Out of the Blue

by JR Carroll

  ‘Yes,’ the man said, and stepped off the verandah. ‘Are you police?’

  ‘No. But I think I have something belonging to you.’ He showed Mr Pipic what he had. Mr Pipic took it from him, examined it, walked to his vehicle and found that indeed it was his wing mirror. The cast-iron break married with the mounting perfectly.

  ‘Is no good,’ Pipic said. ‘Is broke.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dennis said. ‘Mr Pipic, is there other damage to your truck?’

  Pipic walked along the passenger side and Dennis followed him. There were banged-up parts, some with yellow paint embedded in them. Dennis knelt and scraped the paintwork with his finger. Loose flakes stuck to his skin with the sweat. He saw, too, that there was a bull-bar on the truck, but it was made of toughened steel and bore no marks.

  ‘Where was your truck stolen, Mr Pipic?’ he said.

  ‘At the hotel,’ Pipic said. ‘I am there for my birthday; I go out for cigarettes in the truck, truck gone.’ He opened his hands. ‘So you not police, who are you?’

  ‘My name is Dennis Gatz. They hit my wife’s car with your truck. They killed her.’

  Pipic narrowed his eyes. He was beginning to see problems at his door. ‘That is bad,’ he said. ‘But not my fault.’

  ‘No, of course not. What hotel were you at, Mr Pipic?’ He knew all this, from Gilhooley, but needed Pipic’s first-hand version. Details mattered.

  ‘The Welcome Stranger, in, I think … Lydiard Street.’

  ‘Yes, I know where it is. It has a car park behind?’ He found himself mimicking Pipic’s speech patterns.

  ‘Not behind. Next door.’

  ‘Right. And you went out for cigarettes, what time?’

  ‘Ten o’clock, quarter past.’

  Dennis felt a chill. This man’s truck had been harmlessly, innocently, sitting in a car park in Ballarat an hour before Karen died. He felt a little woozy in the heat.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water, please?’ he said.

  Pipic went inside and got it for him and Dennis sat on the Ford’s bonnet, waiting. Shock waves continued to pass through him. He breathed deeply. Pipic came out with the water and Dennis drank it all.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and gave back the glass.

  Pipic looked at his truck and said, ‘Is damaged. Engine damaged too. I have no insurance. Who will pay?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, Mr Pipic,’ said Dennis. ‘But I’ll find out. When I do you’ll have to stand in line.’

  Realisation hit home hard while he drove. The killing of Karen had been no random act. Pipic’s truck had been stolen for the purpose. It had been found next day near the Botanic Gardens, north of Lake Wendouree, which left plenty of time for the killer to disappear. When Dennis thought why, he could only conclude that she’d died because of her connection to him. Had to be that. He’d deprived many hard men of their freedom over the years and snuffed several as well. Some of the very worst—a few names came to mind—had openly threatened him at the time, but Dennis had never taken those threats seriously. Now, too late, he did. Sometimes revenge is all a long-term prisoner has to live for. Grudges did not weaken in criminal families, he knew that. They did not weaken with the years inside prison walls. A man with all that hatred in him and all that time on his hands looks forward to getting out for one reason and one reason alone. But why Karen instead of Dennis himself? Perhaps they thought he was in the Mazda, not Karen. He had driven it around often enough for a mistake like that to be possible. Certainly no one could possibly have had a reason to deliberately kill Karen.

  Dennis didn’t know, couldn’t see, but he had an idea things would be a lot clearer before he got much further into this. He was beginning to feel that old urge to be violent. Someone was going to get hurt on his way to the answers. If you scattered a few seagulls, he had learned, the view improved considerably.

  FIVE

  Teddy Van Vliet put the phone down and stepped out of the booth, frowning. He was starting to get a bad feeling. All morning he’d been dialling this number and it was always the same, no one there. He stuffed the piece of paper with the number on it back in his wallet and returned to the public bar of the Quarry Hotel in East Brunswick. Teddy—born Theodore, but never called that, not even by his mother these days—had been a regular here since the old days, the ’70s, when he used to drink with the Kane boys and Chuck Bennett. Well, not actually with them, but close to them, had walked past them on his way to the brasco and nodded, said hello.

