Blindside

by J. R. Carroll

  ‘Serendipity.’ A vision of Jo in the jacuzzi materialised in the fog, then dissolved . . .

  ‘That’s it, serendipity. Bill couldn’t wait to get in my ear. I knew he’d already formed a plan three different ways by the time we left the pub. As he explained it, the deal was that he would approach Alvarez with the idea to knock off the Petrakos millions.’

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Shaun said.‘He’d never have gone for that. Not after what you bastards did to him. To us.’

  ‘True. That was the big worry. But on the other hand, if Bill could get the blueprints, help bankroll the job, supply the weapons . . . Alvarez knew Bill had a lot of useful contacts. He could arrange to steal the van and have it resprayed by professionals and done up. So he had a package deal to offer him. He was counting on the idea that Alvarez hated Petrakos more than he hated Bill. It was a pretty fair bet. And on that subject everyone knew Alvarez was a big time gambler. He probably wouldn’t be able to resist the odds.’

  Shaun didn’t say anything. He didn’t believe Turner, but he sounded so confident and sure of himself, as if he knew precisely what had happened every inch of the way.

  ‘So Bill called on Alvarez and made the offer. I stayed right out of it, since I was even less of a pin-up boy. The offer was, they’d split the take fifty-fifty. Alvarez listened, but said no, fuck off, he already had two partners. Well, you didn’t have to be a fuckin’ genius to figure out who they were. But Bill worked on him. He pointed out that with Bill onside he had a much better chance of pulling it off and not getting caught. Bill could offer protection too, you see. All Alvarez had to do was cut the partners loose after the job, persuade them to hide the dough somewhere and lie low for a while, then go back and get it on the sly and split it with Bill. When the partners found out later that he’d done the dirty on them, Bill would take care of the problem.’

  Shaun had his face in his hands now. I don’t want to hear this . . .

  ‘The fact was that we wanted the drugs. Any money was a bonus. Shit, we weren’t even sure if there was any. But Alvarez would never know the real purpose of the heist. He would merely provide perfect cover for the perfect crime. It was brilliant. When Bill produced the blueprints, Alvarez’s eyes lit up. He just couldn’t say no. Turned out he did hate Petrakos, and the system, more than he hated Bill. But he insisted you two guys were not to be harmed. That was big of him, wasn’t it? Bill would tell him when it was all set—he’d give him the green light. Timing had to be exact. There was one rider. Bill told him if he came across a stack of heroin in the strongroom to leave it alone at all costs, because it was tagged by the Feds, and there was a big swoop in the pipeline. Alvarez agreed. So that was that—it was a done deal.’

  Shaun was staring at the sand at his feet. Lying in his cell at night he’d gone over everything from start to finish, again and again, but never once had he considered the possibility that Mitch had sold them out. Even now it didn’t feel right. Mitch wouldn’t have done that. They were a team. They were brothers.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ Turner said. ‘I’m sure he agonised over it.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Turner.’

  ‘Am I? Come on. Didn’t you ever wonder where he got the blueprints, the guns, the van? Do you honestly believe he arranged all that on his own? Whose idea was it to stash the money? Who was against ripping off a fortune in drugs?’

  ‘I’m not disputing that you put an offer on the table, or even that Mitch agreed . . . He might have said that, but he wouldn’t have meant it. He saw a chance to use you bastards and square off at the same time, that’s all. He had no intention of delivering his side of the deal.’

  ‘That is a slim possibility, I grant you. But if so, why didn’t he tell you guys about it? Why not come clean, bring you into his confidence, if he had nothing to hide?’

  Shaun could understand why, but all he said was, ‘He had his reasons.’

  Unconvinced, Turner said, ‘Maybe. Have it your way.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Anyway, Stan duly reported that the drugs had arrived safely. He was constantly spying on his father and listening in to his phone conversations on the extension. The gear was to be concealed in sculptures, marble statues, antiques and so on, so all Stan had to do was wait for a shipment to arrive at the house. They cleared customs without missing a beat. Everything was set. Bill gave Alvarez the go-ahead . . . and you know the next chapter.’

  Shaun flashed onto George’s bloody fingers being shattered one by one on the billiard table. He knew that chapter by heart, and didn’t want to dwell there.

  ‘What happened after we left? It was Stan, right?’

