Crooked

by Camilla Nelson

  ‘Think about this carefully. Do you remember the gun?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it was a Dreyse,’ said Dolly, brightly. Gus stared across the room in blazing disbelief. Dolly pulled herself upright, indignant. ‘I could see the gun. I couldn’t have missed it. It fell right on my foot.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the officers at the scene then?’

  ‘Because Sammy tells me I’m making a fuss. He says it could’ve been a cigarette lighter or anything. So I say, “Okay,” and Sammy says, “No worries. I’ll take care of it.”’

  ‘You just left it, even after you knew a bloke had been murdered?’ Gus was incredulous.

  ‘Like I said, I had my reasons. Now I’m tired,’ Dolly added. ‘Please leave.’

  Pigeye jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The lady says that she’s tired.’

  Gus stooped down to collect his hat. ‘We’d like you to make a statement.’

  ‘Fine …’ said Dolly, her eyelids drooping delicately shut.

  Gus followed Pigeye out into the evening, kicking the door shut behind him.

  Police Commissioner Norman Allan was standing at the small Kooka stove in his kitchen, waving a plastic eggslice over a pan. It was Thursday night, and on Thursdays his wife was out selling Avon cosmetics door-to-door. He was dressed in a red tartan dressing-gown and matching felt slippers.

  ‘The Brennan woman,’ he said, tilting his glasses to make them magnify. ‘Wasn’t she mixed up in that business with Harry Giles?’

  Tanner was sitting on an aluminium stool by the kitchen table. ‘Yeah, but I reckon Dolly’s testimony’s as good as anybody else’s. Maybe you don’t understand the style of person who’s frequenting these nightclub establishments –’

  Tanner tried to fix Allan in the eye as he answered, but Allan was shaking his head. ‘Thing is, I had that bloke from Scientific Investigations in my office this morning, telling me the chances O’Connor shot himself are about zero. He says the thingummy in the gun was manipulated after the shot was got off. He swears that’s the only way the gun could’ve jammed.’

  Tanner shifted slightly in his seat. ‘I don’t want to knock poor Wally – he’s good with his tricks – but I reckon his thinking about the gun is a little ambiguous. I also reckon that given the lack of clear evidence that the shooting was anything else –’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ said Allan, abruptly. He took the frypan off the stove and put it down on the table. ‘Do you reckon I’m blind to the slings being copped down at CIB?’

  Tanner didn’t move, but his face drained of colour. ‘Don’t put that on me. I wouldn’t cop one from a bloody criminal.’

  ‘But you’d drop one on a dead bloke in order to protect one.’

  ‘McPherson’s a long standing fizgig of mine.’

  Allan cocked his head to one side as if to observe Tanner from a more telling angle. ‘I reckon that you ought to go round and have a talk to that bloke … who was it?’ He picked up the eggslice and started dishing his eggs onto a plate. ‘The bloke that put the frighteners on the Brennan woman because he didn’t want a fuss.’

  ‘Sammy Lee.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Allan. ‘Some sort of wop, isn’t he?’

  ‘Four-by-two,’ said Tanner. ‘Yid.’

  Allan rushed on. ‘Well, I reckon you better square it off with him, make sure he’s willing to back up this witness you’ve got.’ He paused, and said, ‘I don’t suppose everything at that club is aboveboard? He’s living on the wink and I’m sure you can use that to bring him to a workable agreement.’

  Until now Allan’s eyes had been lowered, concentrating on his eggs, but when he looked up he was grinning – and Tanner, marvelling at the way in which he had conducted the conversation, started grinning too.

  ‘I take it this is a financial arrangement we’re talking about?’

  ‘I’d prefer to regard it as a fee for a managerial service,’ said Allan, and gave a suck of his teeth to underline his shrewdness.

  Gus got back to the squad room an hour after Tanner. He sat down at his desk and got on with his work. The squad room grew dark and, little by little, emptied around him until there wasn’t a sound except for the drone of a static-ridden wireless and the flicker of the black aluminium lamp shining down on his desk. He pulled the paper out of his Olivetti and pushed back his chair. He was increasingly troubled by the events of that evening and, like it or not, he couldn’t shirk off or be quit of them. He stared down at the linoleum between his brogues, then hauled himself upright and knocked on Tanner’s door.

