Blindside

by J. R. Carroll

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘That surprises me. I’m sixty-seven years old, going on sixty-eight, and he’s five years younger. I would’ve thought he’d have hung up his guns by now.’

  ‘He shows no intention of doing that.’

  ‘He should. Come to that, they should pension him off. Christ, he was a wild man in the old days. Big bruisers—and I mean real tough guys, not the fuckin’ pansies and showponies running around nowadays—used to shit their pants when Bill got a hold of them, and with good reason too. They’d have to hose out the interview room after he’d finished interrogating some poor bastard.’ That was worth a fond laugh, and a nod at the ground as he receded further into the past.‘We teamed up when we were both in the consorters, way back in the late sixties. Although I was older I was relatively new in the game because I’d already served a stint in the army. At that time Simmonds was a law unto himself, and I was naturally drawn to him—he was a charismatic guy. We ruled the streets. Big Bill Simmonds and Brick Turner—we were a pretty formidable duo. Anybody wanting to pull a robbery had to get our okay first. The plans had to be officially approved, as it were, so no-one got hurt. Christ, they were gonna do it anyway, so it made sense to come to a sort of accommodation. That’s how we regarded it, and in a twisted sort of way, the system worked. Violent crime didn’t spill out onto the streets as much as it could’ve. If some hood fucked up they’d cop a hiding they’d never forget. Jesus, I saw Bill drag this scumbag down a back lane once . . .’ He shook his head—the rest was easily imagined without words. ‘I could fill a dozen books. Matter of fact I had an approach from a crime reporter down south to write up my memoirs—one of those ghost-written jobs—but I told him to fuck off, I’d have to give up too many people. I wasn’t dying then. Now it’s too late. So consider yourself privileged, McCreadie. You’re hearing stories I’ve never told anyone before.’

  ‘Now you don’t care who you give up.’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it? I feel a need to set the record straight, even if it’s just to one person. It must be part of the process of dying, I guess.’ He drifted away into some reverie, rubbed his face with the hat. ‘So be it. Anyway, as far as Morris Salisbury’s concerned, well, everyone knew he was the biggest dealer in town. But he was useful, because he’d supply us with information and give up people, and we’d make shitloads of arrests and clear up plenty of outstanding cases. In return we allowed him to operate. It was a perfectly sensible arrangement. Hardly best practice these days, but you have to understand it in the context of the times. Strange as it may sound now, we never considered ourselves to be corrupt. It was just the way we operated, to get the job done. Law enforcement was pretty rough and ready back then.’

  Shaun was listening intently. Interesting, he thought, how Turner puts himself in a good light—making arrests, solving cases—but doesn’t say anything about receiving kickbacks from the armed heists he and Simmonds green-lit. So he wasn’t prepared to come clean, not completely. Not yet. One man’s cosying up was another man’s sensible arrangement.

  ‘Needless to say,the system didn’t last. I had various postings, and then CI, and Bill moved around, but through it all we were still a team. But then, things got a little out of whack. Greed was the big factor. When you know you can get away with things, the temptation’s much greater. I forget whose idea it was, mine probably,but that evidence storage facility started to look mighty attractive. I used to go there often, for legitimate reasons, so I knew the set-up inside out. There was no sophisticated security system, no video cameras or swipe cards such as they have now. You wouldn’t be able to get within a bull’s roar of it these days. All I did was get some impressions of the relevant keys, have them made up, and I was set. I could get in anytime, and the building wasn’t even guarded after hours. You didn’t have to be Houdini to get in and out of that joint. I’d have a few beers, then drive over, slip in and help myself to some gear from the vast array of evidence bags. I was smart enough to remove only small quantities from a number of bags, spread the loss so as not to arouse too much suspicion. These cases might take a year or more to come up, by which time, who cared if there was a small quantity of shit missing from an evidence bag? Who could prove anything? Maybe they’d weighed it wrong in the first place. Large consignments were good too: no-one was gonna miss a few lousy grams from ten or twenty kilos, were they?’

  ‘Did you do all this on your own?’ Shaun said while Turner went quiet for a minute.

