Nighty Night

She woke with a killer headache and instinctively felt between her legs. Her hands felt a bulge, no, two… three. The penny dropped.

Donnie Penfoldes nostrils were assaulted by the pheremone-ladened smell of underarm sweat and the gentle waft of cool air coming from a nearby window.

He opened his eyes and watched the world unfold before him – dark patches illuminated occasionally by neon streetlights. Graffiti on the side of buildings…

The man opposite stood and closed the window. He gave no indication that he had even seen Donnie, much less cared, and sat back down and retreated behind his newspaper. The same newspaper that was being read by the woman beside him and — as Donnie looked here and there around the carriage — by everyone else on the train.

Must be good, thought Donnie, trying carefully to get a look at the content of the newspaper beside him. He caught a few words and a large photograph of someone perhaps important standing behind a podium.

‘Greenhouse emmissions,’ he murmured. ‘big mirrors?’

The man beside him gave Donnie an annoyed sideways glance — obviously not liking someone reading over his shoulder — and made a point of shifting so the newspaper was harder to see.

Not that it really mattered to Donnie – he got motion-sickness if he tried reading on moving vehicles; particularly when he was the one driving.

Donnie glanced out the window and saw a green and purple sign perched high on a building.

Go Get

The sign alternated — the neon flickering slightly as it happened.

Stuffed.

Beside this an image of a merry looking pig with an apple in its mouth was suddenly illuminated.

Donnie wasn’t sure if he was supposed to go out and buy something. That or invest in apples and pigs.

This was advertising that was too clever for its own good – but it obviously made someone a lot of money – most likely the owners of the building.

He shook his head, wondering why he was on a train. Surely there were better ways to get around. Then he noticed there was something in his hand — a small but empty ziplock bag.

Drugs?

Maybe that was the reason for the jump this time around. There wasn’t any way he would have had a pull on this carriage. Was there?

The other passengers weren’t available to query, all turning their pages in a strange unison. A phone rang. It was his.

‘Hello,’ he said.

‘Where are you?’ A woman’s voice.

‘On a train,’ he replied carefully.

‘Good. Be right with you.’

The caller disconnected and Donnie stared at the phone screen momentarily before pocketing it once again.

The train slowed and stopped at a station, some people departed and others joined the travellers. A tall willowy woman with dark hair was the last to step onto the carriage.

Bloody hell, thought Donnie as she turned and caught his eye with what he called smile number three: warm but not letting much out.

A tilt of her head indicated he should come over. Possibly for a chat. Fair enough, his arse had fallen asleep on the harsh plastic seating.

‘Good of you to join me,’ said Prime.

‘Well, don’t have anything else to do.’

She nodded and turned to the doors.

‘Any minute now.’

‘Any minute what?’

The train braked hard and Donnie toppled toward her, finding himself gripping her in a way that might well have caused offense.

He apologised and stood up. The lights flickered. Donnie frowned.

‘You expected that?’

Sne nodded.

‘What’s next?’

She smiled; this was a number four: don’t talk, just pay attention and do what I say when it happens.

The lights went out, dropping the train into inky darkness.

She held his shoulder in her hand and whispered:

‘Get the doors open.’

Together they pushed the doors open and jumped down onto the gravel beside the tracks.

The train lights went on again and it began to move off.

‘Come on,’ she said and started a slow run across the tracks, heading for one of the signal huts near the final track.

‘What are we doing,’ pleaded Donnie, following her, narrowly avoiding rolling his ankles as he ran.

‘Shush,’ she replied and arrived at the hut. As Donnie approached he saw while it looked little more than a disused signal box – the lock on the door testified to something a little more important. Not that it mattered to Prime who opened it without issue.

The door swung open and they entered.

‘You know,’ said Donnie. ‘I’m all for unusual dates, but this is taking it a bit far.’

The staircase was barely visible in the 20 watt puddles of light — the visual equivalent of the dingy pooks that would have bred the mosquitos of a thousand bites.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Prime replied, ‘and you need to be ready.’

‘For?’

‘You’ll see.’

‘Great,’ he complained and kept walking.

A door with a mirror above it was all they found at the bottom of the stairs.

‘?’ asked Donnie pointing.

‘Apparently so we can see ourselves as we really are,’ replied Prime, and knocked on the door. Once, twice… a pause.

A knock came back.

‘This is a joke,’ said Donnie sarcastically.

Prime knocked again then kicked the door hard. It opened.

Donnie peered around the doorframe into the mist inside the room. A man in shadows glanced up at the door as they entered.

‘Y’know, it’s gettin’ so a man can’t enjoy his night off,’ said Elvis taking a large cigar from his mouth.

He turned to the three men and a woman sitting around the card table.

‘Call,’ he said.

The door closed behind Prime and Donnie.

