by Candice Fox
As predicted, Khalid had climbed the ranks and developed his own crew of foot soldiers. I’d run into him a number of times over the years. We’d formed a weird relationship. Not exactly a friendship, but a sort of forced camaraderie brought about by the sheer number of times we’d encountered each other, and of course my “heroism” in his sister’s kitchen. It was always awkward, bursting into his lavish Elizabeth Bay mansion in a flak jacket and boots, trailing a squad behind me, acting on orders to turn the place upside down. I’d participated in raids at Khalid’s nightclub, his grandmother’s place, the houses of his cousins and lieutenants, their laundromats and rug shops. A few times, over the years, my colleagues had brought Khalid up on drug or murder charges, which he’d always traded out or thrown high-priced lawyers at. If I’d ever actually managed to put Khalid in a jail cell for a decent amount of time, he might have forgotten about the whole thing with his baby niece and started hating my guts. But he had always been just too slippery for me, so he had remained there, my indebted admirer, for more than a decade.
“Bin a long time.” Khalid smiled at me now in the airport rental car lot, his hired goons an intimidating wall of muscle at my back. “Haven’t seen you since all your shit blew up, bro. ’Cept on the news, a’course. Man, you neck-deep in some crazy shit. I got no idea how you beat that rap. No clue.”
“Yeah, well, I did beat it. So now I’m trying to keep it on the down low,” I said. “I’m only here in Sydney for a couple of days and then I’m off again. I don’t want to ruffle any feathers. In and out.”
I didn’t know how Khalid felt about what I was supposed to have done to Claire Bingley, but I wasn’t game to hang around and find out. I made some short steps to the side, out of the triangle of men, but they shifted around me, kept me at their center like a rabbit surrounded by wolves.
“How you bin? How you holdin’ up?”
“It’s hard.” I shrugged. “But it’s over now.”
“Over? I don’t think so. People are still upset down here about what you did. I heard fools talkin’ ’bout takin’ your head off, they see you out and about in your old stompin’ grounds. Looks like some might feel the same up where you ran away to, even.” He gestured to my face.
“It’s fine. Really.”
“Maybe you thinkin’ it’s fine and it’s over is what’s gettin’ you messed up so often.” He adjusted the cuffs of his shirt, a tough-guy pop of his chest, like the discussion was over. “Listen, Coffee Man, I bin watchin’ all this shit about you and the kid they say you grabbed. And I’m here to tell you that I know it’s not true. You didn’t do it. You’re not that type. I seen that type, and you’re not it.”
“Thanks.” I nodded. “That’s kind of you to say.”
“So when I heard you was comin’ down, I thought I’d catch you before you go all white ninja on me.”
“Who told you I was coming down?”
He waved my question off. “Doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you, in case you were worried about what I thought about it all, that I only got love in my heart for you, man. Anything you need, my people are here for you.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s great. Listen, it was so nice to see you. But I’ve got to get going. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why my boys are here.” Khalid jutted his chin at the lumbering goons behind me. “This your protection detail while you’re Sydney-side.”
“What?” I almost laughed, which made the goons bristle indignantly. “Oh, no. I don’t need a … a protection detail.”
“Really?” Khalid snorted. “You know you ain’t walkin’ straight right now, motherfuck.”
I looked at the goons. They were oddly well-dressed for men in that kind of service. Glittering cufflinks, intricately woven shirts beneath the tailored jackets of very expensive suits. You don’t usually see thugs dressed like that, because thugs don’t tend to make a lot of money. People generally only take up the profession of enforcer because they want to get close to the powerful people in organized crime and maybe one day take over their position, so they’re commonly strapped for cash. Aside from that, the moment they perform their intended duties they’re likely to get blood on anything pricey. I turned back to Khalid, who was examining his manicure.
“I can handle my own personal safety.”
“Oh.” He laughed. “I believe you. You real convincin’ with a face all fucked up like that, lookin’ like somebody’s leftovers.”
