Cassidy

by Morris West

  Cassidy’s reply was brief and to the point:

  … I accept. It’s a role I’m used to. Queen’s Counsel lets off the big fireworks in court. I’m the man who briefs him. Just for your future guidance: I’m especially interested in Industrial Development and the functioning of the Police Department. The present Government has misfired on the one and studiously corrupted the other. We have to produce a blueprint for change…

  At first blush, neither was a very promising department for a rising politician; but at this early stage of his career Cassidy was more concerned with staying out of the limelight than getting into it. Besides, he always worked by contraries. Industrial Development was a catch-all portfolio, properly called Industrial Development and Decentralisation. Its long-term aim was to spread industrial enterprises around the country instead of concentrating them along the overcrowded seaboard. It dealt with growth areas, new technology, small businesses, pockets of unemployment, foreign investment. It was rich in talking points and the Minister in charge of it was a most eloquent talker.

  Cassidy, who could have beaten him hollow in any debate, refused to engage him. Instead, he set up a series of conferences – all carefully minuted – with Baldy McCubbin and the principal union leaders in the State. His message was simple: ‘You want high employment and a solid industrial base. That means foreign investment. I’ll get it for you. However, there’s a price tag. I have to guarantee industrial peace on the work sites. Can you give me that?’

  They couldn’t and they wouldn’t. He was asking them to castrate themselves, make a pact with the devil, turn themselves into running dogs of the Capitalists. Cassidy shrugged it off with relaxed good humour. ‘The essence of democracy is the right to cut your own throat with your own razor. I’m taking a trip abroad in fourteen days. If you change your minds before then, let me know; but I’m damned if I’m going to compromise my credit for a bunch of numbskulls who are still back in the days of Keir Hardie!’

  A week later, Baldy McCubbin came to him with a draft document which could, he said, be negotiated between the unions and any overseas investor. Cassidy’s comment was scrawled across the microfiche image: ‘We could have done this on day one. Why did he have to waste so much energy?’ However, his real feelings were expressed in a memorandum to Marius Melville in Florida:

  …With this agreement now established in principle, we are in an ideal position. There is no doubt in my mind that Labor will win the next election. There is no doubt that so long as Baldy McCubbin is alive the union pledge will hold. After the election, I become the official broker. Pass the word to the boys not to play games with me…

  Melville’s reply was terse:

  …No games. You deliver; we deliver.

  M.M.

  Cassidy’s attitude to the police force was curious. The fortune he had inherited from his father had been made in part from ‘sly grog’, the illegal, after-hours trading in liquor. This trade was the natural adjunct of all the others; gambling, prostitution and the drug traffic which, during and after the Vietnam war, had grown to epidemic proportions. In a sense, Cassidy was born into the family, that tenuous but durable network of pimps, bookies, loan sharks, smugglers, thugs and assassins who pandered to the pleasures of John and Jill Public. He was a lawyer. He knew how the system worked. He understood the macabre symbiosis between the policeman and the criminal: how neither could subsist without the other, how neither would be necessary if John and Jill Public were not such erratic animals – greedy, gullible, violent, scared; and still stupid enough to believe in Santa Claus and the free lunch.

  It was a memo from the Leader which forced him to define his position in a form suitable for the record. The memo read:

  …The present Government has extended patronage and protection to wealthy criminals and their associates. Senior police officers administer that patronage and provide the protection, at a high price. They are therefore accomplices in criminal acts. We will inherit that same police force. What shall we do with it or about it? Your opinion, please?…

  Cassidy’s answer was dated two days later:

  …We’ll inherit the police, just as we’ll inherit the villains and the good, honest citizenry who only want a call girl, or a drink after licensed hours, or a hand of poker, or a roll of the dice, or a jolt of heroin. We dare not disrupt the system by staging a Night of the Long Knives. That could bring on a police strike with looting, violence and blood in the streets. Neither can we afford the collapse of public confidence which would follow an indictment of the present Premier, certain of his Cabinet members and senior officers of the police force. Besides, in a mud-slinging contest, our side isn’t going to come out squeaky-clean either… So let me try to work up a scenario for you. I don’t want to put it into the record system, because it leaks like a string bag. When it’s ready, I’ll call you and we’ll talk at my place. But I give you fair warning. Don’t expect a rigorist document. I was bred under the shadow of Cromwell on the one hand and the Grand Inquisitor on the other. You can’t induce virtue by the rack. If you can’t enforce the law you become a laughing stock. If you don’t enforce it you become a criminal. This is a traders’ town, with three million inhabitants and a torrent of transients looking for fun after dark. So it really isn’t a question of virtue, but of an acceptable incidence of vice – yours, mine and the visiting firemen’s included…

  The next item, number 24, was a receipt for five thousand dollars, identified as ‘the purchase price of fifty glossy prints and fifty negatives, the property of our client, the undersigned Isobel Albeniz.’ The signature was a bold, squarish backhand. A typewritten statement indicated that the prints were held in Cassidy’s safe and that the negatives were deposited outside Australia with instructions for their publication in certain circumstances. Clearly this was the pornographic material still sealed in the sail-bags and lodged in the strongroom.

  Item 25 was a press clipping which recorded the discovery, in a Brisbane apartment, of the body of Isobel Albeniz, 38, one-time prostitute and madam of several expensive Sydney brothels. The coroner’s verdict was suicide by an overdose of barbiturates.

  Item 26 was a photograph; a smiling, handsome fellow called John Augustus Ranke, Detective-Inspector in the New South Wales Police Force. A note in Cassidy’s handwriting declared: ‘This man is an extortionist and a professional assassin. He is responsible, to my certain knowledge, for the deaths of Isobel Albeniz and at least two other people.’ A later postscript noted that Detective-Inspector Ranke died in an automobile accident while holidaying in Manila in 1978.

  I looked at my watch. It was after midday. I called Paul Henri Langlois and suggested we lunch together. With infinite Gallic regret, he declined. He was entertaining Le Nickel from New Caledonia on their half-yearly junket in Sydney. Tomorrow perhaps? Of course tomorrow! I should be there for a whole series of tomorrows, feeling more and more like some grubby little voyeur peering through a tenement keyhole.

  What the hell! If I had to eat alone I might just as well work. I asked one of the secretaries to send out for coffee and sandwiches, then settled back at the screen.

  The new cassettes of microfiches dealt with Cassidy’s offshore business arrangements. They began with a diary note dated June 1968:

  …The only way to make money and keep it is to operate transnationally. The only way for me to do this legally is through discretionary trust arrangements of which I am not the beneficiary. Marius Melville has been most helpful in this matter. He suggests a worldwide chain of autonomous companies, each in a tax haven, with the shares owned by a central trust in a secure location, the company funds being exported to the same trust. He has recommended a firm of Swiss lawyers skilled in this kind of operation… The longer I stay in the political arena, the more clearly I see that money is the only shield and the sharpest sword. If a man is rich, he can’t be bought with money. If the funds lie outside his visible control, he can’t be bullied, blackmailed or seduced into parting with them; besides, the tra
ditional trust is still the best defence against fiscal invasion…

  The next item was a letter from Horstman and Preysing, Attorneys at Law in Zurich. They were pleased to inform their distinguished colleague that the Rotdrache trust deeds had been signed and commercial companies in the Rotdrache series had been set up in Liechtenstein, Monte Carlo, Panama, the Bahamas, Hong Kong and Bangkok. All funds, other than those required for day-to-day operations, would be transmitted back to the trust account at U.B.S. Zurich. Access to funds and information was by a common code as previously designated and known only to the trustees and their lawful delegate. Once again, Cassidy had added a recent footnote:

  … The code consists of Latin literals, a five-figure sequential numeration based on the first group, then Latin literals again. Even you should be able to work that one out, sonny boy. If you can’t, the answer’s in cassette number 10, item eight. But try, just for the hell of it. Pity is, I won’t be around to time you!…

  It wasn’t too complicated. Most operators of transnational companies run them in series – Bluebird Canada, Bluebird Switzerland, and so on. In this case the series name was Rotdrache – Red Dragon. In Latin it became Draco Ruber. Sequential numeration worked thus:

  3 5 1 2 4

  D R A C O

  So the access code became: DRACO – 35124 – RUBER.

