Cassidy

by Morris West

  She thrust a folded paper at me and switched on the dashboard light so that I could read it.

  ‘For Gregory. Your position as executor clear and unprejudiced. Your personal position more complicated. A good hotel has a Gideon Bible in every room. Read and ponder Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17. Until we meet, as now we must – Melville.’

  ‘Satisfied, Martin?’

  ‘You kept your promise. Thank you.’

  ‘You’ll notice I’m still keeping it – not asking any questions.’

  ‘Thank you for that, too.’

  Those were the last words we exchanged until we had delivered the sail-bags at Paul Langlois’ house. She did not come inside with me, but waited in the car until I had seen the bags sealed and accepted a receipt. Then, as we drove off, she asked the very reasonable question: ‘What do you want to do now?’

  If I had given her a straight answer I would have said: ‘I’m as lonely as a shag on a black rock. I’m dog-tired and deep-down scared. I want to forget what I am and who I am, take you back to my room and make love to you.’ Instead I told her: ‘I’d like you to drop me off at the Town House. Then I’m going to pour myself a large drink and read Gerry Downs’ article – and, of course, Genesis 2!’

  ‘The Town House. Very good, sir!’

  ‘Why are you angry with me, Laura?’

  ‘Because you’re a fool – a stiffnecked, wooden-headed, bloody fool!’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You rifled Cassidy’s safe tonight. That’s a statement, not a question.’

  ‘You’re guessing.’

  ‘No. You had Marco Cubeddu with you. I’ve known him for years.’

  ‘I’ve placed Cassidy’s papers in custody of a bank. I had a right and a duty to do that. Where’s the problem?’

  ‘You’ve opened the door to Bluebeard’s chamber. Now you know what’s inside it. Soon, other people will know that you know. What do you think that buys you? A lot of enemies and maybe a bullet in the head. You’re an innocent abroad, Martin! You don’t know a fraction of what goes on in this State. You know even less about Cassidy’s private and business life.’

  ‘But you know all about it!’ I was angry now. My patience was rubbed raw. ‘Who the hell are you, anyway? Who’s your boss and why doesn’t he mind his own business?’

  She didn’t answer. She turned the car off the main road into a tree-lined street, parked in a pool of shadow, then slewed round in her seat to face me. When, finally, she spoke, her voice was tinged with weary sadness.

  ‘The stuff you brought ashore tonight and whatever else Cassidy put in your hands before he died could get you killed. It could get your family threatened or kidnapped. That’s why Marius Melville has taken them under his protection in London and Switzerland.’

  ‘You call it protection. Couldn’t it equally be a threat, a kind of custody?’

  ‘It could be. It isn’t.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘I know him like the palm of my hand: how he thinks, how he works, how he waits, yes, even how he strikes. I’m probably the only one in the world who knows him like that – and manages to retain his trust.’

  ‘Then you’ve been lying to me, haven’t you?’ Angrily I began to mimic her: ‘“Mr. Melville didn’t tell me. I didn’t ask. I’m paid to pass messages…” Now you tell me you’re the one in all the world who knows him best. So what does that make you?’

  ‘His daughter,’ said Laura Larsen flatly. ‘His only daughter, his only child.’

  The blandness of the admission shocked me more than the fact itself. I asked a simple, silly question: ‘Your name – Larsen… ?’

  ‘I was married and divorced. It suited me to have another name than my father’s.’

  ‘And what is his real name?’

  ‘Melitense. The name signifies “a man from Malta”; in fact, he was born in Palermo. When he became an American citizen he changed it to Melville.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this, at one-thirty in the morning?’

  ‘Because you’re going to find it out anyway from Cassidy’s files. Because it’s important that you trust me.’

  ‘And because, suddenly, I’m a threat to your father and he wants to buy my silence!’

  ‘You’d be very wise to sell it, Martin! For your family’s sake, if not your own.’

  ‘Don’t you see – can’t he see – that I have nothing to sell? I don’t own those documents. They’re part of a deceased estate. I have to dispose of them in accordance with the wishes of the testator.’

  ‘Cassidy gave you the option to sell –’

  ‘Only the microfiches. And how would you know that anyway?’

