It was a distilling operation, and the alley of cuttings served both as line-of-sight security and a direct path for that rusted wheelbarrow in the barn. Leonard guessed that the internal buckets held either fermented mash—number 1, or a first run of spirits undergoing a second distillation for greater strength—number 2. At its hottest, the sun and its reflection off the white plastic must have exceeded fifty degrees centigrade, more than enough to steam the mash. Even this late in the afternoon it must have been at least forty degrees. Though it would cool at night, the next sun would quickly heat it again.
Simple, economic, profitable, and, Leonard surmised, unlicensed. Because of the inconsistent heat, the process probably took several days. At a guess, each still pumped out a liter of moonshine every seventy-two hours. Double-distilled, it would smell like a dead camel and kick like a live one. But for customers who could stomach methylated spirits and mineral turpentine, flavor was less important than power. And conveniently near the reserve, the still had no closing hours and no limits on consumption.
The hike back to his truck went quickly, not so much because he moved faster but because his mind was on Hunter's business and on the man's wife and child. A telephone call to the Alcohol and Drug Coordination Unit—when Leonard could reach a spot where his mobile phone worked—would bring an end to this still and a hefty fine for Jeremy, which if he couldn't pay would mean lockup time and seizure of his homestead to pay the fine.
* * * *
At his Tojo, Leonard warmed a tin of dog and washed it down with a cuppa. By the time he finished scrubbing his dishes with sand and rinsing them with a splash from the five-gallon water container, full night had come, with ragged patches of cloud drifting across the stars. In the dark north, flickers of distant lightning told where monsoon rains had begun to fall. If he were smart, he'd get on his way to Broome and the A and D Unit. But his eyes burned from lack of sleep, and his thoughts burned with more questions. He spread his swag on the sand to rest a bit and watch the stars wink out behind scudding shadows as his mind turned over first one option, then another.
A noise alien to the familiar night sounds broke into his thoughts. Breath held, he listened. Then it came again. Angry and abrupt, a distant human voice carried briefly through the muggy night. Leonard glanced at his wristwatch: half past eight. He gathered his canteen and torch, shook out his swag, and folded it into the Tojo. Then he started walking down the road toward Hunter homestead. Though lightning still played across the horizon, its thunder seemed no closer, and he was grateful for that.
Fire glinting through the brush led Leonard to a small clearing near the still. Using the shadows of trees and shrubs, feeling carefully for any trip wires, he worked his way closer. Jeremy and two men sat around the fire. One man was saying something Leonard could not make out. But Jeremy's head wagged and whatever he replied made the second man lean forward, a finger tapping his eye. His loud, angry voice came clearly, “You want some more like last time? You and Cindy and your kid? You like it that much?"
Jeremy's voice, too, rose—"Okay, okay!"—and dropped back into a murmur that placated the men.
After another muttered exchange, both men stood, heavy burlap sacks clutched in their hands. The first man said, “That's settled, then: You hold up your end, we do ours, everybody's happy. Hey, bro'?"
Jeremy stared into the flames. The two watched him for a long moment, then strode away from the fire, passing close to Leonard. The burlap sacks clinked and faded into the black.
Leonard listened to night sounds—the creak of a bat's voice, the distant howl of a dingo, something small rustling among drifts of dried seed husks beneath the shrubbery. Jeremy, still staring into the dying fire, muttered something to himself. Reaching into a shadow, he pulled out a bottle and tilted it for a long drink. Then another as he stared into embers that flared with the wind and died back. Finally the man drained the bottle and kicked sand over the coals and with another mumble staggered toward the homestead.
The cattle dog made a faint whining as it emerged from the gloom under the porch to sniff Leonard's now-familiar smell. He eased up onto the creaking boards and stood by the fly curtain of the open door. Beside his knee, the dog, afraid to go in but eager to hear someone come out, leaned an expectant nose into the room. A long snore rumbled to a choking high note and coughed into silence. In a few minutes came a softer, rhythmic snore. Leonard tapped his knuckles softly on the doorframe. Silence. When the heavy snoring started again, he tapped again. A creak of rusty springs and the floorboards squeaked, followed by a soft whisper, “Who's there?"