  I checked my answer against cassette number 10. I felt a childish triumph when I found it was right. Then the triumph turned to anger. Here I was, twelve thousand miles from home, still being manipulated by Charles Parnell Cassidy – and him, in the best Irish fashion, six feet under the sod! I was only at the beginning of his records, but already the highlights of his activities were becoming clearer and the shadows in the corners were deepening.

  Cassidy had been an empire-builder and sooner or later one would expect to stumble on human bones beside the caravan tracks or around the outpost fortresses. Detective-Inspector Ranke had been a very nasty piece of goods – but I wondered who had paid the driver of the car that killed him in Manila. If, as the Gerry Downs’ article claimed, Charlie Cassidy had a stake in the Manila girl-gambling-and-drug rackets, then it was as easy for him to hire a hit-man as to sell a ten-year-old girl in a bar. Cassidy’s note to Marius Melville and Melville’s curt reply had been couched in the lingo of the Brotherhood – more binding than any contract. So, with the Brotherhood behind me and the Attorney-General in front, I was truly beleaguered. I was also sitting on four sail-bags containing evidentiary material, a pistol and a quantity of heroin, for possession of which I was now answerable at law.

  Enough was enough! The microfiche material I could handle. The rest was a time bomb – and I had to get rid of it. I packed up all the materials and put them back in the safe deposit. I left the sandwiches and coffee untouched and walked out into the gaggle of Sydney’s lunchtime streets and a pall of midsummer heat.

  After two minutes’ walking I was drenched with perspiration. I flagged down a taxi to take me to the Melmar Marquis. I told myself I needed a pleasant lunch in air-conditioned comfort. I was lying in my own teeth. I wanted to see Miss Owl-Eyes, to eat and talk and touch body to body with her. I was lonely and beginning to be as scared as she had warned I should be.

  The foyer of the Melmar Marquis was vast, cool and murmurous. The front of house staff were all beautiful girls or handsome boys, who wore midnight blue blazers with the double-M monogram on the pocket. They smiled readily and offered eager help. I addressed myself to a Taiwanese charmer at the information desk who offered to page Miss Laura Larsen for me. Three minutes later the lady came swaying down the staircase, fresh as a summer flower – and formal as the Court Circular!

  ‘Mr. Gregory! How nice to see you. I’m running late, I’m afraid. We have a convention of Japanese communication engineers. Their inaugural luncheon begins in fifteen minutes. If you don’t mind waiting at the bar, Leon will take care of you, then I’ll show you the accommodation we discussed for your people.’

  As she steered me away from the desk I asked, ‘Why the pantomime?’

  ‘Because I’m on duty – and I wasn’t prepared for a casual visit.’

  ‘Shall I leave?’

  ‘No, for God’s sake! I’ll order lunch in my suite. I’ll fetch you when it’s ready. You look worn around the edges. Is anything the matter?’

  ‘I’ve started going through Cassidy’s files.’

  ‘Have you learnt anything?’

  ‘More than I want. Less than I need.’

  She touched my arm lightly, steering me over to the bar.

  ‘Leon, this is one of our new clients, Mr. Gregory. We’re lunching upstairs, but I’m running late. I’ll call down as soon as I’m free. Mr. Gregory, may I recommend one of Leon’s Margaritas – out of this world!’

  It was a good exit and it cut me down to junior size. Leon, mannerly as a marquis himself, asked me: ‘What’s your pleasure, Mr. Gregory?’

  ‘What the lady recommended – a Margarita.’

  He mixed the drink with a flourish and it tasted good. He asked me: ‘Will you be staying with us, Mr. Gregory?’

  ‘Probably. I’m discussing the possibility of an international legal convention.’

  ‘If Miss Larsen arranges it, you can count on success. She’s a wonder, that girl. Always cheerful, always on the move – and she knows the hotel business inside out. Already we’re up to eighty per cent occupancy, which is great. We’ve got class and comfort, if you see what I mean.’

