The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (27 page)

‘Remember Marlon Brando in
The Missouri Breaks?
I have my own cinema,' he waves a hand back over his shoulder. ‘Over there. In other circumstances I'd invite you to a private showing. Wonderful ending to that movie. Brando creeps up on Jack Nicholson. Or it's the other way around? A hand-held camera, pushing its way through the bushes. And then the sound of a knife across flesh and a final sentence, the last line of the film.'

He makes a slashing movement across his own throat.

‘“You've just woken up because I've slit your throat.” That's what Marlon said to Jack, or Jack to Marlon. I waited a long time to use that line. And I did, not so very long ago. I'm not proud of it, but it was a necessary part of the job. I need to keep up appearance, retain respect. But I have to admit it was exquisite. She barely uttered a whisper, just a sigh as the breath left her throat, not through the usual opening, you understand.'

‘Caitlin,' I shout, almost involuntarily. ‘You don't …'

‘Don't be alarmed,' he interrupts, his hand held high. ‘Your sister is fine and well. We will come to that matter presently. I am sorry to have alarmed you. I was referring to another matter altogether. Please accept my apology.'

My heart races. The adrenaline flows.

‘My job is done,' I say, anger, frustration, all manner of emotions in my voice. ‘Look, here are your precious seeds. I have whored myself for you people, been your messenger boy.' I hold the bag shoulder high. ‘Here they are, here they are …' my voice trails off. I am exhausted. It is so hot.

‘I appreciate that. You have done well. Your efforts are the seeds of our success, so to speak. In no time at all those New York junkies will be clamouring for our South American heroin. What is the lovely English expression about skinning cats, destabilising world powers?'

‘I am not English,' is all I can manage.

He looks down at me.

‘Of course not. Not quite. Melbourne, Australia. Irish heritage.'

I wipe the sweat from my eyes.

‘Something cool to drink, Dr Malloy?'

Again he glances over my head. The door opens and closes behind me. Another messenger on an errand.

A man in a sharp linen suit with slick black hair, sentry turned waiter, places a small table in front of me. A second man lays out fruit and a jug of water. The first returns with a chair. They wait for me to sit. I do. They retreat to their posts by the wall.

‘Drink, eat,' implores my host. ‘It can't all be work, don't you think? No, no, it can't. I have many projects, to occupy me, to amuse me. I, like you, am a man of multiple interests. My animals, my zoo. I find myself more attuned to animals than people. My dealings with people are so one-dimensional. War. With people I am at war. The soldiers go into the barrios, kill the young men, the boys, and say it is because of me. Because they work for me. Bullshit. It is because of the Americans. That's what it is because of. The Americans want war with me.'

He looks around, as if the invisible enemy (the CIA, the FBI, the Marines) is about to appear.

‘But animals are different. They don't know who I am. I feed them, they know me, but they have no opinion of me as a man.'

He is quiet, as if trying to conjure an image. This man who holds the knife to slit a woman's throat and then, with the same hand, feeds his ducks.

I want no more of this. I want to give him the seeds, to know Caitlin is free, to turn away from this nightmare. This mound of a man in front of me. I am tired of his monologues, his pop psychology, his film reviews.

‘Mr Ascavar,' I offer, ‘I have fulfilled my end of the bargain. I've done what has been asked of me …'

‘Not all that I myself have asked of you. So far, I think you will agree, I have asked nothing of you at all.'

He pauses, stares at me and then continues.

‘You are too good a conduit, too delicious a courier. I need, I insist, that you continue. According to Dr Foster and other colleagues you have at least four more Asian trips planned this year. It's too good an opportunity to turn down. There's a bumper harvest and we must take advantage of it. Scale-up production all around and everyone benefits. This is so much more than a simple drug run. It is yin. It is yang.'

The big man stares down at me. I am feeling more anxious and worried. The implications of his last comment disturb me.

‘What more is there?' I plead, as once again I lift the case to emphasise my point.

Ascavar turns a black-stoned ring on his finger and watches me. I look past him out to the terrace and the white light of the rising afternoon. From the zoo in the valley beyond a parrot screeches.

‘I'll answer the questions for you, fill in some details. I do hope you will agree to cooperate with me in our joint venture.'

