Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  —At night.

  —What’s up. Can’t sleep?

  —I sleep good. Because I’ve stopped.

  —Stopped?

  —I didn’t know…it would make such a difference.

  It wasn’t cheap or easy to smuggle nightly cans: two for the patient, one for the cellmate to shut him up. The coldies put Sutton down and filled him up for the midnight shift. At four in the morning Rawson’s logic came into its own.

  A body that needs to piss will wake its master with visions—with dreams that flame in technicolour and make the patient feel alive.

  —

  Bobby Cobra opens the passenger door and the Fairlane braces for weight. ‘Let me guess,’ he says. ‘I accidentally backed the quaddie.’

  The bookie finds this funny. Pretends to. Either way, the hoarse shout of laughter does not last long. Glen is defined by a mournful undertow and his client must always fight not to get sucked in.

  ‘Well this day’s started ordinary. House-hunting again.’

  ‘Oh. Prick of a job.’

  ‘Plus this in the post.’

  Glen looks at it sidelong. ‘Bill?’

  ‘Birthday card. Posted it to my youngest, been pissed off she never mentioned it.’

  ‘So how come—’

  ‘Sent it the wrong address! Return to sender.’

  Good old Glen gives a chuckle but it degenerates into horrendous consumptive cough; he hammers his chest with his fist and by the time he surfaces he is wall-eyed and rueful. ‘You probably ripped into Heather about it.’

  ‘Bit me tongue, thank Christ.’

  ‘Smart.’

  ‘I don’t fight with her anymore. She’s Kingston Town, mate—does whatever it fucken takes.’ Rawson rips at mail that only he and some stranger have ever handled, pulls out a brace of fifties. ‘Beer money. How’s Lorraine?’

  ‘Usual shitfight. Fucken chemo.’ Glen has been giving this report so long that it no longer contains emotion. He is tired in the way that chemo husbands are entitled to be. And thoughtful: ‘I don’t think I ever met a nice Heather. They were always bitches.’

  ‘Same.’ Rawson fetches out his wallet and deposits the cash. ‘And fuck me if I didn’t go marry one.’

  ‘The girls okay?’

  ‘Teenagers mate. Only call when they want something.’

  ‘True.’

  True but wonderful. Rawson swells, darkens. ‘That fucken Mitchell, though—he’s gone and given Sash a smack on the bum.’

  ‘What! Bullshit.’

  ‘It’d wanna be. She calls in tears, tells me she got suspended from school—something about cheating on a test. She gets home and Heather’s in a lather about it. Fair enough, that’s Mum.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But fucknut, right—suddenly he thinks it’s his job to give her a tap on the rump.’

  ‘Jesus. What’d you do?’

  ‘I was hours away when she called. Newcastle. Went round first thing Friday and missed the lot of them. Work, school.’

  ‘Lucky for Mitchell. I thought you said he was a mild bastard? Accountant or something.’

  ‘Dead bastard is what he is.’

  ‘She’s what now, thirteen?’

  Thirteen going on twenty. ‘I don’t care if she’s a hundred and ten.’

  ‘Outrage.’ Glen shakes his head and turns the engine. ‘Come on, I’ll take you for a feed.’

  The transmission is smooth but it’s not quite automatic; Rawson lifts his chin, rubbing the whiskers of his neck as though the offer requires careful deliberation. ‘Free lunch. Like that is it.’

  ‘Like what.’

  ‘Alright, Glendale—wine and dine me. Just don’t tell me why until the end.’

  ‘Deal.’ Glen draws his seatbelt. ‘I thought we’d go to Prime.’

  ‘Did you now?’ Rawson turns the detested pager in his baseball-mitt hands. Please call Karen Millar. Why the fuck would he do that. ‘See that truck over there? Pull up next to it.’

  The car complies and Rawson leans out to fake a raucous string of barks. From beneath the F100 comes an arctic shape—a wolf that launches in paws-up attack. Glen screams horror as it goes for Rawson’s face / nearly licks the cop to death. The bookie wheezes and cups his big left breast. ‘Heart attack.’

  ‘Meet Bloke.’

  ‘Dirty. Lurker.’

  ‘He’s waiting for Master. Aren’t you, boy? Yes—yes you are. Go on now—go wait for Sutton. I’ll bring you back some steak from the restaurant.’