  ‘He wrote to my father and told him.’

  ‘He left me free to sell or hold. Whichever I do, there are legal consequences.’

  ‘Martin, Martin!’ She reached out and grasped my hands. ‘You’re still not hearing me! You’re talking the language of the law!’

  ‘It’s the only one I know, goddammit!’

  ‘Then, goddammit, you’d better learn a few others very fast! Street talk! Triad talk! Il gergo dei bassifondi… That’s where Cassidy operated: the low quarters, the other side of the river. That’s where your paperchase is going to lead you. And if you don’t learn how to survive there, you’re dead!’

  ‘Is your father threatening me?’

  ‘No. As of now, you’re still family.’

  ‘That’s nice!’

  ‘I’m talking about the others, the rival groups: Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese Yakuza, the political terrorists, Irish and Arab, the rogue unions, the big international traders who dealt with Cassidy. For all of them now, you’re a walking disaster. The threat you represent will be doubled when they read Gerry Downs’ newspaper. Do you think the Government or the police are going to protect you? The hell they are! Who’s left, Martin? Only Marius Melville, Mario Melitense.’

  It was then that I understood quite clearly that I had crossed the Rubicon. I was in barbarian country. All the rules of peace and war had changed. The language was gibberish. Even the gods were alien.

  I don’t know how long I sat, in silence, staring out at the tufted blossom-trees, with starlight shining through their branches and deep pools of shadow lying beneath them. I saw a cat slinking past, a small feral creature in the jungle of suburbia. I heard a mopoke, making his lonely, two-note call above the distant hum of traffic. He was a real bush creature, surviving precariously a long way from home. Then a human sound woke me out of my reverie. Apropos of nothing at all, Laura Larsen said softly, ‘With the shadow on your face, you look just like Charlie Cassidy.’

  ‘So… ?’

  ‘Nothing. For a while, just a little while, I thought I was in love with him.’

  ‘Was he in love with you?’

  She smiled then and I remembered Miss Owl-Eyes, whom I had met a thousand years ago on Flight QF2. London, Bahrain, Singapore, Sydney.

  ‘No, he wasn’t in love, but he could give you the wonderful illusion that he was. And when you found he wasn’t, you still didn’t mind.’

  ‘That’s a nice epitaph for any man.’

  ‘I hope I don’t have to write one for you, Martin.’

  She looked so sombre and woebegone that I couldn’t be angry any more. I reached out and drew her towards me and kissed her. She responded eagerly and we sat, clinging together awkwardly, like adolescent lovers, in the front seat of the car. Then, abruptly, she thrust me away.

  ‘Enough, please! We’re not children any more. You’ve got the police in your hotel. I’ve got my father’s security staff in mine. Call me in daylight and tell me you trust me and you still want me in bed and I’ll tell you how I feel… Fair?’

  ‘Fair enough! But don’t blame me if I remember I’m a married man with a wife and family at risk. I’m sorry I stepped out of line.’

  ‘I’m glad you did. It proves you haven’t been writing sonnets all your life, or legal briefs either. Shall we go, Mr. Petrarch?�
��

  And so, as Sam Pepys might have put it, I came solitary to bed in the Town House. Before I slept I skimmed through ‘Call-me-Rafe’ Loomis’ list of suspect companies and Gerry Downs’ scandal piece. I confess they made insipid reading for one who, tomorrow, would read the naked truth in the secret memorials of Charles Parnell Cassidy.

  Then, as any Christian gentleman should when overnighting in a sinful city, I opened my Gideon Bible and read Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17:

  ‘And this was the command which the Lord God gave the man: Thou mayest eat thy fill of all the trees in the garden except the tree which brings knowledge of good and evil. If ever thou eatest of this thou art doomed to death…’

  10

  Charles Parnell Cassidy had always been a tidy worker. His briefs were beautifully drafted, his case-references meticulously indexed. He diarised every exchange, confirmed every instruction in writing. His accounts were accurate to the last cent. At the end of the day he destroyed every scrap of superfluous paper and ticked off the day’s business like an aircraft check-list.

