by Duff, Alan
Shane was peering at the woman. ‘Probably drunk. Or one of them loser hag junkies like up at the Cross. You’re not gonna give her any money, are you?’
‘Nope,’ said Johno. ‘Gonna tell her to get on her bike.’
‘Her feet, you mean. Has she got shoes?’
‘Yeah …’ Johno made sure. ‘What would you say she is? Asian or something?’
‘Same colour and features as TJ,’ Shane said. A Maori classmate who’d arrived mid-year, and wanted to fight everyone. Johno quickly got it — he wasn’t a bully, just a newcomer feeling insecure. TJ had turned out to be okay.
‘So she could be a Maori.’
‘Guess so,’ said Johno. ‘Be careful she doesn’t punch us out.’ There was a nervousness in his laugh.
‘Gidday,’ she said, flailing more than swatting. The accent Aussie. ‘Damn flies when it’s not mozzies. Which one of you is Johno?’
‘That’s me.’ Johno’s standard breezy response. Sometimes he’d add something witty, like ‘Did you mistake me for a movie star?’ He didn’t have movie-star looks, but it didn’t stop the girls liking him. This hag might’ve been a looker in her day.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well …’ She seemed nervous and anxious.
He didn’t like the way her eyes ran up and down his body, then held him in a flickering stare. Kind of creepy. She could be a head case.
‘Guess who I am?’ she said.
‘Uh, the plumber?’
‘Nope.’ She missed the smartarse tone. ‘Take another guess.’
‘The mailman in a dress?’ Which she did get; he saw the flinch.
‘Talking like your father,’ she said. ‘To your own mother?’
The word expanded in his head like a balloon: My mother? He didn’t have a mother. She’d died a long time ago.
‘Hasn’t your old man told you about me?’ One of those drawling voices.
‘About who?’ Felt he’d been thrown into a flooded river. He couldn’t remember asking about his mother since he was — what? — seven or eight. Is this why there were no photos of her — because she’s either a junkie or a wasted drunk?
No. His mother was dead — dead. And this woman making such an outrageous claim was some street bum out of her head. If she didn’t have long sleeves he’d look for the needle marks on her arms. He and Shane knew her type from wandering the streets of Kings Cross, debating whether to pool their dough and toss for going with a hooker. But they never had enough money. Or courage. And it was obvious most of the hookers were hooked on drugs. Johno and Shane knew their city, knew where the queers hung out, the public toilets to steer clear of, the parks where the sex predators roamed and the drunks and the crazy homeless lived.
But this woman his mother? Nah. How could he go from motherless to being the son of this thing? His mother was dead. Or Laurie Ryan and Gramps had told a lie as big as it gets. Bigger. You can’t tell your kid such a lie, you can’t.
‘No,’ said Johno. No other words would come.
‘Aussie arsehole,’ she hissed. ‘He wouldn’t have, would he?’
‘Wouldn’t what?’
‘Told you about me.’
His grandfather’s cruel streak rose to the surface then. ‘Wherever you ran away from, lady, you better run back before they come pick you up.’
‘He hasn’t told you, has he, the bastard? Laurie kept it from you …’
Her saying his father’s name swung the claim hard her way. Johno felt like someone had dipped a big spoon into his brain and stirred it violently. Heard the voice saying: It’s happening again. You’re being claimed. Like he’d felt when told that his father and grandfather, his entire male line, were criminals and so, therefore, was he.
‘How long you been waiting here? Is my father home?’ Johno felt like he was drowning. ‘Or won’t he let you in?’
‘Sat down to rest my tired old legs.’ She didn’t look that old.
His brain registered a horse-race commentary blaring inside the house. He said, ‘He’s listening to a race. Did you knock hard?’
‘I timed it for when you came home from school.’
‘Yeah, you did that all right.’ Looked at Shane but no help there. His mouth was wide open in disbelief.
Turning back to the woman Johno said, ‘You’re my …’
‘I am,’ she said, without a moment’s pause. ‘Not as much resemblance as I thought there’d be.’ A vain smile, as if to say he hadn’t inherited her — quite — good looks. The life she must have led hadn’t done her any favours. He could tell. The way her lips were drawn in as if she had missing teeth, and when she’d smiled he could see that the remaining ones were in poor condition. Her hands shook when she lit a cigarette.
