Hard Light- Infamous

by Warren Hately

  Peter indicated the jacket with a shy, nervous smile that didn’t flatter him.

  “I know it’s warm, but you never know, with Charlie Franco.”

  “You’re the last of the bush poets, mate,” Flanagan said.

  He lit a cigarette as they approached the white sedan, as much for the sake of making an arse of himself as any nicotine cravings. He hardly needed an excuse. Roosveldt had the gall to budge one and Flanagan loaned him a light as they climbed into the car.

  “Wealthy man like you, I wouldn’t think you’d need to bum ciggies,” he said.

  Roosveldt laughed and fired the engine, sitting back slowly to wait.

  “I like to warm the motor.”

  “So what do you do for a living exactly, Peter?”

  Roosveldt looked across and grinned crookedly. There was decay along the gums of his front teeth and one canine was turning blue-black. Up close, a wispy kind of pubic moustache had taken root in the perpetual wetness of Roosveldt’s upper lip. He put on a baseball cap while they idled, checking the rear vision mirror as he carefully positioned it the wrong way around.

  “You know, a bit of this, a bit of that.” He chuckled at his own joke like he didn’t know it was a cliché, and then nodded to Flanagan. “I could ask the same from you.”

  “A month ago, if we were sitting side-by-side like this in a car and I thought you’d been fucking my little niece, I’d have killed you by now, if that gives you any idea.”

  Roosveldt snorted a laugh and wound down his window to exit the smoke.

  “Yeah? How do you think you would do that?”

  Flanagan imagined the elbow strike, but he only turned and looked stonily out his own window, ashing disrespectfully on the floor between his thighs.

  “Hey, use the fucken window, you cunt.”

  “Let’s just go meet this mate of yours.”

  As Flanagan worked the window button, Roosveldt grumbled under his breath and turned, reversing out of the narrow underground bay. Within moments they were jerking to a halt at the lights and the driver was his old juvenile self again, wiggling his eyebrows at Flanagan with a ‘whaddayareckon’ expression at the scantily clad girls running to make the ticking signal and then the beach.

  “They’re probably underage too,” Flanagan said quietly.

  For all his reputed menace, Carlo Franco had settled in sleepy Coogee on the south side of the Fremantle border. Although it shared the same beach as Freo, it was a different mayor working hard to change that for a handful of wealthy supporters: them and their political mates who owned majority shares in the slated waterside development down that way. It was a long way off still, with a lot of ticks needed in the process. Flanagan had barely read a paper since he’d returned, but he’d heard about Sylvania Waters Coogee and was confident enough it’d never go ahead without a level of corruption and self-interest that seemed unthinkable in a democracy. Still, in his cheese-smelling voice, Peter Roosveldt boasted Charlie Franco was probably having a beer with the mayor or chasing skirt with the bloke who ran Cockburn’s notorious private swingers’ club, a headline-making establishment in its own right that extended free memberships to the female half of the community and reportedly had more than a few local takers, including the mayor’s wife.

  Flanagan pulled out his phone and checked the time, reaffirmed to see it’d only just gone one o’clock.

  “What sort of swingers’ club opens in the middle of the day?”

  “Dunno,” Roosveldt replied. “There’s a lot of horny blokes in the world.”

  “Sad to say I’m one of them,” Flanagan muttered.

  “Yeah, amen to that, brother.”

  Flanagan gritted his teeth and said nothing. The Alfa crossed the river and Roosveldt drove at breakneck speeds down Queen Victoria Street and around Parry before squealing around the corner from The Pines and Norfolk Street and swerving and dodging up South Terrace.

  “You’ve heard of the police, I imagine.”

  “Mate, I’m not drivin’ this thing if I can’t fucken appreciate it.”

  “Settle, Peter,” Flanagan replied dry. “We might make the finish line yet.”