The goons snickered.
“Nobody’s askin’ you what you can and can’t handle,” Khalid continued. He put his ring-adorned hands up in surrender. “But bro, takin’ you down would earn some dogs around here some proper respect. You know nobody likes a kiddie-fucker. I got kids, man. Lotta dangerous people do. Takin’ out some baby-rapin’ piece-a-shit would be a real favor to the world, and some people think it might be their duty, you know what I’m sayin’? With the police havin’ fucked it up and all. Just let my guys do their thing, okay? Think of it as a favor to me. So I don’t worry about you all night. I don’t sleep well, you know. Plus, I never got to pay you back over my niece, Sammy. She’s fifteen now—you know that?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“She wouldn’t have been anything if not for you.”
“I was just doing my job.” I tried to sidestep away again. “I don’t need to be paid back.”
“Yes, you do.” Khalid sighed and shook his head like I was being an idiot. “And besides, you’ll probably be havin’ a look around while you’re down here, maybe tryin’ to see if you can find the guy who did do that to the kid. Well, I want that guy. You understand? If anyone’s gonna get him, it should be me.”
I understood. This wasn’t just about old favors being repaid. This was also about the criminal hierarchy. Criminals hate criminals who commit worse crimes than them. Fraudsters reassure themselves that they’re not, in fact, bad people because they look at burglars and say—well, at least I don’t commit my crimes face-to-face. Men charged for hurting men look down on men charged for hurting women. Killers look down on rapists, and rapists look down on pedophiles, and on and on the pecking order goes, each criminal justifying their life because they have someone who’s “badder” than them. Pedophiles and child killers were the lowest of the low. To kill them in prison is a heroic act. To find one and kill him in public would have been a criminal badge of honor for Khalid.
“When you come across the guy,” Khalid said, “you just hand him over to my people. We’ll even let you watch, maybe. But you don’t give him to the police, or I’ll be very upset with you. I mean it.”
“I’m not looking into my own case while I’m here.”
“What?”
“No.”
“The hell not?”
“Because I…” I was too tired to explain it all again. “It’s just easier if I don’t.”
“Huh.” Khalid raised his waxed eyebrows.
“Khalid, I can’t have your people escorting me around,” I said. “This is all very kind, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but things are very bad for me already. I can’t draw any more attention to myself.”
“Linda and Sharon are very professional.” Khalid put his hand on his heart. “I promise.” I looked at the men. The one named Linda cracked his knuckles.
“Linda and Sharon?”
Sharon spat on the ground.
“White ladies’ names,” Khalid said. “They don’t get the boys in blue excited when they hear them on the wire taps.”
“I see,” I said. “Ingenious. What have you instructed these guys to do if any trouble does arise?”
“Be effective.” Khalid shrugged. “Be discreet. Just what I always tell them.”
“I can’t have this,” I said.
“Look, you just do what you’re told, Cappuccino,” Khalid said. “All right? Everythin’ will be fine. You’re gonna follow Linda and Sharon. They’re gonna take you to the car, and you tell ’em where yo
u need to go. That’s it, brother. End of discussion.”
One of the goons took my bag off my shoulder, while the other gave me an encouraging shove toward the north lot. My resistance failed. I felt exhausted. The last thing I needed was to visit Kelly and Lillian at the Department of Family and Community Services offices with a couple of hairy thugs in tow. But on the other hand, looking at these two, I felt the tightness in my shoulders easing. Their wide hips bulged with guns under their suit jackets, and each stood a good foot taller than me, which was saying something. I had accepted so much about my new life. A helping hand from a murderous drug dealer and his crew wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d adapted to since I was released from prison.
“I’ll check in with you, bro,” Khalid said as we parted, taking a set of keys out from his pocket. He pushed a button, and the taillights of a black Lambo at the back of the lot flashed. He winked at me as he turned to go. “Stay frosty.”
