Crooked

by Camilla Nelson

  Chooks gasped for oxygen. “Do you reckon I’m stupid? Do you reckon I’d go around naming somebody like that?’

  Chooks never got the chance to confess. Just then, the cell door banged open and Tanner walked in. He bundled Gus and Agostini out into the corridor, leaving Chooks to straighten his collar and smooth down his shirtfront, all alone in the dark.

  Tanner was storming up and down the corridor, throwing thunderous glances at Gus and Agostini, who were standing to attention with their backs to the wall. Gus stayed stoically silent, but Agostini was too angry to keep quiet.

  ‘Chooks Brouggy’s already copped to the killing. He also says there were others involved, including a bloke by the name of Tommy Bogle.’

  ‘Who’s this bloke Tommy who I never heard of?’

  Agostini replied, ‘He worked as a doorman for Dick Reilly, and also for Johnny Warren at his Liverpool club. It seems he approached Warren with a proposition to shoot Reilly and get paid in the process. Warren hates Reilly on account of it was Reilly who drove him out of the Cross. He’s financially very low after the Liverpool club closes, and so he agrees.’ Agostini opened his mouth to say more, but Tanner stopped him short.

  ‘What do you reckon you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m carrying out an investigation,’ said Agostini, suddenly prim.

  ‘Into what – the unknown?’

  ‘I’ve got a statement incriminating this bloke Tommy Bogle. I dunno the money-man but I reckon McPherson’s good for it.’

  ‘Well, I reckon you’re fantasising. I reckon it’s all in your head.’

  ‘I’ve got a sworn statement.’

  ‘Are you contradicting me?’

  ‘No, I’m just stating the facts.’

  ‘Well, in case you forgot, it’s me who decides on the facts of the matter, and the fact is that everything stops right here, right now. I’ve got no use for coppers running around harum-scarum. You’ve got three months owing, Agostini. I want you to take it, starting now. And when you get back, don’t be surprised if you find that you’re back in uniform. Out doing parking tickets.’ He turned his gaze back onto Gus. ‘I’d expect it of him –’

  Gus said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit bloody late,’ said Tanner, and walked off.

  Later that evening, Gus drove down to Bogle Bros Auto Electric on Tanner’s instructions, and picked up Tommy Bogle as he came off the nightshift. Gus sat Tommy down in a white tiled cell so he could sweat for a bit, only Tommy didn’t sweat. He just smiled politely and asked for his lawyer. The lawyer arrived fifteen minutes later and took them through a point-for-point rebuttal of everything to which Chooks had just sworn. Things being equal, Tanner said they had no reason to keep him and sent Gus to the cells to let Tommy go. Chooks was also sent home, but was refusing to leave custody before he was granted protection. Eventually Tanner gave way, telling Chooks that he’d set up a program called Operation Q.

  Gus went searching for Tanner as the small hours of the night crept towards dawn. He found him in an empty holding cell, with a litter of Tooths KB Lager cans crushed like metal carnations around on the floor. The moon cast a bluish glare onto the ground where Tanner was standing, so motionless in the semi-darkness that for a single split second, as Gus came round the door, the room appeared empty.

  Gus put a finger behind his glasses and rubbed his eye. ‘There’s something I wanted to say.’

  Tanner drank the final dregs from his beer can and flung it away. ‘Anything you want.’

  ‘I reckon you’re being unfair on Agostini. Maybe he was wrong in the way he talked back at you, but I don’t think he’s far wrong about the case. Also, I don’t think McPherson is such a long reach.’

  ‘McPherson didn’t do it.’

  ‘I dunno, I kind of like him for it.’

  Tanner laughed long and horribly, as if some long-accumulated strain was releasing from his system. ‘You don’t understand what I’m saying. I’m telling you he didn’t do it.’

  Gus attempted to say something further but, finding it impossible, went on his way. Face blank. Eyes uncomprehending. Glasses tilted slightly off to one side as he went down the hall.

  Gus was unable to sleep the rest of that night and lay on the flat of his bed filled with inarticulate emotion. He thought about Agostini and the things that were bothering him, and decided there was no excuse for him not standing by Agostini. He woke once again in the odd hours, as new thoughts broke off and rose to the surface. He found himself standing in his sock-feet in the semi-darkness with an ever clearer apprehension of how wrong he had been.