  Chuck Bennett had got a light off him once; Teddy told him to keep the box, and Chuck had said, ‘Thanks, mate, you’re a white man’. In Teddy’s mind that made him part of the gang, a mate of the Kanes and Chuck Bennett, and these days no evidence to the contrary existed. Teddy was fond of saying that Chuck had actually hatched the Great Bookie Robbery in this very bar, that he, Teddy, had been in on it but pulled out later at his wife’s insistence. She was heavily pregnant at the time, and scared. This was the story he put about. In reality he’d never got a woman pregnant in his life, because of his low sperm count—a little fact he didn’t shout about much in bars. But he had been married, twice.

  Now that the Kanes and Bennett were dead, murdered—one of the Kanes was blown away right here in the Quarry on a day when Teddy was not present, though he later became an eyewitness and could name the killer, who had never been caught—Teddy thought of himself as the last hard man standing. This was not mere wish-fulfilment, since Teddy had earned his stripes by bashing a man to death with a lawn-edger one drunken Sunday. They’d been watching the Bathurst races on TV and got into an argument about it, whether Falcons were better than Monaros, and the argument had got out of hand. Teddy had always been a Holden man, owned a Walkinshaw for a brief time in the ’80s—the proceeds of a robbery—but then had to sell it for a song to pay his legal costs. Teddy hated having to do that as much as doing the time.

  The victim on this Sunday was a big-mouthed Pom, Pommy Dave, who knew fuck-all about cars or anything else, but behaved like an authority on any subject Teddy brought up. Eventually Teddy got the shits completely and invited Dave out into the back yard to settle the matter once and for all. Actions spoke a lot louder than words for Teddy. That guy was born to be wasted. Teddy had only just met him a few days earlier in a pub and had been attracted by the amount of cash the man had, his pay packet from a three-month stint on an oil rig in Bass Strait, Kingfisher One. That was what he’d said, anyway, big-noting. The dipstick had been dumb enough to show off his roll in the fuckin’ pub, if you don’t mind, and Teddy had been mainly trying to work out a way of getting it off him, preferably without the guy realising. Anyhow, Teddy had served four years in Pentridge for that. The charge had been reduced from murder to manslaughter on account of the huge quantities of alcohol both men had consumed over a three-day period, so there was a degree of diminished responsibility on Teddy’s part. It could have been a lot worse, and he had actually thanked the judge when he was asked if he had anything to say.

  At the end of his sentence he had come out unscathed and a virgin, which confirmed his view of himself that he was not a man to fuck with, in any sense. During that time away he had developed his stare to unfailingly meet another man’s eyes with a glazed, unblinking look and a half-open mouth. The trick was to appear dead, dead to the core, and therefore beyond fear or pain. In addition, he had covered his body with tattoos, and had a string of them along both arms and on his back. Each wrist bore a red dagger dripping with blood, the left saying KILL and the right, MAIM. When sitting in the mess hall Teddy had always made sure those wrists could readily be seen, and anyone who showed unwanted interest in him saw those fists clench as well, then a slow turn of the head, that dead stare.

  Since then he’d done time for a bank robbery—two-and-a-half years—then a short stretch for having electrical goods in his garage and no receipts to go with them. But that was all a long time ago, when he was a wild young bugger. Cops tended to leave him alone now. There was a new generation o
f them these days, kids with fluff on their faces who’d probably never even heard of the Kane brothers. It suited Teddy. He still stood pretty tall in the Quarry, a lot taller than his one hundred and sixty centimetres. Sometimes he’d come into the bar with his mates and hear someone say, ‘There’s Teddy Van Vliet’, and he’d feel the respectful eyes on him. He’d nod at different young hoods if he was feeling generous, ask them for a light.

  He took a long drink from his full glass and went over it again in his mind. The guy Graham, no surname, had given him a grand down with four to follow once the job was done. Graham had told him to go to Ballarat, knock off a car, something with muscle, wait for the yellow Mazda 323 to leave the university car park, then follow it without being seen, lights out, and ram it off the road. This he did, calling in an old favour from his Pentridge years, borrowing the truck rather than stealing one, but making it look stolen anyway. Graham was surprised, but had no real objection when Teddy informed him of his improvisation, although it had not been his wish to bring anyone else onto the team. Too bad. The key part of the deal was for the driver, a woman, to die or be crippled, and for it to be an accident. Teddy had to make sure there would be no witnesses, no heat later. He was assured there’d be hardly any traffic on the highway that time of night, and there wasn’t. Graham said that the party for whom he acted did not want a stuff-up, that Teddy would be on his own in that case and would have to handle it as best he could. Fair enough.

