by JR Carroll
A little later Danny was back at the blackjack table where Geoff Egan was playing, so he sat next to him for a friendly game and a chat. It wasn’t long before the conversation turned to horseracing, and Danny asked him what he thought of the chances of his mount, a mare named Mustang Sally, which was on the fifth line of betting in the Cup.
Geoff said, ‘Mate, if I had my way I’d be on something else – half the fuckin’ field’s got better credentials. But we’re in there, mate. We got a start. We’ve had a good preparation, which is more’n I can say about some o’ the others. Dunno about her gettin’ two miles, but we’ll find out, won’t we. Get a decent gate and maybe we’ll luck out. And a bit o’ rain wouldn’t hurt. It’s a fuckin’ raffle this year, mate. Too many fuckin’ foreigners.’
He played a hand and said out of the side of his mouth, ‘Listen, Danny. Jockeys aren’t s’posed to give tips, but anyway … If I was you, and I had a few bucks to spend – which you obviously do, after that little exhibition – I’d whack something each way on a conveyance goin’ around on Saturday. Dunno what race, three or four, but it’s a pony called Waltz With Me and a good mate o’ mine who’s ridin’ it reckons it’ll just about get the prize.’
‘Waltz With Me,’ Danny said, sorting cards.
‘Yeah, Waltz With Me. Remember the name. Make sure you don’t say nothin’ to that cunt there, though.’ He indicated vaguely with a tilt of his chin, but Danny wasn’t sure who he was referring to. Noting this Geoff said, ‘See that cunt over there, that Wickham thing? That cunt is a fucking cunt.’
‘Right.’
‘Sold out his best mate for his share in the daily double. Mind you, the cunt’s had it a thousand times, and it paid a hundred and eighty. Figure that out.’ Indicating to the croupier with a horizontal slicing movement of his hands that he wished to stand, Geoff added: ‘For that kind of bread I mighta done the same thing myself. But mate, at the end of the day, a cunt’s a cunt, isn’t it. Christ, look at that. I win. Thank you very much.’
Danny played some more roulette after that – winning and losing, winning and losing – before finally calling it a day at around five. He then went to the men’s room and sat in a cubicle with the door snibbed while he sorted finances. From the afternoon’s business he had two cheques, chips and cash totalling nearly a hundred and seventy thousand. The chips and a share of the cash he put in his right pants pocket, the cheques and the balance of the cash he kept separately in the jacket. Then he cashed the chips and rejoined Victor, who had been wondering where he was.
Soon afterwards they took a taxi to Cricklewood Close, arriving just in time to witness the closing stages of a lesbian sequence – being performed on velvet cushions amid shafts of different-coloured lights and lurid swirls of pink smoke – for the benefit of Sigmund’s Betamax, which could not have been any closer to the action without becoming part of it. The two voluptuous participants, both about Mischa’s age or younger, were dressed only in berets, flimsy veils and scarves, which magically came adrift and floated away at the slightest contact. The impression given was of a Persian theme, but these two were flying on sex instead of a carpet and, as far as Danny could tell, they were both going at it with unfeigned – and unrestrained – enthusiasm. The dominant partner was teasing the other one by tickling her vagina with a riding crop while Sigmund said, ‘Good, good. Now put it in, why don’t you. Go on, put it in. See how she likes it.’ Danny watched the performance with voyeuristic interest, but felt strangely removed and unaroused, even though the activity could hardly have been more explicit. Soon the passive one seemed to be having multiple orgasms; she spread herself out over the cushions in a thoroughly decadent manner with a red, diaphanous scarf across one of her flattened breasts, repeatedly tossing her head back as she moaned and bucked in response to the other’s fingers and flicking tongue, and to Sigmund’s constant direction to keep the action moving.
12
The pretty young prostitute lay naked on the bed – mouth invitingly open, head propped on one hand, the other cupping a breast – and watched the man undress. He was eyeing her intently as he stripped, flinging away his shirt, kicking off his shoes, unbuckling his jeans. She could see he already had half an erection, but when he got rid of his pants and socks and stood bare in front of her she was seriously impressed at the size of it. She had seen a few, but nothing like this. It was a monster.
