Jacko (34 page)

I suppose I looked away, and he said, Yes, I know it's bloody crazy asking that nurse to dinner. I'm not grabbing for excuses, but I'll tell you something.

He paused in the corridor and leaned against one of the walls.

—When I was bringing Sunny home, after the police were done with her, I brought her on Metro Grand. I booked the bedroom so she could rest. I was worried about her eh. She was dazed still and her voice was just as neutral as her old man's. So I took her back to the bedroom, to show her where everything was. I wasn't going to stay. I was going to have a drink and get some sleep in one of the easy chairs. Soon as we were alone, she dropped to her knees. She had her eyes half closed. I don't have to tell you. It was automatic. Not in her control. Jesus, it made my blood creep. That bastard Kremmerling's poisoned everything. He's poisoned everything even for me. And I'm the one who has to go home tomorrow. To the empty loft. I'm not trying to make excuses eh. But I've got no interest in that nurse. Only in Sunny.

I was not willing, yet, to let him off that hook.

—You're not
still
asking me to feel sorry for you, are you?

—Bugger you, he said.

He opened the door to his room. I said I should go, but he reiterated the offer of a drink, and there was enough desolation in his eyes to make me stay. Inside, he looked at his watch and then all around the room, at the ruins of lunch and the empty Cabernet Sauvignon bottle, at the wrappers of peanuts and confectionery, all the signs that misery had made him omnivorous.

—By the way, thanks for coming over, he told me. You miserable bastard.

As Maureen and I sat drinking coffee and, of course, watching the box while the yells of beggars and the music of the saxophonist outside the Bottom Line contrasted with the calm murmur of news readers, a further astonishing item of information appeared on the evening news. Again, it was hot from San Bernardino, and momentous. Kremmerling had been found hanging in his cell, and two jail-house deputies had been charged with fabricating a supposed suicide. Investigators had concluded that he'd been strangled before being hanged.

It was about ten days since Lucy had departed.

A psychologist was interviewed, one who'd had a long conversation with Charles Kremmerling during the day. He said the prisoner hadn't been at all depressed or despairing or shameful. Besides, said the psychologist, people who commit such self-centred crimes as those Kremmerling was charged with are not likely candidates for suicide.

During the interview, the psychologist told us, Charles had said he was so happy at last to be away from the two women who were tearing him apart.

Maureen and I, like the Sondquists and the fashionable nurse Delia, were guilty of not watching Vixen Six. This story was network news, the sober-sided network news Jacko thought was good for nothing. I wondered if Jacko had been told about Kremmerling, and called him just in case. I heard Lucy's sky-wide Australian accent on the answering tape.

—Well, you haven't found us in eh. Jacko and Luce are hitting the town at the moment, but they're anxious you leave a message, coherent as you can make it. Do your worst!

I called the midtown hotel where Sunny Sondquist and her father might still be staying. I said I thought that Jacko had checked out by now. They told me, Yes, he had. I asked for the psychiatric nurse on the fortieth floor, but they told me that no calls were being put through to that room.

I could still so vividly see the sleeping girl, oblivious on her little unzippered square of dirty quilting, a dog on its blanket. She mightn't know yet that two county officials had achieved for her judgement without grief. Two sheriff's deputies taking their primitive industrial action.

I hoped she was asleep still the next day, when – in my new avocation as media ecologist – I heard some of the radio gurus say her story didn't add up, given the opportunities for escape and so on, given too the blameless work and civil record of Charles Kremmerling. They surmised poor Charles was just another honest victim of the sisterhood.

I called Vixen Six and the Perugia, but both Dannie and Durkin said they hadn't seen Jacko.

—I've taken over producing Al Bunker's segments now, Dannie told me. I'm not with Jacko any more.

I so wanted to find Jacko and discuss it all with him that I decided to go down to Tribeca and wait in Coghlan's bar across from his front door in Thomas Street. Big Irish-American detectives from the First Precinct, into whose hands I would not like to have fallen, drank at the bar, facing a mirror covered with IRA and Sinn Fein posters.
No extradition. The Bobby Sands Memorial March, Falls Road, Sunday August 14, 1990
and
Political Status in the H Blocks Now
.

