Drive By

by Michael Duffy

  You know he is right, honey, says Danielle, who was listening to the conversation. You know lawyers run the world these days. You want to use one of your own people, a young bloke. She grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed it the way she knows I like and Farid got the hard look. He is such a good Muslim he does not approve of public displays of affection. I know he does not like Dani, but he was okay with her listening to us talk about all this stuff so I guess he trusted her. I guess you can trust someone you don’t like just like you can like someone you don’t trust.

  I am going, Farid said, giving me a hug to show the conversation was finished. We were at home and it was after dinner and he had to get back to Reem and the little ones.

  Later Dani says she is going home too, and I say, I thought we were going out? Not tonight, lover, she says, I have a headache. Give me a kiss.

  I kissed her, wishing everyone was not watching and I could do it properly. I tell you, I was loving that woman so much. When she was gone I went to talk to the papa about Mr White but he was watching Neighbours with Mama and Shada and waved me away. When Neighbours was finished and the women were in the kitchen washing up I went and sat down, said, Can we talk about something? But he was watching The Simpsons and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  I went into my room and read a Lexus manual, and later I came out and found him smoking a cigarette in the garden and looking at his zucchinis in the dark. He always looks happy then, like he has found peace after the war and stuff he left Lebanon for many years ago. But I needed to talk about this thing. When I started he put up a hand and said, You are a mechanic, Jabber. Leave business to the businessmen in the family.

  I don’t know where this thing of mechanics being stupid came from, but I can see the papa is not wanting to talk about anything now and we went back inside the house. Once the papa has spoken, that is the end.

  Paul Easterley went into the box and described the first twelve hours of the investigation, before Homicide arrived. He’d been working in the Ds’ office at Roselands, uniform had called from the crime scene.

  ‘I arrived at 10.30 pm,’ he said, ‘and parked in Wilson Street. I exited the vehicle and went over to a group of uniformed police officers and saw the body on the ground about fifty metres inside the park, on the grass, close to a bench. The body was lying on its stomach and I observed a number of gunshot wounds.’

  Mabey: ‘What happened next?’

  Easterley: ‘After discussion with other officers present I searched the deceased’s back pockets and found a wallet containing a driver’s licence in the name of Jason Teller. The crime scene officers arrived soon after and when they had photographed the body I had it turned over, and observed its face appeared to match the photo on the licence.’

  Mabey: ‘Appeared to?’

  Easterley: ‘There was a lot of blood on the face and at least one bullet wound, in the top of the head.’

  They’d found nothing at the scene apart from shell casings and a LandCruiser registered to Teller, parked in Wilson Street. No gun, no DNA on the body, no eyewitnesses or CCTV. When nearby residents had been canvassed, that night and the next day, they’d contributed nothing except a few vague memories of noises like firecrackers somewhere between 9 and 9.30. The sounds had not motivated them to leave their televisions, and the body had been found by a man walking his dog just before 10 pm.

  Mabey: ‘Were there keys on the body?’

  Easterley: ‘No.’

  He’d run a check on Teller’s name and found nothing in New South Wales, lots in Victoria, mainly drugs. Jail time. The name had been tagged to the NSW Drug Squad and Easterley put in a call. An officer named Brian Harris rang at 1 am, told Easterley that Teller had been a major dealer in Sydney. Easterley’s boss decided to call in the Homicide Squad.

  Mabey: ‘Was that unusual?’

  Easterley: ‘It was getting complicated, not a walk-up. Detective Inspector Harris told us Teller had a number of enemies.’

  Mabey: ‘And he was a long way from home when he died?’

  Easterley: ‘That’s right.’

  Mabey: ‘You decided you needed to call in the experts?’

  Pause.

  Easterley: ‘We decided we needed more resources.’

  Mabey: ‘And that was when Detective Sergeant Knight became the investigation’s officer in charge?’

  Easterley: ‘Almost. There was someone else picked first, I think. But for some reason he couldn’t do it. When I got to the office the next morning, Knight was there.’