"Constable Smith."
In the gloom a darker shadow held its breath. Then, “Jeremy, he's asleep. You come back tomorrow."
"It's you I want to talk with."
The floorboards creaked again as the shadow moved closer. “He wakes up, he be damn mad."
"He's drunk, Cindy. Out for hours. We have to talk."
"About what?"
"About you and your daughter being beaten. About why you wanted Phyllis Blankett to think Jeremy did it."
The woman, wearing a pale shift, came onto the porch. She slapped the dog's nose away from her crotch. “What you know?"
"I know it wasn't Jeremy. And I know that you, Jeremy, and Melissa might get hurt again."
Cindy's frown, visible in the thin light, showed she had already considered that. “I tell a copper anything, we get hurt a lot worse! They said so!"
"I already know about the moonshine. I know the still's right over there, and I know Jeremy's working with the people who beat you. What I don't know are their names.” He led her by an arm off the porch and away from the snores. “You like this life? Always afraid? Melissa always in danger? That what you want?"
She said nothing.
"Tell me who those men are, Cindy. I can help, but you have to tell me."
Her reply was oblique. “Jeremy wants to buy this place. Family place for us mob. Raise our kids here. Our grandkids. Their kids. All ours—nobody take it from us!"
Leonard waited for more, but nothing was added. “Did those men give Jeremy money to set up the still? Is that it?"
No reply.
"The Elders won't allow a still on the reserve, right? So they talked Jeremy into setting it up here. And those men take the grog and sell it on the reserve."
"The people going to get their grog somewhere! And it's cheaper than at those white-man stores. Those white men charge eleven dollars for two-dollar goonie!” Her voice dropped back to a whisper: “The people drink Jeremy's grog, get drunk, and still have money left for food."
Which, if Jeremy needed convincing, was probably the argument the two men used. Well, more than one famous Australian label had started as a moonshine operation during Settlement, and Jeremy might become his country's most famous Aboriginal whiskey maker.
"Who are they, Cindy. Give me names."
"I can't talk to you! They kill me—they kill Jeremy and Melissa! I can't tell you nothing!"
"But now Jeremy's drinking, too, isn't he? Tell me he's the same man drunk as he is sober. Maybe he'll get drunk and beat you and Melissa. You want your daughter brain damaged? Or if you're dead, who's going to look after her with those two around?” He paused. “He's turning into an alkie, Cindy. They're pushing him into it."
The woman stared at the dark ground.
"You don't want Jeremy in lockup. And you don't want to lose this homestead. But you're tired of being afraid. So here's what you do: Tell Jeremy to get rid of that still before I come back. And you give me the names of those two yahoos. I can fix it so they won't come after you."
* * * *
Hugh Pat and Eddie Chatunalgi helped Jeremy make the down payment on the station. The agreement was that Jeremy would run their still, and Pat and Chatunalgi would keep Jeremy's third of the profits until his loan was paid off. But the still didn't produce as much grog as they thought it would, and when they told him to double its size, Jeremy was afraid that would attract th
e Alcohol and Drug agents who would seize his homestead. But Pat and Chatunalgi bought more buckets and hose and mash anyway, and when Jeremy said “no” again, they beat him up and thumped Cindy and Melissa for good measure. The night meeting Leonard had witnessed was their final warning to Jeremy: Make the still produce more, or else.
That was the story Cindy finally told Leonard. Later in the day, he repeated it to the trio of elders he met near Budgarjook Settlement. Like him, they sat cross-legged in the thin shade of a boab tree on the packed earth in front of the tiny porch of Elder Wongi's home. Across the dirt street and out of earshot, three kids squatted around a toy truck missing a wheel as they created a miniature world devoted to moving sand from one pile to another. The women of the settlement found chores away from the men's business.
After a polite silence, Elder Wongi said, “Lots of grog's been coming onto the reserve. We weren't sure where it was coming from."
"Jeremy's going to lose his station to the alcohol agents unless he shuts down that still."
