‘She doesn’t know you’re a petty criminal?’
‘Nah, she thinks I’m an electrician, which I am. She thinks electricians earn a hundred and fifty grand a year. Net. And work at night. She’s kind of stupid. But now she’s got herself a self-righteous dick who reckons I’m doing something on the side.’
‘Which you are.’
‘Which I fucken am.’
We sat on the sand above the high-tide mark. ‘It’s the kids I’m worried about,’ he said. ‘I’ll hardly ever see ’em if I get busted. She’ll get custody. She might be stupid, but she fights like a spitting cat.’
The conversation turned to the ten grand and what I wanted him to do to earn it. He started to cheer up. ‘I always wanted to be a spy,’ he said. I liked the way he said spy; it sounded like spoi.
By the time we left the beach it was dark except for the glimmer of the quiet sea and the humourless glow of the sodium-vapour streetlights on the esplanade. We drove back to the Edinburgh Hotel so I could get my car.
I followed Shovel to Greenhill Road on the southern edge of the parklands, and he drew up at the curb near the Black Hill office. I parked behind him and joined him in his van, bringing the duffel bag with me. He was like a kid at Christmas when he looked inside.
‘Man, I am going to have fun with this stuff. It’s top grade.’
‘You’re not supposed to have fun with it.’
‘I’m going to spy on that twat boyfriend of Lesley’s for a start,’ he said, not listening. ‘Arsehole.’
‘You can have all this gear, Shovel, after you’ve done our job.’
He flashed me a morose sort of grin. ‘Don’t be so uptight.’ He peered at the night through the windscreen. ‘We’ll go and take a quick squiz. This’ll probably need some planning.’ He gave me a cap and told me to put it on and keep the brim angled down. ‘Big Brother is watching,’ he said. ‘Arsehole.’
We strolled along the paved footpath under dark-boled elms. The Black Hill Exploration office was in a sleepy, two-storey building with aluminium shades. According to the signage out the front, the building housed four businesses. The lights were blazing on the second floor, and through the window I could see a man in a green shirt vacuuming. We walked along the footpath for a hundred metres or so and came back, but there was nothing more to be seen. At the van I gave the cap back to Shovel.
‘I’ll come and take a look in daylight,’ he said. ‘And I’ll call you when I’ve come up with a plan.’
I extracted one of the bundles of notes from the envelope and gave it to him.
‘Sorry they’re wet, but someone threw me in the water. Arsehole. This is to cover the planning phase.’
He took the notes and made them disappear inside his jacket. ‘I’ll be in touch in a month when I’ve recovered from the bender,’ he said. I laughed, and, after a moment, he laughed too. That was more like the Shovel I knew.
14
My flat was in Glenunga and I was home in ten minutes. It was set back from a quiet street studded with jacaranda trees. A dark Mercedes was parked under one of them. It looked familiar but I didn’t think about it. I pulled into the driveway I shared with nine other residents and parked the car under the low carport roof, a tight fit between two other cars. As I squeezed out, someone with big hands grabbed my arm and twisted it behind my back. He pulled me out from between the cars and pushed me onto a car boot. He pressed my face into it, using my right arm as a lever to keep me down. My head was turned to the left and he pinned it with his elbow. He put his face near mine. I could see the face. It belonged to Tiny, the fridge-like bouncer from White Pointer.
‘Mr Harlin wants to see you,’ he said. He spoke slowly, and with each syllable he increased the pressure of his elbow on my jaw. It was a form of communication. ‘You been swimming, West?’ My clothes were still damp.
‘Let him up, Tiny,’ said another voice. Tiny straightened and eased up on using my arm like the handle of a teapot. He allowed me to stand sufficiently upright so I could see the new speaker. It was Coy, Harlin’s right-hand man. He was holding a very long pistol, which on a second look I saw was fitted with a black suppressor, with the barrel pointing in my general direction but angled towards the ground.
‘Sorry about the rough stuff,’ said Coy. ‘We didn’t want you kicking up a fuss. Harlin wants to talk. Mind coming with us?’ He moved the gun, just a little. His black moustache waggled, just a little.
‘If this douchebag will let go of my arm.’