  Mate, Rafi called me at work at 10.05 am on the day of the interview to say he was waiting around the corner at Roselands Police Station. Salim hadn’t turned up and he wanted me to go there. I duck so Chris Taylor can’t see me on the phone and say, I can’t do everything for you, bro. You just call him—he has probably been delayed in traffic. Rafi says he’s tried to do that and Salim’s phone is off. I say, Have you called his office? and Rafi says he doesn’t have the number.

  This is what I mean when I say Rafi was just a kid. Sure, he was innocent but he was like a child too and sometimes you wondered if the way we’d treated him had helped make him like that. To cut a long story, I get on to Salim ten minutes later and he tells me his BMW has broken down somewhere in Canterbury. I say, I will come over and fix it. He says, It’s okay I have called the NRMA. Mate, I say, they take for hours. Give me the address and I’ll be right there.

  Thinking, what am I going to tell Chris Taylor this time? But, Hang on, says Salim, the NRMA bloke has just arrived. Do me a favour, mate, and tell Rafiq I’ll have to reschedule. He hangs up.

  I swear to you, until then I didn’t know things were that bad with Salim, but now I saw he was like a lot of other guys I knew, he thought he could make things be different to what they were just by saying it, by telling a story. But meanwhile, Rafi was waiting outside a station of cops who hated him, and Sam Deeb was out there wanting to kill him because some fuckwit has told him Rafi knocked one of his soldiers. It was a situation Mr White would never have allowed to have happened.

  I got away from work with some story and drove to Roselands, hooked up with Rafi, who was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt without a tie. He looks good in a suit, like a serious sort of person, not like the kid brother I think of him as like. He looks like a fashion model or something, long eyelashes and smooth skin and a curvy mouth like a girl’s. I say hello and ask how many lectures he is missing today and he looks puzzled then says, Well this is more important isn’t it? I say, Sure, good to see you know how important this is, you got to remember that at all times.

  Really my heart is opening for Rafi, the thought of my younger brother in trouble ripping it up. We all of us brothers are handsome, but there’s something extra about Rafi. Imad’s got them scars across his left cheek and the ’roids have swollen his face. Farid’s put on a bit of weight too, although with him it’s from the pastries, and he’s got this nose—on some people a broken nose looks good, but with Farid it just looks crooked. And then I’ve got these acne scars because the papa didn’t think I needed to see a doctor, it was a very busy time for the family with Imad being charged over that thing with the rocket launcher. Apart from that I’m a pretty good-looking bloke still. But Rafi, he is the pick of us brothers, it’s like God got really warmed up by the time he got to number four. No wonder everyone loves him.

  The jacks were different, of course. Anyone called Habib, you were not going to get a break with these people because of the racial prejudice and all the other stuff. We went around the corner and down the street to the cop shop, and I tell you I didn’t look up as we reached it and opened the front door. Imad’s crew drive-byed it after he was arrested for the murders, but no one was hit. No one was ever charged either. I mean, the jacks was suspicious but what could they do? Imad was in Silverwater, which was a pretty good alibi. The cops interviewed Farid and all the boys but they were innocent until proven and there was no proof. Farid likes to say, This is Australia, land of mi
lk and honey and the English legal system.

  People said the drive-by was all about the racism but that was bullshit, it was because Imad had a hundred per cent protection from the detectives there, the local boys was all crooks and everything was cool until one day we started getting bothered for everything and then they let us down real bad and Imad was arrested and all. And like none of them jacks was ever charged, they was all moved to other parts of the city and what are the people to do? It was like sending a message, and believe me the message was sent with lead.

  It was a major effort and the jacks was so lucky none of them was hit. Although if Imad wanted to be sure I don’t know why he didn’t just use a bomb or something. P’raps if he had spent more time in school he would have known more about technology. Anyway, it’s all been renovated since then with painted concrete and shit and, mate, quite frankly, I’d rather forget about the whole thing.

