The door opens. Deth looks like a cross between a derro and some sort of extreme sportsman; all the wanderings about the hills with Nellie have rendered him lean and weathered his skin a leathery tan. His eyes are alert but skittish beneath a head of unkempt, matted, graying hair and four days’ facial growth.
Deth eyes the bottles of wine in the brown paper bag in my hand, takes them immediately, hungrily, and opens the door wider. The dog sits at his feet, its tail wagging furiously.
We grasp each other in a lingering hug. I convulse in his arms, sob and fight for breath.
Brother, he says to me—brother—what are you letting them do to you?
Deth, still clutching me, pats me on the back. It’s good to be held. Even by another bloke. It’s been a while since anyone has held me, really held me.
Jack, I say, it’s been the worst day. I’m going through the works. They’re getting ready to roll me for sure. I know it. Ana’s halfway out the door, the kids are getting shit at school and Indy’s on the move, told me yesterday it’s her or Ana. Can’t blame her. I wonder if she’s been gotten to as well. And the kid who got bitten by the snake in the geo-thingy …
Deth interrupts: Geocache, Danny, geocache—geocaching is bloody fantastic, I love it. You never know what you’re going to find. I do it all the time. Geocaches everywhere in the bush round here. The idea is that you take something from the box and then you anonymously leave something better for the next person. But the snake—who’d do that, Danny? There’re some bent units wandering the world. Anyway, come in and show me your phone.
I give Deth my telephone.
Let’s give you the geocaching app, Danny, it’s free, he says. Then you can go geocaching yourself. What the … you’ve already got the app. What’s going on, man? You a secret geocacher or what?
Deth is coked off his face. It’s going to be a long night.
Sam, I say—remember Sam, your godson?—he must have downloaded it for me. And yeah, Jack, I’ve been asking myself just that—what sort of sicko leaves a poisonous snake just so it bites a kid? The joint’s a mess. Priorities all over the shop when someone’ll do that to a kid and when the punters care more about a cooking show than whether the rednecks declare open season on Normalians.
I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand, walk into the open-plan lounge-dining-kitchen.
The place, in stark contrast to Deth, is immaculate. OCD neat. The furniture is all at right angles, the floor rugs just so, the cushions straight, the lighting perfect and a fire crackling in the hearth. The feature windows across the back of the house lend a perfect panorama down over the top of Weston’s urban forest, along the ridgeline of Red Hill to the lights of Black Mountain Tower and Parliament House. Across the lake directly in front is the winking beacon atop Mount Ainslie. A little further south, the lights of the ASIO building flicker through the foliage.
The earthy aroma of rabbit simmering in wine with scallions and garlic is a balm. I’m still buzzing from Tom’s whisky and had intended not to drink any more. But Deth unscrews the wine, pours two balloon glasses that were meant for cognac and, so, why not?
Did you bring the smokes? he demands.
No, mate, forgot, I say. Kill you anyway.
Plenty of other things to kill me faster. But true—you know I’ve had a few cancer scares lately?
Yeah, I heard.
We both are straight-faced, sloshing wine around the vast glasses, sniffing and swilling. I toy with but resist the temptation to shit-stir Deth about his pathological hypochondria.
Unfortunately, Deth’s sense of irony died in Afghanistan. And I know, as fucked up as he is, he’s fundamentally a good person, always was; he’d never dream of piss-taking me over my panic attacks or my ever-expanding litany of crippling anxieties.
So we drink big—To getting out alive, Deth says, the only toast he ever makes, and then he refills.
Deth, no good on conversational segue these days either, says, Mate—I hate what they’re doing to you, Danny. Hate it. I want to help you. I’m trying to help you.
And I’m thinking, Mate, I want your help like I want a prostate examination—do not try to help me, Deth, please.
So I do stoic and say, Well, mate, you know the game well enough. It’s hard. Vince played it hard. Played it only to win. I’m at that stage— burn-up or re-entry. I suspect I’m going to burn or crash. But I won’t give up.
Vince is still kind of playing it, Danny, Deth says. Not that he knows it. But I’m in there at The Cedars with him all the time. And you should see the procession of the faithful, the party bloody royalty that goes through the doors of that nursing home to pay homage. It’s like the queues outside Father Tom’s confessional. You’ve got no idea, Danny. They sit there for hours—Proudfoot, the Sweeties, Vagnoli, Usher, all of them—prattling on, asking for guidance, talking about the state of the party as if he’s in a position to give them any fucking advice. It’s like they’re having an audience with the Pope. I mean Dad doesn’t give a rat’s—he thinks he’s having daiquiris and fish dinners on a Caribbean cruise. He doesn’t know what day it is and he’s having a great time. The ridiculous thing is that they know he can’t answer. It’s sort of like he represents the last elements of some sort of conscience in the party, which is just ridiculous given all of the evil shit that he and Paddy did together in politics.
