Going All The Way

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Travis sits in his car. In the car park on Ward Ave. He tries Katya’s mobile. Voicemail. He gets out and walks down the stairs and exits to Ward Ave, walks quickly along to Bayswater Road and turns right. Katya sometimes hangs out in the Kardomah Café. They have free entry on Thursday night. Decent bands. He walks down the stairs into the subterranean band room. A band plays some perfect pop music. Travis searches the room with his eyes. Can’t see her. Walks to the bar. Gets a double vodka with lots of ice, sips it, walks through the mostly under-thirty crowd, searching, but she isn’t here. He goes right down the back of the room, stands on a table, and his eyes dart all over the place. No, not here. One last thing. He knocks on the door of the female toilets and walks in, two girls doing their make-up don’t even look up. All four cubicle doors are closed. He knocks on each door calling her name out, ‘Katya, Katya’. Nothing.

He leaves quickly and walks to Darlinghurst Road. Crosses over the street towards the Crest Hotel bottle shop. About fifty metres past it is a set of stairs. He walks down. It is an old video games parlour, but all that remains now is a glass office and bare space. A door in the far corner leading to what he didn’t know. Some young people are huddled together in the far corner in the semi-dark. Empty fits scattered all over the floor. In the glass office, a sixteen-year-old Aboriginal boy sits on an orange swivel chair. Travis walks over to him. He knows the boy from around The Cross. They talked AFL before. Travis had told him he was on the radar to be drafted; it was something he never told anyone, but the kid was AFL crazy. Travis still plays, only it is for Randwick, a million miles from the big league.

The boy says, ‘What’d you want?’

‘I’m looking for Katya.’

‘Bad s**t at the Cross I hear,’ the boy says.

‘Katya, she here or not?’

The boy points at the door in the far corner of the room.

Travis walks to it, tries to pull it open, it doesn’t budge an inch. The young boy laughs, and the other people in the room laugh, and Travis wheels around and runs at the boy, the speed pushing him hard. He tries to open the door to the office, but it doesn’t move an inch, and they all laugh again. Travis picks up a lone chair and swings it hard, and the glass shatters, and the boy falls off his swivel chair but gets up calmly and says, ‘Go. Katya’s not here, go.’

Travis emerges back on Darlinghurst Road. There is another place she might be, further along, before you reach Springfield Park, next door to a motel almost as shitty as the Cross. He climbs the stairs up to the peep show. Katya works here sometimes when she is desperate. They have a set up like in Paris Texas. You put money in a slot, and a panel opens, and a girl performs in front of you like Natassja Kinski did with Harry Dean-Stanton. It is weirdly brilliant, but the place is filthy, and there are video booths set up where you can do the same thing. Slot dollar coins and watch hardcore porno. Toilet paper on a hook to clean yourself up after finishing.

Travis goes to the counter where a bored clerk asks him how many coins he wants. Travis says, ‘I’m looking for Katya.’

His mobile rings as the guy says, ‘Don’t know any girls names, I just work…’

‘Yeah, you just work here,’ and Travis answers his mobile. It is the cop, Olsen.

‘Ann is dead, Travis. The girl couldn’t survive the knife attack. This is murder now. I need to speak to you again.’

‘Alright. I’ll come in tomorrow.’

‘Need you to do that as soon as you’ve had some sleep. Sooner. This is murder, Travis.’

‘You said that. Be there at 1or 2 pm after some sleep.’

‘Make sure of it.’

Olsen hangs up. Travis didn’t kill her. The cop knows that but he… he thinks Travis knows more.

Travis walks to the booth where the girls dance live, feeds some coins in. The panel opens, but it isn’t Katya.

He sticks his hand under the panel, to hold it open, says, ‘Katya, I need to see her, It’s urgent.’

Travis is shocked when the girl says,

‘She’s in the private room, down the hallway.’

He turns around, opens the door, looks around, finds the hallway, walks along. There is an open door. A girl sits slumped in an old torn armchair, nodding on and off, high on heroin, needle marks in the crook of both arms. For a split second, he thinks it is Katya, but it isn’t. She is too far gone this one. Katya is a junkie, but a functioning one.

‘Where’s Katya?’ He says loudly.

‘I’m Katya,’ the girl says, smiling sickly at him. ‘I’m Mary Lou and the skipper too on Gilligan’s Island.’

Travis shakes his head, ‘f**k this.’

He turns and walks out onto the stairs.

The Aboriginal boy from the shooting gallery is sitting on the top step.

‘Hey, Mr Footballer.’

‘Hey, sorry about the chair.’

‘Not my place, only hang out there. Perry knows the knifeman.’

‘What?’

‘Katya’s friend, the pimp, dealer, he knows.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘He talks to me afterwards when he’s relaxed, know what I mean?’

‘He pays you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘For s*x?’

‘Whatever you want to call it.’

‘What did…’

‘He told me there was a guy wanted to do that s**t. It was a few days ago. I don’t know anything else, but like I said, Perry knows someone that wanted this. Must.’

‘What’s your name, kid?’

‘Whatever you want it to be. I won’t say nothing to the cops. Tell them I never met you, footballer.’

‘Ok, alright.’

His mobile rings again.

‘Hello,’ a distant voice says.

‘Katya, where the f**k are…’

‘You tell the cops it was me that sent Ann.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Hey! You tell the cops that…’

‘I told them I don’t where you are, but they know. Mick told them I gave you a free room’

‘Shit.’

‘Katya, she’s dead. Ann is dead.’

‘I need a place to stay.’

Travis felt in his pocket for the keys to Billy’s place. Pressed his fingers through his pants onto them.

‘I got a place for you. Where’s Perry?’

‘Don’t know. Where’s this place?’

He gave her Billy’s address in Darlinghurst, saying, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

‘Thanks, Travis, I owe you.’

Travis looks at the young boy and says, ‘I play at Randwick, you want to come down for a game, let me know. You know where I work. Might change your life.’

‘Like it changed yours,’ the boy says.

Travis shrugs and starts walking down the stairs. When he gets to the bottom step the boy yells out, ‘Might do it. Might come for a game.’