Gunshine State Page 23

  It was still dark when Walsh pulled into the driveway of a double-fronted house, one of a long row of identical dwellings.

  Walsh pressed the button on the remote control they’d found on Dormer. The garage door crept up slowly. He drove in, closed it behind them. No barrels, no boxes, just smooth concrete surfaces and a door.

  Chance placed one hand on the doorknob, the other on the grip of the pistol protruding over the belt of his pants, looked hard at Dormer.

  ‘Don’t worry, Rambo, there’s no one else home.’

  They moved through a sparsely furnished house into the main bedroom. Dormer nodded at a chest of drawers, sat on the bed, the pain from his broken wrist etched on his pallid features. He watched as Walsh moved the piece of furniture, pulled away a section of the carpet to reveal a trap door with a small latch. Blake looked over Walsh’s shoulder, face tight with expectation.

  Chance stood back, picked up a framed photograph from a nearby shelf. It was a group shot, young men in T-shirts and khaki pants, posing against a desert backdrop. A much younger Dormer was unmistakable, despite the wraparound sunglasses.

  Dormer noticed Change looking at the photograph.

  ‘Iraq. Simpler days.’

  ‘Not if you were in Iraqi,’ said Chance.

  Walsh pulled up the trap door, reached inside, withdraw a small black daypack, passed it to Blake, who opened it and tipped the contents on the bedspread: bundles of cash in Euros, Australian and U.S. dollars, several passports, a mobile phone, a small, compact automatic pistol in a holster, several clips of ammunition.

  ‘Looks like a go-bag to me.’ Blake fixed Dormer with one of her humourless smiles. ‘Not much use now, is it, Frank?’

  Dormer shrugged, said nothing.

  ‘Lot more where that came from,’ said Walsh as he lifted out a garbage bag, then another. He untied one of the bags, took out a bundle of hundred-dollar bills, fanned the air in front of his face with them.

  ‘I think my days on building sites are over.’

  Blake’s eye became wide. She reached in, withdrew a bundle, examined the notes carefully.

  ‘That’s it for me.’ Chance put the framed picture back on the shelf, started repacking the go-bag.

  ‘What shite are you talking?’ said Walsh, unsure what was going on.

  ‘There should be enough for you two, plus make sure Vera gets her cut.’

  ‘Sure, mate, but what about your share?’

  ‘Look after it for me,’ said Chance, re-zipping the daypack. ‘I’ve got other business to attend to. I’ll need your car.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Get a taxi.’ Chance smiled. ‘It’s not like you can’t afford it.’

  Blake, on both knees on the carpet, searching through the contents of the sports bag nearest to her, didn’t look up, already knew what Chance had planned. Walsh started to speak, stopped himself, handed Chance his car keys.

  Chance slung the daypack over his shoulder, tapped Dormer on the shoulder.

  ‘Get up, you’re coming with me.’

  Dormer grimaced as he stood, the pain from his wrist getting worse.

  ‘Am I going to see you again, comrade?’

  ‘Probably.’

  The two men hugged. ‘Take care,’ said the Irishman.

  ‘Sure,’ said Chance. He pushed Dormer toward the garage.

  TEN

  Dawn broke cold and pink, the bottle-green ocean completely still. Williamstown was a streak of uneven white behind him. To the stern nothing but open sea. The only sound was water gently lapping against the hull.

  Chance shook his head to clear away the exhaustion, sipped from a half-full bottle of Teachers he’d found in the cabin. He shivered. A whisper of malaria or fear, he wasn’t sure which.

  His passenger stirred against the gunnel, the last of the chloroform wearing off. There was a brief flash of panic on Dormer’s face as he took in his surroundings, the length of rope tied around his ankles. He raised his arms, grimaced in pain from his broken wrist, tried to move his feet. The rope tightened as it strained against whatever it was connected to under a faded tarpaulin next to him.

  ‘The money you and your friends took, that’s going to piss off a lot of very dangerous people,’ he said.

  Chance watched a gull cruise on a current in the sky.

  ‘Are you at least going to tell me who you are?’

  Chance had another hit of whisky, deliberated whether to respond.