  The female at the front desk was a small thing, she looked like she was about to fall over from the weight of all the equipment she had round her waist. She didn’t look too happy when I gave our names. She gets on some phone and after a few minutes this sheila with watching eyes and a brown suit comes out and says she’s Detective Ralston from the Homicide Squad. She’s an attractive woman from what I could see under this cheap suit she’s wearing. Tall and with dark hair almost to her shoulders, maybe a big too strong-looking for me but still pretty good. Something about the ethnicity there too in her bones though I couldn’t tell what. But her eyes mate, I tell you, the way she was looking at us, like death-stare territory.

  I hear you’re trying to stop more killings, I say, and she says, Where is Mr Soufi? I start to tell the story about the NRMA and she ignores me and says, Let’s go inside, Rafiq. I tell her I’m coming too and she says, Rafiq’s over eighteen—he can speak for himself. I say, Rafiq is younger than he looks. This is the truth, he is almost delicate sometimes, it is hard to put into words. So I say to the jack, We will wait for Salim. Okay, she says without looking at me, you can come in too. She looks at the other female and she opens the door for us.

  Ralston takes us inside and through these corridors and rooms and I’m telling you, every jack we passed was standing or sitting there not working, just staring at us without saying anything. The whole police station had gone real quiet. I try not to worry—we were really outnumbered if any of them decided to have a go, but you got to be brave. And too, if they left any marks on us they would be in so much shit. I walk straight and look over at Rafi to see how he’s taking it and he’s just bouncing along, happy as ever, and I am proud of my little brother. There’s this big bloke frowning at us and Rafi just winks and says, G’day, mate, how’s it going?

  Most jacks are stupid, in my experience. But the smart ones are worst, because they’re bored. This detective sergeant was waiting for us when we got to the interview room, fat old bloke in dark clothes, called Knight. He had this moustache like from the seventies or something so you didn’t see he was smart right off. Then you saw his eyes. They weren’t dead but interested in you and he didn’t care if you noticed. When he shook, his hand was strong and dry.

  ‘Rafiq Habib and his brother Jabber,’ Ralston said.

  ‘It’s John,’ I said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Rafiq says he won’t do the interview unless John’s present.’

  ‘No worries, mate,’ said the sergeant, looking at me, paying me that respect. ‘Take a seat, both of you.’

  We sit down one end of the table and the jacks sit on either side of us.

  Rafi says, cheeky, ‘You blokes going to be on the film too?’

  ‘You bet. Everyone needs to see we’re not making any threats,’ Ralston said. She put her fingers to her head like a gun, smiled.

  I said, ‘Just turn the fucking camera on, all right?’

  Knight was grinning at Rafi, who smiled back, and I wanted to whisper to my baby brother, He does not care who you are. To him you are like vermin. But the camera came on and it was too late.

  They started with all this legal stuff and you could tell it wasn’t important because Ralston did all the talking, Knight just leaned back with his arms folded and kept smiling at Rafi, smiled at me too when he got me looking. Ralston went on about inducements and all the usual shit but all of a sudden the start was over and you could tell because there was a change in the atmosphere that reminded me of a car changing gears.

  Knight said, ‘You ever met Jason Teller, Rafiq?’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  ‘Ever heard of him?’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  It was what Salim had told Rafi last night: act stupid and slow on all the questions, so if they get to a tricky one and you have to think for a bit, jacks won’t know the difference. Not that Rafi had anything to hide, but these pricks might try to fit him up or anything, you just had to protect yourself.

  ‘Not a hard question,’ Knight said. ‘I’ll let you know when we get to the hard ones.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Didn’t hear he was killed in Gallipoli Park two days ago? Four bullets in him.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘I would have thought it was news, especially in your neck of the woods.’

  ‘Uh, my what?’

  ‘It’s an expression, Rafiq. Means where you live.’

  ‘I don’t live there no more. Got a place in Alexandria.’

  ‘Parents happy with that, a good Muslim boy moving out of home?’

