Bright City Deep Shadows

by Graham Storrs

  “Don’t worry about the cops,” he said. “Those two won’t snitch.”

  “What? You mean it’s like the gangster code of honour? They’ll keep their mouth shut because the Devil’s Playthings clean up their own messes? That kind of crap?”

  “Something like that.”

  He said no more and I subsided. Truth be told, the relief I’d briefly felt that we weren’t going to be burying two bodies in the bush, had quickly been replaced by a dread of being dragged off to jail in my underwear by a SWAT team. For some idiotic reason, I believed Ronnie when he said our victims wouldn’t involve the police – even though what we’d done would send them to jail, possibly for years. Instead, they’d convey Ronnie’s message to Opperman and he’d give them the revenge they wanted.

  “So, I ask again, what the hell was all that? You deliberately provoked them. You didn’t want to question those blokes, you just wanted to annoy them.” And, through them, Kurt Opperman. “Aren’t we in enough trouble?”

  “You really thought I was going to kill them, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t change the subject. Why did you decide to poke the two hundred pound gorilla with a sharp stick? What good could that possibly do us?”

  “You really thought I was going to execute two blokes who hadn’t done anything except spy on us.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Look, I don’t know you at all. I don’t know what you might do. One minute you’re drinking coffee like a normal bloke, the next you’re torturing people in my lounge room. You hang around in bars like an old derelict, then I find out you’re a central figure in some creepy old people’s dog cult. You put me up and help me out and the next thing I know I’m aiding and abetting you in a kidnap plot. Yes, I thought you were going to kill them. I wouldn’t put anything past you at this point.”

  He nodded to himself as if I’d confirmed something for him.

  We drove on in silence. I wanted to keep pressing him for an answer but I was getting to the point where none of it mattered any more. For better or worse, I’d hitched my fortunes to those of a crazy man and I might just as well accept it.

  “What do you think Opperman knows about us?” Ronnie asked.

  I sighed. We were off on a new tangent. Right-o. Why should I care?

  “Probably a fair bit. Our names, where we live, my relationship to Chelsea, the fact we know about Archerfield and that you beat up two of his guys there… Loads of stuff.”

  “And he probably thinks we’re the usual kind of people he pushes around and threatens.”

  “And aren’t we? I mean, I probably am. I know you’re bloody Rambo-in-Retirement, but isn’t it just being a normal, non-crazy person to cross the road when there’s two hundred bikies on the path ahead, looking for trouble?”

  “Maybe but now Opperman knows we’re not the road crossing type. Now he knows we’re hunting him down and he doesn’t scare us one little bit.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “How do you think he feels about that? The first two guys he probably put down to incompetence, me surprising them, maybe, or me getting lucky. But now we’ve done two more, trussed them up like Christmas turkeys and delivered them to the cops. Now he knows it’s not luck. Now he knows he’s in danger. How do you think he feels?”

  “I don’t know. Angry? Furious? Vengeful? Mad as a cut snake?”

  “Oh, for sure. But underneath all that? Don’t you see how scared he’s going to be? Don’t you think he’ll be the one sleeping with a gun under his pillow tonight?”

  Despite all the crazy talk, he sounded perfectly calm. “So all this kidnap and torture was just to mess with Opperman’s head? Are you out of your fucking mind?” He grinned and I looked away in frustration. That’s when I realised we were winding our way through the streets of Tenerife. He’d brought us back to see Debra Heinzer, carrying on with his little plan as if we hadn’t just been involved in a major crime.

  “Did Bertolissio know you were planning to beat up Opperman’s men? She didn’t, did she? What do you think she’ll say when she finds out? She’s not going to play along with your little psyops adventure. She’s better than that.”

  He found a parking spot and pulled over. “You underestimate her. Didn’t you notice the steel in that woman’s eyes. I did. I recognised it. When it comes right down to it, she’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Oh great, I’m suddenly in a Jack Reacher novel and all the good guys are autistic sociopaths.”

