Crooked

by Camilla Nelson

  The Handkerchief removed the evidence which might have shown who killed gunman Raymond ‘Ducky’ O’Connor last night.

  When O’Connor – known as Ducky because he waddled when he walked – was shot dead in the Latin Quarter, The Fastest Handkerchief whipped out his hankie and wiped all fingerprints off the murder weapon – plus another pistol that appeared miraculously on the floor.

  By the time two watching detectives pushed their way through the crowd, both guns were shining as smoothly as a sergeant major’s boots.

  There was a beautiful irony about it. Ducky O’Connor had died the way he had lived – with violence, without witnesses.

  Police Commissioner Norman Allan slammed down the newspaper and yelled at Reg Tanner as he came down the room. ‘This is not the sort of thing I want to read over the marmalade pot. This is the sort of thing I ought to be told.’

  Allan had been called from his sickbed at an unusual hour. His striped flannel pyjamas peeked at odd points from the collar and cuffs of his uniform, and his protruding potbelly blossomed like cauliflower through a half-buttoned coat. Tanner took this in as he came to a halt in front of the desk, and put on a wonderfully contrived look of angelic contrition. ‘I was going to mention it to you, Norman. Honest. Only with you being sick and all –’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop you from picking up the telephone. You dial it and it rings. Ever heard of that?’

  Tanner slackly raised his arms from his sides, palms uppermost, in a gesture of hapless apology. ‘This O’Connor character. See, he was a bit of a loser. I reckon most likely he upped and shot himself.’

  ‘Shot himself?’

  ‘I dunno how it happened –’

  ‘Too right you don’t.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You better give me a good reason why I shouldn’t yank you off this,’ said Allan, starting in on a tirade that went on for several minutes. Then he sank back down against the edge of his desk, and his eyes began to wander, anxious and allergic. ‘Hell. Just tell me what happened.’

  Tanner threw himself down into the nearest chair like he’d just been invited. ‘I guess it must’ve been a little after three. I’m down at the Latin Quarter with my eyes on McPherson and that lot, when the club starts to close and people are blowing out the door and blocking my sight. Then I hear a shout, “Look out, he’s got a gun,” so I jump to my feet and draw my revolver. I’m pushing my way across the room, hurling furniture and so forth, and then I see this bloke lying under the table. McPherson says, “Ducky O’Connor, Mr Tanner. The cunt tried to knock me.” So I say, “Sit down, you lot, and put your hands on the table.” Then I turn to Pigeye and say, “Lock the doors, Pigeye” and I bend down and see that O’Connor’s still breathing, so I say, “Ring for an ambulance and get the others here.”’

  ‘And then?’ said Allan, pacing the room between the desk and the window.

  ‘Well, about twelve inches to the right I see a small automatic pistol, a Colt .25, so I pick up the gun and put it down on a napkin. Then I see a much larger weapon, a Dreyse .32, which I put on the table alongside the Colt. Then the others arrive, so I bag up the guns and sign them over to Scientific Investigations for dusting.’

  ‘Who wiped the guns?’

  ‘I reckon I dunno.’

  Allan came to a halt at the edge of his desk. For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he said, ‘I don’t like this, Tanner. I reckon it smells.’

  Tanner eyed him soberly. ‘The last thing any of us needs is accusations of hankery-pankery flying around, what with them Labor blokes clamouring up and down Macquarie Street and the press banging on.’

  Allan walked round the side of his desk and sat down in his chair. He took off his glasses, cleaned the lenses, and put them back on. ‘Can’t you get me a witness?’

  ‘We spoke to them already.’

  ‘Well, speak to them again,’ said Allan. ‘Then report back to me personally, understand?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tanner and, when it seemed Allan wasn’t going to say anything more, picked up his hat and got ready to leave.

  Allan glanced after him. ‘How’s young Finlay coming along?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Tanner. ‘Why?’

  ‘Knew his father once. Nice bloke, but soft for a copper. Got into a muddle. Sent him out the back o’ Bourke. Three weeks later, and he topped himself. Know that?’

  ‘No,’ said Tanner, turning around with his hand on the doorknob. ‘I reckon I didn’t.’

