by Jon Cleary
“How did you make the first payment?” Aldwych said.
“By draft to an account in Panama.”
“What about the final payment?”
“That’s to be made here, we don’t know who to. We lost a shipment earlier this week, but they haven’t come near us for payment on that, since we didn’t collect the stuff. They may or they may not. The arrangement is that we pay only when the stuff is actually handed over, but we don’t know just how tough these people are.”
“From what I’ve read,” said Aldwych, who never missed a crime story in the newspapers or on television. Do bishops give up reading the Bible when they retire? “they don’t give anything away for nothing. How’s the stuff coming in?”
“It’s packed between the plastic sheets in solar panels.”
Aldwych shook his head. “Jesus, even I know you wouldn’t import solar panels from Bolivia. Their only bloody industry is growing the coca bush for cocaine and herding those animals that spit at you, what d’you call ’em, llamas? Solar panels! From Bolivia!” He shook his head again. “The Customs people here aren’t bloody dills. But you’re both bloody amateurs.”
“I suppose even you were an amateur once.” Janis was getting over her fear of him; and it hurt her to be told she was not a professional. “You made mistakes.”
“Sure, who doesn’t? But I was never an amateur, not like you two.” He turned away from her. “If you didn’t wanna know, Jack, does anyone know you’re in this?”
Jack Junior looked at Janis, who said, “Nobody knows.”
“Okay, Jack, then you’re out of it. As of right now. If you can’t protect your arse, then I’ll have to do it for you.”
“Where does that leave me?” Janis was angry again. “Where do I get the money for the final payment?”
“That’s your problem.”
“No, Dad, it isn’t her problem.” Jack Junior was tentative in his defiance, but he was not entirely without courage; he was also not without honour, an ironic distortion of the code that his father had once lived by: “Not hers alone, anyway. I got into this mess with her—”
“You admit it’s a mess?”
“Okay, yes, I admit it. But I can’t leave Janis holding the bag. I’ll see she gets the final payment to pass on.” He turned to her. “Then I’m out of it. If you want to go on, you go on on your own.”
“I can do it,” she said doggedly, hating them both.
“You really think a woman can run a big racket in this country?” said Aldwych. “And run the blokes who run a union? This is a man’s country, haven’t you woken up to that?”
“They are two women State Premiers.”
“Put in there because no blokes wanted the jobs. One State stinks of corruption and the other is so broke it should have Mother Theresa running it. Take the money from this shipment, Janis, and run.” He looked at his son. “What’s the cut?”
“Sixty per cent to us—”
“Not us,” said Aldwych. “You.”
“Okay, sixty per cent to me, forty per cent to Janis.”
“All right, Janis, take your two million, less your expenses—”
“We split those,” she said. “White and Schultz have to get their cut. They’re asking for more—”
“You see? You’ve already got trouble. You pay that. Banks never pay the expenses and Jack was just your bank. Don’t argue, girl. Just consider yourself lucky I’m retired. Otherwise I’d feed you to the bull terriers.”
“Dad!”
“Shut up, Jack.” He rose from his chair. He had all of what looked like Sydney Greenstreet’s dignity; but, it might have surprised him to know, it was his own. Even Janis, hating him, recognized it. “I won’t be getting up early in the morning. You be gone, Janis, before I come down for breakfast—I don’t talk to anyone at the breakfast table. And don’t ever come to this house again. Goodnight.”
He went out and she stared at the empty doorway in a mixture of fury and amazement. He had wiped her as if she were no more than a chalk-mark on a blackboard. He had shown her what it was to be a real boss, an emperor. It added to her fury to know that she would never have the power he had.
“Come to bed,” said Jack Junior.
“We’re not sleeping together!” She turned her anger on him.
“I wasn’t suggesting it.” His mother’s ghost still ran the morals in this house. All at once he wanted to be rid of Janis, he had seen the danger in her. He felt grateful to the Old Man, he would tell him so when this was all over. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
That had been last night and this morning they had left the house in Harbord at seven o’clock. Jack Junior had driven her home to Wahroonga, dropping her at the front gate in the quiet, tree-lined street where the smell of respectability was as pervasive as that of the flowers and shrubs in the well-kept gardens. If cocaine were sniffed here it would be done with the little finger raised and it would not be referred to as a snort. Snorting was what was done when referring to socialist politicians.
“Stay away from White and Schultz,” said Jack. “When the stuff is on the wharves, they’ll let you know, I guess. But don’t meet with them. When the contact calls for the money, I’ll bring it to you.”
“In cash”
“I’ll get it today. Look after yourself.” He drove away, thinking of the line in last night’s movie that his father always clapped: The shortest farewells are the best.
Janis had gone into the house, not the large one where she had been raised but the much smaller one bought after her father’s death, and her mother, mouth withered with new-found piety, had shaken her head at her loose-living daughter but said nothing. Janis had showered, changed and come to work by train, travelling for the last time, she hoped, with the hoi-polloi. After this weekend, even though the dream of being an empress looked as if it had run on to the rocks, she would be rich enough to be at least a duchess.
