Ten more minutes and another Camel, in walked his man, filling the open doorway with his hulking, bow-legged silhouette. Mick Dawes. Edward recognised him straightaway from the description Mick had given him over the phone: John Wayne with no hair. Not lacking in self-esteem, apparently. Better known as ‘Early’, for some reason – probably because it went with Dawes. ‘Early’ Dawes. That was slightly amusing, but from what he’d been told Mick Dawes was not noted for his wit. There had to be a more sinister connotation.
‘Sorry I’m draggin’ the chain,’ Dawes said. He dumped his keys, some crumpled banknotes and a few coins on the bar towel. ‘Fucking traffic like you wouldn’t believe out there.’
‘I’d believe it,’ Edward said. ‘I was just in it.’ They shook hands. Dawes knew he had the right man from the Titleist cap and yellow shades, which Edward had said he’d be wearing, although Dawes hadn’t expected someone this shape. He’d sounded better on the phone. Dawes himself was six-three and considered himself ruggedly handsome for his age.
A wizened barman with wet eyes and two or three days’ worth of fuzz on his jaw approached Dawes. ‘Champ?’
‘What he’s having,’ Dawes said, wheezing a little, then breaking into a full-blooded hacking cough that made the floorboards shudder. ‘Christ,’ he croaked, ‘what’s that you’re smoking – horse shit?’
‘Almost,’ Edward said. ‘Want some?’
‘No thanks. Give ’em away years ago. Too dangerous to one’s health. Can’t you read?’ SMOKING KILLS screamed from the Camel pack, in large, bold type.
‘Fucking right,’ Edward said.
‘Used to smoke the fucking Temple Bars, two or three packets a day. All-night poker games I’d go through a hundred, hundred and fifty, then recycle the fucking butts. Maniac. Kill a brown dog, I tell you. Give me fucking emphysema.’
‘That so. Do these bother you?’
‘No, go for your life, mate. Who cares now? Damage is done, ain’t it. The die is cast. I’d sue the tobacco company, ’cept I’d never live long enough to see a result.’ He shrugged and chugged a hefty mouthful of beer. ‘Nine years ago the doc gave me two years to live. Take more than emphysema to knock me off the twig, my old china. But, if it came to the crunch, I’d sooner finish the job with a fucking bullet – clean and swift.’ He placed a finger against his temple. ‘Bang. All over, rover.’
‘Fucking right,’ Edward said again. ‘That’s the way to go out. You want to sit over there?’
‘Yeah. Away from these fucking lizards.’
They scooped up their schooners and accoutrements and moved to a table where no-one could overhear what they had to discuss.
Mick ‘Early’ Dawes was showing – and feeling – his age. A leathery man with a purple nose and a shaven, pitted head, scarred here and there, he was rising seventy. Despite all the bullshit and bravado, he knew he was a leftover, a relic. Dawes belonged to the era when gangsters wore pinstripe suits, hats and snappy two-tone shoes, like James Cagney and George Raft. In fact the only apparent difference between criminals and detectives then was that the criminals had much better clothes. A lot of water had passed under the bridge since those days – now there were no standards, and everything had gone to shit. Drugs and the Asian invasion had ruined it all.
The good old days might be no more, but Mick still had his intimidating presence, together with that dead, blue-eyed stare – the one that used to transfix his opponents long enough for Mick to king-hit them into the afterlife. In the year 2000, however, he considered himself to be a living legend, a national treasure, rather than an active criminal. Half his adult life had been spent behind bars, but now he was semi-retired, almost respectable. Journalists always rang him for a clever one-liner whenever some hard-core criminal got blown away. Papers still pinned the ‘notorious’ tag on him whenever his name cropped up – he was often called to give evidence at the ongoing Independent Commission Against Corruption – but by and large, Mick Dawes steered clear of the law. He preferred sitting on the balcony of his Curl Curl apartment with an ice-cold beer in his hand, looking at the waves and dreaming about the way things were.
And what days they had been. Back then, he and Lennie McPherson had ruled the streets, sometimes from opposite sides. During the late nineteen fifties and early sixties, Mick Dawes was the rising star in the criminal firmament, but Lennie was entrenched and formidable. His word was law. And Mick had spoilt his chances of taking over much turf by spending too many years in Long Bay – for murder, arson, armed robbery, GBH, running prostitutes. His push was known as the Chain Gang, and a nastier crew of reprobates would be hard to dredge up by any Hollywood casting agency. They were a vicious bunch of bastards. Not even battle-hardened front-line police were keen to mix it with the Chain Gang in full flight. With good reason: there was scarcely a more frightening sight than that of Mick Dawes and his mates whirling bike chains over their heads like propeller blades as they waded into the opposition.
