by John Dale
At twilight the ornate art deco fixtures of the stands, gyms, and changing rooms, built when the North Sydney Olympic Pool proudly hosted the 1938 Empire Games events, seemed more gloomily ornamental to the swim squad than they did to their sleepy eyes at dawn training.
Ever since Don had moved his team from the Drummoyne pool to North Sydney’s superior facilities two years before, Brian had been a little in awe of this place, the venue for an extraordinary eighty-six world record–breaking swims. As he recovered his breath, his eyes followed a flight of swallows to their nests above the topmost stands. Sitting in the back row was Dulcie, staring down at him.
* * *
When he arrived home an hour later, she met him at the door. Oddly, for this hour, and the evening temperature, and indoors, she was wearing her satiny blue strapless swimsuit.
She pulled him toward the stairs. She had applied fresh makeup and her body was shiny with perfumed lotion. He noticed her eyes had that eerie gleam.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not anymore. Why were you spying on me?”
“In order to check on you with your young girlfriends, you cruel bastard. You’d better come with me so I can punish you.”
He was speechless. Her urgent tugging released the now-familiar warm scent of womanly flesh, and the satiny fabric of the blue swimsuit brushed against his face with its own erotic smell, and his anger, bewilderment, and weakened resolve had no resistance.
Afterward, thanks to her wild fingernails, his back was scratched even more painfully than usual.
* * *
When Dulcie greeted him at the door the next evening, he managed to avoid her embrace. That she was wearing her swimsuit, he found alarming.
“I saw you watching me at the pool again,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore. Seriously, it has to end now.”
She smiled coquettishly. “I have to make sure Johnny Weissmuller is behaving.”
“Everything is peculiar about this,” he said. “Being shadowed by my mother-in-law is very weird behavior. I’m twenty-three. I’ve got a marriage to think of, not to mention the Olympics.”
“I’m too old for you now, is that it? And I’m weird!” She began to weep. “You lead me on, and now you prefer your teenage sluts.”
He groaned. “They’re not . . . I don’t . . . Jesus, I’m calling a halt for the good of everyone.”
Dulcie wiped her eyes and sighed theatrically. “Sure you are, you monster. Come and sit down for your dinner then.”
She spun on her heel and he followed her swimsuited backside and bare thighs toward the kitchen. In the doorway she turned abruptly and kissed him hard, and pressed her body against him, and he followed her upstairs once more.
Afterward, she said to him, smugly, “I bet those girls aren’t as good at this as I am.”
Speechless, he just shook his head. His shoulder blades had left spots of blood on the sheets.
* * *
Brian and Judy walked hand in hand through Old King Cole’s monstrous mouth. Luna Park was Sydney’s traditional Saturday-night entertainment magnet for young couples: for boys treating their girlfriends to a night out, and for both sexes hoping to meet someone. It was so close to home yet this was their first visit there since moving to Lavender Bay.
It was Brian’s idea. So was leaving the house quietly, without involving Dulcie. “We need some time alone,” he’d said.
They strolled along the boardwalk past the Wild Mouse, the Spider, and Dodgem City. The roller coaster rumbled overhead, the night regularly punctuated by customers’ screams. A breeze from the bay ruffled girls’ skirts and blew ice cream wrappers across their path.
Outside Dodgem City, four young sailors were chatting to three women. The sailors were egging each other on with nudges and winks, and smoking flashily, with tough-guy hand gestures. They wore their caps so jauntily far back on their heads, behind waves of pomaded hair, that the caps seemed to defy gravity. Sparks flew over the dodgem cars and the air smelled of electricity.
Brian felt Judy’s grip tighten and her shoulders stiffen as she urged him away.
“What ride would you like to go on?” he asked her. “The Big Dipper? The Ghost Train?”
“Did you see those girls?”
“The girls with the sailors? Yes, why?”
“What did you think of them?”
“Prostitutes, probably.”
“Attractive? Your sort of girls?”
“Hardly! What’s this about?”
“I’m trying to work out what sort of women you go for.”
“Your sort. Jesus, Judy!”
