by Jon Cleary
He turned round as Chung, leaning over the barrier between the two booths, touched him on the shoulder. “Jack, you see who’s just come in?”
Aldwych looked towards the door of the restaurant where the manager, face like an Oriental sun, was greeting Denny Pelong and his wife. He led them to a booth, ignoring or oblivious to the disapproval of his two bosses at the rear of the restaurant. He was the sort of restaurateur who believed that in bad times any customer was welcome who could pay the bill. Especially one who was known to throw tips around with an abandon that was heretical to the other diners and usually spoiled their last course.
“Who’s that?” said Janis.
“Denny Pelong.” He turned back to her, smiled. “He likes to think he’s my successor.”
“Is he?”
“I wouldn’t know. I told you, I’m retired. I got no more interest in who runs things any more. Does the chairman of BHP keep shoving his nose in after he’s retired?”
Janis looked at Jack Junior. “What do you know about him?”
He swallowed a lychee, gave her a look that his father, who might have caught birds on the wing if he’d been so disposed, didn’t miss. “Pelong? Nothing. I told you, Dad and I never discuss that side of his life.”
“Of course,” she said, accepting the warning. She had never seen Pelong before and she felt a curious excitement at at last observing the enemy, the man whose death penalty she had okayed. She shifted slightly in her seat to get a better view of him. “Who’s the woman with him?”
“That’s his wife, Luisa.” Aldwych was watching Janis rather than the Pelongs. “She’s the brains in the family.”
“She looks like a bimbo, that dress and hair-do.”
“You’re a snob.” But he smiled when he said it.
“Of course. Is she a criminal, too?” Then she looked at him and managed a blush, false but polite. “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”
“Why? We established the other day, when we first met, that I’m a crim. Or an ex-crim. We both know what we are, Janis.” He gave her his old crim’s grin, evil and challenging; she felt a sudden chill, recognizing another enemy. Then he looked at Jack Junior. “What’s the matter, Jack? You choking on a lychee?”
In the next booth Fay Chung, glittering gold seemingly at every joint, said, “What’s the fuss?”
“I wish you wouldn’t wear so much jewellery,” said her husband.
“You’re a jewellery importer, what do you expect me to wear? Rubber bands?”
Les Chung sighed; he loved his wife dearly, even though she was expensive. He came from Shanghai, she from Canton: they both knew the value of a dollar. He had brought her here tonight at her insistence; normally they dined at more expensive restaurants in the eastern suburbs, where they lived. But tonight, she had said, she felt Chinese and she had named the place where she wanted to dine. It had turned out to be her husband’s part-owned restaurant.
“A man named Denny Pelong has just come in with his wife.”
She swivelled round; she was always curious, never inscrutable. Then she looked back at him. “The gangster? And there’s one in the next booth?” She lowered her voice; she had been introduced to Jack Aldwych for the first time this evening. “How do you know people like that?”
For almost twenty years he had kept her ignorant of the dark side of his business; but now he looked at her and he knew that she knew. “Mr. Pelong used to buy jewellery for his wife.”
“And him?” She nodded at the next booth, her voice still low.
He sighed again. “Jack is my partner in this restaurant.” And the gambling club upstairs, the real money-maker.
“Oh, my God!” She was a Christian Chinese. “And all this time we’ve been going to expensive restaurants and we could have been coming here for nothing?”
He wondered why her thrift didn’t extend to other things besides eating out. But he loved her and so forgave her. It was easier: his father and his grandfather and, twelve hundred years before them, a T’ang philosopher, had told him a woman’s patience could always outlast a man’s.
Up at the front of the restaurant the Pelongs, neither of them burdened with philosophical thoughts, sat in the morose silence of warring couples. Luisa was even more loaded down with jewellery than Fay Chung; her hands glittered like tiny chandeliers and the gold necklace she wore could have hobbled a buffalo. The jewellery was the reason for their quarrel; he had insisted that she wear it, all of it. “What the fuck you think I bought it for you for?” he had shouted. “I’m fucking depressed.”
