‘What next.’
‘Gary says, We got a bloke we want you to stomp on for ten. Charlie Moose goes, Ten minutes or ten hours? And I’m like, Try ten thousand, dickhead. And everyone looks at me like I’m the idiot. Like I’m the idiot.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘And one of the nephews, the skinny one, he’s like We’ll stomp him alright. Gimme a bullet and I’ll put his name on it, cuz. Maoris call everybody fucken cuz.’
‘Tongan.’
‘Eh?’
‘Charlie Moose and his people are Tongan.’
‘Exactly. Tongan. So Gary says, Okay, good, stomp him. But don’t kill him or nothing. This one we actually used to like a little bit but now he needs a tap to learn his manners. And the skinny one goes, For ten grand we’ll teach the motherfucker to roll over and say please. But it’s half now, half later.’
‘So?’
‘So Gary goes, Done deal, and pulls out the photo and Charlie Moose looks at it and his voice goes really high. That’s Jamie Sutton, bro / that’s Jamie fucken Sutton. And the nephew goes quiet and I’m not being funny or nothing but he goes white as a sheet. He doesn’t say a word, just ups and fucken walks.’
‘And Charlie?’
‘Charlie goes, Have a nice trip back to the city and fucks off too. Does the bolt with five grand lying on the table and me and Gary just sitting there holding our dicks. You know what I think?’
‘What.’
‘I think they were scared shitless. What do you think?’
Vespa is greybeard by bikie standards, a veritable Nestor, blue-eyed and inclining more and more to mildness. He has listened to Eric’s narrative with his back to the kitchen, the boy’s slow labour signalled by the hiss of the can. Vespa cannot say he altogether agrees with it. A man’s house is not off-limits like his bike or his woman, but still.
‘Eric, I think there are old crims and there are talky crims. But I tell you what, mate—they’re never the same folk.’ The hiss ceases and Vespa can hear the gears in Eric’s head as they grind to a halt.
‘Vesp, why did Gary say that to Charlie Moose? That we used to like Sutton.’
A decent question / the kid doesn’t ask too many. Nestor strokes his moustache, stained in interesting ways by time and tobacco. ‘You remember when that judge got pulped?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Yeah you do. Couple of years back, East Balmain. Justice Faggot Koestler.’
‘Aw yeah, rings a bell.’
‘No it doesn’t. Filth tried to pin it on the boss.’
‘Frame him?’
‘Frame him, charge him, whatever. The thing is, they needed Sutton to do it.’
‘How come.’
‘Slane and Sutton were together before it went down, having a yarn on the ferry.’
‘Yarn. What about?’
‘How the fuck should I know. The wallopers wanted a statement of whereabouts from the carpenter to fuck Slane’s alibi. Slane told them he was out in the suburbs, Turramurra, but it was fabric and they knew it.’
‘Fabric?’
‘Not genuine. Only problem was, Sutton told them to whistle Dixie.’
‘Cool.’
‘Actually, he didn’t tell them nothing. He sat in a room in the cement fucken castle and didn’t make a squeak. Forty-five hours.’
‘Jesus, I couldn’t do that.’
‘No. You couldn’t. You don’t know anyone who could.’
‘You could do it, Vesp.’
‘So they prosecute him right. Sutton. Some bullshit test case about tackling organised crime. They’ve repealed it now but back then they give him a double for disrupting a criminal inquiry. Two fucken years. So you might say Game owes him. You finished or what?’
Vespa turns to assess the kid’s handiwork, gets met by the wall of his own dismay.
Piece Talks!
24 howers untill
we put a contract on u
motherfucker
‘Jesus, Eric.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Spelling, mate. Spelling. We look like dickheads!’
‘Someone’s comin.’ This is the voice of Nuts, a coarse whisper amplified to carry from the lounge. Eric drops the can and takes up his weapon, an oversized one-wood by the name of Big John. They should have brought the hammer, the big dog, Logan fucken Perce. ‘Sutton?’
‘Nah,’ says Nuts. ‘Lady with a clipboard. And some Nip putting up a sign.’
‘Sign?’
‘Century something. Century 21.’
‘That’s a strip club,’ says Eric sagely. ‘It’s in the city.’
‘Aw, shit.’
Vespa appropriates the driver and tells the kid to stay put; Nuts comes out of the lounge room and stands in the reception. The lady’s outline looms in the glass and you can see her rooting in her handbag and then the ravenous dig of the key in the lock.
