On the first day of the case – the Thursday prior – when Barrett had walked into the courtroom, Ernesto had attracted his attention and drawn a finger across his own throat. Later in the morning he had made a pistol with his finger and thumb and blown out his brains, exploding air from his cheeks. Barrett hadn’t thought much about it – such melodramatic gestures were typical of big-noting punks like him. Not that Ernesto looked like a punk: tallish, sleek-faced and shiny as a pup seal, with swept-back black hair, he’d had on a navy pinstripe suit that looked like a Zegna, and a flamboyant silk tie. He also drove a 328i convertible BMW, which he had parked illegally, with the cream leather coachwork exposed to the sunlight, right outside the courthouse. When he’d come out at the end of the session and found a parking ticket on his windscreen, he ripped it off, screwed it up and threw it away. ‘Hollywood Jack’ Tucci did not accept parking tickets.
What Ernesto did for a living was uncertain, which was how he liked it – being shrouded with mystery. Mostly he was seen cutting a swathe around town in his expensive attire, lunching with associates and girlfriends at all the prime spots. He was perfect for Sydney. He would always leave the BMW double-parked directly outside restaurants, its hazard lights flashing, or on the nearest corner, or even on the footpath itself, in true Italian style. In the evenings he stayed up late attending to business – whatever that was – and being seen here and there with gorgeous women. A normal night ended for ‘Hollywood Jack’ at around three or four in the morning, when he would drive through the remote-controlled, three-metre high alarmed gates of his extravagant North Shore residence. These gates carried an emphatic message to intruders: ARMED RESPONSE. Ernesto lived there with his wife, solicitor-cum-crime-novelist, Carla Wilkins, their two children and many guard dogs. The dogs had names like Panzer, Centurion and Exocet. Now and then Ernesto was mentioned in the papers over an incident at a nightclub, or shots being fired at a party, but he seemed to have the cops pretty much where he wanted them. Three years ago he had been charged with the knifing murder of a Canadian tourist outside a Rushcutters Bay hotel, but on the grounds of insufficient evidence police had not proceeded against him. There was not one witness to the stabbing. Rumour had it that a substantial sum of cash changed hands at a certain Chinatown restaurant to secure that no-bill.
The other, older brother, Guy, was much more pedestrian. Chunky and balding like Charlie, he was in the fruit and vegetable business; he was unshaved, he had gnarled hands with dirty, cracked nails, and wore frayed, ill-fitting clothes, as if he had just taken off his leather apron and come to court. He had glowered continuously at Barrett, never blinking, but made no visible threats. Looking at the two of them now, Barrett wondered. Ernesto caught his eye, and Barrett stared back at him. Ernesto, a trademark toothpick propped in his mouth, touched the knot of his tie, then flicked his finger underneath his chin towards Barrett. Today Ernesto was wearing a wool charcoal suit and a more conservative checked tie. French cuffs, which he was fond of shooting by thrusting both arms out in front of him, then folding them. He looked as if he had spent an hour in the wardrobe department before going onto a movie set. Still staring at him, Barrett tried to discern if this man was capable of planting a bomb under his car. He watched for telltale signs, such as a smirk, or a nod, some kind of sly acknowledgment, but none was apparent. And Guy just glowered as usual, hunching forward, his big hands clasped on his lap, a message of sheer animus issuing in waves from his unkempt frame.
It wasn’t too long before Barrett found himself in the hot seat being interrogated by the Tucci brief. He was an oily QC named Stavros – or Steve, as he called himself since taking silk – Constantinos. Steve Constantinos had defended many of Sydney’s criminals, big and small, stretching back to the seventies, and he had a reputation for destroying witnesses under a welter of heavy, aggressive questioning. As soon as he detected a weakness, he went straight for the jugular. Right now he was intent on discrediting Barrett by dredging up as much dirt on him as he could find – or fabricate.
‘Mr Pike,’ he was saying, looking down his nose and pronouncing the name with harsh distaste. ‘Is it not the case that, during your … career in the Victorian police force, you shot dead an innocent man – a man whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? This was in … let me see … 1991?’
Barrett began to answer: ‘The case you are referring to …’
‘Yes or no, Mr Pike. Yes, or no.’
Barrett looked at the judge, who was making notes with his face down: no help there.
