39

Art had a job to do.

They were in the big car park behind Massimo’s pasta joint; nobody else was around. There were a few more stores along the strip – a laundromat, a milk bar, a graphic design business – but they were all shuttered and dark. It was ten o’clock, and the only noise was from a possum up on the electric wires, skittering along, watching them talk.

Cole thought he was there to run another deal, and Art was there to tell him otherwise. Cole had been swiped for possession two weeks ago, and while everything was just peachy – he hadn’t dropped any names, and it was a small enough amount to be let off with a caution – Cole had not been concerned enough about it. And there was one person who very much wanted him to be concerned.

Eddie was wealthy, but he was also of the opinion that there was always more money to be made. Sure, the restaurants brought in a steady income, but it wasn’t fuck-around money, really. He’d met Art because Nina didn’t pay him back fast enough for her supply one time and he’d gone around to get it from her in person; Art had paid it back, plus interest, plus a threat to never go back to their house again, ever. Eddie liked that about him, thought maybe he’d like another job. All it really involved was going around to other restaurants and asking about sarsaparilla. He’d said to Art the only real bad part of the gig was that he had to drink the stuff without flinching, to sell it to anyone around him, in case he was not there alone.

Art was good at his job: personable, mostly on time, knew when to make friends, knew when to shut up. He’d felt for the kid at Mister Porcupine who’d never once smiled at a customer, and who’d once clumsily asked him if he wanted to buy a little weed. Art told him that if that’s what he wanted to do as a career, then he could help him out, why not.

Eddie was all right with Cole – called him ‘the sad kid’ – until the cops hauled him in. Cole was the first person on his payroll who had ever been caught, and he’d be the last, Eddie told Art. Art told him no worries, he was off the list, no longer a liability, no more jobs. Eddie said that wasn’t what he meant: that Cole needed to be the one who showed everyone else what happened if you got caught.

‘Just make sure he can talk enough to tell everyone about it afterwards,’ Eddie said.

‘Can’t you do that shit?’ Art had said. ‘You’re the boss.’

‘And you’re the one who hired him,’ Eddie said. ‘I can make you an example too, if that’s what you’re asking.’

It wasn’t.

So at that car park, with Cole asking where he was delivering, Art told him there was no delivery, and then he hit him.

It was in his kidneys, first, because Art knew that hurt, and that was his job. Then he remembered he needed to be an example, and when Cole buckled over in front of him, moaning, Art hit him in the face, and then Cole was on the ground, and Art thought maybe one more would be enough to make whatever point Eddie needed to be made, and then he kicked him in the head, and then he walked a lap around the car park to shake off what he’d just done and came back and said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to, he made me, all right?’

In the dark, Cole didn’t respond. He didn’t moan or twitch; he just lay there.

Art turned his phone’s torch on. There was a lot of blood, and Art was standing in it. He moved out of the way, and then he leaned in and checked Cole’s pulse, and then he walked another lap of the car park, and then he crouched on the ground and he moaned.

After a few minutes – one, ten, he didn’t know – Art thought about calling Teddy and Alice. They had solved every other problem in his life so far, or at least the ones he had decided to tell them about. Then he pictured Teddy’s face when she saw what he’d done.

Headlights suddenly lit up the road in front of Massimo’s, and he stayed still, back to the car park’s entrance. Nobody pulled in, and he let out a breath.

Art called Eddie. ‘I did what you said,’ he told him, ‘but I need help. I went – it went too far.’

‘Well,’ Eddie said, ‘that sounds like a problem you need to solve, doesn’t it?’

‘Can’t you tell me what to do?’

‘I’m going to pretend I never even got this call,’ Eddie said, and he was using his dark voice; the one that came out when you were not supposed to reply. ‘And if I ever hear anything about this moment again, remember that I know where you live, and where your sister lives, and I’ll bury the both of you under that fucking tennis court.’

Art walked over to the grass and wiped the blood off his shoes. Then he thought: I am tracking this man’s blood all over the car park, and I am making it worse. He called Dan instead; he still owed the guy a bunch of money about the whole eye thing, but Dan wasn’t mad about it. He wasn’t the type of person to stay mad.

