Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  Mostel was surprisingly small up close. He was in his late forties, his hair dyed black, the back of his neck pockmarked by acne scars. He dressed well, smart but casual, and moved like an athlete. His voice was deep and powerful, and his words seemed to hang in the air.

  Which didn’t make sense. The real estate agent had told Foley about how successful Mostel was, did the books for both the Conlan brothers, and more recently had moved into property development. Had some big projects in the pipeline; was a friend to the new money entrepreneurs like the Conlans who were doing so well; could even be counted among their number.

  And yet here was Mostel berating a mousey florist, with her rounded shoulders and cheap print dress, with a thudding bass voice that was building towards something.

  Even if Foley wasn’t casing Mostel, he would have felt like intervening. Mostel was accusing the woman of ducking her responsibilities, of trying to cheat him. He demanded that she paint the front of the shop, replace the aluminium window frames, and the plasterboard ceiling. The wiring would need re-doing throughout the shop. The tin roof was rusted, and needed replacing.

  When the woman tried to point out that this wasn’t part of her contract, that all she had to do was leave the place in the condition she’d found it, that her business was already failing, that doing what Mostel requested would bankrupt her, Mostel twisted the knife, as Foley knew he would. Mostel threatened to take her to court, to recover the full costs of fixing the place up. Either she could do it herself, using contractors of her choice, or he would do it and recover the costs. And he’d win. He knew all the judges.

  He named a figure, and the woman braced herself against the register. The figure was a bad joke, even Foley knew that – probably more than the woman turned over in three years. She was shocked into silence, and Foley felt his fists clench. He looked into the mirror to calm himself, his crisp blue eyes, sunburned face and scruffy beard out of kilter with the staid check shirt he’d taken from the estate agent, tucked into cream chinos and a thin leather belt. Mr Suburban.

  When he’d settled his breathing, Foley started to think clearly. Now he understood why Mostel did the rounds of his tenants in person, rather than leaving it to his property manager. No estate agent would act like this. Extortion wasn’t their game. If this was Mostel’s approach, and it was successful, he’d probably leeched more money out of his tenants this morning than most businessmen earned in a year.

  But there was something else that interested Foley: the need behind the strategy, its cruelty. In everything Mostel said to the woman there was distrust and disdain. Not just a business strategy, but a part of his nature – a reflex. And yet, as Foley’s mother had said, old Schloime Mostel had been a good man. Gentle and funny, and generous to the urchins who gathered in the nearby streets, Foley among them, always up to no good. He knew that were Schloime alive, he wouldn’t be proud of his son.

  The woman was in tears now, as Mostel took her outside and began pointing at other things that needed doing. Foley left the shop as well, and for a moment their eyes met, Mostel not pausing his cataloguing but watching Foley leave. His eyes were dark and vigilant, burning with mock outrage.

  For a moment, Foley hoped that Mostel would recognise him, so that he could end it there. But Foley turned the voice off. There were better ways, he just had to figure them. And he’d left the shop with a new understanding of the man he was stalking.

  As he suspected, Mostel had no code beyond fuck them before they fuck you. It was him against everyone else. This had worked for him until now, but it was also a point of weakness. Once the shit hit the fan, nobody would cover for a man like Mostel, not his business associates, not his friends and, Foley suspected, perhaps not even his family. It was a character flaw that Foley could exploit and, as he ambled towards the parked Fairlane in his ugly clothes, he began to think on how.

  13.

  Swann parked the Statesman a block from Parliament House on a hill running down Hay Street. Heenan hadn’t asked for the Statesman keys back, but Swann knew that it was a matter of time, especially when he saw the peach Commodore assigned to him parked where he’d left it, in the parliamentary car bays, dusty and covered with purple jacaranda blossoms.