  Teddy had done it right, then had followed instructions by dumping the Ford as soon as possible and going back to his motel on the edge of town, then staying put for two days while the dust settled. He’d only left his room to get beer and to eat in the motel restaurant, figuring that was safe enough and anyway, people might think it funny if he never showed himself otherwise.

  So he gets back to town, rings Graham and no dice. Does Graham think he can fuck with Teddy? He’d better not. Teddy knows more about Graham than Graham realises, saw an envelope in his car with a business address on it. Some travel agency in Blackburn. You do four hard years and you learn a few tricks. If this Graham doesn’t start answering his fucking phone or if he’s given Teddy a bum steer, he’s going to wake up one day with his head between his legs, sucking his own dick. Teddy will sort him out with a butcher’s knife.

  Teddy got into his immaculate white VK Commodore and drove home to his weatherboard shack in West Heidelberg. His girlfriend Elaine was not in. She might be looking for a job but was more likely to be in the lounge at the Reservoir Hotel, where she sometimes hung out with her little band of female friends: Josie Korcarevski, something like that, and one or two others whose names Teddy never bothered to remember. He didn’t like Elaine with these women, constantly analysing their personal lives and no doubt slagging Teddy himself at every opportunity, but all the same he had a good thing going on the side with Josie, an unmarried mother who had a nice big body and no brains at all. Sometimes when he’d had a few beers Teddy would ring her from the pub and get her to come and meet him up Sunbury way, and they’d go at it in the back of Josie’s old Valiant. There was nothing she wouldn’t do, but she especially loved to stick her butt in the air for Teddy to go doggy. Together they could stink up the whole car, which was why they did it in her old clunker. Teddy wasn’t having that in the VK, which he maintained in showroom condition inside and out. He even kept a spray can of Glen-20 in the glovebox. Once she’d asked Teddy to take her to a motel for a change where they could drink champagne and watch TV afterwards, but Teddy wasn’t shelling out for that when he could get it anytime for the price of a phone call. He was pretty sure Elaine didn’t know anything about this, but so what if she did. Teddy had his own suspicions about her. God help her if he ever found out he was right.

  When Elaine came in about an hour and a half later Teddy was lying on the couch watching an old rerun of ‘Happy Days’. It was quarter past five. Elaine appeared in the lounge room with shopping bags in her hands. ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘Hi yourself,’ Teddy said. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Northland,’ Elaine said. ‘There are specials on this week. I bought some summer gear.’

  All this had come out a bit rehearsed to Teddy’s ear. ‘There’s always specials on,’ he said, propping lazily on an elbow with his eyes half-closed. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think you had any dough left.’

  She put the bags down and said, ‘I used my Bankcard. Didn’t think it’d work, but anyhow …’ She smiled and started to pull clothes from the bags. There was a pair of white jeans and a couple of tops to go with them. She showed him her purchases and said, ‘What d’yer reckon?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ Teddy said, and yawned. ‘Put ’em on.’

  Elaine kicked off her flat shoes and undressed down to her brassiere and panties. Teddy watched her. She was completely unselfconscious about her body. She pulled on the white jeans, did them up and displayed herself front and back. Teddy nodded. She went to put on one of the tops and he said, ‘Wait on. Come here.’

  She went to him, thinking there was something needed fixing, a loose thread, but he put his hand around her buttocks and brought her in close. He looked up and could see her expressionless face between the two cones of her breasts. He smiled, unzipped her jeans, slid them and the panties down and smelled her.

  ‘So where else have you been today?’ he said.

  ‘Nowhere,’ she said. ‘Just shopping.’

  ‘What time did you go out?’

  She thought about it, about whether he might’ve been watching the house, or phoned, and said, ‘I dunno, Teddy. Just after lunch. I didn’t keep time.’

  ‘You smell nice and fresh.’