She stretched out on her back as he lowered himself over her, his eyes still burning with lust. There was a manly kind of scent – fresh perspiration mixed with a pine deodorant, like Norsca – coming from his skin at close range that she didn’t mind at all. He placed her hand on his penis and she stroked it: the thing seemed to leap to a new level of hardness. It was utterly rigid. He was feeling between her legs, trying to get her excited, but even though she was young she knew better than to let that happen: this was a fuck for money and nothing more. Any pleasure for her was incidental. She said, ‘Uh-Uh’, and pushed his fingers away. The man smiled, understanding: it was worth a try. He had to help her roll on the mandatory condom that was much too tight and which barely covered half his length, then he took hold of his cock and began entering her. It seemed to take a long time and she had to open her legs as far as she could, holding them apart underneath the thighs with her hands, but eventually he was all the way in and going his hardest. She closed her eyes and willed him to hurry. He seemed to take pleasure in making her flinch, gasping whenever he gave it an extra thrust; right up, it seemed, into her ribcage.
Just before his orgasm he withdrew, and she saw that the condom was split. He wrenched the useless thing off and furiously wanked himself all over her before allowing the still-hard weapon to come to rest on her stomach. Then he stood, his face towards the ceiling with the light gleaming on his bald pate, sighing, resting one knee on the end of the bed, his detumescing cock still oozing freely in his hand. The relief he was expressing seemed immense, heartfelt beyond words, from where she lay. The thing that got her about men having orgasms was that they always behaved as if they were enduring terrible pain, agony, not pleasure. She noticed the hard, corded muscles everywhere in his body, some of them twitching, and the prominent white scars showing through the hair on his stomach. There was not a wasted ounce anywhere on him. To make conversation – the girls were told to chat to the customers, to make them feel special, so they’d come back – she considered asking him about the scars, but instinct told her to mind her own business.
‘Thanks, love,’ he said. ‘That was one out of the box. Nice box, too. No offence intended.’
‘None taken,’ she said, sitting up. The cooling semen was trickling down the sides of her body onto the sheet. Noticing this, he tossed her a white, fluffy towel from the adjoining bathroom.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘That’s all right, Selena,’ he said. ‘What’s your real name, anyway?’
‘If you really want to know, it’s Meribel,’ she said, rubbing the towel over herself.
‘Meribel. Fair dinkum. Sounds like a cow. I reckon I’ll call you Selena.’
‘Call me whatever you like,’ she said pertly. ‘It’s all the same to me.’
‘How old are you?’
‘None of your business,’ she told him quickly, with an upturned inflection on the last word, making it sound like a question.
He assessed her at eighteen, if that. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You were special, Selena. I’d like to show my appreciation. Here you go.’
He foraged in his jeans, grabbing his wallet and extracting a hundred-dollar note, which he gave to her – on top of the hundred he’d already paid upfront.
‘Thanks, Lewis,’ she said.
‘I’ll see you again, right? Real soon.’ He brushed the back of his hand over her soft cheek, and she looked up at him with her heart-shaped face and purred like a kitten.
‘You know where to find me,’ she said.
Gerald Kamp came out of the cute little South Melbourne brothel with the wrough
t iron balcony, Kitty’s Wish, feeling a lot better in himself. He had really needed that. When he was looking through the phone book he had been attracted to that particular establishment by the fact that it had his ex-wife’s name. Young Selena wasn’t a patch on Kitty, no-one could be, but she was good enough to be his regular punch as long as he was in town. She had a strong, clean body, nice curves, pert little tits and a firm snatch that hadn’t been beaten to pulp by every punter with a hard-on and a hundred bucks in his kick. Sadly, that time would come for Selena – if she wasn’t sticking needles into her veins, in which case the drugs would get her first. But she seemed to be clean and healthy. Her face reminded him of a girl he knew at school, one he had banged a few times and got in the family way, so perhaps his attachment to Selena was sentimental, he thought.
It was twenty past nine and the bright lights of this ever-expanding city rushed to engulf him as the taxi came up Kingsway doing eighty. Riding next to the driver the impression he had through the windscreen, which was tinted across the top, was that the buildings were disappearing into the night sky. The car sped past the site of the gigantic permanent casino. Men and machines were working under lights virtually around the clock to make sure it opened on schedule in May. Looks like a set for a Spielberg movie, Gerald thought, twisting his head around to take in the whole complex, which occupied half a kilometre of Yarra River frontage and which was dominated by its monumental centrepiece, the casino hotel.
Noticing his interest the driver said, ‘I’d burn the fuckin’ place if I had my way.’
‘Yeah?’ Gerald said. ‘You don’t like gambling?’