  He waited there as instructed, standing as far from the Commodore as possible. He was tired now, and his eyes burned despite the coffee. He was still dressed for the raid on the Chinese gamblers, utilitarian blue work trousers and a faded denim shirt, boots and a peaked cap, sunglasses to hide from the glare. The posse of premier’s men who emerged from the parliament were all in the regulation dark suits and shiny black shoes. Heenan’s shirt was untucked where his belly fought against his belt. He too hadn’t slept, but then again, as he’d confided in Swann, he rarely slept. He indicated that Swann should follow the seven men, some of whom Swann recognised from the premier’s office, towards two black Ford LTDs shaded beneath the muscular arms of a Moreton Bay fig. Three of the men who’d been talking to the premier peeled off when they reached the first car, which the premier entered alone. Heenan shook Swann’s hand, and opened the door of the second car for Swann. The car was the long wheelbase model, but with five grown men inside it felt small, leather creaking and the air stuffy, soon smelling of the mints that Heenan sucked. Both the driver and the man on Swann’s left were compact and efficient in their movements, clearly ex-army.

  Heenan didn’t mention the Chinese gambler, but Swann expected that. As the Ford circled Kings Park back into the city, taking the Riverside Drive exit beside the Narrows Bridge, Heenan leaned into his corner like an exhausted boxer, and talked.

  ‘According to the CIB, there isn’t much to go on. The consorters have been taking photographs, but many of the faces aren’t names. We need to nip this before it gets out of hand …’ He paused to look down the sweep of river to where the Old Brewery stood, ruined, on its retained banks like a medieval castle, uniformed police directing traffic and hundreds of protesters waving placards and banners. ‘Fucking land rights protest, right in the middle of a capital city. The Libs are going to eat this up. We need to be proactive. A solution needs to be found.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Swann asked, a question he understood was going to become commonplace. He hadn’t followed orders for years, and the asking didn’t come easy.

  ‘Line of communication, Frank. The peelers aren’t giving me anything …’

  Heenan let the statement hang there. It didn’t need to be said, what both of them knew – the premier’s looking interstate for a new police commissioner, part of his pre-election promise to clean up the force, was coming back to bite him.

  ‘We didn’t see this coming, Frank. We can’t have it. It’s on the front pages of the papers over East, the ABC news is leading with it nationally. And I’m not getting any clear picture of what these people want. There doesn’t appear to be any spokesman. Find out who has the authority to speak, so we can start a dialogue. You wander around and watch, Frank. Speak to whoever you think might be useful. The premier’s been invited for a cuppa, apparently, by some of the old ones. I’ll mingle with the journos, see what’s what.’

  Swann nodded as the Ford pulled into the siding to let him out early. The police had blocked off a lane with a string of witches hats, and the premier’s LTD drove as close to the protesters as possible, sequestered from the road by a line of uniformed police linking arms. The driver didn’t get out, and kept the engine running, in case they needed to U-turn fast.

  Swann crossed the four lanes of traffic so that he could join the protest and distance himself from the premier’s group. The limestone bluff of Mt Eliza was hard against his right, zamia palm and acacia scrub growing down to the narrow thread of verge grass. He cut behind the first wall of protesters, looking for a familiar face. The chants of Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land increased with the arrival of the premier, but the tone wasn’t angry. The antagonistic relationship that the Libs had with Aboriginal people, who they perceived as standing in t
he way of progress over the past twenty years, was something that the premier had promised to remedy. It was the Commies and Labor who had agitated against the draconian laws directed against the Aborigines over the past century, and the premier had positioned himself as their natural friend.

  Swann knew this, but he didn’t know much about the protest, or the people involved.

  When Swann was a boy, a black man needed a dog tag to justify his presence in the city. Aborigines lived in fringe-dweller camps in the dunes south, and some of the bush around Coolbellup. It had always been like that. And white boys like Swann always fought with black boys.

  It was a Yamatji kid who’d ended Swann’s boxing career, but he wasn’t bitter about that. Swann had been street fighting for small stakes on behalf of his stepfather since he was thirteen. It was the early 1950s, and Brian saw it as an easy way to make money. Brian would organise the fights in the sailor bars down by the port, boasting that he had a kid no foreigner could beat, and if the goading worked, and he had a taker, the crowd would follow him out into the alley to find Swann waiting there, stripped down to his jeans, still a skinny kid. It was bare knuckles and no rules, and on one occasion lasted for a gruelling blood-soaked hour. If the sailor was drunk, Swann was lucky. Brian and his mates organised the betting, took the money and called the odds. It was up to Swann to take down the inevitably larger and older man. He had fitness and a few tricks to wear them down; a relentless rabbit punch and a few dozen kidney blows usually did the trick. He copped some terrible hidings but he learnt from those. And Brian always bet against him if he thought Swann was a guaranteed loser.