“Come home then, and show me how you really feel.”
As they walked back through Old King Cole’s mouth, two incoming teenage girls, heavily made up and no more than fifteen, elbowed each other, giggled, and the bolder one called out, “Hey, aren’t you Brian Tasker?”
He nodded in polite acknowledgment, but Judy glowered at them, her mood worsening when she heard the girl mutter, “The lucky titless bitch!”
At home, Dulcie was sitting in the dark garden. She looked pale and jumpy and her hair was awry, as if she’d been pacing in the wind. She was underdressed for the cool night and had a frangipani flower stuck behind an ear.
“There you are!” she said, too brightly. “The two lovebirds!” She raised her voice over the rumble and screams of the roller coaster. “I’m having a sherry. Will you join me?”
“Not in the mood, but thanks, Mum,” said Judy. “We’re off to bed.”
* * *
When Judy returned from Mass the next morning, Brian was sitting in his bathrobe in the garden again, sipping a cup of cocoa and staring sleepily across the bay.
She pulled open his robe. “So you’ve shaved down again!” she said, and slowly shook her head.
“I need to be transformed,” he replied. He reached a languid hand out for his cup but misjudged the distance and his hand fell short. “Sit down and have some cocoa.”
Dulcie was watching from the kitchen window. “There’s no more cocoa, Judy,” she called out. “I’ll make a pot of coffee.”
Brian looked toward his mother-in-law. “I’d like a coffee too—thanks, Dulcie. Everything’s a bit blurry this morning.”
Judy said, “I’ve been worried about your cuts and scratches. Sitting out here among the oleanders. They’re highly poisonous, you know.”
* * *
It was during his next 1,500-meter time trial on Monday that Brian Tasker collapsed at the 1,350-meter turn and became tangled in the lane ropes.
Still holding his stopwatch, Don Wilmott jumped fully clothed into the pool, disentangled him from the ropes, and held his head above water. But by the time Brian was hauled from the water, laid on the pool deck, and resuscitation was attempted, he was dead.
At the inquest the city coroner found that, tragically, repeated severe exertion had further damaged the clearly genetically defective heart of a gifted athlete.
His grieving widow attracted wide public sympathy after the Telegraph’s pictorial coverage of the funeral service at St. Francis Xavier, attended by top athletes from a wide range of sports, including the up-and-coming swimming star Murray Rose.
* * *
Two years later, Judy Tasker, only twenty-three, married the Telegraph’s young police reporter, Steve McNamara. By this time, after winning three gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Games at the age of seventeen, Murray Rose was a national hero.
In April 1958, when CPO Eric Kruger and the Warramunga left for six months’ exercises with the Far East Strategic Reserve, it was convenient for all concerned for Dulcie to move in with her daughter and her new husband.
PART III
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
RIP-OFF
by Tom Gilling
Sydney Harbour
It was Haklander who gave me the passenger’s name: Ramirez. He told me Ramirez was flying in from the States and would need a ride into the city. Usually I sat on the airport rank wi
th the other drivers, but Haklander said I could make a bit extra by picking up Ramirez in person.
“You don’t have to go looking for him,” he said, tossing me the keys to the taxi. “Just hold up a sign with his name on it. He’ll find you.”
Haklander was Dutch, or maybe Belgian. You had to listen hard to catch the accent. He owned half a dozen taxis. Four times a week I paid him $120 for the privilege of spending twelve hours in a Ford Falcon with illegal tires, a clapped-out gearbox, and nearly 200,000 kilometers on the clock. I drove days: three in the morning until three in the afternoon. The money and traffic were worse but there was less chance of being beaten up. Haklander must have paid a quarter of a million each for the plates, but thanks to Uber they were practically worthless. Haklander already had his eye on other ways to make money and upgrading his taxis wasn’t part of his business plan.
“Is this guy Ramirez a friend of yours?” I asked.
“No,” said Haklander. “One of the other drivers told me about the job. He couldn’t take it himself so I’m giving it to you.” He paused. “If you’re not interested I can give it to someone else.”