  ‘Uh, not really.’

  Ralston came in, said, ‘You going to uni?’

  ‘Yeah. How’d you know that?’

  ‘Is it a secret?’

  I said, ‘Hey—’

  ‘Not a word!’ Knight suddenly turned real fierce, right in my face. ‘One more word from you and I’ll have you taken outside. You are not this young man’s lawyer.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m doing okay,’ said Rafi. ‘It’s cool.’

  That was so much like Rafi, wanting everybody to be friends. Like a lamb among lions. We should have walked out then, but I thought with the cameras and all that, it mightn’t look so good. I mean, Salim said they played them in court.

  ‘You’re in second-year business studies,’ Ralston said, ‘so you must be smart and you must be able to read. I suppose you watch television?’

  ‘Not much, I go out a lot. Sometimes the morning TV stuff, if I get up in time.’

  ‘How you going at uni?’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, hoping Knight would not shout again, but, like, fuck him. ‘What’s this got to do with Jason Teller?’

  Knight ignored me this time, said to Rafi, ‘You did hear about Jason Teller, didn’t you?’

  ‘Uh, I guess.’

  ‘What did you hear about it?’

  Rafi looked at me, doing the dumb thing, and I had to turn away, I thought I was going to laugh. After a while he said, ‘Uh, I forget.’

  Knight said, ‘What you’re doing, fucking around with us, it used to be called dumb insubordination in the British Army. You know that?’ Rafi opened his mouth and looked at me. ‘There’s names for it today too, it’s a passive–aggressive attitude often adopted by people who are powerless.’

  I wanted to say something, it was not right to give us some psychology lecture. There must be a law—

  ‘But you’re not powerless, you’re a uni student, your brother’s a senior mechanic with Toyota Australia, he’s stayed out of trouble and he’ll be running the place one day. So don’t you just think we can have a conversation like normal adults who respect each other?’

  Rafi looked at me like he couldn’t understand a word he’d heard.

  At last he said the same thing I was thinking. ‘Respect?’

  Knight looked at me and I wanted to speak, felt I ought to get myself into the conversation. But what could I tell him, a skip and a jack, on this subject? He went back to Rafi.

  ‘Yeah, man to man. I know your brothers have told you not to cooperate with the police, t
hat’s a man thing. But this is a man thing too, you and me, just having a conversation. I mean, you agreed to come in here, so why are you fluffing around now, acting like a kid?’

  ‘Don’t you fucking—’ I began to say, but Ralston stood up so I stopped and put up my hands. She looked pretty big in that small room and I wondered if female jacks did that sort of thing too, beat people up but made it look like self-defence in front of the cameras.

  Knight waved his hand and Ralston sat down. I gave her the next-time look but she was avoiding my eyes.

  ‘It’s up to Rafiq now,’ Knight said. ‘How old are you, mate?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘Up to Rafiq to decide what he wants to do. We’re trying to help, we’ve heard the Deebs think you killed Mr Teller. That’s no good, is it?’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘The Who?’ Knight said, putting on a whiny voice. ‘We talking about music now, are we?’

  ‘Why would they?’ I said.

  This thing about the Deebs, it had got me worried. Things had been quiet for a few months.

  Knight looked at me, and he wasn’t saying nothing about me leaving the room now. ‘Some people think Jason Teller had something to do with Imad going to Goulburn.’

  ‘I never heard that.’

  ‘If you brothers did believe it, I can see Rafiq manning up.’ He turned back to Rafi. ‘Did you?’

  I liked the way he assumed we boys would stick together through darkness and light.

  ‘No,’ said Rafi.

  ‘Where were you at about 10.15 pm on Sunday the fourth of April?’

  ‘Uh, I was at my parents’ at Auburn at a family barbecue.’

  ‘How many people were there?’

  ‘I dunno. About twenty, all the family and their wives and stuff. Some friends.’

  ‘You were there—’

  ‘From eight o’clock, just after, to later, after eleven. Lots of people can verify that.’