Black Teeth (6 page)

So coming here on the bus I made a deal with himself: if Madison said ‘obviously' eleven times or more, I'd call that number today. If not, the post-it could sit in my pocket another twenty-four hours, let tomorrow wring its hands about it.

It's a word she's fond of, repeats it like there's a glitch in her voice chip. Eleven times was possible, while being in the outer realm of possibility.

But then Stuart walked in and presumed to run the meeting, because he's a partner or because he's a man or both, and I knew in the first five seconds that I wasn't going to get my quota.

Therefore: I have altered the terms of the deal.

‘Let me put this another way,' Stuart says, adjusting the tension of his braces. ‘It's come to my attention that you don't use your real name in these interviews. I'm sure you have your reasons. But I'm also sure you can understand that, from our point of view, it seems odd. I'm wondering if it doesn't scare off our best candidates. Can you explain that practice to me?'

Madison bends forward as far as her tummy will allow and stares down another biscuit. She does not pick one up.

‘You come to embrace certain work practices,' I say, breathe in hard. ‘…when a crazy person attacks you in your home.'

Stuart licks his lips. He always seems to be preparing to speak, but now he stays quiet. They watch me blink down at the boardroom table to properly dredge up the memory.

‘You may have seen it. It was on the news. Do you know the name Paul Heaney?'

Stuart, not a man to let on when he doesn't know something, doesn't respond.

What else I knew in the first five seconds of this meeting was that Madison de Silva is pregnant, evidenced by the baby bump as much as by the macaroons she's had three of. This is someone I've only ever known to nibble at a rice cake, to wear a thick layer of make-up and do aerobics in the park at lunch. My theory is that Madison is not one of those thin people who do not
get
food, for
whom eating is as uninspiring an act of replenishment as a visit to the petrol station. My theory is that Madison has fought hunger every day of her life: circled her trouble spots in the mirror; sniffed at a hamburger while she devoured a stick of celery; flirted with eating disorders and maybe even taken one home. But now that she's With Child, something has triggered: she's lurched for cover behind the big-tummy branding of Mother-To-Be.

My decision, therefore, is this: if Madison eats four macaroons or more, I'll make the call. Today. Like, before I go home. As it stands, one more macaroon and it's
ring-a-ding-ding
.

For now, Madison shakes her head, waits for me to explain, doesn't so much as bat her eyes at the biscuits.

‘Paul Heaney was a candidate at SoSecure. This is a while ago, before they went public. I used my real name back then and I interviewed him and he told me he was a blank slate. He said there was nothing I would find on him.'

Madison just listens. So does Stuart.

‘I wound up with a photo of him at the Jabiluka protests. Remember those? Students in the Northern Territory? Big placards, bongos. The photo was a police officer dragging Heaney out of a picket line. He had long hair and a different wardrobe to the one I'd seen, but it was him. So I passed that on to SoSecure and they cut him from the harvest. For obvious reasons. They didn't want an employee who'd once picketed their clients.'

Still nothing. She's had enough. What kind of glutton did I take her for? The alternating current of relief and disappointment surges through me.

‘Then one night, I'm at home and there's a knock at my door. And I think it's the pizza guy so I open up. And it's Heaney. And he's got a broken bottle in his hand. And he's drunk. And he demands an explanation from me, for why I doctored that photo. He said he'd never been to Jabiluka, it never happened. So I must have shopped him into the pic. I tried to shut the door, he swiped at me. Cut me pretty deep along here. They call this a defensive wound.'

It's an effort, but I pull up my shirt sleeve to display the four-inch scar below my elbow.

‘Oooooh,' Stuart says. Madison sighs in sympathy.

‘I got the door closed but he cut up the security screen. Cops showed up and that was it.'

Stuart says, ‘Christ.'

‘You know the
scariest
thing…' I lower my voice, talk directly to Stuart now. ‘I spoke to half-a-dozen people who were up there with him. I saw video footage of Heaney at the site. I saw the bus ticket with his name on it. But he was convinced. I mean, I looked him in the eye. He was
convinced
he'd been the victim of a fraud. He'd made himself believe, without a doubt, that this thing which had happened had never happened. That was the scariest bit.'

