The Bear Pit

by Jon Cleary

  “Which people? At party headquarters?”

  “Yeah, one or two there. But mostly at Trades Congress. There’s a bloke named Jerry Balmoral—”

  “We’ve met him.”

  “You know him? Looks like a million dollars, but it’s all credit card. They’re backing him, some of the trade union guys. Then I heard this morning one of the other party branches is gunna run a starter—”

  “Would it be the Harding branch?”

  Rix looked surprised, but made no comment. He hesitated, then nodded. “There’s a guy there named Joe St. Louis—”

  “We know him.”

  “There’s been talk about him—he’s a mean bastard, he’s threatened a coupla guys, to knee-cap ‘em—he uses a tire lever—”

  “You ever report any of this to the police?”

  “You guys know the rules. You mind your own business, you keep your troubles to yourself . . . How many wives report their husbands for wife-beating? It’s the same in politics, in the unions—you work it out between yourselves.”

  “If you live . . . Has it been worked out with Joe St. Louis?”

  Rix shook his head. “You don’t work anything out with the Harding branch, they go their own way. That guy Kelzo, he’s gunna be the biggest power broker in the State some day. That’s his aim.”

  Then the door was pushed open and an older nurse, all authority and starched indignation, stood in the doorway. “What’s going on in here—oh, it’s you, Mr. Rix! What’s this—a cell meeting?”

  “This is Matron Plymouth. She votes for the other side.”

  “Out!” She stood aside. “You two are police, right?”

  “How’d you know?” said Clements.

  “I can smell you like a dirty sheet. No offence.” She stood aside as the three men moved out of the tiny room. “If you’re here about Mr. Crespi, he’s regained consciousness but you can’t talk to him. Not for another day at least.”

  “No problem,” said Malone. “Mr. Rix has given us all we need.”

  “Have I?” said Rix and looked even more worried.

  There is something defeating about seeing another man’s fear. It tells everyone but the fool that he himself is vulnerable. Fear is a cousin to anger and sometimes can, working against the grain, make a man heroic. But Malone knew that Barry Rix would never be heroic. He was not, after all, a man for the barricades. The death of the Premier, his general, had knocked the stuffing out of him.

  III

  “Do we ask for our money back?” said Madame Tzu, drawing on gloves for battle.

  “Easier said than done,” said Jack Junior. “Do political bosses in Shanghai give back donations?”

  Everyone looked at General Wang-Te. He was an ex-general, if there is such a thing. Generals are like cardinals: unless executed for treason or heresy, they retain their rank, like a late birthmark. Wang-Te had been the financial comptroller of China’s southern command; though an honest man he had experience of how money came and went in the army. It was an army of entrepreneurs as well as the military trade. When he had left the army to join Madame Tzu and the Bund Corporation all he had to do to adapt was to change from a uniform to mufti. He now wore a Zegna suit, but it was a uniform in which he was still not comfortable. He still wore the hair-shirt of his wife’s mission upbringing. She had taught him the meaning of sin if not an understanding of it.

  “Of course they don’t,” said Jack Aldwych. “That would be like preaching the meek shall inherit the earth to a congregation of stockbrokers. They’d bust a gut laughing.”

  “So our money goes to waste?” Madame Tzu hated the thought. Charity should not begin at home, it shouldn’t even leave home. And giving money to politicians was charity unless they gave something in return. She never understood why corruption was looked upon as sinful, whatever that was.

  “Not necessarily,” said Leslie Chung.

  The directors of Olympic Tower were in Chung’s offices on the forty-ninth floor of the tower. The offices were a converted apartment and took up one corner of the huge block. From its windows there was a magnificent view of the city stretching north and east. The light in the distance to the east was oddly clearer than close to the city, as if the sea kept it washed; the silvertail eastern suburbs basked on the hills like seals sunning themselves. Northwards one could see the Harbour Bridge vaulting the water towards the silvertail suburbs of the North Shore. There was no view to the south or west, where there was less money. Les Chung took the long view, which is to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was his considered meteorological opinion that all rainbows ended either in the east or the north.

