The Missing Millionaire

Miriam pored over the myriad pixels on her monitor that collectively formed to comprise an eerie tableau, a series of squares meshed together, aerial photographs taken by a great unconsciousness that is the satellite. Its mechanical eyes, magnified to nth powers, may have been the only thing that had seen the fated plane descend in its death throes, it held the secret to the millionaire’s final resting place, a performance artist’s piece of twisted fuselage amongst the trees. Given an even timeline, we all wind up amongst the trees, reconnected with the ground, the carbonised essence of life made whole.

Miriam’s grandmother had turned 83. Leaning close to hear her, she’d told Miriam of the afterlife. Energy that lifted and waned upon the spiritual plane of the universe. She said she was looking forward to seeing the galaxies through the eyes of an awakened consciousness. Perhaps that consciousness would also have seen where the millionaire’s plane had downed.

Miriam clicked the mouse and with deft moves of the wrist, she covered hundreds of miles, looking for anomalies, something which stuck out from the landscape of sand and Spinifex as foreign, man-made. As she went she recorded the grid references she had covered. She was a search volunteer, one of hundreds committed to finding the millionaire. Her motivations were less to do with charity and more to do with being a part of a greater whole, to do with connecting with a collective consciousness made possible through the digital world.

Miriam was a freelance editor. She worked from home, receiving her work in plain manila envelopes, stamped confidential, do not bend. She conferred with the Chief Editor and HR departments remotely, through a tiny spherical light and glistening lens of her web cam. She always wore her white blouse, and black vest, hair pulled up into an austere bun and red lipstick applied to present an almost regal look, the way her aquiline nose made her look like a noblewoman. She controlled the cam, it never dropped to reveal her moth-eaten track pants or jimmy-jams. She would have died had they seen her moccasins.

She would write an article on the search, she had a unique perspective having been selected as one of the key volunteers. She had chatted to others in the search chat room. One was a mother of three, who lived just four suburbs away. They would never meet in real life, though they chatted regularly each day now, five minutes here, thirty here. She knew the names of her children, and that her husband was a landscape gardener. She knew that the mother couldn’t stand the heat, preferred winter any day.

She sighed, set her messenger status to ‘Away’ and stretched. The fridge yielded no results – condiments, sauce, capers, olives. A half-eaten tub of yogurt - natural taken too far – the creamy texture tasted bitter without the artificial flavouring and strawberry red colouring. There was a phone bill and a postcard from a friend in Japan in the letterbox. She slit open the third envelope. It was a rejection letter from the publisher, thanks but no thanks to her manuscript – about a suburban affair gone awry – but keep submitting, we would like to see more of your work in the future.

She alt-tabbed to her editing work, but the words on the screen merged into one, she couldn’t concentrate. Would her death ever be as significant as the missing millionaire's?

Thrill-Kill Carl

Thrill-Kill Carl and his death-kill-super-seek suit merchants. An evil combination. I first met Carl in a mind-sweep auto-bar. I had had a bad day. I wasn’t exactly sure why I had gone there. I just didn’t get off my train. My stop came and went. The train then reached the outskirts of the median perimeter and began to accelerate through the furthest reaches of the great suburban sprawl.

At last we had arrived. The end of the line. I was the only one left on the train carriage. The curious thing was that I hadn’t been particularly aware of anyone getting off along the way. I guess my mood had desensitized me. Work was a slow death that started in my toes.

I slid the automatic doors open and stepped out into a blaring loudhailer advising passengers the station was closing for the night. Last service for the evening. I trundled down the stairs out into the street. I hung a left and just walked. Time was inconsequential. I found a bar.

Sitting down with my cold pint I exhaled and for the first time that evening I took in my surroundings. The bar was empty but for the bartender. He hung up his towel and exited the room through a dull door at the rear. I heard murmuring then a raised voice. Then silence. The door opened again. The bartender reemerged and returned to his place at the bar.
He glanced up only when I placed my empty glass before him.

“One more.” I told him. He locked my gaze for a moment as he poured me another pint. I retreated to my table.

The voices from behind the rear door flared again – I saw the door open and a man appear. His head jerked in my direction. I stared numbly. The head jerked again beckoning towards the door behind him. I turned to the bartender who was absently wiping down a table. He didn’t look up. I moved towards the entrance.

Before I could get there the man was before me. His hand reached out and took my shoulder, effortlessly redirecting me to the rear door from whence he had come.

The room was sparse. A table stood in the centre. Five men sat around it. They wore suits that looked ethereal, otherworldly. A wooden stand of ornate design sat in the middle of the table, a blue, slightly iridescent orb lay atop it. The suited men were gazing at it.