‘What’s he said about me all these years then? That I died, I bet.’
Johno could only nod.
‘And I didn’t run away from some loony bin either,’ she said, ‘thank you very much.’
‘Shane? She’s claiming to be …’ He couldn’t say it. ‘Have you heard anything about her, like, being actually alive?’
‘No, mate. I swear, not a word. And who says she is your mum? Show us some proof, you,’ said Shane.
She spoke to Johno. ‘You were born April thirteenth, nineteen sixty-six.’ Shit. ‘Your middle name is Sean. I wanted to give you a Maori middle name but your father said no, you’re Aussie not Maori. I said you were less than half Maori so what did it matter. He told me to butt out.
‘You were only this little when I last saw you,’ she said, indicating. ‘But look at you now. So tall and solid. I kept meaning to come and see you, but you know how it goes. Time passes. Other things come up.’
‘Just say that you are …’ Johno’s stomach was knotted. ‘Why have you bothered? I mean, look at me. Do I look miserable at being without you? ’Scuse me.’ Said roughly as he pushed past her to the door, anger on its way. The door unlocked as usual.
‘Dad! Dad! Turn the fucking race off! We got a serious situation out here. You hear me?’ The radio volume went down and he heard his father’s hurrying footsteps.
‘What’s going on, boy?’ Laurie Ryan stopped short. His disbelief didn’t last long before a snarl took charge. ‘Where the hell did they drag you up from? You’re not welcome here. Johno, go inside.’
Johno didn’t move. The woman was reduced by Laurie Ryan’s hostility, almost cringing. Yet she looked a tough cookie.
‘A mother’s entitled to see her son.’ She lifted her chin, but her mouth was quivering. She looked vulnerable then, and Johno felt a desire to protect her. But what to do against his father’s cold anger?
‘He stopped being that the day you chose to became a junkie ahead of a mother,’ said Laurie. ‘Now get.’
Johno wanted her to defend herself, to say it wasn’t true. To ask his father if they could at least have a talk — something.
But she was walking away, turning and throwing evil looks at Laurie and pleading glances at her hapless son.
He wanted to call her back, talk some more. He wanted to get angry at her, even strike her. He even had a crazy urge to run after her and hug her.
Later, he pictured a hole being dug, and her, his dead mother, being put back into it. But at least she was buried inside of him, somewhere deep and dark, like the answer to a question he’d never remembered asking.
Seeing her was like permission to go a little bit crazy. He got into lots of fights, and his anger won them all. Yet the anger seemed to have the better of him.
Sixteen, and legally allowed to leave school and do what he wanted, like Shane, though it was against Bev’s wishes. So how do two willing young would-be crooks get started? At the bottom is where.
Gofers for the big boys, mostly running money here and there, or picking it up, gambling debts usually, but they weren’t debt collectors, even if Shane was convinced they were being groomed to move into the heavy league. ‘We’ll soon be breaking the kneecaps of the guys who owe,’ Shane said.
Both fathe
rs were back working for George Freeman, the underworld figure who ran illegal bookmaking in pubs all over Sydney and owned at least two illegal casinos that crooked police allowed to operate.
‘Then I’m out.’ Johno didn’t want to know about the heavy stuff — just Shane talking crap. ‘We’re errand boys and we’re gonna stay that way till we show initiative and break out by our own efforts.’
His father would later say he had that exactly right. ‘There’s no free lunch, not even for family. But you walk before you run. The whole world of crime and criminals is bad — no morality, no principles. So you’re in it as one of them, but you’re also a Ryan, and we have our own rules.’
Johno’s seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays passed and nothing seemed to change, except they were invited into the pub scene where most the action took place, became accepted faces on the circuit. But they were youngsters still — no respect, no standing. And Shane, more than his best mate, was keen to show what he was made of. But Johno knew damn well that Shane’s talents were limited or even non-existent. The only thing he had going for him was absolute loyalty: he’d stand alongside Johno and fight to the death, when fighting wasn’t what Johno had in mind.