  Dormer shrugged, motioned at the bottle with his good arm. Chance passed it to him.

  Dormer brought the bottle to his lips, drank. ‘If you’re not going to tell me who you are, at least tell me how you found me. Not as though I can do anything about now.’

  ‘Got lucky. Discovered the house near the airport, the body in a barrel. Also a box of business cards for that brothel Feeney owned. Connected the dots from there.’

  A flicker of recognition flashed across Dormer’s face. He tilted his head, as though a different angle might jog his memory.

  ‘Always knew Feeney was unreliable.’ Dormer smiled. ‘As for the house, I told Ahmad to clean the place up. My fault for trusting the job to a man who’d spent most of his life in a mud hut. He couldn’t read. Hadn’t even seen a photograph of himself until a few years ago. Where’s Ahmad?’

  ‘Dead.’

  Dormer’s shoulders slumped and he let out a long breath.

  ‘You don’t sound very cut up about your partner.’

  ‘Partner?’ Dormer snorted, ‘I suppose that’s one way of looking at our relationship.’

  Dormer passed the almost-empty bottle back to Chance.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Chance finished off the bottle, dropped it on the deck. He grabbed one corner of the tarpaulin, pulled it off to reveal a small bar fridge, speckled with rust, connected to the rope around Dormer’s ankles.

  ‘That’s how it’s going to be?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘My old man had a fridge like this one,’ said Dormer wistfully. ‘Weighed a tonne.’

  ‘Mine too’.

  ‘But first you’re going to tell me it’s not personal, right?’

  ‘Like you said, Frank, the strong sharks eradicate the weak ones.’

  Another flash of recognition, stronger this time, swept across Dormer’s face. Chance picked up the bar fridge in both hands, dropped it over the side of the boat. It disappeared under the surface with a loud splash. Dormer looked for something to hold onto, but the fridge sank too fast, dragged him over the side and into the water. He opened his mouth but the sea swallowed his words.

  Chance gripped the side of the boat hard as he watched the cloud of bubbles and foam explode in the green water and slowly disappear.

  His hands trembled as he rolled a cigarette. The water was completely calm. His reflection no longer that of a stranger.

  Chance slowly finished his smoke, looked up, aware of noise behind him. A vessel a couple of hundred metres away, a two-story cabin, packed with people, men and women, laughing and drinking from cans. Some of them wore sombreros.

  One reveller waved. He waved back. Several partygoers cheered, saluted him with their drinks and went back to their festivities.

  Chance watched the boat pass by. When the dance music faded, he pulled up the anchor, started the engine and pointed the boat in the direction of open water.

  Back to TOC

  ORPHAN ROAD

  The following is a sneak peak of the next Gary Chance thriller coming in early 2019.

  One

  Chance ignored the pain gathering force in the back of his skull, concentrated on aping the looks of joyous ecstasy plastered on the faces of the surrounding cult members.

  The young woman next to him, Shannon, a model-thin former legal secretary from Sydney, squeezed his arm, smiled as she swayed. Chance grinned back, swept her up in his arms in what he hoped would be interpreted as a gesture of abandon. She hugged back harder.

  Aro
und a hundred people occupied the circle of cleared forest that served as the venue for Cornelius’s regular soul cleansing sessions. Chance battled his headache for the name of tonight’s subject. Wetzler. A stockbroker in his mid-forties. He sat on the ground, Cornelius squatting behind him, arms holding the overweight man, as if helping him give birth.

  Tonight Cornelius claimed to be channelling the spirit of Siphon, a nine-thousand-year-old Atlantean wizard. The cult leader’s deep voice was audible above the new age synthesiser music that blared from speakers affixed like beehives to trees around the clearing. Tears streamed down Wetzler’s chubby face as the crowd chanted at him to confess his spiritual impurities.

  Chance had to hand it to Cornelius. He knew all the tricks: switching between abuse and intimacy, subliminal messaging. In another life he would’ve excelled as an army interrogator, like those Chance had met during his tour in Afghanistan. The setting helped, the middle of the forest ‘to bring us closer to the spirit world,’ as Cornelius put it. A brilliant yellow moon partly obscured by wisps of cloud, a roaring log fire that cast flickering shadows across the crowd as it shrieked and moved in time to the music.