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ Barrett said. ‘But yes, I did use deadly force on that occasion.’
‘Deadly force, yes. Nicely put. And the victim had committed no crime that warranted deadly force?’
‘The man … attacked me. The circumstances …’
‘Yes, or no, Mr Pike. Had the man committed a crime that justified the use of deadly force? It’s a simple enough question.’
‘No,’ Barrett said. This prick was having an effect on him already.
‘Thank you. I put it to you that, as a result of this incident, and because of your frequent willingness to buck the system, to play the cowboy, and because of your mental instability over a period of time, you were suspended from operational duties. Is that true?’
Again Barrett looked at the judge, who was still face down, a hand over his forehead as if he had a terrible migraine. He seemed to be taking no interest whatsoever in proceedings as he scribbled away.
‘Your Honour,’ Barrett said. ‘I do not see the relevance of this line of questioning to the present case. And the matter to which Mr Constantinos refers requires detailed explanation, not a simple yes or no answer. Could you please give direction?’
‘Your Honour,’ Constantinos riposted, ‘Mr Pike is clearly a hostile, compellable witness, with a dubious history both as a police officer and as a civilian, and I ask you to compel him to answer my questions.’
‘Mr Constantinos,’ the judge said. ‘There is no need for all these theatrics. This is not Court TV, and you are not up for an Oscar. Like Mr Pike, I am curious as to where exactly these questions are leading. To the present matter, one trusts.’
‘It will soon become clear, Your Honour.’
‘Mr Pike,’ the judge said wearily. ‘Do you have a problem answering Mr Constantinos’s questions?’
Barrett said, ‘Your Honour, I am happy to answer counsel’s questions if that is your wish.’
‘Thank you, Mr Pike. Proceed, Mr Constantinos, but for goodness’ sake let us arrive at our destination sooner rather than later.’
Miffed, Constantinos said, ‘Thank you, Your Honour. Now, Mr Pike. Is it the case that you suffered a nervous breakdown at about the time we are discussing, for which you underwent psychotherapy? And because of which, ultimately, you were unable to continue in the police force?’
‘No.’
‘No, you didn’t have a nervous breakdown; no, you didn’t have psychotherapy; or …’ – he checked his notes – ‘no, you didn’t leave the force because of your mental condition?’
‘Well, that’s three questions, Mr Constantinos. Excuse me, but why don’t you ask them one at a time to keep it simple?’
And so it went on. Constantinos obviously had a good source, but it was stretching things to claim Barrett had undergone psychotherapy. In reality, he had attended two sessions with the police shrink – under duress – before pulling the pin when she asked him, ‘How did that make you feel?’ once too often. He didn’t need a shrink to tell him what was wrong with him. However, the mere fact that Constantinos knew that much was disturbing – obviously he had accessed Barrett’s file somehow, and gone through it with a magnifying glass. Little by little, a brush-stroke at a time, the picture of Barrett Pike, ex-cop, ex-husband, apparently respectable private investigator, became one of a half-deranged, dangerous loose cannon whose preference was for flouting the law rather than upholding it. Even his domestic history, his bitter feu
d with his first wife, Lauren, was dragged out into the open. In the end, Constantinos described him to the court as ‘a low, contemptible creature’, and ‘a thing who knew no rules other than the rules of the jungle and the street’.
No mention of the time when he’d gone into a house half-naked to negotiate with a hostage taker, a severely disturbed single father who had his two young children tethered together, some sticks of dynamite strapped to his body and a lighted cigarette lighter hovering over the fuse. That incident had ended happily, and Barrett had been decorated for extreme bravery.
No mention of the numerous times during his seventeen-year stint he had put himself on the line, well beyond the call of duty.
No mention of war service, the hangover from which was at least partly to blame for his later ructions with superiors, his volatility, his anger management problem, his inability to toe the line, and his well-documented nervous collapse.
No mention at all of the day-to-day stress and strain that was a normal part of a cop’s life at the coalface.
