Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  In vain.

  Interesting. Sutton must have his hands full.

  —

  The men in dark suits do everything right. They enter the flat of Rawson and move in synchronic tandem, assessing each zone in predetermined order. The target is not encountered. Lights are on but no one is home.

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘Clear.’

  They stand in the squalid kitchen and look at each other, relaxing their attitudes of imminent kill. Backs are straight but shoulders slump. They have no plan for this contingency.

  One of them sets his gun on the sink. Made in Austria. A silencer is attached and when it touches the metal it makes a certain noise—the noise that the person in the roof is waiting for.

  —

  Rawson is three hundred to the good but he can’t feel it. His skin wears a methylated sheen and he drinks at speed but the hangover enjoys a twenty-point cushion / a thousand-metre start. He ups the pace and mixes with spirits but he might as well be throwing it down a well.

  The futility puts him out of sorts, sets him right at the edge of his temper. The humidity isn’t seasonal and he wishes the storm would go ahead and fucken-well break. He puts his faith in Ursa Major, a big white dog in Devonport who runs a race but gets nutted. Son of a Beach. It occurs to Bobby Cobra that he has stuffed it up a treat.

  ‘I’m a dickhead,’ he tells the boards.

  He glances at his pager—nothing—and goes to the public phone, striving for a while to recall his own number. His reward for the feat is himself on tape, thanking him for the call, inviting him to leave a message. He returns to the table and kills his Reschs stone dead.

  He forgives himself / he has a lot on his mind.

  No—he doesn’t.

  ‘Total bloody dickhead.’

  —

  Sutton and the surviving man are entwined like Greco-Romans. It is late in the bout. Both have nearly died. One is about to.

  Sutton is underneath but has the upper hand, arms locked around his opponent’s neck and head. He seeks like a gunsmith for the cranial trigger, a safety that can unlatch the enemy from life.

  But it’s difficult yakka / the other bloke is good, Sutton taking on damage with reserves nearing zero. He is dizzying by the second and the thought forms to weaken: maybe this is his turn to go.

  The phone rings to activate the enemy, freshen his desperation.

  ‘Sutto? It’s me, cob—pick up. Not there? Fark, what a galah am I. For some reason I got confused and thought we were meeting at the Lympic. Really not there? Fuck it—if you get this message, sit tight, I’m on my way. Sorry, fella. What a bloody galah.’

  The heave on the floor like Siamese twins striving hard against partition. It occurs to Sutton that one of them has heard his final word, sent packing by Galah.

  —

  Rawson puts his empty on the bar and goes to leave. Strangely enough the girl presents him with another—only it isn’t a Silver Bullet / it’s a pure hit of Jamey. His eyes light up at the centre of a frown, the girl explaining Compliments of him. She is slim and pretty, not too imperious, and Rawson follows the flick of her hair to the broad front room of the Brig. Solo in a booth that overlooks Oxford sits the gangster Chris Slane.

  The Busted Incremental lays waste to the pair of on-the-house fingers, sets the empty lowball. She raises an eyebrow when he looks at her expectant.

  ‘Come on, love. Don’t tell me he only shelled for one.’

  —

  Rawson transacts for two more and saunters the quiet room with feline strut, demon eyes. Slane has elbows on the table and his hands are clasped like a giant clam. He watches over the famous road, apparently absorbed by all he sees. This is the top end. Hereabouts is fashion.

  Slane likes fashion. He wears designer jeans and quietly expensive trainers and a dark tight T-shirt of a prominent surfing brand. Even without it there is a strong implication of the beaches about him. Maroubra maybe. He is not blonde or callow or looking to make a statement—he is not a type—but his hair is long and there is sand and surf wax somewhere in his make-up. You would not be surprised to learn about a beach house in Hawaii / Rawson knows about the one at Batemans Bay.

  ‘What shall we drink to.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ says Slane. ‘Your team didn’t win.’

  ‘My team hasn’t played in ten bloody years.’