‘Heya,’ Art said, his voice cheerful. ‘I got a little extra money to pay back your dad. You got a number I can call?’

‘Sure I do,’ Dan said. ‘This means you can buy me a beer next time, right?’

‘Next week,’ Art said, ‘for fucking sure, man.’

He called the number Dan sent. He explained who he was and said, ‘Uh, if something’s gone wrong, do you have someone who can help?’

‘Of course we do,’ the woman on the other end of the phone said. ‘It’ll cost you. How many people do you need?’

‘I don’t know. Two? It’s … it’s urgent. I got into a fight with this guy and he’s not moving and—’

‘What’s the address?’

He told her, and she told him the amount he would have to pay. He closed his eyes and said, ‘That’s fine. I can get that.’

While he waited, he thought about how he could get the money from his parents. They had it; he knew that. The easy way was to tell them he was getting engaged and could he use Grandma’s diamond? It was worth an obscene amount of money; he could get Teddy to put on one of her faces and pretend to be his hot fiancée. Then he could pawn it, and she could say she left him, and he would say he was sad, and probably it would be a while before they asked about the ring, and maybe by then he could get it back, if he cared about it, which he didn’t. Grandma had been a vicious monster who shot rabbits on her farm for culling and birds for fun.

Or there was his father’s Jaguar, or the yacht, or there was actually asking them for money – he thought about all of it. Then a car pulled into the parking lot and he thought: I’m fucked.

But it was Dutch’s people. A man with a huge beard and a woman in a black turtleneck. They got out of the car, and the woman sighed.

‘What the fuck did you do?’

He told them. The woman sighed again.

The bearded man was already rummaging in the back of Art’s Jeep. He pulled out a thick, wide picnic blanket that Art’s mother had bought for him for Easter; his dad had griped that it cost two hundred and fifty goddamn dollars. The man threw it next to Cole’s body and said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’

They helped him wrap Cole up; they helped him put the body in the boot of Art’s car. They told him what to do, gave him an address for where to take Cole’s body and another to take his car to clean it up afterwards. They had a tank of water in the back of their car and a hose attachment; he watched them start to spray the blood off the asphalt before the woman said, ‘What the fuck are you waiting for?’

‘We’ll move his car from here,’ the man said slowly, like he was talking to a small child. ‘But we’ll send you the address of where it’s gone. You have to dispose of it after.’

‘Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?’

‘The less people that know anything, the better,’ the man said. ‘You deal with his car, and we’ll see that he’s never fucking found. We’ll see to it that nobody knows you were here. But, mate,’ he said, and now he was growling, wolflike, ‘you can’t expect to kill a fucking teenager and not have to do anything to fix it.’

Art got into his car with Cole’s body in the back and watched Cole’s car drive away and out of the car park. He took a shaky breath and called his sister.

‘Nina,’ he said, ‘I need you to get some nice clothes out of my wardrobe and meet me at an address in Rye.’

‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘I need you to be there and ask no questions,’ he said, his voice jagged, the car ice-cold around him. ‘I need you to remember all of the times I paid for your fucking addictions, and told our parents you weren’t home when you were spiralling on your bed, and gave fake names to paramedics. I’m calling in a favour. The big one. You know.’

Nina did know. And by the time he finished talking, she wasn’t so tired anymore.

He drove Cole to Sadie’s funeral parlour, smoking every cigarette he could find in his car and half of an old one from the centre console. Nina was already there when he arrived, and she passed over the clothes she’d brought from his wardrobe while he told her what had happened. Sadie came out, rolled her eyes at them both, then opened the garage for Art to drive on in.

Nina waited on the stairs outside, sitting in the dark and playing Tetris on her phone because she’d heard you should do that after traumatic events, and it felt like helping to dispose of a dead body was a traumatic event. He was in there for half an hour, and then he came out pale.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Sure I am,’ Art said.

He drove to the car detailer, and she followed. She waited in her Mercedes, and when Art came back, he looked tired, so tired. She got out and hugged him.

‘You smell like shit,’ she said.