  ‘At first,’ he said. ‘But then Bill started coming with me. Usually, if we’d been to the boozer—and we were always on the piss—we might decide to visit the supermarket, as we called it. We’d take a few cold cans and sit in the fuckin’ evidence room drinkin’ ’em while we checked out what was on offer. What a joke. Bill’d say, “Hey, marijuana’s on special this week”. We used to laugh our fuckin’ heads off like a pair of jackasses.’

  ‘You’d unload it all through Salisbury, right?’

  ‘Of course. No problems. He was a bottomless pit. It was a piece of piss, and a nice, steady earner. I got so cocky I used to pinch stuff during the day, when I was there on official police business. No-one suspected anything. But then, along came your buddy, Vincent O’Connell. I wondered who this new dealer on the scene was, and it didn’t take long to sniff him out and discover he was a cop. We had most of the senior drug squad guys onside, but this was different—it was a covert operation. I didn’t know who was behind it, and I was concerned that they were after me, via Salisbury. They’d bust him, and Bill and I would be caught up in the wash. That was the fear. So yeah, I put the frighteners on him and did a few distasteful things . . . usually when I was oiled up.’

  ‘You gave him up to Salisbury, didn’t you?’ Suddenly Shaun wasn’t feeling even faintly sympathetic to Turner. ‘You blew his cover.’

  ‘What I did, I told Salisbury he’d better watch himself, because he was dealing with an undercover cop, and if he went down Bill and I would go with him. If that happened, if he got busted, he was a fuckin’ dead drug dealer. He’d be dead before he hit the courts.’

  ‘What happened to Vincent?’ The four words hung trembling in the air. Turner took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if it hurt to breathe.

  ‘One day while all this was going on, an assistant commissioner called Paul Harcourt was given a dossier by Mitch Alvarez. It was all the dirt on me. Harcourt wanted to know why Alvarez had taken it upon himself to investigate another officer, and Alvarez told him you claimed I was out to get your mate O’Connell, who was in my face.’

  ‘So Paul Harcourt was the third member of the group?’

  ‘Harcourt? Shit no. Harcourt was a very career-minded cop. All he was concerned about was how he could get to the top. He wouldn’t have had the balls to run with this, because he didn’t know if he’d be treading on the wrong toes. Harcourt was a gutless toady. Fortunately, however, he had the sense to pass it on to the right man—an Internal Investigations officer by the name of Nifty Neville Burns.’

  ‘Burns . . . I know him.’

  ‘Course you do. He offered you a cut-and-run deal, didn’t he? Do you imagine that came from the goodness of his heart? Nifty doesn’t have one.’

  Shaun was wondering if there was any part of his life that was not controlled by Turner and his cohorts.

  ‘Burns had also come through the consorters, and he knew Bill from before my time. They were still tight, you know, in the manner of old soldiers trading on war stories, and I got to know him too. This was before he hit the goon squad. In that capacity he was very useful to us because he’d pass on command directives, memos, inside scuttlebutt, whatever, and he had the power to divert or even suppress investigations that may have been damaging to Bill and me. Nifty Burns was our protector. He was the silent partner, the Invisible Man, as Bill called him. For his trouble I used to deliver him an envelope every so often, when we’d made a nice score. I’d just drive around to his place and slip it under his front door. He never o
nce gave it back.’

  ‘That’s The Three—you, Simmonds and Neville Burns.’

  ‘Right. I was shitting bullets when he showed me this dossier, because I thought it was this covert operation coming after me, but when Burns told me it came from Alvarez and you I thought I could fix the problem. Alvarez had done a top job, he had photos of me entering and leaving the premises at night, shots of me boozing and carrying on with Salisbury, dates when I’d signed in to the facility corresponding with dates they suspected drugs had been stolen . . . Burns told me there was already an investigation under way that had nothing to do with Alvarez. Someone had smelled a rat. It was all starting to come down on us.’

  Turner wiped his face with the hat again. Even though it was pleasantly warm he seemed to sweat excessively. He stared across the expanse of sand at the surf rolling in. Shaun thought, all this shit must seem such a world away from here that it didn’t really happen.