  ‘What’s up?’ Tanner ran his signature over a last bit of paper before raising his eyes.

  Gus stepped towards the desk. ‘Sir, I need to talk to you about the O’Connor case.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘About Dolly Brennan, it’s a bit complicated. I reckon she’s lying.’

  Tanner eyed Gus benignly. ‘Look, I can understand you might have a problem with Dolly, especially after what she did to poor Harry. But frankly, in a matter such as this, we haven’t got much choice as to witnesses. My advice to you is to leave well alone. I reckon as far as everybody here is concerned, the matter is closed.’

  Gus wasn’t put off so easily. ‘But how come Dolly just turns up all of a sudden? It doesn’t feel right. Then there’s Driscoll’s report about the jam in the Dreyse, and the missing prints on the guns –’ Gus struggled on. ‘I mean, everything points to the fact there’s a copper involved.’

  Gus had been firm in his own mind about the importance of speaking to Tanner about the things that were bothering him, and of Tanner’s ability and willingness to dispel all his doubts. But now he felt frighteningly alone in this opinion. He no longer knew what he wanted to say, and had a very strong sense that he’d said too much already.

  ‘Tell me, precisely,’ said Tanner, ‘who is it you’re pointing the finger at? Me, maybe? Or some copper who’s not got a chance to be in here defending himself? Yeah, there was a balls-up with the guns. Maybe some copper did it, maybe it was the cleaner. Maybe it was some accident happened down at Scientific Investigations. I dunno what it was. But I do know that this isn’t a time to be hurling accusations. It’s a time to pull together, show some solidarity with the rest of your colleagues. Why are you trying to destroy some good copper’s career?’ He paused. ‘You’re one of us, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Gus, hanging his head.

  ‘You don’t suppose. You are or you’re not.’

  ‘I am,’ said Gus.

  Tanner cupped a hand to his ear. ‘Speak up, I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘I am,’ Gus repeated, louder.

  ‘Good to hear it,’ Tanner went on. ‘The reason I got you in here was because I was impressed by your loyalty, especially the way you stuck by poor Harry when nobody else would. I’ve always considered that a police force survives on loyalty between work-mates. We’ve got to go out there, weekly, daily, backing each other up, going into crooks’ houses and hide-outs and whatnots, and knowing that we’re coming out alive because of the copper who’s standing beside us.’

  Gus felt the words smite him. ‘I came here in good conscience. I’d never have gone to anybody else. And also, in the interests of justice,’ he added, a bit prim.

  ‘Justice?’ said Tanner. ‘I find out a brother officer’s involved in some trouble, I cover up for the bastard, no matter what sort of mug he might be. I lie if need be, and I verbal any crook who says things to the contrary.’

  Gus struggled to speak out some word of defiance. He’d stuck up for Harry, but Harry was straight.

  He felt a firm hand clasp him on the shoulder.

  ‘I’m not asking you to do anything,’ said Tanner. ‘Just to look after yourself.’

  Gus clambered into the Falcon and swung onto the expressway, over the Bridge. He drove on, through seemingly enchanted vistas of dragon-flanked restaurants and prawn-cocktail palaces, a counter in the shape of a windmill selling five-cheese fondue, and a billboard peddl
ing imported whitegoods. Up ahead, the lights of two television towers competed with a star-freckled heaven, and then the tang of saltwater mingled with the fumes of the highway and the smell of the Harbour washed in. Gus dropped off the main road, curving down through a tangle of side streets, heading towards a handful of California-style bungalows fighting their way through the underbrush. He pulled up on the gravel shoulder of the road, and doused the lights.

  Dick Reilly’s house was humped on a patch of land inching out into the bay. Around it, clumps of blue gums and sugar gums scrabbled down to the water where a spun-glass speedboat made its way through the dark. Gus got out of the car and walked a few paces, staring up at the ghostly white bulk of the building, a pile of ageing lawn-chairs stacked against the front porch, a crazy-paved pathway wandering towards an ornamental pond in the shape of a wishing-well in the middle of the grass. He didn’t move or make any gesture. Just stood there, thinking – and not getting any answers. Slowly, the sky came over purplish and the rain started falling. First, in glittering pinpoints, then in fat, plunking drops that gushed off the brim of his hat. After a while, his hat brim drooped, and the rain came pouring over his face.