But there were a few ‘testers’ in that area, guys a little bit older trying each boy out to see how he stood up. Johno, of course, soon got a reputation, one he’d rather have been without. He didn’t like all the attention, unlike Shane, whose fighting efforts won him respect but not the admiration he wanted and that Johno had. Johno just that much more brutal.
‘It’s like school days, Johno. You are the man.’ Kids talk.
‘Swap you any day,’ he replied. ‘If I am the man, it’s the Maori warrior in me blended with the fighting Irish.’ He wasn’t the type to be bossed or punched around like some of the younger up-and-comers. But he didn’t worship the idea of being tough.
As for the underworld, it wasn’t anywhere near the big deal he and Shane had thought it would be. Most of the characters were shady to downright sleazy, and Johno wasn’t impressed. Only occasionally was there a mild, brief rush, of large sums of money ending on the bookmaker’s side of the table, Laurie Ryan getting a cut and giving the two youngsters a nice bonus.
Otherwise it was hanging around all day and half the night in the Trianon Hotel in Balmain, not allowed to touch a beer till 6 p.m., dying of boredom. On quiet evenings they’d go to Shane’s place for some good home cooking, though deaf to his mother’s warnings and concerns about the life they’d adopted. ‘Silly old chook,’ said Shane. ‘Means well, but no idea how the real world works.’
Johno could vaguely hear her but refused to open the door fully. Every time he saw her, he thought of his own mother and what his life would have been had she been there all this time.
Chapter three
Nineteen before the next major event in his life: falling in love. He won Evelyn because, unlike every other guy, he didn’t just want to bed her, he wanted a long-term relationship. His granddad, an all-day regular at the pub where his son was bookie and Evelyn the barmaid, described her as ‘pretty as a picture’. To Johno she was beautiful: high cheekbones and coal-black eyes from, she told him, her mother’s parents, born in the south of Spain and Moorish blood somewhere in the mix. Black hair, quite tall and lithe, an olive complexion that Johno couldn’t take his eyes off. He wanted to ravage and protect her at the same time.
Why he felt the need to marry her when they were both so young he’d not figure out till years later, and by then it was far too late. Got Evelyn knocked-up pretty fast and he made a promise to himself that the child would grow up knowing both its parents.
Saying he worked for his father covered him with Evelyn, and it wasn’t a lie: he picked up losing cash bets and a few times got sent to ask some businessman punter to pay his debt. No threats. Mr Freeman handled that side, and Johno discouraged Shane from playing the heavy. ‘You don’t even look scary, Shano. You had too much mother’s milk.’
Evelyn saw Laurie Ryan in action on a daily basis as she served his punters, but had no idea bookmaking was illegal. Nor was she interested. All Evelyn Tanner wanted was to be a good mother, and she seemed to have found a young man who thought the same way.
His father was shocked he wanted to get married. ‘What’s the big hurry? Have you told her what you do for a living?’
‘I told her I work for you and that you’re a bookie.’
‘But I bet you didn’t mention the life she’ll be signing up to. Why do you think I brought you up on my own? I’ll tell you. Because it’s not fair on a woman to have children while her man’s risking his liberty breaking the law.’
‘I thought you booted her out because of her drug problem?’ Johno meant his mother.
‘That’s right. But I didn’t bring in a replacement, just girlfriends who didn’t stay long, and you only ever took to one. Why not just live with the girl?’
Johno wasn’t blind to the fact that over the years his father had treated his girlfriends more like trophies to show off to his mates, and the less heard of the better. ‘Because she’s pregnant,’ Johno said.
‘God almighty,’ said Laurie. ‘You’re hardly out of nappies.’
Shane’s reaction was similar. ‘Married with a kid before you’re twenty-one is kind of too fast, isn’t it?’ Johno guessed maybe he felt pushed to the side.
Shane was much relieved when Johno said, ‘We’ve still got the fun part of our crim careers to come.’
Seemed to Johno he could have it both ways: live with the girl he loved and be a professional criminal, especially when they landed the job smack dab in with the crooked dock workers at the Balmain wharves. Course he could have it both ways.