One of the other elders, Graham Walley, cleared his throat. “Pat and Chatunalgi won't appreciate Jeremy doing that."
Leonard agreed. “There's not much the police can do about them. The still's on Jeremy's station. There's no evidence to show those two are involved in the operation, and buyers on the reserve won't dob in their suppliers. It would be Jeremy's word against those two, and the court would probably be satisfied with nabbing only him.” Leonard let the elders consider that. “That's where you come in—tribal law."
The third elder looked up. “Coppers aren't keen on tribal law! You know that."
"What I don't know about, I can't report."
Walley asked, “That what you told Jeremy? You wouldn't report him to the alcohol agents?"
Leonard shrugged. “No still, no report.” He added, “If keeping that station really is more important to him and Cindy than making grog, they can manage."
The silence was long and thoughtful. Finally, Wongi scratched in his short white beard. “Tribal law can be heavy business. Those two, they might be hurt real bad."
"They hurt Jeremy and Cindy and their daughter. They said they would hurt them worse. And they're hurting your people with grog."
The three elders said nothing more—at least not in front of Leonard—but he felt agreement in the air. When he thanked them for hearing him and took his leave, he had a good idea what would happen.
The rain began while the Tojo was still jolting over the rough track. At first the drops smacked fat and heavy against the earth, sending up puffs of dust, and then, like a faucet turned on suddenly, lightning split the dark sky and a torrent turned the earth into streaming mud. Lurching and jolting in the slick clay, the Tojo slid and splashed toward a horizon that was a gray band between the black of land and the black of low rain clouds. It would be good to reach the main track in another couple of hours. It would be better, in a couple of days, to read in the newspaper that Pat and Chatunalgi had been hospitalized from multiple spear wounds in the thighs for violating some tribal law and as a warning against further violation. The article would, of course, end with a lament about the brutality of native justice and a demand that the police be more vigilant in prohibiting it.
But best of all, it would be good to tell Phyllis Blankett that this bloody copper had done something.
Copyright (c) 2007 Rex Burns
Author's Note: Thanks, again, to Terry Thornett for his invaluable linguistic skills.
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REEL CRIME by Steve Hockensmith
The cast of Women's Murder Club
There's a lot at stake when the broadcast television networks announce their new fall schedules each May. Advertising execs are on the lookout for shows that'll keep the right kind of people (the affluent, spend-happy kind) glued to the tube. Rival nets are anxious to see what they'll be up against come autumn. And of course loyal fans are on pins and needles until they know whether their beloved series got the axe.
But Mo Ryan's got them all beat. What's on the line for her isn't just money or glory or a favorite TV show. It's her sanity. Because she's got to watch all the new shows. Got to. All of them. And if they all blow, her brain will be sludge by November.
Ryan, you see, is a critic: the TV reviewer of the Chicago Tribune. And what's more, she's a lifelong mystery fan. So if she says the new fall schedules actually look promising—and she does—that's good news indeed for couch potatoes with a taste for the criminous.
* * * *
After Katrina, the cops of K-Ville still have a big mess to clean up. (c) Fox
* * * *
"I'm looking forward to watching this new crop of mystery shows,” says Ryan (who also blogs about TV on the Tribune Web site). “I think the networks have at least tried to be more creative with their crime shows this year. None of them are CSI clones, for one thing. Nor are they Law & Order rip-offs."
Which makes sense: Both venerable old warhorses are being shunted aside a bit by their respective networks. (More on that later.) Instead, Ryan's pick for most intriguing new crime show comes more from the NYPD Blue mold. Think of it as NOLA Blue.
Set in New Orleans, Fox's K-Ville explores the chaos that still runs rampant in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Living in the Big Easy's anything but easy these days—especially for the town's stressed-out cops.
"I like the concept,” Ryan says. “And it has Anthony Anderson as the star, and as any fan of The Shield knows, he's an amazing actor.” (Anderson played nefarious gang leader Antwon Mitchell in the gritty FX series.)