Amanda stood at the door of the Barking Frog and looked down the road at the edge of the rainforest, to where it curved left toward the highway. Hours had passed while the bodies of the fallen bartenders were taken away and the scene was processed, every stray napkin and discarded straw bagged and tagged, every surface polished with print powder, every sheet of paper categorized, labeled, and hauled away in boxes. Some of the family and friends of the deceased had arrived to huddle at the corner of the outer cordon and cry, some of them pacing back and forth, looking wonderingly at the gray sky. When police officers came near the family, the officers approached with their hands up, like they were being taken hostage. The family talked in high, near-hysterical voices. Amanda sucked on her cigar and looked up, tried to see what they all kept looking at, what it was about the meandering steel-gray clouds that they thought might give them answers. She didn’t understand grief much at all. The grimacing faces of the families bewildered her.
During her murder trial, the family of her own victim had been very aggrieved indeed. The emotion itself had many facets. One moment the grief seemed heavy and sluggish, making the mother and father of the girl Amanda had stabbed seem like they were walking through water. The next moment it seemed to sparkle through them like electricity, flaming behind their eyes, twitching in their legs as they sat staring across the courtroom at her. Amanda’s lawyer had instructed her to look aggrieved throughout the trial, so that the judge would understand that she was sorry for what she had done. Amanda was sorry. But she didn’t know how to look that way. Should she jog her knees? Should her mouth be downturned? What kind of grief was the right one?
She hopped down the porch stairs of the Frog and wandered to the edge of the building, peeling off her forensic booties and leaving them on the verandah. Beside the squat wooden building, the grass had been flattened by cars rolling in and out the night before, fresh, resilient grass that, like all Cairns flora, could spring up overnight with hope of life only to be crushed down by humanity. There were more defiant things growing behind the bar; twisted tomato plants born from a single rotting fruit that had rolled out of the garbage pile, and sunflowers, the seeds of which had probably been spat there by birds flying over from the suburbs. She went to the back door of the pub, where more forensics officers were taking casts of footprints in the mud. The ground here was littered with cigarette butts by the bins, each of which was being carefully lifted with tweezers and slipped into paper envelopes. She watched the activity for a while, then walked down the small hill to the creek. Something slippery slithered away from her and into the water as she approached.
When the big rains came they carried crocodiles down the back channels of water like this, between the lakes and rivers. Tree-change city families who bought McMansions in the suburbs closer to Cairns were the prime victims for fat-bellied predators who used these smaller waterways as their secret alleys. The city families with their city dogs and cats didn’t heed the croc warning signs. They wanted unhindered waterfront views and pretty, bougainvillea-laden gazebos a stone’s throw from the creek bed. Missing-pet posters littered the supply store windows.
Across the creek, fifty meters from the back door of the Barking Frog, was a wooden fence with a single odd paling, a new blond plank of wood boarded over an old one that had fallen down, a bright tooth in a stained row. Amanda stepped carefully on three big rocks that created eddies in the creek, exhaling cigar smoke over her shoulder as she made her way toward the little house.
She walked along the side fence, heard a bubbling sound and peered through the cracks. In the back corner of the small, neat yard there appeared to be a goldfish pond outlined with large sandstones, the surface of the water almost covered with huge green lily pads. Orange flashes of life in the depths.
She reached the open front yard. There was a car in the driveway covered by a protective tarp—an old Chevy, it looked like—the shiny vintage hubcaps barely visible. She found a young man pulling the bins from their little latticed cage in the manicured garden. Amanda stood smoking and watching his lean, tattooed frame until he got the first bin free and turned to wheel it toward her.
“Oh, hello.”
“Hi.” Amanda smiled. “This your house?”
“No.” The man had been working. His hands were dusty and worn. “My grandmother’s. My brother and I are here renovating for a few days. Are you one of her neighbors?”
“Nope,” Amanda said brightly and followed the young man to the roadside, where he aligned the bin with the curb. “I’m here about a murder.”