  ‘I knew I had to act,’ Turner said. ‘In life, you can sit still and let things happen to you, or you can take the bull by the horns. I’ve never been one to take a backseat, so I paid one last visit to the facility one night armed with a razor blade, and cut out pages from the sign-in book that had my signature on them. Alvarez had written down the dates, but if his list couldn’t be matched against the sign-in book they had fuck-all except some photos, which didn’t prove anything by themselves.

  ‘While I was at it I also ransacked the records and took anything that might vaguely connect to me—files on Salisbury and other criminals with whom I’d had some dodgy dealings over the years. In those days records were not computerised, it was all in file cabinets. There was a mountain of shit in there, going back years, so the stuff I’d taken probably wouldn’t be missed. And before leaving, I helped myself to some drugs, and other items such as weapons that had been used in the commission of crimes.’

  ‘To fit us up.’

  ‘It’s a time-honoured tactic: when all else fails, discredit the witness. We knew Alvarez, you and Corcoran were a tight crew, so we figured you were all in it together, especially with you being O’Connell’s mate. Anyhow, why take chances? So we planted the stuff and made a couple of anonymous phone calls to the detectives investigating the facility break-ins. And just to top it off I managed to dig up an ex-girlfriend of Corcoran’s who was still dirty on him. I slung her a few quid to cry rape. That was the icing on the cake.’

  Shaun was starting to simmer.‘What happened to Vincent?’ he said again.

  ‘Salisbury had this contact from the Chinese underworld. The Chows normally stick to their own turf, but this guy was a freelancer. His name was Johnny Wu. He was a hitman from Taiwan, a real professional. If Johnny Wu was after you, you were gone. I don’t know the whole story, not for sure, but I believe he abducted Vincent at gunpoint, shot him in his car as he was driving, and then dumped the body in a construction site.’ He paused, weighed his words and added,‘Without being absolutely certain, I would say that right now Vincent O’Connell is underneath a high-rise office building somewhere in the Central Business District.’

  ‘You fucking bastards.’ Shaun’s fist had clenched of its own accord, and he was suddenly feeling strangely light-headed. Too much sun, now this.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Turner said. ‘It was a cunt of an act. But all I wanted to do was scare him off. I had no intention of hurting the boy. Salisbury took matters into his own hands, without consultation. He got the wind up when I told him what Alvarez was up to. Christ, I had no idea he’d go that far, kill a fucking cop.’

  ‘You’re responsible. The whole fucking bunch of you.’ And God help me, so am I.

  ‘I can see you’re steamed up. I don’t blame you. Go on, then—take a swing. Get it off your chest.’

  ‘I’ll do more than that, Turner.’

  That drew a mock laugh.‘Yeah? What are you gonna do— kill me? Be my guest.’

  ‘Maybe I will.’

  ‘I don’t think so, McCreadie. You’re still young. Why go back inside? Killing me can’t change anything.’

  But the fist would not unclench: it seemed to have seized up on him. Turner glanced across at the white knuckles and blood-filled, purple veins on the back of Shaun’s hand. He didn’t seem bothered by the prospect of a bashing. Why should he be?

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but it would make me feel better.’

  ‘Then you’ll have a nice long stretch in the big house to feel bad all over again.’

  The logic couldn’t be faulted, but all the same Shaun didn’t know how long he’d be able to stop himself from smashing him in the face. What made it worse was the boastful pleasure he was deriving from it all, as if these war stories were nothing more than harmless anecdotes that brought back a treasure trove of memories. The fact that he was dying gave him a smug, secure attitude—he was past retribution. It was tough to swallow.

  Eventually the crisis passed, and Shaun was able to uncurl his fingers. Sensing it was safe to go on, Turner said, ‘After you guys were put out of business, we pulled our heads in for a while, till it all blew over. Being an inspector in CI I had reason to revisit the storage place, but no more sticky fingers. In a while we regrouped with Salisbury, who had also been quiet after the Johnny Wu fiasco. Then one day I was having a beer with him in the Spread Eagle and he let slip that something big was about to go down, and did we want a piece of it. Bill turned up and we pumped him for details, but he wouldn’t spill till he was good and pissed. The upshot was, Salisbury had it on good authority that a large shipment of heroin was on its way from Pakistan, and the man behind the deal was the well-known used car tycoon, George Petrakos.’

