by JR Carroll
Later in the afternoon a man came into the bar.
Not local. Dennis knew him from somewhere. It had to be the firm, he thought. Guy about forty, sandy complexion, fortnight’s growth. Casual gear. Then his mate came in and they were two of a kind except that the offsider might have been five years younger. The first man looked at Dennis with a straight face, eyes unblinking, a cop’s face, devoid of expression.
‘Dennis Gatz,’ he said flatly.
‘That’s what it says over the door.’
The man grinned and then Dennis knew who he was. ‘You haven’t changed much at all,’ the man said, and put out his hand. ‘Steve Donohue.’ They shook. ‘This is Greg Moss.’ Dennis shook his hand too.
‘Been a long time, Steve. What’ll you have, boys?’
‘Two pots for starters. Then I think we’ll just make up the rest as we go along.’
TEN
Dennis poured the beers. Steve Donohue. Detective Sergeant, last Dennis heard. Armed Robbery Squad, St Kilda Road. But not now, presumably. Dennis had passed him in corridors and known him distantly over a period of time. There had been reports about Steve in the papers twelve or eighteen months back, a departmental or judicial inquiry in connection with the shooting of a crim and the subsequent disappearance of bank robbery proceeds. A large sum of money. It was all a bit out of focus—Dennis hadn’t taken much notice at the time and didn’t know how it came out in the end. Greg Moss, however, did not compute. But underneath the fuzz he looked like some kind of cop too.
‘Bit out of your bailiwick, aren’t you Steve?’ Dennis said.
‘Have been for a while, mate,’ Steve said. ‘Like you.’
‘Seems to be a lot of that going on. So who’s left these days?’
‘No one you’d want to know. There’s a whole new generation taking over, Dennis. Everything’s changed. Just before my swansong some fucking committee barred red meat from the canteen, and that was it for me. You know they actually started issuing directives to the effect that all officers were expected to do two laps of the Tan track or the equivalent before or after work? That was the exact wording. I ripped it off the fucking noticeboard and got told off by the Fitness and Wellbeing Coordinator. And do you know what? That’s a paid position. She got a fucking allowance for it.’
‘Go on. Nothing surprises me.’
Steve drank some beer and said, ‘Some guy was running a scam, signing cops up for this fitness club that offered a group discount, you know. But it turned out the discount took the form of a fucking commission that went into this prick’s pocket. He was their fucking agent!’
‘Fuck me.’
‘He made thousands of dollars. Thousands. But then some bastard blew the whistle on him and next thing he’s on the tram into town, bag packed. The dork was a fucking probationary constable. That’s the kind they breed now, mate. Fucking entrepreneurs. The first page they turn to in the paper’s the stockmarket report. They have investments, you see. They deal in coffee futures and the short-term money market. They have tax havens in Norfolk Island. These are fucking twenty-year-olds.’
‘I heard there’s a new class of cop in town,’ said Dennis. ‘They wear Zegna suits and silk ties. They buy time shares together at Byron Bay or Surfers Paradise and do a lot of windsurfing. They go to restaurants for lunch and have jugs of iced water on the table.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Steve said. ‘But these fucking college boys are very ambitious, Dennis. They want to be Inspectors by the time they’re thirty. They have a fucking program mapped out on the wall at home. No bullshit. They’ve got degrees and diplomas coming out of every orifice. They’re treacherous, self-seeking bastards. Lean and fucking hungry—and the top floor loves ’em. They’re in bed together, drawing up the next list of promotions. You think I’m making it up? Listen, there was this guy, twenty-two years up, George Medal, the lot, not one blemish in his career. Absolutely first-rate candidate for a commission. But unfortunately he was forty-five and not part of that new order. Not in the fold. Some kid with jelly in his fucking hair and an MBA from Texas University gets the nod. This happened, Dennis. I was there.’
‘I believe you, Steve. But we don’t have to worry about it now.’
‘Thank Christ.’ He finished his drink and said, ‘I spat the dummy, mate. I spat it far and wide. I threw open the window and yelled, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it any more!”’
‘I saw that movie too,’ Dennis said. ‘But it wasn’t a cop said that—it was a newsreader. Peter Finch.’
