How Not To Commit Murder - comedy crime - humorous mystery (43 page)

CHAPTER 32

After consulting the accommodation list the clerk at Centrelink had given him and making a few phone calls, Reuben found a room in a boarding house at New Farm, not far from where Thommo had lived. It was an old Queenslander that had been converted into half a dozen bedrooms with a communal kitchen and bathroom. It smelt of stale cooking oil, sweaty socks and old men; but at $150 a week, it would do until he found something else.

His room reminded him of his childhood bedroom. Faded floral wallpaper, single bed with chenille bedspread and an old wooden cupboard with the door ajar because there was no key to lock it. It was musty but clean.

Hey Mum, I’ve blown it again
. He saw her face before him, disappointment etched in the lines. The same look he’d seen countless times before.
I really gave it a go – it’ll be different next time
. She looked unconvinced. ‘Remember your number one rule,’ he told himself, ‘convince yourself before you try to convince someone else.’

He dragged his luggage inside, closed the door and sank down onto the bed. Was there anything sadder and more pathetic than a single bed when your marriage had broken up? The only thing worse was a bunk in a prison cell. He opened the first suitcase and rummaged through his things. No Mandrake comics. Surely Carlene wouldn’t have thrown them out – she knew how valuable they were to him. Which was a good reason to do just that. She’d said she wasn’t vindictive, but most people were capable of spitefulness if pushed too far. He opened the other suitcase and scrabbled through the contents. Not there either. Fuck.

He opened his backpack and pulled out a plastic bag. The comics were bundled neatly inside it. He slumped with relief. He opened the bag and rifled through them – they were all there. He slipped out the oldest comic –
The Earthshaker
, from 1943. It was his favourite comic as a child, a story full of giants and monsters, all of whom Mandrake subdued with his magic powers. The drawings were so detailed and lifelike they both fascinated and terrified him. One in particular, of a giant face staring through the window of a house, with Mandrake’s girlfriend Narda cowering inside, gave him nightmares for weeks. Every night when he went to bed he saw the giant’s eyes, huge and menacing, staring through his own bedroom window. It was strange to look at the face now and remember so vividly the terror he’d felt. When you were an adult, your giants just took a different form.

The pages were soft, the images still as crisp as if they’d been drawn yesterday. The comic was almost as immaculate as when Albert had given it to him twenty-five years ago. Reuben had looked after it, had looked after them all like precious jewels. They were possibly quite valuable to a collector, but he hadn’t bothered to have them valued as he’d never once considered selling them, even when he was down to his last dollar.

He slipped the comic back into the plastic bag and dug out his mobile phone from his backpack. As the battery had run flat while he was in prison, he plugged the phone into the power point beside his bed. Checking that he had his wallet, he left his room, locking the door behind him.

Halfway down the narrow, dank hallway of the boarding-house, was a small coffee table. On it sat a phone, padlocked to the table, and two battered phone books; a White Pages and a Yellow Pages. They were for the use of the residents, with an honesty box for depositing the payment for your call. Strange that management had faith the residents would pay for their calls, but not that they wouldn’t steal the phone.

Reuben picked up the White Pages. Pages here and there had been ripped out, but fortunately not the K’s. Reuben searched until he came to Kominsky. There was only one – V. Kominsky. Viktor, Ivan’s son, still at the same address at West End. Had Ivan gone to his death consumed with hatred for Reuben and Derek? He’d never know, had to live with not knowing. It was a fair bet that Viktor hadn’t forgiven him – he’d sat in the courtroom all through the hearing, his dark eyes fixed on Reuben, the loathing so intense Reuben could feel its heat from the dock.

As he walked to the takeaway shop on the corner to buy dinner, he mulled things over in his mind. He knew what he had to do. Every inch of him was resisting it, but there was a force bigger than himself at work. The evening was darkening as he headed home with his hamburger and chips, and the sultriness of the night air clung to him. Two old codgers in shorts, t-shirts and thongs sat on the front step smoking roll-your-own cigarettes, their stick-thin legs stretched out in front of them.

‘Evening,’ they nodded. Reuben nodded back.

‘That smells pretty darn good,’ one said.

‘Dinner at your place, mate?’ the other said, and they both chuckled. As Reuben came through the front door of the boarding house a wave of mustiness swamped him.