She had left the Capri in the St. Sebastian’s car park when Jack had picked her up last night. She did not go to the clinic in Darlinghurst Road, but came straight to the hospital. She had just finished with her second client, a sixteen-year-old boy who had been on heroin for two years, was skeleton-thin, hollow-eyed and already halfway to the grave, when her beeper buzzed. She went to a phone, rang the clinic.
It was one of the other counsellors. “Janis, there’s been an Inspector Malone here looking for you. He’s on his way over to the hospital now. I thought you’d like to know.”
The youthful addict shuffled past her, looked at her with dying eyes, went across the lobby and out into the street, where he disappeared, like smoke blown away, in the eye-shattering glare of the morning.
IV
As Malone came out of the clinic he met Ava. At first, blinking in the glare, he almost missed her. The heat and the humidity compressed one; it was as if the city were wrapped in smothering plastic. The weather report had said this morning that if this heat continued for another month this summer would be the hottest ever recorded. This year looked as if it might be one of records: weather, unemployment, bankruptcies, murders. Enough to make you feel good just to be dead.
“Hello, Inspector.”
She was modestly dressed, a long-sleeved white shirt and a loose blue skirt; she wore dark glasses against the blinding sun and her hair was pulled back in a chignon. She looked respectable enough, Malone thought, to be mistaken for a counsellor. Though he was on his way to interview a counsellor who, he had begun to suspect, might not be respectable at all.
“Miss Eden’s not here,” he told her. “I’m going along to see her at St. Sebastian’s. You want to come?”
Ava hesitated, then she followed him across to the marked police car at the kerb. “It’ll look as if I’m being picked up again.”
“I’m your defence witness.” He introduced her to the young constable at the wheel. “This is Miss Redgrave, a social worker.”
“G’day, Ava.” The young officer’s grin tore every muscl
e in his face. “How’s business these days?”
“Hello, Darren.” She smiled at Malone. “Darren’s picked me up half a dozen times. Always very nice about it.”
When they entered the hospital Malone took Ava into a corner of the lobby. People were coming and going, patients’ visitors loaded with fruit and flowers and magazines, looking forward to meeting other visitors across the patients’ beds. Nobody took any notice of the tall detective and the attractive young woman standing beneath another of the hospital’s over-coloured prints, this one of the Virgin Mary. Malone sometimes wondered if the Holy Family ever shuddered at what passed for their likenesses.
“Ava, what do you know about Miss Eden?”
She took off the sunglasses, gave him a suspicious look. “Has she done something wrong?”
“Not as far as I know. But she’s close to a couple of cases I’m on. Does she appear to you to know much about the drug scene in this town?”
“She’d know everything, wouldn’t she?”
“Not necessarily. She’d know the general workings, but she wouldn’t have to know who controls the importing of the stuff. Leroy knew, didn’t he?”
“I think so. Well, he said he did, but he was a real crap artist.”
“Did he ever mention Denny Pelong?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember. But we’d heard the name. You work around the Cross, you hear names like his every day.”
“You ever hear of a Dallas White? Snow White?”
“No.”
“He has a mate, Gary Schultz. About the size of a house, they call him The Dwarf.”
“Oh, him. Sure. He was a client of mine a coupla times. You’re right, he’s huge. I was glad he never wanted to be on top.” Above them Malone was sure the Virgin Mary rolled her eyes. “He knew I was on heroin, he used to ask me questions where I got it.”
“He wanted some for himself?”
“No, he seemed more interested in—in the marketing of it.”
It was difficult to imagine The Dwarf studying marketing. “Maybe. When did you last see him?”
“I don’t know, about a week or ten days ago, I think. I don’t keep a business diary, you know. We were leaving the house and we bumped into Sally and that feller you mentioned, the one who died the same way as Sally and Leroy. Grime?”
“Did The Dwarf make any comment? I mean about Grime?”
“No. They just nodded to each other. It’s often like that, guys seem not to want to recognize each other. As if paying for it is some sort of reflection on their macho image.”
Malone looked at her. “Ava, how did you ever get into this game? No, don’t tell me. Go home to—where is it? Wagga?—go home as soon as you can. It’s getting dangerous around here and I don’t want to get a call one night and find you with a broken neck or a poisoned needle in that attractive butt of yours. Go home today.”
She returned his gaze. “Do you go through life holding girls’ hands?”
“I’d like to, but the wife won’t allow it. Take care, Ava. I’ll tell Miss Eden you’re waiting to see her.”
He found Janis Eden in a small cubicle, the walls bare of everything, even colour prints of St. Sebastian or the Holy Family. There were two chairs, a table and that was all. It reminded Malone more of a police interrogation room than a place for counselling. He told Janis that Ava was waiting to see her, then he sat down opposite her.
“You’re not surprised to see me?”
They called me from the clinic, said you were looking for me. What’s it about, Inspector?”
