‘My colonial oath. Fifth most powerful man in the state.’
‘Whatever you reckon.’
‘I’m serial. He tells the Premier what to think.’
‘Well I’ll be buggered.’ Lisa stands and arranges her tray. ‘Shows to go you never can tell.’
Oh yes you can, says Rawson through the awe. Yes you fucken can.
—
Ink. They should call it Murk, maybe Dark Room. It is precisely like one with its infra-red lighting, its silhouettes delineated solely by their heat. You identify your neighbour by her outline, his mass; faces are occluded and it could be 1979 / it could be 1983. The music doesn’t help because the music doesn’t change: lyric-less funk, hard and acid, the songs bodies in a line without identifying marks.
He takes a table up back, his own silhouette written more in black light than red. Being overlooked is not a sensation he understands / Rawson courts it when he can.
The first of them circle, tentative satellites that run in tightening orbit around the reddened giant he is. Or was: Bobby Cobra has supernovaed, is now just the remnant of a former sun. A blackening hole / a sucking weight in the fabric. He smooths the cloth and lays two sets of cards upon its crumbless face—Poker, Tarot—and with the same precision places a plastic hourglass in view. On his right is a bucket of crystal ice and a scandalous want of champagne.
This is how some king-in-exile might comport himself. Would-be courtiers in some future regime come to crouch by his shabby setup, sue for certain undertakings. He attracts a lower grade of moon than once he did but quantity is not an issue. Some are permitted to plead their unctuous case, others dismissed before a plenary spill of sand.
‘Heard about these? Eckies, super hard.’
‘Piss off, noddy. Do I look like drug squad?’
‘Limited edition, mate—like five Mitsubishis in one fucken go. Up Yours.’
‘Hey?’
‘That’s the marque: fist with middle digit raised.’
‘Oh.’ He digs in his ear as though data resides there / ‘Yeah, maybe I did hear something.’
‘Street name is Fenechs. I love youse all. That’s what you’ll be saying if you drop one!’
‘And this is what—a dozen free samples?’
‘I can hook you up for a lot more than that.’
‘Sure,’ says Rawson. ‘But who’s hooking you up? Gimme the name of the goose who’s putting them around.’
‘Come off it, skipper. I don’t owe you that bad.’
‘That’s just it, sunshine—I might end up owing you.’
The barter, the haggle, the first transaction. The next is a girl in want of advice and Rawson listens gravely to her predicament. Other Rawsons would exploit the situation, sexually perhaps, but in this place he is a giver of wiseman information, his counsel sound and in its way profoundly moral. She offers to owe him or thank him / Rawson smiles like an uncle. Just do as I say and get out of here, sweetheart.
‘Mr Rawse.’
‘Piss off, Clyde—you’ve no credit here.’
‘I’ve got something that’ll square us.’
‘We’ll never be square yamaggot.’
‘There’s a bloke I know, rolls with Leslie Prime.’
‘Leslie Prime, Leslie Prime.’
‘You know—the old standover artist. Runs a book in Clemton Park, two dealerships in Bexley.’
‘Bexley. Clemton Park. Do me a favour and fuck off.’
‘This bloke is Leslie’s dogsbody. Keithy Dean. You did him for AR back in the day.’
‘Keithy Dean. AR.’ Rawson speaks the terms emptily, as though they belong to foreign language.
‘Are you telling me you don’t remember Bopper Dean?’
‘I sure is.’
‘He’s trying to sell me a job on a bus. Good one. Armaguard, Artarmon maybe.’
‘Good one?’
‘Tight. Not risky. With a record like his you could dog-and-bone him.’
‘Why? What’s he done to you.’
‘Who cares?’
‘I care.’
‘Alright, then. He fucked my missus.’
‘Bopper Dean couldn’t fuck your missus with an automatic fucking machine. Repeat this shit to anyone and I’ll shop you myself. Be gone.’
‘What do I get for it?’
‘For what? For nothing? Gee whiz, let me think about it. What’s the going rate on nothing?’