  Allan sank a little deeper into his chair and reflected. His crook leg hurt him. He’d done the thing in by falling down the station steps one morning, landing splat on his back and mangling the cartilage. The damn thing had folded underneath him again shortly thereafter, boarding a plane out at Kingsford Smith Airport. That put him hip-down in plaster. Then there was the bit of asparagus on the floor at that politician’s kid’s bar mitzvah that cost him seven months and a kneecap …

  Scrambling to his feet, Allan strode angrily to a window that gave out on a glum courtyard filled with bits of broken brick and uncollected garbage. A thick fug of pollution drifted about the lintels of the building. He was head of the police force and in charge of everything, but down at the Criminal Investigation Branch he was in charge of nothing – there, only Tanner was in charge. Allan sent out orders. They were constantly countermanded. He requested information and got nothing back. The battle was denting his ego and sapping his strength. Pitiful as it was, he was compelled to go on or watch everything he cherished go up in a puff of black smoke.

  Allan knew there were plenty of coppers who had unusual arrangements with the criminal class and that money was involved all along the line in such transactions. Previously, he’d always been willing to turn an honest blind eye so long as nobody got hurt … and because politicians were involved. But he deeply resented the idea that Tanner should have the upper hand. And this feeling worked inexorably on him, grinding away at the mellow of his mood, until it began to assume the shape of a plan.

  Tanner walked through the rear entrance to CIB. Up ahead, the corridor was blocked off with pressmen surging out the swing doors into the stairwell, clambering over each other to get close. On the first-storey landing, an enterprising photographer stood on a three-stack of soapboxes emblazoned ‘LustreGlo’, another dangled down from the top-storey landing, with his left foot hitched round the banister, looking like a brown-suited orangutan in bottle-glass spectacles. Tanner eyed them narrowly, threw a few elbows and barged his way through. Gradually the whole gang of them creamed back from his passage, falling away. And then the doors of the squad room banged shut behind him.

  There was a lectern on the platform but Tanner didn’t use it. He hoisted his foot onto a straight-backed wooden chair – tie yanked down, shirt collar unbuttoned, twin patches of sweat darkening his armpits – and leaned into the room. He didn’t need to grab anybody’s attention. ‘Lads,’ he said, and everybody jerked themselves upright, craning towards him.

  ‘I guess you already know what that ruck in the corridor’s all about: Raymond ‘Ducky’ O’Connor. In light of recent adverse publicity the big boss has asked us to put the lid on this quick, and gather up enough evidence to substantiate a charge. Now, we know that O’Connor arrived at the Latin Quarter just before closing, we’ve got witnesses that put him through the door a little after three. More than likely, he went there looking for Lennie McPherson with the intention of shooting him. However, two guns – a Colt and a Dreyse – were found at the scene of the shooting, and neither of these guns have owners. We were hoping for fingerprints. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any.’

  ‘What’s new?’ said Gus.

  ‘Not much,’ answered Pigeye.

  ‘That’s right, detective,’ said Tanner, ‘not much at all. The coroner has confirmed the Dreyse as the probable weapon, and because the Colt wasn’t fired, I reckon we can safely work with that assumption. Bullets and cartridges have been retrieved from the scene of the shooting, but the complete ball
istics might take a couple of days. We do have leads. Officers spoke to forty eyewitnesses at the scene of the shooting and the big boss wants all of them re-interviewed –’

  There were groans, a collective stirring.

  ‘Don’t give me that.’ Tanner straightened up. ‘It’s not me who’s saying, “I don’t trust you.” Just this once it’s got to be everything by the book. In any case, it’s more than possible that there’s somebody out there who saw something but is holding back, through shock or fright, or maybe just something they don’t consider important. So, are there questions?’

  There weren’t any.

  ‘Good,’ said Tanner, and the crowd busted up.

  Gus sprang off the desk and wedged himself into the back of the queue of detectives snaking towards Pigeye, who was handing out assignments.

  Tanner put a hand on Gus’s shoulder.

  ‘Sir,’ said Gus, wheeling round.