  It wasn’t the fastest way to make Cockburn, but it let Flanagan tour straight through the heart of South Fremantle. On a white picket fence down near the corner of Sheedy Street, branching off the main drag, he saw a good-looking blonde in a power suit hammering a ‘for sale’ sign into one of South Terrace’s rugged, Beirut-style footpaths. Flanagan only glanced, noting the number and taking a vague look at the house, and by then Roosveldt was swinging the car around the roundabout at the very end of the strip and hammering the clutch, squealing tyres and pissing off a truck from the nearby fish-packing plant. Moments later, they’d climbed a slight hill, leaving a tantalising glimpse of crystal blue ocean and Norfolk pine trees behind. There was hardly anyone in sight and Flanagan smiled.

  “That’s the beach for me.”

  “Mate, not enough skirt,” Roosveldt proclaimed.

  It was another fifteen minutes before they pulled into a conservative little street, a cul-de-sac with a scattering of monopoly houses left to bake since the late 60s. The house at the end of the street was different, probably only a three-minute walk through the scrubby bush to the soon-to-be-rezoned seabed. Gilt pillars and white plaster columns demarked the mini-mansion from the rest of the street, if not the suburb as well. The house was two-storey if not three, the colour of burnt peaches and covered in more terra cotta than a whole village in Tuscany.

  Peter swung the Alfa into the drive in a practised move, halting just short of a black electronic gate. He buzzed down his window and leaned across to a plastic interface, pressing a button and grunting until the whole apparatus crackled.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Flanagan heard him call. “Yeah, Peter. Let me in.”

  There was a buzz and a crack and then the metal gate divided into halves with a clacking noise as it levered apart. At the first instant, Roosveldt gunned the car forward and up the slight incline. A black BMW, a Nissan Pintaro and a labourer’s ute full of painting gear sat at the front of the house. On closer inspection, Flanagan saw he was right to guess the house at three storeys, the lower level a sub-basement with a pair of big roller doors at the end of another sinking drive. Gone With The Wind-style ascending steps took visitors up to a landing with a big black door adorned with a metal lion’s head, a ring nonsensically through its nose for the knocker.

  As they parked, a huge man appeared through the doorway. Closer to seven feet than six, the bloke had the build and demeanour of a nightclub bouncer. He’d solved his baldness with a razor, and dark, meaningless tattoos covered his bare left arm from elbow to shoulder. Like Roosveldt, he wore a singlet and track pants, his with redundant press studs down the side, enormous trainers on his feet. Like his head, he was clean-shaven all over, and everything about him seemed built up and in good condition and probably riddled with steroids.

  “That’s RJ,” Roosveldt said in the same voice Flanagan had heard schoolmates use to boast of older cousins or tough uncles.

  Flanagan got out of the car slowly and followed his guide’s lead, moving up the steps until the doorman’s shadow fell across them both.

  “Who’s he?” RJ asked in a voice that was surprising only for its pleasant pitch.

  “My name’s Flanagan. I’m here to see this Franco bloke.”

  The bald man glanced between Flanagan and Roosveldt for confirmation and when he received it, his face broke into a grin.

  “He’s for real, is he?”

  “Afraid so. The cunt almost busted up my apartment,” Roosveldt said.

  RJ’s face settled into a blank and uninviting stare.

  “Right. Through here.”

  They entered a large foyer with another sweeping staircase ascending to their right, the materials inside more likely to be marble and tile than the concrete outside. There were a pair of stuffed leather couches, green in colour, facing each other like they belo
nged in the lobby of a hotel. Actual magazines rested in a rack beneath a glass-topped coffee table. RJ pointed and ordered Flanagan to sit, then he and Peter Roosveldt went through a pair of sliding wooden doors at the back of the room, positioned beneath the staircase overhead.

  Flanagan resisted the urge for a smoke, glad at least for having drunk the beer at Roosveldt’s Cottesloe pad. He sat on the edge of a couch, and after a minute or more of complete silence, slid sullenly down into the chair itself. Within a few minutes he was bored enough to pick up one of the men’s magazines on the table, his own heart rate and breathing level once more after the initial possibility of distress.

  The wooden doors slid apart with sudden violence and Flanagan’s adrenalin returned as RJ and then Roosveldt marched through, the former with a black look and Roosveldt, his confident swagger restored, grinning cockily at Flanagan as the magazine fell to the ground.