  A new rendition of Slane’s particular smile, one that allures while edging insane. He examines his glass like a shaman who will tell Rawson things about his once or future self, the Bobby Cobra who yet may be. An open face, swarthy from the sun, and made disarming by the fact that he is profoundly wall-eyed. The unnerving doubt that comes of speaking with the blind, an uncomfortable contemplation of what it is they see.

  ‘You still carry a torch for the Bluebaggers.’

  Rawson nods, fierce about it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Understandable. Blood, sweat and tears. Three seasons, right?’

  ‘Forty-six games under Harry Bath. Know that name?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Liar. The Old Fox. He only played five years in Sydney. Two with Balmain, three with Saints. How many premierships do you think he won?’

  ‘A legend.’

  ‘A legendary pain in the arse. Stricter than my old man, and that’s saying something. Leader of men, though. I was a kid, didn’t quite belong in grade, but when Harry said I had the goods to outshine Beetson I believed him.’

  ‘And did you do it?’

  ‘Absolutely—for about eight fucken minutes. After that Artie got sick of my cheek, hit me with so much bad news I thought it was the six o’clock bulletin.’ Slane renews his grin. ‘Worst concussion I ever had,’ says Rawson. ‘But Harold said a prop who could remember the game hadn’t put in a shift.’

  ‘It was more rugged in those days.’

  ‘It was war. And that isn’t just me being old-timer about it.’

  ‘No. I hear you.’

  Slane is wide-set and looks after himself. Hammers the gym. Discipline, vanity, occupational need: he has made his way among men who are brutal, and to look the part has been prerequisite. But brutality is not what he advertises. Chris is primal, not feral.

  The face an amalgam of flawed elements—cleft chin and lined forehead, broken nose and zany eyes—but with what perplexing synergy they accrete. When he walks into a room he is noticed, seen. Rawson has wielded more sexual charisma than he has known what to do with, but he is sitting down now with a someone who has more. An envy in the Big Ship that has no precedent, a sensitivity to himself and matters aesthetic. Perhaps it is only natural given the history. ‘Has she dropped you a line from the Old Dart yet?’

  ‘No,’ says Slane. ‘She hasn’t.’

  ‘You might have to go over there and get her.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘You want some advice?’

  ‘From you? About Kris?’

  ‘Point taken.’

  How about a scrap—who would take who? Rawson commits to the process of gauging and assessing that all men in public houses are committing to. It is clear to Rawson that Rawson would prevail—but not by the margin of a few years back. Truth be told, it would be a top fucken fight. The Blue Mover says, ‘If you’re following me from the footy, then I assume you’re following Jamie.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Is Gary?’

  ‘I don’t speak for Gary.’

  ‘Righto. Well, he didn’t say much. Trouble at Whit’s. What Whit did to piss you lot off I don’t know or care. I don’t think Jem does, either. He broke with Whit a long time ago.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘So you need the bikes back—fair enough. But your boys are starting something and it could get out of hand.’

  ‘We have the bikes.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’

  ‘But it’s not about the bikes. Surely you see that.’

  ‘It’s about face.’

  ‘It’s about the men who owned the
bikes.’

  Rawson nods, pretending to understand. ‘Sutton didn’t say who—’

  ‘Shark Delaney. Bison Croft. Nigger.’

  ‘Ah. Core members…The first two at least. I don’t know this Nigger character.’

  ‘Gary’s nephew.’

  ‘Ah. Unlucky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Shark and Bison and the nephew are in Gary’s ear wanting payback. What do you want from Sutto? He’s not gonna send ’em flowers.’ Rawson stretches, yawns, looks longingly across his shoulder at the bar. ‘You think she’s gonna keep sending these over?’

  ‘Shark and Bison are not in Gary’s ear. They are not in anybody’s ear.’

  ‘What, gone to ground?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Rawson’s smile is slow, sly. It says, Come on, pal / don’t put me on. Having a bit of fun are we? But Slane is inscrutable. ‘What are you saying? That Sutto rolled around to Whit’s like cavalry and dusted three of your blokes?’

  ‘He’s got the skill set.’

  ‘He’s not a bloody magician, Chris. He’s a carpenter.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘He doesn’t go about town on killing sprees.’