  He’d taken to the amateur boxing circuit in the RSL halls and Italian clubs and PCYCs around the city, but when he fought a black kid the same age in a scout hall in Armadale he learnt the hard way that he was merely a brawler, and no boxer.

  Bloodied and bruised, Swann saw out the fight but the other boy was a clear winner. He’d never forgotten the other kid’s name – Gerry Tracker. For most of the past twenty years Tracker had a mechanics workshop in Spearwood, and Swann went to him from time to time, looking for parts. It was no surprise to see him at the protest now, still fit and strong and warlike, sporting a beard and a red-and-white Bulldogs beanie.

  Swann approached Tracker from the side, his eyes never leaving the man’s profile. Tracker’s posture said comfortable, leaning down to listen to the older white woman beside him, but then Tracker sensed his observation and turned.

  They shook hands, and Tracker introduced Swann to the older woman, an Anglican nun.

  ‘Never picked you for a ratbag, Swann. What you doing here?’

  Tracker laughed when Swann told him. ‘True? You’re on the gravy train? They lookin’ for a handsome black man to play Tonto?’

  ‘Your skills, Gerry, they translate. But I don’t see you wearing orders from the Boss.’

  Tracker had done time in Fremantle Prison after the armed robbery of an armoured vehicle, a crime unusual for a black man, and he’d worked standover inside. But after ten years of Yes Boss this, Yes Boss that, released men like Tracker usually preferred self-employment in all its varieties, legal or illegal, to having a white superior standing over them.

  Tracker laughed again and clapped a hand over Swann’s shoulder. The gesture was friendly, but his eyes were watchful as the pitch of the chanting increasing for the benefit of a panning TV camera.

  ‘Never been one for crowds, meself,’ he said. ‘Make me jumpy.’

  ‘Same here. Always associate it with holding the line.’

  Swann looked to Gerry, who was turning away every time the camera swept over them. ‘So you know I’m on the clock. Going to help me out?’

  Tracker shrugged. ‘Not for me to say. I’m Yamatji, and this is Nyungar business. I’m here to support the cause, but I’m not going to speak for anyone else.’

  The older white woman had no such reluctance. She looked with distaste at the navy-blue police truck that now arrived, bearing a dozen reinforcements. Riverside Drive was blocked, and the traffic was banking away from them in both directions.

  ‘Say what you want, just don’t mess with commuter traffic. Bad for productivity.’

  Swann was surprised by the nun’s working-class drawl. When she spoke, he listened.

  ‘The Brewery was built near a sacred site. Where the Wagyl, or creator water serpent, passed through. Now they’re going to flog the Brewery off to the highest bidder. The Nyungar elders want the place returned to them.’

  Swann nodded. ‘Can you see that happening?’

  The nun grunted. ‘The last site we pointed out to a council, over there in Bassendean – a woman’s birthing place on the upper Swan, they immediately built a toilet block over it.’

  Tracker shook his head. ‘Can see somethin’ happening, Swann. Can see it happening till we get some justice.’

  ‘How many here have the authority to make a decision?’

  ‘Take me to your leader, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Man, you don’t know much, after all these years. It ain’t like that – never was. Only the people from here, and I mean right here, got the right to speak for here.’

  There was a hint of sarcasm in Tracker’s voice as he watched an angry young man in jeans and a cowboy shirt turning on a megaphone. At the first warped sounds of the megaphone the dozens of journalists in attendance began to rush and jostle. Swann looked around at the black faces. Many of them shared Tracker’s bemused expression, arms folded.

  Swann didn’t want to hear a speech, and he put out his hand, which Tracker shook. ‘Anything I can do to help, let me know.’

  ‘You just sayin’ that, or you mean it?’