  “We’re going for a drive,” Roosveldt announced.

  “Another one?”

  “Carlo’s not here,” RJ snapped.

  They swept past him without so much as another glower. Raising an eyebrow unnoticed, Flanagan stood and followed them back out the door.

  *

  AS FLANAGAN WENT for the passenger seat, RJ moved across and reached with one ape-like arm to clutch the door handle, elbowing Flanagan in the sternum and grunting without apology as he swung himself down into the car that seemed dwarfed by his size. Flanagan rubbed his chest, expression undecided between annoyance and playground hurt.

  The bouncer glanced up from under almost hairless brows and muttered, “You can ride in the back. With the dog.”

  “You what?”

  Flanagan looked around, realising Roosveldt had kept going once they reached the Alfa. He spied him over near the gate, crouched at a small guard box obviously home to the beast in question, a stainless steel bowl of water out the front as well as a length of chain.

  “I don’t do dogs, mate,” Flanagan said.

  “I should hope not,” RJ replied, his voice almost accented by his crisp English. He started chuckling, not so much oblivious as hitching a ride on Flanagan’s clear ill humour.

  “Open the back door,” Roosveldt wailed.

  He walked over a Doberman so black it looked oiled, straining at the chain leash and twisting like some convoluted animal from a Celtic tattoo. As if confirming Flanagan’s worst fears, the creature stopped suddenly at the other side of the car and began furiously licking itself between the legs. RJ rolled his eyes.

  “Cut that out Henry, before your red bit pops out.”

  Roosveldt only laughed, and RJ, glancing out over the back of his seat and through the newly-opened door, clicked his fingers with a measured seriousness.

  “I bloody mean it, Prickles. Stop him, unless you want him jizzing all over your fucken upholstery.’

  Roosveldt blinked as Flanagan moved around the car and helped himself to the driver’s door. For once, RJ laughed and Roosveldt, hangdog expression on his own face, mouthed a complaint only to be snapped at again and told to stop holding them up.

  “Carlo’s out in the fucken sticks waiting for us, for fuck’s sake.”

  Flanagan held out his hand and Roosveldt reluctantly handed over the jingling collection, more front door keys than any person had the right to possess. The Alfa Romeo fired smoothly and RJ held up a little device that set the gate clacking backwards once more.

  “Alright,” Flanagan announced.

  “You don’t even know where we’re going,” Roosveldt said.

  “We can give him the directions once we’re away,” RJ muttered.

  They drove even further south, RJ directing them to the unfamiliar road to coastal Mandurah. In silence, they continued on for twenty minutes until the dog, Henry, overcome by a bout of flatulence, lay down with his head asleep in Roosveldt’s lap.

  “I won’t tell the boss, Peter, if he licks you,” RJ joked.

  “Fuck off, Mike.”

  Flanagan looked across as he drove, embankments covered in salt bush casting the land into anonymity at either side.

  “The boss, huh? That’s what this Charlie Franco is to you?”

  “Carlo’s not really that keen on being called Charlie any more,” the big passenger replied carefully. “He’s moving into serious business these days. Charlie kind of smacks of a kid’s name, doesn’t it?”

  Flanagan watched the other man’s play acting consideration and pondered the comment. Finally, he flicked his eyes meaningfully over the back seat.

  “You’d better tell him that,” he said.

  RJ turned, a brawny arm curled over the head rest, regarding Roosveldt wordlessly for several long seconds before relaxing and facing front.

  “So, Mr Flanagan,” the bruiser said at last. “How is it we’ve found ourselves with the pleasure of your company, you driving us an’ all, on the way to a secret meeting with Mr Franco?”

  Flanagan steered the car around the corpse of a kangaroo splattered in the middle of the double lane highway, changing gears down and then back again, keeping the high performance sedan around the hundred-kilometre mark.

  “How long have you been in Australia, Mike?” he asked.

  “Was that the question? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m sure Peter already filled you in on why I’m calling.”

  “‘Calling,’” RJ grunted and smiled. “That’s a pleasant name for it. Sort of Jane Austen, taking us back to yesteryear and somewhat gentler times.”