The driver, in his fifties with a heavyset, unhappy face, moved his mouth around as if he were chewing something sticky and said, ‘Fuckin’ wife can’t stay away from the joint. I’m workin’ nights payin’ her fuckin’ debts.’
‘That’s rough,’ Gerald said.
‘It’s like a fuckin’ magnet. These women – they go fuckin’ bananas. Fair dinkum.’ He shook his head. Gerald didn’t respond, not wishing to get the man started. Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the short journey to Gerald’s hotel, a relatively downmarket one in Spencer Street frequented by budget tourists and backpackers. He gave the driver a ten-dollar tip for his trouble and went up to his room.
The good thing about being in this country was that you didn’t have to produce passports or any kind of ID when you checked into a hotel. You used whatever name you liked, paid cash and no-one knew or cared who the fuck you were. To be on the safe side he moved around, not staying anywhere for longer than a week, and used a different name at each hotel. The task of tracking his movements would be next to impossible, given that and his constantly changing appearance. Problem was, he thought under the shower, living like this was not cheap. One had to have readies flowing in from somewhere. Fortunately for Gerald, he had run into Keith Morgan, an old mate from Kiwiland, with whom he did prison time. Morg was now an upper-level distributor for a major drug syndicate, had the Rolex and Jag Sovereign, family spread in the wilds of Harkaway, east of Melbourne, and a fuckpad in Hawthorn, and was only too happy to put Gerald on the payroll as a bagman or debt collector. It saved him a lot of grief, and he knew Gerald could be relied on. There were a lot of bad debts in the drug business, especially from bottom-feeding dealers who became users. It was a permanently running sore, and you had to fix up these cunts who thought they could play without paying. Bad for one’s rep, bad for business otherwise. And Gerald earned a commission on any debts he recovered.
This evening he was having dinner with Morg at a restaurant in Toorak. He thought that Morg was probably a bit edgy about the Donna Pritchard thing, which had got a heap of coverage in the papers and on TV. You’d have thought she was the Virgin Mary or at least a film star instead of a fuckin’ junkie and a whore, Christ. Gerald held no fears: these things always blew over, and they had less than Buckley’s of ever finding the stiff to even make a case for a homicide. It wasn’t easy getting rid of a body, especially if you were in unfamiliar surroundings, as Gerald had learned from experience. You couldn’t just cruise around all day with this stiff in the boot looking for a suitable spot – it had to be planned, like a military operation. He had learned from living off the land how to suss out a place.
Gerald had a quick shave, ran the razor over his shiny dome, brushed his teeth and got dressed. He didn’t have a lot of clothes, being mainly on the move, but the reefer jacket and slacks served him well for most occasions. Everything else he owned, including the Browning .45 revolver he had acquired in the army, fitted into a tote bag that he carried over his shoulder like a day pack. He wouldn’t bother with the arm sling tonight, not for evening wear. He strapped his short-bladed knife to his leg inside his sock, checked his finances – though he assumed Morg would play the generous host, big-noting himself – splashed on some cologne and went outside to whistle up a cab. Nobody could whistle up a cab like Gerald Kamp. He was famous for it, nearly as much as for the size of his snake.
The restaurant was a chic French number called Trompe L’Oeil, which Gerald discovered meant ‘trick of the eye’, referring to a style of painting. There was one on the back wall depicting a French provincial scene through an open window with curtains blowing out. It looked so real you would swear you could walk right into it. It was obviously a class establishment, because they had linen tablecloths and napkins, silver cutlery and very large wine goblets. And the waiters were deferential, not palsy.
Morg was already there when Gerald arrived, twenty minutes late. A bottle of Moet was turned upside down in the ice bucket by the table. After the handshakes between the men, Morg introduced him – as Lewis Kenny – to a smart little piece in a strapless evening dress named Sondra, whom Gerald assumed was Morg’s fuckpad punch. She was much too young and raunchy to be his wife and the mother of his children. Gerald shook hands with her, noticing she wore false eyelashes, about a litre of mascara and green nail polish. The waiter arrived with another bottle of Moet, poured a flute for Gerald and topped up the others. Gerald wasn’t a champagne man, that was sheilas’ piss, but this stuff was all right.
‘So what do you do, Lewis?’ Sondra asked, when he’d quaffed most of the wine in his glass.
‘I’m a sort of handyman, love,’ Lewis told her. ‘I do odd jobs for people.’
‘I see. Do you do odd jobs for Keith?’