In the end, after a deal of blood-letting, he and Lennie had reached a sort of uneasy accord – each man watching his back and not going out of the house without a loaded .45 revolver at the very least tucked into his pants. Mick used to carry a .45 and a sawn-off shotgun with its stock fashioned into a pistol grip, which was housed in a custom-made shoulder holster concealed by an overcoat that he wore even on hot nights. It was a case of look out if you saw him coming in his overcoat. He also carried a fancy bowie knife like John Wayne’s, strapped to his leg. At that time Mick was both notorious and feared. How he had enjoyed reading about himself being written up in the press as a ‘feared underworld identity and standover man’. In the police mug shots he looked a lot like one of the Kray brothers, complete with the shock of black hair falling over his eyes and the cruel, thick-lipped mouth.
Mick Dawes would shatter a man’s jaw, slash his throat, kneecap him or fit him out with cement shoes and dump him in the harbour. He didn’t need much of a reason: the fool might’ve bumped him and spilt his beer, looked at him the wrong way – or, in one instance, made a careless remark about Mick’s wife shagging out of school. Nowadays, however, he mainly lived off a scrapbook of memories, as well as a little hardware retail business on the side. And, like so many of yesterday’s infamous bad men, he was showing all the signs of wear and tear. Even the toughest of the bare-knuckle street brawlers got a proper flogging now and then. On one occasion Mick had been belted mercilessly by an axe handle wielded by one of Lennie McPherson’s goons. That really stung. He’d spent a month in hospital as a result, and there was a critical period when they didn’t think he’d pull through. They could see his brain through the crack in his skull. Even now he had tender spots and suffered from fits and bouts of dizziness – and this had happened more than thirty years ago. Didn’t seem that long, though.
‘So how can I help you, Duane?’ Mick said, his big, misshapen right fist wrapping itself around his schooner of beer. ‘You in the market for some tools?’
‘I am,’ Edward said. He shook loose a Camel and fired it up, then sipped his beer as the thick smoke drifted from his nostrils, into the glass, where it curled and floated on the surface of the amber fluid.
‘Anything specific in mind?’
‘I need a premium quality bolt-action rifle, infra-red scope. Remington or Weatherby Mark V for preference. Semi-auto handgun with maximum stopping power – a Heckler and Koch nine, if possible. Ammo for both pieces. No jibbing, no cheap Saturday night shit.’
‘Man who knows what he wants. One-off job, is it?’
‘Fucking right. Off’s the word. You can have them back afterwards if you like. I’ll be outta here toot sweet.’
‘Maybe. Don’t know about buy-back deals. I know the Triads are into short-term leasing, but it sounds a bit iffy to me. We’ll see.’
‘One more thing. I’d like some grenades.’
‘Grenades. As in … hand grenades.’
‘Are there any other kind?’
‘Christ. What about some
Claymores, or maybe a surface-to-air missile launcher?’ Duane didn’t seem to find that funny, so Dawes said, ‘As it happens I have a box of M-79s.’
‘Ideal.’
‘How many?’
‘Three should do it.’
Fuck me. Do what exactly? ‘How soon d’you want all this … merchandise?’
‘As soon as.’
‘Okay. Give me a day or two for the first item. The second I can’t do. What is it with Heckler and Koch that every jumped-up johnny has to have one all of a sudden? They just aren’t available in this country, china. Christ, if I could get my hands on some, I’d clean up … But anyway, I can do you a Beretta nine Parabellum, 15-shot, or a Glock nine, a Colt .45 US army issue, or a brand new nickel-plated Smith & Wesson .44 magnum with a beautiful pearl grip. Whichever. You can take delivery of the handgun today, or wait and get both it and the rifle together later. Day after tomorrow.’
‘That would be better. Fix it up all in one hit.’
‘Fair enough. Let’s see … what’ll it be – the Beretta, Glock, Colt … or the Smith?’
‘… I’ll take the Smith.’