The man directed me to seat at the end. I sat, folded my arms, fingers interlocked, as the other men were doing and opened my eyes to the orb as well.

---

“O my laughing pretties of the doomsday machine! Come to haggle your wares upon the revolving Chinese circle of a monetary death-spin? One more time perhaps? Go on. Why not, you do afterall deserve it.”

I turned my head to the voice. It was disembodied – emanating from the man rather than from his larynx.

“Mystified my dear good golly chum? Why this is the time of dialysis and comforting conformity.” He took me aside and whispered in my ear. “Or, as they say, ‘tis but a dally from the realm of Pittany.” I turned incredulous in his direction. Rather than elucidate his point, he gave me a conspiratorial wink. I was sure in fact the he’d even given me a nudge.

My eyes wandered to the men around me. Their suits. My mind hastened to understand them, to make a connection with their reality. Like a wet slippery canvas, their descriptions dripped from my mind’s page. I found I could not convey their presence into thoughts. It was unusual. They never looked up.

I decided to relax. Whether the idea had been mine or it had been suggested by my host I will never know. My eyes hung heavy as I watched the orb. My limbs grew tired.
My eyelids began to droop.

---

An hour or a day or so later I emerged from the dream. Steven was worried – he’d never seen me like that – not in the two years he had known me. He knelt at my bed and gripped my hands.

“Jesus! Dave I’ve been worried. How do you feel lover?” My eyes darted in Steven’s direction. He looked familiar – like I had seen him somewhere before.

“Who…?” My voice cracked in my throat. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere.

“They say with some good rest you’ll be as good as new.” I caught a brief smile. “You’re to come home with me.”

“But…but who are you?” My mind was racing now. My vision began to clear then swim again. 

“Who the fuck are you!!?!!”

“Dave – for God’s Sake! Chill out!” He stood up and began to furiously pack some of my belongings into a bag. “I’m taking you home - now!” Then: “Fuck-Wit!” He said under his breath as he yanked me from the bed.

I was fragile. Too weak to resist. I melted in his arms.

---

I came to in the warehouse shack of my mind. There were big stars.

“Soon it will be over.”

I hung upside down strapped to what looked like a shimmering well-lacquered board. My arms hung free.

The voice hovered around my frontal lobe. “Soon … Soon … S s s s soo oo o n n n n n n…” It flicked into my consciousness and then faded. “God is moving this time.” A man’s voice spoke form the corner of the room. I heard the click of a switch and the board began to turn and slowly twist.

“Getting dizzy yet?” The man’s face spun in front of me, leering. Circus music assailed my senses. I saw white balls. Watched them getting larger and larger, closer. They flashed at my focus. The pain was incontinent – I could not physically place it. Pasty made-up faces flickered in front of my eyes. Unicycles rode towards my head, their tires inches from my face. Men plummeted from trapezes of life into a fire-flight of existential experience, their screams ripping at my lungs. Clowns cried themselves ragged, their hearts exploding with the torment. A beard-faced woman suffocated me with her tits. I stopped breathing.

---

“Do I have your attention yet?” Thrill-Kill Carl was tapping my shoulder again. I returned my focus to the orb sitting on the ornate stand resting on the table in the sparse room through the dim door at the rear of the empty pub, which stood at the end of the line.

A Silent Prayer

I shouldn’t have left them there with her. She’s not a mother, not worthy of the title. She’s barely fit to look after herself, let alone the two young’uns. Still I couldn’t miss this for the world. The siren sounded and the game was on. The crowd erupted around me in a deafening roar, everyone standing up, streamers, scarves, club colours.

‘This is it mate,’ Mike shouted to me. ‘The big one!’


‘This tip of yours better pay off,’ I replied. ‘I’ve got everything riding on this.’


‘Relax, there’s no way Essendon won’t win the Grand Final. Have I ever been wrong?’


‘Actually…’ I was cut off by another roar as the Hawks made their first goal. I sat back down, starring blankly ahead. I opened my wallet and counted the notes then went through the coins. $68.70. A princely sum that was. I sighed.


Mike elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Hey, check that lot out.’ He cocked his head in the direction of two good looking blondes. ‘Wouldn’t mind a go’ of that, eh. Eh?’ He laughed. ‘Not that you’ve got much of a look-in. No job, no prospects…’


‘Quit it mate, I’ll find a job. It’s hasn’t even been a month.’


‘Try telling that to the missus, if you can get a sober moment together that is. Still you’re on the right side of 30, barely.’