* * * *
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. (c) Fox
* * * *
Ryan also sees potential in another Fox drama: the Homicide-meets-Highlander mash-up New Amsterdam. Danish import Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as John Amsterdam, a jazz-loving NYPD detective with a beautiful young partner (Rome's Zuleikha Robinson) and a nose for trouble. Oh, and he's four hundred years old. Seems Amsterdam was “blessed” with a Native American spell that keeps him young forever ... as long as he doesn't fall in love.
"Hey, at least it's different,” Ryan says. “But it's also on Fox, where ‘different’ can mean ‘canceled within three weeks.’”
That's exactly the fate Ryan predicts for CBS's similar horror-mystery hybrid Moonlight, which features a vampire P.I. rather than an immortal cop. And Ryan thinks ABC's Women's Murder Club (based on James Patterson's popular series of novels) could be another early casualty.
The problem for these shows isn't concept or quality. It's timing. Both have been cursed with slots in television's ratings Dead Zone: Friday nights.
"I'm always suspicious of anything the networks schedule on Fridays,” Ryan says. “It sort of indicates they don't have much belief in the shows."
What the networks do seem to believe in—this year, anyway—is science fiction and the supernatural. In addition to New Amsterdam and Moonlight, you've got NBC's Chuck (nerd becomes Matrix-style spy), the CW's Reaper (young bounty hunter tracks escapees from Hell), and NBC's retread of the ‘70s “classic” The Bionic Woman (which might turn out to be better than the original ... seeing as the original wasn't particularly good in the first place).
"I think (sci-fi hit) Heroes may have been a big influence on what got developed for fall,” says Ryan. “So you're seeing a lot of shows with genre elements, supernatural elements, or characters with some kind of power."
Meanwhile, the shows that used to have all the power—CSI and Law & Order—have lost some of their wattage. While all three CSIs will be back (along with fellow CBS crime dramas NCIS, Numb3rs, Cold Case, and Without a Trace), the network's new shows will have nary a chalk outline in sight.
* * * *
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. (c) Fox
* * * *
"CBS has really built its resurgence on the backs of the CSIs and its other crime shows,” Ryan says. “But it's tired of being pegged as the Criminal Behavior Showcase, so it's really dialed down its crime for
fall and is trying out-there shows like Swingtown (about seventies wife-swappers) and Viva Laughlin (a pseudo-musical drama). They want to be the ‘buzz’ network, and that involves, in their opinion, putting on new shows that don't recall CSI."
Meanwhile, NBC didn't just back away from crime: It turned on its heel and ran screaming in the opposite direction. Though it added one cop drama to the schedule (Life, about a detective back on the force after serving time in prison for a crime he didn't commit), it dropped several others.
Crossing Jordan was canned. Midseason replacements Raines (the Jeff Goldblum vehicle about a detective who sees dead people) and Andy Barker, P.I. weren't picked up. And Law & Order: Criminal Intent was exiled to the USA cable network, while stodgy old Law & Order won't be back until January.
"The Law & Order franchise is certainly showing its age,” Ryan says. “Really, NBC is kicking an aging veteran to the bench but not quite cutting them from the team."
So though crime dramas once played a key role in buoying network schedules—particularly for CBS and NBC—the form as a whole might be falling from favor. Not that you'll see it disappearing from your TV Guide anytime soon. Cop shows remain reliable ratings draws ... when done right. They're just not trendy anymore.
"The genre's no longer the lead character, as it were,” Ryan says. “But it's still a dependable supporting player."
Copyright (c) 2007 Steven Hockensmith
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MYSTERY CLASSIC: THE JUDGE'S HOUSE by Bram Stoker
When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcolmson made up his mind to go somewhere to read by himself. He feared the attractions of the seaside, and also he feared completely rural isolation, for of old he knew its charms, and so he determined to find some unpretentious little town where there would be nothing to distract him. He refrained from asking suggestions from any of his friends, for he argued that each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge, and where he had already acquaintances. As Malcolmson wished to avoid friends he had no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends’ friends, and so he determined to look out for a place for himself. He packed a portmanteau with some clothes and all the books he required, and then took ticket for the first name on the local time-table which he did not know.
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