  “So what do we do?” Camilla Feng was the youngest director, but her youth did not make her naive. “If Jerry Balmoral gets the pre-selection, do we let him use the money?”

  “Who told you this—Mr. Balmoral?—is going for pre-selection? Who is he? Do you know him?” Madame Tzu was opening a file in her mind: another name would be added.

  “I know him,” said Chung. “The Trades Congress offices are only a block from Chinatown. He comes occasionally to the Golden Gate—” a restaurant owned by him and Aldwych—“he’s a very ambitious young man. Clever, too. In ten years’ time he will be a very good minister. In twenty years’ time a very good Prime Minister.”

  “But we don’t want him now,” said Aldwych. “So how do we get rid of him?”

  “Perhaps I can help there.” Camilla Feng was at ease amongst her fellow directors. Like Balmoral she had the look of someone whose future was assured. “I’ve been out with him a couple of times. He was with me at the dinner the other night.”

  “I saw you,” said Leslie Chung. “I didn’t realize he was your partner.”

  “Perhaps because he was working everyone else at the table. He never misses an opportunity.”

  Everyone had leaned forward, even Madame Tzu. They were never rude to her, but she was young; they were waiting for her years to catch up with theirs. Even Jack Junior, who was only ten years older than she, had been perfunctorily polite when discussing business. She was beautiful and decorative, with a cool elegance; but she was young. Now, suddenly, she might be taken seriously, an apprentice with the spanner that might work.

  “Is it serious?” Aldwych liked to get to the point. “Between you and him?”

  She had the sort of smile that some women have from nine to ninety; men can never read it. “It could be for him. For me?” She shook her head; the short black hair caught the light. “Whoever marries him will only be baggage. Some men are like that.”

  “How true,” said Madame Tzu, who had discarded baggage of her own, but male.

  “So how do you get rid of him?” Aldwych was practised at practical questions. He had once held a gun at the head of a man for twenty-two minutes till the man, crap-sodden, had finally told Aldwych what he wanted to know. “We’re not gunna pay money to someone who won’t listen to us. Mrs. Vanderberg wants the branch secretary, some bloke named Rix, she wants him to get the pre-selection. Jack here has looked into him—”

  “I met him when I gave him the cheque,” said Jack Junior. “That was before The Dutchman was shot. He looked to me like a guy who wouldn’t make waves—he doesn’t want to be Prime Minister. Or even Premier. He’d be satisfied with his eighty-one thousand dollars plus electoral allowance plus perks and superannuation—”

  Madame Tzu wondered how the near-poor could be satisfied so easily.

  “—but he’d run Boolagong the way Mrs. Vanderberg would want it run.”

  “And how’s that?” asked Camilla.

  “To look after the people in the electorate, the voters. All she’s interested in is the grass-roots.”

  “Then what’s the point of leaving our money there?” Madame Tzu didn’t believe in watering weeds.

  “The point is,” said Les Chung, “we don’t leave our money there, we take it out. But if Balmoral and the guys handling him get their hands on it—”

  “We could shoot
him,” said Aldwych, being practical though smiling.

  “He’s only kidding,” said Jack Junior hastily.

  Wang-Te rarely asked a leading question, but he tried one now: “Does this Mr. Balmoral have any dirty secrets we could use against him?”

  “A good idea.” Madame Tzu clapped her hands as if a rock were about to be turned over.

  “Maybe he has no secrets,” said Jack Junior.

  “A man who has no secrets has no intelligence.”

  “Confucius?” asked Aldwych with a grin.

  “No,” she said, “Madame Tzu.”

  “Leave Mr. Balmoral to me,” said Camilla and it seemed that she, too, drew on gloves.

  “Good luck,” said Aldwych solicitously.

  She looked at him in surprise, got up, passed behind him, kissed him on top of his thick head of hair and went out.

  Aldwych looked at the others. “I think I might start being a ladies’ man.”

  “Too late,” said Madame Tzu, as practical and blunt as he.