He went again to the table in the hallway and picked up the Yellow Pages. He looked up comics in the index and was directed to Books – Secondhand and Antiquarian. There was a comic shop on Adelaide Street in the city – ‘Comics Incorporated. We buy and sell new and old comics.’ They’d do for starters.

His room was stuffy – there was no ventilation apart from a small window. He opened it as wide as it would go and sat on his bed to eat his dinner. The food didn’t live up to the promise of the aroma – the hamburger roll was stale and the chips were soggy. But it was better than jail food. Afterwards he checked his phone. There were three messages in his voicemail box. ‘Message received at eleven-twenty pm on thirty-first December,’ intoned the MessageBank voice.

Thommo’s voice boomed in his ear.

‘G’day mate. Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve rung the cops in Brisbane and told them about’ – he’d lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper – ‘you know what. I had to, it was spoiling my New Year’s Eve sitting in the yacht club surrounded by all these hot Sydney chicks – networking, of course, they’re all in the movies – and all I could think about was whatshername getting blown up or you at the bottom of the river with cement shoes – do they do that in real life? Anyhow, as my father used to say, I hope one day you’ll thank me.’

The next message was on January first at eleven twenty-five a.m. Thommo again.

‘G’day again. I guess wishing you a Happy New Year isn’t in order. I just rang your home number and spoke to your wife and she told me what happened. I couldn’t believe it at first – I picked you as a lover, not a fighter. Still, Wayne is a bit of a wanker. Anyway, at least you’re alive. Give me a ring when you get out. Hey, this might be just the thing your career needs. Didn’t do Russell Crowe any harm.’

He’d phone Thommo tomorrow and thank him for trying to save his life, if he could be bothered picking up the phone in between drinking and networking.

The third message was a familiar woman’s voice.

‘Reuben, it’s Posie.’ She gave a theatrical sigh. ‘You’re a naughty boy, getting yourself into trouble. Really, I don’t know what you were thinking of.’ She sighed again. ‘Anyhow, when you get out, give me a ring. Jonathan Huntley from Brightstar Films wants to talk to you about auditioning for a feature film. He saw you in the Becker ad and was impressed. Anyhow, hope you’re okay,’ she finished chirpily.

Was that for real? Reuben pressed the button and replayed the message several times. A feature film. A giant step up from a TV ad. What did ‘a part’ mean? Could be another non-speaking part, maybe a promotion from bartender to waiter or cab driver
. Don’t get too excited. It’s only an audition; you mightn’t get the part
.

But later as he sank into bed, heavy with weariness, the excited flutter in his chest kept him awake into the early hours.

CHAPTER 33

He called Posie as he strode down Adelaide Street, weaving his way through the morning peak hour crowds.

‘She’s in a meeting at the moment,’ the receptionist said aloofly, ‘I’ll give her your message.’

For some reason he’d been expecting Comics Incorporated to be a small, dingy shop, overflowing with dusty piles of comics and manned by a just-as-dusty proprietor. But it was a large, airy, cheerful store, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves stacked with neat piles of plastic-covered comics. In the middle was a table on which stood boxes of loose, unwrapped comics. A couple of teenage boys were flicking through them.

‘Can I help you?’ the attendant asked. He wore a name badge that said ‘Tim’ and was shortish and podgy, with dark hair falling over his forehead and chipmunk cheeks. He had one of those eternally youthful faces that made him look anywhere from twenty to forty. Much more appropriate for a comic shop than a dusty old man.

Reuben took off his backpack, opened it and placed his plastic Myer bag of comics on the counter. ‘I want to sell these. How much will you give me?’

Tim slid out the comics and studied them carefully, one by one. He whistled as he held up
The Earthshaker
.

‘This one is worth quite a bit – it’s not in mint condition but it’s still pretty good. The others aren’t worth as much but you’d still get a few dollars for them.’

‘How much all up?’

‘If you’re asking me how much I’d pay, I’d say fifty dollars.’

He grinned when he saw the expression on Reuben’s face. ‘That’s if I was an unscrupulous dealer taking advantage of you. And I’m guessing you’d go elsewhere and find out their true value.’