“Mostly you.” He decided to be direct. “How much do you know about the drug scene, Miss Eden? Not around here at the Cross, the dealing in the streets. I mean the big picture.”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
“Because yesterday afternoon, out at La Perouse, you met with a man named Dallas White, who has a list of convictions as long as his arm and who we suspect of being up to his thick neck in drug smuggling.”
“You’re mistaken. Inspector, I don’t know any Mr. White—”
“Janis, don’t let’s beat about the bush. I should imagine when you’re counselling anyone in here, you demand the truth from them or you’d get nowhere. It’s the same with us police. So let’s cut out the bull. Your car and White’s—yours, I believe, is a Capri and his is a Jaguar—you were observed and the cars’ numbers taken and checked.”
“Were you following me?” That was a slip, and she cursed herself for it.
“Blame it on Saddam Hussein.” She frowned in puzzlement and he explained: “With the Gulf war, they’re afraid of terrorist attacks on the oil refinery at Kurnell. You two sit in a car at La Perouse, just across the bay from the oil refinery, and you’re bound to attract attention. You could have been lovers, but I don’t think Snow White is your type. Now why did you meet him?”
She was trapped; and she was not prepared for it. She had never expected the police to be attacking her so soon. She was not the least bit interested in the war in the Middle East; that was something between politically ambitious men, a fight over oil. But now she wondered if Saddam Hussein had, like herself, miscalculated. She had not thought of herself being in a war, at least not against the police; the analogy had not occurred to her. But of course she was in a war, against Denny Pelong, against the police, against even Jack Aldwych. He had declared it against her last night. It was a shock to her intelligence to realize how unintelligent she had been. Too clever, but not clever enough.
“Well, yes, I did meet Mr. White.” Her mind was in high gear, almost out of control, as she sought some plausible reason why she should have been out at La Perouse yesterday afternoon. Her demeanour, however, was cool, relaxed, none of her tension showing.
“Why?”
“I don’t think I have to tell you that, do I? The Consorting Act no longer applies, does it? You can meet with known criminals now, can’t you, and not be charged? From what I’ve been reading, some of your police officers have been doing a lot of that.”
“Sure, and we’ve sacked them. You have some idea of the law?”
“In this job you have to.”
“You can meet with the Devil himself, if you want to, and we can’t touch you. But it wouldn’t look good if ever we hauled you in.”
“Are you thinking of hauling me in?” She was playing for time, trying to find some defences.
“That depends what we come up with on Dallas White. You sure you don’t want to tell me why you met him?”
She hesitated, unsure that she should go any further. Weren’t there minefields in a war? Then she said, “He wanted to sell me information.”
“What about?”
“About drug distribution. He’d somehow got the idea that here at the clinic we were interested in that.”
“And you’re not?”
“Not in the sense of wanting to find the dealers. That’s the police’s job, isn’t it?”
“Then why would he come to you? Janis, this clinic of yours wouldn’t have enough spare cash to buy a street map, let alone any real information. Especially from someone like White. There are some dumb cops, Janis, but most of us are reasonably smart. We have to be, otherwise the crims would run rings around us and do-gooders like you would be lying in the streets with your throats cut. Though, actually, I think Mr. White and his mate, Gary Schultz—have you met him, too?—they go in for breaking necks. You might like to tell Mr. White I said that, next time you meet him. He can sue me for defamation.” He stood up. “You’re lying, Miss Eden, but you’ll keep.”
“If you repeat that outside, I might sue you.”
“Do that. It’d be nice to have everything out in the open. Did you know Denny Pelong is in the private section next door?”
“Yes, I’d heard.” She had gone out of her way to make enquiries. She was still waiting to hear from White, to hear his excuse for botching the killing.
“Denny’s in the drug racket. If he survives, you might like
to buy some information from him. He won’t come cheap, but these days, in a recession, you never know.”
The cracks were cheap, pulp stuff, but they were more sensible and less dangerous than slapping her face, which he was tempted to do. She got under his skin as not even Luisa Pelong had done; there was a cold arrogance to her that put him and, he guessed, most men down as creatures far less worthy, in her eyes, than herself.
He left her, giving her rope to play with. She would not run away, nor attempt to disappear; he was sure she was not the type. Her arrogance, and whatever else drove her, would keep her on the scene.
When Malone left, Janis continued to sit in her tiny room, staring at the blank wall opposite. She had been challenged, something that usually stimulated her; but now she felt drained, even afraid. But she was more afraid of failure of the dream than of the consequences; that was the worst of it. She had tasted cream, but already it was turning to sour cheese. She wondered if Dallas White would consider killing a policeman.
Then her beeper startled her.
For a moment she thought of ignoring its call. It would be from the clinic to say another junkie was looking for her. To hell with the junkies. In her role as counsellor they might be her bread and butter; in her role as drug supplier, they would provide riches. If she survived . . .
She went along to the ward desk. Two ward sisters, one of them a nun, were there and a clerical assistant; all three of them gave her a smile and the clerk handed her the phone. “It’s for you, Janis.”