Lenny Bartulin - Death by the Book

To Robert Gray

It was perfectly clear to him now, dangling in the wet tussock cleavage of a broad hill that slid towards the headland cliffs. Nothing like fresh air and imminent death to clarify things. Jack could see exactly when his life had begun to go downhill: it was that Wednesday afternoon a couple of weeks ago when he stepped off the bus in Double Bay. He had gone two stops past where he should have. A man susceptible to omens might have understood it as a warning. But Jack Susko thought it was his lucky day. Not having seen one for some time, it was an easy mistake to make.

The narrow ravine cut through the headland like an axe mark, straight down to the foot of the cliffs. A hundred metres below, Jack could hear waves smash into crags of rock and hiss over a coarse gravel beach. When he had slipped, the handcuffs had somehow tangled with a discarded piece of harness strap and the branches of a small tree. The strap must have come from one of the weekend hang-gliders; Jack had seen them run down the smooth hill before, watched them lift off with a slight dip and then curve out over the water like giant, lazy birds. It was a nice view up there, off the cliffs: a perfect spot for a romantic picnic. Somewhere to crack the champagne and propose marriage. All you needed was the right girl.

Jack craned his head up. “Hey, listen,” he called out. “What do you say we get married? Right now? We could kidnap a priest and bring him back.”

She was standing three or four metres above him, looking down. Holding a gun. She held it casually by her side like a mobile phone. The morning sky was dark with rain clouds but clearing. Jack could just make out her face: pale and thin like watered-down milk. As though another burst of rain might wash her away.

Her gun hand came up slowly, empty eye down the barrel-sight. Her blank gaze fixed on something beyond him, way down in the blackness below. She was giving Jack the look , the one Ziggy Brandt had warned him about a long time ago.

They were in the big black Mercedes with the customised number plates: EASY. Jack at the wheel, suit and tie, but a little dark under the eyes. It was after three in the morning. Ziggy was stretched out in the back, legs spread wide. “You got to watch it, Jack, you got to watch that look,” he said, voice on the edge of slurring after a few too many at his club in the Cross. “I call it the seven veils look. They’re looking at you, but nobody’s home. You know what I mean?”

Jack nodded into the rear-view mirror, half-listening. Ziggy brushed invisible crumbs from his Armani duds. “Be ready for that look, Jack. Nine times out of ten it’s followed by a fucking bullet.” He laughed, then coughed. “The other time it’s either a knife or they push your eyeballs into your head with a hammer.”

The handcuffs were holding but Jack was reluctant to try pulling himself up. He moved a leg, feeling for a foothold. As he did, the gun went off. The bullet thudded into the ground near his shoulder. Grass and dirt stung his face. Fuck .

He should have minded his own business. Curiosity got the cat’s head blown off.

“Honeymoon in Tahiti,” he shouted, desperation rising in his voice. “Massages and cocktails by the pool. Nothing but the best, baby!” Jack was not into things tropical, but then marriage was all about compromise. “If you could just throw me a rope …”

The gun remained pointed at him.

Jack tried to squirm up the rain-drenched slope. Like a worm on the end of a hook. A surge of adrenaline helped move him about a foot. Not enough. And where the hell was he going anyway?

Another bullet hollowed out the dark and scorched the air not too far from his left ear, thumping into the soggy ground. Was she a terrible shot or just a sadistic bitch?

Jack closed his eyes, pressed himself against Mother Earth. Almost let slip a prayer, but it was too late to pay insurance now. “How about a last cigarette?”

There was no reply. Waves broke below. Jack breathed in the cold salty air: but all he could taste was gunshot smoke and fear.

The strap slipped out. Then held. His body stiffened, turned to lead. Light rain began to fall again. Terror beat his heart. Jesus. I’m gonna die.

Who the hell was going to look after his cat?

The sky was two o’clock blue, cloudless on a Wednesday afternoon. The weather had forgotten it was winter: the air was almost sweet and the breeze had manners. Jack Susko lit a cigarette and began walking down the hill. He could not remember the last time he was in Double Bay. Nobody he knew earned the sort of money needed to live here. It was the kind of place where old women noticed your shoes, where lawns were green year-round, and the streets were clean and wide and lined with big old trees. A place where money had always done the talking and everything else the listening — even the pollution had been slipped a roll and asked to go west. Parks and playgrounds and plenty in the bank: the kind of place to consider having kids.

Jack put his sunglasses on. Having a child was not a priority, though if you asked him what was he might take a while to answer. For the moment, it was a package he was delivering to 32 Cumberland Gardens. The streets were so nice around here, they were gardens.

Over the rooftops on his right, Jack caught glimpses of water in the bay. On his left, houses and apartment blocks stepped up the slope of Bellevue Hill, straining against each other for a better view, their windows whitewashed by the sun. Jack had a vision of himself in one of those double-glazed sunrooms: cognac in hand, looking out at the city’s skyline, the phone warm on his ear as he gave calm instruction to a banker on the Bahnhof Strasse in Zurich. It was the kind of job he could settle for, part-time even. Pity they never came up in the employment pages.

No, Jack Susko would not be retiring at the age of thirty-four. His view would remain the dusty shelves and battered paperbacks of the last year or so. Instead of up, he would climb down the steps into his basement shop in York Street in the city, where he spent the day making sure delinquent kids did not lift the stock. At least he was his own boss. Though sometimes it would have been nice to boss somebody around.

The guy’s name was Hammond Kasprowicz. He had called Jack two days ago, asking for copies of four books: The Machine , Entropy House , The Cull and Simply Even . Every copy you have, he said. And it’s poetry, he added, as if Jack might not know what that was. Did Susko Books have a poetry section? His voice was cantankerous. At one point he coughed violently down the line for about a minute and Jack had to hold the phone away from his ear. When he stopped, Kasprowicz wheezed and his voice was tight. He would pay fifty dollars for every copy and an extra fifty if they were personally delivered. He gave his address, stated a time and day, and hung up.

Afterwards, Jack wondered why Kasprowicz was willing to pay so much for very little. But he did not think about it for too long. He remembered a piece of advice he had been given many years ago: when someone wants to give you money, the least you can do is dress nice and take it. Jack could do that.

Unlike a lot of second-hand bookshops, Susko Books was an alphabetised affair. There were two copies of The Cull in the poetry section. After checking through a few boxes of the latest, unsorted stock, Jack made some calls. He managed to locate one more copy of The Cull and two copies of Entropy House . But it was late and most places around town were already closed. The next day he went to King Street in Newtown and scoured second-hand bookshops for an hour or two. That was all he could handle amid the mess and choked shelves and the floor littered with old orange Penguins, fallen like ticket stubs at the races. It was nauseating, like walking around in somebody else’s headache. No copies of Simply Even that he could see, just one of The Machine , missing a few pages, but that was not his problem. Three hundred dollars plus another fifty dollars delivery. It did not happen every day. It had never happened before.