—
Susan comes to the threshold and Bloke can only catch a glimpse, a sight so out of focus that he feels like celebrity snapper. She brushes her hair behind one ear and is insulated thickly by a jumper / fold of arms. Sutton is in his uniform of jeans and steel-capped boots, the wraparound shades of a pricey American brand. They are almost his only luxury and he has had them a long time.
They speak without flow and make a mutual show of reserve, looking like a couple who only meet in such a way—upon a doorstep to perform the transfer of children. But for them there are none / no questions of custody / Bloke howls that she does not say hello.
The tremendous dog is privy to a jungle of earthly perfumes, projecting from his complex scents a simple view of world. The light of afternoon is gifting colour schemes like scotch, the blended fistic kind that shuttled Rawson into space. It fortifies at Zetland where the printing presses churn, where a late edition Tele is being loaded into trucks. Ms Carozza likes to wink at you and turn the mill of rumour, to chat like empty budgie from the crest of page thirteen:
Still crazy after all these years is that ace of bass Whit Hammond. His impromptu Friday night shindig had Bellevue neighbours seeing red, but at least the ruckus was all played out when the boys in blue arrived. Residents in the exclusive cul-de-sac are now scheduling A-list peace and quiet—the crack of Saturday dawn saw Hammond jetting off to Heathrow. First class, first thing: talk about catching the red eye! Accompanying the rowdy rocker was his equally weary half-sister, the always glamorous Kristy Hammond-Blake. (Harbour Confidential is reliably informed it was a case of messy do’s and dark sunglasses as the pair passed customs.)
Still throbbing after all these hours is that cosmonaut of fraught Mick Rawson; he is a mile up the road and burning back upon re-entry, sped dangerously by gossip that he cycles through again. Set the controls for the heart of the harbour…G-force complications stoke a fire in his gut, a blaze wholly unrelated to his middle-stage cirrhosis.
Bad angle of attack: he left the Sheldons to scout for form guide, ran headlong into Pia. The Heathrow mention saw him sprint to the London but the door was bolted / the place shut for reno. Instead he took the Four in Hand, paid homage to Lord Dudley. A climb past Olympia and jump to Grand National; an outing at Paddo Inn / quick wave to Paddo Arms.
Aiding and abetting is the legend Bryan Lonie, a king of crawls who always packs his trusty pocket transistor. He fires it up and tunes to the races, Rawson tuning to the notion of tomorrow’s Canterbury Park. Naturally he says nothing of a Metcalf named Shane / of a colt called Drunken Circus, busy as he is swapping warries with ‘Scared And’ Lonie. Ripe tales and salty anecdotes, both torrents dispensed by a famed constabulary mo: it is gunmetal grey like Bryan’s eyes and Bryan’s soul, and for twenty odd years the incoming gadgets assessed its benchmark in a spirit of vain. Bobby Cobra was one of them, frightened when tender by a frightening unit, Bryan Goddamn Lonie the proprietor of a drill sergeant piss off that still lands like a coarser oath. No, you would not want him to verbal you / not even now in his sixty-third year. Took early retirement did Bryan Pi
ss Off Lonie—a bad incident in custody and subsequent coronial inquest. Not that anything was proven there, a case demanded to answer. But they do not teach that chokehold now / privately he swears by it.
Says the voice-like grip of Bryan Chokehold Lonie, Let’s go in the city where the pubs have TABs you low-down mongrel bastard. The taxi they hijack passes close to the Sheldons and it is plain they are bound for the Crown Hotel, its Elizabethan offer of ten-dollar steaks and office girls calling for a glass / a cask of riesling. The lasses toast the death of hump day with a sigh of modest achievement, oblivious to final gallops now in train around the nation—to anchor legs at Casterton and Bordertown and Scone. The winners start out interim and then elevate to paying, the glory of their weight as it is found to be correct.
Bryan Rotten Lonie confounds all market expectation, says Fuck the Crown / it’s my bloody shout and I say we bear for the cove. Rawson’s need for rest is mortal but he resigns to acquiescence: you don’t say no to The Lonie Ranger / you just don’t bloody do it. He pans for upside and finds fool’s gold, elements of himself he can dash upon The Rocks. Dash and deafen in a shattering district, men roaring ashore with too much cargo and no safety-net wives to miss or nag them home. The Incremental’s was lost half a dozen years before, farewelled by good riddances almost genuine, almost felt. As for Bryan Flaming Lonie, his missus is a lovely Filipino girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose.