So it goes, hour upon hour, the dawning scope of Rawson’s true insolvency. The king is in exile / the pope is in waiting / a prince among merchants with ships lost at sea.
—
It is said he did not pay for a beer in 1985. Eighty-five and the first ten months of ’86. That’s how flamin good he was going; that’s how hot he was.
‘What was that for?’
‘Ashfield.’
‘That one?’
‘Footy.’
‘That one?’
‘Fucked-if-I-know.’
Well, Jane can top it: she hasn’t bought a drink since she was fourteen years old. And it’s a fair bloody while since Jane was fourteen. She watches the hologram of Sutton materialise and makes what used to be called a beeline.
‘Hey, mister. Gary was in before. He was putting the word on Bobby.’
‘I know.’
‘Bullshit you know. You only just got here.’
A brimming shot glass stands before him. He doesn’t touch it and he doesn’t order one for the lady. The lady says, ‘He’s looking for you. They all are—even Mr Krakatoa.’
‘Krakatoa.’
‘Yeah, that hot new kid of theirs. Logan Parsifal.’
‘Perceval.’
‘Perceval. What have you done this time?’
Sutton’s aura is sad. Parsifal / Perceval. ‘I killed Shark Delaney with a paperweight.’
‘Righto, then—be that way. Hey why do they call him that? Gary Ptero-dactyl. I never heard the story.’
‘His real name is Terry. That’s all you need to know.’
She laughs without humour / he has always been an arsehole. ‘Do you ever tell the truth?’
‘I only tell the truth.’
‘Come on, Rawse is up back.’
‘No good.’
‘What?’
‘I needed him straight. Try and look after him.’
‘Get real, Jamie. Everyone knows that’s your—’
But she says it to air / Sutton’s going going gone.
—
Rawson isn’t gone. Rawson is gawn. The Fenech inside is decking everything in sight, dropping all contenders with the exception of the coke. The coke looks like it might actually go the distance. A shape gets big that he should have seen coming.
‘Gary Pterodactyl. Your cousin still work this door? I haven’t seen him about.’
‘Hospital.’
‘Ah, the occupational hazard. There’s more violence now. Do you know why? Because there’s less fear.’
‘I’m doing my bit.’
‘Ha ha ha, that you are you scary fuck. What will you drink?’
‘That, if it’s bourbon.’
‘Tis, Gary. Tis.’
Rawson waves and clicks as he has waved and clicked in that seat on fifteen hundred prior occasions, pretending not to notice how the sizeable man across the table stares at him. If he is seen to notice he will have to make something of it. And he’s having much too good a time for that. How good are these Fenechs?
Anyway, it is widely known there is something missing in Gary’s head. The bloke is not all there. He was dropped as a baby—then again as a toddler, a youth, a full-grown man. Rawson leans back and sighs.
‘So what’s shakin Gaz.’
‘Sutton. Where is he.’
‘Couldn’t tell-ya.’
‘We want the bikes quick smart. And that’s just for fucken starters.’
‘The bikes. Quick smart. Just for fucken starters.’
‘You better find him before we do. That’s what Slane said to say.�
�
‘Oh, so this is coming from upstairs.’
‘This can get sorted out or it can get nasty.’
The Big Ship turning thoughtful. ‘Chris The Game Slane. I always thought it was a pretty stupid tag. What’s it even mean?’
‘You should know, mate. He played you didn’t he.’
The biker gets up, the first of Rawson’s interlocutors to take his own leave, to snare the final word. ‘Gary Pterodactyl,’ he says to no one as the surplus Jim Beam makes an entrance. ‘Now that’s a fucking nickname.’
‘Still want this?’
‘Oh, we’ll find a good home for it my love. Joh Bjelke-Petersen.’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s slang among cane toads, means Don’t you worry about that.’
15
‘Take the bridge. Don’t take the highway. Go the right lane, yeah, Military Road. Stay on this for a bit.’