  ‘Stan was there all the time, waiting for you three to fuck off. He, uh . . . did the rest, delivered the drugs to Salisbury as arranged, and Salisbury put them in the lock-up he rented for such purposes. There it would stay until the heat died down. The city would be alive with cops, and it wouldn’t do to be found in possession of a big batch of heroin. Plan was, he’d on-sell it to the Asian triads later, when the investigation cooled off. Get rid of it all in one hit.’ He smiled to himself and said, ‘It was a classic inside-out job. One job unwittingly covering for another.’ Nostalgic recollection made his face crease sharply into a half-smile: so proud of his cleverness.

  ‘An inside-out job,’ Shaun repeated to himself.‘Very smart, Turner.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so. Too bad—’ ‘Did Mitch know Stan was part of the act?’

  ‘Shit no,’ Turner said. ‘Mitch cottoned on to that, he wouldn’t have gone one yard.’

  ‘Stan shot his father and Stephanie? Why? I mean, he hated the old man, fine, I can go with that, but why Stephanie?’

  ‘Stan’s a crazy son of a bitch. Shit, no-one was supposed to die. You’re right, George is one thing, but . . . Stephanie? Christ, it was unnecessary aggravation. She wasn’t even meant to be there. She was meant to be out riding a goddamn horse somewhere.’

  ‘But she had a float breakdown.’

  ‘Yeah. Couldn’t have turned up at a worse time, unfortunately for her.’

  Shaun said, ‘But we left both of them with their eyes and mouths taped over. Stephanie wouldn’t have known who was lifting the dope. He only had to fill the bag and go. She would’ve assumed it was one of us come back. So would George, for that matter. He wasn’t in real good shape. I doubt if he could’ve given an accurate report about anything.’

  ‘Yeah. But maybe Stan did something idiotic in the heat of the moment, like . . . give the old man a piece of his mind. Wouldn’t put that past him. Then Stephanie would’ve known from the voice who it was, giving him no choice.’

  Shaun thought about that. It still didn’t sound quite right. Something else he remembered, a detail that came out in the trial: the piece of duct tape they’d put over George’s eyes was found on the floor. It had to be from George because some of his eyebrows adhered to it. But how did he get it off? He was wrapped up tight—they’d used masses of the stuff.

  ‘What about Stan’s alibi?’ he said.

  ‘He fixed it with his bosom pal, Rick Stiles, and Stiles’ girlfriend. What was her name? Linda, Linda something.’

  ‘Linda Powell.’

  ‘Yeah, Linda Powell. They were supposedly boozing and watching videos all afternoon at her house. All they had to do was stick to their story, and they did. It couldn’t be cracked. There was no evidence to put Stan anywhere near the scene. He was eliminated as a suspect.’

  It fitted. More than two hours elapsed before the police arrived at the scene—more than enough time to drive to Melbourne, unload the drugs and get set up at the girlfriend’s place—especially if you were driving a Ferrari.

  A red Ferrari. That’s a highly distinctive getaway car.

  ‘Stan went up there and back in the Ferrari?’ he said.

  ‘No. He wasn’t that crazy. Stiles drove.’

  ‘Stiles was a part of it?’

  ‘No. I doubt if he had the full story. Stan persuaded h
im to be the wheelman for some bullshit reason, something wrong with the Ferrari. Stiles got a big shock later. Dunno what Stan told him beforehand, maybe that they were gonna lift some dope. But he remained staunch. I suppose he had to—he was in it up to his eyebrows.’

  But Shaun wasn’t interested in Rick Stiles. Turner had opened the door for him partway, and now he had to push it all the way.

  Staring dead ahead with his hands tightly clasped, he said, ‘Who shot Mitch?’

  Turner didn’t miss a beat. ‘A better question: who left his cigarette lighter in the ditched van, with identifiable prints on it? That was very careless. It meant you were busted. And once you were busted, there was every chance you’d give up Alvarez and Corcoran. And if Alvarez was busted, the shit could really fly—especially since it was now a double homicide. Once Alvarez spilled, it was all over, period. Couldn’t be allowed to happen. He was too hot. He was overcooked. So, two nights after you went down, Bill waited for Alvarez to come home and shot him in his driveway.’