In the Lord Nelson they switch to top-shelf spirits because Bryan Sonofabitching Lonie has taken a share in the Hobart quaddie. He always has luck at Elwick for some reason and If you can’t help me put a serious dent in this three grand before I get a chance to collect it then my name isn’t Bryan Agincourt Lonie. Later he goes for the World’s Longest Piss and Rawson sits quietly in the front room of that composed public house, watching men and women of finance while thinking of a nearby single storey. His inheritance was in and he had raided a Victoria Street brothel, strolling out with roughly the same that Bryan Elwick Lonie has just made. But back in those days it was a helluva lot of money.
‘What is it you think on.’
The Big Ship starts, meets the cordite eyes of Bryan Fire-and-Brimstone Lonie. They fix upon him / they searchlight his hull; All wickedness begins with independent thought declares that Presbyterian scowl. Rawson looks down in a bid to escape it, shocked by the gambler’s pencil clutched tight in his Devil’s Plaything. A cardboard coaster near at hand is squealing Drunken Circus / Bopper Dean.
‘A little terrace I should of bought, just up the road here.’
‘Millers Point?’
‘Argyle Place.’
‘Fuck me dead, when was this.’
‘Twenty years ago. They wanted thirty-two thou.’
‘And you had it to give?’
‘More or less. What a mug.’
‘I thought footy players only got pocket money in those days.’
‘It wasn’t football,’ says Bobby Cobra. ‘Anyway, I was finished by then. The crash.’
‘Right.’
‘But mum had just died, plus some other bits and pieces. I just thought—’
‘You just thought the market would be flat forever.’
‘I didn’t think anything. I just went to the Taj and played pokies.’
‘Yeah. And chased birds.’
‘Correc.’
‘Speaking of which, what ever happened to that one sheila? You know—the one you were crazy about.’
Rawson rocks back and dovetails hands, places them on a gut that used to be washboard hard and is still not bad all things considered. ‘She’s gone to London, so they say.’
‘Is that a fact.’
‘But it’s been over for ages. We’re only mates.’
‘This is the one from Bomb Squad, yeah.’
‘Bomb Squad?’ Rawson warrants a smile. ‘You mean Deanna…No, I was never crazy about D.’
‘Were you not?’
‘Nup. Enjoyed sleeping with her though.’
‘I love a redhead,’ says Bryan Loves-a-Redhead Lonie. ‘She was a tidy piece of work—worth getting blown up for. Still screw her?’
‘She got married.’
‘Yeah, and?’
And all through this Rawson is surreptitiously shredding the coaster into beer-soaked confetti, making the act seem habitual when really it is coldly deliberate. There is no need to go about the taverns of the town and inscribe these dangerous names; no need to put the mocker on either bloody party. The horse is carrying enough weight as it is, and as for Bopper Dean…
Anyway, what is this dread and dreadful thing they call the mocker? Rawson imagines it to be some dunce’s cap or broken iron wreath. You’ve put the mocker on, pal / you’ve put the bloody mocker on. Of late he has reached to remove his weighty hat, only to grapple with a nothingness that taunts.
