The Dead Path (31 page)

Chapter
29
   

  T
ony Barisi stood on his balcony finishing a Dunhill Superior Mild, watching sheets of rain blow like impossibly tall sails past the city’s half-lit office buildings across the Brisbane River.

He stubbed the smoke out and dropped it in a cast bronze vessel filled with damp sand held between the paws of a sculpted Asiatic lion. Tony didn’t feel fifty-one. Tonight he felt thirty-one! Fuck it, twenty-one! He didn’t want to sleep, because sleep would hasten the rising of tomorrow’s sun, and he didn’t want to miss a minute, not now. Business was beautiful. The city was beautiful. Life was beautiful. He turned to the tall, frameless glass door and went back into his penthouse.

The boy was asleep on the leather couch. Tony smiled. He was a gorgeous one, Dan: just gone thirty but tight and tough as a teenager. And he was
different
. Dan had stayed with Tony right through the court case, even when everyone—Tony’s solicitor included—was sure that all was lost. Dan was the only one who knew—
knew!
—they’d settle out of court. And he was right. Dan’s confidence was infectious and Tony loved him for it.

Loved him.

Admitting that sent a thrill into his stomach. He smiled, watching Dan sleep. Yes, it was love. And being in love was divine. Dan was a keeper.

Tony watched his lover slumbering where he’d drifted off after their
many
celebratory drinks and decided not to wake him. He padded silently to the bedroom.

As he undressed, a delicious weariness crept over him and the bed suddenly looked inviting.
Screw it, I won’t even clean my teeth.
Sleep when you’re tired, eat when you’re hungry; the rest of the time was for hard work and hard play. He stripped off his boxer shorts and pulled back the covers to curl onto the delicious four-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

Life was beautiful. Life was perfect.

Tick, ticketty-tack-tacktacktack …

Tony sat up.

The echoing sound had come from the en suite bathroom. Something had fallen into the sink. He felt his face grow hot. That was a seven-thousand-dollar Villeroy & Boch vanity—the thought of some badly installed light globe chipping the enamel made him instantly angry. He threw back the covers and stomped naked through the walk-in closet, past his bespoke suits and shoes, Zegna ties and Duarte jeans, into the en suite.

The bathroom was as wide as a garage, tiled in icy white with a cathedral ceiling that had made Dan gasp (a delightfully erotic sound) when Tony first showed it to him. One wall was a single pane of one-way glass, affording an unimpeded view of the city and allowing the glow of its buildings’ lights to illuminate the room. A set of three large hopper windows rose above the wide white vanity: the first was head height, the second rose to three meters off the floor, the third rose to the ceiling five meters up. These huge windows were usually kept closed—it could blow a gale here on the apartment building’s top floor, and even up this high the noise of human traffic on the boulevard below could be disturbing. But he’d left the middle hopper open a crack, and something dark was hunched on top of the pane. A bird? A mouse?

Tony crept closer, wondering what he could use to shoo away the pest. And then he stopped. His stomach gave a slow gurgle as if suddenly filled with spoiled milk.

The creature perched on the middle window frame was a spider. One as big as the barking spiders that used to crawl the sides of his father’s tractor shed in Innisfail. Motherfucker. Tony was just about to creep backward, to run to the kitchen and get the insect spray, when he noticed …

It’s holding something.

The creature held in its jaws—fangs? mouth?—a tiny white pebble. As he watched, the spider carefully balanced itself, took a sly half-step forward, and dropped the pebble.

It fell through the air and landed neatly—tick, tack, tacktacktack—in the vanity basin.

Tony stared with wide eyes. Then something even more incredible happened. The spider threw itself into space and fell away. Just a moment later, another spider of the same size but of a different genus stepped delicately from the side of the building onto the middle pane. It, too, held a white pebble, and carried it to the center of the pane. Then it stopped, motionless and waiting.

Waiting for me.

Tony took a reluctant step forward, his eyes locked on the spider. And another, until he was standing at the vanity, staring up at it.

The creature leaned forward and dropped its hard little parcel.

Tony caught the stone, and watched the spider throw itself backward, slide down the glass, and fall away into darkness.

No others came to take its place.

He was about to call out to Dan, but glanced down at the pebble in his palm. There were two others like it in the basin. The stones were the size of large ball bearings, smooth and white and slightly ovoid, like tiny eyeballs. The one in his palm was translucent, like quartz, and cold. On its flattest part a mark was scratched. It was a line with two angled hooks, one at each end:

The mark had been stained with something rusty red.

Tony looked into the basin. The other two stones bore the same symbol. There was something about it. Something sad. Something depressing. Something familiar.

Papa’s cheek. The mark looks just like the deep lines in my father’s cheek. The lines that grew deep as chasms as he got sicker and sicker
 …

A wave of unhappy nostalgia flowed over Tony like a noxious wind. He recalled his father lying in the hospital bed, his cheeks bristled white and deeply furrowed, panting like a dog. And his eyes, Papa’s blue eyes. Papa’s body was thin and dying, lungs wasted by emphysema, but his eyes were blue as flames. His glands were swollen and his voice was reed thin, but not so thin as to hide the hate as he whispered to Tony in a voice dry as cane stubble, “
Finocchio
.”

Tony leaned on the vanity and looked into the mirror.
That’s me,
he thought.
Look at you. Look hard. What do you see?

