“Don’t underestimate the value of the daily news,” Harry said to me once. “It’s saved many a wanted man’s skin. The police are always trying to prove they’re making progress: ‘Oh, we have a sighting here, we’ve picked up this clue or that one.’ Put that together with the public’s indefatigable hunger for news that has nothing to do with them, and you’ve got the best thing for a fugitive out on a crime spree. You think I’m paranoid? Check out the general public. They demand up-to-date news on investigations because they think the authorities are holding out on them, hiding information about criminals who are in their backyards with their guns and cocks out, ready to party.”
He accused the others in the cooperative of harboring mercenary thoughts. He said he could smell greed on all of them; he said it clung to them like beads of sweat. “A thousand dollars in your hand isn’t good enough?” he’d scream. Harry predicted that their little Greek senate would go down in flames. Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal. The cooperative was getting into constant disputes over the share of profits and the distribution of dirty jobs like filing the serial numbers off a thousand stolen cameras. Its members were learning that, like their manifestations in whole countries, profit-driven democracies create imbalances, encourage greed and impatience, and because no one’s going to vote to be the one who cleans the public toilets, lead to faction-splitting and ganging up on the weakest and most unpopular members. Moreover, Harry smelled that anonymity was frustrating them. That’s how Harry discovered everything, through his nostrils. “You’re the worst!” he’d say, pointing at Terry.
“Mate, I didn’t say a word,” Terry said.
“You didn’t have to! I can smell it!”
And maybe he could smell it. What did Harry once say about long-term paranoia earning a man telepathic powers? Maybe he was really onto something there. Maybe Harry was seeing the future. Or maybe he was just stating the bloody obvious: that my brother had ideas, and those ideas were going to destroy him and everyone along with him. To be honest, though, it wasn’t obvious to me then. I just didn’t see it coming. Well, maybe Bob Dylan was wrong. Maybe you do have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Second Project
Normally, there is your life, and you turn on the television and there is news, and no matter how grave it is, or how deep in the toilet the world has fallen, or how relevant the information might be to your own existence, your life remains a separate entity from that news. You still have to wash your underpants during a war, don’t you? And don’t you still have to fight with your loved ones and then apologize when you don’t mean it even when there’s a hole in the sky burning everything to a crisp? Of course you do. As a rule, there’s no hole big enough to interrupt this interminable business of living, but there are exceptions, grim instances in the lives of a few select unlucky bastards when the news in the papers and the news in their bedrooms intersect. I tell you, it’s a daunting and appalling moment when you have to read the newspapers to find out about your own struggle.
It started far from home. One morning headlines shouted that key players in the Australian cricket team had been caught taking bribes from bookmakers to underperform in international matches. It was big news, perhaps bigger than it deserved, mostly because if sport is Australia ’s national religion, as it has been said, then it was like all the Christian fundamentalists finding out that God made the trees and mountains without first washing his hands. It rocked a lot of cores. There was public outcry and mass disappointment and saber-rattling and everywhere people said it was disgusting and rotten and corrupt and an unremovable stain on sport. The voices on the radio bayed for blood. They wanted to hear the snapping of necks: the necks of the bookies and the necks of the real traitors, the players themselves. The politicians cried for justice and vowed to get to the bottom of things, and even the prime minister promised “a thorough and exhaustive inquiry into corruption in sport.”
For me, this sporting scandal was mere background noise. I was too preoccupied with my own problems: my mother was dying and shutting herself up like a mad queen, my father was disappearing into a bottle, and my brother was tearing through the world with a gun in one hand and an ax in the other.
The next Saturday that Terry and I met at a game, it was Australia vs. Pakistan. There had been a question as to whether it would still be on, considering the scandal, but the innocent-until-proven-guilty technicality meant it was going ahead as scheduled. The sky was bright and the air full of spring- the kind of day that lulls you into a false sense of security, but I still felt the apprehension I always feel in groups of thirty-five thousand people apt to pool their collective fury at a moment’s notice.
When the players walked onto the field, the crowd started to boo like mad, because these were the men implicated in the scandal. Some of the players ignored the crowd, while others gave the fuck-you sign, the one where you use both arms. It was a hoot. I love booing. Who doesn’t? Some of the boos were chock-full of fury, while others were more lighthearted boos mingled with laughter. Beside me Terry didn’t make a sound.
When the captain came out to bowl, there wasn’t just booing but hissing, and people started throwing things, like beer cans and shoes- their own shoes! One of the spectators jumped the fence, ran onto the field, and tried to tackle the captain. Then a crowd spilled out too. Someone blew a whistle, and the game was clearly over when Terry turned to me and said, “Let’s go.” I thought he meant “Let’s go home,” so I agreed, but before I knew what was happening, Terry was bolting down the grandstand toward the cricket oval. I tried to follow, but for a long time I couldn’t see him in the madness of the crowd that had come from all sides and blocked the teams’ exit. It was all very tribal and nerve-jangling. You know how rioting mobs are.
Then I heard some yelling that was different in character from the stock murmuring of the furious mob. I saw what they were looking at, an image that has never left the inside of my eyelids: Terry had pulled out a gun and was pointing it at the Australian captain. Terry’s eyes were wide and clear, his face refreshed, as if he’d just bathed in crystal waters. He wore an uncharacteristic look of self-admiration. The mob watched on, frozen. They wanted to run, but curiosity wanted them to stay. Curiosity won. Police were fighting their way down the grandstand steps when my brother shot the captain of the Australian cricket team in the stomach.
I don’t know how we got out of there. I remember Terry seeing me in the crowd and waving. I remember running. I remember Terry laughing and suggesting we split up and just before disappearing into the crowd saying, “Let’s see if he can underperform his own death!”
There was no bigger story in Australia, before or since. Not even the Federation got as much press. And the worst thing was, they had pictures. Someone took a beauty of Terry standing there, eyes shining, arm outstretched, the gun held out in front of him and a friendly smile on his face, as if he were about to give the captain an amiable piece of advice. Every newspaper and television station ran that picture. From then on, he was a wanted man. This was the real beginning of Terry’s infamy.
Our little town was inundated with police and reporters. The reporters were a nuisance. They wouldn’t take “Fuck off” for an answer. The police were irritating too. They asked me all sorts of questions, and for a while I was under suspicion. I admitted having gone to the game with my brother but said I’d lost him as soon as he ran into the crowd. No, I said, I didn’t see the shooting. No, I said, I hadn’t heard from him since. No, I said, I didn’t know where he lived. No, we weren’t close. No, I didn’t know who his friends or associates were. No, I didn’t know where he got the gun. No, I didn’t even know he had a gun. No, I didn’t expect to be hearing from him again. No, if I did hear from him I wouldn’t call the police, because after all, he was still my brother. Yes, I had heard of obstruction of justice. Yes, I knew what being an accessory was all about. Yes, I would be willing to go to jail, but I’d really rather not.