Faceless, page 4
‘Look, I’m just tired, that’s all. I didn’t sleep so well last night, and I probably overdid it at the gym.’ Only half of that was a lie. ‘I probably shouldn’t have gone in the first place, to be honest, but it helps me deal with the stress.’ After all these years he knew the right words to say to appease her, or at least fend off the haranguing.
‘I’ll ring Dr Morton’s for you, see if I can get a time today.’
He shook his head, making the facecloth drift down over his eyes. He pushed it up with the back of his hand and closed his eyes to avoid her gaze, those chameleon-like blue eyes that could change from charm to cold in a millisecond.
‘No, I think you should go, you need to look after yourself.’
There she went, having to fix everything, like he wasn’t capable of taking care of himself. Firing those unconscious little barbs, all pointing to the unspoken assertion that he was useless, that everything came back to her, that she would shoulder the burden. It was always delivered with that little sigh.
‘No, there’s no need to do that. It would be a waste of money. I’ll just see how I go. If I’m still feeling crook tomorrow, then I’ll get an appointment.’
She stood up from the bed. ‘Well, I’ll ring anyway and book for tomorrow. We can always cancel if you don’t need it.’
It was an eternity before she finally left the room.
Max
Max wandered his way down K Road, trying to formulate his thoughts into some kind of order. What would cause her to not come home, or at least not let him know where she was? There was no shortage of ways a young woman on the streets could come to strife. He was pretty sure that for Billy, drugs wasn’t one of them. From what he had seen of her she wasn’t someone suffering the scourge of addiction. She didn’t bear the hallmarks of crystal meth. Although she was thin she had an air of healthiness about her, and he knew from the times he had seen her smile that her teeth were strong. Dental hygiene had been one of the things she was fanatical about – she’d even kept him supplied in toothbrushes and toothpaste, and she checked that he used them. ‘Have you brushed your teeth today, old man?’ she’d say, with that sparkle of cheek in her eyes.
‘You’re not my mother, stop nagging.’
‘It’s not nagging, it’s reminding.’ She’d do that mock eye-rolling thing. ‘Why did I waste good money buying you the stuff if you don’t use it?’
‘Told you I would have preferred fags.’ He’d wave the brush. ‘This thing is too hard to smoke.’
He ran his tongue over his teeth and felt a twinge of guilt at their furriness, reached into his pocket and extracted the splay-bristled toothbrush and popped it into his mouth. He had her to thank for the fact his teeth were still there – the only part of his body that could be described as minty fresh.
Her vices were few. They’d shared a smoke and the odd joint, but as far as he was aware that was the extent of it. He’d never seen her completely out of it; if anything, she was a bit of a control freak. He couldn’t imagine she’d allow herself to get wasted to the point of insensibility. It was one of the many things he admired about her, that she had the strength of character to avoid that pitfall of life on the streets. But there was one element of street life she did participate in that he hated. He’d made his displeasure clear, but considering he’d benefited from the proceeds, he was in no position to lecture her on the pros and cons of street prostitution. She was old enough to make her own decisions on that front; she was not some poor, hapless twelve- or fourteen-year-old, the likes of which he’d seen too many of on the streets of Auckland. He knew she didn’t do it regularly, and he knew she didn’t have a pimp; he’d had to tag along as a watchdog for her a few times when some of the local boys had tried to pressurise her into their fold. She did it to eat; her dietary standards were a bit higher than his, and she even slipped food his way at times. It also kept her in spray paint. He smiled at the memory of her chastising him when he once made the careless mistake of calling her a tagger.