* * *

‘It’s always important,’ said Elvis, standing now by the bar. He nodded to Barry the owner who sent a glass of whiskey sliding down toward The King’s waiting hand. ‘You handle it.’

‘Yes,’ said Prime patiently. ‘And that’s why I came down here in the middle of the night and rode on a train full of people.’

He gave her a look.

‘It’s the only way to get in here,’ he said, sipping the single malt.

Prime sighed.

‘The point I’m making is that you need to hear this,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’

He frowned at her.

‘Look, listen to it and tell me it’s not and I’ll go back to the church and probably to my bed.’

‘Can I come,’ asked Donnie.

Prime and Elvis let their gazes slide up to Donnie.

‘To the church. To my bed. I’m knackered.’

Prime blinked; happy he wasn’t referring to anything else.

‘Gimme the earpiece,’ said Elvis testily. ‘Then go nighty night, got it?’

Prime pressed “Play”.

* * *

Twenty minutes later and three showers (consecutive as the water heater wasn’t quite up to the load), three members of The Church of Elvis stepped into the control room in the basement of the building.

‘The intelligence is good,’ asked Elvis.

‘Good,’ answered Marcus looking up from the table in the middle of the room. ‘It’s practically gold-plated.’

‘That’d be a Yes then,’ asked Donnie, considering. ‘You could gold-plate a rotten bananna if you really wanted to be obtuse.’

‘It’s good,’ said Marcus, confirming.

‘Straight from the surveillance,’ said Prime. ‘We tapped into their feed.’

‘Shit,’ said Elvis rubbing his face and dragging the skin downwards a little. It sprang back where it was supposed to be. ‘This couldn’t get any worse could it?’

‘This meeting,’ said Marcus, ‘is beyond anything we could have imagined.’

‘What provoked it,’ asked Elvis, then shook his head. ‘Never mind. We have to get there first and get their minds off things.’

‘Their minds off what,’ asked Donnie.

‘Death, destruction, the usual,’ said Marcus, picking up his keys. ‘And we need a distraction.’

Donnie stood and wondered what that could mean. Then he got it.

‘No fucking way!’

‘If they’re going to start fighting it’ll be all-out,’ said Prime. ‘We need some way to get into the place undercover.’

‘And that means throwing me in at the deep-end?’

‘You’re a good swimmer,’ said Elvis, putting his hands on Donnie’s shoulders. ‘You can do it.’

* * *

Donnie stood in the cold air and wondered where the rain was. It seemed appropriate somehow.

‘Walk down there,’ he said. ‘Get seen by as many cameras as possible. Right.’

He tramped down the street towards the first corner; four young men were kicking hell out of a fifth who was protesting that he wasn’t an overseas student and he’d lived locally for his whole life.

‘Go home!’ yelled one of his attackers.

‘I am home!’ he protested with a local accent.

Donnie walked past to checkpoint one: the Casino camera on the corner. He looked up and stepped around the mob of applauding patrons watching the punchup taking place. The local boy was currently pulling odds of 10-1.

The camera recorded the fracas, and Donnie’s mug.

Donnie continued onwards, past the docked river cruise ships, empty of customers and bumping against the bank with the movement of the water. A number of polystyrene containers and plastic bottles bobbed on the water nearby, a result of the current administration’s inability to come to an agreement with the rubbish collection unions.

He stopped briefly at a bar and asked for a cappucino.

The barman gave him a look: You’re an idiot;  and pointed his thumb at the bottles behind him.

‘Never mind,’ said Donnie, making sure he was caught on the camera just inside the door.

He continued down past cameras three and four before walking up the steps and onto the bridge.

It was a chilly night up here; the buildings he’d been walking along had sheltered him from the worst of the wind, but now he was up above them, it was blasting him towards his goal: the center of town.

Taxi drivers wolf-whistled to him, making in turns, lewd remarks, abusive comments and pleading for his fare so they could feed their kids, their drug habits, their mortgages and occasionally all three.

Donnie continued into the train station and bought a ticket – a one-way to the end of the line. Now caught on three more cameras he walked from the station and out onto the street again, dropping the ticket into the upturned hat of a man screaming into a megaphone that the lack of godly worship and the increase of rights for men, women, queers, trannys, small pomeranians and library members would be the downfall of civilisation. He handed small handwritten flyers to all those who passed within range, but they were incomprehensile to anyone who couldn’t read latin.

‘You have no idea mate,’ murmured Donnie as he approached the traffic lights.

He noticed a car in the throng of other vehicles vying for pole-position: a red mustang with a white convertible top. Two men sat inside it. He did his best not to make eye-contact with either of them.

Where the hell was Prime though?