‘Oh, you’re just a stream of good news today Mike. I’ll know who to look up when I’m feeling blue.’


‘Don’t go all Carlton on me now mate, we’ve got a game to win here. Kids don’t come cheap, and neither do those two chicks by the looks of them. We win this, we’re on easy street.’


‘I’d settle for hard street and a decent job, to tell the truth,’ I looked at my betting slip and said a silent prayer.

Hey Come To

‘Hey, come to,’ I said. I shook him again, but he did not stir. His head lolled around listlessly, a heavy bulb on a paper string, I grabbed his shoulders and shook him, hard, lifting his head from the floor, my hand beneath it to stop it striking the polished wood. What to do? What to do? I thought, clicking my fingers and looking about absently. Some water maybe. No, need to get him up. Walk him through to his room. Put him down on the bed.

Crouching low below him, I lift up an arm and slide my head and shoulder in under it. Rocking in circles slightly I am able to wedge in and get an angle to clasp his chest and lift him up using my legs at the knees to lift him up. He is just under a foot taller than me and so I am stretching to get him up on his legs, which drag and catch on the furniture as I stagger with him to his room. He is a dead weight and I’m exhausted with the exertion by the time he flops headlong onto the bed. He moans slightly and immediately goes into deep snoring, stilted slightly every fourth or fifth breath, where the air comes through strained.

I place a glass of water on his bedside table later, and then turn off the light and close the door. He will sleep the deepest sleep. And he’ll make the coffee in the morning upon awaking, and we’ll both sit and stand, talking and smoking, combing our hair and showering, and then the both of us will head off to work.

The Number 57 Tram Home

Sarah dreaded this trip each week. She had to work late on Thursdays before heading out to Maribyrnong to spend the night with her Grandmother who was all alone since her husband had passed away. Sarah was a dutiful granddaughter. She could never let her Grandmother know just how she dreaded these visits.

The tram shuddered to a halt on the corner of Victoria and Elizabeth Street. The brakes groaned at the effort. As the doors swung open on creaking hinges those passengers standing were flung back before holding the plastic grips more tightly against the motion.

Three males in their mid-twenties swung aboard. They swaggered to the back of the tram where they welled around the steps at the rear, safe from too many prying eyes.

Sarah looked up from her book and studied them. One of the men was shorter than the others but with a heavier build. He had three gashes across his face which glistened with blood from a recent wound. Sarah sensed the man was about to see her watching him. She turned back to his book, alternating between reading and peering out into the damp wet Melbourne night hoping this would all soon be over.

It was winter and people were scurrying between the shelter of shop awnings and the open unprotected streets. She watched a businessman in a grey suit pull the collar of his coat up around his neck to keep out the chilling rain. The businessman scampered across the street at the lights and pulled himself onto the tram. He walked down the carriage and sat opposite Sarah. Their eyes met briefly before they both looked away.

Sarah huddled back against her seat. She listened to the short sturdy man speak to his friends.

“Fucking bloody junkies, mate. Fucking junkies. Never trust a junkie.” He was emboldened in his inebriated state, swaying with the tram’s motion as the doors slid shut once more. The tram’s bell dinged and it turned the corner onto Victoria Street. The man was speaking loudly as though to make his point known to all those aboard.

There was an Asian family sitting closest to him trundling their way home after a trip to the Markets with black wire-framed shopping trolleys laden with all manner of vegetables and produce for the week ahead. The father’s face was lined with wrinkles and concern. He stared out at the night, praying for this to all be over. Praying that his family would be safe.

The sturdy male with the bleeding cuts then knelt down next to Sarah. She clutched her bag of University books and plastic bag of groceries closer to her chest for protection as he leaned in:
“Never trust junkies. D’ya hear me? Never. They will nearer rip your face off than talk to ya. She spat on me when I went up to grab me’self a fucking beer! Spat on me – all down my jacket and all ‘cos I bumped into her with me shoulder on the way past. Ah. Fuck. Bullshit. Fucking bullshit!” He looked back up at his two friends.

“Bullshit is right mate. Total bullshit junkies.” One said back to him. The other settled himself further down in the back steps.

“I mean look at me face! Bleeding an’ shit all over the friggin’ place. My face is fucked up man.”
The man suddenly caught the businessman’s gaze.

‘Leave her out of it.’ The businessman said. ‘Leave her alone.’

Sarah saw the businessman’s hands were clenched tight, knuckles white. The man stared at the businessman for what seemed like a long time. He seemed to be weighing up the effort of a fight. The businessman didn’t back down – kept his eyes fixed on the man as though daring him to try something.