‘I am not a tagger.’ It was amazing how she could puff up her little frame, like some cat, when she was riled. ‘Taggers are mindless vandals who piss all over their own neighbourhoods. They’re worse than feral dogs. Don’t ever call me a tagger. I’m an artist. I make things beautiful; I don’t destroy things like those arseholes.’ The lecture had been delivered emphatically and he hadn’t made that mistake again. She was right, of course. He’d seen her work and had to admit it was beautiful in its wild and colourful way. What she created was mythical, captivating, something that enlivened the blandness of the city, her spirit exploding into vivid relief on the grey walls of Auckland. Prostitution was one of the sacrifices she made for her art. What higher ideal was there than that? But that side of her life also posed the biggest risk, as far as he was concerned. Sure, there was the chance she’d been the victim of a random act of violence or something, but it was more likely a trick gone bad. There was a heaviness resting in his heart – the thought of her having come to harm was causing a tinge of something like panic. It was an alien sensation, and one that was driving him to action. He walked further down K Road, across the motorway bridge, his eyes instantly seeking out the spindle shape of the Sky Tower, lips curling into a smile at its reassuring presence on the skyline. It was too early for the regular streetworkers to be out; at this time of day men looking for a no-strings-attached thrill went to the establishments, and there was no shortage of brothels now that it was legal. No, in his work he’d seen plenty of pros who had suffered at the hands of their trick or their pimp – black eyes, broken teeth, bites and, for some unfortunates, they’d paid the ultimate price for their source of income. He’d have to wait for the cover of night before he could ask if any of the girls had seen her.
His mind flirted briefly with the idea of her family snatching her away in some form of intervention, but he dismissed that quickly. In the time he’d known her none of them had shown so much as a flicker of interest in their daughter, and she didn’t like to talk about them either, passing on the basics but little more. He knew something serious must have gone down there, but it was an unwritten code of street life not to ask too many questions, especially about family. The thought triggered a hint of his earlier darkness, so he shied away from that line of thinking before it drew him in completely. Instead, he made a one-eighty and turned his feet in the direction of the central city. The change of direction brought him face to face with a very startled, smartly dressed man who quickly stepped into the gutter between two parked cars. Max didn’t pause to wonder what kind of a front he must present to make a grown man prefer to risk the traffic than face him. He upped his pace. There were some people who might be able to help, who might know where she was. A kind of collective of like-minded souls she had mentioned on occasion. He just hoped he could find them. He quickened his footsteps before the impetus left him.
Billy
She hums to herself, trying to break the otherworldly silence of this place, as if the sound will repel the darkness as a fire repels the creatures of the night; but she soon realises her parched throat can’t sustain sound, and it dries up, fades into the concrete walls, and she has to do something, anything to distract herself from this place, from him, so she starts rocking backward and forward, ignoring the twinge in her wrists as the rhythm of the motion, the pull, relax and pull, tugs her bonds against raw skin, and she finds the pain oddly comforting; it reminds her that she is alive; for now, she is alive.
Max
The picture demanded reverence, and Max stood in front of it in a state of humbled awe. He had to call it art, there was no other word to describe it, even though it was essentially vandalism, which he usually hated with a vengeance. But this image was different, it was a thing of pure beauty. His eyes took in the astonishing detail, the way it reflected classic art. It reminded him of Renaissance paintings he had seen in books and galleries long ago, when he had cared about such things. Its shape and form definitely gave a nod to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Compared to the other hip-hop-styled crap some liked to call graffiti art, its mastery stood out. He loathed those big 3D words spray painted on the sides of buildings, fences, trains, under bridges; even if you tilted your head sideways they were so elaborate and stylised you couldn’t figure out what the hell the words were, what message the writers were trying to inflict on an unappreciative public. And it did his head in when do-gooder city councillors actually commissioned murals of this style of rubbish, mainstreaming it, making it acceptable. The masterpiece in front of him was wasted, hidden here under the bridge. Why hadn’t she painted it somewhere prominent, like all the other crap taggers did? He took in the shapes and the form, the mythical quality of it, as the goddess rose out of a caldera of fire – although there was nothing bird-like about this phoenix. Her arms were crossed over her breasts, fists clenched in a sign of strength. The long, curled hair streamed out in a halo of gold and brown, surrounded by the licking flames; and the face, the beautiful chocolate-toned face with the defiant eyes, was Billy, it could only have been Billy. He walked up to the wall and traced his finger over the signature – Girlie, her street name, the type of nondescript name chosen by someone who wanted to stay under the radar. He needed to find those others. The collective she belonged to was called the BMX, short for Bullshit Mix, because she’d said they were from a multitude of cultures. Although he had no specific idea where they hung out, she had pointed out their work when they had been walking together, so he knew where it tended to occur. There were one or two places around the central city that were deemed legal or legitimate places to graffiti; although for the truly die-hard artists, putting up a piece somewhere illicit was part of the thrill. There was always the rail – for some reason rail wagons drew them like moths to the flame. They were as good a place as any to start.