  Tanner pulled a set of car keys out of his pocket. ‘O’Connor was carrying these. I want you to find the car they belong to. Take Agostini with you. Grid-search everything between Hyde Park and the Harbour.’

  ‘Right-o,’ said Gus. He signed off on the keys and left, banging through the swing doors with the rest of the squad.

  Tanner waited for the last muffled ring of a footfall before he switched off the lights. He returned to his desk, cocked himself back in his swivel chair, ankle on knee. He didn’t need to think about Allan. He already knew what to do. He stared blankly at the wide strip of blue sky and, etched against it, the rectangular black edge of the city.

  Gus and Agostini stepped out of the Royal Arcade into a butterball of sunshine. They were looking for an unclaimed 1958 FB Holden to match the keys found at the Latin Quarter under O’Connor’s right hand. So far three hours of grid-searching had yielded nothing but parking tickets. They headed down George Street, turned right into Liverpool Street, and wandered off through the slow sprawl of the docklands between the Trocadero and the Harbour. They passed a gold Sprite, a pink Mustang, three Falcons and a Bluebird. Then, with the plate-glass windows of the commercial district firmly behind them, a two-tone pink and plum Holden sprouting tailfins and minus four hub caps.

  ‘Okay,’ said Agostini. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘I reckon that car hasn’t gone anywhere for a very long time,’ said Gus.

  ‘You reckon?’

  Gus kicked the side of the Holden and a bit of rusted metal dropped out from under the chassis and clattered hard in the gutter. ‘Yeah, I reckon.’

  Gus and Agostini walked on, across ridges of old cobblestones forcing their way up through the asphalt. They passed the barred wooden gates of the warehouses lining Kent and Sussex Streets, walking alongside the chain-link fence that ringed the bricolage of coastguard huts, nightwatchmen’s cottages, union ticket offices and rail sidings replete with abandoned carriages, nudging up to Cockle Bay. The silos of Glebe Island stood shimmery in the distance, and a thick line of smoke lay like a wet rag along the horizon.

  Agostini stopped, hands slung low to his hips in the middle of the footpath. ‘Do you reckon it’s true then? What they’re saying about the prints?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gus, and scuffed up some gravel. ‘I got it off Driscoll. The guns were wiped.’

  Agostini whistled. ‘Who do you think it was?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Do you think it was a copper?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gus, and shuffled his feet.

  ‘Somebody in the squad?’

  Gus felt the prickle of gathering heat through his shirt. ‘I dunno …’ he said, and shook his head slowly. ‘They’re all good coppers.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Gus turned away. ‘I owe Tanner. He helped pull me out of a whole pile of shit.’

  ‘Yeah, and maybe I got it wrong then, maybe you were this blind about what Harry was up to as well.’

  Gus opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. The Darling Harbour goods yard draggle-tailed along the foreshore in front of him. Cats preened themselves in the dark hatches of shipping crates, or under mounds of stacked tyres. Dust and wheat chaff fell through the sunlight.

  From somewhere deep inside this maritime waste, a toothless old geezer in a muddy brown raincoat staggered out of a shadow, hauling a string-bag packed with loose cans of Reschs. He jumped off a crate, reared back and swung the bag cross-ways.

  ‘Oi!’ shouted Agostini. The old man cringed as Agostini lunged forward.

  ‘Leave him,’ moaned Gus. But it was already too late. The tosspot ran, and Agostini was off running after him.

  The old man was clambering over a corrugated iron fence, making for the water, when Agostini grabbed hold of his coat, dragging him down. ‘I’m arresting you for drunk and disorderly and assault on an officer.’ He snatched off the man’s hat, and kicked him methodically. The old man staggered and mumbled, and kept falling over.

  Gus caught hold of Agostini. ‘Jeez,’ he said, swinging him around. The old man chucked up, and Gus caught the load straight down his shirt front. ‘Jee-suss,’ he swore, holding his arms out and stomping his feet.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Agostini started laughing. ‘Oh, mate, I’m sorry. God, you smell bad.’

  Gus left Agostini to take the old man to the station, and strode angrily over to the pub on the corner. Weather and age having erased the first and last letters, the sign running across the awning flashed ‘OTE’ in rotating red neon.