‘Good choice. Okay, all up – grenades, ammo and night scope included – that’ll set you back …’ He held up five spread-out fingers, then the first three fingers of his other hand. ‘But call it seven and I’ll take what’s left off your hands afterwards, if you insist. You pay half now, the rest on delivery. How’s that sound?’
Edward snorted. ‘Seven large? Sounds like a fucking rip-off.’
‘China, you can take it or leave it. We’re talking top-of-the-range tools, and as well as the actual ticket value of the items, I’m copping some risk if you crap out and the jacks find out where you got ’em. This is not America – we got strict gun laws here. You can’t get this shit in Kmart. And anyhow, that’s seven in Australian currency – deduct around thirty-five, forty per cent and you’ve got your actual greenback value. What’s that? Shit. Less than five, according to my mental arithmetic.’
Edward knew he was right. In the States you could purchase weapons at Kmart or Wal-Mart, or on Telemall Shopping on TV, or even on-line nowadays, but it was different in this little corner of the world. You had to allow for hefty under-the-counter mark-ups, but even so the price seemed high. So be it. However, it was necessary to haggle in these situations, to show you couldn’t be done down. It was like comparing dick sizes.
‘I still say you’re screwing me,’ he said. ‘J. P. Morgan I’m not, friend. Knock another five hundred off and I’m happy.’
‘Two-fifty.’
‘Hard bastard. All right, fuck it. Six-seven-five-o and we have a deal.’ Edward leaned forward, took off his shades and got in Mick’s face so close he could hear the watery vibrations in his chest. It was a sound like old, clogged pipes rattling in the deep. This ancient cunt resembled John Wayne the way a decrepit, flea-bitten mountain yak resembles a champion racehorse. ‘But I want your assurance on the quality control. I’m paying top dollar and I want the genuine article. No Korean imitations, no tainted or damaged goods, nothing hot or traceable. No short-changing. And don’t kid yourself I won’t know the fucking difference. Be assured I am extremely familiar with all types of weaponry. Go down that cheatin’ road and you’ll get the stuff back all right, but it won’t be the way you want it. Also, I’d appreciate it if you kept this little transaction to yourself. Any trouble comes my way and I’ll know where the information got out. In a word – don’t try and play me for a chump, or fuck me over in any way, just because I’m American. And I’m not a fucking jumped-up johnny, either, China.’
Dawes wasn’t expecting anything like this, and his first instinct was to grasp Edward by his fat throat and close off his windpipe, see how far his tongue came out. He was close enough to do just that. But the more he looked into Edward’s eyes – the right of which he could now see was red instead of white on the outer side – the less he felt inclined to do it. It looked like a permanent injury – the corner of the eye was pinched half-shut. Also, the same side of his face, the right, looked to be a little out of alignment compared to the left. He found himself re-assessing this prickly, barrel-chested, thick-armed gringo, thinking that maybe there was another kind of person inside that unlovely exterior. The very fact that he was after such top-end firepower made you wonder, for starters. A .30-aught with night scope meant sniper rifle, didn’t it. That meant human target. This dude was definitely not going pig shooting. When you looked at them, Edward’s arms were very thick, like his neck; not fat but packed with layers of dormant muscle that stood out like heavy-duty steel cables when he clenched his fists, and they were coated with tight curls of angry ginger hair. High on the upper arm, under his shirt-sleeve, part of a small tattoo, like an insignia, was visible. At around five-eight, five-nine, he was built like a brick shit-house. Years ago the guy was probably a fit, physical type and a formidable hand-to-hand punch-artist. Probably still was. Being a bare-knuckle king from the old school, Dawes could feel it in the air when a man could look after himself. In the end he bit his lip and gave Edward a half-grin that twisted up one side of his face like an old shrapnel wound.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a complaint yet. And I don’t intend to start now. Why would I brass you? I’m a bona fide businessman, mate – not some back-yard rag-and-bone merchant. For six-seven-five-o you get the red carpet and silver fucking service. Come on, china. Lighten up. It’s my shout.’
When he left the hotel an hour later, Edward was feeling better about the deal. Mick Dawes was a real type, a tough-talking old trooper with a hide of dried pigskin who didn’t have much of a life left. He was a beached whale, blowing his last. That skull of his looked like a well-used battering ram. It didn’t hurt to let guys like him know where they stood, give them something to think about. Edward had passed him two-and-a-half thou in crisp US c-notes, and Dawes had slipped it into his trouser pocket without counting it. Edward never travelled without a hefty wad of greenbacks – they carried clout anywhere, they got you out of a jam, especially in the Third World dumps where he had spent a lot of his working life. They opened doors. They were an international guarantee of five-star treatment.