Stuart nods, his glower weakening.

‘Well…' he says. ‘Getting stabbed by a disgruntled job seeker might have been a bit scary too.'

‘People can freak out when you dig into their past. So I take precautions.'

And he smiles, looks at his watch with an air of conclusion. I've brought him round.

It's a lie, that story. The scar on my arm came from a tower PC that fell on me at Mum's place. There is no Paul Heaney. He never went to Jabiluka.

I'm just more comfortable being someone else. I don't get panic attacks when I'm being someone else.

It's the same with Madison de Silva, finally bingeing on the biscuits she's been bringing to meetings for years. She had to become someone else before she could be herself.

She swipes another macaroon from the plate, a pink one. I try not to let her see me notice, but she does. She disarms me with a coo:

‘Don't look at me like that, Andrew. I'm eating for two here. Obviously.'

8

It rings for an age before someone answers. Like, for a minute. No message bank or answering machine. The ringtone is the weird kind of analogue one that landlines have. I hug my coat tighter, am about to hang up when I hear a cough and a man's voice:

‘Hello?'

An old man. But not a very old man.

‘Hello, is that Mister Glen Tyan?'

‘Who is this?'

I'm in a paved alcove skewered between Albert Kane and Roach and a sheer brick wall, the pedestrians of La Trobe Street just far enough away for me to believe I've found privacy. But through an invisible glass door emerges now a hunched and grim-faced woman and before she does anything I realise this grey nook is the official smoking yard for her and her fellow office dwellers. A black enamel ashtray clings to the wall, overflowing with butts and black ash and a sign beneath it says
Smokers Please
, like it's asking for more smokers. The ground below is strewn with orange stubs. She lights up and I turn my back to her and the traffic and the wind and jam a finger in my ear.

‘My name is Alan Harper, I'm a journalist with the
Daily Sun
. Your name was suggested to me by the Police Association as someone who may be interested in discussing a piece I'm working on about the lives of retired police officers.'

‘How did you get this number?'

Glen Tyan draws on a cigarette, inhales deep, but the smoke I can
smell comes from behind. To keep this conversation private I huddle into the glass wall, an icepack against my forehead.

‘Um, the Police Association—'

‘The Police Association does not have my home phone number.'

I glance around, thrown. The woman stands silent, as if waiting to hear what I'm going to say to that.

‘Mister Tyan, all I can tell you is that Marjorie Schwitzer at the Police Association gave me the names of three former officers who may be appropriate for the feature I'm writing, one of them was you, and she included the telephone numbers.'

‘Who were the other names?'

I flounder.

‘Paul Heaney and Madison de Silva.'

‘Never heard of them.'

‘Well I believe they were based in Geelong.'

Tyan sucks back so hard I hear tobacco burning through the phone. His inhale is a rattlesnake.

‘What's this really about?'

‘Umm…'

‘I haven't heard from the press in nine years. You come out of the blue—'

‘The piece will be about how you've adjusted to retirement, what parts of the job still haunt you, what you took away from your experience. It's an attempt to show the human side of the police force, not to embarrass you or…anything.'

‘Why didn't they contact me themselves and ask if they could give out my number?'

‘I'm not sure, Mister Tyan. But I have a long-standing relationship with the VPA and with Marjorie, and they know that any information passed on to me is kept private and secure.'

At the squeak of the glass door behind me I raise the collar of my jacket, like that will somehow keep this conversation private and secure.

‘So you're a journalist.'

‘That's right.'

‘Is it something we can do over the phone?'

‘I was hoping we could meet. Perhaps I could buy you a drink.'

The smell of cigarettes becomes a stench. I glance back. Seven or eight people are crowded into this small grey space, breathing and wheezing in silence. I'm the strange-o facing the wall and talking to it. At first my head spins with humiliation and I'm about to make for the street, but Tyan's voice comes back suddenly brightened, as if some new personality has snatched the phone from Old Man Crotchety and it wants to make amends.