The barman greeted every newcomer with, Is Belfast free yet? When the cops said, No, Michael, not yet, he'd say, Then you've still got to pay for your drinks until that happy day.

I drank the Ulster drink, Bushmills – mind you, an establishment Loyalist company, Bushmills. But I'd noticed during visits to Northern Ireland that tribal prejudices did not extend to booze, though Catholics and Protestants did tend to drink different brands of porter.

I tried to drink slowly, but my excuse for getting tanked is that I come from a family of heavy swallowers. After four o'clock, when the light was failing and I had to look twice at things to assure myself of their verity, I saw a stretch Mercedes come round the corner by the Korean store and park in front of Jacko's doorway. Jacko emerged in a hurry, fumbling for keys. It took two keys at least to unlock the heavy steel door at street level.

I got up from the bar, from the urgings that I should prevent the extradition of Provisional IRA men and women out of the Republic of Ireland into the British sector, from the exhortations to remember dead hunger strikers. By the time I'd reached the cold evening and crossed the street to the limo, however, Jacko was in the door without seeing me and had slammed it.

I turned back to the limo, but its windows were tinted and I could see nothing. A small man in a chauffeur's uniform, almost grotesquely broad-shouldered, rose up from the suddenly opened driver's door. He came up strangely close to me as if to intimidate me with the black-serge bulbs of his muscular shoulders.

—Can I help you, sir?

—I'm just waiting for Jacko.

—Sir, I've got to ask you to stand clear. Mr Emptor doesn't want any journalists.

The man was jostling me off the pavement, into the narrow street, back towards Coghlan's
No Extradition
bar.

I said the usual, the expected things, which sounded hollow in my mouth. That Jacko was a friend and would want to see me. The driver put his meaty little hands up and gave me an efficient shove which made my ribcage shiver and carried with it the promises of punches soon to follow.

I said, I don't want a damn fight. I'll wait over by that bar door until Jacko comes out, and if he wants to talk to me, he can. If he doesn't I'll just stand there.

The driver told me okay, to just keep there. I knew what to expect if I caused Mr Emptor any problems.

I didn't have to wait until Jacko came back downstairs. Within seconds, the well-dressed psychiatric nurse opened the back passenger door facing Coghlan's and stepped out. I could see that she was wearing a Cartier scarf.

—I'm sorry, she called lightly. I didn't realize it was you.

—Yes, I just wanted to talk to Jacko. To see how he's doing in the light of Kremmerling's death: cheated, thwarted, relieved or exhilarated?

There was something in the nurse that she could not hold in.

—We're going to Australia, she told me.

Numbed by that joyous shout, I had nothing to say.

—We're going to Australia!

—Tonight? I could ask at last.

—Yes, Jacko's just getting a few papers he needs, then he's taking us out there.

I asked if I could re-cross the street to them. The nurse turned to the driver and reassured him. I liked the confident and jovial way she did it. She was a good woman. She had a vocation for nursing. And for going to Australia.

So I crossed the street and then paused at her doorway, through which she had already re-entered the car. Sunny Sondquist was in there, holding the nurse's hand, looking tranquil but uncertain of her surroundings.

—We've agreed, said the nurse, we're going to bury that goddam sleeping bag at Burren Waters. You know Burren Waters, don't you?

Stupefied, I nodded.

Jacko emerged from the steel door downstairs with a brief-case and an envelope. He seemed as flummoxed to see me as I had been to see the psychiatric nurse. I was one item too much for his turbulent day.

—Mate, he said to me across the lid of the limo.

I said I just wanted to see how he was.

He shook his head.

—Get in, mate. I'm taking the girls to the airport. Take the jump seat in the back.

He hauled himself into the front beside his pocket-battleship driver. I sat not in the jump seat but – since she patted the leather at her side – beside the nurse. Without losing hold of Sunny's hand, she made room for me. I could smell the utterly pleasant fragrance of her excitement. She wore her expensive scarf with aplomb. Surely it wasn't a gift from Jacko? In the heightened air, I was jealous as a spouse. I sat there and let them tell me their story.

