Too Easy

by J. M. Green

  ‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said. ‘I understand your time is valuable.’

  ‘I’m flying to Laos next week for another series. But if your information is useful, then it’s fine.’ She tapped a spiral-bound notebook with a biro. ‘Also, I’m kind of addicted to the witch juices here.’ Dazzling smile.

  I was about to play my useful-information card when Bunny pointed at my face.

  ‘Colourful bruise.’

  ‘Bikie punched me in the face.’

  ‘I don’t get it. You’re not a cop, you said. How did a social worker get involved with the likes of Ox Gorman, number one Corpse Flower?’

  I held her gaze. ‘Long story.’

  The waiter danced over with two tall glasses of blue magic and a bowl of caramelised popcorn, winked at Bunny, and scootered away. I removed the straw and drank most of it in one go.

  Bunny frowned and leaned back in her chair. ‘Come on. How are you involved?’

  ‘Cops. I personally know two cops under investigation by the task force. One has ties to the Flowers. The other is mostly, probably, a bit innocent-ish.’

  She sipped her witch juice. ‘Who is the one with ties?’

  I lowered my voice. ‘Detective William Blyton. He and the late Jeff Vanderhoek, the junkie who died at the Turk’s place on Saturday night, were lovers. Vanderhoek was sent by the top Corpse Flower, Ox Gorman, to act as an informant for the police, while in reality feeding information back to the Flowers. But Blyton got involved with Vanderhoek — they were both addicts, and Vanderhoek set up a dealer with a large stash to be arrested, so that Blyton could steal the drugs from the police evidence safe. They had plans to —’

  ‘Slow down.’

  I threw a couple of popcorn pieces in my mouth. Phuong refused to use this information, out of a desire to protect Copeland from implicit suspicion. I had no such desire.

  Bunny continued scribbling, then looked up. ‘I didn’t say stop.’

  ‘That will do for now.’

  ‘You’ve got more?’

  I nodded. I’d happily give her everything I had, starting from the night Bruce Copeland announced that Ricky Peck had drowned. Even the irrelevant bits, like Felicity. But not now. ‘First, I need something from you.’

  She smiled, like a viper. ‘What do you want and what do you want it for?’

  ‘I’ll get to the point. A group of homeless kids in Footscray have been targeted by the Corpse Flowers. They’ve been offered rewards of money and some vague mention of a job to do in South East Asia. They name a town in Burma. What are these gangs up to in fucking Burma?’

  ‘Burma, Laos, Cambodia,’ she shrugged. ‘The gangs are all over.’

  ‘They were told specifically Kengtung.’

  ‘That’s wild Burma. Shan province. Lawless. Kengtung is a sleazy frontier town that is supported by China, but really, it’s under complete Chinese control because all the Burmese officials there are corrupt.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  A group of boisterous young women came in. In a sudden panic, I scanned them, fearing Felicity might be among them.

  Bunny’s eyes moved from me, to the group, to the door.

  I took a deep breath, acted relaxed. ‘I mean, drugs would be the obvious reason.’

  ‘Yes. That part of the world is all about opium. But not just opium. More than half the young people use yaba, basically cheap ice with caffeine mixed in. I don’t blame them. Their prospects are shit — either a form of slave labour on Thai prawn trawlers or prostitution. When I was doing research for the series, I hung out with some Australians working for an NGO over there, and even they were jacked. Pretty fucked up stuff is going on there.’

  ‘Not just drugs then.’

  She jabbed her witch juice with the straw. ‘More than westerners hear about. There’s huge resistance to western interference. The rebel groups despise the blue-eyed NGO-types. They just want to get on with business — drug trafficking, human trafficking, smuggling of animal products, tiger, monkey. Even illegal logging. The Chinese market is insatiable.’

  I mused on that. Bunny was still, quiet, eyes down. At the next table, the women erupted into laughter. Meanwhile, the two of us were miserable. What horrors went on in the world while we sat here drinking in near absolute safety.

  Bunny took a last sip of juice and wiped the blue from her lips. ‘You’re a fraud, Stella Hardy.’