‘Can we just go home? I need a lot of showers.’

Nina drove. Art didn’t speak for half an hour, then, staring out of the window, he said, ‘Is the Alexandra a river?’

‘I don’t think so?’

‘That Sadie woman said they’re going to put him in it.’

‘They’re not putting him in a river. People could find him.’

Art got out his phone, typed frantically. Nina tried to drive slowly, cautiously, even though it didn’t really matter if the police found them anymore. Then he sighed, long and hard.

‘It’s a casket,’ he said. Then he whistled.

‘What?’

‘A thirty-thousand-dollar oak casket.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

Art laughed. He laughed and laughed until Nina shook with fear and then he stopped, took a breath, and said, ‘Okay, I’m all right. Let’s just get home and never tell anyone we were here. And Nina,’ he said, ‘thank you.’

~

The sun moved down low outside as Nina finished telling them the story. Eddie was making a sound that was something like a snore; it was both reassuring and terrible.

‘Art killed him,’ Teddy whispered. ‘The fucking teenager we were trying to find.’

‘Not on purpose,’ Nina said, and she was angry, but exhausted; the story had been wrung out of her as they watched. She was sweating again. Neither of them thought it was due to the story alone. ‘He was terrified when he saw the case on Choker’s desk – but I wasn’t surprised. Of course a dead dealer kid’s loved ones would hire you dodgy fucking “private detectives”. You’re all linked, just like you and that guy Art punched in the eye. Just like me and fucking Eddie.’ She looked down at him for a moment. ‘But Art took the case so nobody else would, in case they could figure it out somehow and pin it on him. He said if he had control of it, he could control you. Because you trusted him.’

Teddy felt everything go very quiet.

‘Until then, we’d tried not to talk about it. But it all went to shit that day. He told me you were investigating that case, and those people who helped him out came to hit him up for the money he owed. You saw them, Teddy, when you came to get Art that time you took my fucking car and then the police kept it because my brother died right next to it. He was paying, but not fast enough. And he asked me that morning whether the woman at the funeral home gave the picnic blanket back or if they kept it, because he couldn’t remember.’

‘What, he was too good for sitting on the grass?’ Alice snorted.

Nina shot her a look of red loathing. ‘Because it was wrapped around a dead body with Art’s fucking initials monogrammed on it,’ she said. ‘He thought it might be in the coffin with him. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.’

Teddy, in her silence, was looking at Eddie, now; he was waking up. Alice wasn’t looking at either of them; she was thinking something unthinkable about what Nina had just said. And then Eddie stood up.

All three of them jumped. Alice brought up her hands; she didn’t know what she would do. Maybe another hit to the face would slow him down. Teddy noticed, briefly, that Nina was yanking at a door, but she could only deal with Eddie now.

He warbled again, a bloody gurgle in his throat. ‘Hurt,’ he said – an actual word – and then he reached out with his wet red hands. At that point Alice and Teddy realised: he couldn’t see.

Teddy tilted her head to the front door. Alice nodded, and stepped around him, quiet. She reached for a set of keys on the side table and threw them onto the staircase. Like a beast, Eddie heard the sound, made an angry roar, and went for them. Teddy threw open the door, and then both of them ran to the street outside.

A Jaguar with Nina behind the wheel was tearing away down the drive; it didn’t really matter. Sure, she was an accessory after the fact to Cole’s death, but they weren’t the police. At least now they knew, even if knowing was harder than before.

Alice started the car and drove off. The sun was almost gone, and the dusk light was a dark, gentle orange.

‘Are you okay?’ Alice asked.

‘I hit him hard,’ Teddy said.

‘I meant about Art.’

Teddy said, ‘Ah.’

She didn’t follow that up. After a while, Alice said, ‘You notice anything about Art’s hands the day he died? Not when he died – I mean like beforehand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like a bandage, or anything?’

Teddy was silent for a moment, and Alice gave her time. She was driving towards her house, but there would be no salmon; this didn’t feel anywhere near over. She couldn’t go home, surely.

‘I don’t know,’ Teddy said, finally. ‘He was wearing mittens all day.’

‘Mittens?’