  ‘Organise yourselves!’ he would thunder at us. ‘Thus, and only thus, can you be sure you’ve opened every avenue of relief to your client and raised every possible obstacle against his adversaries. I will not brief untidy silks. I mistrust eccentric geniuses at the Bar. Generally they’re delivering a performance instead of a plea and our clients are paying through the nose for it. Above all, I loathe, hate and detest sloppy juniors!’ Thus the great man before he took to the hustings and made his reputation as the most successful local ham since Billy Hughes or Robert Gordon Menzies, Warden of the Cinque Ports – God save the Queen!

  So, when I locked myself in my office at the Banque de Paris, with Cassidy’s briefcase and a microfiche scanner, I was not surprised to find that what he had called ‘a rag-bag’ was, in fact, a carefully ordered and indexed record of his works and days. I decided to address myself to this record first. Once I had mastered the plan, I could use it as a grid for a study of the material I had removed from his safe. Without such a guide, I could flounder for weeks through the miscellany of material.

  In the beginning I had difficulty assimilating the texts thrown up on the small screen. They were illusions, not reality. I was accustomed to paper – the texture of it, the weight of it, the colour, the imprint of type upon its surface. I needed something that could be tagged and numbered as an exhibit in evidence… Then, slowly, I settled down. What I had here was information, the real foundation of power. I had not yet to present it in court, only to judge its authenticity and its value.

  The first microfiches dealt with Cassidy’s selection as a Labor candidate for election to the State Parliament in the mid-sixties. They consisted of diary entries in Cassidy’s emphatic hand:

  Jan. 15th. Stinking hot. Tempers frayed. Send the staff home early. Joe Mullins calls. He’s the sitting member for Waterside. He tells me he has cancer and expects to die before Easter. I commiserate. He curses me out. He needs my attention, not my sympathy. Then he informs me that he’s recommended me for preselection to contest his seat in the by-election after his death. He tells me it’s a safe constituency but the local Party is split between mid-line moderates, the Far Left and the bareknuckle boys from the waterfront and the metal trades. If I’m endorsed on the split vote they’ll make my life hell. If I get a unanimous endorsement, I’m safe for twenty years. I tell him I’m not sure I want to muddy my shoes in politics. He abuses me to hell and back… ‘Your old man made his fortune selling liquor and betting slips to the workers. It’s time you paid your dues. Call me Monday and let me know your decision.’ Next, the Cardinal’s on the line. He mourns like a cooing dove over Joe’s impending demise. Then he reads me his favourite sermon about Christian democracy and the apostolate of the work-place. The which, translated into basic English, means ‘The British sent the Irish out in chains with the First Fleet. We’ve dragged ourselves up by our bootstraps until we’re one-third of the population, with a stranglehold on the Public Service and a good part of the Labor Party in our pockets – and by God we’re not letting go one toehold of our gains!’

  What the hell! He’s right. I wasn’t flogged through High School by the Christian Brothers and booted through Law by my old man, just to surrender the rewards to some nobody with a First Fleet name and a Public School tie…

  Now, dead on five-thirty, when I’m locking away my papers, in walks Baldy McCubbin. Baldy is the left hand of God in the Labor Party of New South Wales. He’s a bruiser, but he’s very bright. His nose is broken. His face is scarred by a razor cut. His flinty eyes mirror the grudges of a lifetime. His voice sounds like gravel running down a metal chute. He sits down without being asked, spreads his two ham fists on my polished desk-top and tells me: ‘You’re recommended for preselection when Jack Mullins dies. If I approve, you’re in. When you’re in, you pay dues. I’m here to read you the rate card.’

  I toy with the ebony ruler, which is a useful weapon and legal as well. Very quietly, I give Baldy the facts of life:

  ‘I’m not for sale. If you want dead meat, go to a butcher’s shop. I hate bullies and blackmailers and I can fight just as dirty as any of your boys in the Painters and Dockers. If you want legal advice, you ask politely and pay promptly. If you want service in Parliament, you elect me and you get it for free. But I don’t pay, not now, not ever, not one goddamn brass razoo!… Have I made myself clear, Mr. McCubbin?’