‘They gave him an Oscar, I think. Posthumously.’
‘He got shot on camera,’ Greg Moss said. They both looked at him. These were his first words since coming into the place.
‘That was the character in the film, dickhead,’ Steve said. ‘Peter Finch had a heart attack.’
‘I know that!’ Greg said.
Dennis said, ‘So what are you up to now, Steve?’
‘What do ex-cops do if they don’t become publicans? I’m in the private investigation business, mate. So’s Greg here. We spend a fair bit of our time installing listening devices into car phones, which is a bit dodgy because you have to get into the car first. That and photocopying purloined documents. We’re fucking outlaws, man.’ He laughed.
‘Nothing changes. Who do you work for?’
‘Myself. I bought the Australian franchise for this US outfit, ChainLink Inc. Cost me a brick.’
‘I’ve heard of them. I’ve seen your ads.’
‘Have you?’ Steve looked at Dennis a little more seriously, the beer glass poised at his lips. When he’d emptied it he put the glass down thoughtfully, played with a few coins, glanced at Greg Moss and said, ‘Actually, Dennis, we might be able to do some business, you and I.’
‘Oh yeah. How’s that?’
Steve thought about it, breathed out, massaged the stubble on his face and said, ‘On second thoughts, delete all reference for the time being. Let’s just have another drink.’ He didn’t say any more, just that. Dennis shrugged indifferently but didn’t respond. He refilled the glasses. Steve gave him a ten-dollar note and said, ‘Have one yourself, Dennis. Then you better fix us up with a room if there’s one going.’
‘No problems. You can have one each if you like. You can have the run of the place.’
‘Better still. Just whenever you’re ready, mate. No hurry. I think we’ve done all our driving for the day, haven’t we, Greg?’
‘Bloody oath,’ Greg said. Grinning crookedly at Dennis, he said, ‘I hear the cops around here are pretty deadly on the old DUI.’ He poured a quantity of beer down his throat as if to illustrate the point and left a thick film on the glass.
‘You heard right.’ Dennis smiled at Greg. ‘They’ve got fuck-all else to do, mate.’ To his eye Greg Moss looked a bit feral, as if he’d just come out of a hole in the ground. He had a tilt to his neck and a permanent half-sneer on his face. There was something unnervingly cross-eyed and generally off-centre about him, as if he wasn’t really a part of this scene and didn’t particularly care for it anyway. He might have been a hitman. He had that sort of detached, vacuous air, an independent fuck-you demeanour. There was violence in Greg Moss, of that Dennis felt sure. He saw and recognised it. He decided to feel around and see what he could uncover about him.
‘So what’s your background, Greg? Ex-firm too?’
‘Not yours, Dennis. The Green Machine. SAS.’
‘Fucking flyboys,’ Steve said derisively. ‘This cunt was in the Falklands War, do you believe that?’
Dennis grinned but said nothing. That explained a lot, although the bit about the Falklands didn’t sound right. Still, you couldn’t tell, and Greg himself gave nothing further away. Then some old cockies came in and he served them their ponies and heard what they had to complain about. The recent storm hadn’t done any good at all. It had come far too late and had only been enough to settle the dust on the ground anyway.
After dinner he joined Steve and Greg at
their table in the lounge. They were well into their second bottle of Taltarni Reserve de Pyrenees following a string of beers and it was starting to show. Steve Donohue grabbed a clean glass from a nearby table and filled it for Dennis. ‘Fancy running into you up here,’ he said. ‘I thought about getting a pub myself for a while. Not in the bush, though, couldn’t hack that.’ He waved the possibility aside. ‘Seemed like long hours for not much return, though. And there are always problems with the Licensing Commission, from what I hear. Do those arseholes bother you?’
‘Not at all. Not yet, anyway. But you’re right about the lack of return. I’d say I make about ninety cents an hour.’
‘No kidding. I believe it.’ Steve filled his mouth with wine, swallowed and said, ‘I must say, I can’t complain, not now. But it was tough at the start. I slept in the car for a while, didn’t I, Greg?’
Greg Moss laughed and shook his head. ‘Never happened.’
‘Seriously,’ Steve said. ‘I had my back to the wall. You must’ve heard about that episode of mine.’