It just went to show that if you chose to take a particular slant, ignoring ninety per cent of the available facts, you could make nearly anyone out to be a piece of shit. But what did Constantinos think he was achieving by doing this? It didn’t matter if Barrett was a bigger monster than the backpacker killer, Ivan Milat – the prosecution’s case against Charlie Tucci was overwhelming, and he was definitely going away. The fact was, he had been a long-term police target, ever since he had started out in business in the late eighties by advertising for investors in sure-fire projects, then making the money disappear through a series of shelf companies and family trust accounts set up by Carla Wilkins. This was before she’d started shacking up with Ernesto, when she had been the family’s main mouthpiece and Ernesto’s occasional punch. Then they’d decided to get serious, and Carla was admitted to the family.
At about the same time, police also had good reason to believe Charlie was dealing recreational drugs, off-loading quantities of imported cocaine, ecstasy and other shit through the nightclub and entertainment industry, probably in collaboration with his brothers. Charlie had become a bit player in a larger surveillance operation called Benedict, before resources had to be diverted for budgetry reasons. At first, police hadn’t known who this bald, smiling guy was who’d kept appearing in the footage, so they’d taken an interest, put a tag on him and discovered he was Ernesto’s brother. Clearly he was part of the drug biz, but who was his supplier? It was a mystery that had never been solved. For an Italian, Charlie was fond of Indian food, particularly at a restaurant operated by a Mohsin Pivarran. Pivarran was a serial restaurant owner with a highly dubious character. A popular theory was that Charlie’s source was either Mohsin or another Indian businessman, someone deep in the background with drug connections on the sub-continent. They’d code-named this person Aziz. But Aziz was too cunning to show himself – or he didn’t exist. The watching brief on Charlie Tucci had dried up, and his file had been put in cold storage. Barrett knew all this detail because he had been shown Charlie’s file – for a fee – by a well-placed cop who was on the verge of getting out. Ironically, the Benedict task force hadn’t even been aware that he was also under investigation by the fraud squad, whose case against Charlie could not, in the end, be substantiated. The corporate structure Carla Wilkins had put in place was in fact legal, and Charlie had no case to answer. Once the companies were folded, they couldn’t touch him. So he’d been getting away with too much for too long – now they wanted him. Bad. It was his turn to swing.
Barrett’s heart was over-racing by the end of the interrogation, which lasted three-and-a-half hours, not counting a lunch break. At the end of the day the judge adjourned proceedings to a date to be fixed, which was the cue for the action to spill out into the street. Barrett’s mouth was dry and his chest hurt from being clenched in anger. All he wanted to do now was pound Constantinos to pulp with his fists, then stuff him in a garbage compactor, wig, gown and all. Instead he stood on the footpath, trying to cool down, vaguely looking for a taxi and thinking he needed to put some food in his stomach. He’d eaten very little during the luncheon adjournment. He put a cigarette in his mouth, and a silver Zippo lighter instantly snapped open in front of him. The hand holding it was perfectly smooth, tanned and manicured. He turned in surprise: Ernesto Tucci. Barrett removed the cigarette from his lips, and Ernesto smiled and snapped the lighter shut. A little gust of wind occasioned a potent hit of Ernesto’s after-shave, which was so overpoweringly scented it was more like a woman’s perfume. Up close, the gloss and slickness of his head and neck gave him the appearance of something that had been inside a lubricated sheath.
‘Just staying in touch,’ he said. ‘Keep looking over your shoulder, Pike man. Maybe you’ll see me, maybe you won’t. But I’ll be there – and one day I’ll fix you up for good, you filthy piece of dog shit. The lawyer sure got that one right.’
It was the wrong remark at the wrong time, and Barrett couldn’t help himself. He grabbed Ernesto by the tie, pulling it tight and causing Ernesto’s eyes to pop. When he started to turn puce and his knees wobbled, Barrett let him go with a thrust that sent him sprawling on the footpath, his cigarette lighter ringing on the cement. The problem now for Barrett was, having gone this far he had to be prepared for whatever followed. Word was that Ernesto carried a gun, but would he have it on him now? It was more likely to be in the car. Best to maintain the upper hand while he had it. He helped Ernesto up by the lapels, got him to his feet and then slammed his forehead onto the bridge of Ernesto’s nose. Blood exploded onto Barrett’s shirt, then ran in a stream down Ernesto’s own clothes. Christ, it was a lot of blood. He wasn’t to know Ernesto had a chronic nosebleed problem.
‘You trying to intimidate a witness, Tucci? Making death threats? Don’t you know that’s fucking illegal?’