The lights changed and the Mustang roared around the corner and away. Donnie continued on his journey, noting the electronic banner above the pub on the corner was reading out a recent piece of news: The president of the United States had been held accountable for his recent decisions, and was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

‘Wonder what he did,’ wondered Donnie, then remembered something about mirrors.

Checkpoint eight got a full-frontal – Donnie tried not to smile for the camera. No point in provoking them.

The people at this end of town were plentiful and unlikely to be from these parts. It was a Saturday night after all, and they had presumably been allowed into the city sector as a means of relieving them of the burden of their finances.

Hey, mused Donnie. Whatever works.

Donnie glanced up at camera number nine, and ducked into the alleyway and down a flight of stairs.

‘Okay, here’s where it gets interesting,’ said Donnie taking a deep breath. He pulled the coat off, reversed it and pulled a rolled-up brown leather cowboy hat out from a pocket.

‘Dave!’ screamed a man’s voice nearby.

Donnie stuck the hat over his head and walked back up the steps.

‘You’re a fuckhead Dave!’ continued the voice. It was coming from one of the windows above.

With nary a backward glance, Donnie continued down the side-street, away from the main strip.

‘Dave! You’re a fuckhead!’ the voice concluded.

Emerging on another main street, he brushed off an enthusiastic drug dealer by way of a knee to the groin then headed north, towards the lights and action.

* * *

‘Guatemala,’ said the young man to the tall willowy woman standing beside the fountain.

She failed to respond.

‘That’s where I’m from,’ he continued.

‘You wouldn’t like me,’ she said at last, meeting his lustful gaze. ‘I’m not your type.’

‘I’d like to try.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ she replied. ‘Goodbye.’

She walked without haste across the square to the large grey van that had pulled-up.

* * *

Donnie continued north with nothing to do but wait. He felt fortunate that this little jaunt had an end-point which meant he could acutally get fed. Sleep though, that was out of the question for the moment.

Behind him a large number of black-shirted men gathered. Donnie ducked into a cobblestoned laneway and legged it.

Darkness hid him effectively as he ducked into a doorway and opened his mouth as far as he could while gulping air; it was better than wheezing in a corner and giving himself away.

The men stormed past, which meant one thing: the plan was beginning to work.

He ditched the overcoat and hat and walked back the way he’d come, emerging back on the street near his destination. Then, pausing only to stand on the fingers of the slowly ascending drug dealer and nicking his drugs, Donnie jumped onto the tram that had fortuitously arrived.

It took him West, toward the docks.

* * *

A man nodded and put the phone down. The man was Colonel Panix. And Colonel Panix was annoyed.

‘Get. Me. Penfolde,’ he said simply.

* * *

Donnie alighted the tram as ticket inspectors boarded. He kind-of wished he’d hung around to torment the inspectors with his Church of Elvis Get Out of Jail Free ID card. It was often hard to resist.

But they ignored him, finding it far easier to harass the first tourist they came upon.

There was a short exchange which consisted of the tourist finding their ticket and then being koshed by the inspector behind her. The others took it upon themselves to manhandle the woman from the tram and hold her down on the cement by way of a size nine boot held hard against her head.

Donnie walked down the ramp at the end of the tramstop and crossed the road. He barely glanced up as he noticed the grey van stuck in traffic across the road.

There she was.

He crossed in front of the van, provoking some consternation from the occupants before blending with a crowd of people watching a game of football on the big screen.

One team — blue shirts — had posession of the ball, amid loud cries of approval from the similarly clad fans. Those players in the black and white were less than happy about this state of affairs and wrested the ball from their opponents by way of a left forearm to the throat and twelve men on top of the hapless victim.

The crowd began to engage with one-another and Donnie made a retreat up a flight of stairs as the first fists were thrown. Glancing back he was caught full-frontal by the camera above the stairs then walked away from the fray.

The members of The Sisterhood that had been in pursuit were blocked by the fracas only momentarily before riot police screamed in and restored order the hard way.

Donnie was far away by the time his pursuers reached the stairs though.

* * *

Another dark alleyway and a bag stashed in a garbage bin – though the outside had the odour of a thousand fish-heads left in the midday sun, the contents had been vaccuum sealed for freshness: a dinner suit and pressed white shirt. Quickly – as it was freaking freezing – he stripped his clothes off and donned the suit, noting Prime had been kind enough to include a comb; he ran it through his hair and threw the bags into the trash again. Cursing, he briefly retrieved them to remove the shoes that had been provided; a dinner suit and white (all right, mottled grey) sneakers wasn’t quite the done thing in this town.

Behind him he heard a heart rending scream.

‘They’ve taken them!’ screamed the drug dealer standing beside his car. The window had been smashed in. ‘My fuckin’ drugs!’

