by Peter Corris
‘That’s putting it mildly. Has Sheila Malloy, his wife, been in touch?’
‘She has, and it’s another thing that doesn’t look good if it became known. I only spoke with her on the phone, but from the way she sounded, I’m guessing—’
‘All right, all right. What are they more interested in—nailing me on these Mickey Mouse charges or finding out who killed Patrick?’
As soon as I said that I saw the connection. If Patrick was involved in a lucrative steroid racket and hadn’t given satisfaction, he could have been a target. But you’d expect a bashing or a wounding, not a brutal killing. But then, there was always ’roid rage to consider.
‘Both,’ Viv said.
‘So what’s likely to happen now?’
Viv checked his watch. ‘We’re due for a magistrate hearing in twenty minutes. You’ll be charged with illegal importation and possession, with other charges pending. I’ll reserve the right not to enter a plea until a full charge with evidence is forthcoming.’
I’d been through it before and had lost, but that time I was guilty as sin. ‘Then what?’
‘I’ll apply for bail. The police won’t oppose it because they want you on the loose, but on a chain to see if you lead them somewhere more important. My guess is—surrender of passport and fifty thousand surety.’
‘I can make that,’ I said, ‘thanks to Lily. And I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.’
We went up before the beak in Liverpool Street and it worked out pretty much as Viv said. I agreed to hand my passport in at the Glebe station and to report there each week. I signed a document pledging my security and that was it. The police prosecutor appeared to be just going through the motions.
‘What about Sheila?’ I asked Viv when we were outside the court.
‘She has no problem, unlike you. All she has to do is apply to the Probate Office for Letters of Administration. Once granted, that ensures her right to the estate.’
‘Did she tell you that Patrick said they were divorced?’
‘She did. Again, that’s pretty simple. Divorce proceedings are a matter of public record. She initiates a search to support her contention. She probably doesn’t even have to do that if no other claims are made. If another claim is made what Patrick told you becomes relevant, but I don’t suppose you’d want to bring that up. Am I right?’
‘I’m not sure.’
We were in George Street, heading for a bus stop. Like me, Viv saw public transport as the only sensible way to get around in the city. Unlike me, he had a Seniors card. When we reached the bus stop he gave me a searching look.
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘I don’t know. I want to believe her.’
He shook his head. ‘You have a knack for trouble on several fronts.’
A Leichhardt bus that’d get us both close to where we wanted to go arrived and we caught it. At that time of day it was only half full and we were able to talk without annoying anyone or being overheard.
‘Can Sheila jump through those legal hoops herself?’
‘She could, but it’d be better to get a solicitor—quicker, easier.’
‘And more expensive.’
‘Not very. Look at me, I’m travelling by bus.’
‘You’ve got a Beemer at home. Did she ask you to act for her?’
‘An old one. Yes, she did, but I declined. I’m not taking on new clients, Cliff. My wife won’t let me, and I’ve got all the hassles I need with the few I’ve got. I’ll send you an invoice.’
I got off in Glebe Point Road. The pub beckoned but a shower and a change of clothes beckoned more. There’s something about Corrective Services sleeping quarters, and I’ve been in a few, that seems to taint your clothes, your hair, your skin. I went home, stripped off, showered and shaved and dressed in clothes that were moderately fresh. I’ve always liked Nick Nolte’s line in Forty-Eight Hours, when his girlfriend hands him his shirt after she’s been wearing it and he puts it on to go to work. She says, ‘If you’d let me sleep over at your place you could at least go to work in a clean shirt.’ Nolte says, ‘What makes you think there’s any clean shirts at my place?’
I had clean shirts but what was making me think of movies, actors? Sheila.
With his apparent involvement in steroid smuggling and my uncertainty about Sheila’s game—she wouldn’t be the first to arrange the convenient death of a spouse with money as the motive—it looked increasingly as though Patrick was the true target for the man with the shotgun. But the threat from Frank Szabo couldn’t be ignored.
The possession of an unlicensed handgun is a serious offence and with my record almost certainly meant jail time. And for someone on bail with heavy charges pending, it would compound the trouble. I had no choice, but I took Viv’s warning about possible police surveillance on board and arranged for Hank to check my landline for bugs. I bought a new mobile phone in a Telstra shop—new Sim card, new account, new number. If the powers that be could monitor mobiles as they can in the movies, they’d get only innocuous stuff from my old mobile. Anything important or potentially incriminating I’d reserve for my new phone.
The first call I made was to Sheila. I left a message that she should only call me on the new number. It felt like paranoia, but paranoia can be protective. Ever since the initial suspension of my licence, the subsequent cancellation, denial of my appeal and lifelong ban, I’d felt threatened. I’d played fast and loose with the authorities for many years and there were some policemen and bureaucrats who would have loved to even the score. I booked the Falcon into a garage for an unnecessary service and hired an anonymous Toyota Camry. I drove to Erskineville to visit Ben Corbett.