‘It was in the papers. But I didn’t follow the whole thing.’
Steve drew breath and said, ‘You remember the After Lunch Bandit, right?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘That guy was good. Couldn’t get a line on him at all. We had a task force of thirty men after him in the end and he still had us completely fucked. You really gotta respect someone like that. Sonofabitch put me out of business, that’s for sure. Anyway, eventually he made a mistake and we worked out a plan. But the plan went skew-whiff and we lost a good officer. The brass threw everything they could at me. The plan was fatally flawed and my tactics unsound, they said. I had acted without authority, I’d been unprofessional in my personal conduct, I’d been the worst bastard on God’s earth. Anyway, I accepted all responsibility and threw myself at the feet of the Toecutters, and they gave me a choice of doors. I took the first one, the way out. Fuck ’em.’
It was coming back to Dennis now. They’d taken this kid, an accomplice, up the bush and put the frighteners on, trying to get him to give up the main guy, the actual bandit, whose identity they still didn’t know. But somehow the kid had managed to turn the whole thing around …
Steve topped up their glasses. ‘I heard you didn’t exactly go out in a blaze of glory either, mate.’
‘You heard right. I got my choice of door too.’
Steve grinned. ‘Snuffed a punk, didn’t you? Mistaken identity, something like that?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Yeah. They put you in the front line, though, didn’t they? It’s always a different story when the shit hits. They all run for fucking cover and suddenly you’re the only one there, copping the lot.’ He became suddenly morose and silence came to the table. Greg Moss sat back and surveyed the room. There were a few good-looking girls around now and he concentrated on those.
Steve fixed Dennis with eyes that seemed to flicker on and off and said, ‘We have a lot in common, you and I. We are both disgraced policemen.’ He proposed a toast. ‘Disgraced policemen,’ he said. ‘Here’s to ’em. Here’s to us, mate. The best of a fucking bad bunch.’
They clinked glasses and Dennis said, ‘Disgraced policemen.’
Dennis and Steve laughed heartily. It was the first time Dennis had done that in a while. Greg Moss regarded them both with amusement. This was a private function that had nothing to do with him and he was obviously content to leave it that way.
‘Seriously, Dennis,’ Steve said. ‘This has been a fortu—a fortu-i-tous encounter. Let me go back to the comment I made earlier at the bar. You could be the man I’m looking for. You have all the qualifications.’
‘Qualifications for what? Breaking into cars?’
‘Forget all that. I was just pulling your plonker then. No, this could be an important career move, Dennis. How’d you like to live in Sydney?’
Dennis shrugged. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘Think about it. ChainLink has expanded now to the point where we need to open interstate branches. I’m looking for someone to set up a Sydney end.’
At this point it struck Dennis that Steve was actually serious. He took a swallow of wine and said, ‘Steve, I wouldn’t know the first thing about industrial espionage.’ The words themselves sounded ludicrous, unreal.
‘The only thing you need to know is that it’s a gold mine. The stakes are high, mate. Seriously. Car manufacturers alone are prepared to pay a fortune for advance knowledge of the opposition’s new models so they can copy ’em. Everybody’s desperate to find out what the other bastards are up to. Same with computers and in fact anything in the way of high-tech engineering. Things are changing so fast no one can keep pace. Fucking no one. You don’t have to be a genius to see a window of opportunity there, do you?’
‘I don’t think so, Steve. I can’t see it somehow. But thanks anyway.’
Steve remained undeterred and carried on as if Dennis had not spoken. ‘The rewards are enormous. A lot more than ninety cents an hour, I promise you that.’
‘I don’t doubt you for a minute, Steve. They’d have to be.’
‘So what are you going to do, pull beer and run around in sloppy boots throwing out drunks for the rest of your life? You got a nice place here, Dennis. But it’s a waste of your talents.’
‘I really don’t think I have the talents you attribute to me,’ Dennis said. ‘Anyhow, the simple life suits me now. There aren’t that many drunks. I’m past all that aggravation now. Too old for it, mate. And I seem to get by on the shit pay.’
‘Don’t get me wrong, mate. I didn’t mean to insult you. I was only making a point.’ He went to pour more wine, then realised that the bottle was empty. ‘We’re going to need more of this excellent Taltarni wine before the evening advances much further, Dennis.’