  ‘Pig’s arse.’

  The Fairlane hoons towards the naval base, the hairpin bend that will take them out of the point and into the Woolloomooloo. In the rear-view Rawson watches Bloke flatten and reverse-creep under the old red truck, a white-smoke genie receding into bottle.

  ‘Fucken monster,’ says Glen.

  ‘Fucken champion,’ says Rawson.

  —

  Bloke is not a monster / he is a pure and pedigree mix, the secret Cold-War offspring of twin nations long at odds. His mum was princess Malamute and his dad a peasant Husky: their every grand component stands resplendent in his eyes.

  The right one is Alaska and belongs to moral sky. It brims with patient kindness and the blue of motherly love. Logic lives inside a pupil open to human orders.

  The left is otherwise. It is dark with Siberia and belongs to havoc, a fossil of mud and sinew. You could stand up close with torch in hand and it still would not reflect you.

  —

  ‘I’m getting out,’ says Glen. ‘When this round is over I want to take her to Europe, see some stuff while there’s time.’

  ‘Good plan. Is this the part where I tell you I can’t settle up?’

  ‘Jesus, Mick. I know that.’

  ‘I could take repayments up a notch. Got some things on the go.’

  The bookmaker turns down the volume, finds the lowest practical notch. ‘You don’t owe me a cent.’

  Rawson grins to hear it. ‘Is that right? Last time I checked it was about two hundred and forty grand.’

  ‘I got bought out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The debt, mate. It got purchased.’ Glen licks his lips, cracked like old papyrus. ‘You don’t owe me nothing.’

  Rawson leans back in his chair. It is a timely move / dessert arrives. He takes up a napkin and smears his mouth, wipes at the thing most recently heard. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Yeah I can.’

  ‘No. You can’t.’

  ‘It’s done.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Rawson puts the ball of his thumb into his eye socket and rubs. ‘How long have you and me been doing this.’

  ‘I dunno. Forever.’

  ‘Too right forever. Twenty years.’

  ‘Mate, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Fuck sorry. Sorry is me backing Gay Icarus to defend the Caulfield Cup. Nineteen seventy-two, Glen. Gay fucken Icarus. You hear what I’m saying? I’ve been pissing money against your wall for half my fucking life.’

  Glen stares at the restaurant wall, eyes watering with stress. Nearby diners are staring at Rawson, source of the antic whisper. Glen whispers too: ‘They offered me a hundred and twenty cents in the dollar. Then a hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Then they offered a hundred and seventy and said it’s not an offer anymore. It’s take it or take it.’

  ‘Aw, Jesus.’

  Rawson looks at the award-winning tart as though it is a confounding puzzle. Rubik’s Cake. Glen retreats to his glass and slowly finishes the red. Excellent drop—a Henschke from the year Gay Icarus dropped the belt. Hill of fucking Grace. ‘You had a Doberman,’ Rawson whispers.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just come back to me.’

  Glen perturbed. ‘Look, I get it. We go back a long way.’

  ‘You had a Doberman Pinscher but then you got rid of it.’ The gambler speaks as though readi
ng a palm, establishing the fact of his own spooky gift. ‘Your daughter came along so you sent the dog away.’

  ‘I didn’t send her anywhere. She went to live on a farm.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Rawson nods, an alarming new vacancy in his eyes. ‘Her name was Donna.’

  ‘Do you know who these people are? Because I tell you, Michael, they put the frighteners on. They weren’t local mugs.’

  ‘What kind of a person calls a Doberman Donna.’

  ‘This kind,’ says the bookie, thumbing in his own direction. ‘And for the record she was a very nice person.’

  ‘Did it ever bother you not having sons. Having only daughters.’

  ‘What? Fuck you.’ Glen reaches for the nearest thing he can turn into projectile, a silver spork that hits Rawson in the chest / spills harmless in his lap. Zero flinch. ‘Come on,’ says the bookie, motioning at the tart. ‘Put that bloody thing out of its misery.’

  Rawson ignores commands. ‘My own bloody fault,’ he says through white / through chastened lips.

  ‘Why. Because you backed the wrong horses?’

  ‘Not horses, Glen. The wrong fucken people is what I always back.’