‘Let go of his arm, Tiny,’ said Coy. Tiny let go of my arm. I turned to him, and as I turned I sunk my fist into his solar plexus. Tiny doubled over. His knees hit the asphalt, then his hands, then his elbows, then the top of his head. He made a whining sound, like a blocked vacuum cleaner. Air was neither going in nor coming out.
‘Sorry about the rough stuff,’ I said to Coy. He didn’t look happy but the gun was still pointing to the ground.
‘Harlin in the Merc?’ I said.
‘He is.’ Coy walked with me to the street, leaving Tiny to self-inflate his lungs. The purple smell of jacaranda blossoms was thick on the night air.
‘Nice punch,’ said Coy. ‘You like your knee-caps?’
‘Sure.’
‘Do that again and you won’t have any.’
I opened the back door of the Mercedes and looked in. Harlin was sitting on the back seat, smoking a cigarette. He gestured for me to join him. Coy was standing next to me, just making sure. I climbed in without too many misgivings. I wasn’t afraid of Harlin or Coy. Not yet. Coy got into the driver’s seat.
‘Where’s Tiny?’ said Harlin in his half-whisper.
‘West belted him in the guts. He’ll be alright, eventually.’
‘Go get him.’
Coy looked back and Harlin nodded to him. ‘Sure,’ said Coy. He was back in a minute or two, accompanied by Tiny, who dropped into the passenger seat in a way that tested the suspension. It sounded as if some sort of gaseous exchange was starting to happen in his lungs. ‘Where to?’ said Coy.
‘Let’s just drive,’ said Harlin. He stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray in his door and lit another. I pushed a button on my door and wound down the window to halfway. Harlin grinned.
‘Surprisingly, it’s not illegal to smoke in a car,’ he said. ‘Not yet. But I had to get this ashtray custom fitted.’ Coy had the car in motion and we were drifting down the street. A warning bell was chiming.
‘Put your belt on, West,’ said Coy. ‘Or we’ll have to listen to the bell the whole fucken time.’
‘It’s illegal not to,’ said Harlin. ‘But smoking is okay.’
I strapped myself in and the bell stopped. Harlin was wearing a black T-shirt and the tattoos on his forearms looked like scenes from someone’s nightmare. Possibly his. ‘It’ll come one day. A ban on smoking in cars. It’ll be a shame. I don’t like to break the law.’
‘Only when you have to, eh?’
He laughed. ‘Yeah, only when I have to. Some laws are stupid, right?’ Harlin took a drag on his cigarette. The end of it flared red, like a brake light. He looked at me. His eyes were nowhere to be seen in the gloom. ‘And what about you, West? Ever break the law?’
‘Only when I think I can get away with it.’
Harlin laughed again. He was trying to be friendly. ‘I’ve asked around about you. People seem to know you, mainly ’cos you played for the Crows. We won’t hold that against you.’ Coy laughed in the front seat. ‘People say you’re straight-up. Even honest.’
‘What’s this about, Harlin? I don’t need a character reference.’ We had turned left onto Portrush Road and were heading north. Harlin took another drag on his cigarette and released the smoke through his nostrils. He looked at the cigarette; it was about a third the way through its short, carcinogenic life. He waved it around.
‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Four blokes in a car. It’s a nice car. You like my car?’
‘Sure.’
‘You don’t feel in a
ny danger, do you?’
‘Safe as houses.’
‘Funny you should say that. I’m not a bad man, West. But according to the Minister of Police, I’m responsible for almost all the crime that happens in this state. The government thinks I’m a gang leader. They think I’m a drug lord. Ha! You want to know where crime really happens?’
‘Sure.’
He gestured at the brick walls that fronted the road. ‘It happens here.’
‘Here? In Toorak Gardens?’