‘Ex-police,’ Corbett said, handing me the pistol. ‘Must’ve got lost somehow. Mint condition. Only ever fired on the fuckin’ range and not much then. All identification removed. Barrel retooled. Fully loaded with first class ammo. Yours for twelve hundred.’
I put the weapon down and gave him the extra money. ‘You’re a crook.’
‘That’s right, and now so are you.’
I examined the .38; broke it open, removed the cartridges, spun the cylinder and sighted down the barrel. What Corbett said was true. The pistol hadn’t seen any serious action and I hoped it would stay that way. The twelve hundred dollars implied an unspoken contract—Corbett would never tell anyone that he’d supplied me with the gun and, if I got caught with it, I’d never reveal the source. Doing deals with criminals isn’t comfortable, but sometimes there’s no other way. Nobody knows that better than the cops and the lawyers.
I still had the chamois leather shoulder holster I’d used when I was licensed to carry a firearm and I’d worn it to the meeting. I slipped the pistol into it and adjusted the holster with a shoulder shrug I’d done a hundred times before, but not lately.
Corbett grinned as he relit one of the extinguished rollies wedged around the sides of his ashtray. ‘Small of the back’s better.’
‘If you want to shoot yourself in the arse.’
‘Goodbye, Hardy. If I never fuckin’ see you again it’ll be too fuckin’ soon.’
‘That’s no way to talk. I’ll be right here to sell it back to you when I finish this little bit of business.’
‘It’ll cost you.’
‘Everything does, Ben, everything does.’
Then it was a matter of doing the rounds to get a line on Frank Szabo. It meant the outlay of a fair bit of money and the consumption of a fair amount of alcohol. The money wasn’t a problem but the booze was. The last thing I needed was to be picked up for DUI with an illegal pistol under my arm. That was a sure way to go where Frank had recently been. So I had to take it in stages and spread the work out over a couple of days.
If Frank Szabo had been after me he’d know by now that he’d killed the wrong man. If he was as psychopathic
as his father it wouldn’t bother him too much and he’d stick around for another try. It was an uncomfortable feeling but I had one thing in my favour—to kill with a shotgun you have to get close. On the evidence of Patrick’s murder, the killer wanted to be close to see the results of his work. I’d done some sniping in the army and it’s basically a mathematical business: adjust the weapon for range, trajectory and terrain; allow for wind, fix the target in the crosshairs and fire. You hit or you miss and that’s that. You take the emotion out of it if you can. If you can’t, you’re not a sniper. I was for a while; then I wasn’t.
These days, you don’t go looking for underworld people by asking questions in pubs, clubs, brothels or at racetracks. The old days when they accumulated at defined and known places are gone. They disappeared in Sydney some time back, lingered on in Melbourne through the gangland wars, but now respectability rules. But some things remain the same. The underworld is as riven with competition, vindictiveness and payback as politics, and there is no loyalty that money won’t overcome. Fear is a factor though, and it’s best to have it on your side.
I trawled through the people I knew—the ones I’d met in jail and in the course of my work; the ones who’d come to me with information in the past and the ones I’d had to handle when all they wanted was to crack my skull. Some I liked, some I almost liked, most I disliked intensely. I met them in offices, in restaurants, in pubs, in hospitals and a couple in jail visits. It was like panning for gold with nothing showing. Then there was a nugget in the form of Marvis Marshall.
Marshall, an African American, had come to Australia in the eighties to play basketball for the Sydney Kings. He’d played a season or two in the American league but hadn’t made the grade and Australia offered him a chance to play successfully at a lower level. He did well for a season, injured his knee as so many do and that was the end of his career down under. During the year he’d met and married an Australian woman and had a child, so his citizenship was assured. In retirement, he operated for a while as a player agent and manager but suspicion arose about him attempting to influence players to tank games and he was warned off the basketball scene.
At 199 centimetres and a hundred kilos going up, he was scary big and he found work as a bouncer and enforcer for gamblers and a car repossesser for some of the more dubious dealers. He was charged with assault several times but evaded conviction by intimidating witnesses. His bad character was equalled only by his charm and I had got, warily, to know him, at the Redgum Gym in Leichhardt where he lifted weights with the pin in the bottom slot. After those he’d known in Chicago and Detroit, he had contempt for Sydney crims. He made fun of them and would tell tales about them if he was in the mood and the beer was flowing.
I’d been looking out for him for a few days during my own workouts and eventually he turned up. He was running to fat but still awesomely powerful. He saw me going through my middle-of-the-range workout and beckoned me over to the bench press stand.
‘Hey, Cliff, my man. Spot me?’
He meant stand by and help if the weight attempted proved too much for him or if he faltered for some reason. This was a ridiculous request given the difference in our strength and he knew it.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘If you can’t handle it I couldn’t and you’re looking at a crushed chest.’
‘Piker,’ he said, as he loaded weights onto the bar.
‘Tell you what I will do,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you a few schooners in return for a chat.’
‘You’re on, man. Stand aside. I got testosterone to burn.’
