Sydney Noir

by John Dale

  “You’re leaving him? To go to your son?” I do my best to ignore the gun, hope she just wants a lift, but the woman looks at me uncomprehendingly.

  The old man clears things up: “My son is in those two suitcases, detective. My wife found them at our front door this morning. She opened them. It has . . . disturbed her mind.”

  What I’d taken for shadows in the pattern of the rug around each suitcase I see now as dark stains spreading across the thick silk.

  “What does she want?” I whisper over my shoulder.

  “My wife has been a very unhappy woman for very many years. I have caused that. She has never been,” he pauses to choose the right word, “comfortable with my business interests. This morning she tried to shoot me. She has decided that it all finishes. Now. She wants us to walk out of this house and leave it all behind. She wants me to tell you everything in return for protection and immunity. She wants us to leave with you, now.”

  I disobey every instruction I was taught at the police academy and turn my back on someone with a gun.

  Something green and glassy lies splintered all over the floor behind the old man. There’s a toppled wooden pedestal and a telltale hole in the white plastered wall at head height. A matching pedestal, still upright, flanks the other side of the doorway; a giant jade horse still prances on it, intact.

  I wonder if the old man has thought to count the shots.

  “Your wife arrested you?”

  “She convinced me I have no immediate alternatives. She has not convinced me that we have a long-term chance.”

  That we again. The old bastard’s casting me as his fucking Tonto.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those who killed my son are powerful. You may know that. I thought I could control them but there are bigger players in the game than I assumed. A miscalculation of risk on my behalf. It is my belief that I have become irrelevant, therefore redundant. If we can make it out of this house, detective, then maybe we have a chance.”

  Put like that, it sounded almost noble. But killing the son, chopping him up, and sending him home? That was just flamboyant. An MO that fit the old world and the new.

  My sources had kept me briefed. The son with his plans to expand. The old man with his old world ties to triads and tongs and tradition, he was just slowing a young man down. Old-fashioned thinking. A biz needs fresh blood if it’s going to grow. A couple of paparazzi shots in the Sunday papers of the son riding a Harley, a custom number, throbbing up Campbell Parade for a lunch at Bondi Icebergs even gave it all a touch of glamour.

  In reality, various deals with various devils on moving mountains of meth, and it’d all come down to a couple of suitcases bleeding on a silk rug.

  Time to make a call. The crafty old bastard’s right. A bunch of cops, armed response, a heavy presence, and we just might make it out.

  And then?

  The return of the lawyers and the commissions and the deals and the negotiations.

  I take another look at the woman and ask her, “What do you want?”

  She stares at the old man. The gun propped between her thighs, barrel centered on his body mass. It strikes me that I’ve never heard her say a word. Even the rare occasions we bugged the office or the car. Not a sound. Maybe she doesn’t speak English.

  “I want him to pay.”

  Her voice is calm. Unaccented, stripped of emotion. Translucent. But I recognize myself in the eyes that meet mine. We can do business.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Please, detective, we will take my car, I think it is a little safer. There are certain design features, you understand.” The old man trying to keep control.

  The woman gets to her feet and gestures toward her son. The old man takes hold of the suitcases, places them into a small elevator. She prods him with the gun until he steps in. The doors close and we look each other in the eye.

  I wonder if she recognizes me. The stalker in the car across the road. The cop with the warrant who turned up on their wedding anniversary. I’ve grown old watching them. Maybe she doesn’t recognize me at all.

  I almost tell her. Right then. Just the two of us, as the elevator takes the old man and his son down into the garage. I almost tell her what he did. And why I couldn’t—can’t—stop. But he’s sent it back up; the doors open and we step in. The hand with the gun drops down at her side. I make no move to disarm her.

  The Mercedes fills the garage. I’ve tailed it often enough to know it like it’s my own. Tinted windows, bulletproof so the story goes, and bodywork that only hints at the depths of protection.