  He looked at me for the first time since we’d left the forest. “Shut the fuck up. I’m sick of your endless whining, you bloody sook.”

  He got out before I could answer and slammed his door shut. Not that I had any answer to give him. I was sick of hearing myself whine too. I was sick of feeling trapped in that nightmare, sick of being scared all the time and sick to my very core of feeling helpless and incompetent.

  Ronnie banged on the roof and I jumped like a startled roo. I got out of the car.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asked. His tone was belligerent, challenging.

  “Ready for what, exactly? I told you she won’t see us. She’ll just call the cops.”

  “Oh, she’ll fucking see us,” he snarled and set off, head down, jaw set, fists clenched, like he was planning to walk straight through the wall of the building. I thought about leaving him to it, getting a cab and getting as far away from there as possible. But I knew I couldn’t. I’d made my decision to stick with it, no matter what, and that’s all I could do now. I ran down the street to catch up with him and we walked in silence to Debra’s office.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Hey! You can’t— Hey!” was all the young man on reception had time to say as Ronnie marched straight past him into the body of the building.

  Hurrying along behind, I held up placatory hands and said things like, “We’ll only be a minute. It’s cool.” I followed behind Ronnie and the young man followed behind me. Everybody looked up and stared, even the two women playing pool.

  Ronnie burst into Debra’s office, making the door crash against a filing cabinet. Debra was there behind her desk. There were two other people with her – young employees, at a guess. All three stood up in alarm.

  “You two, out,” Ronnie told the employees. “We need to talk,” he said to Debra.

  “Oh Debra, I’m so sorry,” the receptionist said in genuine anguish. “But you can see what they’re like.”

  Debra, who had been startled at first, was now composed. To the receptionist, she said, “Bobby, call the police.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Ronnie said, speaking to Debra as the young man fumbled for his phone. “We know about you and Kurt Opperman.”

  The whole room seemed to wait for Debra’s reaction to this cryptic announcement. Even young Bobby waited, phone in hand. I saw Debra’s nostrils flare but she showed very little emotion otherwise. She turned to the two employees and said, “Would you mind if we did this later. I’ll just deal with these gentlemen.” To the receptionist, she added, “Bobby, thank you. Everything’s fine.”

  “The police?” he asked, holding up his phone.

  “I overreacted. Everything’s fine.” She gave him an encouraging smile.

  Everyone left and we were alone with Debra. I closed the door.

  “Just what do you think you know?” she asked Ronnie. She sounded angry but I was sure I could hear an underlying fear in her voice.

  “I know he’s threatened you,” Ronnie said. “You, or someone you love. He’s making you work with him to pull off a gambling fraud during Gamefest.”

  She turned her back to us abruptly. She stood in silence for several seconds. Ronnie and I exchanged glances. “Debra?” I said. “We don’t want to put you, or anybody, in any danger but we can’t let him get away with this.”

  “Can’t you?” she asked.

  Again I looked at Ronnie, urging him to say something, but my companion, so dynamic when it came to barging into people’s lives, seemed to have
no clue what to do now to bring this woman around.

  “He’s killed two people already,” I said. “He’s coercing you. He plans to rip off hundreds or thousands of people. He’s a thug and a bully. He leads a criminal organisation that runs protection rackets, prostitution and drugs. The bloke is a monster. Someone has to take him down. Someone has to draw a line in the sand.”

  “And that’s you?”

  I don’t know how I expected Debra to react. How does a woman react when two strangers turn up to tell you they know your guilty secret and creating the possibility that something dreadful will now happen to you? Angry? Pleading? Despairing? These long silences and quiet questions didn’t fit any of my expectations.

  “It’s us,” said Ronnie. “And you’re going to help us.”