You mean you’re there with him when they’re spilling their guts? I ask.
No, Danny. It’s like he’s a tape recorder. Most nights when I sit there with him, when he’s sedated and he’s supposed to be sleeping, he talks and talks. Parkinson’s is cruel like that—it never lets the body or the brain rest properly. So I sit there and hold his hand and just bloody listen—and he tells me everything they’re saying to him. Even Tom’s sitting there, day in day out, too, just downloading to him.
Tom? I ask.
Yeah, he’s forever in the old man’s room. Must’ve given him the Last Rites half a dozen times. Communion every day. Confession. Jesus, confession, Danny, I mean from Tom, can you bear it? It’s Tom who ought to be fucking confessing—you and I know that.
Deth stands, walks to the kitchen bench, bends into the fireplace and lights a spliff. He sucks on it deeply, offers it to me.
I shake my head, steer him back to where we were—Go on, Jack, I say.
Crying, Dad says. Tom’s always crying about the past when he’s with Dad. Telling him stuff about the party. About you. You know I’m no naïf, mate. I understand politics inside out, upside-down—it rooted my family like it does just about everyone’s it touches, remember? Tom says stuff to Dad like he doesn’t know if you’re going to make it because you’ve got too much baggage from the past that they’re going to dump on you during the campaign. Says things like, maybe, Vince, he’s got to go before the election. You know, Vince, I love Danny like a brother, but the party is bigger than any individual. I’m not sure that we can take the risk with Danny because the voters are ready to ditch Drysdale, the punters just want to feel safe about giving him the arse. But Danny scares people. Maybe, Vince, I hate to say it, but maybe we’ve got to try somebody else. Maybe it’s time for the old boy-girl combo.
I feel like I did an hour ago when Violin Girl’s boyfriend filched my fifty. This is crazy nonsense. Deth’s wasted, has to be making it up.
Jack, I say, I can’t accept he’d sell me out. He’s been helping me through fixes since you could barely walk.
Deth is cutting lines of coke with a credit card on the corner of the black granite kitchen bench. He gulps wine, pours more.
Line? he asks, handing me a rolled-up twenty.
No, mate, I say. Deth shrugs, snorts one up each nostril. Then he looks up, pupils dilated, and smiles.
Mate, he says, I know you’re not going to want to believe this, but they’re organising a Crawley–Usher ticket. It’s coming from the usual places—the Sweeties and Proudfoot. Tom’s on board, reluctantly—tells Dad he’ll use whatever leverage he can to force you. Unless you declare it open they’ll get a petition signed by a third of the members, force a vote.
Really, mate, I don’t think so.
Danny, believe me. Normalians are the final straw. They’re terrified that any sort of security scare—a bombing threat, a shooting—will be blamed on the party. And they reckon you’re shot to pieces on the character thing. They think you can’t make it. They’re trying to get the personal stuff aired to force you out now before the Tories get a chance to do it in an election. You know—Domenica and the Kick photos.
How do you know?
There’re ears everywhere in this town, Danny. You know that. Someone’s always listening, watching. If it’s not Dad, it’s someone else. Eddie. Fuck me, Danny—how much do you actually know about Eddie? Well, Eddie knows shit you wouldn’t believe—and there’s her hubby, Brendan. Mate, he’s connected—in Afghanistan, I’m sitting in a bed in the American hospital, my shoulder’s ripped apart and I’m morphed to the eyeballs. I’m not sure if I’m imagining being debriefed by a guy with an Oz accent who’s obviously with the agency. But it was Eddie’s Brendan. I know coz he turns up here a few weeks back asking how I am, sits where you are drinking beers, we walk Nellie up the hill together and do a joint up top at the trig, come back and keep talking, then he helps me dig the veggie patch. Good guy. Talks about you and Eddie. Says Eddie reckons you’re the real deal but a difficult cunt to work for.
Mate, I say, Eddie’s a mystery to me. Haven’t met the husband. But I’ve never worried about where Eddie stands with me.
There’re plenty of others you should be worried about though, he says.
Like?
Start with Vaughan Charles, Danny. He wants to get rid of you because the Sweeties and Proudfoot say so. Plus he’s got a personal reason, right? He’s been looking at those photographs for thirty-five years, mate. Of course he’s going to use them to fuck you up. I know Tom’s been trying to talk him down.
So you’re just another member of the secret society that’s known who Vaughan Charles is all this time—that’s made sure I’m the last to know? I ask, my voice rising with the accusation.
