Out of the Blue

by JR Carroll

  They shook hands and Dennis joined him at his table. Des Carlysle was a serious-looking man of about fifty, grey-eyed and grey at the temples.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ Carlysle said. He had what looked like a Scotch and soda in front of him.

  ‘Scotch, neat,’ Dennis said. Carlysle got it. When he returned to the table Dennis had a single sheet of paper out and unfolded.

  ‘So who’s on your list?’ Carlysle said, eyeing the sheet with a stern policeman’s gaze.

  ‘Ken Butts first,’ Dennis said.

  ‘Butts? I think he’s in jail. Not sure. I seem to remember hearing something about him … some sickness. I’ll check. Who else? I presume I can take the sheet of paper.’

  ‘Of course. There are two brothers, Goran and Stan Pipic. They live in Ballarat—or at least Goran does. Both have committed serious crimes in the past—murder or manslaughter.’

  ‘Right. Don’t know them off-hand, but that doesn’t mean anything. Anyone else?’

  ‘One more crim. All I’ve got is a first name, which is Teddy. He’s short, nasty, forty-five to fifty. Street hood. Thick head of hair and sideburns, dark, going grey. Looks like an old rocker. He has two distinctive tattoos on his wrists: KILL on one and MAIM on the other. Drives a white Commodore. That’s all I know about him.’

  ‘Should be enough. Teddy …’ Carlysle looked upwards in a pose of concentration. ‘Rings a bell somewhere. Anyway … is that it?’

  Dennis said, ‘The last name I have is not a crim, but a cop. Gavin Spicer. Used to be a sergeant in Homicide with me, but that was two years ago. I don’t know what he’s doing now. He may not even be in the firm any more.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him. No, I’m pretty sure he’s not in Homicide. Gavin went through some problems a while back … Internal Investigations.’

  ‘That’s not surprising.’

  ‘You had a run-in with him?’

  ‘Yes. A serious one. He has good reason to dislike me intensely.’

  Des Carlysle finished his drink. Dennis could tell that he had been assessing Dennis throughout the conversation, working out if this guy was worth going out of his way and taking risks for, even though Steve Donohue had vouched for him. Dennis couldn’t blame him for that, not a bit. He wondered if he’d passed the test.

  Carlysle took the sheet of paper and put it in his pocket. ‘Can you meet me here same time tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carlysle got up. ‘See you then.’ He raised a hand and went out. Dennis hadn’t even touched his drink. The meeting had lasted five minutes.

  Teddy was sitting at home in West Heidelberg, waiting for Elaine to show. Her absences were becoming a worry—he had no idea where she was or who she was seeing. He hoped she hadn’t been stupid enough to put him in to the fuzz for whacking her. Women were getting pretty uptight about that sort of thing these days, and there were plenty of interfering do-gooders around they could run to. He knew she didn’t have many friends—she used to, but most of them evaporated when Teddy hit the scene.

  Teddy got himself a beer and looked out of the front window. Then he went back to the kitchen. He was restless. He couldn’t fix things with Elaine if she wasn’t around, for Christ’s sake. It was seven-thirty. He sat at the kitchen table, tapping the can gently on it. In the centre of the table sat a little package. In it was a Piaget watch, a stylish gold number for which he’d paid three thousand dollars. The woman had wrapped it beautifully in gold paper and tied it with a black bow. Teddy couldn’t wait to give it to Elaine, to see her face light up at last. Teddy wouldn’t come on strong; he’d just say something simple like, This is just to say that I’m very sorry, and that I love you. You’re everything to me. Words along those lines. He’d say them very humbly and show her his soft side. How could she resist that? He wouldn’t even touch her. He’d wait for her to make the next move. The ball would be in her court. If she forgave him he’d take her out for a good dinner, anywhere she wanted to go. That’s if any restaurants were still open by the time she got home—where the fuck was she?

  Elaine got back just before eight. She’d been down to Ocean Grove, where she’d been taken for summer holidays as a little girl. Happy memories of a simple childhood filled her mind, bringing sadness. It all seemed so distant now. Elaine spent a long time sitting on the sand, doodling in it with a stick, looking at seagulls and swimmers, and at little kids playing nearby—kids the age she was when she used to go there. Elaine wished she was that young again—or that she was someone else entirely.