  The old man pops the locks on the Merc, but as he lifts the first suitcase into the boot, his wife fires a shot into the wall behind his left shoulder. She doesn’t flinch. My ears feel like they’re hemorrhaging. The old man swings the bag out again, shuffles to the side of the car, and sets it gently on the backseat, places the second one on top. The woman climbs in alongside, rests one hand on the stained tan hide, and follows her husband’s movements with her gun hand.

  The old man slams the boot shut and moves to the driver’s side, stopping to shut his wife’s door. She fires another shot through the gap, vaguely aimed at his feet; it ricochets; the old man skips and jumps, but doesn’t bleed.

  “The detective drives.”

  The old man climbs into the front passenger side and I slide in behind the wheel, adjust the seat. The engine turns over like a big cat being stroked. The old man rummages for the garage remote. There’s a beep from the backseat and the door opens soundlessly.

  We roll out into the sunlight and I accelerate smoothly down the drive. The front gate swings open to another beep from the backseat and McLean Crescent opens up before us, houses to the left, Rosherville Reserve to the right. Barely eleven a.m., croissants and coffee still being dawdled over on the next-door balcony. A dog and kids bounce out of a car and make for the beach. In the park, flush up against the old man’s fence, a fierce game of cricket breaks out between a bunch of big blokes with tattoos. A row of motorbikes line the boundary.

  By my right temple, a corner of the driver’s window crystallizes. A fine webbed tracery appears as if by magic in the dark glass, a complex mosaic of radiance and black.

  No sound but the crack of bat against ball, or a sniper rifle with a suppressor from among the trees on the other side of the park.

  I brake.

  The old man touches me gently on the forearm. “The bulletproofing on this car is very good. It’s working as it should.”

  I release the central locking, lean across him, and open his door.

  “I needn’t detain you any longer. Your wife, unfortunately, I’ll need to charge with certain firearm offenses, but I think after a medical examination they may not proceed.”

  The old man looks at me, unguarded. He forcibly regains control of himself. “What do you mean?” He doesn’t move.

  The cricket game in the park is getting rowdy. Howzat!

  “Condolences on the loss of your boy. We’ll need a statement but there’s no rush. You, sir, are free to go. Now.”

  “You can’t do this. I came to you for protection. I want to speak to someone in charge. I want—”

  “I made him call you,” the woman says.

  I lean over, unclip his seat belt, and shove. He’s old but he’s strong. He resists. Wraps his fingers around the seat belt.

  “I wanted it to be you,” she says, and slides forward in her seat, jabs the muzzle against the old man’s fist, and squeezes the trigger.

  The echo of the shot swallows his shriek. He tumbles out onto the driveway.

  “I knew you’d know what to do,” she says, letting the acceleration push her back into her seat. I put my foot down. The car door slams shut of its own volition as I power out of the drive.

  I see the old man in my rearview mirror, scrambling on all fours across the gravel, tugging to close his gates, the remote in his wife’s hand locking them open. There’s a rumble like thunder as ha
lf a dozen Harleys sidle through the gate and I turn my eyes to the road.

  McLean sweeps left back into Cyprian. We glide up Parriwi but I don’t stop until we reach Military Road and the safety of the Saturday gridlock.

  I turn in my seat to look at the woman. She leans forward and places the gun gently onto the center console. A small patch of her husband’s blood is smeared over her chin. I use my thumb to wipe it off. She reaches out and pushes my hair back behind my ear. Like a mother would.

  “I always wanted a daughter,” she says and sits back, her arm draped around her only son.

  GOOD BLOKE

  by Peter Doyle

  Edgecliff

  It was the usual thing: nine in the morning, Di settled behind the reception rostrum at New Beginnings Self-Care Center, the ambient playlist (Celtic harp today) murmuring in the background, a crystal wineglass of chilled Pellegrino with a sprig of mint and a slice of lemon. At thirtysomething, or maybe forty, Di looked healthy and elegant—balanced, you might say—and not like she had to work at it.