Bradley
Thank God, silence had fallen upon the house. Ange had taken the girls to the park for half an hour and their absence finally allowed him to relax, as far as was possible given his predicament. He scanned the Herald and Stuff apps on his iPhone, needing to hold the device at arm’s length occasionally to re-establish the network connection. If he had the money he’d buy a better wireless router, or at least a wi-fi extender, but that wasn’t a priority; he’d never be able to justify it to Ange when as far as she was concerned they had a perfectly reasonable one now. The only way he might manage to sell the idea to her would be if he angled it towards making it easier for her to stream her Netflix shows anywhere in the house, not just the lounge. After a bit of arm waving he found the right spot and enough signal, and watched with satisfaction as the page downloaded. He relaxed a bit when he saw there was no mention of any missing girl in Auckland; no one had reported her gone. Maybe they never would. He knew there was that seedy side to the city, like in any big city in the world – an underground of illegals or homeless or runaways. Maybe she was a runaway, and her family had all but given up looking. That still didn’t solve the question of what the hell he was going to do with her.
He couldn’t concentrate on scrolling the internet, so turned his phone off and threw it on the duvet. His head turned to his bedside table, to the stack of books and magazines there. He laughed out loud when he remembered the novel he was trying to read. How appropriate: a crime fiction thriller, Captured, about someone whose life spirals out of control in a real bad way. Shit, now he had started laughing, he couldn’t stop, it was like the dam that was holding back his pent-up fear, guilt, shame and anger had burst and the giggles slipped the border between laughs and sobs. His life had turned into a fucking novel.
Max
After a few hours of wandering the back streets and parks of central Auckland, and with the bonus score of someone’s half-eaten packet of hot chips, he finally came across a group of youths hanging out in the cemetery under the imposing arches of the Grafton bridge. They had the look: they were all young men, wore caps or hoodies, most carried backpacks, and there was a mix of ethnicity that suggested a common purpose had brought them together in the first place. Why else would you get Asians, Pasifika, someone who looked like an Arab and white boys comfortable in a group together, rather than facing off? They also had that shiftiness of the habitually persecuted. Their banter was the bluff and bravado of youth, punctuated by expletives, exaggerated accents and Americanised street slang, although the noise levels dropped markedly as he approached. He caught the tail end of a few rapid ‘what the fuck’ and ‘check out the loser’ comments that drifted on the air. Max came to a stop about three metres in front of them, and when he saw how big the Polynesian boys were it occurred to him that perhaps he should be nervous.
‘What do you want, old man?’ The speaker would have been mid-twenties, a ginger, and considering the youth of a few of them was most likely the oldest and the leader. The sight of his red hair threw the image of another redhead into his mind, and the thought made him reel slightly. The leader reached down and grabbed a backpack that had been on the ground in front of him and slung it over his back, as if he expected Max to make a dive for it. The others moved in tight around him, a classic aggressive defensive move. Strength in numbers – as if he was any kind of threat. He could understand the posturing if he’d been some young skinhead, or carried the insignia of a gang, but it was a bit excessive for some sad geezer alone. He cast his gaze around him at the scattered, time-ravaged graves dotted across the tree-studded slopes and the significance of how isolated he was dawned. The cemetery may have been an oasis of calm and green in the city, but it was noisy, the inhabitants certainly did not rest in peace and quiet. The thrum of traffic on the nearby motorways a constant backdrop to the closer roar of buses and cars along Grafton Road and Symonds Street. He could yell for help here and no one would hear him. For the first time in a long while he felt the dance of butterflies in his stomach. He tried to think back to how he had handled groups like this in the past: direct, be direct but civil, he told himself.