It came to me in fragments.

Jacko said, I was talking to Delia about the situation.

—Delia?

—You know, your friend there in the back.

—Yes. Delia.

—New York's impossible for Sunny. The bloody Sondquist apartment is still besieged by every wacko in Christendom.

—And now, you see, after what happened out West, she's free, said Delia.

At the word
free
. Sunny seemed to fall pleasantly, lightly asleep.

—Does she feel he got off too easy? I wanted to know.

My friend Delia nodded.

—That, certainly. But she grieved for him too. He was her bad parent, but he was a kind of parent just the same. She's been much calmer since it happened. She was dosed to the limit when you saw her four days ago. But she's on only half that dosage now!

—Have you ever been to Australia before? I stupidly asked the nurse.

—Never. This is a big thing for me. It makes some good sense. Jacko's mother will meet us in Sydney, and we'll fly across to Darwin together.

I couldn't imagine anything better for Sunny than making unexpected friends with other women like this.

—Is Chloe back in the Northern Territory by now? I asked Jacko.

—Yeah, mate, he murmured. She went back up there to keep an eye on Stammer Jack, the randy old bastard.

—I love the uninhibited way Jacko talks, Delia confided in me.

—My useless mongrel of a brother doesn't need her. He's getting on fine, let me tell you. Running things, and organizing musical evenings. Minimum security now. He doesn't need more than an occasional visit. He'll be whistling a long time before he gets one from me.

—But what about Michael Bickham? I asked, a little perversely since I already knew. Is she still running things for those two old men?

—They had a falling out.

—Over what?

Jacko shrugged, Politics. Bickham's a bitter old bastard. She sends you her love. You know, she was standing for the Federal Senate?

—No!

This was not something Chloe had told me in so many words.

—Yeah, that's what the fall-out with Bickham was about.

—She wasn't standing for the right party?

—Got it in one. Or maybe it was
too
right a party. Bickham's people cleaned up the Aboriginals in Northern New South Wales in the 1840s, and the old bugger's still living off the income. But he's got no time for Chloe Emptor, who's had to live with them day to day and get on with them. Not that she's any model of tolerance, mind you.

—Pardon me, I said, changing the subject and nodding to the dozing Sunny, but aren't medical services pretty thin on the ground at Burren Waters?

—Darwin's only an hour away by light plane, said Jacko. There are plenty of good psychiatrists in Darwin. The bloody Flying Doctor could drop one in to her anyhow. And she'll have Delia and she'll have Chloe.

By now we had come the long dreary way across Houston Street and eased ourselves onto the reasonably free-flowing FDR Drive.

I asked, Bob Sondquist knows his daughter's going?

For I picked up here, in the expectancy of Delia and Jacko, a redolence of the day we had tried to kidnap Francis away to a cure in Tijuana.

—Well, he's totally for it, isn't he? Old bugger doesn't know what to do for her eh. And he can't go home again until Sunny's off the scene.

—A funny thing, said Delia. I think he wanted her found. But I don't believe for a minute they're ready to occupy the same house.

—Dead right, said Jacko.

But just as in the attempted kidnap of Francis, special arrangements had been made. The women were travelling business class – that was the compromise Jacko had come up with to deal with Delia's confessed mild claustrophobia and Sunny's fear of spaces. When we arrived at Kennedy, we didn't go straight to the usual desk. A United Airlines woman took us straight to the Red Carpet Club, and then, in view of Sunny's dazed condition, vanished with the women's passports and tickets to attend to their seating.

We found a quiet corner of the lounge and sat down and drank some coffee, all except Sunny who was parched and needed orange juice. This was my first and only real chance to exchange words with the more or less waking Sunny.

—Well, I offered, catching her eye, you wouldn't have thought this possible a week ago.

—No, she said, her monotone hardly muted by the hopeful circumstances.

She said, I watched a little documentary about it once. The kangaroos.

I have to say I flinched at the idea. The torture implements and implements of containment stored in the cupboard, out in the shed, and under the marriage bed, while Sunny and the children watched some cheery little segment on Terra Australis and its amazing antediluvian animals.