When the usual hoons drifted into my shop the next afternoon, Tanya was looking real cool in this wicked day-glow tank top.
‘Did you wear that to school?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘All day long — under me school shirt. Then I took the shirt off at home time and shoved it in me bag. They didn’t half spew — they reckon we’ve got to look neat and tidy going past all the shops. So the school gets a good reputation and we all get employment. As if there were any jobs around. Though Rats Eyes has got a job. Got a job ramming handbills in people’s letterboxes — haven’t you, Rats? Real weird too — the handbills I mean, not Rats. Although he’s weird as well. Hey, Rats, show Scalp one of the handbills.’
The hoon called Rats Eyes opened his school bag. It was stuffed full of bright yellow handbills. He pulled one out and gave it to me.
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‘Weird, eh?’ said Tanya. ‘This guy just comes up to Rats Eyes in the street and does a deal. Rats shoves all these bills into letterboxes and he gets $20.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know all about this. It’s a cryonics scam. Nano-technology.’
‘Oh, that old stuff,’ Tanya said. ‘I read this Cool Moments In Science comic strip by Dr Polly Math. See, they make all these little microscopic robots that go snorkeling through your arteries like rats through drainpipes.’
‘Watch it,’ said Rats Eyes.
‘Not you, Rats. I’m talking about rats. Real rats. Anyway, they go looking for run-down organs and clapped out cells. When they find one they knock it back into shape again. One molecule at a time. The building blocks of Life. The catch is, if they get it wrong you end up with two heads and seventeen fingers and the wrong organs of generation.’
‘Rubbish,’ said the hoon called Christo. ‘You couldn’t fit a rat into an artery.’
‘Listen, boofhead, I’m not talking about rats, I’m talking about nano-technology.’
‘It’s still rubbish.’
‘It’s not rubbish because they haven’t invented the damn things yet.’
‘So how come Rats Eyes is going around advertising them?’
‘Jeez, you’re thick. Can’t you read? He’s not advertising the little robots, he’s advertising refrigerators.’
‘Aw, drop dead, Tanya.’
‘Drop dead yerself.’
To stop the argument I started to tell Tanya that I’d call round at her place on Friday night, about half an hour before Exterminator Gator started.
‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘Mum won’t let us go out together.’
‘No, I’ve had a chat with your mum,’ I said. ‘It will be all right as long as she comes along too.’
‘What?’ said Tanya. ‘Drag the old cheddar along as well? What is this? Some sort of horror show? There’ll be all sorts of kids we know there … I’m meant to be seen out in public with my mother?’
‘No, it’ll be cool,’ I said. ‘I’m fixing your mum up with a blind date. The pair of them can sit somewhere else.’
‘Jeez, she’s gunna like that. Some old codger with a white stick. How’s this date gunna see the screen?’
‘It’s okay. He’s actually a jockey.’
‘A blind deejay?’
‘No, not discs, horses.’
‘They do that, you know,’ Tanya said. ‘Stick blind kids on horses. There are these funny-looking collectors that keep coming round knocking on the door, rattling tins. Horse rides for the visually challenged. It’s like guide dogs, only horses. Maybe this date’ll bring his seeing-eye horse with him. The horse can look at the movie and tell the date guy what’s going on. You can make horses communicate, you know. They do it by tapping their feet on the ground. Ms Boston told us all about it in year seven. There was this horse called Clever Hans. He used to do sums, tapping away with his feet. Only he wasn’t doing the sums actually. It was his handler that was doing the sums. Only the handler didn’t know he was doing the sums — he thought the horse was. Doing the sums, that is. But really, Clever Hans was just picking up subliminal signals. Fact of the matter was, the dopey animal couldn’t care less about two and two making four, or anything else for that matter. All he was after was apples. Stimulus response.’
‘Stop motor-mouthing, Tanya,’ said Rats Eyes.
‘Yeah, Tanya …’ said another hoon.
‘Belt up,’ Tanya said. ‘You wouldn’t know a horse from a pile of —’
Then, suddenly, all of the usual hoons went rather silent.
‘Oh no, not that cop again,’ Christo said.
And sure enough, in comes Senior Constable Sergie Poldarski. ‘Afternoon, you guys,’ says the policeman.
Mumble mumble, say the hoons, and start their usual drift out the door. But Tanya doesn’t leave. She decides to have a little chat with the cop.
‘Have you thought a great deal about immortality, officer?’
‘I don’t reckon I have,’ says the policeman.
‘Well, I reckon you should,’ says Tanya. ‘Because there’s guys going around in vans offering eternal life after death. All you’ve gotta do is get stowed away in a freezer until they invent some way of getting you up and running again. Have a squizz.’
The policeman looks at the handbill Tanya shows him.
‘It all sounds a bit vague to me,’ he says. ‘If we investigated every alternative lifestyle group who shoved leaflets through letterboxes, there’d be no time for Community Policing. I think we might just leave this mob in peace. That’s the thing about a multicultural community. There’s a place for everyone.’
‘All right,’ says Tanya. ‘What do you know about horses?’
