by Duff, Alan
‘And what’s the name of the person trying to change the subject? And how about his trolley with that stinking coat? Does it go with him?’
Chapter twenty-seven
2007. My God. Thirteen years locked up. And now this, the worst part: the last few months. The growing fear that someone will deliberately provoke you so that your retaliation comes before a judge in court and more time is added.
Now he was, what’s the word, resurrected, a man wanting so badly never to ever come back that he shook all over at the thought.
But what if his mind snapped in the sleepless last ten hours? Felt it could go any moment.
In his old friend Gerardo’s cell, Shane was saying, ‘And I’m not fucking up this time.’
‘No,’ said Gerardo. ‘We won’t be putting you with untrustworthy dogs like Eduardo.’ The late Eduardo Puisi, whose murder had made the front page of Melbourne’s Age. Tortured horrifically, the article said. Genitals stuffed in his mouth — you name it and it’d been done to him. Gerardo had said they’d get him and, though Shane shivered at seeing it publicly announced like this, it was a deserved killing — say no more.
For just brief moments Shane had thought he couldn’t run with these people who were supposedly his adopted Family — always spelt with a capital F in his mind’s eye. Not with torturers, as if that was worse than murder.
He wanted to be as far from them as possible. To live a straight, even decent, life. He wanted to be so normal it popped up in his head with italicised emphasis: normal. As Gerardo described in lurid detail Eduardo Puisi’s last living moments of unspeakable agony, Shane felt physically sick.
Yet, unlike his friend Johno, who had heeded the voice of conscience when they were threatened by the psychopath in Long Bay and remembered what he owed his wife and children, Shane let the thought, the whole suffocating feeling, the guilt by association, all of it, pass.
Now here he was on the eve of getting out, after so many years missing from the free human race, in need of a man who had ordered the torture and murder of several people.
‘Gerardo …?’
‘No. Please. Think I don’t know the turmoil your mind is in? Me? Of course you’re gonna say no more for you. After thirteen years why would you want to do anything that brings you back? Huh? You’ll be met right outside the gates of hell, with a one-way ticket out of here.’ It had been said a million times and still they grinned.
‘We’re about an hour’s drive from Melbourne so you’ll have to hang on a bit longer. But I don’t think you’ll be writing me to say how unhappy you are at your homecoming. Huh?’
Another kind of ‘huh’. These Eyeties could say it ten different ways, just as they could talk with eyebrows and brows alone, a separate language not needing words.
‘And when you’re ready, and not a day before, you know what we’re gonna do for you while you adjust? Put you in a luxury city apartment, out by Victoria Market, close to town but it feels like a village, too. People of every culture, Italians you can speak the lingo with and surprise them. Good fresh food, not expensive either. A hot woman your first day, gotta have that. Huh?’
On he went, in his soft, deep, persuasive voice. ‘Then to give you even more peace of mind, as you rightly deserve, we’re putting people between you and the hot end of the stick. Know what I mean? Like a wall separating you, a respected Family member, from the soldiers we got who never done time, or not much, and out to prove themselves.’
Gerardo smiled, put a hairy hand on Shane’s shoulder. ‘When you, Shane McNeil, have done all your proving. Sound like you, son?’
God, was every man this vulnerable the day before his release, this churned up inside, this frightened and ecstatic and believing and cynical all at the same time?
‘You’ll hardly be mixing with the soldiers. More like an officer, let’s say a captain. Paolo’s running the show, so think of him as one down from a general.’ Paolo and Shane had become regular pen pals. ‘You and him get along, don’t you?’ As if Gerardo didn’t know.
‘Got anything going in Sydney?’ Shane asked. He’d had the idea, countless times, that he’d go up to Sydney, visit his beloved mum, find out why she’d stopped writing, perhaps find that Alzheimer’s or dementia had claimed her, but at least he’d know. And, with Gerardo’s reach, finding Johno wouldn’t be a problem; so much to talk about after all this time.