  For the first time he gave in to his suspicions. He tore a hole in the fabric of his universe and stumbled straight through.

  ‘I can tell you I was sweating bucketsful soon as I walked in,’ said Chooks. ‘But I reckon they took a real shine to me in the end. They asked me, “Can you swear to this, can you swear to that?” I said, “Just put me up before the magistrate and I’ll swear like a trooper.”’

  ‘They’re giving us the reward?’

  ‘Five thousand dollars.’

  ‘Dear God!’ Marge’s eyes rounded out in astonishment.

  ‘Now don’t get yourself het up,’ said Chooks, a bashfulness showing in the crooked grin he gave her. ‘I reckon those coppers are pretty important blokes in their own line of business, and you’ve got to respect that. I mean, I’d be the first bloke to kick up a stink if they cocked up on me. The minute some mug tries to push me around, he knows what to expect. But overall, I’ve got to admit I was pretty impressed –’ Marge interrupted before Chooks got much further.

  ‘You’ve got protection?’

  ‘No worries. I’ve taken care of all that. Anything happens, all you’ve got to do is dial up triple-O and say the words Operation Q.’

  ‘Q?’

  ‘That’s right. Just say, Operation Q. The place will be swarming with coppers in a jiffy.’

  Marge stacked the plates in the sink and began running the taps. ‘I dunno, Chooks. It’s a long way out here in the dark. Maybe I ought to take the kids to my mother’s –’

  ‘Aw, Marge. Don’t do that. It’s lonely out here without you lot to cheer me up.’ But Marge continued to look doubtful, and Chooks, after giving the matter some thought, came up with an idea. ‘Here’s what. Why don’t we do a dummy run? I’ll discharge a firearm from out near the fowl house and you can get on the blower and yelp, Operation Q. Just see what happens.’

  Chooks pulled on his gumboots and trudged out across the yard. He leaned with his back to a fence post and raised the stock to his shoulder.

  The sound of gunfire echoed through the blackness.

  Forty minutes later, Chooks watched in horror as Marge almost swooned right there in front of him. ‘I never should’ve trusted them,’ said Chooks. ‘They don’t care what happens to us. I’m not important enough.’

  Marge was too frightened to say anything.

  Chooks said, ‘I’m sorry, Marge. I love you. I’d do anything for you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Marge. ‘But I’m scared.’

  Chooks knew if he looked at Marge any longer that he might burst. So he dropped down beside her and buried his face in her neck. Marge was trembling, and so was he. After a while, Marge led him back into the house. Chooks got on the telephone to CIB. ‘Fair dinkum,’ he said, sounding not at all hopeful. ‘Is that the best your mob can do?’

  Several weeks later Charlie was digesting an account of the Reilly inquest over fried eggs and coffee in his Balgowlah home. Much space was given over to the doings of the mystery witness ‘Joe Smith’ (already well known in the legal and criminal fraternity as the small-time scoundrel, Chooks Brouggy). How he was smuggled into court in the well of a cop car, and tendered his three days of testimony in a disguise of dyed hair and dark glasses. Reporters dwelled at great length on his preference for wide floral ties and shabby tweed suits, and his disconcerting habit of laughing at unusual moments throughout the proceedings. O
ut of curiosity as much as anything, Charlie had idled up alongside the George Street North Court the previous morning. He peered at the windows patched haphazardly with cardboard, and the handful of mounted cops who fronted the entrance. He was as impressed as anybody by the hoopla surrounding the case, but as to the alleged guilt or innocence of the parties to the proceedings he was, like the rest of the world, in a bit of quandary.

  Charlie was preoccupied as he headed through the smog-stained arcades riddling Circular Quay, emerging on the far side in a tangle of cobblestone lanes and tobacco-tiled pubs. He pushed through the crowd of reporters gathered under the sandstone-trimmed purple brick arches of the Coroner’s Court, walked down a long corridor and entered the room where the inquest into the death of his former client, Raymond ‘Ducky’ O’Connor, was already in progress.