  She shrugged. ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘How come, Elaine?’

  ‘Christ, Teddy. What is it with you?’

  ‘Warm day, you been out all afternoon. Should’ve got a sweat up by now. But you’re clean.’

  Elaine didn’t say anything. Teddy stroked her buttocks and looked hard into her face. He sensed that she had become frightened. There was a faint quivering on her white belly.

  ‘Get ’em right off,’ he said. ‘Then lie on the floor.’

  She did so without hesitation. Teddy got onto his knees, undid his pants and revealed what he had in store for her. It was only half-erect, still below the horizontal. She watched while he stroked himself and got it good and hard. When he drew back his foreskin the pink head shone like a plastic dome. His was an unattractive organ, distinctly out of shape and with dark brown fungoid-looking spots that made it look diseased. He lowered himself between her legs, fingered her roughly then slammed hammer-like into her. She cried with shock and pain and he held her by the wrists and fucked her brutally, grunting with each sharp thrust. Being a slight girl she was tight, tight as a young virgin. Teddy liked that because it made him feel much bigger than he really was. Unlike a lot of short, chunky men, Teddy was not at all well hung, a fact that he kept concealed as much as possible by pissing in corners. He fired his shots into her as soon as he was ready, grunting, then withdrew, squeezed the last of it out and wiped himself on her thigh. Then he noticed blood-smears where he’d wiped, blood on his cock and hand. She cried, had not stopped crying, held herself, rolled to one side and curled up with her arms between her legs. Teddy leaned over and kissed her sweetly on the ear.

  ‘You been a naughty girl, darling,’ he said affectionately. ‘It doesn’t take all fuckin’ afternoon to buy jeans, does it?’ Crying, she shook her head and made unintelligible sounds.

  That seemed to annoy Teddy. ‘Christ, you must reckon I’m dumb, Elaine. Tell you what. I find you’re doing the dirty on me and I’ll fix you so you never fuck again. I’ll use the butcher’s knife on you. And I’ll fix your fuckin’ boyfriend, too.’ Suddenly angry, he punched her twice in the body with his left hand and she screamed. She choked and gobbed and coughed, and Teddy shut her up with a whack across the chops.

  ‘Go and wash the fuckin’ car,’ he said. ‘I
t’s filthy, like you. Use the turtle wax. Make it shine. Then get in here and cook tea. Move your lazy butt!’

  He kicked her leg and she started trying to get onto her knees. Teddy stuffed his bloodstained genitals into his pants and zipped up, turned the TV off and went to the fridge for a stubby while Elaine gathered up her new clothes and crawled on all fours from the room.

  Teddy had a lot on his mind at present. These were tough economic times for him as well as a lot of other people. He was a qualified forklift driver and had held down plenty of jobs over the years, the last with a timber merchant in Clifton Hill, but they’d gone bust a few months back and there was just nothing around now. All the factories seemed to be closing down. Teddy found it hard to keep up any sort of decent lifestyle on the lousy dole and was starting to think that even if things improved he would never get another job because he was too old, just a few months shy of fifty.

  So he had that, cash-flow worries, on top of which there’s this Graham gone into smoke without giving Teddy his four fucking grand. And then as if that’s not enough he’s got a wayward woman on his hands, domestic shit Teddy can do without. He was pretty sure she had a boyfriend—and that wouldn’t be surprising, since she was only twenty-four, less than half Teddy’s age. She was still finding out what it was all about. But Teddy loved Elaine a good deal and could not consider a life without her in it. If he hit her it was only for her own good and it was always nice when they made up later.

  He was going to have to sweeten her somehow. Looking through the window at her hosing the VK down he thought, Well, it’s Cup Day tomorrow and I might take her to the races. She’d like that. She could get dressed up and they could drink champagne. But then that brought him back to the cash-flow thing. He had seven hundred in his wallet but only twenty bucks in the bank once that was gone. A day at Flemington was going to set him back at least three or four hundred. Still, it was a good idea, and there was still the four grand he’d get off Graham one way or another. Teddy thought about it all, watching Elaine with the hose and running his hand through his ’60s-style pompadour, thick as it always had been but streaked with grey now, making him look more like an ageing pimp than an old rocker from way back.