Ah, don’t shit me, Danny, Deth says. I’d have told you if I’d known, mate. I’ve had a few problems of my own to worry about recently, ’case you haven’t noticed. Before that I was getting my arse shot off. Vince never told me a thing, mate—he knows I’ve been contemptuous of politics since I was a kid. The only way I know who Vaughan Charles is, is because I’ve had cause to start going through his papers and stuff in the last day or two and because I’ve been sitting with Dad’s hand in mine listening to him replay Tom’s pathetic carry-on. You know, Oh, Vince, Vince, now Vaughan’s getting antsy, threatening to tell the truth about what happened, you know, what am I going to do? Pathetic really. I just put two and two together—Vaughan and the Kick and you and Tom. Don’t need to be a rocket surgeon to figure that one out. Sure you don’t want some coke? Might help you think straight.
Jack, mate, what do you know about the Kick?
Look, Dad and Paddy used to talk about it around me when I was a little kid. Assumed I didn’t understand. ’Course I listened to and remembered everything. Heard all sorts of bits and pieces. I know they smoothed it over with the cops and supported Chislette, as he was, looked after his medicals and rehab—everything really. And recently I figured out they helped him turn into Vaughan Charles …
The fuck—Jack? Vaughan was banging on about this today in my office, carrying on with how we’re almost brothers because Paddy and Vince helped him out, too. It’s the first I ever heard of it.
Well it’s true, mate—I’m Dad’s power of attorney. I get to see the books. Dad and Paddy have channelled hundreds of thousands from the firm, through our family trust company, into Vaughan. They talked about Chisel sometimes when I was a kid. It was all about closing ranks around what happened—making sure he had an incentive not to talk about it or even really know the truth about it and was all looked after—looked after so that word never gets out. And now, sounds like he’s going to go public. To do you over.
Well, if he’s saying it’s me who did that to him, Jack, it won’t be the truth—he obviously doesn’t know the truth.
Yeah, Danny, but you and I do. And Tom.
Jack, mate—you on Twitter?
Hate Twitter, he says. Got a troll account, @cadetjourno, just to watch, to follow you and a few others, so ’course I saw the creepy Devilindrag posts. But I don’t ever post.
Any ideas who Devilindrag is? Tom maybe?
Danny, I sat there with Dad this arvo and listened. Tom had just left when I got there. Dad says to me how Tom’s trying to talk Charles down—trying to tell him not to go public on the Kick. But he’s too late—Vaughan’s running his own race. He’s determined to derail you.
So I ask, Vaughan’s Devilindrag?
Danny, I don’t know who it is. But, mate, it doesn’t matter. The point is they’re doing it. And the Kick will finish you. You know that. Unless you tell the truth about it.
Deth is motor-mouthed now, speaking so fast I can scarcely understand him, hard in the grip of the coke. He keeps topping up and slurping the wine and saying, Danny, it could even be Kirsty Usher trolling you—Dad parrots all the stuff to me she says to him, too. She’s talking the same ticket, Crawley and her, saying she feels so guilty after all you’ve done for her, all the support. I swear.
Deth starts fidgeting around the kitchen bench, opens the oven. It smells fantastic and I realise I haven’t eaten all day. I’m famished. I want Peng’s rabbit thingy.
Deth removes the casserole and places it on a wooden board, uses a cloth to remove the lid. His animated anticipation of the perfectly executed recipe quickly shifts to disappointment. Looking into the pot he shakes his head frantically.
It’s fucked, he says, absolutely ruined. It’s supposed to be a deep caramel hue, with an earthy, dusty scent from the porcinis and truffle oil and the flesh of the free-range rabbits—they’re bred in Hackett, you know?—and it’s supposed to retain a tinge of pink and then just fall off the bone. But I’ve overdone it, which is just as bad as under-cooking rabbit. Stringy one way. Leathery and dry the other. Dog food. I’ll let it cool down and give it to Nellie.
Jack, I plead, I really don’t mind if it’s overcooked. Please don’t give it to the dog—I could eat the arse out of a dead donkey right now. And look, you’ve gone to all of this bloody effort, please …
But Deth is agitated, pouring more wine and drinking randomly from both his glass and mine, one moment looking sloppy-pissed, the next completely wired.
He says, Mate, did I tell you that it’s the rabbit dish from what-sername—Peng? You know it’s the final of the show tomorrow night. Can’t wait. Man, I hope she wins. Come back ’round and watch if you like. Took me hours to make it. But now I can’t be fucked eating it. It’s just not right. And it should be just right. Man, I’m a fuck-up. I stuff up everything I touch. So I’m having another line. You want a line? Go on, mate. Do you good. Kill your appetite but.
I want food, which I’m not going to get, almost as much as I crave sleep.
So I snatch Deth’s rolled-up twenty and hoover two long lines off the benchtop.