  —

  Another punishing bright day on the harbour: light hits the water and blinds the watcher. In multiple directions go the suits and office girls, flowing along the promenade like words in conversation. Rawson follows their conservative dark fashion show with no censure or discrimination in his aqua-tiled eyes.

  —How long.

  —I pushed for a month.

  —And?

  —And they told me a week.

  —A week. Good stuff. See you round.

  Watching the ferries, he is forced to permit Glen’s painful truth. Sirius, Lady Charlotte—he has backed a few non-winners in his time. The last eighteen months on the punt, truly shithouse. In youth he was always lucky…Now a seagull with one leg eyes him like an enemy who cannot remember the cause of hate between them. Beyond it floats the damning film and dreaded half-lame gluepot—the scum that edges every civic harbour since men and horses started.

  16

  The flashy entrance he makes is not inconsistent with the celebrity crime-fighter he used to be. Sunglasses are whipped away to expose a frictionless flashing grin; courtly bows are proffered and received. A phone in a partition somewhere refuses to stop ringing and Detective Sergeant Rawson’s personal answering service, this is Lewis speaking.

  Laughter all round and Rawson leads it. ‘Very funny, Lewisham. Very good indeed. But it’s Detective Incremental Sergeant—and don’t you bloody forget it.’ For ten minutes he holds court in the precinct of their affection, a bird glamorous and pleased to preen. Among the rank and file he is still folklore, still folklegend. It won’t ever be otherwise. He looks settled, at home, and you would not guess how he spent his lunch on the verge by a Circular rail.

  Only four yellow message slips on his desk. What is Lewis bitching about? The first three even say the same thing. Someone named Pia wants to talk about Whit.

  ‘Bin. Bin. Bin.’

  Even the fourth presents just a tiny variation, just a single extra word. But sometimes that’s the difference between a B side and a hit. Someone named Pia wants to talk about Whit and Whit’s sister Kristy.

  —

  ‘A moment of your precious, detective.’

  Fuckit. The office, the chair, the sit down. ‘I just fielded a call from Bruce Humphrey.’

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘Your pager operational?’

  ‘On the blink,’ says Rawson. ‘Water damage.’

  ‘How unfortunate.’

  ‘Yeah, toilet bowl. Unlucky.’

  ‘Here you go. Replacement.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, triffic.’

  ‘Plus Karen Millar’s digits. The next time Mike Samo requests the pleasure of your company, you shift your superannuated arse round to Temple toot sweet.’

  ‘Iron Mike? Jesus, what’s the commotion.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah—seriously.’

  ‘Not even you could be so deaf to the rumbles in this joint.’

  He emerges from that shit dark-faced and muttering, pacing the carpet while the office pretends it heard nothing. His temper is an uncertain mass, far from stable. He snatches up the fourth yellow scrap and demands to know Who the fuck is Pia Cwerouassoa?

  ‘Ladies present.’

  ‘Sorry. Who the frig is Pia Ca, Ca…Stone the crows, can’t read this fucken writing.’

  ‘Carozza?’

  ‘Maybe. Some doctor is taking down the messages!’

  ‘She’s that piece from the Tele gossip column. Harbour Confidential.’

  The Rawsonic mood eases; the people feel it happen. He fans himself with the note and wonders What does she look like?

  ‘Highly rootable.’

  ‘Is that a fact…Jesus Christ, I think I need a heart-starter.’

  ‘You only just got here.’

  ‘I know. But Jesus Christ. I think I need a heart-starter.’

  Rawson stares at the digits until they commit to what’s left of his memory. He thinks Kristy’s name beneath his breath and sends the note to sleep with its brothers, its sisters.

  —

  ‘Pia speaking.’

  ‘Lovely Pia. Detective Sergeant Rawson.’

  ‘Rawson…Oh hi, thanks for the call-back.’

  ‘That’s alright, sweetheart—I’ve just seen your picture.’

  ‘Ha. They said you were a charmer.’

  ‘They spoke truth. I’ll be at Ink this evening if you care to swing by and discuss it.’

  ‘Discuss what?’

  ‘My charmativity.’

  ‘Why don’t we warm up with Whit Hammond.’

  ‘Excellent guitarist. I’ve got all the albums.’

  ‘Do you know anything about a disturbance at his on Friday night? Off the record, of course.’