  Afterwards she’d had a cup of tea and a cake in a cafe, trying to avoid the damaged tooth. The dentist had said it would have to be capped, but that was going to cost five hundred dollars, which she didn’t have. Elaine had two hundred and thirty dollars in the bank. Teddy would no doubt offer to pay for it, but she wasn’t going to give him that. She hadn’t worked for over a year, since Teddy had said she could quit her boring supermarket job, that he’d look after her. And now since he’d lost his job she’d been on the dole, out of the job market. There was nowhere for Elaine to go, except back to her parents, and she couldn’t face that, the constant nagging and criticism. In any case, Teddy would ring and come around, hounding her, making her situation even more unbearable.

  She sat in the cafe thinking about her life, which seemed to her to have ended already at the age of twenty-four. All she saw was a dead-end coming up fast. She realised now that she had made a lot of mistakes, the main one being Teddy. Yet how different it had been in the beginning, when it was kind of novel and exciting to be around a man like him, physically strong and fearless, going out drinking, having sex all over the house, taking off to Sydney in a mad moment, Teddy driving all night and Elaine waking up in the back seat with his jacket for a blanket, her head resting on a jumper he’d folded, and here they were going down George Street at eight in the morning! There was always something crazy like that happening—he’d have a good day at the races and away they’d go to Wrest Point for the night. You never knew what he was going to come up with next. That was before the gloss wore off, and then one day he whacked her, for no reason except that she’d opened her mouth at the wrong time, when he was in a shit about something. Her friends—the ones she had left—had warned her about getting mixed up with this guy, a criminal—a killer, for Christ’s sake—but she was twenty-one then and knew everything. Right now she hoped that when she got home it would be to find that he’d been wiped out in a car smash.

  But no, there he was, sitting in the lounge. Hearing her come in, Teddy had grabbed a magazine and pretended to be reading, although Teddy never read anything except racing guides. She passed through the kitchen, ignoring the little gold package, and went to the toilet. Teddy got up, lounged around the hall with his hands in his back pockets. When she came out he said, ‘G’day’.

  Elaine mumbled something and walked past him. Into the kitchen. Teddy followed her.

  ‘Got sump’n fer ya. Onna table.’

  Elaine, making a cup of instant coffee just for something to do, glanced at the package without much interest, then turned away again.

  ‘Go on—open it. Won’t bite ya.’

  Feeling compelled, Elaine unwrapped the gift, opened the velvet box and saw the glittering timepiece. Teddy watched her face closely. Elaine’s expression hadn’t changed—you’d have thought the box was empty.

  ‘Put it on,’ Teddy urged. ‘It’s yours.’

  She seemed reluctant, handling the thing with apparent distaste, as if it might carry an infection. When the gold band had been clipped on she looked at her wrist, but then didn’t know what to do next, how to slip out of the corner he was working her into.

  ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Beautiful. Just like you, baby.’

  Elaine continued to look at the watch, not at Teddy. She knew the expression that would be on his face: the bad boy’s come-on-forgive-me look, cheeky and imploring, that he’d perfected with practice. Teddy felt this tremendous urge to take the two st
eps towards Elaine and hold her in his arms, lift her up, make her feel the old magic, that she was safe and secure with him. But he resisted it. This was an important moment. He waited.

  Elaine carefully removed the watch from her slender wrist and put it back in the velvet box. The kettle had boiled. She made her mug of coffee and turned to leave the room with the mug in her hand.

  ‘Elaine?’ Teddy said.

  He watched her go into the bedroom, saw and heard the door slam. From within came the sound of low sobs, as if she didn’t want him to hear them. Teddy sighed. Leaving the watch on the kitchen table, he went to buy himself something to eat. There was a McDonald’s not far away, in Bell Street. He drove through, got two Big Macs and fries, went home and ate it all on the kitchen table, staring at the watch and wondering what the hell he could do now. Elaine was still in the bedroom, but he couldn’t hear the sobs any more.

  Dennis was waiting. He had arrived at the Old Melbourne Hotel five minutes early and got himself a Ballantine’s on ice. At exactly five-thirty Des Carlysle came in and, without appearing to look for him, made directly for Dennis’s table and sat down.

  They exchanged greetings, then Dennis offered to buy him a drink. Carlysle declined, saying that he didn’t have time. He produced a large folded-over buff envelope from inside his jacket, which he opened. In it were some pages of computer paper with the perforations still intact.