  IV

  Lisa, being foreign and a gourmet cook, looked on barbecues as something for cannibals and auto-da-fé enthusiasts. Occasionally, however, she relented, so long as the children did the cooking and she was allowed to sit as far as possible from the smell of grilling steak and sausages. She did provide the desserts, though even there she felt she was slumming, cooking American: upside-down cake and lime pie. She had one strong rule: the wine had to be out of bottles, preferably at least three years old and not out of cardboard casks that, she said, had been sealed yesterday. She was a culinary snob and unashamed of it.

  She had invited two women from Town Hall, who came with their husbands, both of whom showed the plump sleekness of double-income living. Malone had invited Phil Truach and his wife, a jolly woman who smoked as much as her husband and was racked by coughing every time she laughed. Russ and Romy Clements were there with young Amanda. Tom had brought his Girl of the Week, a lanky pretty girl who, she told Lisa, was studying medicine and men and finding them equally easy. Maureen brought a student director from the North Ryde film school who, so Claire said, believed in shooting through Venetian blinds, crossover dialogue so that the audience had to pay attention and thought Spielberg was too sentimental but was learning. Claire herself had come with Jason Rockne, her live-in partner.

  Jason’s mother was doing life for, with her lesbian lover, killing Jason’s father. He and Claire had been on-again-off-again sweethearts as teenagers, then they had drifted apart for two or three years. Now, six-feet-four and lean, a junior engineer with a major construction company, he was back with Claire, his life apparently adjusted, his love for Claire very apparent.

  “You never worked on Olympic Tower, did you?” asked Malone.

  “No, thank God. They tell me it was nothing but headaches. Still is—for you, I mean.”

  “It’s political now. You interested in politics?”

  “Not really. Is it worth it? Being interested, I mean. They all go their own way, they’re not really caring a damn about what the voters are trying to tell them.”

  “Is it like that with youngsters your age?”

  “Mostly.”

  “It was different in my day,” said Con Malone, coming feet first as usual into the conversation. He had just arrived with Brigid, Scobie’s mother. Malone, glancing at him, remarked how old his father looked lately; the years of struggle were coming out of him like leprosy. “In my day the pollies listened or we got rid of ‘em, no mucking about. Those days they come out into the open, on soap-boxes, the backs of trucks. None of this stuff like today, hiding away in TV studios. You didn’t like what they said, you pulled ‘em down off the soap-box and did ‘em. They listened then, all right.”

  “The good old days,” Malone told Jason with a grin.

  “It might’ve been better. Now—” Jason flicked the switch on an imaginary remote control. “You can just turn ‘em off.”

  “We turned ‘em off in the old days,” said Con and put up a fist bigger than any remote control. “Still, the next few weeks are gunna be innaresting. You’re gunna see more in-fighting than in a yard fulla roosters.” His rheumy old eyes suddenly looked younger with relish. “They’ll be fighting each other to get on the 7.30 Report, you watch.”

  “What about Wanted for Questioning!” said Jason, grinning.

  “That’s my territory,” said Malone and left them.

  He passed the student director telling a small group, “Antonioni was the greatest director the screen’s ever seen. He made the audience think.”

  “He directed the Marx Brothers, didn’t he?” said Clements and gasped as Maureen hit him in the ribs. Mrs. Truach started a laugh that turned into a hacking cough and the student director looked pained at the dumb taste of the middle-aged.

  Lisa and Romy were sitting in deck-chairs on the far side of the pool from the barbecue; Romy, even though German, had better taste than sauerkraut and dumplings. Amanda was seated on her mother’s lap. She was a chubby little girl, the hint of her mother in her broad-cheeked face, of her father in her build. She gave Malone a hug and transferred herself to his lap as he sat down and took the glass of Hunter semillon Lisa poured for him.

  “How’s my girl?”

  “I just one of your girls,” said the three-year-old.

  He looked at her mother. “Are you teaching her to count or be suspicious of men?”

  “Both,” said Romy, and Lisa nodded appreciatively.

  “That’s you Europeans.”