‘Do you know Girlie?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Do you know Girlie?’ He made a movement with his arm as if he was holding a can and spraying something and made a pshhhh noise.
They all fell silent.
‘Billy,’ Max said, ‘her real name is Billy.’
‘Why do you want to know?’ He heard the note of suspicion, but, as well as an escalation of the storm in his stomach, the sound triggered a wash of relief. He’d found them.
‘Do you know where she is?’
Again, the silence. They started to stand taller, their shoulders-back, chest-out posture making them even bigger, readying for action. From the look of distaste and distrust on their faces they probably thought he was some paedophile or pervert who preyed on young women. After seeing the train wreck of an image of himself in the shop window this morning, he didn’t blame them.
‘She’s missing,’ he said. ‘She didn’t come home to her usual spot last night. She always tells me if she’s going to be away, because she knows I worry, but she didn’t come home last night. Do you know where she is?’
One of the Polynesian guys tapped the leader on the shoulder and whispered in his ear. Max watched as they nodded and whispered back and forth to each other, knowing full well everything hinged on this interchange. Then the Ginger faced Max and gave him that ‘yeah bro’ head flick. ‘Eh, what’s your name?’
Max hated the ‘eh’ and he hated the gesture. What did it matter to them? But he didn’t want to annoy them more than they already were. He wasn’t in a position to be picky about manners.
‘Max.’ The sound was reed thin, like its owner.
‘Well, fuck me,’ he heard another one say above the outbreak of murmuring, but they all appeared to relax.
‘Shit, you’re Max.’ The Ginger looked astonished. ‘Fuck, from the way she described you I thought you were a bodyguard or something, not…’ He let the words trail off; further explanation was unnecessary. Max saved them all the embarrassment by getting to the point.
‘Do you know where she is?’ The head-shaking, shrugged shoulders and confused looks on their faces were answer enough.
‘You reckon she’s missing?’ the leader asked. ‘Are you sure she hasn’t just crashed on someone’s sofa or something?’
‘She always told me if she wasn’t going to be there for the night. We kept each other’s back, you know? She didn’t show up last night, and she didn’t say anything about staying elsewhere.’
‘Maybe she got a boyfriend, got shacked up with him.’ A few of the younger ones sniggered. ‘She’d be a sweet little catch,’ another said. ‘I’d fuck her.’ ‘Me too.’ ‘Me first.’ ‘We could share, eh bro, take turns.’
Max felt a twist of something hot rising in his chest, something ragged driven from somewhere deep, a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long time. It exploded out with words, words delivered with rage-fuelled passion:
‘She always talked about you lot like you were her brothers, her family. She told me that you all looked out for each other, that you cared. And I have to stand here and listen to this bullshit, listen to your crap pimply-arsed fantasies. Seems she was wrong.’ He looked from face to face, eyeballing each and every one of them, the contempt he felt in his heart steeling in his gaze. ‘You guys aren’t worth it. You don’t give a shit. Great lot of friends you turned out to be.’ Two of the youths took umbrage at his words and stepped forward, chests out, attitude compressed into lanky bodies.
‘Stand down,’ the leader said in a tone that gave no room for debate. ‘Stand down, he’s right.’ He turned to the bravado club. ‘Shut it.’ When he turned his attention back, Max noted the concerned look. ‘You’re seriously worried about her?’