  ‘You have,’ he says and walks out. I’m hot and tired and angry. I hope to Christ Clare isn’t in one of her moods when I get home. I need a quiet drink and a long swim and, for a change, some happy sex…

  The next item was dated January 25. The script was curiously laboured, as if the writer were forcing himself to achieve a clerkly hand.

  Dear Cassidy,

  The way you handled the preselection committee was a joy to watch – and to get Baldy’s vote was a bloody miracle! Now, if you can run a half-way decent campaign, if you don’t commit murder or rape the Secretary’s girlfriend, you’ve got the seat in your pocket.

  Question is, what will you do after that? Your bum’s too broad and your brain’s too good for the back benches. This Parliament has a year to run. I don’t think we can win the next election. We’re too divided. We’ve had too many strikes to be popular. And, besides, we don’t want to be seen helping to run the war in Vietnam. So for you it’s twelve months on the back benches, then a term in Opposition as a member of the Shadow Cabinet. After that, I think you’d be ready to take a crack at the Premier’s job.

  Think about it carefully. Start building a patronage list. Start getting your funds together, because it’s an expensive exercise if you want to stay in control and not go on anybody’s payroll. Start making friends in big business and in the unions. We need the middle-class vote. So you’ve got to be seen as an honest broker, with friends in capital and labour.

  But get moving now. Five years isn’t very long to build an empire. You’ll find time runs away from you very quickly.

  When I die, the Cardinal will hand you a sealed envelope. It’s my legacy to you. Use it wisely. Have to stop now. I’m hurting more and more each day. Death begins to look like a friend.

  Good luck, brother.

  Joe Mullins

  The nature of Joe Mullins’ legacy was not revealed immediately. I had first to deal with a series of letters, documents and commentaries on senior members of the Labor Party, union officials and high members of the public service. Cassidy was a great admirer of the French method: the dossier into which you fed every scrap of information, however trivial, about an individual, until you could draw his portrait blindfold.

  About this time, too, he was beginning to dispense favours – mostly in the form of unsecured loans at very reasonable rates of interest. These loans came, not from the trust funds of the partnership, but from a small finance company called Clarevale Finance, of which Micky Gorman was the titular head and whose funds were provided from Cassidy’s pri
vate purse. Cassidy approved the candidates, but it was Micky who authorised the loans, signed the receipts for interest and kept the books. The client list contained some surprisingly prominent names; and a large number of foreign ones: Chinese, Lebanese, Italian, Greek. Even though his political career had hardly begun, Charles Parnell Cassidy was acting like a true evangelist and converting the migrant tribes along with the local ungodly.

  Joe Mullins died on Good Friday that year. Three months later, Charles Parnell Cassidy made his maiden speech in the Legislative Assembly. There was no copy of the text on microfilm, but there was a full copy of Joe Mullins’ legacy: a complete diagram of the patronage system of the existing Government and its connections with the criminal community.

  It was by now a very dated document. Some of the people named in it were dead – of natural or unnatural causes. Some had aged into respectability or impotence. But there were others, ringed in red, who were still riding high and mighty in their hierarchies. Cassidy’s footnote was illuminating:

  …The more it changes, the more it’s the same. You work with the tools you’ve got. You live in the house you inherit. If you make a frontal attack on an institution, whether it’s criminal or legal, you’ll break your heart and your head. You have to infiltrate it, suborn the guards, seduce the secretaries, bribe the underlings, scare the high ones… In Australia you can never win an election on a reform ticket. We love our little villainies. We vote for the candidate who can maintain them at an acceptable level…

  This was Vintage Cassidy. He was a born sceptic. He had breathed in doubt with the incense at Sunday Mass. As to his tactic of infiltration, a note from his Parliamentary Leader was instructive:

  …I note and approve your desire to maintain a low profile during your first year or two in the House. However, I can’t have you dissipating your talents on the back benches. I have therefore secured Caucus approval for your appointment as my personal counsellor and my liaison officer with the Shadow Ministries. This will give you access to all the information at our disposal and the chance to build some alliances among your colleagues. No need to tell you they’ll be testing you at every step. You’re the new boy and you’re rich – and we take delight in slashing down the tall poppies…