  When Tremont had first suggested robbing a cult, Chance imagined something like the Manson Clan or a bunch of backwoods Christians who stockpiled guns and slept with each other’s wives. New Atlantis was more like a rave party meets Lord of the Flies.

  Chance broke away from Shannon’s embrace, scanned the crowd. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette. One of the many items forbidden by Cornelius because they made the human body unsuitable for re-occupation by the Atlanteans, who, according to him, would soon emerge from their ocean home to reclaim the planet. Cornelius didn’t exactly come across as prime real estate for a returning Atlantean spirit. Clad in a faded denim shirt and black jeans, eyes hidden by ever-present dark sunglasses, he struck Chance as a cut price Jim Morrison, his body, all bone and sinew, skin stretched and weather beaten.

  Lilith on the other hand, Chance could well imagine an Atlantean spirit being at home in her form. One of the group’s ‘Elders,’ watching Lilith had been one of the few pleasures in New Atlantis not forbidden by Cornelius. In her late thirties, if the faint wisps of grey that crept into her shoulder length black hair were any indication, tonight she wore narrow-cut black cotton pants that showed off the contour of her strong legs, and a loose purple overshirt that accentuated her cleavage. Her suntanned skin looked caramel in the firelight.

  Chance gripped the little finger of his left hand. The digit, taken off at the knuckle with a pair of garden shears years ago, had been replaced with one of his toes by a plastic surgeon in Thailand. Remembering he played with it whenever he was nervous, he suddenly let go, as if worried he was giving himself away.

  Lilith met Chance’s gaze, held it. Chance felt sharpness in his gut at the possibility she was on to him. Without taking her eyes from him, she inclined her head, said something to the bald man next to her. Swain, another of the group’s Elders. Swain was tall and well-muscled, but Chance wondered what the Atlanteans would make of the white supremacist tattoos that peeked out from under the long sleeved black tops he always wore.

  A cry drew everyone’s attention back to the centre of the clearing. Wetzler had broken. Head nestled against Cornelius’s chest, he blubbered out his spiritual impurities—a selfish material life, fucking his secretary, tax evasion. Cornelius stroked Wetzler’s thinning hair, leaned close, whispered in the man’s ear. The stockbroker immediately became calm, his eyes fixed on a point in the night sky only he could see.

  The music stopped, the signal that the ceremony was over. The cult members paused like a bar crowd when the lights come on, reluctant for the night to end. Chance joined them as they drifted towards the dormitories, watching from the corner of his eye as Cornelius and Lilith lead Wetzler in the opposite direction. He knew from Tremont that a soul cleansing was always followed by a one on one debrief during which Cornelius counselled the individual concerned about the uselessness of worldly possessions now they had reached a heightened stage of spiritual consciousness.

  At first sight of the dormitories, Chance ducked behind a large gum tree. He waited until the last of the crowd had filed inside and made his way around the perimeter of the compound, pausing now and again to make sure he was not being watched. He found the spot he was looking for, scooped away the dirt, unearthed the zip lock plastic bag he’d buried soon after arriving in New Atlantis, took out a stainless steel wristwatch and a flashlight. Two more items banned in New Atlantis. He peered at the tiny green dots on the dial. Ten-forty-five. Tremont would wait until two am.

  Cornelius lived in an old wooden farmhouse on the property. The door was unlocked, the threat of excommunication for anyone caught near the house, the only security Cornelius needed. Chance whistled softly as the beam of light moved across the main living area. Sleek metal and leather furniture competed for attention with Asian-themed wall hangings, rugs and throws. A large plasma screen television stood against one wall, a well-stocked liquor cabinet by another.

  The trap door was under a rug in the bedroom. He pulled the latch, put a hand in, felt smooth, cool wood but nothing else. He withdrew his hand as though he’d received an electric shock.

  The money was gone.

  Chance crouched in the darkness. The hairs on his arms and neck bristled. Had Tremont doubled crossed him? There was no way his partner could have made it onto the property and stolen the money without being detected. That left two other possibilities. Tremont’s information was wrong or someone else had taken it.