Least that’s what Shane assumed, till he thought about it some more and realised their lives had almost certainly taken different paths, and maybe Johno had put their past behind him. Or it might be that Shane was anticipating being rejected and preparing himself. Have to keep Johno Ryan away from these people’s radar.
‘We could have,’ said Gerardo. ‘But we see how you go in Melbourne. Be patient.’
It wasn’t the tornado of utter confusion he’d expected. Just endless excitement at everything, yet a constant state of nervousness, perhaps at being exposed, in fear of someone yelling out in the street that he wasn’t a member of society but a hardened criminal fresh out of jail. He could picture people staring, scorning, shunning him.
He didn’t feel he deserved his liberty, and yet there was ecstasy at being a free citizen, even if he was still required to report weekly to a tired, old, cynical probation officer.
All right, so he did intend going back to crime, but it would be a temporary measure, a means of getting back on his feet. No way was he going back in the slammer. He’d commit suicide rather than do that. Just make some big money fast and move to somewhere like Darwin, or Perth, buy a pub, learn to be ordinary and lawful — normal. As Gerardo promised, he’d be some steps removed from the action so the risk was minimal, if it was there at all.
For hours on end he would stroll through the meat and fish outlets of Victoria Market, back and forth, back and forth, hearing the butchers and fishmongers bellowing out their specials, marvelling at rough-looking men so confident in themselves, their products. Held off speaking Italian to the Eyetie vendors — he’d wait a bit till he found his feet, got some self-confidence back.
Back at his very nice apartment just around the corner, white leather sofas, big television and great sound system. He played the Verdi and it still got to him. Man, did it get to him.
He always bought way too much meat and fish — couldn’t help it — along with a pile of other goodies from the markets. The apartment did have a freezer, which he’d already filled, and he threw out perfectly good meat, a bit troubled by this wanton waste.
The fridge he kept stacked with both Victoria Bitter and some imported German beer, which he’d dared to try and decided he really liked. Holstein it was called. Had far too much to eat and drink each day, ended in happy, drunken oblivion after starting on the booze as early as three in the arvo. Occasionally Paolo caught up, but for coffee only, as if keeping the social side on hold. Maybe Gerardo had told Paolo that he’d come out in quite a messed-up state.
So nice to crash out on a comfortable sofa, wake up to city lights out the big windows and that initial disbelief at being a free man. He’d take a tram into town and hit the city streets, taking in the shops, looking at restaurant menus in windows, but hated thought of dining alone and anyway lacked the confidence. Flabbergasted at the new fashions, at stuff that was available which didn’t even exist the last time he was out in the free world, the changes accelerated in his absence.
And everyone had a cell phone, a very public network of contacts, people to call, people who loved them. Wherever he looked almost everything was new to his eyes.
Where did torture and murder and selling drugs fit into all this?
Sometimes he felt like an outcast, impatient for the car Paolo had promised so he’d at least have a sense that he was on the move, going somewhere, even when in his heart he felt alone. It was as though his survival instincts had switched off now he didn’t need them, left him vulnerable, unsure.
On the day of his release Paolo had a woman with him, and she sat in the back seat with
Shane, as bold as brass. He nearly ejaculated when she put a hand on his leg. She stayed all that day, and he laughed at Paolo asking if she could still walk.
But after two more days of her his old prejudices about easy women returned and he didn’t bother inviting her back. He’d find a woman somewhere, a decent one who hadn’t been around much. Like Evelyn, Johno’s wife — she was a good one.
Then he got asked into the Family fold.
Not until he’d been invited to several different Italian homes was he prepared to believe what his eyes saw: that these were guys who loved and respected their wives, doted on their children.
How was this possible?
Two, three or even four of the main players had to be the same guys who tortured and murdered Eduardo Puisi, and many others. Was one of them Paolo, who kissed his children as often as he patted his Labrador dog? He remembered Johno wanting a Lab when they were in their early teens, wondered if he’d fulfilled that wish or was doing time in some jail. Surely the incredibly handsome Tito hadn’t taken part in torturing Puisi or anyone else?