‘Not a lot,’ says the policeman.
‘I don’t think they’re allowed into cinemas,’ Tanya says.
‘I don’t reckon they are.’
‘Well, there’s some guy going to try and get a horse into the Hoyts Complex on Friday night. I reckon you ought to be there.’
‘How do you know that?’ says Poldarski.
‘Scalp told me,’ says Tanya. ‘The guy’s blind — right? — and he uses a seeing-eye horse instead of a seeing-eye dog.’
‘Oh yeah,’ says the cop.
‘Straight up,’ says Tanya. ‘Ask Scalp.’ And she saunters out of the door.
‘What’s this about a horse?’ says the cop.
‘Don’t know nothing about horses,’ I say.
‘Well, what’s this about a bloke trying to get a horse into the pictures?’
‘You’d better ask Tanya.’
‘She said to ask you.’
‘Then we’re stuffed,’ I say. ‘It’s how rumours start — everybody thinks somebody else is the source of the story. So it’s gotta be true because everybody knows some dude who knows about it first-hand, but really the rumour just started all by itself. See?’
‘Yeah, well, there’ve been a few rumours lately,’ said the cop, ‘and I don’t think they started all by themselves — rumours about a couple of blokes having drag races on bikes in the main street. Hanging onto the back of cars. Jumping red lights. Riding without helmets. Rumour has it that one of the suspects looked a lot like you. Distinctive scar right round his head. We got rather a lot of phone calls.’
‘Well, that’s rumour for you,’ I said. ‘It’s appalling the way law-abiding citizens can have their characters blackened by malicious gossip. I’m glad you’ve got the good sense not to believe it.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ says the cop.
‘Officer, I make a point of always telling the hoons — the kids — that they’ve got to obey the rules of the road and that they’ve always got to wear helmets. It’s the law.’
‘Yeah. Well, personally, I’d be more inclined not to believe all this malicious gossip about you riding a bicycle upon a public thoroughfare in a reckless and dangerous manner liable to cause a bingle, if you’d show a bit of public spirit in relation to the problem of red-hot stolen bicycles.’
‘Gee, you’ve got a fine turn of phrase, Sergie,’ I say.
‘Comes of giving evidence in court,’ says the cop. ‘I’ve had lots of experience. My evidence stands up in court. If you get my drift.’
‘What you’re saying,’ says I, ‘is that if I tell you everything I know about the … er … the secondhand bike trade, you won’t pursue the matter of my little race down the high street.’
‘I might just have more pressing engagements.’
‘Done!’ I say. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know about stolen bikes. Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ says the cop.
‘I don’t know nothing about hot bikes, officer,’ I say with feeling.
‘Now, unless I’m greatly mistaken,’ says the cop, ‘that’s what they call a double negative.’
‘Come again?’
‘It could be argued in a court of law that the statement, I don’t know nothing, officer, implies the statement, I do know something, officer. See what I mean?’
I saw what he meant. And I also saw a chance to make a bit of mischief in the matter of Luis Greystone’s plans for my brains.
And I still wasn’t too happy about Luis’ plans — despite Rachel’s promise that she was going to change them.
‘Look, Sergie,’ I say in a whisper. ‘All I know about crimes against the community is what I’ve already told you. Or what Tanya has already told you: some guy is going to try and ride a horse into the Hoyts complex on Friday night. He’s going to arrive outside the movie in an old furniture van. Not a proper horse float, see. Just an old black furniture van, so nobody gets suspicious. But there’ll be a horse on board. He’s going to come flying out of the back of the van and into the pictures. On the horse.’
‘Now why would he want to do that?’
‘Search me,’ I say. ‘It seems like a ridiculous idea to me. Totally stupid. I mean, what’s the point?’
‘So why’s he going to do it?’
‘Who knows?’ I say. ‘We will never fathom the criminal mind. Maybe he’s got a grudge against the movie. Thinks it’s a load of horse manure or something. Maybe when he gets the animal into the cinema he’s going to make it … er … express itself.’
‘What’s the movie?’
‘Exterminator Gator.’
‘They reckon that’s real good.’
‘It’s meant to be a winner.’
‘I was thinking of going to see it,’ says the cop. ‘But then I thought, bugger it, I’ll wait for the video.’
‘No way,’ I say. ‘You’ve got to see Exterminator Gator on the big screen. Action, blood, violence, language, adult themes. Me and Tanya — I mean, me and Tanya’s mum — we’re going to see it on Friday night. You want to come along too. Come to the early session. You can see the movie. Then you can arrest the guy with the horse afterwards. He’s going to try and get the horse into the late session.’
‘He’s got a name, this perpetrator?’
‘Luis Greystone,’ I say. ‘A deranged dentist.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘He’s from out of town. I used to know him years ago, before I came here. He’s got a reputation for doing dumb stuff. He’s got this fantasy that he’s still a student. His life is one long Rag Week.’
‘Sounds like a long shot to me,’ said Poldarski. ‘But seeing as how I might be going to the movies anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for a suspicious furniture van.’
‘Good idea,’ I say.