‘I’ll get it now, if you like.’
‘In a minute. Listen, what’s the problem? I thought you’d go for this. Do you have domestic complications? You’re married, aren’t you?’
Dennis drew a deep breath. ‘I was.’
‘Same old story. It happens. Shit happens. I don’t think marriage was meant for guys like us. When my missus went she took the fucking lot, then got a court order to stop me seeing the kids. She said they were frightened of me. What a load of shit that was. She deliberately turned them against me, Dennis, my own fucking kids. I’ll never forgive her for that. Never.’
Dennis didn’t want to broach the subject right now, but had to set Steve straight. Where Karen was concerned he didn’t want any misunderstandings. ‘It wasn’t like that with me, Steve. My wife died in a car smash.’
His carefully chosen words had the desired effect of stopping Steve in his tracks, the wine-glass half-raised to his lips. Greg Moss took a sudden interest too.
‘Shit. I’m sorry to hear it, mate,’ Steve said. ‘When was this?’
‘Recently. About three weeks ago.’
For the first time since he’d come in the front door Steve had nothing to say. An uncomfortable silence ensued, an extended one, which Dennis eventually broke.
‘I loved her a lot. Too much. It’s knocked me around.’ He began destroying a coaster, then put it down. ‘We hadn’t been together long. She was my second wife.’ He looked up and said, ‘The first one, now that’s another story altogether.’
Steve nodded politely. Drunkenness had made his face putty-like and lugubrious, transforming his whole appearance. Excessive alcohol did that to a lot of people, he’d noticed since coming here. You only had to look at the photographs on pub noticeboards, the ones taken late at night with the party in full swing, where everyone resembled some kind of reptile.
‘What can I say?’ Steve said. ‘I wish I’d known. Then I wouldn’t have opened my big mouth.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Steve. There’s nothing you can say. There’s nothing anyone can say.’ At that moment he felt a tear break and let it trickle down his face. When it had run its course h
e said, ‘I’ll just get that bottle, boys. Hang tight.’
When he came back it was obvious that Steve and Greg had been in a huddle. He sat down and poured and they all watched the procedure intently.
‘So what brings you blokes to Avoca, anyway?’ Dennis said. ‘We’re not real big on multinationals around here.’
‘Very true,’ Steve said. ‘I noticed. Oh, a bit of this and that. Popped the odd bunny and worried a few trout, didn’t we, Greg?’
‘I don’t think they were too worried,’ Greg said.
‘We had a cabin up in Hall’s Gap,’ Steve said. ‘Supposed to be going home today, but found our way into a few vineyards instead, then here. So it goes.’
‘Right. Listen, Steve, there was something I wanted to ask you.’
‘Ask away, man.’
‘Do you still know anyone back in the firm who might have access to criminal files?’
Steve was instantly curious, interested. This was better than talking about a dead wife. He cocked an eye. ‘You mean the big database? BCI?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. BCI.’
‘Hm. Possibly.’ He stroked his beard. ‘I know a Senior Sergeant at Russell Street. He’s involved with that, or was. I could check for you. Why?’
‘No big deal. I just need a little information, that’s all. It’s a personal matter. But I’d be grateful if you could set up a contact for me.’
‘Can do, mate, one way or another. Leave it with me.’
‘Thanks, Steve.’
Dennis was reasonably sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Having a clouded past himself, Steve would not be likely to ask too many questions that might make him more involved than he needed to be in someone else’s activities, and nor for the same reason would he be likely to shoot his mouth off. And he would understand that a man like Dennis would not make such an unexpected request without very good reason.
‘Look, Dennis,’ Steve said. ‘I might be a bit pissed now, but I won’t be tomorrow. I meant that before about the job in Sydney. I know it’s none of my business, and tell me if I’m out of line, but you’ll have your hands full looking after this place on your own now.’ He produced a business card and handed it over. ‘ChainLink, see? I wasn’t bullshitting. And there’s me—Executive Director. Bit of a wank, but still. The clients love it. Just tell me you’ll think it over in the cold light of day. But I’ll certainly find out what I can for you on that other matter. No strings. Okay?’