  I gasped.

  ‘You got better intel out of me than I got with your corrupt-cop spiel.’

  ‘The Corpse Flowers are also importing weapons. I personally saw a crate full of grenades. Think it’s easy to get a crate of grenades into this country?’

  She shrugged, unimpressed. ‘I only have your word for it.’

  ‘It’s under a Corpse Flower house in Sunshine. There’s enough storage room under the floor for crates, files. All the evidence the police need is under that house.’

  She tilted her head to the side. ‘The dope house where Ricky Peck died?’

  ‘Not telling,’ I said, mysteriously. ‘But there’s material on Kengtung there and about how Gorman and Peck were planning to send crews of homeless kids to South East Asia.’

  I lifted my bag, pulled out the manila envelope, and slid it across the table. ‘Fakes, procured by the woman recently arrested in Crown and under investigation by OTIOSE. Other documents here are in Chinese, some translated. I’ve only skimmed the things in English, which are mostly shipping statements, inventory. Some letters are addressed to Mr Richard Peck.’

  She sat up, glanced around.

  I went on. ‘I have a contact inside the Corpse Flowers who is supposed to travel to Kengtung via Vietnam. He doesn’t want to go through with it, but can’t go to the police for fear of Gorman.’

  She regarded me afresh, more attentive now. ‘Gorman doesn’t suspect him?’

  ‘I don’t know what they know.’

  Bright-eyed Bunny, eyebrows raised. ‘Is he your lover? Is that how you’re involved? Did he give you that?’

  I touched the bruise on my face. ‘No.’

  She shook her head. ‘You seem like a rational, regular person. Yet you know all the Corpse Flower secrets. How did you get involved with this business?’

  ‘I was helping a friend. But then something happened to a kid named Cory, and it keeps me awake at night.’

  She lifted her pen. ‘Cory who?’

  ‘Fontaine. A teenager, sweet kid, charismatic, clever. The type likely to become school captain except he was one of those unlucky ones who spent his childhood in foster care, and his adolescence on the streets. Later, I saw his dead body sprawled on Ballarat Road. He’d been pushed into the path of a truck.’

  She made a note in her book. She glanced up at me, pulled a bunch of tissues from her bag and shoved them in my hand.

  ‘He was murdered because he didn’t want to go to Kengtung,’ I said, dabbing my eyes. ‘Corpse Flowers are using homeless kids as drug mules.’

  Bunny’s nose flared; she’d picked a scent. Her eyes moved to the envelope.

  I blew my nose. ‘Cory told me, there was nothing I could do. I happen to think otherwise.’

  ‘Me too.’ She picked up the envelope. ‘This contact of yours, the one about to leave for Burma, would he be willing to speak to me?’

  ‘I’ll ask.’

  ‘My direct number is on the back.’ She slid her business card across the table and left.

  She was right, I thought, as I finished my drink, I should be dead. How the hell did things get so messed up?

  Fuzzy-face the disco waiter picked up my empty glass, waved it at me. I nodded.

  Phuong — no, Copeland — he wanted Mortimer found with no cops involved. I doubted it was for him to testify on Copeland’s behalf. More likely, it was a stitch-up job. The Corpse Flowers wanted Mortimer dead for trying to s
abotage the kids-to-Asia scheme. And the Flowers had certain cops in their pockets. Maybe they asked Copeland to find Mortimer so they could get rid of him.

  If so, I almost helped Copeland do that. I shuddered and put my head in my hands, and remembered poor Jeff Vanderhoek. Tortured and murdered by the Turk for Josie, because she thought he had informed on her in Thailand. But who’d told Josie it was Jeff? Blyton thought it must have been Mortimer.

  Cuong didn’t believe it was Mortimer. And I believed Cuong.