  Shaun felt a little edgy—he wasn’t too sure now that he wanted to hear the next part. But he was on white water rapids, heading for the big drop, and there was no stopping.

  ‘How did Salisbury know about it?’

  ‘He got the mail from George’s son, Stan. Stan was down on his old man, so when he overheard him on the phone arranging the deal he seized the chance to rip him off with Salisbury’s help. It was an attractive proposition, but I had reservations. Stan was a crazy bastard, for starters. Like his father he was full of his own shit, ever since he’d supposedly run Lou Galvano out of town a couple of years before. He was still trading on that, but there was a solid story doing the rounds that Galvano left the country for personal reasons without even being aware that Stan was gunning for him. However, he did have street credibility, and the information sounded reliable. Stan was convinced it was a sweet deal, and he’d won Salisbury over. Being a big shipment, though, it was possible the Feds were already onto it, and if so you didn’t want to fall into a fuckin’ trap. The stuff could be tagged. So we put it on the back burner for a while. If George received the goods with no complications, then we’d go for it. This was . . . late August, in 1992.

  ‘Bill and I spent a lot of time discussing it. He was of the opinion that if you had a good enough plan you could steal the pyramids, but then you’d have the problem of finding a buyer.’ Turner laughed, then coughed. Sweat dripped from his nose and blowflies were buzzing around him. When he’d stopped coughing he swatted at the flies with the hat, but they didn’t go far.‘He once said that to commit the perfect crime, you had to pull it off in plain view without anyone noticing. It sounded impressive, but I didn’t know what he meant, and I doubt if he did either. It was just pub bullshit. There was a lot of pub bullshit with Bill Simmonds.

  ‘So we sat on that, and then one afternoon Smooth Wollansky turned up in the Spread Eagle.’

  That name clicked. ‘Wollansky? The ex-cop?’

  ‘Yeah. He was in the robbers with your mate Alvarez.’ For some reason that wasn’t apparent, he said this with a distinct sneer.

  Shaun knew of Brent Wollansky. He’d left for the private sector by the time Shaun hit the squad, but they’d run into each other in pubs, and he was mentioned in dispatches often enough to still have a presence. He’d been tight with Mitch . . .

  ‘Wo
llansky had a security business which he’d just started up. He wasn’t exactly a regular, or one of us any more, but he was pretty well liked. You may remember that famous case he worked with Alvarez, when Stan Petrakos robbed the restaurant.’

  ‘I remember it. Stan walked because of his old man’s money. It was a scam—he and the owner set it up.’

  ‘Correct. Alvarez and Wollansky were real shitty about that. Mitch was heard to say he’d do anything to get back at the Petrakos clan. They made him look like a fool.’

  Shaun was remembering some of the things Mitch had said long after that case, what he’d do if he ever had the chance and there were no witnesses. They weren’t the sorts of comments you wanted quoted back at you by a prosecution lawyer in court.

  ‘That day at the Spread Eagle, Wollansky said he’d had a visit from Mitch Alvarez. Alvarez asked him if there was any way Wollansky could get his hands on the architect’s blueprints of the Petrakos mansion at Lancefield. The suggestion was apparently made that it would be worth his while if he could. But it was all water under the bridge as far as Wollansky was concerned—he didn’t want to know. Alvarez made it clear what he had in mind: “That place is awash in cash. It’s up for grabs.” Stuff like that. He was playing on the fact that they both hated George’s guts. Wollansky told him not to be stupid.’

  ‘He refused to help.’

  ‘Absolutely. But while he was telling us this, I could see Bill’s mind ticking over . . .’

  Turner’s words revolved in Shaun’s head: steal the pyramids . . . perfect crime . . . plain view . . .

  Steal the pyramids. Pyramids. Petrakos mansion . . .

  It was coming together. He was a blind man whose sight was gradually returning, but although he could now pick out objects in front of him, the shapes were still blurred.

  Turner closed in.‘The timing could not have been better. What’s the word for that?’