Next thing, Barrett saw a light show in his head. When he opened his eyes again he was lying in the gutter. He figured he’d been out for three, maybe five seconds. Voices were raised: fuzzily he could see Tucci grappling with cops. There was a woman – one of their wives, presumably – shrieking and swinging her expensive handbag. He swooned again – someone had brained him with something very solid indeed. Fighting unconsciousness, he climbed to his knees, feeling the back of his skull. It came away wet and sticky with blood. In the meantime, Ernesto Tucci was going off the top of his tree. The cops, guns drawn, got him down and cuffed his hands behind his back while he spat blood and swore and threatened. Charlie and Guy, ranting in Italian, were kept at bay by other cops, who were reading them the riot act with batons raised. The shrieking woman with the handbag was clinging to the cop holding Ernesto, apparently trying to scratch his eyes out; she was jerked off him and thrown away like a sack of carrots. Barrett stood up, head still whirling, legs unsteady, leaning on Ernesto’s BMW for support.
‘Get your filthy fucking hands off my car!’ Ernesto roared through the bloodied hole that was his mouth. Cops had knees in his back and a baton held tight across his throat, but that wasn’t fazing Ernesto any: no person, no matter what, was putting his paws on the prized Tucci Beemer. Charlie, the ice-cream man, and Guy, the greengrocer, tore and reefed to get into the action, but there were too many uniforms stopping them. Tuccis were outnumbered, outgunned, out of business. Sirens screamed; a couple of carloads of reinforcements hit the scene; commands were shouted, firearms brandished.
Chaos.
In the end Ernesto’s fine, tailored suit was dragged like a hemp bag through grass and dirt to the back of a police wagon; rough hands grabbed Barrett by the shoulders and flung him on the ground. The air went right out of him when a big flat foot planted itself in the middle of his back and pushed down.
Madness.
Complete. Fucking. Mayhem.
11
Nothing about Edward Hickey attracted much interest from the other lunchtime drinkers in the rundown Pyrmont hotel where he stood toying with his schooner of Resch’s. H
e hadn’t yet come to grips with the terminology pertaining to beer glass sizes in Sydney. Back home, a beer was a goddamned beer, standard measure every time; here, they gave you these choices; you always had to make a decision. Fuck that for a game of soldiers. Even in the UK, you had a pint, or a half-pint. No problem there: Americans understood the imperial system, still used it. You could even get a goddamned yard of ale in London. That was a major gig.
Edward checked the time on his Omega Oyster Perpetual: 12.40. The guy was ten minutes late: it wasn’t a promising sign. But he did say he had to come a long way, from Curl Curl. Curl Curl. Edward had looked it up on his tourist map, and it was across the bridge and far away, a coastal location. Maybe his man liked to go surfing, or maybe he just liked to check out the broads on the beach in their nifty little bikinis. They sure had some good-looking stuff in this town. None in here though: just middle-aged drones and a couple of loud-mouthed lushes with too much lipstick on. Young guy in a caftan sitting on the floor was twisting a flower in his fingers, smiling at nothing and muttering to himself – a classic jim-jam case. Edward took a good pull on the Resch’s and lit up a Camel filter.
Not that Edward could sling off at middle-aged men: he was one himself. No prize for a broad, not at any price: he was medium height – just under five-nine – with a thick neck, wide shoulders, developing paunch and a generous set of love handles where there had once been a six-pack stomach, plus a couple of hefty rolls under his recessed chin. Cropped fair hair that only grew in patches these days, a most unbeautiful pan that was slightly out of shape on one side. His left cheekbone had been crushed in a mishap years earlier, leaving the left outer eye pinched and permanently bloodshot. His vision, however, was only marginally affected. Edward was starting to look a bit like the Michelin man. He was fitted out in a black Titleist cap, loose-fitting, short-sleeved striped shirt, belly bag, cream shorts, tropical off-white socks and matching leather moccasins, the kind with a zipper on the side. The tarnished copper bracelet on his left wrist helped him cope with chronic arthritic pain. The bracelet had left a heavy black stain on his skin. Fashionable straight-armed plastic shades were smoked yellow. On the bar were the map of Sydney and his cigarettes and lighter. Edward Hickey had Yankee tourist all over him.
Hard Yards Page 11