Dead Dog in the Still of the Night (4 page)

‘You kidding, right? Ad reckons my old man can get word out to take the bitch down?’ Tone said incredulously. ‘Is Ad serious? My old man does nothing more than toss pizza bases around nowadays. You know that, Prims. It was all just talk because the old man did good in business, right? Jealous
paesani,
mate,’ he added through an uneasy smile. ‘People just make stuff up, right? They hear a whisper and blow it out into a shout, you with me? My dad says that. All the time.’

Primo nodded. Or add to what they’ve heard, he thought, but didn’t say. He knew from experience how touchy Tone was about the rumours surrounding his father.

‘I don’t know this Crystal, but I reckon she’s probably not a bitch, Tone, not really,’ he said instead. ‘My brother’s a gutless prick. Ad’s just talking scared. This Crystal has him by the balls and he’s afraid of losing Stella and Beth.’

‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ Tone cut in. ‘Seems to me his troubles are about to hit the roof.’

Tone lay back on the bed and fiddled with the PS3 controller he’d brought over, while Primo tried to make sense out of the sheaths of A4 papers spread out before him. It was his English assignment, overdue and underprepared. Primo was hoping for the best, dreading the worst.

‘And talking of troubles, what about you and Maddie?’ Tone asked, sitting up. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Here’s an idea, Prims, maybe, instead of taking your little niece to Luna Park, you should take Maddie and have a day out to sort your shit. After all, she thinks you tried to run her over.’

‘I didn’t try to run her over, okay!’ Primo glared at him.

‘Word is you went a little spare in the head and tried to scare the shit out of her by throwing Bambino around. Probably just lucky that concrete bollard was there, eh?’

Primo jumped to his feet. ‘Otherwise what? I would of run her over? Bullshit. I was never going to do that.’ Primo pointed a finger at Tone. ‘Why you taking her side, anyway?’

‘Taking her side? You soft in the head all of a sudden, Prims? Just call her and say you’re sorry, say you went a little white line fever on her, anything, just don’t pretend like nothing happened, okay.’ He started counting off on his fingers. ‘You took the car. She was pissed because you promised to go OS and now you’re not. You had a psycho moment and lost the plot for a few minutes. There it is right there.’ Tone clapped and the sound startled Primo.

It didn’t remind him of the Fiat smacking into the bollard, or Maddie’s brittle voice yelping in fear. It brought back the memory of his mother slapping his father across the face as they’d stood toe-to-toe in the kitchen, unaware that he was watching. He would have been a little boy, maybe five or six, but Primo remembered the moment vividly. It hadn’t been the first time his mum had struck his dad like that.

Primo swallowed and shook the thought from his muddled brain.

‘Anyhow, as I keep telling you, I can get you a good deal on Bambino,’ Tone went on, reaching for Albert Camus’s novel,
The Outsider
, that Primo had been thumbing through when he’d arrived. ‘There’s a huge market out there for unusual cars, like my little baby, right. Reckon I could smell out a good deal on your behalf, like the twenty bucks I got for that clapped out bike of yours yesterday.’

‘The Fiat’s not for sale,’ Primo answered matter-of-factly.

‘Apart from your misadventure, when was the last time your old man even sat in, let alone drove, the Fiat?’ Tone asked.

Primo stapled a few pages of the English text response essay he’d been trying to work on, and got to his feet. ‘Just chase your cousin on the exact quote okay, Tone? Sooner I can get it fixed the better.’

‘And you’re going to pay him with what exactly?’

Primo hesitated.

‘Prims, listen to your mate here, you’d make enough on the car, even with the dent, to cover a trip OS with Maddie. Easy.’ Tone lowered his voice and leaned closer to Primo. ‘And besides, watch if Ad doesn’t sell it if that woman comes chasing money he doesn’t have.’

Primo flinched. Tone realised he’d landed a punch and dropped an arm around his shoulder.

‘My old man’s a pain in the arse, Tone. Always has been with me,’ Primo admitted. ‘But I can’t sell the car out from under him. Not even for Maddie. I’ll get the money. Just find out what the damage is, okay?’

Tone patted Primo fervently on the back. ‘Sure, but you just keep that option open, okay?’ He gathered his things, pulled on his cap, and twirled his car keys around one finger.

‘Guess what?’ he asked with a grin. ‘Guess who I think I’ve almost convinced to come ride the Stiff Master?’ When Primo shrugged, Tone added, ‘Alison Walker.’ He arched his eyebrows and touched the side of his nose. ‘It was just a matter of time. You want to sort things out with Maddie so we might, you know, double date or something?’

‘You couldn’t manage a date with Alison when you were in the same class together, Tone,’ Primo said. ‘What makes you think she’s keen on you now?’

Tone had stopped twirling his car keys and stood leaning against the doorjamb. ‘It’s different now, Prims,’ he said. ‘Now that I’m not a school kid anymore, she looks at me differently.’

‘So, by that reckoning, how exactly do you figure Maddie sees me? Given that I’m a “school kid” still, Tone?’ Primo asked.

Tone pushed off the doorjamb and moved into the middle of the room again. ‘Girls always thought you were older than you are, Prims. You know that. Me, they saw as the kid who hammed it up for the class. I got the laughs.’ He paused long enough to waggle the keys to the hearse. ‘I have my own wheels now, Prims. That changes things. You didn’t need no car to impress Maddie. She went for your …’ Tone shrugged. ‘I don’t know, mate. Maybe she went for your intellect.’ Under his breath, but loud enough for Primo to hear, he said, ‘Couldn’t be your looks, eh?’