He ran his fingers over his belly—the flesh was soft as custard and abhorrently pale, a swollen white mass under sweat slicked body hair. The feel of his own fat under stretched, hairy skin disgusted him.

And your head is no better.

His fingers traced the flaccid skin of his nearly double chin and ran over his scalp. There was nothing left on top, and the hair on the sides and back was thinning. When had it been thick? Before the divorce, before the string of court cases. Long before Dan.

Yes, Dan,
said the voice in his head.
Do you think he’s here for your looks?

Tony blinked. “Dan loves me,” he said to the empty room.

Of course he does.
The voice in his head had a nasty edge to it, like a hand held tucked behind a back that might just hold a knife.
Why else would a tight young boy stay with a flaccid old man? You must have changed him.

Tony’s heart started thumping. He remembered the party where he picked up Dan, who’d been flirting with a dyed-haired old bastard in a Kiton suit. When Tony quizzed Dan a few days later whether he would have gone home with him, Dan had shrugged and said he was glad he didn’t.

Of course he was glad. He could smell money on you. That’s what he’s here for, Tonio. The money.

Tony turned slowly and stared through the dark tunnel of the walk-in closet at the bed where Dan had sprawled so many times like the faggot whore he was. Leopards don’t change their spots and gold diggers like Dan don’t change their ways.

The money.

No wonder Dan had pushed and pushed with the court case. No wonder he’d egged Tony on and on about the Tallong development, treating the idea as if it was his own. The
money
. That was what the young slut loved.

Not you,
agreed the voice, sadly.

Tony felt hot blood pound in his temples. But he forced his rage down into a small, tight ball as he stepped quietly through the huge living room, past the sleeping bitch-boy, to the kitchen. The cook’s knife clicked metallically as he removed it from the magnetic strip over the hob, but Dan didn’t wake. The boy’s eyes did fly open when Tony pushed the sharp blade up under his sternum, but Tony had selected the knife for its length, and it took only seconds for Dan’s pierced heart to stop.

Pleased with his work (and pleased he no longer needed to tiptoe) Tony strolled back to the bedroom, picked up the phone and dialed. He regarded his bloody footsteps while the line rang.

“Hello?” The woman’s voice on the other end was sleep-fuddled.

“Ellen, it’s Tony.”

“Mr. Barisi? It’s … is there something—”

“Stop the Tallong development. First thing in the morning. Ring Koopers and tell them it’s off. I’m not ratifying.”

“Mr. Barisi, are you—”

“It’s off.”

Tony disconnected. He slipped the phone back into its cradle. His sprinting heart slowed. A warm, satisfied weariness ran through him like good alcohol. There. Dan had gotten what he deserved, and his precious Tallong development was as dead as he was. Tony took a deep breath, and felt a satisfied smile appear on his cheeks. A good evening’s work. Now he could rest easy.

Yes
, agreed the voice in his head; it also sounded very pleased.
Rest easy.

Tony nodded and yawned softly as he walked back to the bathroom and climbed up onto the vanity. The bottom hopper swung wide. A chilly wind pushed in and flooded the room, cold and sharp and cleansing.

“Easy,” he whispered. “Yes.”

Tony slid his legs through the window, then pushed himself out. The thought in his smiling head just before his skull split open like a dropped melon was of kissing his father’s craggy dead cheek.

  J
ust as passersby were running to the shattered body of Tony Barisi, Sergeant Peter Lam was returning to the station’s front desk, ripping the top off a sugar packet with his teeth and pouring it into his coffee mug that read “de’caf [dee-kaf],
noun
—preprocessed urine, slightly less flavor.” It was a quiet night. Two calls about some V8 thumping around the side streets doing doughnuts: he’d sent Erica and Mick to have a look. One call from Crazy Joan, who rang every night; this time she was complaining about an ad on TV she said was clearly made by the Mormons and
must
come off the air. Other than that, a lovely, quiet night. Then, movement in the CCTV monitor above the desk. A sedan was pulling into the front car park. It was commonplace for people to come in at all hours with queries about license renewals, barking dogs, cars broken into.

Sergeant Lam sipped his coffee. A bit hot. He watched a man get out of the driver’s side. He moved slow and easy, no signs of drunkenness. Lam relaxed just a little. Then he stiffened, suddenly alert.

The man went to the trunk of his car, opened it.

Lam placed down his coffee. The guy could have anything in there: a cat he’d hit on the road, a box of God-knows-what that someone dumped on his footpath … The big worry was the folk who’d received speeding tickets that day and decided to try for some payback with a tire iron. Lam’s hand inched closer to the desk radio; Erica and Mick might need to come back in a hurry.

Then the guy in the car park straightened his back and turned toward the surveillance camera. In his arms was the limp body of a naked child.

“Oh, fuck,” whispered Lam. One hand grabbed the radio handset, the other slipped down to release the clip holding in his Glock.

The man outside—who would later be identified as a Miles Kindste from the neighboring suburb of Tallong—placed the dead girl at his feet, reached into his pocket, and produced a Stanley knife. Without a pause, he flicked out the blade and drew it across his own throat. He sat himself down to die.

  T
he phosphorescent hands of Nicholas’s watch glowed eldritch green. Nearly two thirty in the morning.

He sat in an armchair that had seemed huge when he was a boy, but now was small and uncomfortable. After the first few hours, he’d realized that moving didn’t help, and so stayed as still as he could, trying to will himself to numbness.