  It felt comfortable to me too until, half way through my drink, ‘Call-me-Rafe’ Loomis hoisted his pudgy body on to the next bar stool and gave me his furtive, jowly grin.

  ‘Well, look who’s here! Martin Gregory. This is a surprise.’

  ‘You’re a long way from Parliament House, Mr. Loomis.’

  ‘But never far from you, Mr. Gregory.’

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘Never known to refuse. What are you having?’

  ‘A Margarita.’

  ‘I’ll try one.’

  He waited until the drink was served and Leon had drifted away to another customer, then he said, ‘You foxed my boys last night. You went to Cassidy’s house in a taxi. But you never came out. We didn’t solve the mystery until this morning. You left by boat.’

  ‘Something illegal in that?’

  ‘No. Sneaky perhaps. Smartass perhaps. But certainly not illegal.’

  ‘So why the surveillance and the harassment?’

  ‘Not harassment, Mr. Gregory – security. This is a rough town. You’re an important man with distinguished connections. We don’t want anything to happen to you. So we provide police protection. Free of charge, you’ll notice.’

  ‘According to Gerry Downs, free police service is getting rarer and rarer.’

  ‘Ah! So you’ve seen the first piece. It doesn’t publish until Saturday.’

  ‘Someone gave me an advance copy.’

  ‘And… ?’

  ‘Clearly, you, as Attorney-General, will have to make some response.’

  ‘Any suggestions?’

  ‘Some. But I’d rather not discuss them in a public bar.’

  ‘Name the time and place. I’ll be there.’

  ‘The Premier’s office, Parliament House, at a time convenient to you both.’

  ‘Why the Premier? You and I can handle this.’

  ‘I think the Premier will want to attend.’

  ‘He’s a busy man.’

  ‘I’m trying to save him trouble. You, too, for that matter.’

  ‘Where do I contact you?’

  ‘You know where I am every moment.’

  ‘Almost every moment.’

  ‘I’ll call you at five this evening, at your office.’

  ‘What do I tell the Premier?’

  ‘Tell him the end is nigh – and the executor of the deceased estate would like to talk to him.’

  ‘Very funny!’

  ‘Not funny at all, I’m afraid. When we first met, you tried t
o bully me out of my proper functions as executor. You were having – what did you call it? – “forensic fun”. Now, the fun’s over. I wish to open legal communications with Cassidy’s successor and his Attorney–General. A conference is the first step.’

  ‘Which means that you’ve got something to give us.’

  ‘It means that if and when I have something to give you, it’s recorded, certified and I get a receipt for every item.’

  ‘I told you at the time – that’s standard procedure.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Let me make a guess at what you’ve got.’

  ‘No guesses. I’ll call you at five.’

  The telephone buzzed behind the bar. Leon answered it. I prayed he was as well trained as he looked. He put down the receiver and announced, ‘They’re ready for you now, Mr. Gregory. Tenth floor, someone will meet you at the elevator.’

  I thanked him and slid a ten-dollar note across the bar. He made no move to pick it up.

  ‘The drinks come with the compliments of the house, sir.’

  ‘Just saying thank you for the service, Leon.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr. Gregory,’ said Leon. He picked up the note and began wiping the bar near Loomis’ elbow. Loomis sat, hang-jowled and unhappy, staring into his liquor.

  Laura Larsen was waiting for me outside the elevator on the tenth floor. Her smile was warm.

  ‘Good afternoon, Martin.’

  I bent to kiss her. She offered her lips, but there was no passion in the brushing contact. I apologised for coming unannounced. I thanked her for inviting me to lunch. She chided me lightly.

  ‘I told you last night. You’re still family. You’re welcome.’

  Her hand was cool as she led me along the corridor to her suite, a large three-roomed apartment with an office, a sitting room and, I presumed, a bedroom beyond. Luncheon was set in the sitting-room; chilled soup, cold cuts, salad and cheese, with a bottle of Chablis cooling in the ice-bucket. For a moment I felt an oaf, shambling and tongue-tied. Then I managed to get the words out.