  Wally Driscoll was up on the stand giving testimony. On a broad ledge in front of him were photographs of the Latin Quarter, including a close-up of the expended cartridge, the actual head wound, and some dark shiny stains seeping across the carpet.

  ‘You drew this conclusion on the basis of the gun being jammed?’

  ‘I’m satisfied the only way the gun could’ve jammed was through manual operation of the slide after the shot was let off.’

  ‘You’re also of the opinion that it was impossible for Mr O’Connor to have performed this action?’

  ‘Injury was massive and fatal.’

  Charlie wedged himself into a seat towards the back, taking in the atmosphere of the court, with its high-backed wooden chairs, dark wooden panelling and clock hanging from the gallery balustrade ticking over the proceedings.

  Next up, Lennie McPherson took the stand. He stood with his eyes raised enough to meet those of the spectators in the gallery in front of him, but never enough to meet those of the Coroner, whose questions he answered in an unenergetic fashion and a not even slightly defensive tone.

  ‘I put it to you that you saw O’Connor in Sydney.’

  ‘I only heard he was in Sydney that night.’

  ‘Did you also hear he was intending to murder you?’

  ‘I thought he was in Melbourne.’

  ‘Were you concerned about threats?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you normally take precautions against attacks?’

  ‘I never have.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, it seems to me that it doesn’t make much sense. I mean, how would you know somebody was going to attack you until they’d already started?’

  Charlie felt a stab of familiarity as the next witness took the stand. Clad in peach nylon, tight as upholstery over her wide hips, was Dolly Brennan, Tanner’s female companion at the Latin Quarter on the night they had met.

  Dolly said, ‘I was standing with my back to the booth, talking to this bloke at the table, when I felt something hard strike my foot.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t a cigarette lighter or something?’

  ‘I can see a gun. I had a strapless shoe on and it dropped right on my toe.’

  ‘You subsequently told detectives you saw a man pick it up?’

  ‘It was the bloke who got shot. I told the coppers I reckoned he must’ve knocked himself –’

  Charlie couldn’t help noticing that the Coroner made no inquiry as to the credibility of Dolly’s evidence, or the prints on the guns, and the way he moved quickly to dismiss the ballistics evidence as far from conclusive. He summed up by saying, ‘The testimony of Mrs Brennan adding sufficient weight to the rest of the evidence, I’m making a finding of death accidentally or otherwise by the victim’s own hand.’

  It was an uncomfortable afternoon and Charlie was sweating profusely as he trudged up Bridge and then Phillip Street towards Martin Place.

  Upstairs in his office, he lay back in his swivel chair with his heels on the desk and his mouth hanging open, listening to the monotonous swoosh, swoosh of the metal fan on the ceiling. It was a marvellous sound, and it suited his mood, until something more insistent than the patter of a typewriter or the burr of the distant traffic interrupted his thoughts. He took a brown manila envelope out of the safe under his desk, and walked out the door.

  Gus was feeling pensive as he drew the blue Falcon into the mouth of the dirt track that curled along the headland. Edging his way through the underbrush, he emerged in a clearing at the foot of a dune, where the carcasses of several automobiles were drawn round in a camp. Tarpaulins were strung haphazard off tailgates. Lines of damp washing were tethered between branches, or suspended off twigs. A young man in striped daks and winklepickers strummed a guitar.

  ‘I’m looking for Twiggy,’ said Gus. ‘Twiggy Lonragen.’

  The young man looked up for a moment then went back to his song.

  Gus turned his eyes towards the ocean that lay just beyond the foot of the dune. There was a mess of rock and shingle on the far side of the bay, and beside this was a cottage of sun-shrunken wood. It had a front veranda with a slight forward tilt, and a broken front window.

  Gus rolled up his trousers and set out across the sand. Twiggy was waiting for him in the shadow of the screen door, dressed in a yellow-flowered sarong. She was largely and unmistakably pregnant. She beckoned him inside, but Gus wasn’t particularly anxious to enter.

  ‘You said you had something to tell me –’ he started.