Ascavar offers me an ingratiating smile that makes the hair on my neck stand on end.

‘But let me add some weight to your conscience. You have no option. You lack choice. As we are both aware, you are linked to your sister's somewhat unfortunate circumstances.'

‘Excuse me,' I say, sounding like a polite tourist looking for directions, ‘but … how does all this link up. Caitlin, you, her fate, my fate …'

‘All you need know is I am – how shall I put it – a major shareholder in Taneffe. All above board, registered through a holding company. Legal. Their assets and my assets are intertwined. Hey,' he adds, as if it just occurs to him, ‘it is me who is funding your invention. We give and we take. One hand does this,' he weighs the air, ‘the other does that.'

I feel shaky. He notices.

‘You are not going to faint, are you?'

I shake my head. My mind is all a quandary, a confusion of moral and meaning. Goals merging, fading in and out of focus. Sister, daughter, drugs, world health. What am I responsible for? Who do I put before others, put before myself? A sister? A daughter? How much needs to be my responsibility? And this devil man, with the heavy rings on his fingers, is an emissary, a dark messenger, in this unfathomable scheme of things.

‘Tell me some more,' I say, a calmness in my voice, as if I've surrendered, given up trying to work it all out.

He sits back and smiles.

‘My assistant, who you will meet in a short while, will fill you in on the details. I need not explain what is at stake here. Regarding your sister, you understand. Unless you wish me to go further?'

‘I understand you well,' I answer.

‘What I say is what I mean. What I want of you is simple. You remain in my employ. For this year at least, while you are on your travels with Taneffe.'

I force myself back into this space. Into this now. This particular moment in time.

‘As you can see, most things I have,' he boasts, waving his hand in the air as if even the elements are part of his domain.

I sense another monologue brewing. Here is a man who not only loves to command attention, but, as the Russians say, never uses one word when a thousand will do.

‘My football team is the champion of South America. The cellar in my country club is full of the rarest wines. If you had turned up at my door a year ago I would have asked you, I would have requested, an 1897 claret from a well-guarded cellar in a chateau not far from Orange. The year before that, I needed a certain central defender from an Argentinian soccer club. I have obsessions. Just now my obsession is with opium. A new interest in horticulture you might say. It is quite simple, I want, you get. You want your sister to live. I can make that happen. Or not. A simultaneous equation with a simple solution. Let's say x is your consultancy services, y is your sister and the resolution is that we all become happy.'

Aware of the cliché on the tip of my tongue, I feel impelled to state the obvious.

‘Why me?'

A smile spreads across the plump face. Wads of fat bulge and crease around his eyes and mouth. Here is a question he has dealt with before. The footballer? The vintage wine? Here is a cue for erudition. An opportunity to hold court, to pass a few more moments of exquisite self-indulgence. Here is a man whose only means of communication is through the medium of a captive audience. Human or animal. He leans forward, his plump fingers gripping the arm rests, a final confidence.

‘Let's just say I like the idea of a doctor, an educated man of letters, running my errands. I get whatever I want. If I want a million dollars, or a crate of Semtex, or the eyelash of a sperm whale, I order it, I get it. I am like the buyer at Harrods and you, the chosen, the hand-picked, are all my sales assistants.'

‘With respect …' I hear myself say. What respect? My mind is confused.

‘Respect?' he spits out the word, sandwiched between a laugh and a sneer. ‘I'll tell you what respect means. Simple. I get my respect through fear. That, my academic friend, my professor, is my doctorate on respect. Do I pass? Am I a fellow of Oxford, of Cambridge, of Yale and Harvard? Can I wear the frock gown of ermine and silk, drink sherry on your lawns?'

He runs his chubby fingers across the chubbier folds of his face.

I am so weary of all this. The hot afternoon, the wood of the table, the sound of his voice. I look up. I meet his eyes. Ascavar falls silent for a moment. He looks to his guards and makes a slight beckoning movement.

‘Leave that here,' he says to me, pointing to the case. ‘My secretary will tell you what is expected of you.'

‘Please, my sister. Is she … okay?'

‘I can assure you,' he says, ‘she is safe and well.'