‘Don’t ask so many fuckin’ questions,’ Morg snapped at her. Definitely edgy. ‘He’s a mate of mine, right? Leave it at that.’
‘Shit, I was just making polite conversation,’ Sondra said. ‘Excuse me.’
‘You keep your fuckin’ polite conversation to yourself. That’s not what you’re here for, to go asking personal questions you got no business asking. In fact, why don’t you piss off to the little girls’ room while I have a quick chat to Lewis. Go on, now.’
Miffed, Sondra scooped up her bag and left the table, and when she was out of earshot Morg said, ‘Mate, I don’t have to tell you I am far from comfortable with what happened to that girl Donna.’
‘Forget it, mate,’ Gerald said. ‘She’s down the bottom of a fuckin’ mine shaft. At least I assume it’s a mine shaft. It’s a fuckin’ deep hole, anyway. No-one’s gonna find her in a million years. Long after we’re gone, that’s for sure.’
‘Shit. I didn’t mean you to take the bitch out, mate.’
‘That’s not my recollection.’
‘It is mine. I oughta fuckin’ know what I said. Christ.’
Gerald drank some more champagne and said, ‘I asked you at the time, mate, I said, how far do you want to take this, and you told me: As far as you have to, mate, as long as you get the job done. Those were nearly your exact words.’
‘I didn’t mean take her out, mate. I meant rough her up, give her a scare, that’s all.’
Gerald shook his head. ‘She was past her use-by date. It’s water under the fuckin’ bridge, Morg.’
‘It’s unnecessary aggravati
on is what it is. I got a sweet operation goin’ and I’d like to keep it that way. I got cops, top cops, in my fuckin’ pocket, mate, but they can’t hack a fuckin’ homicide. That is way out of their hands, they can’t cover it. Murder is serious shit. They have experts to investigate these things.’
‘Have you been interviewed?’
‘Fuck, no. And I don’t wanna be. Mate, I got too good a life to go back inside. I’m not gonna finish up like Snapper and Croc Palmer and what’s-his-face, Paltos. Or the Mr Asia crew. I’m here for the long fuckin’ haul. But if I get connected to this Pritchard thing it’s gonna be a fuckin’ disaster, mate. I get heat too, you know, from up above. No-pne’s immune. You take yourself a bit too serious, all this Golden Condor shit. You’re startin’ to believe your own publicity. Fuckin’ mine shaft. I don’t believe it. Christ, I better not be connected.’
‘You won’t be connected. No-one will. Quit worryin’, will ya? You’re like a fuckin’ sheila tonight. Speakin’ of which, here comes yours. Nice one, too, Morg. You wanna share her around?’
‘Get fucked. Find your own snatch. You’re a big Kahuna, aren’t you?’
Sondra sat down and had a little sip. ‘Finished your boys’ talk?’ she said, taking the piss. ‘Is it all right to order something to eat now?’
‘Darling,’ Morg said, snaking an arm around her and fondling a breast for Gerald’s benefit, giving him a wink, ‘you order whatever you like.’ Into her ear he whispered audibly, ‘Just leave some room for the pork later on.’
‘Keith Morgan, you are so disgusting, I swear,’ she said, fluttering the lashes, glancing at Gerald, lapping it up. ‘And stop doing that – it’s embarrassing in front of your friend.’
Back in his room some hours later Gerald was enjoying a cigarette and smiling to himself. Keith Morgan was such a girl, for all his tough talk, and that bitchy little remark about the Golden Condor was uncalled for. Anyone else, Gerald would’ve split his face open right there. But it was hard to take Morg seriously – he was a real wanker, but a solid guy at the same time. You had to like him. The Golden Condor business referred to a segment about the rogue Kiwi commando on Sixty Minutes, which Gerald had seen, and which put Gerald in the same class as the Asian backpacker killer, Charles Sobhraj, also known as The Cobra. So: Cobra – Condor. That was a bit rich. There was also a big spread in The Australian, titled On The Trail Of The Golden Condor, which charted his activities over the years and contained anecdotes and pearls of wisdom from army mates, women he’d known and various cops who’d been after him, including Wolfgang Lutz. Because of his talent for disguises and his ability to extricate himself from tight corners, he was compared to the Scarlet Pimpernel, for Christ’s sake, and to the Jackal in Frederick Forsyth’s book. Gerald had never read it, but he made it his business to after seeing that. The story in the paper was mostly bullshit, like most of the stuff they put in the papers. They just make it up.