  Flanagan said nothing and the bouncer snapped his fingers.

  “This photo. Let’s see it.”

  Flanagan scrounged in the back of his pants and passed across the picture of Allyson in her school hockey gear. RJ exhaled softly between big teeth.

  “Right. That bird. I thought I knew the name.”

  “It’s Allyson Jacobsen, not James, not matter what you might hear,” Flanagan said. “And she’s sixteen.”

  RJ looked across into Flanagan’s gaze and held it for as long as safe driving allowed.

  “No comment,” the big man said. “You came here to speak with Carlo. I’m just facilitating that.”

  “And what’s your role in Mr Franco’s business exactly, Mike?” Flanagan asked. “Facilitation, is it?”

  RJ stared dead ahead and gently lifted a finger.

  “Slow down for the lights, please.”

  TEN

  THE CAR PULLED off the highway a few kays short of Mandurah. Roosveldt passed along instructions for the sand and gravel track. Flanagan’s hands were locked in tension on the steering wheel, his concerns going from grave to worse as they left the hallmarks of civilisation behind.

  As if reading Flanagan’s thoughts, RJ glanced across with a mirthful grin. “Rethinking your approach now are you, Mr Flanagan?”

  “You’re quite the polite bloke, aren’t you, Mike?” Flanagan shot back. “I guess after years of people thinking you’re just a big meathead, you’d have to come up with some kind of schtick.”

  The humour flushed from the bouncer’s face. Flanagan turned his eyes back to the road as the track curved and rose into a pitted plateau, rusted chain-link fences lying down to either side, old chemical drums and the skeleton of an incinerated warehouse off to the far side. An expensive-looking motorcycle and a mottled Bedford van were already there, figures moving around the far side. Flanagan popped his jaw and kept his eyes alert.

  “We’re here.”

  “Bring the dog,” RJ said.

  Flanagan and Mike stepped from the Alfa at the same time. A smaller man in the ubiquitous white singlet, studded track pants and trainers came around the far side of the Bedford. He had half a kilo of gold around his neck and wrists, tattoos on his throat and collar bones. Flanagan knew straight away he was Charlie Franco, now that he saw him and his trademark mullet compensating for thinning forelocks, familiar from some past transgression in the pages of the State daily.

  “Carlo,” RJ said aloud.

  The o
ther man nodded and started across in the hurried pace typical to many smaller men. Despite his natural limits, Franco had worked out to fill the rest. Dark features with the receding hairline made him look a rodent, though his shifting eyes also betrayed at least some kind of equally feral smarts. He flicked from Flanagan to RJ to Roosveldt and the dog and stopped twenty paces from the first of them, crouching and clicking his fingers.

  “Come here, Henry.”

  Roosveldt snapped the karabiner and the dog dutifully ran like a whipped thing to his master. Franco avoided a tongue kiss and ruffled the thing’s head and looked up at Flanagan, standing eventually.

  “Henry Rollins.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything to me,” Flanagan said.

  “Singer, you know, Black Flag? Rollins Band? Does some spoken word shit too, it’s fucken awesome. Hilarious. You’ll have to listen to it some time.”

  Carlo spoke with the unthinking authority of a man who might just make true his word by use of force. He gestured and Peter trotted forward to restrain the dog again. Flanagan used the moment to look around, two bearded men in dusty black denim and leather vests fussing with the open doors of the van. The bike was a Harley, one of Franco’s vanity pieces.

  “You down here alone, Carlo?” RJ asked quietly as they started walking as a group for the van.

  “Yeah. I decided to take the bike out for a spin. I never get to stretch these days, feel the fucken wind in me hair, what I’ve got left of it.” He gave a strangely boisterous laugh, something suggesting he’d swallowed a much bigger man, and he flicked his hand out at Flanagan.

  “RJ said there was a photo. Let’s see it.”

  Flanagan pulled the picture again and Carlo stood, resting against the side of the bikers’ van and producing a pair of very small, expensive-looking glasses and blinking as he put them on.

  “Right.”

  He thrust the photo away, towards Flanagan, like he didn’t want to ever look at it again.

  “So what’s your problem?”