He leaned forward on the counter. The Mickey Mouse face on his watch winked at Reuben. ‘You look like an honest, genuine sort of guy so I’ll help you out. There’s a collector I know in Melbourne who’s a bit of a Mandrake fan, and I reckon he’d jump at these. If you can wait, I’ll go out the back and give him a tinkle.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate it,’ Reuben said.

‘Josh, counter please!’ Tim called. A sullen, pimply-faced youth slunk out from a door at the back of the shop. Tim picked up the comics. ‘I’ll take these with me so I can give him a detailed description.’

He disappeared through the back door. Josh stood at the counter with an expression that said, ‘I’m only here because I have to be and I’ll be really pissed off if anyone wants to buy anything.’

Reuben browsed through the comics in the boxes on the table. They were an eclectic mix of superheroes, Walt Disney and even some romance comics, obviously well-loved and not valuable enough to be kept in plastic. He should buy a few as a thank-you to Tim for going the extra mile for him. He picked up a
Phantom
comic. Two dollars was the original price, the store sticker said six dollars. Two comics would be enough.

After what seemed an eternity, during which Josh had been forced to ring up two sales on the cash register and had retired to the back of the shop in a fit of pique, Tim emerged from the back room with the comics.

He beamed. ‘Good news. Ron is prepared to give you three and a half. He was stuck on three for a while, but I talked him into the extra half.’

Three hundred and fifty dollars. Hardly worth selling them.

‘That’s three-and-a-half thousand,’ Tim said.

‘Thousand?’ Reuben said. ‘Really?’

‘Yep. If you give me your bank details, he’ll put the money in today, and I’ll take care of packing and posting them. Just one small detail,’ he added, ‘I charge ten per cent commission. So Ron will put three thousand, one hundred and fifty into your bank account and three hundred and fifty into mine. I’ve got a contract here to make it all legal.’ He waved a sheet of paper in the air.

Three thousand and a bit sounded pretty damn good, more then he’d dared hope for. But should he try elsewhere for a better price? Not that he was in the mood – the wrench of parting with Mandrake was hard enough without prolonging it.

‘It’s okay if you want time to think about it,’ Tim said. ‘Or if you want to see if you can get a better price. But I’ll tell you, Scout’s honour,’ he held up three fingers, ‘you’ll go a long way to find someone who’ll pay you more than that.’

‘And he’s prepared to buy them sight unseen?’ Reuben said.

‘I’ve been in this business for twenty years, from way back when every kid had a pile of comics under his pillow, and I’ve known Ron for almost that long. He trusts my judgement.’

‘Okay, it’s a deal,’ Reuben said. He filled in his bank account details on the contract and signed it.

‘And I’ll buy these,’ he said, placing the two
Phantom
comics he’d chosen on the counter.

‘Do you like the Phantom?’

‘Not really, he’s not a patch on Mandrake.’

‘I agree. I like the fact that he’s not a superhero, just a regular guy with a girlfriend. Except for his hypnotic powers.’ Tim came out from behind the counter, rifled around in one of the boxes on the table and pulled out a handful of comics. He handed them to Reuben. ‘On the house.’

There were four Mandrake comics, later editions from the 1990s, battered and dog-eared. Reuben scanned their covers; he hadn’t read any of them.

‘Thanks, that’s really good of you.’

‘No worries, I can see it’s hard for you parting with yours. Do they have sentimental value?’

‘Not really,’ Reuben said, ‘the old man next door gave them to me when I was a kid. But they’ve been everywhere with me and I’ve read them so many times, they’ve sort of become part of my life.’

‘So, sentimental value.’ Tim grinned. ‘Well, I guess you must really need the money, otherwise you wouldn’t be selling them.’

‘Yeah,’ Reuben said.

***

Posie returned his call as he was walking back down Adelaide Street towards the bus stop.

‘Reuben! I’m so glad you’re back!’ she trilled so loudly that a woman passing by looked back at him. Reuben turned his phone volume down. Posie lowered her voice. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I couldn’t believe it when I read about you in the paper. What on earth were you thinking of? I would never have picked you as the brawling type.’

‘I’m not. It’s a long story.’

‘I’m sure it is. Never mind, you’re here now. But you didn’t tell me you’d been in jail before.’ Her tone was gently reproachful, like a kindergarten teacher chastising one of her charges for not putting his crayons away.