Back at Paolo’s for a third time, nice place but not a mansion or anything big and flash, just a good-sized dwelling out in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton, with a Thursday evening backyard giving off barbecue smoke like thousands of others. The only difference was that the guys never produced a beer; they drank red wine and their wives drank white, but not much. And the men never got drunk, as Shane expected of professional criminals. They were slack, too, about filling up a man’s glass. As if telling him of an unwritten rule that no one should get drunk. But he loved the feeling: it took him away, turned him into someone he liked better.
They ate a lot, sang big Italian songs with tons of emotion, laughed a lot too, very touchy with everyone; children belonged to every adult, not just the parents, constantly cuddled and fussed over, happily sitting on some tough guy’s knee, rolling on the lawn with some enforcer type. The younger ones were even fed mouth to mouth by some adoring relation chewing a piece of meat for easier eating.
Paolo — known in Barwon Prison as very dangerous, not to be crossed, didn’t matter how big and tough, how crazy you were, Paolo was crazier — would sit there brushing his daughter’s then the son’s hair. He got out two years before Shane, after serving seven. So, like Johno Ryan, his kids were little when Paolo went away. Shane would have expected them to be more distant, which made him wonder how Johno had got on with Leah and Danny.
‘Keisha? Did you give your Uncle Shane a kiss?’ Paolo’s ten-year-old daughter, ‘as beautiful as a painting’ according to her father, came over and kissed Shane on each cheek, in the European way. The famed Aussie mateship society could learn a thing or two off these Eyeties. This is how it should be done.
Paolo junior, twelve, kissed him like that, too — a boy? — and they called him ‘Uncle Shane’ as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Shane often felt emotion welling up when he was around these kids, whom he’d kind of got to know through Paolo’s letters and the occasional photographs he sent. Just their clean hair glistening in the sunshine could set off a longing to have children of his own.
There were no princesses among the wives present at Paolo’s barbie. Attractive, not one of them beautiful, mothers first and foremost, devoted to their children, and in private doubtless good, dutiful spouses. Shane hardly ever saw much physical exchange of affection. But plenty of respect for women, though not the adoration the men had for children. He couldn’t imagine any of the women fucking around. No problem imagining the gory consequences if someone did.
The women who kept the men company in the restaurants and certain clubs always run by Italians they called their ‘baby girls’ or ‘hot chicks’. In Shane’s eyes they were no less than sluts and he wanted nothing to do with any of them, no matter how pretty or vivacious. But as he had with those three rotten, bent cops, he went with the flow, though not all the way to anyone’s bed — made out he was too drunk.
His thing about loose women was doubtless learned from his mother. She’d warned him against all kinds of people, kept a sort of verbal list to be read out regularly — of those he shouldn’t associate with, sleep with, talk to, be seen dead with. What would she think of these hypocrites going from this family setting to leering up with wild women, never mind how they all made their living?
‘Yes, but listen, Shane. It’s wholesale. We get the coke in and hand it out to distributors. Don’t set eyes on our customers and don’t want to. Do we, Shane?’
This was Gerardo, explaining how Shane should be involved in selling drugs, but a couple of walls removed from the action. His role was more supervising bulk movements of product from a distance and doing his part in making sure the money added up. The Family was strict about correct bookkeeping.
If anything had convinced him, it was this: a family barbecue, mothers talking about school — in English, though he didn’t mind if they spoke Italian, he could too — about their little ones. ‘My youngest isn’t like her older brothers and sisters. She’s so laid back. I worry she’ll grow up to be the type who misses the bus.’ ‘The plane, you mean,’ some other woman said. ‘No one catches the bus these days.’ And someone else said, ‘Business class, minimum. We never fly cattle class.’ Yet another said, ‘We’re strictly first, hon, but as far away from the morning champagne-guzzlers as we can get.’