Primo shook his head. Whatever Maddie had seen in him, he thought, it was all under threat now.

As though reading his mate’s thoughts, Tone said, ‘She likes you ’cause you’re a good guy, Prims. And good guys like us are getting harder to find, eh?’

Primo smiled, tossed his paperwork into a large manila folder and dumped it all on his bed. He grabbed an old pair of tatty jeans from the floor, changing out of his track pants, and slipped on steeltoed boots as well.

‘Mind dropping me off at the yard?’ he asked as he pulled on a hoodie.

‘Thought you didn’t work Thursday afternoons? Too much homework and whatever.’

‘Yeah, I don’t, not usually, but I need the money now, don’t I?’ Primo said.

‘I’d loan you the grand or whatever it’ll be, Prims, but my recent ac-qui-si-tion has, you know, de-pleted the bank account.’

Tone laughed at his own use of the words ‘acquisition’ and ‘depleted’.

‘You should consider coming to work for my old man now that you’ve got your licence,’ he suggested as they pulled up outside the gates of the massive freight yard. Already rows of canvas-covered semitrailers lined the concourse.

‘What would I deliver the pizzas with, Tone? My bike, of which I am no longer in possession?’ Primo stepped out onto the hot concrete. ‘Even I wouldn’t use Bambino for a pizza run, Tone.’

‘Reckon my old man would let you use his ancient Falcon. I could ask, you know.’

‘I’m good for the money for the repairs. Tell Alfie that, Tone. That’s all you need to do right now,
capisce
?

‘You think I’m thick,’ Tone snapped back. ‘Go sort the mail, Prims, before they sack you.’

‘It’s freight, Tone, freight,’ Primo called, but Tone was already fishtailing out of the car park, leaving a faint stench of burning rubber behind.

Primo shook his head and grinned. Sometimes Tone was a total wanker, but he was the best mate he could ever hope for, of that Primo had absolutely no doubt.

‘And it’s freight that needs to be unloaded,’ a voice suddenly barked at Primo’s back.

Primo turned and saw his supervisor, Akbar, a short, stocky Turkish man in his late fifties, glaring at him, his arms folded across his barrel chest.

‘You tell your mate he make that shit stunt here again, I’ll take his rego down and get his arse nailed. I got enough empty-headed no-brainers around here already. Okay?’

Primo felt like laughing but thought better of it.

‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘Yeah, no problems.’ He walked off to clock in for the afternoon shift, pulling on his orange safety vest as he went.

The local drivers were just starting to get back, their vans and small trucks in the loading bays, back doors open to the dock area where everything from coils of cable to boxes of tinned fruit stood stacked three and four deep.

Primo walked over to his section in the area of the dock designated to city and local runs. In the few months he’d been working after school, Primo had learned to keep his personal business to himself. He didn’t want the boys working beside him to see him as a show pony, there just to fill in the time between school and getting into some prestigious university course. Nothing irritated his co-workers more, Primo knew instinctively, than someone who thought he was above them.

‘A hundred and fifty pallets tonight, man,’ Jimmy, a thin, reedy young man who also worked the casual afternoon shift, called across the conveyor belt. ‘It’s gonna be hardcore, man. Gonna earn our keep today.’

Primo smiled and looked up and across the open warehouse to the larger conveyor belt that brought the freight from the unloading docks to the sorting dock.

‘Looks like it,’ he said and gestured toward the unloading area where forklifts scuttled about like giant metal locusts, picking up and disgorging tall bundles of pallets, some bound in heavy clear plastic. ‘Wouldn’t mind driving one of those,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be easier on the back than lifting and sorting.’

But Jimmy wasn’t listening. He’d put in his earplugs and was mouthing to lyrics only he could hear.

‘Yeah, that’d be great,’ Primo answered himself, doing his best to imitate his workmate. ‘Like, that’d be so cool, eh.’

‘What’s cool, Juice?’

Primo turned. Ari was standing at the foot of the metal steps that led down into the loading bays, texta in hand. He was a full-timer and the lifting and hauling had given him an impressive physique. The tattoos of knotted barbed wire on his neck made him look even more threatening.

Primo. Prima juice. Juice.

Ari’s way of being funny.

Primo didn’t argue. It would be worse if Ari took a dislike to him. If you wanted a decent shift you knew to be nice to Ari. If you wanted something to help you cope with the boredom, to spike the weekend, you saw Ari about it.

‘Everything’s cool, Ari.’ Primo smiled tightly. He watched the big man closely, careful not to draw too much unnecessary attention.

‘I said it before, man,’ Ari went on, pulling himself onto the dock beside Primo, over whom he towered. ‘You look too smart to be working here, man. You sure you’re not a spy for the Boss Man?’ When he punched Primo lightly on the arm Primo staggered sideways. ‘You sure you’re not like a troublemaker for Ari, man?’

‘Yeah, I’m like Maxwell Smart,’ Primo replied light-heartedly.

‘Who?’ Ari’s tone was challenging. He wasn’t smiling.

Primo realised his mistake.

‘Maxwell Smart, a secret agent on a TV show from the 60s,’ he explained tentatively. ‘It was a joke.’

Ari’s face hardened suddenly. ‘You’re not making fun of Ari, are you man? That’s not cool, you know.’ The much broader and taller young man flexed his chest and stuck out his chin. ‘We don’t need no 007 shit around here, Juice.’

Primo put his hands out palm forward and shrugged. ‘Here comes the first load. I’d better get to it, eh?’

From where Ari stood a short distance away marking up the loads, Primo could sense him watching him, mumbling. Nothing much was a joke to Ari unless Ari said it was. Primo reminded himself not to forget that.