The details sounded vague—deliberately vague. It wasn’t exactly a dream job: forty dollars max. I was probably better off taking my chances on the rank. But I spent too much of my life sitting on ranks. I told Haklander I’d do it.
“Ramirez. R-A-M-I-R-E-Z,” he said. “The commonest name in Mexico.”
“Someone told me Rodriguez was the commonest name in Mexico.”
“Is that right?” Haklander replied without interest.
“That’s what they said.”
Haklander held my gaze for a few moments. “Just make sure you’re on time.” He wrote down the arrival time and held out his hand for the cash. “By the way, the oil gauge isn’t working.”
“I told you that last week,” I said, as Haklander’s phone started ringing.
He waved me out the door.
* * *
The flight must have landed early because as soon as I held up the sign with Ramirez’s name on it, he walked straight up to me. Or maybe he’d caught a different flight, I thought.
“You’re Mr. Ramirez?” I asked.
He nodded a bit too eagerly. “Ramirez. Yes.”
He was young, early twenties. He had bad skin and teeth that had never seen a dentist, but his Nike trainers were brand new. When I asked where he’d come from, he said, “Miami, Florida.” It sounded rehearsed, a phrase he’d spent time practicing in front of a mirror. As I threw his suitcase into the boot I noticed a half-torn tag on the handle from Bogota, Colombia: Aeropuerto Internacional El Dorado. Suit yourself, I thought. None of my business.
“You’re going to the city?” I asked, since that was what Haklander had told me.
Ramirez—if that was his real name—looked momentarily confused. Then he showed me a scrap of paper with an address written on it: Park Regis Concierge Apartments, Cremorne.
“Are you sure?”
Ramirez pointed to the address on the paper.
“Okay,” I said. It didn’t matter to me where I took him. Besides, I’d make twenty dollars more by driving him across the harbor. I got in and started the meter.
“Long queue?” I asked.
He looked at me blankly.
“Customs,” I said. “They’ve been on strike. It was chaos yesterday.”
Ramirez held the scrap of paper in front of my face.
“Park Regis Apartments,” I repeated. “I saw it the first time.”
I told him he had to wear the seat belt. He pretended not to hear, just sat there clutching a bag from Downtown Duty Free.
“Mate,” I said, “I’m not copping a fine because you refuse to wear a belt.” I tugged at the inertia reel to show him what I meant. He showed me the address again. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Ramirez wasn’t a talker. That didn’t bother me. You get used to all sorts: the ones who won’t shut up, the living dead, and everything between.
The traffic on Southern Cross Drive was a nightmare—two lanes closed, police cars and flashing lights everywhere. I warned Ramirez the trip was going to be expensive but told him there wasn’t much I could do about it. I turned on the radio: Ray Hadley. I wouldn’t want him sitting next to me in the cab but on the radio he’s alright. You can always switch him off.
I asked Ramirez if he had Australian money. I’ve had people try to pay me in rupees, pesos, cigarettes. He didn’t understand. I rubbed my finger and thumb together. Ramirez pulled out his wallet. He must have been carrying a thousand dollars in new fifty-dollar notes.
“Bridge or tunnel?” I always ask. Some passengers think it’s a trick question. Lion or tiger? Chicken or egg? I know one driver—Iranian, used to be a dentist—who refuses to use the tunnel. It’s the lights. They remind him of the months he spent in one of the Ayatollah’s prisons. I’ve never heard of a driver who won’t use the bridge. You can’t drive a taxi in Sydney if you’re scared of crossing water. If the passenger doesn’t have a preference, I always take the bridge. I’ve never liked the thought of all that water above my head. Once I picked up an old bloke who had worked all his life as a bridge painter. His skin was gray from all the paint in his pores. He told me he had talked seven people out of jumping; he still remembered their names. There was one he couldn’t stop—it was the one name he’d forgotten.
I waited for Ramirez to answer. He was staring straight ahead, both hands gripping the duty free bag in his lap. I pointed out the Opera House. You’d be surprised how many people don’t notice it, especially traveling north. Ramirez shook his head, as if I was trying to sell it to him.