Shane didn’t know what they were talking about. He’d never been on a plane. Sick of staring at his empty wine glass, Shane went and helped himself to the bottle. No one said anything, no disapproving looks. He could’ve done this a few months sooner if he’d known.
That is, till Paolo sidled up to him and said, ‘Don’t be getting drunk. I got a call from one of the distributors. Cheeky fuck says he’s coming round here.’
‘You saying you want someone to discourage him?’
‘I want you to go meet him — in a bar just down the street, round a couple of corners. Tito will drive you.’
‘Case I get breathalysed?’
‘Case you get lost. Never knew a man with such a bad sense of direction.’ Paolo grinned as he always did, a sideways face slice.
‘Put that down to thirteen years of not driving and finding I’d lost my confidence behind a wheel. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of direction. I just kind of freeze up.’
‘You’ll get used to it again. We all know the feeling. Me, I applied rage when I drove. Ran vehicles off the fucking road, sideswiped ’em. Had a ball and got my confidence back.’
Indicating the families around them, Shane said, ‘Bet they never saw that side of you. No. You know Gerardo told me once that each of us is a public man and a private man, and the two don’t have a reason to have a discussion.’
‘He’s a wise man is our Gerardo.’
Shane loved how they said ‘our’ and ‘we’ and ‘the Family’ with the capital. Made him feel warm inside, maybe even loved.
‘So tell me the problem needs solving.’ Shane felt in his element now. The survival instinct was back.
‘This boy is a Polynesian. Tongan.’
‘Tongan? I know them — least I knew one I had to put down with the old battery-in-the-sock trick. Whack. Too big to fight fair. Like that cowboy bloke in Barwon?’
‘Yeah. You did him good. Gerardo said it was the making of you.’
‘He did?’ Shane surprised. ‘Well, he never told me that. Just doing my job.’
‘Which tonight is to tell this guy our price is already as low as it gets,’ said Paolo. ‘And it’s still cash up-front. Tell him don’t come a kilometre near the fucking house or that’ll be taken as a planned invasion.’
Shane got it. ‘And if he kicks up?’
Paolo shrugged. His dog was right there for a rub and pat every few minutes. ‘He’s a big man. Take four to lug his body. Ah, look at Keisha getting clucky already, holding my cousin Carlita’s baby. She was born to have kids, that one.’
As Tito came over and nodded to Shane in his res
pectful manner, the thought came from left field that if these people were in a normal business they would be successful and, if it was possible, even happier, since there would be no lengthy absences in jail. No emotional hardening that committing to torture would require. Normal.
Chapter twenty-eight
‘I thought you had a show on at a gallery?’ As Frederick opened the door and stepped aside, Danny could smell the alcohol on his friend’s breath. ‘It not go well?’
‘Yes. The owner says most of my work will sell.’ Danny didn’t want to glance around the apartment taken out in his name, the rent and a weekly hundred paid by his family trust, but his eyes couldn’t miss the untidy mess in the living room and the pile of dirty dishes, pots and pans in the kitchen and the general debris. A spilling-over ashtray on the glass coffee table smudged and smeared by something greasy.
‘That’s good.’ Though Frederick did not smile. ‘What sort of prices are we talking?’
‘I can’t really remember. In the thousands for each piece,’ Danny said. ‘I’ll give some money to you.’
‘I thank you, kid. But what use is money to me? I have more than enough from what the government gives and you adding to it. This,’ he held up an almost smoked cigarette, ‘is all I need, along with you know what.’ He nodded at one empty vodka bottle and another quarter-drunk beside it, a glass with the same look as the coffee table.
‘The medication not right yet?’
‘Have my moments.’ Frederick’s eyes went briefly to the ceiling and Danny saw his nails were getting black again, noticed the heavy nicotine staining on the fingers. ‘What of your big moment tonight, young man? What are you doing here when the invitation said it finishes at ten?’
‘You didn’t come.’
‘I said I might come.’ Frederick sounded a bit defensive. ‘But I didn’t. Sorry. So why did you leave? And don’t be telling me it was to come see me or I’ll be angry.’