“You wanna wear it then?” she had shouted in reply; the neighbours, she knew, would have had their windows and ears wide open to this latest battle in the Pelong house. “You buy me jewellery because you’re depressed?”
“No, because I wanna see you wearing it. It bucks me up, makes me feel good—I see all the rocks on you and it tells me what I can afford—I can afford as much fucking jewellery for my wife as any rajah—”
“Rajah? Where we gunna eat then? Some bloody curry palace?”
It was she who had nominated where they would eat; she told him she felt like Chinese tonight, though she meant food, not character or personality. So here they were in this Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, with the rest of the diners, it seemed, made up of Japanese tourists, come all the way from Yokohama or Kobe or wherever to eat Chinese food in an Australian restaurant. In the quirky way that memory works, it reminded her of an old faded cartoon her father had once shown her, of a Turk taking an Australian bath, sitting in an antiquated tub naked but for his fez. She smiled at the thought and Pelong looked at her suspiciously.
“You’re up to something.”
“No, I’m not, honest, sweetheart.” She laid a hand on his arm; the glare from her rings and bracelet made her squint a little. She was not stupidly vulgar; she knew she shouldn’t be wearing this much jewellery to a place like this. Rocks like hers should be worn to State dinners at Parliament House, but she couldn’t see her and Sweetheart being invited there; this new government didn’t invite criminals to dinner, not even white-collar ones. But if wearing the rocks pleased Denny, okay. He’d had a bad week and things might get worse. “What’s the matter?”
He had turned round and was staring down towards the rear of the restaurant. He turned back. “Fucking Jack Aldwych is down the back there. And fucking Les Chung.”
Four Japanese in the next booth, ears tuned to pick up the local idiom, nodded to each other. Australia was just what they had been told it would be, a robust country.
Luisa looked down towards the back booths, saw Jack Aldwych gazing at her. She raised her hand and gave him a forty-carat wave. He smiled at her in return and said something to the auburn-haired girl beside him.
What Aldwych said was, “You have to admire her, putting up with someone like her husband.”
“In my job,” said Janis, “I’m continually amazed at the men some women choose. As a sex, we’re masochists.”
“Not you,” said Aldwych. “Is she a masochist, Jack?”
“Are you talking sex or just in general?”
Aldwych was suddenly uncomfortable. He was an old man, he had never gone in for kinky sex with Shirl, and you certainly never talked about it in front of a girl young enough to be your granddaughter. Not even one as brass-bound as this one next to him. “Finish your lychees. Jack. It’s time we were going.”
In the next booth Fay Chung said, “Les, how does a man like Pelong stay out of jail?” Meaning: how do you, if you know him so well, also stay out of jail? It is a little-known historical fact that wives invented the micro-chip: they can squeeze a dozen questions into one. “He must have a record as long as your arm.”
“Not my arm. He and I have no association whatever.” Which was not strictly true. There had been an association at one time, but it had been temporary, during another gang war, and it had not been an easy one. Pelong had an abiding hatred of all Asiatics and Chung had an equally durable contempt for
intelligences as far below his own as Pelong’s. “He eats here occasionally, pays without complaint and tips too much. The waiters love him.”
“Has anyone ever tried to kill him?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just in the mood for those sort of questions.”
“Drink up your tea. It’s time we were going.”
The Aldwych party and the Chungs left at the same time. As they passed the Pelong booth both Aldwych and Chung, without losing stride, said goodnight to the Pelongs. The three women, Janis, Luisa and Fay, looked at each other with that swift appraisal that has put women on a par with Indian scouts and security cameras; they missed nothing of importance in each other, taking in the abundance or absence (in Janis’ case) of jewellery, the cut and expense of dress and, most important, the intelligence in each other’s eye. Out in the street the Aldwyches and the Chungs parted.
Aldwych paused as he recognized an old acquaintance. “G’day, Fred. What’re you doing down here amongst the Chinks?”