The doors opened and a ticket inspector came on board. The man turned back to his friends, muttering something Sarah couldn’t make out, and sat down in the stairwell. Sarah smiled her thanks at the businessman. As she fished out her tram ticket she made a promise that she would save for a car as soon as she could.

The Factory News

The factory news was delivered three times daily by way of couriers traveling from one depot to the other. The facts and information they carried was of a ‘sensitive’ nature – awkward – were it to fall into the wrong hands.

I was one such courier.

On this particular morning I had had a rough night. Hadn’t slept much more than a wink. My nerves were jittery and the air seemed unconscionably quiet. Eerie even. My bed creaked as I slid from one side to the other. My alarm went off too early.

I arose feeling exhausted. After a shower and coffee, life began to return. My right eye twitched now and again.

The drive to work was turmoil. After leaving my sedate street and merging onto the main road I was jammed into a mass of cars careering down interminable stretches of road like automatons, mindless matters of metal and steel, all moving unswervingly to their destination of work in the rush-hour cliché of terror and belligerence.

I had the great misfortune of being boxed into the middle lane by a set of two or three cars and soon found myself unable to speed ahead or slow down or turn off in a bid to loose them for they drove so doggedly about me.

Then they took a left and my car obliged in kind. A play-off ensued – I would break a right and they would follow and yet afterwards I was urged to take another right.

I pulled the car over and came to a stop. I left the engine running as I watched the other cars pull over, up and behind me, against the ditch. I opened my door and leaping across the ditch I sidled up to the fence around the field beyond.

Blackened figures are not good at the best of times. This was not even a mere average ‘time’. Two got out of the three cars. I backed closer to the fence.

“Don’t be alarmed.” He had said. The voice could have even been familiar. I don’t know – I can’t remember. “We’ve come only for the paper.”

“In the glove-box.” I said. Sure they were sensitive documents – powerful in the wrong hands – their's perhaps? But to me? I know their secrets – I had carried them to and fro twice a day – I stopped at intersections, while waiting for a light to change, I’d have a flick through. Maybe peruse a page that caught my attention. I knew their secrets. Dangerous in the wrong hands? We’ll have to wait to find out.

Rambler Classic

Hucston. Just who in the hell had heard ’o’ Hucston? I can tell you to save from counting. Nobody. Nobody but the inhabitants, which numbered about two hundred, and then there was me.

Since arriving in this nowhere-town, with its closed-up gas stations and abandoned lots, shop fronts all boarded up, bored youths flicking knives going nowhere fast and old johnny law patrolling the main drag like it was the only thing he knew how, I was getting the awful sinking feeling in my gut that the last of my luck was fixin’ to run out. 

That was, of course, until I turned off the main drag into a side alley and banged my knee straight into her bonnet. She was a 1964 Rambler Classic 770 and just about the most smoking set of wheels I’d laid my eyes on in this shambles of a town.

The passenger door was unlocked, which floored me. I sidled over to the driver’s seat and as I did, I caught a whiff of that gorgeous new leather smell, like a cross between that new hair pomade and the sharp scented lotion the barbers use after a genuine cut throat shave. The smell enveloped the whole car and I damn near swooned. 

Everything I know about cars, I’d learned from White Mike, my cellmate back in San Quentin. I’d served a short stretch there in ’58. Named for his albino complexion, White Mike was a lifer. Murder and grand theft auto. I’d be damned if there was anything about the delicate art of the modern car-jacker that he didn’t know. The man was a con’s walking encyclopaedia. 

White Mike put me wise to the greats - Coltrane, Mingus, Ellington, Monk, Cannonball and the irrepressible Miles Davis. It was the way they played the blues that got me thinking about my life, the what-ifs and could-have-beens. Hell, if some of those thoughts didn’t come rough and hard at a man every now and again. Especially when cooped up in a 4 by 6 cell, eating that rat-arse poison prison food. Knowing all the while I’d left all those pretty ladies, dolled up in their finery, dancing and twisting their sweet stuff, back in my native San Fran’.

So when I did get out, I got myself dressed up in a second-hand suit, ran a comb through my hair with a dab of brilliantine and hunted out a jazz club. There were plenty, if you knew where to look. Like I said, White Mike had put me wise and damn me to hell if jazz didn’t turn the ladies out, straight up and down - they did look fine.

And that’s how I met Val. Slinky li’l Val. Val never stepped out in less than a high-class low-cut silk number that clung to her body in a way that left me in no doubt there was a higher power. What I’d done to deserve such blessings I didn’t stop to ask. It was the way she smelled that first took me in - feminine, full of dark allure and irresistible.