  Gus tripped over four bottles of sour milk on his way through the front door. He’d failed to collect them earlier that morning, and his mother was away on a P&O cruise. He made his way across the peach-coloured carpet that she had recently put in, into the small flat out back, where he’d been living since the age of eighteen. The sitting room was almost bare, except for a single boy scouts trophy gathering dust on the bookshelf, and his graduating picture from the police academy hanging on the wall.

  Gus picked up the telephone and rang Harry Giles. The manager of the Myola Camping and Caravan Park picked up on the second ring, but it took more than ten minutes for Harry to come to the telephone. Gus told Harry about the case. But as soon as Dolly’s name crept into the conversation, Harry clammed up.

  ‘I can’t help you, Gus.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’

  Harry drew in an audible breath. ‘I’ve drawn a line. That’s what they told me to do, and that’s what I’ve done. I’ve got a new life. I don’t want to go over my mistakes in the old one.’

  ‘I need some advice.’

  There was a particularly long pause. ‘Look, Tanner’s a bit rough around the edges, but his heart’s in the right place. He’s a stand-up bloke. If you stick to him, he’ll carry you the whole nine yards.’

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. Tanner helped me out when nobody else would. He gave me a character reference before the court. He made sure I got out of the force on full pension. It sounds to me like there’s some poor copper in this case of yours who’s getting a second chance.’

  ‘What about Dolly Brennan?’

  Harry sighed. ‘I knew your father, Gus. Did I ever tell you that? I don’t want you to end up like he did.’

  Gus felt his hackles rise. ‘A failure, you mean?’

  ‘Your father was a good bloke. I respected him as a copper. He had a run-in with the wrong sort of people and got sent to the sideline. Don’t get me wrong,’ he added. ‘You’re not going to find any skeletons in that particular cupboard. Just promise me you won’t throw away your career.’

  Gus told Harry yes, and they spoke for another few minutes before Harry rang off. Gus sat by the window and stared at the night. The only thing he saw was a bunch of dead ends, with none of them getting him any closer to anything.

  JUNE 1967

  Charlie Gillespie entered gate three of the Sydney Stadium and shoved his way down the aisle. The ring was empty. Just above the ring-lights the air was split-level with smoke, like a mist rising off flat ground. He scanned the thicket of faces shadowed under felt hats, the smouldering orange ends of cigars flaring over chins and foreheads. High mesh wire divided the ring from the terrace, and behind the terrace were the bleachers, row upon row of bare wooden planks, rising steeply from the small-upraised square in the centre.

  He found Browne seated ringside. Charlie took the vacant seat beside him as the lights went down and the fighters came out – spotlights trailing them down the aisle. The champ took the ropes at a hurdle, dancing about the ring with arms extended, gloves pressed together, and the whole crowd yelling back at him, stomping and caterwauling for the flyweight with the wild, swinging style. (‘Born with the Italian’s inherent love of spaghetti,’ ran the fight promo. ‘He is also very keen on Australian steaks.’)

  Then the yammer and hum of the crowd died down until there wasn’t a sound, except the surreptitious scrape of a beer bottle on concrete, and the creak of wooden seats as the crowd shifted position, poised and waiting for the fighters to touch gloves.

  Inside the ring, the champ came out fast, whirling and swinging. The challenger was more cautious, dancing with his chin tucked into his chest, blue smudges flaring under his eyes. The champ was on him before his gloves went up. Left after left came flashing from the champion until he brought over a full roundhouse swing, landing flush and solid to the side of his face. The crowd rose, swaying to its feet.

  ‘Go after him, you mug,’ yelled Browne. ‘Go after the bastard!’

  Charlie turned his eyes away from the action. Chip sellers dodged up and down the aisles, cameras waltzed backwards and forwards under the ring, and dough-fat men with one too many beers under their belts ducked off to the Gents. Charlie’s eyes alighted on a technicolour sign, ‘Insist on Bell’s Double Seated Briefs’. Seated underneath it was Premier Bob Askin, muttering deferentially to his good friend Frank Packer, owner of Sydney Newspapers Ltd and publisher of the Telegraph.

