Black Teeth (2 page)

The insurance man allowed himself to appear thoughtful. He turned his head.

The end of the kitchen was the end of the house. Through eight or nine cobwebbed windowpanes, three of which constituted a door, he could see out to an overgrown courtyard, festooned with upturned plastic furniture into which an ambitious, strangling vine had laced itself. At the far end of the ‘garden' was a freestanding two-storey structure, a studio or granny flat. Unlike the front yard there was a trampled pathway and visible brickwork beneath the creeping greenery that was otherwise rampant on the fences, on the trellises, on all of the space out there.

It was a cloudy grey day, deep in a Melbourne winter, but even on the sunniest First Day of Spring, Anthony thought, this house would still feel doomed.

He spoke slowly.

‘You're asking if the payment will be made in circumstances where you take your own life?'

‘Yeah.'

He flicked through the contract, frowning, then read aloud:

‘
No benefit is payable where the claim arises out of or in connection with any deliberately self-inflicted injury for the initial thirteen months of cover.
'

‘Right…' said Rudy, struggling. ‘So…I'd have to wait…after thirteen months?'

‘In theory, yes. But…may I sit down?'

Rudy nodded, scraped out his bowl.

‘Mister Alamein…' Anthony lowered himself into a cane chair. ‘If it is your intention to apply for cover in an effort to profit your beneficiary in the immediate future—'

‘It's not the immediate future. It's thirteen months. You said it.' His mouth was full.

‘Yes, but if your plan is to take your own life, I would have to recommend against Fortunate Insurance accepting your application.'

Rudy licked his spoon and flung it into the empty bowl.

‘Why? It's the rules. I'm following the rules. You said it.'

‘Yeah, no…' Anthony shifted in his seat, felt the nail clippings prickle his buttocks through his trousers. ‘Not really. The purpose of life insurance is protection against…the hand of fate, as it were. Not to profit, or for your beneficiary to profit, from any given technicality.'

‘But…' Rudy said, and had nothing to go on with. His eyes shut tight, hard at thought.

‘So, I think the best thing for us to do is if I recommend for you another provider, or better yet an insurance broker, and you—'

It was a long moment before Rudy opened his eyes. When he did he saw Anthony's, fixed into a face of astonishment.

He knew what the salesman was staring at. It was in his voice when he said, ‘What?'

‘On your hand,' Anthony's voice quavered. ‘What is that?'

Rudy lowered his right hand to consider the marking there, on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

‘Tattoo.'

The intensity of Anthony's reaction must have appeared to Rudy as mere curiosity. He explained without a skerrick of humiliation.

‘They give it to people sometimes in…at the Severington prison. Branded like horses get. It means, like, you're someone's…you belong to them. And they can do whatever they want.' He held it out to better contemplate it.

‘It's meant to be teeth.' His mouth bent into a sick sneer. ‘But I kind of reckon it looks like a crown. Like, a dodgy crown.'

He cradled the marking in his lap.

‘You were in Severington?' Anthony asked, his throat sounding dry.

‘I wasn't. My father was. He died there.'

‘Your father had that?'

‘Yes.'

‘So why do you?'

‘Because I'm his
son
,' Rudy spat. ‘Why do you
think
?'

His indignation was hot in his eyes and in his breath. He crushed his right hand against his thigh and glared at the wall past his guest, who picked at the fingers of his glove.

‘I get it,' Anthony said. ‘Like a sympathy tattoo.'

‘I don't know.' A big shrug. ‘It's just—'

Now it was Rudy who went abruptly silent.

Anthony's glove had come away. He'd turned his wrist to display the same mark in the same place on his right hand.

Rudy grabbed at it in a sudden lurch, knocked the spoon from his bowl and wailed a half-word. Anthony yanked his arm out of reach and pulled the glove quickly back into place.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘I don't like to be ogled.'

‘Sorry sorry,' Rudy's eyes bulged. ‘I'm just…never met anyone else who had it before.'

He settled back in his chair, shot glances at Anthony's hand.

‘What was the…like, what did you do?'

‘To get sent up?'

‘I mean, why did they put you in jail?'

