'yes,hello, it's Peter Wheeler here. I'm Logan Wheeler's father. Is that Jerome's mum?'
Jerome looked anxiously up at Logan's father, on the phone calling his house. Mr Wheeler, listening to Jerome's mum on the other end of the phone, leaned against the kitchen wall and ruffled Jerome's hair. Jerome stuck his head around the kitchen door, hearing laughter from the lounge room. He was missingSouth Park.
'I don't know whether you've noticed yet, but you're missing a child.' Jerome was drawn back to the phone conversation. Logan's parents had been cool when he'd shown up, but when he'd told them he came over without telling anyone, they'd skitzed out. Jerome's dad looked down at him, nodding.
'Yes, I know. I'd kill Logan if he did something like that too. But Jerome's right here, and he's fine. Logan's got him some pjs ready and it's okay with us if he stays the night.'
Yes! Jerome beamed up at Logan's dad. He positioned himself in the doorway and did a little victory dance in front of Logan and his brother. Logan pumped a fist in the air, grinning. Logan's big brother said, 'Faggots,' and went back to watching TV.
Brothers suck, thought Jerome.
'Yes, Narelle. I'm sure you do. I'll put him on.'
Logan's father handed Jerome the phone and Jerome stared from it to the man holding it and back again, horrified. He finally took the receiver, handling it as if it were burning hot, and head bowed, face miserable, he put the phone to his ear. Peter Wheeler smiled and shook his head, and walked from the kitchen back into his lounge room. Jamaal and the junkie had completed their errands. Praise God, this night is nearly over, thought Jamaal, leaning against his van, his bandaged head resting on his hand. It was only when the junkie's whining had become unbearable that Jamaal had stopped the vehicle and given him a fix. Sebastian had insisted that Jamaal only give him heroin after they had completed their jobs.
Like I would be stupid enough to do it before, he thought, fuming at Sebastian's assumption that he was so ignorant. He intended to make his boss pay for his assumptions one day. Hadn't he proven his worth a thousand times over already? What about Mary – did she count for nothing? A slut who knew too much, and could speak too well. It had taken him just a week to find her after she'd gone underground. Sebastian had told him just to cut out her tongue. A lesson to others, he'd said. It had been too difficult, however, for Jamaal to stop, once she had started to cry. Her bleating had excited him, had driven him to punish her further. Seven years, and still her body had not been found.
Jamaal took a few steps away from the van, walking a little way down the alley in which he had stopped to appease the junkie. From the wound at the back of his head, rhythmic flares of pain bloomed with his pulse. He took a small packet from the top pocket of his sweat-stained shirt. He popped two aspirin tablets from the blister pack and put them in his mouth, crunching them, dry. He ignored their bitter, vinegary taste. He lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply.
Under the only streetlight in the alley, he noticed a youth and his girlfriend parked in a car two vehicles behind his own. P-platers. They each looked away when his eyes met theirs. He noticed the female furtively use her elbow to push down her doorlock; her boyfriend's hand hovered near the ignition. He grinned, his yellowed teeth coated in the chalky residue from the painkillers.
He continued to watch the teenagers. Their eyes widened as the junkie performed his ritual, oblivious to all around him, absorbed in his communion with his one true love. Squatting in the gutter beside the van, a rubber tube was cutting the circulation to the lower half of the man's skinny arm, pumping up his veins. Jamaal had once watched him mainline into the fat blue blood vessel in his penis, frustrated with being unable to find a vein quickly enough in his arm.
The junkie was in the zone. He'd finished melting the white powder in a spoon. He drew it up, now a clear liquid, into the syringe and injected it. A moment. Then his body lurched forward and he projectile vomited over his feet. He collapsed forward over his knees, in ecstasy.
Jamaal laughed in delight at the look of revulsion on the teenagers' faces, and walked back to his vehicle. He picked the junkie up by the shoulders and threw him in through the passenger's door, making sure to smack his head on the frame as he did so. He walked around to his own door and got in. The smell of vomit made him gag.
'Kess emmak,' he spat, cursing the man's mother in Arabic. He drove out of the alley.
Jamaal made his way back to the house in Hunters Hill. He promised himself that he'd go back to the street in Burwood in the morning.
The boy was a sign. Jamaal believed in signs. His luck was changing; he could feel it in his groin.