  Finally, she turned back to face us. She still looked angry but the underlying fear seemed to have vanished. “They turned up at my home,” she said, glaring at Ronnie. “Opperman and two of his standover men. They had photos of my mum and dad with Opperman in the background, grinning. They wanted to show me how easy it was to get close to them. Then they told me about Simon and what he’d got himself mixed up in. They said it was too late to back out and that I had to go on helping them.” Her lip curled in a snarl as she said, “What would you have done?”

  Ronnie met her anger with tight lipped contempt. “Gone to the police.”

  “The police? Have you ever met DI Reid? I’m not going to risk them hurting my mother and father. I’m certainly not going to put my parent’s lives in the hands of an idiot like that. Besides, it’s only money. They can have as much as they like if it keeps my parents safe.”

  I was inclined to agree but Ronnie was unmoved. “But it’s not, is it? It’s not just money, it’s lives. Some of them innocent lives. People killed, people corrupted, people ruined. Scum like Opperman depend on people like you telling yourself it doesn’t matter. The fear and cowardice that makes you justify your actions is simply part of their business model.”

  I saw Debra’s face turn white. “Jeez, mate, she’s just—”

  Ronnie turned on me. “She’s just what? Scared for her poor mummy and daddy? Doing the best she can in an impossible situation? Or is she condoning murder and extortion for her own personal benefit?” He returned to his assault on Debra. “Because that’s what it looks like from here. You get what you want. Opperman gets what he wants. And, if a few people get hurt or killed along the way, at least it wasn’t your people. Isn’t that the calculation in your selfish little head?”

  Debra looked ready to explode. “You bastard,” she said through clenched teeth. “If it was your parents—”

  “If some lowlife piece of shit was threatening my parents, I’d want him behind bars. I’d do everything in my power to make that happen. And, if he ever hurt them, I’d want him dead. If I couldn’t make it happen any other way, I’d walk into his home carrying a hand grenade.”

  “You’re – you’re completely insane.” She looked shocked, as I was, at Ronnie’s vehemence. Possibly, like me, she could see he meant every word.

  He took a step towards her and she, nervously, took a step back.

  “We’re taking him down, Debra. And you’re going to help us.”

  She seemed mesmerised, staring into his eyes like he was a cobra about to strike.

  “Have you told the cops all this?” she asked.

  “The cops will be on board when we make our move,” he said.

  “But have you told them yet?”

  “Don’t worry about the coppers. They’ll know what they need to know when they need to know it.”

  I couldn’t understand why he was being so deliberately obscure. It seemed to me that just saying “Yes,” would have been more reassuring but maybe Ronnie knew better because Debra seemed to relax a little.

  “You have some kind of a plan?”

  My heart skipped a beat. It was the breakthrough we’d been hoping for. Ronnie began running through his plans – in far more detail than he’d shared with me – and Debra listened. She listened carefully, considering what he said and asking relevant questions. Her anger and rejection gradually evaporated. Ten minutes later, she was on board. She still kept asking questions like, “Are you sure?”, “Can you really do that?” and “Won’t he suspect something?” but I had the impression they were increasingly half-hearted, as if she felt she ought to sound sceptical and uncertain but really she was completely sold on the plan.

  When we left, Ronnie handed her one of our burner phones, saying, “It’s got my number in it. Don’t call me on any other phone and don’t call anybody else on this one. Use it to call me when you’ve got the meeting with Opperman sorted out. We won’t see you again until that happens.”

  She took the phone and looked at it uncertainly.

  “This is the right thing to do,” he said. “And it’s the only way you’ll ever get out from under his thumb. Or ours. You’re an accessory to a major crime, right now. This is how you get clear of that.”

  Debra nodded in silence and we left.

  * * * *

  “All I’m saying is you came on a bit strong.”

  We were sitting in the Botanic Gardens, eating burgers and chips under a massive tree. The river was brown and slow. The day was hot and still.

  “It worked,” was all Ronnie had to say on the matter. He’d said it twice already.

  It was very frustrating. “The means don’t justify the ends,” I said. Every first year ethics student learned that. It should have been bloody obvious. But Ronnie was another kind of animal: a Pragmatist to the bone: a true blue, dinky-di utilitarian. His moral calculus was something I would never grasp.