‘Fucking parking tickets, mate.'

Rudy cocked his head, one eye shut tight. ‘You went to
Severington…because…with parking tickets?'

‘Yeah. Well, because I didn't pay them. Cops made an example of me.'

He looked into Rudy's boggle-eyes and said, ‘That's why I hate cops.'

Rudy only gazed back.

Anthony said, ‘You're the first bloke on the outside I've seen with the teeth, too.'

With a meaningless hum, Rudy's attention switched back to his own hand. He stared down at it. Down into it. Anthony shook off the drama and raised his tone.

‘As I was saying, I can put you in touch with a broker and they can take it from there, okay? But you may want to think about exactly what you tell them up front.'

There was no indication that Rudy had heard. Dreamily he was somewhere else, punching his thigh with a vacant agitation.

‘Oh
wait
,' cried Anthony, boggle-eyed himself. ‘Shit, was your father Piers Alamein?'

Those tiny eyes snapped to meet his. The response was breathless. ‘Yeah.'

‘I knew Piers. On the sixth floor.'

Rudy nodded, urgent, gripped the tablecloth. Anthony laughed.

‘I was on the sixth floor!' He clapped his hands. ‘In D-Wing. He and I always used to talk. He was a jeweller!'

‘Yes!' Rudy cackled in awe. He clapped too.

‘He talked about you. Only child. You slept in a bungalow at the back of the house!' Anthony fingered out the window to the red-brick studio.

‘
Yeah!
'

‘He was a great bloke. A really good guy. I remember he told me about the underwriting for the shop. He had a shop in the city, right?'

Rudy didn't answer now, just leaned slightly as if to check that Anthony was three-dimensional.

‘Dude, I've seen some big policies. But those numbers had so many zeroes, I didn't know how to pronounce them!'

Anthony guffawed and so did Rudy. Their rowdy laughter fed on each other's, peaking and receding, shaking the copper saucepans hung from the gallery.

‘I remember the day they put this on me.' Anthony flexed his glove. The leather squeaked. ‘Two of them held me down in the rec room and then that Russian arsehole fired up the needle and…I mean, I couldn't stop it. Piers was in his bunk when I came back. He gave me his toilet paper because I was bleeding so much, all down my wrist. In Severington, that's like giving someone a kidney.'

Something glistened in Rudy's eye. He absently tugged on the tablecloth, setting nail clippings to dance like gnats.

Anthony's voice was grave: ‘Did you say he died?'

‘Just, like, a month ago.'

‘How?'

‘They said he bled out.' Rudy blinked up at the roof. ‘He did it to himself.'

‘Shit. I'm sorry, mate. I only did two years and I almost went batshit. It's taken all this time for me to get my head right. He was tough. He lasted ten.'

‘Eleven years.' Rudy looked at him now, eyes bloody. ‘Almost eleven and a third.'

He jerked to his feet, gripped his pants in place and whirled away from the table with his cereal bowl. It clattered into the kitchen sink. A modern sculpture of used cereal bowls teetered there, probably the source of the incredible odour. Rudy sidled out of view, behind a pillar that held up the second floor.

His voice asked, ‘Did he tell you why he was there?'

‘Yeah, but…everyone knew about Piers Alamein.'

Attached to the pillar was a landline with TELECOM etched onto it, covered with dust and fading to yellow. Half of Rudy's face peeked around, chewing on the inside of his lip.

Anthony said, ‘Was it your mum that he…?'

‘He
didn't
. It wasn't him. He wasn't even
here
.'

Anthony looked around himself with a sudden shock.

‘
This
is where it…?'

‘Yeah. Upstairs. She was…died in the bedroom.'

Anthony couldn't help a glance at the ceiling. Sick paint peeled in strips and hung down like a disgusting chandelier, laid bare rotten plaster and the hump of an electrical cable.

Rudy followed his gaze.

‘I don't go up there anymore. I don't…I mean.' He turned to the windows. ‘I always sleep down there. Like you said.'

He pointed at the bungalow. Then he murmured, almost whispered:

‘It's so funny. It's so funny that you came…just showed up. Like, now. Out of the woodwork.'