  ‘No. But things happen.’

  Rawson skewers his chest with a finger. ‘If he hasn’t told me, then who? At very least he’d need help with disposal.’

  Slane is mild, almost pitying. ‘He loves you too much to put you at that sort of risk.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t need anyone’s help to fuck my career. What’s the bottom line here?’

  ‘About what.’

  ‘About Sutton.’

  ‘I didn’t come to talk about him. Gary is going to do what Gary is going to do and Sutton knows that. But I’m clear of it. Right now I only care about Kris. She needs to come home.’

  ‘Month over there might do her some good.’

  ‘You’re not hearing me. Has she spoken to him?’

  ‘Jamie? Haven’t the foggiest. And if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.’ The detective is reckless now, insouciant. He has crested a wave, the first intoxicating surge he’s had all night / a taurine self stirs aggressive. Rawson rather likes Chris but he would also love to bash the cunt. Fair enough: a moment can be crafted of opposite sensations. Think mayhem, hospital, Rawson stared at by onlookers in the long and shocking aftermath…

  ‘You don’t understand,’ says Slane. ‘Kristy is sick.’

  —

  In the first spring weeks of the autumn he was with her, Rawson brawled in the street with six sailors and lost. Yanks on friggin shore leave, Bobby Cobra busting three naval heads and well on his way to a fourth when another of them—the skulker—careened from the five o’clock shadows with a screaming two-footed missile.

  Fuck, Tomahawk, direct bloody hit: the knee came apart like bad meccano, disassembling with an instant consent he had never known his body to grant. The hulk went down and the pissants swarmed, fetching kicks at his nuts / at his temple. But Kris was Athene, scattering the tars with her goddess rage / Getoutofityamongrels.

  It was only right: her beauty had been the cause of the strife—of the initial disrespect and harsh Rawsonic recoil. But he hadn’t understood about the savagery inside her, the honey badger aspect and its willingness to scrap. The Incremental dazed on Darlinghurst cement, staring at the windmill now thrashing them to quarters, knowing in his heart he’d met the final girl who’d live there.

  The knee was cactus. She helped him reverse the dislocation and they stumbled back to hers. Ravishing drunks, one icing the other; together they shot up. The scalene triangle of their uncontrolled love, its tendency to warp from one out-of-shape to another: him and her and heroin.

  Rawson was given a brace to wear. Six weeks. The swelling went down and the joint got functional and they told him yet again that it would never be the same. For once they were right: by the time he handed it back again, the honey badger was gone.

  Gone over to someone else. It didn’t hurt unless he put weight on it, or extended to lock position, but if he did—and still unto this day—her crystal image would sear his organs, nostalgia’s articulation an anatomy of pain.

  —

  Rawson feels nausea. ‘What sort of sick.’

  ‘It’s not my place to say. But if she calls Sutton—’

  ‘What. Sort.’

  Slane closes his outrageous eyes. The left is milky from an ancient glassing, a clambroth or bennington in which the spearmint green of iris mixes with a greyish pearl. There has always been dignity on both sides of the booth about the defection—about the transfer of her affections—but now everything is back on the table. Chris begins and Michael listens to words that make him swallow and blink.

  —

  There is a front door and a side door / he goes out the front. The park of the centennial is across the way but the silhouettes of even the closest trees are lost in mounting downpour. To the left there is nothing so he stumbles to his right, follows the camber of the Light Brigade hull around to Jersey Road. He sees the toy-town cop shop he forgot existed, the cosy little cottage kept for Paddington police.

  The lightning is frequent, persistent, a circuit breaker triggering in gothic frames of sky. A planet is thinking reset—courting merciful fresh start—and Rawson prays throughout a dozen hits but experiences zero change.

  03

  The thing that carronades through the three a.m. door is worse than unclean / it is pissed as a newt. Sutton is prone on the hardwood next to some face-down clown. Rawson looms like Vinson Massif.

  ‘Who’s this fucker.’

  Sutton’s eyes are open without focus. Rawson doesn’t understand the game and crouches. ‘Whas that buddy?’