‘Yes, here, in Toorak Gardens, and Largs Bay, and Noarlunga, wherever. In every fucken suburb, every fucken street, every fucken night. No one is safe in their houses. You know what I mean?’ He gestured with his cigarette again. ‘A bloke has a few too many and uses his belt on his wife or fucks her up the arse to show her he fucken owns her. Or he gets the shits with his boy and puts him through the gyprock or drags him to his room by his hair. An uncle stays over and slips it to his nine-year-old niece or nephew, or both of them. A boy sticks up for his mum by taking to his dad with a kitchen knife. A mother gets cranky and shakes her baby that won’t shut up, or she’s hard up for a fix so she pimps her daughter to some fucken sicko in the suburbs. Most of the time you don’t hear about these things ’cos they happen behind brick walls in cute little houses with flowers out the front. And a little boy ain’t going to accuse his father, is he? Is a nine-year-old girl going to tell people how Uncle Fucken Neville is raping her every time he comes to visit? Her parents won’t believe her. The cops won’t believe her. But it happens. It happens all the time. It’s happening now, maybe in that house.’ He pointed out the window at a random house. ‘Every fucken street, every fucken night. There’s your crime wave, West. There’s your crime wave.’
The tyres hummed on the road.
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
‘I don’t want you to do anything about it. Except maybe fucken think about it.’ Harlin pointed at another random house. ‘There’s the real problem.’
‘Alright, I’ll think about it.’
‘That’s all I want you to do.’
‘Is there anything else, Harlin? You can drop me home, if you like.’
‘Tasso worries me.’
‘So what?’
‘He seems to think I had something to do with Hiskey’s death. He seems to have shared that view with the cops. The cops now also think I had something to do with it.’
‘So do I.’
He leaned towards me, his voice even softer than usual. ‘You do, do you?’
‘Did you? Kill Hiskey?’
He leaned back and looked out the window again and drew on his cigarette. ‘No. I wanted him alive.’
‘Why?’
‘Two reasons.’ He looked at me again and blew smoke at me. ‘One, I actually did like him. He was the biggest bullshitter I ever knew, but I liked him. I’d known him for years. We were friends. I know Tasso doesn’t believe that, West, but it’s the fucken truth.’
‘And the other reason?’
‘The other reason, as we discussed the other night, is he owed me money.’
‘How much?’
‘A shitload.’
‘For drugs?’
Harlin sighed, releasing his last breath of smoke as he did. ‘Sure, every guy who rides a bike is in an outlaw gang. Every outlaw gang is just a bunch of rapists, cop killers, drug dealers and all-round scumbags.’ He ashtrayed his cigarette and this time didn’t start another. ‘Stereotypes, West. You should avoid them.’
‘Hiskey was an addict,’ I said. ‘He had to be getting his gear from someone. Who was it?’
We passed under a streetlight and there was a flash of light in Harlin’s eyes. It didn’t make him any easier to read. I wasn’t sure how this conversation was going to end. ‘It’s irrelevant,’ he said. ‘What’s relevant is whether I’m going to get my money.’
‘I hope you’re not expecting to get it from me. Or Tasso.’
Harlin shrugged. ‘Let’s just say that Tasso might be better off quietly paying Hiskey’s debts. Let’s just call it a mutually beneficial arrangement.’
‘Let’s just call it extortion.’
‘Let’s just call it an easy way to avoid a whole lot of trouble.’
‘If I were you, Harlin, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Especially not when you’re the number one suspect for Hiskey’s murder.’
‘I just told you I had two good reasons to want him to stay alive.’
‘Yeah, but maybe you got frustrated with him when he didn’t pay you. Maybe you started hitting him because you were mad at him. Maybe you lost it. I hear you’ve got an evil temper. Maybe you killed him even though you wanted him alive.’
In the front seat, Coy made a squelching noise. Harlin had gone still. ‘I heard you were chatting up Melody at my club the other night,’ he said, changing the subject. He was staring out his window again.
‘We had a conversation.’
‘And I heard you left with her.’
‘There was a brawl. Everyone left.’
Harlin looked back at me. ‘West, this is what is called a conflict of interest. If you show any interest in Melody, we are in conflict. That will be bad for you. Does that make sense?’
‘In a way.’
‘You won’t see it coming,’ said Coy from the front. ‘If he loses it.’