  “Women have gone further in Europe than we ever have out here. Catherine the Great, Isabella of Spain—”

  “Nymphos—”

  Both women laughed, then Romy said, “Changing the subject—did you know Janis Eden has been released from prison?”

  “No. When?”

  Janis Eden had been holding a large briefcase full of hundred-dollar notes, drug money, when Romy’s father Peter Keller, a serial killer, had plunged a poisoned syringe into his own arm and committed suicide rather than be arrested by Malone and Clements. It had happened just over nine years ago, had brought Romy and Clements together, but it was a shadow that would never go away. Malone stole a glance at Amanda and hoped she would never be told the truth about her grandfather. She saw his glance, smirked at him and gave him the two-eyed wink that Wombat Rose had given him. He hugged her, as much for protection as for affection.

  “Four months ago. She got out of Mulawa, time off for good behaviour. While she was in there she counselled a lot of the women who had drug problems.”

  “That was what she was before she went in, a professional drug counsellor. She was also a drug seller. She had a nice set-up. Her patients didn’t know it, but they were her customers as well as her patients. She might still be going if she hadn’t got greedy.”

  “Well, she’s out now.” Romy sounded cautious, as if a door had suddenly opened again.

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know,” she said and looked at Amanda as if protection was already necessary.

  Malone held the little girl for a moment, looking over her head at her mother. Lisa sat quiet, but there was a warning in her eyes: Don’t say anything. Then he kissed Amanda, gave her back to Romy, got up and went along to where Clements had just joined Phil Truach. The latter put out his third cigarette since arriving; Malone didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke. Truach smoked two packs a day and boasted that his doctor said he had lungs that could work a steel forge.

  “Janis Eden is out,” said Malone. “Did you know?”

  “Romy told me this morning.” Clements was sipping a beer, his pre- as well as his after-lunch drink. He drank wine and had a good cellar, but the habits of youth still clung. “I think she’s known for a week or more, but didn’t want to talk about it. Janis is history.”

  “Janis Eden?” said Truach. “Wasn’t she involved with Jack Aldwych’s son? I did some work on that one with you two. You had me and Andy Grah
am tailing Jack Junior at one stage.”

  “We were never able to hang anything on him. Jack Senior got to him and pulled him out of it before we could land him. He’s been squeaky clean ever since. And happily married.”

  “While Janis did nine years?” Truach automatically took out another cigarette, remembered whose company he was in and put it back in its pack. “I wonder if she hired a hitman and he got The Dutchman by mistake?”

  4

  I

  MONDAY MORNING there was a strike force conference at Police Centre, presided over by Chief Superintendent Random. Laconic as ever, he still managed to have an edge to his voice, a drawl that was a slow cut across the throat:

  “Every editorial writer, every talk-back host, every columnist is on our back about this case. Five days have gone by and they can’t understand why we haven’t got the hitman, tried him and hung him by now. We have a suspect, as you know, but so far we haven’t enough evidence to convict him of even a traffic offence. We know of the throat-cutting going on in the Labor Party—is that door shut?” He looked towards the back of the big room and was assured that, yes, the door was shut. But everyone in the room knew that shut doors do not stop leaks. “We’re walking on eggshells here, both parties will knock us arse- over-head, for different reasons, if we put a foot wrong. So we tread carefully. At the same time we’d better get a move on. Now, has anything new come up?”

  Malone hesitated, then spoke up: “I’ve something we still have to look into—” he was aware of every eye in the room on him, like a battery of laser beams—“there is a possibility that the bullet that got the Premier wasn’t meant for him—”

  He paused. Everyone in the room was abruptly still. Even Greg Random, as relaxed as a bolster, seemed to stiffen.

  “It could have been meant for one of the Aldwyches, father or son, who were on either side of him when he was shot.”

  “Shit!” said someone and a wave, like a bad smell, stirred the audience. Complications were never welcomed; they bred like rabbits. To have lost a Premier and Police Minister was bad enough; to have lost him by accident, even if someone else’s accident, was disaster compounded.