  ‘I was right,’ he said. ‘Ken Butts is halfway through a three-and-a-half-year stint in Pentridge for drug dealing, possession of firearms, assaulting police and threatening with menaces. Apparently he’s dying from Parkinson’s disease too. So Ken has his problems.’

  Dennis nodded. Sipped Ballantine’s.

  ‘Goran Pipic did five years from ’73 to ’78 for the manslaughter of a neighbour he thought poisoned his dog. Since then he’s been back a couple of times for violence against the person, most recently in ’86 for threatening a barman with a knife when the barman refused him service. His kid brother Stan shot a man in a dispute during a card game in ’83. For that he did six-and-a-half years. Before that there’s a string of burglaries, car thefts, possession of stolen goods. In recent times he hasn’t done anything—that he’s been caught for, anyway.’

  ‘Did Goran do his time in Pentridge?’ Dennis asked.

  Carlysle checked. ‘Yes he did.’

  Now the big one. ‘Teddy?’ Dennis held his breath.

  ‘You must mean Teddy, or Theodore, Van Vliet. One sixty centimetres, born 1943, head like a robber’s dog, tattoos—the ones you said: KILL and MAIM. A pub brawler and petty crook from the old days, but broke into the big time when he drew six years for killing a man with a lawn-edger during a drunken row. He then tried to bury the body in his own yard, but the ground was too hard, so he hid it under the house and covered it with building materials. Neighbours reported the smell a couple of days later. Nice type of fella.’

  Dennis said, ‘When did he do his time?’

  ‘From ’74 to ’79. In Pentridge. After that there was an armed hold-up, two-and-a-half years, then he seemed to go quiet. On Cup Day this year, however, he started a one-man war at Flemington, and still has to go to court for that one. And he’s under suspicion concerning a computer heist, which is the thing I’d heard about. Investigations at this stage are inconclusive, however. He’s just one of a number of suspects.’

  ‘Got an address there?’

  Carlysle turned the sheet around. Dennis’s eyes searched fast, found what he wanted. Photocopied the information into his mind.

  ‘Gavin Spicer?’

  Carlysle said, not referring to the printouts any more, ‘Spicer hasn’t been in Homicide for over a year. He was investigated and cleared by the Toecutters on suspicion of graft. Suspicions were strong and some of the shit stuck. He’s now back in uniform and in charge of Balwyn Police Station. He’ll never be a detective again.’

  ‘Gavin wouldn’t like that. He’s fond of the high life.’

  ‘He won’t find much of that at Balwyn.’

  Dennis said, ‘Can I keep the printouts, Des?’

  ‘I’d prefer not, to be honest. This sort of stuff gets found in the street, it comes back to me, mate. My arse in the sling. The computer keeps detailed records. But have a good look, take notes if you like.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time yet. I will get a drink after all.’

  He handed Dennis the pages and went to the bar. Dennis got out the pen and notepad he’d thought to bring for just this eventuality and got busy. A little while later, his drink gone, Des Carlysle pocketed the documents and walked out, saying, ‘Goodbye, Dennis. Enjoy the rest of your life.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Teddy came out of the Sylvania Hotel at around ten-thirty and picked up a slab from the bottle shop on his way to the car park. He had twelve thousand dollars in his pocket. It seemed that his pockets were always stuffed with money these days. And yet, Teddy thought, he wasn’t exactly feeling ecstatic about it. The truth was that he was deeply worried about losing Elaine—having all this dough didn’t have much meaning for him compared to that. What was the use of money if it couldn’t make him happy, get her back on track? He thought about the watch: that was obviously a failure, an expensive one, too. Where did he go from here? Carrying the slab under one arm and fishing the keys out of his pocket, Teddy felt, well, he’d never say depressed, but kind of … flat, troubled. He was too old to go looking for a new woman. Anyhow there was no way he was giving Elaine up. Never happen. She was his. Somehow he had to find a way to make her understand that, that she had to take the tough times with the good. Work through their difficulties.