  I gazed at the pathetic, desiccated beds of roses. The climate was changing. Chelsea had said that hotter and hotter summers meant that, one day, councils would have to stop trying to put on displays of flowers from temperate regions. Only Aussie natives would survive the droughts and the heatwaves. I suddenly felt it. The brown grass that crunched when you walked on it, the endless water restrictions, the trees, dying on their feet. It was the new normal. Children born today would never know anything else but, to me, the world was slowly turning post-apocalyptic.

  Or maybe it was just post-Chelsea. That’s why everything seemed so much bleaker now.

  I turned to Ronnie. “OK Mad Max, what do we do now? A little trip out to the Thunderdome?”

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “Just… It was just a joke. But, seriously, what’s next?”

  “Next, is waiting. Are you going to finish those chips?” I handed him the bag. “The way I see it, Debra is going to take some time plucking up the courage to do what we asked. She might still bottle out. If we’re lucky, she’ll call Opperman this arvo for a meeting. If she hasn’t called him by tomorrow lunchtime, we’ll need to go see her again.”

  “Maybe we could tie her up and throw her in the van?”

  “How come you’ve got such a hard on for little Debra, hey?”

  “I haven’t got a— I just don’t like how we’re treating her. She’s getting bullied and threatened from all sides. She’s scared. I feel sorry for her. It’s called empathy. If I had my crayons with me, I’d draw some pictures and explain it for you.”

  “You’re a sarcastic little sod. Don’t forget she was quite happy to go along with a gambling fraud.”

  “To save her parents!”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  There was no point arguing. “So we wait?”

  “It takes a while but you get there in the end.”

  “OK, here’s a question, where do we wait? You’ve already said I can’t go back to my place and, this morning, we left your house with our bags packed, so I reckon you don’t plan to go back there tonight. We can’t stay in the gardens all night, so…?”

  “Don’t worry. I know a place.”

  “Like a hotel?”

  “Like a mate.”

  Great, it had come to couch surfing
on strangers’ sofas. I felt hard done by. I stared at the sludgy river in a self-pitying sulk. None of this was my fault. I didn’t ask for Chelsea to die. I didn’t ask to be mixed up with a load of gangsters. I didn’t ask to be saddled with Ronnie. Well, actually, I suppose I did ask for that, sort of. But I didn’t ask for him to get them all so riled up I couldn’t even go home any more. I ran through my list of grievances over and over again, each time adding one or two more. I’d just added that I didn’t ask to be sitting in a drought-blasted park in the middle of the day, sweating like a pig, when my phone rang.

  “Mr. Kelly,” said a voice I didn’t recognise.

  “Doctor.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Doctor Kelly. How can I help you?” I had never insisted on my title before but winding up the cops was a matter of duty and this guy had “cop” stamped into every syllable he uttered.

  “Doctor Kelly,” he said. For some reason he didn’t seem as pissed off as he should be. “I’m Inspector Tim Pearce with the Queensland Police. I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid.”

  My breath caught. My mum and dad. I’d told them they needed to get out of town but I should have checked. I should have been more forceful, made sure they’d left.

  “I’m investigating a fire at your unit in Indooroopilly.”

  “What?” I was so ready for really bad news that this hardly seemed worth him calling me about.

  “Your unit has been deliberately set alight. The fire department tells me the place reeks of accelerant. Where are you now, Doctor Kelly?”

  “I’m – I’m in the Botanic Gardens.”

  “This was arson, sir, possibly attempted murder. I’d like you to come into Indooroopilly station as soon as you can.”

  I looked at Ronnie, suddenly certain he’d known this was going to happen.

  “I – Look, I know who’s responsible. Have you spoken to DI Reid or DS Bertolissio from homicide? They’ve been on the case for a while now. There’s probably someone in organised crime – what do you call it?”

  “State Crime Command,” he said.