He looked out the back window of his taxi, checking for a tail. Every now and again he told the driver to take a left or a right, watching to see if anything followed. Having to deal with locals was mighty unfortunate, but these days you couldn’t take a chance on airport security. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have thought twice about packing weapons and explosives – Uzis, rockets, grenades, C4, whatever – in a suitcase or a golf bag, but now with Federal cops and sniffer dogs crawling over luggage looking for drugs, it just wasn’t worth it. Fucking dogs were trained to sniff out anything that wasn’t supposed to be there, not just drugs. This was his first visit to Australia, and he hadn’t known what to expect at the airport. With the Olympics on they’d have extra staff, he’d imagined, but then the volume of people coming in would offset that. But Australian customs officers were on a roll after a string of upscale heroin busts, so they obviously had to be taken seriously. When he’d arrived, there were guys in uniform and plain clothes all over the place, just watching and occasionally picking someone out of the line and going through their stuff. Edward was impressed: they selected exactly the people Edward himself considered suspicious. He was glad he hadn’t tried to bring any gunja – or guns – in.
Edward had been given a name – Mick ‘Early’ Dawes, some washed-up gangster that sold weapons under the counter. He was supposed to be the main man, the one, according to the guy Edward had consulted. This guy, the go-between, was an expatriate Australian who lived in Chicago, had a clothing store there. Edward had got his name from someone else – it always went like that, fucking daisy chain of names – and the word was that the guy running the clothes store came from Sydney and had scored a shitload from one job, a major payroll rip-off. Cops couldn’t get him for it. They were sure he did it, but couldn’t touch him. He had no
form, nothing, it was a one-off, planned and carried out to perfection, and he only came under notice via the criminal grapevine. The man had owned a shirt factory; he’d been in the rag trade all his life. When Edward met him in his Chicago store he thought, this can’t be the right guy – he was clean-cut, soft-spoken, ultra smooth; three-piece, made-to-order suit, complete with gold fob watch-chain, conservative club tie, Chamber of Commerce stickpin in his lapel. Run the peepers over him and all you saw was a fucking blue-blood Rotarian. He also had the eye contact and warm handshake of a candidate for public office. It just served to prove you couldn’t afford to take anyone at face value. And the guns this man and his accomplice had used were apparently supplied by Mick Dawes. The joke was that they were stolen from army barracks, police stations and a security firm – the same one they ripped off.
12
Edward told the taxi driver to drop him at Central Station, watched the cab disappear among a phalanx of tourist coaches, then made the rest of the journey home on foot. It wasn’t far. Along Pitt Street, he stopped abruptly now and then to look at something in a shop window, automatically noting if someone behind him also stopped, turned around, started a conversation with a stranger or pretended to tie up a shoelace. He knew all the tricks, and could tell instinctively if he was being watched or tagged. Many times had he been under surveillance, but he always knew, so he was able to play games with his watchdogs, and ultimately lose them. The important thing was not to let on that you knew. Most cops assigned to that kind of work were, in his experience, not very good at it. They were lazy, inept, obvious. They gave themselves up in little ways – a sudden furtive glance, or a refusal to make eye contact when it would be natural to do so. Once Edward had stopped and patted his pockets, as if he’d forgotten something, then turned around, retraced his steps and faced his tagger – but the guy averted his eyes. Wrong. You might not hold the gaze for more than a second or two, but you always looked at a stranger who looked at you – unless you had a reason not to. These undercover cowboys tried to blend in with the crowd, to make themselves invisible, but a cop, even with body piercing, torn jeans and tattoos, was a cop. One time in Boston, Edward was being tagged by a young man in skintight black jeans, New York Yankees outerwear jacket and turned-around cap. It was a busy street, around peak hour. The guy had been on the other side of the road, no doubt thinking he was doing a spiffing job, but then Edward threw him off by diving into a public convenience – for women. While he was in there, he’d heard the cop striding around outside telling someone on his cell phone that he’d lost the subject. It never occurred to the poor sap to look in the women’s, because he was too wet behind the ears to realise that Edward had made him. He thought he’d accidentally lost his man somewhere in the sea of humanity.
Hard Yards Page 12