  I looked up and saw another Mad Fucking Witch juice waiting for me. If the government got wind of these drinks they’d be made illegal. I took a long drink and wondered if Jeff Vanderhoek really had ratted out Josie Enright. There must have been others who knew about the Thailand case, and that Jeff had been involved. Like maybe a cop, a cop who had informants. Blyton and Copeland worked together. Copeland knew Blyton was involved with Jeff. Could Copeland have told the Flowers that Jeff was the informant? From his relationship with Blyton, Jeff knew a lot about Copeland. It would be opportune for him to have Jeff out of the way.

  Copeland, I was sure, was corrupt. But how to broach that with Phuong? I couldn’t tell her anything. In the first place, she would accuse me of sour-graping her marriage, and hate me for it. And secondly, it would get back to Copeland.

  In any case, she had her hands full keeping her cousin out of jail. Cuong was a tragic gambling addict, but an otherwise decent man, until the Corpse Flowers got their claws in him. Next thing, he was on his way to becoming an international drug trafficker, obliged to collect millions of dollars’ worth of drugs from Burma.

  And they did the same to the woman who counterfeited the passports. They were capable of bending all kinds of people to their will: junkies and vulnerable kids, sure, but also cops, a terrified mechanic, and a defenceless public servant.

  I finished my second Mad Fucking Witch juice. They went down easily, and hit like a concrete truck. I was tempted to order another. If only I had taken tomorrow off like half the population of the city. I paid for the drinks and contributed to the taxi economy once more.

  48

  A FULL eight hours sleep and I was a new woman. In fact, I was early, so I dropped my phone off at a screen-repair shop in the plaza near work. Then I got straight down to WORMS business, firing off emails, making appointments, and reading The Age online. Boss snuck up behind me and stared at my computer screen. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Reading internet comments,’ I answered, though it was unnecessary as he was reading them over my shoulder.

  ‘What are you, some kind of masochist?’

  I clicked the ‘X’ button and swivelled my chair around. ‘What’s up, Boss?’

  ‘My God, Stella. What happened to your face?’

  ‘Roughed up by a couple of bikies.’

  ‘Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?’ He pulled an empty chair over. This was a bad sign. I was hoping for a quick set of instructions for the day and to be left alone.

  ‘I’ve resigned. Leaving at the end of the week.’

  A part of me didn’t believe he would really go. ‘Does that make you feel better?’

  ‘No.’

  I was worried about him, hide-the-sharp-objects worried. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I can’t give you the job, Hardy. Procedures must be followed, hoops must be jumped through. But I can help you apply.’ He hesitated. ‘If you want it.’

  I felt I should want it. I wanted to want it. It was complicated. If I was the boss, I’d have to work a lot harder. If I didn’t go for it, maybe I’d regret it.

  He touched my shoulder. ‘I think you could do it.’

  He was right, I could do it. That was not the issue.

  The phone rang, and he rose wearily.

  ‘Want me to take it?’

  ‘Please. Whoever it is, I’m not here.’

  Waving him off, I picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and said all the words.

  ‘Stella Hardy? Jim from Talbot’s Body Works. Your Mazda is ready.’

  ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘No damage now, love.’

  ‘I mean —’

  ‘Six hundred.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable.’

  ‘You gotta collect it now, we’re closing up for the Cup.’

  ‘Wednesday will be fine.’ After this business has blown over.

  ‘Um, I’ll be … on holidays. Closing the shop for a year.’

  That sounded suss to me. Gorman probably put the mechanic up to it. He suspected I was still alive, and now he knew it for sure. If I went anywhere near Talbots, Buster would pounce. A car was no reason to risk death.

  ‘It’s not even my car. Belongs to my brother, and he’s away for a while, so you can hang onto it for a whole year for all I care.’ I hung up, thinking I’d rather lie back and feel the cold metal shock of a spring-loaded speculum than go anywhere near those thugs.

  The phone on my desk rang again. This was getting ridiculous.

  ‘Stella? Mum says I’m allowed to come over to your place. I asked because you said we can make that pumpkin mash one day. So she said I can come over and make it with you.’

  ‘That’s awesome, Marigold. Where are you?’

  ‘Home. We got the day off.’

  ‘How did you know where I work?’

  ‘Googled you.’