‘It was endearing,’ Teddy said, but she was looking at Alice. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me. It’s going to take that endearing moment away from me.’

Alice said, ‘I’m sorry. I could be wrong. Was it in the coroner’s report?’

‘I didn’t read it,’ Teddy said. ‘Why would I want to read it? I was there when it happened. Did you read it?’

‘No,’ Alice said. ‘He was my friend. I didn’t want to know anything.’

‘So we don’t know whether he had a stab wound in his hand when he died. Nobody said anything to me. Maybe they thought it was from the actual fight?’

‘Maybe,’ Alice said. She stretched back in her seat. ‘I thought mostly that the person who broke in at Chetna’s was there to hurt me, and I fought them off. But I also wondered if they were trying to get the keys to Valkyrie. Now I think that’s exactly what happened.’

‘You think he drove all the way to goddamn Tomb Creek to check the coffin for his two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar picnic rug?’ She paused. ‘And that he did it in Cole’s goddamn car, and left blood in it from when you put my knife through his hand?’

Alice did not want to say it, but she thought: yes.

Teddy couldn’t talk. She was just looking at her hands.

‘I never said who was in the coffin,’ Alice said. ‘But I told him it was oak. He must have realised then that it was the one Cole’s body was in. Still – how did he know where I was?’ Alice asked quietly. ‘He never had the address. I know you track me, but he doesn’t. Unless you showed him?’

‘I didn’t,’ Teddy said, and then she said, ‘wait. I updated it in our Docs when I was at Rusty’s. I wrote the address you told me there.’ She breathed out. ‘I even said you had a key to the garage.’

Alice said, trying to laugh, trying not to cry, ‘The first time that slack fucking prick ever bothered to look over the Docs, and he used it to find me with a fucking gun?’

Teddy put her hand on her mouth. ‘Not only the blanket,’ she said. ‘There was the shell,’ she said. ‘The shell in the pocket of Cole’s pants.’

Once, on the beach with Alice and Cherry and Jun, Art had found a handful of shells for Cherry, who loved them. He said she could have them, and she had stared at them like he had given her the moon. He always picked up tiny, shiny shells. A beachside boy and his sandy pockets and the pants his sister gave to a dead fucking body.

‘And Nina’s car,’ Alice said, her voice smaller with every sentence. ‘Getting off the Monash, that night. She was picking him up from where he’d left Cole’s car, and then later that morning he pretended he’d just come in when you got there.’ She let out a sound that was almost a whimper. ‘I think I don’t have any other ideas for who it was, or why they were there. Give me any other one, anything, and I’ll fucking listen.’

Teddy did not have any more ideas. Neither of them did.

Alice pulled down a side street, and idled in front of a dark, low house, with palm trees in the front yard.

‘What the fuck are we going to do now?’

‘I know what we can do,’ Teddy said. ‘We need to meet up with Darwin.’

‘How the fuck are we supposed to find him? He could be anywhere.’

‘He could,’ Teddy agreed, ‘but what if we made him come to us?’

‘No need to speak in mysterious questions,’ Alice said, almost smiling. ‘Come on. I’m sufficiently enthralled.’

‘What if we told him to come and meet up with Eddie,’ Teddy said, ‘but, actually, it was us?’

‘And how would we do that?’

Teddy held up a phone between her fingers.

‘Is that fancy-ass Samsung possibly Eddie’s telephone?’

‘It could be,’ Teddy said smugly.

‘You sneak,’ Alice said admiringly. ‘But how are you going to message him? Surely a prick like that has password protection.’

‘Fingerprint,’ Teddy said.

‘You didn’t,’ Alice said.

‘I did,’ Teddy said.

‘Teddy!’

‘Not the whole finger! Just the top. He won’t miss it. I mean, he’s a big guy, and it’s just a tiny percentage of his body mass, overall. We might have to put an electric pulse through it to fake his vitals if his phone is fussy, but I’ve got a small electric generator at home. Or there are some jumper cables in the boot of my car.’

‘You fucking ghoul.’

‘You love it,’ Teddy said.

‘You know it,’ Alice said back.