  New Beginnings took up three rooms on the top floor in the rear of Riga House, a squat blue-gray box on noisy New South Head Road, opposite Edgecliff Station, which may have been a smart address once, back in the days of brown pebblecrete and white stucco, but nowadays, as the real estate guy had said, it was all about affordability. Di had opted for the second-most affordable suite in the place, nearly at the end of the corridor, beyond Competitive Dentistry and LaMarque Depilations but not as far back as the mysterious Just in Time Credit Solutions. Right opposite her was the frosted-glass door of Good Bloke Labor and Logistical. Contract laborers, warehousing services. The business, if you could call it that, run by Justin, her ex. A whole other story.

  Despite the general seediness, Di had done the best she could with New Beginnings—potted palms and silk grass, a nice lounge, a small, not-tacky fountain, and simple consultation rooms at the back. The way she had it, she could sit at reception and do her work, see the customers coming down the hall, and have a nice smile ready for them before they even noticed her there.

  When she’d arrived that morning, Timmy had been skulking near the lift doors, chatting with her two practitioners, hired just for the day. Charming them. He’d given Di his lost-boy grin. The lank hair over one eye, tat-shop leather coat with frayed lining trailing halfway down his thigh over battered jeans, all made for a nicely achieved vagabond look (or was it bold musketeer?), which worked on her a bit, she had to admit, but not that much. Di had headed straight into New Beginnings, the practitioners, Maddy and Kim, behind her, and in the absence of an invitation to come inside and wait, Timmy had shuffled back into the lift.

  At nine thirty the first appointment, a mother and daughter from Bellevue Hill, arrived. Di sat them down in the lounge area, made a pot of lemon ginger tea, and while it was drawing discreetly texted Kim, waiting out the back, who appeared a moment later with Maddy. Kim was scheduled to do a myofascial release for the mother, and Maddy an essential oil emotional support session for the daughter. Later, when they’d finished and the credit cards were out, Di would give them all, practitioners included, caramel truffle tea.

  Back at her perch, confirming appointments, booking practitioners, processing a few late web payments for tomorrow night’s seminar (“Women’s Financial Mindfulness”), she saw Bec, the receptionist at Good Bloke, come hurrying out of the lift. She waved absently at Di, unlocked the Good Bloke door, darted inside, barely a minute ahead of the Two Stooges. No friendly waves from them.

  Five minutes later the lift bell rang again and Dave stepped out. Tall, okay-looking. He called hello to her, in his clear voice. That nice smile, the manners and looks, definitely enough to cast a spell. She could see it. But there were things there not declared. Seemed so, anyway, but she kept that to herself. Try not to judge, right? Dave, like her, like all of them, even the Stooges, staying clean a day at a time, trying to be open to whatever changes they might have to go through, agreeing maybe not in words exactly that they were all kind of on the same team. None of them was perfect. None of them even adequate, really, if it came down to it. But recovering. The line she recited often to herself.

  Justin was last to arrive, via the stairs, a Fitness First backpack on one shoulder, not carried loosely. Anything but. He slowed as he approached, peered through the door into Good Bloke to see who was there, then glanced at Di, nodded, gave a quick smile. He had that elsewhere look that she knew well. They’d been separated for four years now, though there was always stuff to deal with—who was taking Mimi to ballet tomorrow, to piano on Friday, to the weekend playdate—and they’d turned a corner this year, had mostly gotten past the embittered-ex thing, becoming whatever they were now. Friends. Wary friends.

  But they never talked about the business, Justin’s business—Di had drawn the line there. Not to say she didn’t know a fair bit anyway. There was plenty of talk. At meetings, at the coffee shops. People weren’t happy. She understood that. The hydroponic—okay, people could sort of accept that. But powders were different. Thing is, as Di had said more than once, what do you do, form a lynch mob? Anyway, like they’d told her at the Al-Anon meetings she’d gone to when she was breaking up with Justin, ask yourself, Is it my business? Is it really my business? It was maybe a yes to the first, but definitely a no to the second.

  Two minutes after Justin went in, Bec tottered out, holding her phone, cigs, and lighter, heading for the lift. She looked at Di and eye-rolled, came over to the door, and stage-whispered, “Fuck. It’s all going on today.”

  Di nodded slowly.