  A photo of me, with my name and occupation, was on the WORMS website. What an appalling lack of privacy.

  ‘I’m a bit busy right now. I’ll talk to you soon, okay?’

  ‘Hey shorty, you don’t sound fully rad.’

  A responsible adult would remind her that how rad I was, was not her concern and to go and play with her friends. But when was I ever a responsible adult? She was a good listener, and there was no one around that I could discuss the situation with. ‘Do you think art is futile?’

  ‘No. It’s a bludge from maths, and kids go crazy and we make a big mess.’

  ‘Good answer. Do you think I should be the manager at my work?’

  ‘Sure, you’re bossy enough. But you’ll need to be all serious and boring and probably get so busy that me and Dad wouldn’t get to see you much. We’d miss you.’

  ‘Another excellent answer. Okay, last one. There are some bad people in the world, people are dangerous. They even hurt people. And it is possible they will try to —’

  ‘You got to muscle up, ya feel me?’

  ‘You mean weapons?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. And your posse.’

  ‘Thanks. Um. Great advice.’

  ‘So can we hang out? Do some cooking together?’

  ‘Sure. When things settle down.’

  ‘Thanks, shorty. Gotta bounce, yo.’

  Muscle up. I wished. I finished updating a case file. The morning was quiet in the WORMS office, with not a single new client showing up. Or any existing ones, for that matter. I spent the morning putting together a work-skills training course; liaising with a local adult learning centre, covering CV writing, interview skills including role play, what to wear, what’s expected; and highlighting job ads suitable for unskilled, recently-arrived residents.

  And my skills? Bossy, erratic, moody, loyal. Did any of that add up to management material?

  In need of fresh coffee, I plunged a French press in the staff room, sat alone, eschewed the crossword and the quiz, preferring to contemplate career suicide — staying put.

  Senior Constable Raewyn Ross bounced in, aglow. Sexrisx or UzeHer must have come through.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Not this time, I just came in to deliver some hot gossip. A bloke from the station here knows that cop from St Albans, Joe Conti. He reckons they’re having a Cup Day barbeque at his place, all the local cops are going. I asked whereabouts that would be, in a super casual way. And he goe
s, Caroline Springs. Just like that, he blurted out the address.’ She sang the word address, like Oprah.

  ‘You sure this is … appropriate?’

  ‘Hell no! But the path of true love has to break a few rules,’ she said, and started to write it down. ‘You can totally just rock up.’

  ‘Not me — my friend.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ Rae winked. ‘Your friend.’

  ‘I have a boyfriend.’

  She hadn’t heard, or chose to ignore me. In any case, she placed an ingratiating hand on my arm. ‘Get back in the saddle, Hardy.’ And away she bounced.

  I walked to Racecourse Road to pick up my phone, with its shiny new screen, and some lunch. On my way to my desk I was surprised to see a client in the waiting room. No, not a client. Flicky Sparks. ‘What the?’

  ‘I googled you.’

  Boss had to take that webpage down. Immediately. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘I’m going to drive you home.’

  Felicity’s timing was not fully rad. ‘That’s grand, except for two things. First, I’m not going home after work — I’m going to a temple in Braybrook.’

  ‘No worries. I’ve been practising in the manual.’ She steered an invisible wheel. ‘Come on, you don’t have a car, let me drive you around for practice.’

  ‘And, two, I don’t finish work for three hours.’

  ‘Happy to hang around.’

  It was a trap, no doubt. A voodoo thing. Next, she’d cut a piece of finger nail, take a stray hair from my shoulder, mix it with that cashmere-wood crap and poof! I’d be a slug.

  ‘For three hours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A definite trap.

  Or was it? ‘If you’re going to stay, I have some work for you to do …’

  I set Felicity up at Shanninder’s desk, and logged in on the computer. ‘Since you’re so good at Google, let’s see you search for ‘Kengtung’ and ‘methamphetamine’ and maybe throw in ‘trafficking’ and, what the hell, ‘outlaw motorcycle gangs’, and report back to me.’