  ‘Oh, of course. But I’m CIB, darling—attached to SPG. If this was Victoria you’d call me Son of God.’

  ‘Riiight. So too senior to attend a noise complaint.’

  ‘Light years.’

  ‘That’s what I thought actually. But then someone said you know him. Socially. And his sister Kristy.’

  ‘Everyone knows Whit and his sister Kristy. Ever seen her?’

  ‘Sure. Hot page regular. My source reckons you and she—’

  ‘Your source. Who might that be I wonder?’

  ‘Sorry, detective, you’re not the only one with CIs to protect.’

  Rawson smiles his admiration. ‘My, my—and she’s even up with the lingo. Pleasure speaking with you, Pia. Next time you’re chatting with Lenny Clarke, give her a big g’day from Bobby Cob. It’s nice to know you keep up with your Fairfax cousins.’

  Pia sets it on the cradle and says to no one, How the hell did he know that.

  —

  A heart-starter for Rawson used to be a double shot of espresso from Vittorio down on Roslyn. It’s not that anymore.

  ‘Time. Is it granular or continuous? Does it build or does it flow? Does a moment belong to itself, one of infinite like it, or is there just One Moment never-ending? Instinct says that if light betrays qualities of both particle and wave, therein lies the answer. Time must be likewise configured, granular and continuous at the same…’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Time.’

  ‘Will you be quiet now?’

  ‘Sorry, Michael. You know how garrulous coke makes me.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s just hope the hammer shuts you up.’

  Rawson shares the cushioned space with pale pockmarked Lester. Lester’s sleeves are rolled but he isn’t an addict: he just needs to get away sometimes. ‘It’s always afternoon in this place,’ he says. ‘Time stops at Wendy’s.’

  Rawson pants with thirst and mordant inquiry. ‘You mean the granular kind?’

  ‘No,’ says Lest. ‘We’re not talking science.’

  ‘We’re talking shit
.’

  ‘Poor Michael. You’re like a bear with a bad tooth.’

  ‘Yeah, and I can’t afford the dentist. What do you know about a fresh push on the judge?’

  ‘Koestler?’ Lester smiles, ovine / lupine. ‘Bercovitch has been circling that tombstone for a while. Superintendent—it’s his ticket to ride.’

  ‘As long as someone else does the heavy lifting. How did Bob Mack feel about having his star apprentice pinched?’

  ‘Don’t believe what you hear—Millar doesn’t belong to anyone. Anyway, Sir Bob isn’t the possessive type.’

  ‘You talk like you’ve actually met the bloke.’

  A girl in white camisole enters and kneels next to Lest. Blonde hair, brown roots. Awake but prone in darkest dorset, he says through a vacant smile as she rigs him like a pro. Her smile is vacant too. The girl is tired / she does this shit all day.

  Lester’s eyes give the telltale roll and he looks like the back-office refugee he is, his armpit-sweated shirt and badly selected tie now loosened to a Y. But which bloody office? He is cheaply put together, the type who might live with mum and shop at Lowes. A stiff Stanmore breeze would knock him sideways / you would think him middle management in insurance.

  Lisa crosses the air-conditioned room and arrives at Rawse. ‘Could lie here forever,’ he says. ‘Maybe Lester’s right. Maybe time does stop at Wendy’s.’

  ‘Fucken hope not.’ Lisa is pretty but she’s on the turn and it isn’t just the years / it’s the mileage. Rawson wants to tell her to Get out while you can, my dear—I hope you’ve something saved.

  ‘Between the fingers, acushla. Come for a drink?’

  ‘Can’t. Jane will.’

  ‘Lovely Jane.’

  Lisa pierces the great lieutenant. The moment prior / he clears his mind of debt. ‘I shouldn’t do this.’

  ‘Because you’re an officer of the law?’

  ‘Because it makes me talk worse than Lester on coke.’

  ‘Horse doesn’t make you talk. Doesn’t make anyone talk.’

  ‘I mean on the inside, sweets. And I say such terrible things.’

  She yawns, glares at Lest. ‘As long as you don’t rabbit on about time and bloody space.’

  ‘Deal. But don’t knock him—he’s a bloody good connection.’

  Rawson watches the development of her frown, her self-assembly in the world like a beautiful marionette. ‘Lest We Forget?’