  Agostini had never perfected the outward appearance of deep inner cynicism that was regarded by most coppers as a pre-requisite for getting on in the force. Though Gus tried not to let other coppers’ judgments weigh with him, as he walked into the Gents it struck him that Agostini was lacking in certain manly qualities. He didn’t want to be like that.

  Gus took off his glasses, laying them carefully to the side of the washstand. He peered at the half-moons of sweat under his eyes. The conversation with Agostini hadn’t been pleasant, but it had set him off thinking, particularly after what Driscoll had said about the prints on the guns. The more Gus thought about it, the more he convinced himself that Agostini was wrong-headed, and quite possibly bitter. Besides, there was a distinct possibility that forensics was wrong. Quite simply, he believed in Tanner. Nothing anyone could say could touch the core of this loyalty.

  Gus took off his jacket and yanked down his tie. He stuck his head under the cold tap and turned it full blast. He smeared soap over his face and shirt and looked back into the mirror, blinking. He flashed on a memory of his old partner, Harry, with his long blue nose and slouchy potbelly, and the way he had of blinking rapidly as if the whole world around him was just a little too bright.

  Gus remembered the night they began raiding the terraces up and down Palmer Street, closing down brothels, pushing out street molls, forcing the spivs and the hoons out of business. Treatment was rough, money was confiscated as evidence. Hundreds of arrests were racked up in a handful of weeks. It wasn’t until maybe six weeks along that the problem got noticed, that the brothels were being bought up almost as soon as they closed them. It wasn’t just bungling. Somebody was taking advantage of the crackdown – and Dolly Brennan was the name that got mentioned.

  Gus had seen Harry and Dolly together often enough. Dolly, parked in her pink Valiant at the bottom of Palmer Street. Harry, leaning into the window, mumbling something. It never crossed his mind there was anything in it. He’d always pictured Harry as a family sort of man, doing his fair share of the washing and cooking and laundry. Then he didn’t know a thing. Not for sure.

  Dolly had a problem. She gambled. All the money she made went straight back through the tables, so nobody was particularly surprised when she stepped off the deep end, drastically in debt, and running wild with it. Telling off street cops. Tearing up traffic tickets. Telling her creditors that it was Harry who owned all the brothels on Palmer Street. That she was a small cog in Harry’s wheel, kept on a retainer of around fifty a week. Of course, the creditors
didn’t believe it. In any case, they had Dolly declared bankrupt and dragged before the court. Next morning, the whole sorry episode was splashed over the papers. Gus remembered Dolly caught in the glare of a photograph. Tearful, turning away from the cameras, a hat made of split ribbons pulled over platinum curls, masking her face with a copy of the morning’s newspaper, which said, ‘Askin Ahead’ (it had been the middle of the State election).

  That night Harry had turned up on his doorstep, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. His voice was thick, his speech shambolic. He’d said Dolly had gone missing and asked Gus to help.

  It had taken them a little over three hours to find her, though she hadn’t gone far. As things turned out, she’d holed up in a flyblown motel in the backstreets of Enmore, the kind with a pink cupid shooting neon arrows through a sign, put a penny in the slot for the radio, and washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with a half-pint of gin. Dolly had been packed off to hospital to have her stomach pumped. Harry resigned from the force and disappeared. Allan ordered a high-profile comb put through Darlinghurst Station, and Tanner was assigned to carry out the inquiry.

  Gus wiped his face on a grubby yellow handtowel, throwing it down on the floor. Five minutes later found him hunched over the basin, the bright eddy of his memory swirling around him.

  Gus made his way back into CIB, checked his messages, and shoved his notebook and holster into the bottom drawer of his desk. He changed into the fresh blue cotton shirt that he kept in his locker, then worked his way down the linoleum-covered corridor, barging in through the swing doors marked Scientific Investigations. Inside, the walls were lined with pea-green glazed tiles, six stainless steel benches marched in two rows down the room, and a stack of repackaged cartons labelled ‘Arnotts’ sat by the door, bulging with sinister exhibits on their way to the courtroom. Balancing on top, a battered tin wireless was tuned to the ABC World Service.