  After a while, seeing it played out various ways in his mind, Shaun said,‘There was no need to do that. Mitch would never have put anyone in.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. It was just safer that way. You know how many of those Mafia-style driveway hits are solved? Very fucking few. If hoods want to whack each other, that’s fine with the homicide cops. It means fewer scumbags on the streets. Simmonds said he got the idea of the driveway hit from the Colin Winchester case some years ago. You’d be familiar with that.’

  ‘Winchester?’ Shaun was looking at Turner in disbelief: he was saying that a serving cop had modelled a hit on the murder of a high-ranking policeman.

  ‘Yeah, Winchester.’ The case Turner referred to was a driveway execution of a police commissioner in Canberra,back in the mid-eighties. It was a long-running, controversial and bitterly contested affair in which there was much speculation about Winchester’s activities, before the culprit was eventually put away. There was even a TV movie suggesting—wrongly, as it turned out—that Winchester was more involved with the New South Wales Mafia than he had a right to be.

  Turner said,‘I remember Bill saying the guy almost got away with it, and would have except that his victim was a top cop. It’s not Sicily,you just can’t have people running around shooting police commissioners. But Alvarez was no top cop. He was a rotten apple, and no-one would give a shit if he was put down.’

  Shaun said, ‘You’re dead wrong about Mitch, Turner. He wasn’t a rotten apple, and he would never have sold us out to go with your outfit. He didn’t tell us about it simply because he didn’t want to distract us. He probably thought we would have kicked up, maybe even refused to go ahead with it, once we knew you bastards were involved. And he was probably right.’

  ‘Believe that if you wish. I can only tell you what I know happened.’

  ‘It’s not true. Can’t be.’ But even as he said it he was recalling those night-time sessions at the White Lion, when the anger became white-hot, and when he couldn’t help but feel that Mitch held him responsible for everything . . .

  Turner gave him a sad, long face. ‘Let me tell you something, McCreadie. Sooner or later, everyone rats. It’s only a matter of when, of the right circumstances falling into place. In Mitch Alvarez’s case, he wanted revenge on Petrakos and the department that fucked him over more than anything. So, he used you two as his foot soldiers. And you were willing troops.’

  This was stated with such conviction that Shaun felt foolishly naïve for never even considering the possibility when it was staring him in the face all the time. Nevertheless he said, without real heart, ‘I still don’t believe you.’

  Turner shrugged. ‘Please yourself. But you have to ask yourself why I’d bother lying. Just to fuck you up a bit more? I’m afraid I don’t care enough, McCreadie. Don’t care about much at all now.’

  ‘Tell me what happened to Andy,’ he said, hands clasped, staring down at his feet.

  ‘Uh . . . that was the Chinaman, Johnny Wu.’

  That made Shaun sit up sharply.

  ‘What in the fuck did Johnny Wu have to do with it?’

  Turner let out a long sigh. ‘Morris Salisbury was shitting bullets because of the homicides. Apparently he thought that if you and Corcoran were allowed to testify, it might come out that other parties were involved, and Salisbury was holding the drugs, which made him vulnerable. He made an independent executive decision. It had nothing to do with Bill or me. We didn’t want Corcoran killed—shit, he was the only one left who could lead us to the money. I think Salisbury was also scared of Corcoran running around loose, thought he might figure out what had happened and come after us. He was a wild bastard. So Salisbury got Johnny Wu on the job. I dunno the details because I wasn’t involved, but I believe he cut his throat from behind while he was getting into his car.’

  Shaun was thinking, Johnny Wu, Johnny Wu . . . burned up in a car . . .

  Turner said, ‘Johnny’s days were numbered after that. Bill was savage. He wanted to kill Salisbury, but he cooled on that for practical reasons, and we settled on Johnny instead. It was a way of sending a message to Salisbury that he was not a law unto himself. You can’t hire guys to go around killing people. It creates too much fuckin’ stress. So one night after we’d been to the pub, we visited Johnny with an armful of cold cans. We were sitting at the dining room table sinking beers, bullshitting and carrying on. I can remember Johnny had this big cannon on the table, a Dirty Harry .44 Magnum Special— little man, big gun syndrome. I guess that was his way of saying he didn’t really trust us.