‘I'll say.'

‘No.' Rudy rushed to his seat, perched on the edge. ‘I mean it's
really
funny.'

For the first time Anthony noticed Rudy's actual teeth, like claws in his slack mouth.

‘Because my dad's dead,' Rudy whispered, eyes shiny. ‘But the man who got him put in jail, who
lied
…' A snarl formed on his face, one of someone consciously turning pain into anger. ‘The man who lied to the newspaper…
he's
still alive.'

Rudy glowered, baring his determination.

‘Do you understand what I'm…I mean?'

‘I don't know. You're saying—'

‘He's going to bleed out. In his bed. Like Dad did.'

Anthony had to stop himself from recoiling, maintained their proximity. In the green tyranny of the garden a wind rose up. Every branch and leaf trembled.

He said, softly:

‘You're going to go to this man's house?'

‘Yeah. While he's sleeping. Tonight.'

‘
Tonight?
'

‘Yep. With the insurance, there's not anything to…no reason to not.'

‘Look, Rudy, I loved your dad. Really. But even if…You can't…' His shoulders hunched tight. ‘They'll put
you
in Severington.'

‘I know.'

‘So
then
what?'

For Rudy, the answer was obvious.

‘So then I wait thirteen months.'

Now Anthony did recoil. He slumped back in the chair and it protested, sharp, like the cane was snapping into pieces.

‘Wow.' He shifted. ‘You really hatched a plot, didn't you.'

‘I thought about it for a long time. I've thought about it for…it's thirteen years.'

‘Who's the beneficiary?'

‘What?'

‘Who gets the money?'

‘Oh.' He shook his head. ‘That's just a friend.'

‘What's his name?'

‘It's a girl.'

‘Right. A girl…friend?'

‘Not a girlfriend. Not like that.'

‘What's her name?'

‘Um, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Cannon. She just started, like, this furniture company. Or shop.'

‘You must like her a lot.'

‘I don't know if it's a shop. It's furniture…'

‘What's she done to deserve one-point-five million dollars?'

‘Because she's, like, the only friend I've got.'

‘Well…' Anthony managed to hold Rudy's eyes this time. ‘Let's say you've got one more as of today.'

An embarrassed smirk spread across Rudy's face, then cooled.

‘She doesn't know, if that's what you think.'

‘Doesn't know she gets the money?'

A hand sliced through the air. ‘Doesn't know that. Doesn't know I'm going to do it. Doesn't know anything. She doesn't have to know anything, does she?'

‘I guess not.'

‘Good. Good. I want it to be a surprise.'

‘Have you told anybody else?'

‘No. Nup.'

‘You sure?'

‘Yep.'

‘Okay.
Don't tell anybody else
. You shouldn't have even told me. And don't tell
me
anything else. I don't want to know who this bloke is. What he did. Or anything. Nothing, okay?'

‘Okay.' Rudy grinned and rocked in his seat, a big overbite grin. ‘I knew you'd understand. After what you…with the teeth.'

There was a twinge behind Anthony's eyes and before he could stop himself he was stretching, fists in the air; a yawn popped his ears.

‘You know, coming here today, I thought this would be a waste of time. Especially on a Friday afternoon. I can never sell a policy on a Friday afternoon.'

His customer sniggered at the irony. The two smiled.

‘But Rudy,' he got serious. ‘You can't do this thing tonight.'

‘Why not?'

Anthony pushed a thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. The brown leather scratched. He wasn't accustomed to wearing gloves.

‘Because if you're arrested, some stickybeak at the office could hold up your application, stamp you as an unnecessary risk. And no one will underwrite you once you're in prison. But you see, once you're covered, you're covered. They can't withdraw it.'

‘So…'

‘So you've got to wait.'

‘Until when?'

‘Until the policy is active.'

‘How long does that take?'

‘It depends. But also…'

‘What?'

‘I need to think about this. Over the weekend.'

‘Think about what?'

‘About
this
. Now that you've told me,
I
could go to jail. And I didn't like it so much that I'm pining to go back. Maybe I
shouldn't
arrange this policy for you. Maybe I should just go and forget all about it.'