“What?”
“Some murders, actually,” she said, struggling to make herself plain.
The man stared at her.
“The murders I’m here about happened at once. Last night.”
“Okay.”
“Back there, at the Barking Frog Inn.”
“The bar?” The man looked over where Amanda was pointing with her cigar, toward the tops of the trees, as though he’d see some sign of devastation like smoke on the light wind. “Jesus.”
“No, not Jesus. They solved that one a long time ago. This one is unsolved. Couple of kids. Bartenders. Somebody went into the bar last night, popped ’em.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Bang! Killed ’em dead before they could get home to bed, filled their families with significant dread. The kitchen floor’s red, and the killer has fled, and…”
Amanda thought. The man stood wide-eyed, waiting.
“… and now the forensics guys are casting his tread!”
“Um,” the man said.
“That was a good one. Made that up just now. Pretty clever, the forensics bit. It just came to me.”
“Who did you say you were?”
“I’m a private investigator. Amanda Pharrell. I was wondering if you were here last night. If you heard anything that might pertain to the case.”
“Ah, no.” The man dusted his hands. “I mean, no, we weren’t here. We just came in this morning. My brother Eddie and I. Ed! Let me get him.” The man walked up the steps toward the house, opened the screen door and let it slam behind him. Amanda followed to the door and looked in, saw an old black and orange recliner chair near the entrance to a living room. A cup of tea sat there on a small side table, a pair of pink-rimmed glasses. There was a wrinkled elbow resting on the arm of the chair.
“Hi.” Another lean, dust-coated man appeared in the doorway, bristly and handsome, all edges, looking concerned. “I’m Ed Songly. This is Damo.”
“Yeah, Damo, sorry.” Damo was still frowning. “I didn’t introduce myself. I got … distracted.”
“I’m Amanda. Do you reckon Nanna heard anything last night?” she said softly, glancing warily toward the elbow on the chair. “Was she here? Is she asleep?”
“She’s got Alzheimer’s,” Ed said, pushing lanky black hair behind his ear with a dusty hand. “I’m not sure she’d be any good to you, even if she did. We’re doing up the house to sell it. She’s about to go into aged care. We haven’t been so happy about her living here anyway,
you know, with the bar back there. Sometimes she gets yahoos down by the creek, people chucking stuff over the fence.”
Amanda nodded, glanced the other way down the hall. There were drills and cords littered on the floor. They appeared to have started only recently—some of the items were still in packets, new boxes broken down and stacked against the wall. The two men watched Amanda across the threshold, not inviting her in, not asking her to leave, Damo still apparently markedly disturbed by Amanda’s rhyming skills.
“I think the bar gets a few bikers visiting,” Damo suggested, leaning against the wall. “Drug deals, that sort of thing. Was the place robbed?”
“Possibly,” Amanda said. “I’ll keep most of that sort of thing under my hat for now. My metaphorical hat. I don’t have an actual hat right this minute. Not with me, anyway.”
The two men looked at each other.
“If no one here heard anything, that’s all I need to know.”
“There’s another house not far down,” Damo said, pointing. “A young family, I think.”
“All right, I’ll check it out.” Amanda saluted with her cigar and closed the screen door carefully behind her.
The people of Cairns sure were antisocial, Amanda thought. Between the houses on the other side of the creek lay thick tangles of rainforest, impenetrable by the eye, walls of crossing vines and elephant ear leaves wet and dripping. She was forced to walk out and along the isolated street to reach the next property, another neat dwelling with terra-cotta potted plants lining a rocky garden path. As soon as she set foot on the grounds a chocolate brown lab rushed to the flyscreen over the front door, barking madly and pawing at the wire. From the front door of the house, no other properties were visible. She might have been in the middle of the Amazon. She stubbed out her cigar in some kind of bird’s nest–looking plant and smiled at the frowning young lady who answered the door.
