drenching himself with his perspiration. His hand flicked the stubborn stud from his collar and pulled viciously at the neck of the shirt. Suddenly he thought he knew.
‘Well, Nikos,’ Milan paused theatrically, obviously savouring this rare moment, ‘what you have pursued is here to ask you why.’
Tseridis nodded with growing understanding. He searched the faces of the two big men and saw his final moments as belonging to them. ‘I have a heart condition.’ he said simply and ambled to his study. He turned at the door and watched them follow.
‘You first, fat man.’ Frank insisted evenly.
Tseridis entered the study and tumbled into his reading chair. His hands gripped his chest as his wild-eyed plea became panic. ‘Why do you do this to me?’
Milan left the study and began to meander through the house. Max was an ominous presence at the side of Tseridis and Frank faced the ex-wrestler and smiled. ‘Why?’
Frank kicked Tseridis in the shins and the big man howled in woeful pain. As the big man grabbed his sorry shin an enraged Max dragged him to his feet.
‘Ya got my boy, scumbag!’ howled Max as he lifted the ex-wrestler from the floor and crashed his face with a deadly head butt. Max lowered Tseridis and moved away quickly.
Tseridis faltered and moaned loudly as in an opera. ‘What are you saying? Why are you doing this to me?’
Max found his tongue tied by rage to the dry roof of his mouth. He stared at the window shut from the world by a 19th century Chinese print upon a silken curtain. The episode depicted in silk was tranquil with a solitary bird, a sparrow with coloured wings, he thought, drinking from a simple garden.
‘You’d eat your mother for her crap, pal.’ suggested Frank softly.
Tseridis glanced his way and then he shut his eyes and rested his head on his chest. Blood formed in awful clots upon his clothing. As he raised his head again and breathed out he sprayed crimson spittle in the air.
‘What fucking mother? You crazy bastard!’ Tseridis sniffled obscenely and spat a fat blob of red upon his carpet.
Frank was tiring of the game. He saw no point in dallying further. He walked to Tseridis. ‘Is that all, pal?’ When Tseridis turned away Frank drove a corkscrew into the bulbous neck. It stuck fast and hung as an ornamental fountain of blood. Tseridis gripped the terrible weapon and desperately twisted it loose from his neck. Then he suddenly raised his arms and the hole in his navel seemed to appear long before a shot was heard.
The Beretta had fired with a muted sound and a gingery flame. A powerful spurt of blood accompanied the whistle-thud of the silencer as the ex-wrestler blundered backward across the study. Hans Dorfman pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped the pistol securely. He then returned the weapon to the holster under his coat.
It took a couple of seconds for their shocked muscles to jerk back to life. Their eyes followed the trajectory of Tseridis, his motor pumping life from his blubbery chest. He landed on his buttocks against the wall.
Tseridis was numb where the bullet had carved its way into his spine. His eyes were glazed and a nervous tic played rumba with his eyelid. He moved his hands indecisively in front of the wet hole in his stomach, like a child keeping flies from his porridge.
Hans Dorfman stood over the injured ex-wrestler. He kicked the big man’s legs a few times and walked clear of the spreading stain of blood.
‘Looks like the cunt wants to plug the dyke.’
‘He’ll need Braille to find the fucking thing, Hans.’ smiled Frank as he extracted a teaspoon from his pocket and walked over to Tseridis. The ex-wrestler watched through uncomprehending eyes as the teaspoon came closer. He felt the pressure of the warm metal against his eyelid. ‘No!’ he screamed as the spoon dug in and removed the oval jelly from its socket.
Tseridis tried to scream his pain but his chest would admit no air. He was turning the colour of suffocation. The other eye was removed as easily, and the two weeping orbs hung like testicles down his cheeks.
‘Payback time, pal!’ Frank muttered sourly. ‘An eye for an eye, and a spine for a spine. Or, in this case, a couple of eyes for good measure.’
Frank glanced at Max who returned his look with a downcast shaking of his head. Frank smiled and understood. His friend would be avenged. He reached out with both hands and extended forefingers and thumbs over the hanging eyeballs and squeezed till they burst. A mucous gummy substance squirted over his hands. ‘What an eyeful!’ Frank said with reservation. ‘Sorry! Couldn’t pass that one up, could I?’ He then wiped his hands on a handkerchief that had decorated Tseridis’ dinner jacket.
‘Let’s go, shall we?’ Milan asked from the study doorway. He viewed the scene with little interest and was keen to leave.
‘Finish the bastard?’ asked Hans.
Milan shook his head. ‘What more can he do, Hans?’
Hans said nothing as the bloodied form of Tseridis grew grey with approaching death.
The four men left the house and found their way to the limousine. A sparse layer of Poinciana flowers had formed on the roof and bonnet. They got in and Hans drifted the limousine back to The Cross.
‘All that fool can do, my friend, is to fight against the blaze of pain and blinded stupefaction.’ said Milan as he surveyed his coterie of conspirators. Frank was amiable as usual and was engaging Hans Dorfman in a verbal walk through avenues of nostalgia. Max was tight-faced, his eyes opaque, soulless as a turd on a dung heap. ‘By midday,’ Milan concluded with satisfaction, ‘that dog will be dead.’