  Swann’s answer was drowned out by the crackle and tearing sound of the young man’s voice smashing through the speaker. He winced, as did everyone else, moving back a step but locked in.

  14.

  Foley slid the Fairlane into a park opposite Parliament House. The heat of the day was broken, the sun gone behind the limestone hill to the west. He rolled down the front windows and sucked in the air, heard the drone of traffic low in the moat of the Mitchell Freeway – all the worker ants heading home. Mostel was idling the Porsche in the parliamentary carpark, cigarette smoke curling from his limp wrist on the sill. Foley looked over the parliament. The building held no interest for him, except for the fact that he’d considered bombing it on his last visit. The pigs had been close, and blowing up a bin or a postbox in the centre of power would turn them away. As it turned out, the bombing hadn’t been necessary – the Ds weren’t smart enough to dig him out.

  Foley had a regular place to hide that nobody expected, where nobody bothered to look.

  A fat man with his shirt-tails hanging out huffed out of the parliament building and lit a cigarette as he walked, eyes scanning the carpark. The Porsche sank on its springs when he entered shotgun, pulled away with less than its usual enthusiasm. Foley followed at a distance until the Porsche reached Kings Park, drove along the parapet of lemon-scented gums, around the war memorial and the view east over the CBD, then took a bay near the botanical gardens. Now the view was south over Melville Waters, but when the two men exited the car they were looking down rather than across. At their feet, by the bottom of the limestone cliff, was the Old Brewery. Mostel pointed at the Brewery and at the man, getting his finger under the fat man’s chin. They argued for a while, both of them smoking. Then Mostel did something Foley hadn’t seen coming. He took the fat man by the forearm and turned him, pointed directly at Foley, and his Fairlane. Made a show of pointing him out, keeping eye contact.

  At some point during the day, Mostel had made the tail. Credit where it’s due, although the real estate agent must have shopped him.

  The two men didn’t approach, but this changed everything. The fat man had emerged from Parliament House. No politician would want it known that Foley was back in town but, depending on what happened next, Foley could expect a few th
ousand coppers to drop everything to hunt him down. The word would be leaked to the media, and then the fun would really start. Mostel was obviously well connected, and had called in a favour. Now it was Foley who had to show his hand. He could either run, or finish what he came for.

  It didn’t take long to think on it. Funny how things work out. The little coincidences that you feel aren’t coincidences. Feel like messages from the part of you that never sleeps. Foley would need that hide-out now, where nobody would think to look. Not because it was well hidden, but because it was where nobody liked to look, among people nobody bothered to look at.

  15.

  Marion’s Datsun was in the driveway so Swann parked on the street. The sea breeze was gusting from the south, whipping the heads of the eucalypts in his front yard, carrying the smell of salt and seaweed and the aluminium refinery down at Kwinana. A spray of red needles lay over the drive, dropped by the flowering bottlebrush either side of the letterbox. Swann reached to cut the engine just as the phone in the console began to trill.

  ‘Swann, two things. Firstly, the arrival of the commissioner’s been delayed. Reckon about a month. Health reasons.’ Heenan ploughed on, not wanting Swann to get a word in. ‘Second, and fucken Murphy’s Law, Des Foley is back in town. He’s been stalking a local businessman, and –’

  Swann cut Heenan off, or he’d never get a chance. He was tired and needed a drink. ‘I missed out on a night’s sleep, Heenan, to troubleshoot a problem for you. Problem solved. Des Foley is no problem of mine. With the new commissioner being delayed, yes, the local CIB are going to make you squirm, remind you of their power to make you look soft on crime, exact a bit of payback until you kiss some blue arse. But when it comes to arresting Des Foley – that’s not an arrest they’ll back away from. That’s a career-making arrest, for the right D with an ambitious mindset. You don’t need me to –’

  Now it was Heenan’s turn to talk over Swann. ‘No, Swann. It’s not that. I’m just keeping you in the loop. This … businessman, he doesn’t want me to take this to the coppers. He’s putting it on the street. Giving it to Adamo, Leo Ajello, maybe some of the bikie clubs. Says his family have been threatened.’