“Howyagoing, Jack,” said Fred Cargo. “I’m working for Denny Pelong. I’m his sorta Jack-of-all-sorts.”
“His minder?”
“Yeah, sorta. I’m retired, but. Like you, Jack. I don’t wanna go back inside.”
“You shouldn’t be working for Denny, then.”
“It’s his missus I’m really working for. Nice lady. Who else is gunna give a fifty-eight-year-old ex-con a job?”
“Still, watch out for Denny. Take care, Fred.”
He moved on, not having bothered to introduce Jack Junior and Janis, who had lingered nearby waiting for him. He had used Fred Cargo once or twice as a stand-over man, but he was now part of the past.
Jack Junior was about to follow his father when he saw that Janis had not moved, was looking around.
“What’s the matter?”
The Dixon Street mall was crowded. The nearby Entertainment Centre had just spilled ten thousand people into the streets; Billy Joel had sent them home flushed and excited and singing snatches of his songs. Janis was looking for Snow White and The Dwarf, but she didn’t feel Jack Junior had to know that. She had discovered that he was a worrier, something his father certainly wasn’t. At dinner she had all at once begun to wish that Jack Senior was her partner.
“You notice something? A crowd like this and nobody notices anything.”
“You noticed something,” he said.
“What?”
“That nobody notices anything.”
She smiled at him, but more to herself. Oh Jack, Jack, how long am I going to be stuck with you? He was her means to an end, but she did not want him with her till the end.
Half an hour later, inside the restaurant, Denny Pelong abruptly announced he had had enough and wanted to go home. “Whatever you say, sweetheart,” said Luisa. “You go and tell Fred to collect the car while I go to the little girls’ room. You got your credit card?”
“Course I got it—” Then he checked his pockets. “No, I musta left me fucking wallet at home.”
“I’ll pay, sweetheart. You go and tell Fred.”
Denny Pelong stepped out of the restaurant. The crowd had thinned a little, but the mall was still lively with people, most of them youngsters in groups, still thrilled by the Joel concert, too wide awake to go home. There was no sign of Fred Cargo. Pelong suddenly had a moment of inexplicable panic, something he had never experienced before.
He was looking up the mall, half-aware of raucous music approaching him from behind, when the hitman did the job. He was a young man, dressed like most of the concert crowd in jeans and summer shirt, and he carried a portable stereo, a “ghetto-blaster.” Strapped to it was a pistol fitted with a silencer. The stereo was blasting out a Billy Joel hit as it was pushed up against Pelong’s back. He went down, with two .22 bullets in him, to the tune of “You’re Only Human.”
IV
“I don’t fucking know,” he said in the moment before he lapsed into unconsciousness; if he were to die, it was a remark unlikely to go down in any list of famous last words. He had been asked by a police officer, on the scene within two minutes of the shooting, if he knew who had shot him. He did not give his denial out of any criminal code of honour; he would have squealed with all the power in his punctured lungs if he had recognized his assailant; his only code was to repay any wrong done to him in any way he could.
It was Fred Cargo who had gone into the restaurant to give Luisa the news. She went pale, but she took it better than he had expected. “Where the hell were you, Fred?”
“I’d went for a leak, Mrs. Pelong—”
Malone and Clements arrived ten minutes later, Clements bringing his own car, with blue light flashing on the roof, down the mall to the join the police cars and the ambulance which had just arrived. They had left Romy and Peter Keller with Lisa, Malone telling her to ring for a cab to take them home. The mall was crowded again, but the throng was held back by the police cars and, now, by the media vans and cars nosing into the scene. The blue and red lights of the police cars were oddly out of place in the Chinatown colour scheme of orange-red and yellow, like spots of paint dropped on the wrong canvas.
The PE team was already at work, the Crime Scene tapes strung out, but Phil Truach was the only Homicide man present.
“Nobody saw anything, Scobie—”
“Where the bloody hell was the surveillance? There was supposed to be a bloke on Pelong’s tail round the clock.”