She and I spent our nights cloistered in a back booth, slamming whiskey shots and pumping the mini-jukebox with quarters, keeping the jazz numbers coming, waiting on some cool West Coast act to make its way to the stage. 

Val damn near got me shot tryin’ to steal a wad off her ol’ man, Duke. This was not just any wad, this was nearly five grand we were talking and, my oh my, was Duke connected. I should have stuck to the motor caper; stealing cars had never seemed so safe. 

After we’d bolted, every town we hit, there was talk of this man who’d stolen Duke’s girl and made off with a whole load ’o’ dough. Word was that Duke had a bounty on the man; would pay handsomely if anyone came by him or his (now) ex-lady friend, Val. 

Three days ago, Val upped and left in the middle of the night. I should’ve seen it coming. Any gal cold enough to leave her sugar daddy of 6 plus years without so much as a good-bye kiss wouldn’t think twice about leaving a beat up ex-con like myself, jazz affectations aside. 

She’d been thoughtful enough though to make off with what was left of the dough we’d stolen. Real thoughtful. I didn’t even have enough to make the hotel rent that next morning, so when I woke, pounding whisky hangover thudding at me like a clamouring landlord that just won’t quit ‘til he’s got his fingers on the rent, I just walked out the door and hitched me a ride out of town quick smart. 

A whole day and night later, I found myself in glorious old Hucston. I arrived with the shirt on my back, less than a nickel to my name and a hole in my left boot that was getting bigger every step I took. I’d even pawned my suit jacket for a pack of cigarettes.

Now I had me some wheels and a half tank ’o’ gas, it looked to be farewell Hucston. The place was starting to get to me anyhow. Creepin’ locals, their critter-eyes-a’buggin’ when they first clapped eyes on me at the local bar. The bar tender hit me with a whole bunch ’a questions, I said I’d sooner have a drink than tell him my life-story; wasn’t much there to tell anyhow. I figure any ’o’ the bars in these parts that play all the country music and none ’o’ that good wholesome blues and jazz is smoking the wrong stick ’o’ tea. 

I scrabbled about under the dash, detaching a lead here, splicing another one here, until I had the two I needed. I touched them together and on the third spark the engine roared into life. I turned on the radio and Chico Hamilton came over the airwaves. I tapped the accelerator; got the fuel working through the pistons. Leaning back, I lit my last cigarette then turned up the dial and let Chico Hamilton serenade me as the afternoon deepened and the sun dreamt up long shadows in the eddies of the lane ways off the main drag. 

I rolled the Rambler down the main street, the window down, elbow out, one eye out for johnny law, enjoying the last of my cigarettes as Coltrane’s My Favourite Things came on. And that’s when I saw Val bold as love, stepping out of a local Macy’s, more bags than she could carry, all decked out in a new fur coat, smoking a cigarette from one of those cigarette extension devices the movie stars like. 

My, did she look fancy. Fancy with all that sweet dough trickling through her fingers, and not a second thought spared for me, left three towns back with only the shirt on my back.

I should have just kept on driving, put my pedal to the floor and left Hucston for the archaeologists to find in another millennia. But my hurt pride and sense of damn righteousness got the better of me and I pulled the car around, following from just behind as she strolled along, not a care in the world. 

She didn’t see me at first, the Rambler sidling along the pavement as she walked by, her attention on the more important things in life, like keeping hold of all her damn parcels. Miles’ version of Summertime came on and I turned it up, loud, the muted high trumpet clear as day and she must have recognised it, must have triggered some memory of an earlier, happier time.

She looked up in the direction of the music, peered straight at me like it was nothing and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched it dawn on her that it was me, right there, staring back at her, shit-eating grin on my face. That’s right darling, I’ve come to collect what’s due. 

One bag hit the pavement and toppled sideways, depositing a single leather high-heeled shoe that just looked forlorn and then she stumbled backwards, taking these little nervous steps until she bumped up against the storefront window. Then she turned and ran. Full tilt, down the alleyway. I jerked the car to a standstill and bolted out. I’d half expected to give chase. She’d have to know I wasn’t going to be the happiest man in Hucston after losing my retirement savings. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Lidgard has self-published two novellas - A Forming Destruction and The Subversion of Richard. His work has appeared in American Feed Magazine, Babel Magazine, Double Dare Press, Melange Magazine, Slinkster Ezine, The Australian Reader, and The Surface Literary Magazine. He regularly updates a blog on Australian jazz, and is working on a cyber-noir thriller. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.