‘If we get pulled over…’
Jane’s car is a piece-of-shit Commodore. Rawson lies expansive on its back seat, totalising Sydney. His directives arrive at the precise moment they are required, even though his eyes are closed and he is intermittently delirious.
‘Seriously, buddy. If I get breath-tested…’
Around the dirty silver of their machine are other riders of the highway’s paper grey. Not many at such an hour, but even one reminds that the Commodore is not the world. The ad hoc ballet of vehicular company that drifts together, drifts apart…Who are those drivers. On what night-time business are they engaged? Rawson cannot decide if to know their stories would be fascinating beyond belief or dull beyond compare.
‘The sign reckons Mosman,’ says Jane. ‘Darkside. I never come frigging Darkside.’
North and south in combination. East and west in collision. It is always a city in the dark, Jane. We are all just cities in the dark.
‘Sutton was there tonight,’ she says. ‘I talked to him.’
Fair enough—but where is Sutton now? Just a man and dog and truck that are lost out there in the hot blue nothing. Rawson says, ‘Was anyone else about?’
Some of those cars will be workers of shifts and some will be heartsick refugees, souls lost and speeding to or from romantic disaster. A few will be lapping for the sheer and lonely hell of it while a minority, slight, will be in criminal conversation. Beyond them all is the one without category and that is a Ford called Sutton.
‘You mean, Was Kristy there.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Come on, Rawse—don’t tell me you’re still hung up on that moll.’
‘Spit Junction. Bear right. Ages to go yet. Don’t talk about her like that.’
‘I never understood what you see in her.’
Oh do not lie to me, Jane. Do not fib to me like that. What men see in Kristy is seen by everybody all of the time.
‘Hunters Bay,’ she says. ‘Is that us?’
—
The sea laps constant at the esplanade like a thirsty dog or kraken. Nothing will slake that thirst / that thirst must self-endure. It’s just one more contract that cannot be met.
‘Your pager’s buzzing.’
‘Not for long.’
‘You’re in demand,’ she says.
‘Yes.’
And no. Transmissions from across the water, the blood–brain barrier of Sydney. Rawson could smash the device but the messages would keep on coming. Call Karen Millar. He thinks about a world before pagers.
The water looks grey and autumn cold and they park to wander the foreshore trees. A single red light in transit across the harbour, a ship or vehicle not possible to say. They take up a bench and Rawson lies, his head in her lap as Jane smokes a cigarette. Every now and then she puts it in his mouth, Bobby Cobra’s performance of a long passive drag. She does not even mention it when she sees that he is crying.
‘Why do you come here, babe.’
‘Because I have to.’
‘Always by yourself?’
‘Always by myself / but just this once with you.’
They are of an age, both forty-four. Jane’s hair is perfectly straight and perfectly black, framing a face that is interesting because asymmetrical. Because of all the living she has done. Her skin is pale like a frog’s.
‘We are all just cities in the dark.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘You told me.’
‘Better to repeat truth than rumour. That’s the problem with the world—people do it the other way round.’
‘And what’s the truth?’
‘That we are each of us many different people, squeezed together with no view of what is coming round the corner. You get me?’
‘Not really.’
‘We are all the aggregate of many years’ hard labour, earth that can be wrecked by any cruel and random quake. Vandals with bats are standing at the margins, craving for a swing at all you have and all you are. They are the looseners, Jane Hemingway—the reavers and bereavers.’
‘I didn’t know you knew my surname.’
‘I know all the names and all the stories that underpin them.’
‘Alright, then. Gary Pterodactyl.’
‘The child of ten-pound poms. Terry Sackville. Conceived upon a boat. Say it fast three times.’
‘Conceiveduponabo—’
‘Terry Sackville.’
‘Oh. Terrysackvilleterrysackvilleterrysackville.’
‘Thus, Pterodactyl.’
‘But why Gary?’
A lemon-coloured dog appears at the edge of the park and stands in a pose of quizzical watching. Two humans oddly arranged in an awkward hour, the lady vertical, the man horizontal. The dog’s front paw is raised in expectation.