‘Who told you I had an evil temper?’ said Harlin.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter? The fuck it doesn’t matter.’ Harlin grabbed my shirt, pulled me to him and jerked his forehead towards the bridge of my nose. He didn’t land it where he wanted, though, because our seatbelts restrained us and we didn’t quite come together enough. His forehead made contact with the bottom half of my nose. Blood poured from it as if a tap had been turned on. There was a high-pitched siren in my ears. Harlin still had hold of my shirt and his mouth was close to my ear.
‘Stay away from Melody, you fuck, or I’ll have you dragged behind this car from here to the saltpans.’ He pushed me back and let go of my shirt. I grabbed my nose. Harlin thumped on Coy’s headrest. ‘Throw this ugly fuck out before he bleeds on the seat,’ he said.
Coy braked the car and we came to an abrupt halt in the middle lane of Portrush Road. I released my seatbelt and opened the door. Harlin shoved me with his foot and I tumbled out. The Mercedes raced away.
Blood was puddling on the road. I pinched my nose, just below the bridge, and stood up, wobbly. It was late and the road was quiet. There was an orange light overhead. A car cruised past, giving me a wide berth. Two scared white, middle-aged faces stared at me. I didn’t blame them for not stopping or for being scared. I felt the pocket of my jeans to make sure the five thousand in hundreds was still there.
It was twenty minutes before I was able to hail a taxi and get back to my flat. My nose had stopped bleeding by then and it only took a couple of slow glasses of whisky and a bunch of paracetamol to turn the siren off and calm me enough to pass out.
15
‘Jesus, who busted your nose?’ said Tasso the next day. It was swollen and had a cut across it about halfway up. It was sore and looked deformed. I told him about my ride with Harlin.
‘You alright?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I told you we’d give this town a shake.’
‘You did. You also told me we’d have fun.’
‘Aren’t you having fun?’
‘Not entirely.’
Tasso chuckled. ‘When you shake something, there’s always a chance you’ll disturb vermin.’
‘This guy is dangerous, Tasso. Coy had a gun. With a silencer.’
‘What about a hammer?’
‘I didn’t see a hammer. Did I mention he had a gun? With a silencer?’
‘You want a gun? We can get you a gun. Guns are easy to get these days.’
‘With a silencer?’
‘With a silencer, if you want.’
‘I don’t want a gun, Tasso. But you, on the other
hand, need a bodyguard. Or three.’
‘I’ve got Bert.’
‘I realise Bert is more than a driver, but is he a match for these guys?’
‘Bert can handle gangsters. He was an elite commando in the British Army. SAS. You know, Who Dares Wins. He’s the best.’
‘Is that right? Well, I always knew he wasn’t a chauffeur. He sucks as a chauffeur. But he’s getting on a bit.’
‘He’s still the best.’
‘Okay, he’s the best. He dares, he wins. But he’s not by your side the whole time.’
Tasso was behind his desk. He swivelled his chair so he could check out the view to the Gulf. ‘I’ll talk to him. Maybe something can be arranged. In the meantime, maybe you’d better cool it with Harlin’s girlfriend.’
‘Melody.’
‘Whatever. Cool it with her.’
‘There’s nothing to cool.’
‘Keep it that way.’
‘I think I like her.’
He swivelled back and eyeballed me. ‘You know she’s just using you to get away from Harlin?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Probable.’
‘Okay. Probable.’
He stared for a while longer, then shrugged. ‘Well, do what you want to do.’
‘I will.’
‘And get your nose fixed.’
Shovel rang later in the day. ‘I’ve found a way in,’ he said.
We met at a coffee shop on Gouger Street, an easy walk from the office. Shovel was crouched in a dark corner behind his reflective sunglasses, wearing a khaki cap. He looked like a spoi.
‘You look dodgy,’ I said to him.
He took off his sunglasses. As always, the paleness of his eyes was disturbing. ‘Not half as dodgy as you. Your nose is a disgrace.’
‘I had a bit of a run-in with a bikie, that’s all. Tell me how you’re going to get into Black Hill.’
Shovel leaned forward so his head was close to mine. ‘First tell me I’m not getting caught in the middle of a gang war.’
‘You’re not. My role in the gang war is personal. Nothing to do with Hardcastle. How are you going to bug his office?’
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