Try making seventeen thousand — each, he and Shane — from just getting into a truck and driving it off the wharf to a warehouse out in the west, and see if your feet stay on the ground. You feel invincible and so fucking clever. On their first job, nervous wrecks wearing stevedore orange overalls, making out they were helping unload a cargo ship, fooling around badly with mooring ropes thick as a man’s thigh while they waited for the signal to make it official: membership of the underworld, no less. When, really, it felt ridiculous, and it wasn’t as if they were up against any form of resistance or threat.
A few hours later, mid-afternoon, unable to stop laughing, getting fits of the giggles at what a cinch the job was. Now it was over, business done, paid by the fence, handed over the fifty per cent dockies’ share in cash, settled into a pub known as an underworld watering hole, downing schooner after schooner, patting their bulging pockets, unable to stop laughing.
Shane wanting to haul his wad of dough out. ‘Can I just flash it, J?’
No, he fucking couldn’t. Not that Johno didn’t feel like doing the same, but he didn’t entirely banish common sense, even at a moment like this, and he didn’t like showing off.
But nor did he go home to his new bride that night either; he and Shane picked up some girls and went back to their place. And because Evelyn didn’t give him such a hard time over it, since he lied and said he fell asleep on the sofa at Shane’s house, he thought he could set the rules — and always would. He loved her, of course he loved her. But that growing belly had taken away something. And for all his promises to be a good dad, he just couldn’t make a bond with little Leah when she was born. Maybe it had something to do with his own mother being absent, except for her one shock appearance rising from the grave.
Next, the duo accosted by three detectives in summer police issue short-sleeved white shirts, two with loosened ties, one no tie, all big blokes. ‘Still living with your mummy and daddy, Shane McNeil?’
Covering up his surprise, Shane said, ‘So would you once you’d tried my mum’s cooking.’ Got a hard stare from the detective, but Shane blinked first — only at an eye signal from Johno.
‘And you, Johno Ryan? Does your old man charge you and your granddad board at your Balmain residence? Nah, wouldn’t take money off his own family, wo
uld he? He’s a Ryan before he’s anything. All his good-for-nothing life going on about being honourable. Yet he’s still bang at it, right?’
Johno said, ‘My old man? Nah. Like you said, he’s honourable. You got the right Ryan family?’
The three cops shook their heads in unison. The clearly senior one said, ‘You know what, sunshine, that smartarse attitude might soon get your fucking ears slapped, and then some?’ He moved right in close and Johno nearly lost it, but had enough sense to ease his body back from the cop, who was snarling in his face. ‘We are not honourable. As for your old man? A fucking honourable crook, my arse. No such thing.’
Another detective stepped forward with hand thrust out. ‘Give us our whack from the wharf job, mate. Or do we give you another kind of whack?’ Oh, real funny, he and his mates in stitches.
‘Or,’ the third had his role to play, ‘you could watch yourselves on TV? In colour?’ Another side-splitting performance. But it might be funny, given the truck had been full of colour television sets. But how did these cops know? Had the pair been set up by a dock worker playing both ends against the middle?
The main man introduced himself, with one of those bone-crusher handshakes designed to intimidate, except that Johno’s big mitt matched it.
‘Detective Inspector Wally Marsh. Armed robbery flying squad.’
Johno said, ‘You got the wrong people. I’ve never even seen a gun. Have you, Shane? See? He hasn’t either.’
The third guy said, ‘I think they do want to be on television. Shall we oblige them, boys?’
‘We should,’ said Marsh. ‘But let’s give ’em one more chance. Now, you young punks, before we cut up rough, how about you just say you’ll give us half your naughty earn and — I haven’t finished yet — and agree right here to a partnership, whereby you give us half what you make. And we, in turn, promise not to arrest you for a serious crime.’
Johno knew from his father that corruption was a way of life throughout Australia, from bent cops to politicians to shire officials. ‘Everyone’s at it,’ said Laurie Ryan, as if with a right to moral outrage. Wet behind the ears, Johno and Shane hadn’t given crooked cops a thought, and Johno Ryan sure as hell wasn’t going down for his first-ever criminal act. He had a wife and baby, plus there was the pride factor.