  He stood up only to be thrown back to the ground. The circle of light from the dropped torch illuminated his assailant’s booted foot, the rest a grunting shadow. He wrestled with the figure. A blow cut deep into Chance’s upper lip. Fireworks went off in his vision and his mouth filled with the taste of his own blood. His assailant used the seconds while Chance recovered to roll on top of him and try and pin him to the ground.

  Chance threw several punches, found only air. He jabbed again, heard a wet crack that was his fist connecting with his assailant’s nose. Chance tried to leverage himself up but a blow snapped his head back onto the wooden floorboards.

  The pain became more distant with each blow until he felt nothing.

  Chance’s last job had left him broke and on the run. Working a long haul prawn trawler out of Cairns had seemed an ideal way to avoid the authorities. At first he’d welcomed being at sea, no external contact except a tanker that delivered food and fuel and took away the catch. Until he got to know the crew: a captain whose idea of letting off steam was to fire a shotgun at sharks trying to get the catch; a deckhand who got his kicks playing practical jokes with the chemicals used to freeze the prawns; another whose standard reply to anything was ‘What happens on the boat, stays on the boat.’ But the worst part was going through the nets. You had to sort the prawns without gloves to feel for the soft and broken ones. His hands were still scarred from the cuts. Not to mention the various lethal creatures that got caught in the catch, all of which had a ferocious attack or defence mechanism. Or both.

  He’d been in the northern New South Wales town of Byron Bay two weeks, waiting on a call from a man named Loomis. A cut out for Vera Leigh, working girl turned Melbourne businesswoman, Loomis dealt with anything messy or illegal, which in Leigh’s business—owning a nightclub and one of Melbourne’s best-regarded S&M dungeons—kept him busy. He also connected people with jobs. Leigh took a cut of everything he helped put together.

  When Loomis’s call finally came, the raspy voice, which sounded as if it emanated from a place farther away than Melbourne, gave him contact details for Carl Tremont. They met in a backpacker bar in town. Tremont came across as a middle-aged hustler, heavily tanned skin, long greying hair tied in a ponytail, his white shirt unbuttoned to reveal a chunky Buddha amulet on a gold chain around his neck. A self-described cult buster, Tremont had set up shop a decade earlier in Byron Bay, a place where the remn
ants of the seventies counter culture faced off against pastoralists and hard-core Bible thumpers.

  On their second meeting, Tremont was accompanied by Celeste, an animated, curvy woman with a head of frizzy ginger hair. After drinking for a couple of hours, the three of them ended up on an L-shaped black leather couch in the family suite of the motor court Tremont called home. Celeste chopped up lines of coke on a glass coffee table, eighties stadium rock low on the stereo, while the cult buster told Chance about New Atlantis, a hundred-hectare property cut out of rain forest near the town of Mullumbimby, north of Byron.

  ‘It was established by a bloke called Terry Cornelius. Claims he can channel the spirits of Atlantean wizards who died when their city was wiped out by an alien invasion thousands of years ago.

  ‘He preaches humanity is just a transitory stage, we are merely minding our bodies until the Atlanteans return to reclaim them.’ As Tremont spoke, Celeste did a line. ‘The faithful will be elevated to a higher level of existence while the rest of humanity is destroyed. Something like that.’

  ‘Do people actually believe that shit?’ said Chance.

  Celeste paused mid-snort, shot Chance a wounded look. ‘It’s not shit, Gary.’

  ‘Celeste, not now,’ said Tremont with a tight smile.

  ‘Carl, baby, just saying, what Cornelius preaches about us just being the keepers of our bodies until the Atlanteans return, it’s not all—’

  ‘Honey, I get it, just not now. Okay?’

  Celeste went silent.

  Tremont put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Would you go get Gary another beer, love?’

  Tremont shook his head, looked to the ceiling after she’d gone.

  ‘Nice lady, great in the sack, but a half a sandwich short of picnic if you know what I mean.’ He winked at Chance. ‘It’s the same with a lot of cult survivors. The experience leaves them a little fucked up.’