  ‘Can’t move.’

  ‘I’ll move-ya.’

  The giant shakes him the way Berco’s daughter was shaking her doll; pain flares in the dummy and Rawson sobers quick smart. He calls to himself for aid and heavy water but when he dashes to the kitchen he comes a cropper on the corpse.

  A flaunt of blood and brain: the Big Ship forces a glass beneath the faucet / he sprays like a hydrant gone rogue in the summer.

  —

  Sutton is twenty minutes coming good, and even then his vision triple-blurs. Two discs are out and his sternum cactus.

  Rawson helps him shower. When Sutton comes out the cop is cleaning the joint, scrubbing like a madman, every single nook except the bodies. Rawson puts the kettle on for tea but he cannot stand to wait, too mesmerised by Rorschach gore. He has known worse scenes but not his own place, not full to the gills in the deep of criminal night.

  —

  The Blue Mover tightens curtains, puts on Bach. The music is a stately masque, fugues respectful to the dead.

  ‘Jesus, Jamie. What the fuck.’

  ‘French wallets, Czech watches. The suits are Italian.’

  ‘Okay—so they’re wankers.’

  ‘Ex-army is what they are.’

  ‘Ex-everything.’

  ‘Special Forces.’

  ‘Yeah? If they’re so special—’

  ‘I was in the ceiling. I got lucky.’

  ‘No, sunshine. Character is destiny. And it takes a real fucken odd bod to sleep in someone’s roof.’

  Character is destiny. ‘You’re bent,’ says Sutton.

  ‘Yes, my dear—that would be the word for it.’

  —

  Sutton does the labour that pertains to the bodies, Rawson the housework that pertains to everything else. It is only fair, each man cleaning up his own mess. Sutton says Oi and Rawson comes as far as the truncated hall, dishwashing gloves riding forearms like hot-pink gauntlets. Sutton is crouched above the dead man in the lounge and the dead man’s mouth is open.

  ‘False teeth.’

  ‘The fella likes chocolate. Big deal.’

  Sutton’s gloves are surgicals. He peers close at each digit, as clinical as any on-site tech that Rawson ever saw. ‘No fingerprints.’

  ‘
Bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Sutton. ‘This is bad.’

  ‘Why not call it in? We haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Piss off, then. I’ll say it was me, a man in his castle.’

  ‘Won’t work.’

  ‘Because I’m not capable?’

  ‘Because they’ll reconstruct.’ Sutton rests on haunches with elbows on knees, scratching his nose with a forearm. ‘You wouldn’t fit through that hole I put in the sky.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘They’ll see your eyes, take your blood.’

  Bobby Cobra nods and swallows. He knows what they will do. ‘More comin?’

  Sutton shakes his head, definitive. ‘Not tonight. This pair’ll have a car, high-end but nothing lairy. Need to find it.’

  ‘Fine. But I’m not staying here alone.’

  ‘Okay. Why not.’

  ‘Horse, mate. I get the heebie-jeebies.’

  Sutton’s face is a closed shop, transmitting nothing of the mind behind: not his thought, not his tired. ‘I’ll finish the kitchen.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Where do you hide the bleach?’

  —

  Sutton stops in the street when he sees the 5 Series. He hits the button and the car flashes blinkers in nerveless acquiescence. He underarms the keys to Rawson, reaches in his pocket for a new pair of surgicals. No other movement in the street.

  He opens the driver’s door and scans the interior. The laptop is sleeping and when he strikes a key the nightscape fades to life. Peculiar scopes make the street look fog-bound, gas-lamped, a full reversion to its Victorian self. He hits Escape and sees fields of data about Rawson, about himself.

  Rawson opens the boot and rifles the gym bag, a fresh change of clothes neatly folded. A black leather briefcase is home to knucks and combat knives, a pair of nasty blackjacks. Rawson closes the briefcase and the boot.

  Sutton circles the car while the Busted Incremental moves to a nearby phone box, inserts forty cents. He self-identifies and chats to an operator and says No worries, I can wait. A full minute later he thanks her and hangs up.