By the time I pulled up outside the Park Regis Apartments, the meter showed $137.30. Normally I’d knock a few dollars off to make up for the traffic, but this time I didn’t. Ramirez pulled a bunch of fifties out of his wallet. I took three and tried to give him the change but he wouldn’t take it. I didn’t offer him a receipt.
He stayed in the taxi as I walked around to open the boot. A police car with flashing lights was parked fifty meters down the road. The cops had pulled over a P-plater in a black Audi TT. The driver looked about seventeen, black singlet, tattoos down one side of his neck.
As I popped the boot, Ramirez got out of the taxi and started walking away. “Whoa, mate!” I shouted. “Don’t leave this behind.” He looked back. For a second I thought he was going to make a run for it. Then he came back for the suitcase. The cops were still dealing with the P-plater, who was leaning against the Audi with his arms folded.
I left Ramirez standing on the porch of the Park Regis Apartments, hitting the numbers on his phone. It was only later, as I vacuumed out the taxi for the night driver, that I noticed the plastic duty free bag lying under the driver’s seat.
Inside the bag I found a bottle of Gordon’s gin and a Seagate computer hard drive. It would have taken me half an hour to drive back to the Park Regis Apartments. I called reception and asked if a guest checking in this morning had reported any missing baggage. The woman who answered had just started her shift. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes. Then she came back on and said, “Nobody checked in this morning.” I thanked her and hung up. It was just after three thirty p.m. I called the taxi controller. No one had reported losing a duty free shopping bag.
I took the gin and the hard drive out of the bag and stuffed them in my backpack. As I walked down Foveaux Street, a dero in an army coat asked me for money. I gave him a handful of coins and dropped the empty bag in a bin outside Central Station.
As soon as I got home I put the chain on the door. Ramirez’s story—the version Haklander had given me—didn’t add up. Haklander had told me just enough to get me to take the job but not enough for it to make sense. Ten to one Ramirez was Colombian, not Mexican, and his name wasn’t Ramirez.
The silver seal on the Seagate box was still intact but when I unwrapped the hard drive and plugged it in, nothing happened. A sticker underneath said,
Made in Thailand. I used a kitchen knife to pry the plastic case apart. The circuitry and components had been stripped out. Inside the case was a vacuum-sealed slab of white powder.
I sat for a long time in silence. I remembered Ramirez’s reaction when he saw the police car parked across the road from the Park Regis Apartments, the way he started walking away without his suitcase. It dawned on me that Ramirez had panicked at the sight of the cops and left the duty free bag behind on purpose. Luckily for me, he had paid in cash and hadn’t taken a receipt. Chances were, he hadn’t noticed my license number. However, my face and that stupid sign would be all over the airport CCTV. What I wanted to know was, did Haklander know what Ramirez was carrying?
* * *
Haklander lived in a 1930s mansion in Bellevue Hill with stone lions on the front porch. I had been there once for a barbecue. Usually I called him at his office in Bondi Junction. I dialed the number.
“Hello, Mr. Haklander,” I said. “I picked up your friend Ramirez.”
“Who?”
“Ramirez. The guy you asked me to pick up at the airport.”
“Oh, yes,” said Haklander.
“I took him across the harbor, like you told me to.”
Haklander didn’t correct me. Maybe he’d forgotten telling me that Ramirez needed a ride to the city. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. I had the impression he was waiting for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he said, “I hope he made it worth your while.”
“Sure. Mr. Ramirez gave me a big tip.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“By the way,” I said, “one of the rear door handles needs fixing.”
“Leave it with me.”
I knew what that meant.
In the corner of the room was an old pair of Tannoy loudspeakers wired up to a secondhand amplifier that no longer worked. I pulled the front off one of the loudspeakers, unscrewed the bass driver, and pushed the slab of cocaine into the cavity.
* * *
I was living in a run-down art deco block in Potts Point. My apartment was on the top floor, facing the back, with a bay window that offered glimpses of the Finger Wharf and the rust-streaked warships in Woolloomooloo Bay. It cost me $525 a week, which was less than it was worth but more than I could afford. I sold a bit of weed to make ends meet.