Donnie frowned and wished the man luck; it wasn’t likely he was long for this world. He walked back out into the light and back the way he had come on the tram, with a view to warming himself up with a little exercise; at least four members of The Sisterhood were now hot on his heels.

Speaking of heels, his were astonishingly painful due to the new shoes. Still, nothing to the pain he’d be feeling if his pursuers got their fingernails into him. Around a corner he was confronted by a group of BSD thugs with one thing on their mind. It suddenly became two as the girls came into view.

A successful distraction, thought Donnie as he dodged moving vehicles and made his escape, leaving the men and women behind to have their particular brand of party. He wasn’t dressed for a fight.

Well, the night had been a resounding success thus-far; he’d achieved the goal he’d been set which was to get so far up the collective noses of the BSD and Sisterhood that they’d send squads out for him.

No-doubt Colonel Panix and Miss Rook would be en-route to their meeting place as he ran around out here — hopefully thinking of him as much as their decisions as to whether their little disagreement could be solved with an armistice or all-out war. Put that many insanely obsessed people in a room together and the conclusion wouldn’t be pretty: two groups enter, none leave.

The Mustang zoomed past.

* * *

A specially prepared room had two entrances. One one set of doors two young men stood. On the other, two young women. Above them, security cameras recorded the action, such as it was.

The cameras were connected via cables and wireless protocols to a single room in a basement somewhere in the city. The location was unimportant to the BSD and Sisterhood, but to The Church of Elvis, it was a piece of gold in the rough.

And in this room, two people watched the screens. One glanced up from their controls.

‘They’re tapped-in,’ said Monsieur Bleu.

Madame Pink smiled; Donnie would have called this a chilling number one.

‘Now let us see where this will lead,’ she said as on one monitor, boys stood to attention as the BSD party approached. Colonel Panix nodded to them as the doors were held open.

On another monitor, girls stood to attention as the Sisterhood party approached. Miss Rook nodded to them as the doors were held open.

* * *

‘We’re nearly ready,’ said Elvis, scratching his cheek. The screen embedded into the dashboard was a tapped into the surveillance feed.

‘I’ll Park it then,’ murmured Marcus and pulled the car into a dark alleyway. He turned the lights off, secure in the knowledge that the clerical plates would keep them safe from the long-arm-of-the-parking-inspectors.

* * *

There was silence in the room with two doors. The Sisterhood on one side of the square table, The BSD on the other.

Two folders were exchanged, in accordance with the commands of their superiors. Two folders were opened by the opposite party.

Then things got interesting…

* * *

Prime watched the clock, praying Donnie had remembered the arrangement. A camera caught her image… and in a dark room a black-and-white facsimile was displayed on a screen.

‘Patricia Ferrer,’ said Madame Pink watching the screen with Prime’s image on it. ‘You’re looking particularly well.’

She nodded, content with the events.

‘Well trained,’ said Monsieur Bleu. ‘Proud?’

‘Pride isn’t the word I’d use,’ replied Madame Pink. ‘She is performing as expected.’

‘And Miss Rook will not fail?’

‘Certainly not,’ said Madame Pink, a little taken aback.

They stared at the screens as the first verbal altercation took-place in the room with two doors.

‘Now let us add the random element,’ she added. ‘And see if our theories are true.’

He nodded and left the room, picking-up an umbrella, hat and overcoat as he departed.

Madame Pink presed a button on her keyboard.

* * *

‘Oh shit,’ said Elvis.

‘What?’

‘The location of the meet…GPS has finally worked it out’

‘Where?’

Elvis pointed to a multi-storey building in the distance – a shopping center topped with an enormous bejewelled Christmas tree. Beneath it was a clock which was counting down the seconds until Christmas day: Fourty two and counting.

‘There.’

‘Fuck,’ breathed Marcus. ‘If they go for it under there…’

‘It’ll be packed with people,’ said Elvis, stating the obvious. ‘We’ve got to get the info to Prime.’

‘But we’ll blow her cover,’ said Marcus. ‘Is it worth it?’

Elvis glanced sideways at Marcus.

‘Right then,’ said Marcus and started the car.

* * *

Donnie Penfolde took a breath and walked up to the glass doors, wishing for his bed and a warm doona.

A man wearing an overcoat and trilby hat  stepped out, lifting his umbrella as he walked by. He caught caught Donnie on the leg with the point.

‘Jeez!’ said Donnie as the man walked past. ‘ That really hurt!’

‘It was supposed to,’ murmured Monsieur Bleu as he walked away into the night. ‘Au revoir Monsieur Penfolde.’

As Donnie walked into the restaurant, he began feeling queazy.

‘A table for sir,’ asked the Maitre’d.

‘Yeah,’ said Donnie and stumbled into the chair. The world tilted and his head struck the tabletop with a thud.

BZORNT!

Fitzroy North

May 2009