—
An hour from now they drift onto the cobbles, still churchgoing and genteel compared to the dark-age visigoths they later become, all terrible with piss and with wind and blaspheming incessantly against every god, any neighbour. To attain this exalted state they will enter the Captain Cook at twilight and drink a bumper to the great man’s health, adhering faithfully to the line of their English fathers in terms of dress and demeanour, scope of thirst and means of quenching. But after they will taxi to the Oxford and Mercantile, to the flaming bloody Orient, tending more and more to Irish blood bequeathed to them by mothers. Come the nightmarch proper they will burst into the Fortune like a rampant bushranger gang, the big one roaring I am the crusher ofbones / handup your purse else my iron barks. That pub does not feel like the nation’s inaugural but they assure you it is / Austraya started with a piss-up. Five full days and seven fatalities, the survivors self-naturalised with the rum they made their money. Rawson knocks his head against the inn’s low ceiling and stares across the quay of recent colour-lit regret. Thirteen thousandmiles they come / what an odyssey of suffering. Imagine curling on a crazy shore done over by your crewmate. Bryan Adjectival Lonie will slump in the Fortune’s rearmost corner as the stentor he has loosed unfurls a sonnet most profane, channelling upon both behalves a rampant Fenian clergyman. HAVE YOU SEEN THE HORSE THAT DRINKS THIRSTILY FROM A BUCKET MARKED ‘JAMESON’, THAT PISSES MIGHTILY INTO A BUCKET NAMED ‘ANYTHING SCOTS’? THAT HORSE IS THE PATRON OF OUR ENTERPRISE TONIGHT, FOR THE TIME HAS COME TO COMMIT SECTARIAN VIOLENCE AND DIVIDE OUR HOARDED MALT. I SPEAK AS AN OFFICER OF THE LAW AND IN THE NAME OF HEREBY KING DO LICENSE THE SINFUL SACRAMENT OF WHISKEY APARTHEID. YOU / YES YOU BEHIND THE BAR MY DEAR SHALL BE AS SPRING RAIN ROBBING THE WHEAT OF ALL ITS CHAFF, SETTING ASIDE OUR BLESSED CATHOLIC LIQUOR FROM THAT ACCURSED PROTESTANT STUFF. UNDER MY DIRECTIVE WE WILL SMASH THE LATTER AND RAREFY THE FORMER AND TAKE IT FOR OUR CURRENCY IN THIS BURGEONING NEW SOUTH WALES. BY THIS DECREE LET IRISHMAN AND ULSTERMAN BE RECHRISTENED AS THOUGH FRATERNAL, NOT WITH MERE BAPTISMAL WATER BUT VIA SWEET AND SACRED JAMIE!
Ejected from that place they stumble on in shambolic partnership, up to the only Fort Street tavern that can speak archaic dark. The Hero of Waterloo preserves the spirit of 1790, its roughcut joins of sandstone sweating a harbour for ghosts of Irish. In the violet-light district they are rechristened as though fraternal, Bryan ‘Easter 1916’ Lonie crafting his final martyred stand: I do this every day, you prick / I assure you it is heaven. You must have yourself a tidy pile, a slush fund to retire on? You must chuck your bloody papers in / you must hand your notice and join me. Rawson’s supply of truth will be exhausted now, a slush fund never rich or self-sustaining. That sounds marvellous, Bry / sounds totally terrific.
Now the hour when to fracture is the natural way of things, when the Busted Incremental will flee downhill and not look back at an alehouse satanic with the soul of previous times. It drives him into the arms of water, the only agent that is always comporting newishly, that is always expounding moods and schemes that strike the beholder as novel. The Blue Mover stumbles beneath the celebrity bridge and so chances upon its easily most awesome angle.
He will sway at the edge and know at last what the tide has been saying: The flattened beanie of zero luck is now upon your head, the wreath of broken iron you self-crowned as though Napoleon. Luna will advertise deranged satisfaction, a gaoler locked in communion with the numberless drowned of Sydney. They press beneath the one-way glass that is the harbour surface, ghosts ferried past the mirror-point by luck or bad decision. Rawson will rip the mocker off and fall to veteran knees, say Tell me before I come there, mates, is it peaceful where you are?
—
The lady from the strip club looms in the glass, performs a practised hip and shoulder to make the door give way. Early middle age with expensive brown hair, her skirt and blouse and jacket matching perfect. She sees Nuts in the offing and makes an oo-ah of surprise, declares her name out loud like a safe word. The biker turns for guidance / him and Vesp still holding clubs.
‘Gordon Kline,’ says Vespa, coming forward to shake her hand. ‘Linda, was it?’
‘That’s right—Linda LaSalle, Century 21.’
‘Oh, gotcha. Sorry to give you a start; we thought you might have been the vandals coming back.’
‘Vandals?’ Linda juggles her handbag, her clipboard, her gift for looking astonished.
‘Yeah, they had a go at the kitchen I’m afraid. Mr Sutton sent us round. You know Mr Sutton?’
‘I’ve been dealing with Susan. With Ms Sheldon.’
‘Ah, of course. So they’ve decided to—’
‘Sell.’
‘Right. Well you couldn’t wish for a better location! James here—my associate, James Finnegan—was telling me a four-bedder in Brighton Boulevard just went for north of eight hundred thousand.’
‘I don’t doubt it. This whole area is taking off.’
‘You think there’s still some give in the market? Seems to be overheating if you ask me. But then, I’m just a handyman.’
‘Ah.’
It occurs to Linda that Vespa and Nuts do not look like handymen; Vespa hears and turns, sheepish and smiley. ‘Oh—the leathers. We only dropped in to give a quote on the damage. We’re actually on our way to, ah—’
Winter Traffic Page 10