‘Okay,' he says. ‘Let's meet tonight.'

The rasp is gone. The voice is lighter, more friendly. I grind my brow into the glass to hear properly.

‘Tonight is perfect.'

‘Where?'

‘Wherever you want. Somewhere easy for you.'

‘Do you know the Good Times in Mitcham?'

‘I'll find it.'

‘It's on Cemetery Road. Opposite the Caltex.'

‘I'll find it. No problem.'

‘Yeah. Seven o'clock at Good Times.'

‘Great. Let me give you my number, just in case.'

I say it slowly and Tyan at least pretends to write it down, co-operative, even eager. I attribute this to the thrill of being courted by the media.

‘What's your name again?'

‘Alan Harper.'

‘Okay. Bye, Alan.'

‘See you.'

Tyan hangs up. I listen to the silence. It must seem like I'm still on the phone. But I'm sniffing at the smoke, warmed by it. The smell of the future.

9

The Good Times on Cemetery Road is so what I expected that I'm literally giggling as I make entrance. A bright green banner in what else but Comic Sans promotes bingo nights and chicken parmigianas, neither of which can be enjoyed anywhere but in this cupboard-cum-bistro overlooking the vista of the staff toilets. The rest is a windowless hellscape of pokies and ebola, norp-tier as fuck, whirls and bleeps sounding out whenever the betacuck autotune pop goes briefly, mercifully silent. A handful of worn gamblers dole out their life-savings one coin at a time, dead-eyed but for a fading belief in
this
turn, in
this
push of the button, while the dining area is desolate: not so much as a staff member slitting their wrists on the lino behind the bar. Then a swarm of pimples finds it within himself to materialise in front of me and he relays that tonight's special is pizza. I order a beer and carry it to a chair and wipe off some yellow paste which itself might be pizza and I sit at a table littered with plastic advertisements for beers, jackpots and tomorrow night's special, which is pizza.

Glen Tyan would have known reporters when he was a police officer, ones that worked a beat, sniffed out stories in back alleys and hotel rooms and the toilets of strip clubs—he'll never believe that I'm one of those. But I can play a touchy-feely dorkoid with a degree in creative non-fiction who talks about the fourth estate and enjoys wine and cheese in the park. I've chosen a pale ale for this reason and it's why my checked shirt is tucked into my jeans and the cuffs are buttoned twice each. It's easier to be someone else when you put on their clothes.

I camp the front door, ignorant of the second door to the carpark at the rear. That's where Tyan comes from, half an hour late and I'm too busy trying to figure out if I'm happy or sad that I've been stood up, don't see him until he's right on me, crotch in my face, and even then he has to speak before I jerk back, ambushed.

‘You Alan?'

He's got hair too blond for his age, a polo shirt too tight for his big belly. His eyes are wet and too friendly for the scowl that cuts across his forehead. I never found a DOB when I researched Glen Tyan; the only clue was that he retired nine years ago. From that I expected someone older, even elderly, but this man still has swell in his shoulders, his forearms. One of them comes at me now, catches my hand and shakes it. I refuse to wince—surely he's trying to demonstrate how formidable he still is.

I'm like, ‘Yeah.'

The scowl disappears and leaves those wet, friendly eyes.

‘I'm a bit late, sorry. Lost track of time.'

‘No problem. No problem.'

Whatever he was doing to lose track of time, fapping or sleeping or practising that handshake, he was smoking while he did it. Freshly burnt tobacco roars in my nostrils.

‘You right for a drink?'

I nod at the beer I'm halfway through, don't say I'm halfway through my third beer, watch Tyan's slow jaunt to the bar, see the broadness of his shoulders, the pregnant glory of his stomach, and I recognise a man at his home ground. He doesn't seem to know the staff, but he knows soulless vinyl drinking barns like this one, knows they were built for white men with pot bellies and polo shirts. This is their Green Zone, and no amount of immigration or feminism or gay pride out there in the world has yet breached its ramparts.

When he returns with his beer I smile, welcoming.
I'm a white man
, I think.
This should be my home ground too.
But it is not.