He went into his routine, muscles and veins in his head and torso bulging and sweat breaking out all over his big, brown body. It made me tired to watch him. I finished my stint, showered, and waited for him in the foyer. He came bounding out dressed in his usual tight T-shirt, hooded jacket, jeans and basketball boots. But the outfit was shabby and some flab was moving on his torso. Marvis’s best days were behind him.
We crossed to the pub on the corner of Carlisle Street and I ordered two schooners of old for him and one of light for me. He put the first drink down in a couple of gulps, sighed and settled back in his creaking chair.
‘So, Cliff, I hear you had a bout with the big C.’
‘No, with a heart attack, and I won.’
He patted the roll of fat around his waist. ‘Headed that way myself less’n I make some changes.’
‘I’m looking for someone.’
He smiled. ‘Ain’t we all?’
‘Frankie Szabo.’
‘Don’t know why anyone would be looking for him. He’s a mean mother.’
‘I know that. I have my reasons.’
He held out his empty glass. ‘Which are?’
I shook my head and got up to get him another drink. My glass was half full, but when I got back he’d emptied it.
‘Savin’ you from yourself, brother. Why I’m asking is that I can see that you’re carrying and I like to know what I’m selling and why.’
I was wearing a loose denim jacket that I thought concealed the shoulder holster, but Marvis’s eyes were sharpened by experience.
‘It’s for protection, nothing more.’
‘Yeah, sure. I’m just a dumb nigger doesn’t know nothing.’
‘Don’t come that line with me.’ I pulled a newspaper cutting, a bit frayed now from constant use, about Patrick’s death, from my pocket and passed it to him. I told him the dead man and I were related, that we looked alike and the killing happened in my house.
Marvis whistled. ‘I get it.’
‘I never thought you were dumb, Marvis.’ I took out my wallet and peeled off two hundred dollar notes and one fifty. ‘For the pleasure of your company. Same again if you can help.’
‘You trust me?’
‘No.’
‘Good. I don’ trust folks as trust me.’
I put the notes under my empty glass. ‘Szabo. He was in your line of work but he expanded a little which put him inside.’
‘Dumb, and him not even a nigger.’
‘Marvis.’
‘Happens I did run into someone who ran into Frankie recently. Sold him certain items, he said.’
‘What items?’
‘Didn’t say, but this man deals in what you might call ordnance and mind-altering substances.’
‘Great. Who are we talking about?’
‘Nobody you know or want to know, but he told me a bit about Frankie’s new . . . field of endeavour. Seems he joined a certain organisation. Another two-fifty you said?’
‘For something solid that checks out.’
Marvis slid the now damp notes towards him and beckoned with his index finger. I took out more money and leaned closer across the table.
Marvis smiled and chuckled like Gene Hackman. ‘Frankie’s in with a soldier of fortune crew, name of the Western Warriors up Hawkesbury way. Ain’t hard to find—fuckers have themselves a website.’
I was heading for home and my Mac when Sheila called on my mobile. Mindful of my precarious legal position, I pulled over to take the call.
‘Where are you?’ she said.
‘Almost home.’
‘Can I visit? I’ve got something to celebrate.’
She was waiting out front when I arrived. She put her arms around me and we kissed. Then she pulled back, pointing to my armpit.
‘Is that what I think it is?’
‘For protection only. Come in and tell me what’s happened.’
I thought it was going to be something legal—applying for the document Viv had mentioned, or a positive result from the divorce records search, but her manner and her clothes told me something different. She was wearing a blue silk dress with a faux fur jacket. She’d had something done to her hair and her shoes looked new. She moved with the same
grace as before but perhaps more confidently. No whiff of tobacco smoke. She produced a bottle of champagne from her bag and waved it in my face.
‘I got the part.’
Her face was alight with happiness and it communicated directly to me. I reached for her and we kissed again. It had been a long time since I’d had what has to be one of the great human experiences—the blending and sharing of sexual and emotional and professional pleasure. It had happened a few times before—when Lily won a Walkley award for journalism; when Glen Withers got a police promotion; when Helen Broadway’s vineyard scored a gold medal; when Cyn had got a commission to design a building. I hadn’t expected to feel it again, but here it was.
We opened and poured and drank. She told me about the role in the film she’d auditioned for—the avenging mother in a thriller about a miscarriage of justice. She said she needed to project sex and danger and cracked it at the audition.
‘I have to thank you, Cliff.’
‘How’s that?’
‘You supplied the sex charge and you still aren’t sure that I didn’t arrange to have Patrick killed, are you?’
I’d taken off my jacket, removed the shoulder rig, stowed it away, and taken out the notebook I’d opened just that morning to keep track of what I was doing. My habit was to write down the names of the people I was dealing with under the case heading and draw connecting arrows and dots between them indicating possible guilt, possible lies, gaps in information. I showed her the dotted lines running from her name.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘What you said—a maybe.’
‘What’s this?’
I’d drawn a line through the information about James O’Day, the fire at the hotel in Hamilton, and the aggrieved publican.
‘No connection,’ I said. I was high on adrenalin and alcohol. ‘Case closed.’