  “Something to do with—” and nodded in the direction of the lift.

  Di knew. Timmy was in the shit. That much was obvious. Plus, she’d heard something yesterday. And there was that Fitness First backpack. Which she’d have rather not noticed.

  But that was all the time Di had to give it: a Double Bay woman, hefty, arrived for her consultation. Di, all smiles and gentleness, ushered her into the free room, sat her down, poured her a tea. “Okay, so, let’s talk about raw diets . . .” and as she closed the door caught a glimpse of a distressed, harried Andy bustling into Good Bloke.

  * * *

  Dave got himself a Diet Coke from the fridge in reception, plonked down in the armchair in Justin’s office, and watched them all take their places. Awkward, bumping into each other. Justin came in, slung the backpack under the desk, shut the door, took the big chair, sat back, scowling.

  Dave tried not to look at the backpack at Justin’s feet. But he felt its radioactive force. The rest of them had all been heroin junkies, and for them okie-doke was just a little extra fizzy thing they did from time to time. But cocaine had been Dave’s drug of choice. It didn’t exert the same pull on him now, but still, he felt its presence.

  The others felt it too: the excitement of the whack-up, the largest batch so far, the most pure, at the best price yet. The supply side was mostly a mystery, all they knew was it came from a Korean guy. They sort of knew it came on boats, and that the Koreans kept changing the method, and that had kept things reliable. So far.

  This business with the powder had just more or less happened, when Justin’s Korean mate approached him, and Justin had approached them, and they in turn had each spoken to one or two people they knew. By then their circles consisted of other former drug addicts. So it had come about almost by accident that the stuff was sold mostly by addicts who didn’t use dope anymore. No one really planned it.

  Dave had been the first to get the tap on the shoulder. He had sought counsel on the matter, confidentially, from Mac, who wouldn’t make a yay-or-nay call on it, just put the responsibility right back on Dave: do whatever you do, he said, just be prepared to deal with the consequences, whatever they may be. So Dave in the end decided, fuck it, come this far, go with it.

  But it was still too new a thing for him or for any of them to really weigh it all up: for one thing, they were making good money, so far expressed in new cars, better
threads, jet skis, and holidays in Bali. But not quite at the level of real estate yet. And there was the anxiety, though they had their ways of dealing with that. They all knew, too, but hadn’t discussed together the fact that people, their friends, took a dim view. But they, people they knew, didn’t want to condemn or moralize either. None of them had ever met a recovering addict who actually supported drug prohibition—the addiction isn’t in the substance, it’s in us, in me, in you. Maybe it’s like the ex-alcoholic who runs the bar, right? In fact, look at it this way: who better to sell drugs? No one was quite convinced by that line, but that was the sort of shit swirling around in their heads, understood between them, mostly unspoken. So far, though, so good. Maybe it was meant to be?

  But the whack-up would have to wait. There was an emergency.

  Justin leaned forward and, no smile, glanced toward tough, wiry, agitated Andy and said, “So?”

  Andy sighed, searched out Justin’s eyes, which remained distant. He looked at the floor then back at Justin again, then put his head down, apologetic. “So, yeah. It’s what I thought. Timmy’s been using.”

  “How long?”

  Andy shrugged. “Couple of months.”

  “Our stuff?”

  Shook his head. “Smack.” He looked up, faced Justin. “But paid for with our stuff.”

  No one moved.

  “He blew the lot.”

  “Smack from . . . ?”

  Andy shrugged. “Don’t know, mate. From the Cross. Lebs, whoever. I’m fucking gutted.”

  Another silence.

  “What’s he into us for?”

  A pause. “Ten.”

  Head shakes and slow exhalations around the room. Next thing was obvious to all. The way drugs were dealt the world over: get a bag up front, bring back the money, and you get another bag. Fail to bring the money back and get a flogging. Then you’re given time to make good. And if you don’t make good, there’s another flogging, only worse. The iron law. Timmy was due for a hiding.

  The Stooges would arrange it. That’s what they were for. Except none of them had dealt with this in recovery before.