  Inside the ring, the referee threw his arms wide. The champ made a victory tour of the canvas, bending his knees, worrying the ropes. An incongruous anthem struck up. The crowd surged forward, cramming the aisles, climbing over seat backs, prying their way with shoulders and elbows. Askin got up and appeared to be moving towards them – the crowd falling watchfully back from his passage until they were standing together under the ring.

  Askin poked a stubby forefinger at Browne’s chest. ‘Too much weaving and jabbing the long lefts. “Left hook,” I yelled at him. “Left hook.”’

  Browne chortled. ‘I reckon the job of holding him up must have been harder than knocking him down.’

  ‘That’s an unworthy thought.’

  Browne let out a full-throated roar and Askin laughed too. Then Askin was patting his coat pocket for a light. Charlie dug a packet of matches out of his pocket and stroked up a flame. Askin glanced at him with mild surprise, as if seeing him standing there for the very first time. Browne introduced them.

  ‘Browne tells me you’re a racing man,’ said Askin, glancing sideways at Charlie as he puffed at the flame. ‘My good friend Packer’s got a filly running in the fifth at Randwick. What do you think?’

  ‘Blue Cairo by a length,’ said Charlie.

  Askin seemed to find this unbearably funny. ‘Not if he’s being asked to rely on any God-given abilities.’ He slapped his thigh, laughing in quick bursts like a sea mammal. ‘Browne’s told me a few things about you. He says you’ve got a friend who wants to give me a donation.’ He wandered off a step and then, as if recollecting something, turned back. ‘Here’s what.’ He rested his cigar hand gently on Charlie’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you bring him to the racetrack on Saturday? Maybe we can nut out something or other. Also, that way I can watch your face when that pox horse Blue Cairo falls over the finish line six lengths behind the rest of his mob.’

  In the world in which Charlie aspired to live, important pursuits were treated as if they were only mildly significant to the people they really concerned, and such people were to behave as if they were only half serious about the things for which they were asking. So though Charlie’s heart was fit to burst with his triumph, he laughed and joked and threw a wet blanket over the matter as if the whole episode was of no consequence at all.

 
; But once they were shot of the crowd, the charade fell away. ‘Does Askin really know about Reilly?’

  ‘What’s there to know?’ Browne wandered on ahead. ‘As far as the world is concerned Reilly is a legitimate businessman. He enforces a degree of order in a world of illegal enterprises whose denizens might feel a little different from you or I about seeking official help. I guarantee he’s good at making lots of noise, and scaring up the sort of thing that frightens people half to death, but there are some who would see such a service as a benefit to society. Frankly, I don’t know another well-to-do blackguard of whom you might say as much.’

  ‘I mean, about his being a criminal,’ Charlie blurted out.

  Browne stared at Charlie with some perplexity. ‘And what is crime, but a wilder form of enterprise than the one that we’re used to? I tell you, the criminal fraternity is perhaps the only functional model of pure capitalism, the only instance of free enterprise working as … well, free enterprise.’

  Charlie tried to protest, but Browne was awash in a sea of sophistry. Soon he found himself standing on the doorstep outside the Mansions Hotel.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I reckon you’ve got to give Reilly the good news.’

  Browne crossed the road and walked down a dark tunnel of buildings. Charlie caught up to him outside the Kellett Club door. The street was quiet, and there was nobody about except for a bag lady with rouge on her cheeks and a delphinium in her hair. Browne bent forward to knock on the door, but it gave way under his hand. Inside, the hall was scattered with carnations of newsprint and empty wooden crates labelled ‘Darjeeling Tea Co’.

  Browne blinked hard in the semi-darkness. ‘I reckon we’re a bit late.’

  Reilly had disappeared, but it didn’t take long for Charlie to find him. He parted with Browne on the doorstep of the Mansions Hotel, then followed the bartender’s directions back to the crenellated black brick building on the opposite corner. A sign in oil-slick neon was fixed across the second-storey window. But the sign was turned off and the place appeared empty. Charlie reached the first-storey landing, and disappeared through a bead curtain.