‘It’s biker stuff,’ says Rawson. ‘OMCG ritual. Sackville is ex-Rebel, and that lot take a warrior name. The name of their first.’
‘First what.’
‘The first one percenter from a rival gang they bash or shoot.’
‘Jesus.’
‘So you get these feuds, right, these wars going on over names. Or sometimes not going on—a Rebel or Bandito running round, trying not to go one-on-one with someone whose handle he doesn’t fancy. Who’s out there mates? Ian? Aw gee, don’t really see meself as an Ian. How about a Max, they got one of those?’
‘Funny.’
‘It can be. They reckon Blackie Mountain up in Cessnock wept like Baptists at a funeral when he half killed Dick Champion in the dark.’
Jane laughs. ‘Dick Mountain.’
‘Not a bad bloke actually.’
‘Dick Mountain?’
‘Dick Champion.’
The dog gives a shredding bark and rounds like a horse in battle, runs manic towards the sea. Jane looks past it, to the headland around which two new points of light appear to be converging. She half anticipates the noise of distant catastrophe, hull against hull, but the beacons pass serene. Rawson looks at that headland too / has looked at nothing else.
‘That stuff about vandals and earthquakes. That’s you talking about your career.’
‘That, but more than that. It takes a lot of cases to make you, Janey. Only one to send you down.’
‘And this was yours. The one that sent you down.’ Jane is a beautiful witch, slender in the night, stroking his magic hair. She mortgaged her soul in return for powers. ‘I know that’s where they found her.’
‘No one knows nothing. Who have you been talking to?’
‘Nobody. I just remember it. Fucking awful…But you caught him.’
‘Not me, sweetheart.’
‘You know what I mean. You the police.’
‘Yes, William Meath, apprehended within a matter of days. It didn’t matter what the tide said.’
‘Yuck—can still see his creepy face in the paper. The picture of his boat.’
‘I feel your shiver even now.’
‘But you worked it. You helped.’
‘Indeed. A group of the sworn, tasked with finding the monster or monsters responsible. Operation Beowulf…But I
was just an extra pair of hands. It belonged to others. To Holden, Paspaley.’
‘You worked it together.’
‘No—apart. I took no share in it. Not that they gained from what they did. Castaways the pair of them.’
‘But you’re still here.’
‘That I am. Last of the breed.’
‘So why not let it go? Or is that a stupid question.’
‘A stupid question, Baby Jane. For one thing, he didn’t do it. The man they convicted was not the man.’
‘Hey?’
‘Truth.’
‘But, that’s terrible.’
‘It is both terrible and not. They didn’t just hook some civilian off the street. Fixed up a bad old rock spider is all.’
‘A pedo.’
‘Yes.’
‘A killer?’
Rawson breathes her smoke for a while. ‘You say it like killing is the most horrendous thing. An interferer of children, Janey Hem. Just not the one we happened to be looking for.’
‘And this is, what—common knowledge?’
‘Not common. The opposite of that. I have proof but it’s the bad kind: predicated upon bad things. She would not have turned his head.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meath molested boys.’
‘That’s hardly proof.’
‘You think they’re all the same, that creeps are cut from common cloth. True in a sense, but we all feel the suck in our own special way. Meath was as likely to make the switch as I am. Not that it’s a real good defence. It wasn’t me, your worship—I only attack the lads.’
Jane, Faustian still but fractured in a deep place, presented with a spreadsheet of burdens greater than supposed. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘So say nothing.’
‘Someone got away with it. How does that make you feel?’
How does it make him feel inside, the Busted Incremental. The Hammer of Haberfield, the Lion of Leichhardt. ‘When you get to the scene,’ he offers softly, ‘it’s the fourth or fifth question you’ve got to ask. But sometimes the uniform will see it coming and he’ll spare you. Will give you the grim eyes and say, Yes sir—the usual.’
‘Raped.’
‘But it’s the opposite of usual and the both of you know that. They don’t say it to be tough; there’s just no other way they can. Not without saying it, like you just did…I sometimes think the women are better at it. Facing up.’
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