“He went for a leak—”
“You just said Fred Cargo went for a leak, too. Thank Christ it’s not a cold night—the whole of bloody Chinatown would have gone for a leak.” Malone’s anger had been building up all during the quick trip in from Randwick. Not at the fact of Pelong’s being shot but at the growing multiplication of events that would mean more headlines. If this kept up, the Gulf war was in danger of being relegated to the Deaths Notices page. “Where’s Mrs. Pelong?”
“She’s over there by the ambulance. He’s in pretty bad shape. They’re taking him to St. Sebastian’s.”
“Anyone in the restaurant?”
“No, I got the manager to clear out the place. Upstairs, too. Did you know they’ve got a gambling club up there?”
Malone looked at Clements. “Did you know that?”
“I can’t believe it,” said Clements.
The three Homicide men exchanged looks that said nothing; illegal gambling had nothing to do with them. The bureaucracy of crime prevention saved many headaches. Then Truach said, “Most of those in the restaurant were Japanese. This isn’t gunna do much for tourism.”
“It hasn’t done much for Pelong,” said Clements, watching Pelong, festooned with drips, being loaded into the ambulance. “You want me to talk to the wife, Scobie?”
“Let her go for the moment. We’ll talk to her at the hospital. Let’s see what we can dig up here.”
Ten minutes later they had dug up nothing, “I believe Fred Cargo when he says he went for a leak,” said Clements.
“Maybe he did,” said Malone. “Maybe someone paid him to go and splash his boot. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s been done.”
With the departure of the ambulance, the crowd began to disperse, going back into the restaurants that were still open or going home. The police at work were never as interesting as a corpse or someone close to being a corpse. Billy Joel had provided better entertainment.
Malone and Clements left for the hospital, with Truach to follow as soon as the PE team had done their work. As they drove up to the hospital in Darlinghurst, Clements said, “At least this wasn’t a needle-in-the-bum job, so it wasn’t the same guy who did Lee-roy.”
“Not unless he’s changed his MO.”
St. Sebastian’s was the biggest hospital in the inner city, halfway between the sleaze of King’s Cross and the brittle gaiety of the Oxford Street homosexual community. Its public and private sections stretched along an entire block; it catered for the poorest and the
wealthiest, all within a kidney stone’s throw of each other. It was run by nuns dedicated to St. Sebastian the martyr, whose name was usually invoked against the plague, possibly the one disease not to be found in the neighbourhood. Tradition had it that he had been a beautiful youth who had spurned the advances of the Emperor Diocletian, a career decision that enhanced his sainthood in the eyes of the nuns and made him a fool in the eyes of the community further up the road. Even saints can’t please everyone.
Denny Pelong was in the operating theatre in the private section, where, Malone and Clements were told, the doctors were fighting to save his life. The two detectives found Luisa Pelong in a small, otherwise unoccupied waiting room. A television set was turned on in one corner of the room and on the wall nearby was a garish colour print of Sebastian decorated with Diocletian’s arrows, a picture of doubtful comfort to anyone waiting in the room for news of a dying relative. Luisa was leaning back in a chair, staring with uninterested eyes at a late-night movie. The first thing Malone noticed was not the jewellery but that this afternoon’s bruise on her jaw was hidden by cleverly applied make-up.
“Mrs. Pelong?”
She started, as if she had been woken from a doze, then looked up at the two men as if puzzled as to why they should be disturbing her. Then she frowned. “Oh Christ, you don’t wanna talk to me now, do you?”
“Better now than tomorrow.” Malone pulled up a chair opposite her, his back to the television set; Clements sat down on a couch at an angle to both of them, St. Sebastian poised above him to shed a shower of arrows on him. “We don’t like things to go cold on us. Do you know who did it?”
She shook her head. There was a cup of tea on the small table beside her chair and she picked it up and began to sip it. Behind Malone Mary Astor told Humphrey Bogart, “Oh, I’m so tired, so tired of lying and making up lies.” Luisa looked at Clements. “Turn that off, would you?”