  Teddy rested the slab on the roof of the VK and put the key into the door. Then out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something, someone moving quickly near him. But there hadn’t been anyone else in the car park a second ago. Teddy turned around just in time to see a pair of arms raised and coming down; he covered his head, ducked fast, the blow struck his shoulder, hard, Teddy going, ‘Ugh!’—Christ, that hurt!—the guy swinging again, Teddy throwing himself into him. The blow is deflected, Teddy swings a body punch, connects, swings again; Teddy’s in close, using his low centre of gravity; the attacker is trying to back off, get some leverage to hit Teddy again with his weapon, some kind of club: Teddy puts his head down, butts the guy, the guy grunts and Teddy hears the weapon clang on the ground—fucking iron bar. The guy’s hunched over, Teddy throws a kick, the guy grunts again, then he tries to rally, coming at Teddy with his arms going like a chaffcutter; the blows are ineffectual. Teddy grabs the slab off the car, slams the guy with it, straight in the face, slams him again, the guy buckles, sits down; Teddy kicks him, the guy bellows, then Teddy brings the slab down hard on top of his head, WHAM!—again, WHAM!—the guy moans, wobbles, rolls back; Teddy jumps on his chest, smashes the slab into his face, once, twice, the guy’s arms pinned under Teddy’s knees; Teddy brings the slab down again and again, flush on the guy’s face; ten, twenty times; the guy’s stopped struggling but Teddy keeps going, the slab coming apart, but Teddy still pounding the pulped face with it, again and again; his arms start to ache, shoulder kills, slab’s out of its plastic and cans fall loose; Teddy winds up and gives the guy one last WHACK!—then stops. He’s astride the guy’s chest, heaving, gasping, throat rasping; the guy does not move. With the wrecked slab in his hands Teddy gets his breath back, blowing out air and sucking it in. Pain throbs in his shoulder: he feels it, feels the bone; cracked, he thinks. Jesus! Who the fuck …? Teddy struggles up. All he can see is a guy, young, nothing to him, decked in leather—fucking biker. The face is not a face any more, just a mess of bloody ruined features, flattened and fanned out. There’s blood everywhere: all over the guy, his leathers, on the ground, on the busted slab still in Teddy’s hands. He picks up the odd can lying around. Bastard! Teddy thinks, Christ, that shoulder! Iron bar, eh? You fucking punk. Jump Teddy Van Vliet, would you? Fucking Jesus!

  Teddy kicks the iron bar in disgust. He’s got n
o idea who his attacker is. In fact he’d have trouble recognising Shawn even if his face hadn’t been rearranged. He’s only met him a couple of times, very briefly, when he’d gone to the parents’ house in Broadmeadows to pick Elaine up on Sunday afternoons, before she had her own car. Teddy opens his car door, throws the slab on the floor, gets in. No one around: good. Fuck that punk. He starts up and backs out. There’s blood on his hands: he wipes them on his shirt and pants, gets onto the highway. He’s still breathing hard. Kid’s got a lot to learn, he thinks: reckons he can take Teddy all by himself, Teddy Van Vliet, last of the real men, mate of the Kane boys and Chuck Bennett. Go back to school, son, get some years up. Get some hair on your arse. Get some mongrel. Teddy drove on, passing transports. Fuck me! he thinks: can’t get over it. He wipes his brow with the back of his hand. That must be the only guy ever got smashed on a slab and didn’t even drink any! Teddy laughs: that’s a good one. He says it out loud: ‘Must be the only guy ever got smashed on a slab and never even drank it! Ha ha ha!’ What he doesn’t know is that he’s driven Shawn’s nose right up into his brain and killed him.

  Teddy stops at a drive-in bottle shop for a new slab—this one’ll be no good for a couple of days, that’s for sure! The attendant hands him the slab, Teddy pays with cash from one of his wads, and the attendant, peering at Teddy, says, ‘Are you all right, mate?’

  Teddy shoots back, ‘Why the fuck wouldn’t I be? What’s your problem, pal?’

  ‘Nuffin,’ the man says hastily, backing off.

  Teddy’s on the road again. If he looked at himself in the mirror he’d see what the man had meant. He’s got Shawn’s blood all over his face.

  Back at the house, Elaine’s car in its usual position halfway across the front lawn, Teddy went in the back door, dropped the damaged slab on the laundry floor, splashed a little cold water on his face, dried off, then went inside, the second slab under his arm. Elaine wasn’t in the kitchen, but he could hear the TV on. He put the slab in the fridge, ripped a can free and stood there with the door open, drinking thirstily. That little stoush had taken a lot out of him, even though the punk was right out of his league. Wonder who he was, Teddy thought. Those arseholes, Glenn and that, trying to set him up, get their dough back? Maybe. But they’d know better than to send a boy on a man’s errand.