‘I want to see her.'

‘Of course you do. All in good time. Trust me,' he says, glancing over my shoulder,

I must trust that our nightmare will end. Trust that we will not become surplus to requirements and be disposed of. Trust is all I have left.

One of the guards approaches to escort me out of the room. I look back and there is Ascavar, now standing, surveying his kingdom beyond the terrace. Very dramatic. Very Godfatherly. I think Ascavar may have watched one too many Mafia movies.

Caitlin is delirious. She barely knows if she's awake or asleep. Dreaming or thinking. Remembering or imagining. She has a raging temperature and her throat is agonisingly sore. Images sweep back and forth across her mind like scenes from an underwater world. In the cracks in the wall she imagines a young girl and a boy running towards the crescent moon. Each holds a bunch of flowers. Lilies, freesias. Both laugh, racing each other along the higgledy-piggledy maze leading to the night sky. ‘Quick,' shouts Caitlin to the dark room, ‘run fast.' There, sitting on the crest of the moon, is their mother. She wears a crisp white summer dress. Her hair flows in the breeze and her smile is as wide as the Milky Way. Caitlin reaches out with the tip of her finger, caressing the soft plaster. ‘Mother,' she says, ‘some flowers for you.' She sucks her thumb, pulls the coarse blanket tightly around herself. The image fades.

‘I tell you, I tell you, I tell you,' she repeats to herself, ‘No man with Eyebrows. No man without Eyebrows. No click of a boiler. Tell them true, Anthony, hold me tight, for dear life. Tell them true.' Then Caitlin turns to the wall and drifts into exhaustion, another day finished with.

I am taken along the corridor and left in a small windowless room. As one door closes, another opens. It is the woman in the black dress from the alligator bar. But now she is in a midnight-blue trouser suit. Her hair is in a bun; she wears glasses. There is nothing in her demeanour to acknowledge our having met previously. She speaks like a sales rep from a travel agency.

‘I trust you had a good trip from Chicago,' she says, sitting down at the desk separating us.

She pulls a folder from a briefcase that looks as if it has been fashioned from something rare: an armadillo or other ancient creature. She places the folder on the small mahogany desk between us.

‘First, to erase any doubts in your mind, Mr Ascavar has instructed me to show you this short video.'

With a press of the remote control a monitor in the corner of the room whirs to life. And there is Caitlin, standing chained and manacled. She looks distracted and distant. Slowly she raises her arms to show a newspaper. On the front page is a picture of myself in Chicago, shaking hands with a Democrat from the senate. It all seems a million years away. I gulp and cry dry tears. Caitlin, my darling. Her skin is like paste, like dust. She looks harrowed. Deep dark circles ring her eyes. Her hair is lank and dull. Her expression portrays death, tiredness of spirit. I want to hold her. Comfort her. Tell her that it will be alright, that I am here. In her eyes I see she knows I am fighting for her. She is still hoping. I can see, deep down, she still has a glimmer of light in her expression.

The camera zooms in. Her face moves in and out of focus. Her pallid features are pitted and rough. The only colour is in the small red patches of dry skin, raw and scratched. Abruptly the screen goes blank. The look in her eyes is scorched on my mind. I stare at the blank screen. I feel the soreness of her skin.

‘She needs cream for the eczema,' I command. An anger and assertiveness in my voice. ‘Will you promise to get her cream?'

The woman looks at me from over her designer glasses.

‘It can be arranged.'

‘No, to hell with “it can be arranged”. Tell that fat friend of yours if you don't get Caitlin cream for her skin he can do his damned running around himself. He can count me out.'

I can feel the dry tears rolling up inside me, gathering force.

‘Just get her the cream,' I whisper, ‘just get her the cream.'

‘I will arrange for your sister to be given cream for her skin,' says the woman in a calm, unabashed voice. She pours a tumbler of water for me from a jug on the table. I reach out and sip the cold water from the glass. She is clearly used to dealing with hysterical, aggressive outbursts.

‘Your itinerary,' she says, looking up briefly to see if I am composed. When she is sure she has my attention, she places a closely typed sheet of paper in front of me. She continues as if the video was no more than an introductory sales pitch or a travelogue.