Woody said, Tell her you are sorry to have been a coward and a waste of space.
Felix Moore reported this, and made gnomic notations on all the abuse that followed. This was not his usual style.
Gaby Baillieux then entered the room and he was moved, again, by the small bare feet the chipped nail polish. He experienced a deep and complex familiarity with a woman he had met only once before. At her side was a wiry whippy man, perhaps thirty-five years of age with deep-set eyes and sunken cheeks. The barcode tattoo on his wrist identified him as Frederic Matovic, but could this man have ever been the girl-boy with the eye shadow? If so he had been distilled, reduced, burnished and he confronted Woody Townes like a hard man, with his right hand held down along the seams of his jeans. Felix Moore had never seen an actual “shiv,” but the whole of Frederic’s body suggested he held one in close against his thigh.
OK, famous Frederic said to Woody Townes. What you got?
The property developer’s eyes were small, pouchy, bloodshot, dangerous. They settled on Frederic and stayed on him throughout the following silence. When he reached into his jacket he produced two Australian passports and tossed these on the desk.
Using an aluminium jeweller’s loupe Frederic inspected one and then the other. He took his time.
Judith, he said, delivering the first passport to Gabrielle Baillieux.
If this was a joke, no-one smiled. Woody offered a fat brown envelope. Gabrielle Baillieux counted the contents and Frederic’s eyes did not leave Woody Townes.
OK, said Gaby.
Airline tickets, said Frederic.
Celine was already searching in her handbag in the manner of a woman who fears she has lost her keys. Shit, she said, I put them in the glove box in the car.
Woody groaned.
I thought they would be safer, the actress said.
OK, said Frederic, this is what we are going to do. Gaby and Celine will stay here. You will give me your keys, mate. I will go and get the tickets.
You’re joking I hope.
All right, you tell me how to do it.
Woody narrowed his eyes and Frederic held out his left hand, leaving the right down by his side.
Flashlight too, he said.
I haven’t got a flashlight.
Bullshit.
Woody paused and when his hand emerged from inside his jacket the writer was relieved to see only a flashlight.
Frederic departed with key and flashlight. The writer typed. Woody Townes instructed him to cease. He was unable to comply and was abused. Woody Townes then turned on Gabrielle Baillieux to whom he delivered a sarcastic lecture on the future of the earth: the planet had always been going to die; there was nothing she or anyone could do about it. In 5 billion years the sun would go cold and the story would be over. So save the fucking whales. Was she such a spoiled superior up-herself cunt to think this would not apply to her?
He was a dog on a leash barking. If Frederic tried to nick the Merc Woody would have him killed. It would be cheap, a thousand bucks. He promised that the manuscript would never be a book. It would be “properly gone through by the authorities” then Felix Moore would go to jail. He sat heavily on the bed which spewed Duracells onto the floor. He produced the revolver and rested it on his massive thigh. No-one spoke. Still Frederic did not return.
Woody got up and stood by the connecting door. He pointed the weapon at the women, each in turn. All typing ceased.
Celine, he said.
Celine’s mouth crumpled. No, Woody. Don’t.
Shut up. You go and find him. Bring him back. If he is not here straight away I will have to get serious. You understand what I’m saying?
Celine turned to her daughter wringing her hands. The girl held out her arms to her and kissed her eyes and ears. I’m OK, Mummy. Go.
As always, the omniscient narrator had a very wobbly grasp of what was happening. He certainly did not know, for instance, that the OBD-II port of a Mercedes S500 is under the lower right side of the dashboard, that it is possible for a malevolent device to send instructions directly to the CAN bus through this connection and thereby to own the car’s network which can, in turn, be controlled remotely via a smartphone. It did not occur to him, as the prosecutor would finally suggest, that Celine might have somehow left the tickets in the car by prior arrangement with “the other conspirators.”
Felix Moore was flattered to be accused, even briefly, of aiding and abetting a hack of the type described. Yet he could never have dreamed that such a feat was possible. All he wished was thirty minutes, a chance to finish the book on a grand note. But when Frederic finally returned, the author was ordered to collect all his manuscript and source material, most specifically the tapes, and carry them out to the Mercedes. By then the revolver had been returned once more to its holster. There was no explicit threat made or any apparent danger. The worst he expected was to be shoved into the boot.
Woody Townes had left his car not in the car park, but beside the road. He walked around the Merc inspecting the tyres with his flashlight. Whatever he was looking for he did not find. When he popped the boot it was only so the manuscript and tapes could be locked inside the dark.
He shone the white-quartz light in the writer’s raddled face.
You are a silly prick, Felix.
Yes, mate. I am.
Just a tip: I wouldn’t hang around here now if I were you.
You couldn’t give me a lift back, mate?
There was silence. The writer thought, I’ve surprised him.
If you could drop me somewhere I could get a cab.
Silently, Woody opened his door and sat behind the wheel. Felix presented himself at the passenger-side door. He waited optimistically. The engine started. He heard a click and reached for the door handle and narrowly avoided serious injury as the Mercedes accelerated.
Abandoned in the yellow sodium streetlights of Katoomba, Felix Moore made a forlorn figure. His shoulders were hunched and his shuffle clearly audible in the mountain air. There was no-one to observe this moment in his life, nor any indication that he was on the very brink of becoming a publishing phenomenon. In the short time since he had carried the tapes out into the night, a previously prepared digital edition of his account of the so-called life and crimes of Gabrielle Baillieux had been unleashed on the World Wide Web. In the few minutes it took him to reach the motel suite the PDF file titled “Amnesia” had been downloaded over five thousand times. Fast forward.
39
MY OLD MATE’S CONNECTIONS were such that I was almost immediately arrested by the Federal Police and, as a result, it was my fate to not see my wife and children for many months and then only through the glass wall of the visitation facility of Barwon Prison, a high-tech Supermax prison not so many miles from my home town of Bacchus Marsh. Here I was held on many charges including conspiring in the murder of Woody Townes whose car had last been seen intact as it passed the Pennant Hills Golf Club at 240 kilometres per hour. Two kilometres later it left the road, briefly airborne before it flipped and exploded in a ball of flame.