  But Twiggy, nervous and talkative, had already begun. ‘There’s a few things I reckon you’ve got to understand at the outset,’ she said, pulling him inside. ‘Reilly, he was into gambling and extorting and loan-sharking mostly. He took a bit from the card games and most of the SPs. Ducky was the bloke who collected his debts. Maybe some bludger’s late with a payment? He sends Ducky around. Ducky, I guess he wasn’t the full shilling but he wasn’t that stupid. He never did anything without Reilly’s say-so. Reilly was always saying how nobody could touch him without Ducky to deal with. And Ducky, he cared for nobody’s interest but Dick’s.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘For Ducky.’ The look on his face made Twiggy defensive. ‘I’m doing this for Ducky,’ she insisted.

  ‘What about the Melbourne job?’

  It was clear that Twiggy didn’t want to answer this question. ‘You’ve got to understand Ducky’s been in and out of gaol since he comes out of Boggo Road as a kid. He was deeply into drugs and was apt to give people the wrong impression about things. I reckon it was the quality of drugs he wasn’t used to getting inside.’

  ‘You look like you’ve got off the gear yourself.’

  Twiggy gave a crooked smile. ‘I’m clean. I’ve been clean for six months. I’m going to be good to my kid.’

  Gus nodded. Twiggy stopped, and started again.

  ‘Anyway, Ducky gets himself banged up in Pentridge, and I wasn’t sure what to do about it until McPherson comes along. He says, “I’ve arranged with some coppers to get Ducky sprung.” He tells me to pick up some money, and give it to the lawyer who’s handling the case.’

  ‘The money was for pay-offs?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know much about that.’

  ‘Come on, you can give me better than that.’

  ‘The money was to pay anybody that the lawyer bloke had to.’

  ‘Who gave you the money – McPherson?’

  ‘I dunno, it wasn’t anybody I’d met.’

  Just then, a kettle on a gas ring fired by a cylinder started to sing. Twiggy walked into the kitchen and turned it off.

  ‘Where were we?’ she said briskly, coming back.

  ‘The pay-offs.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. It never occurred to me that McPherson was setting Ducky up for any bag-o-lime funeral. Then again, I don’t think about it much. I just do like I’m told. But after Ducky gets shot I say to myself, “Uh-oh, isn’t this a bit strange, paying a bloke’s bail and shooting him?” Then Reilly gets his, and I can’t see my way straight for the panic I’m in. You see, I don’t think Ducky’s murder was about Ducky at all. It was about
somebody wanting him out of the way so they could move in on Dick’s racket.’

  ‘Convince me,’ said Gus.

  Twiggy stared back at him, incredulously. ‘McPherson did Reilly. It stands to reason. He bails Ducky out and shoots him, and then he gives Reilly what’s coming. I think you’ve got to understand that McPherson always reckoned Reilly was stupid, confining his trade to gambling and such. He had these ideas about getting into brothels and organising them. Reilly was old-fashioned, see. He just reckoned hooning was totally beneath him. He wasn’t going to touch it, no matter what anybody said, or how much he was cash-strapped. Reilly didn’t want to hear about it, but McPherson wouldn’t listen to reason.’

  Gus was more than inclined to believe her, but knew that he had to play tough. ‘How do I know you’re not making this up?’

  ‘What? Haven’t you heard? McPherson is putting a gallon of petrol under Palmer Street, driving out everybody who’s not paying him by the week. The coppers up there, they don’t give a stuff. That’s why I got out. Ducky wasn’t so lucky.’

  Gus was back on the beach a few minutes later, standing a little way off from the shack. He was surprised to see Charlie Gillespie trailing across the sand towards him.

  Gus looked at him distrustfully. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just checking in with a client on an administrative matter.’

  ‘Twiggy is a client?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yeah.’

  Charlie took a step towards the shack, but Gus grabbed him by the elbow. ‘There’s something I want to ask,’ he said. He told Charlie a small part of the story that Twiggy had given him.

  ‘Maybe McPherson gave Twiggy the bail money,’ said Charlie. ‘But so what? It doesn’t have to mean anything.’

  Gus didn’t make any sort of reply. He kept his gaze fixed out over the water.

  Charlie tried to pin him with a look. Eventually Gus said, ‘I don’t care if you paid any coppers down in Melbourne. I just want the name of the copper in Sydney who made the arrangements.’