  ‘Suddenly Bill lashed out. It was so fast and unexpected. People think because he’s so big he’s slow, but he’s not, he’s fucking fast. Shit he moved. I blinked and missed it. Next thing I see he’s got his monstrous hand around Johnny’s throat and he’s lifted him out of his seat . . . it was amazing, he was throttling him in mid-air. Johnny couldn’t reach his cannon, so he was out of business. All he could do was thrash around while Bill choked him. Johnny was a martial arts nut, I think he’d seen too many Jackie Chan movies, but he had no hope against Bill. He went a terrible shade of purple, his tongue came out and he made these squawking noises, like a chicken. After what seemed about an hour the thrashing stopped, and he went limp. Bill just lowered him back into his seat again and resumed drinking his beer. That was when we noticed the bad smell. Johnny’s sphincter had opened.

  ‘We bundled him into his car and drove out the back of Deer Park somewhere, in a sort of windy wasteland. I drove Johnny’s car and Bill followed in his Statesman. We propped Johnny behind the wheel, doused the inside with petrol and threw in a match. Whoosh-o. Did she go up in a hurry.’ He gave a short, hollow laugh, as if he’d just remembered something funny.‘Dunno if you’ve ever seen anyone burn up, McCreadie, but this was weird . . . Johnny was enveloped in flames, and then . . . his head and arms started swaying around in slow motion, as if he’d come to and was struggling against the fire. Anyway, that was another underworld job for the homicide boys to ponder. It sure put the wind up Salisbury. He’s probably in therapy now from having too many nervous breakdowns. For a big time drug czar he was a real drama queen.’

  Shaun sat quietly, watching and listening to the surf. It was late in the day. Light was fading, and a soft breeze had sprung up. Now that most of the holes had been filled, what difference did it make?

  ‘You should’ve whacked Stan while you were at it,’ he said in a dead voice.

  ‘Stan was protected by virtue of his father’s connections. That probably would’ve started a Sydney-style gang war. Christ, enough’s enough. We were cops, not criminals. None of this was supposed to go the way it did.’

  ‘You were so damn clever you ran into yourselves coming the other way.’

  ‘That should give you some satisfaction.’

  But Shaun was just staring at the surf, not feeling very much of anything.

  ‘On top of which,’ Turner said,‘we got nothing out of the whole sorry sa
ga. Nothing.’

  Shaun looked at him with a question mark written on his face.

  ‘Yeah? Surprised?’ He gave that same short, empty laugh. He was good at that. He probably laughed that way when he watched Johnny Wu go up in flames.‘Salisbury tested the gear. Turned out we were the proud owners of twenty kilograms of chalk dust and talcum powder.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘Nope. Someone got there ahead of us.’

  It was news to Shaun. When he hit the nick all he knew from press reports was that a ‘large quantity of cash and drugs’ was stolen during the raid. During and after his murder trial, police investigators unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to show them where he’d hidden the ‘cash and drugs’, and in the aftermath, during his long incarceration, little more was said about it. The issue simply died away. It was as if the script had been rewritten after the event, wiping out the very existence of any dope. Shaun always assumed that whoever lifted it had got rid of the stuff straightaway, that the cops somehow got wind of this on the criminal grapevine and realised it was pointless pursuing Shaun. In the end they even seemed uncertain whether he’d stolen the cash as well, since only one outfit was supposed to be involved. The impression Shaun had was that the cops were every bit as confused as he was. But there was never any mention of the heroin turning out to be chalk dust. It fitted, but then Turner could well be snowing Shaun for reasons of his own.

  Turner wiped his brow with his hat and said, ‘That little detail was never explained, at least to my satisfaction. Never will be now. There are theories: George might’ve been ripped off by his suppliers at the Pakistan end, but it doesn’t seem likely. It’s bad for business—trust is a fragile enough commodity in the international drug trade without resorting to rip-offs on that scale. We didn’t know if the shipment was being tagged by the Feds or not, we just said that to Mitch Alvarez as a deterrent, so he’d leave it alone, but maybe it was after all. I tend to believe that the Feds were tagging it, intending to wrap up the whole syndicate later, but then grew nervous about so much shit maybe getting out of their control and finding its way onto the streets, so they played safe and switched it. That was the unofficial version that did the rounds later. Maybe the operation was called off for some other reason, so they cut their losses. And after they found out about the murders, they didn’t own up to any involvement in the whole affair—reputations, careers would be shot down. Strange. I never heard of anyone being arrested for possession of chalk dust. Dunno if George knew he’d been dudded, but it could be that he did. There was a small cut in one of the bags, so it’s possible he’d tested the stuff himself.’