Drive By

by Michael Duffy

  Karen feared for her husband, knowing drug users vote, and people are never happy to be told they are to blame for anything. As Stephen himself observed, they suffer from what at times looks like willful dumbness. But as he’d also explained, after they’d made love one night, it was a fight he had to have.

  ‘In politics you’re either going up or down, there is no stasis. Chris and I need to have a fight, one of us will win. Everyone knows that. And this is the fight it has to be at this time.’

  They’d had conversations like this before. She’d found it disconcerting at first, his desire to talk of politics after sex. Had come to see it was a form of intimacy, the only time he revealed his fear.

  Politicians were different. She had realised this as she spent more time with them and saw Stephen, despite his quick mind and sophistication, his superiority to most of his colleagues, shared with them an ego the size of a child’s. Shared with them the capacity for remorseless aggression, always stabbing or being stabbed. The ability to cope with that, while appearing to be a normal person and to do good work, required extraordinary qualities of character. Few people knew these things, and she felt part of an important secret.

  She didn’t know if Stephen’s drug idea would work—she was not political, and unlike him didn’t have a degree in economics. But she respected him for trying something different. She had spent a lot of her career in the drug war, in the courts, and knew that what was being done at the moment wasn’t working. The scale of criminality she’d learned about—most of it never even prosecuted—was horrifying. Everywhere in the city, brutal thugs exercised a terrible power over large numbers of a certain type of person—the weak and the vulnerable, of whom there were so many. Even before she’d discovered Ian’s addiction she had realised that people like herself, achievers, had failed monumentally, and yet she had no idea of the solution.

  It was one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with Stephen. As well as being charming and handsome, he offered hope. When he’d left the bar and gone into politics, she’d supported him emotionally and financially. A benefit of her divorce was that some of the money she’d got from Phillip might be used, through Stephen’s work, to make the world a better place.

  Phillip hadn’t wanted make the world a better place. She’d left him not just because of his affairs, but because of a hardness she’d detected. It hadn’t been there when they’d married, or if it had been, she’d missed it. It was toughness unqualified, and it was bad for Ian: maybe she’d sensed a softness in her son even then. At the time of the divorce, Phillip had tried to take Ian from her and she’d fought him with everything she had, and won; back then the courts had little sympathy for men who wanted to care for their children.

  Not long after she received the Habib brief, there was a dinner for supporters of Stephen’s proposed Drug Buyers’ Act, organised by a think tank that had taken up the idea. Karen found herself talking to Brian Harris, an inspector in the Drug Squad who’d been profiled in the Sydney Morning Herald a year previously. He was one of the few stars in the city’s battle against drugs.

  As he talked Karen glanced around for a chance to escape. On the whole she didn’t like cops, finding that most had a strange capacity for self-pity given their tough image. This she found tiresome. And the interesting ones, such as Russell Knight, were so only on account of deep character flaws. But after a few minutes she realised Harris was different. He was intelligent, for a start. He was shorter than her and, with a dusting of pale freckles across his face, unattractive. But when he spoke he demonstrated imagination, and a keen sense of how his job connected to the struggle for a better world, and she found herself drawn by his piercing blue eyes. Clearly this excited him.

  ‘I thought the police were against my husband’s idea.’ She wondered why he was here, given the politics of the situation.

  ‘Not the smart police.’

  ‘Your own minister—’

  ‘Byrne’s stupid. We need something new.’

  This was interesting.

  ‘You’re assuming the war can be won?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘It’s what I do.’

  ‘And very well too, if I may say so.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’re almost there, you know.’

  Ian came into her mind and she couldn’t speak.

  Harris went on, ‘I’ve seen kids narcotising themselves since I was at Newcastle in the eighties.’

  ‘Narcotising?’

  ‘Seen them dying, all we’ve done until now is pile resources on. We need a new approach.’ Looking at his face, trying to read his eyes, was like staring into a fire. ‘Imad Habib’s an extraordinary man. You’re doing the Rafiq case?’

  She blinked at the change of subject.

  ‘Russell Knight.’

  ‘He’s a good cop. Homicide wanted to put someone else on the job, I got them to give it to Russ.’ He smiled. ‘We were partners, once. They’re an amazing family. Imad ran his empire from jail for two years through his solicitor, bloke called Salim Soufi, some sort of relative. He visited Goulburn once a month for instructions.’

  ‘You stopped that?’

  ‘Couldn’t bug him, the judge wouldn’t allow it.’ Harris looked furious for a moment: lawyer–client communication was protected by law. ‘I got the Crime Commission on it, put the electronics on Imad’s friends, caught him using a phone from jail. Whole thing was a nightmare though, they change phones every week or two, drove my analyst crazy. Got a few thousand TIs . . .’ He went on, and Karen was intrigued and impressed. The Crime Commission is a powerful and secretive agency; it wasn’t easy to get it involved. ‘He was paying fifty dollars to borrow a phone. Created a mini-industry until the screws got on top of it.’

  ‘So the intercepts—’

  ‘Nothing much except the comment to Farid saying Jason Teller should die. You can get that in?’

  He knew a lot about the case, must keep an eye on the Habibs.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why did Imad want to kill Teller?’

  ‘Thought he’d ratted him. Not true.’

  ‘Why—’

  ‘Probably a rival, getting into his ear. In jail you have too much time to think.’

  ‘Imad doesn’t still control the business?’

  Knight had told her all this, of course, but it was good to check. With cops, it was good to check everything.

  ‘Eighteen months ago Farid stepped up. We suspect they thought we might be tapping Soufi.’

  ‘So he’s stopped going to Goulburn?’

  ‘He still goes, I guess they’re not sure just what we know, figuring to play with our minds.’

  ‘Sounds elaborate.’

  ‘Farid’s smarter than his brother, Leb Gangster 2.0.’ For a moment the emotion flashed across Harris’s face again. Karen saw she’d been wrong before to think it was just anger: it was an intensity composed of a blend of feelings. ‘Highly violent, we think five deaths so far, highly intelligent, and cunning too. He sorted out the bikies out there, something Imad could never achieve. Sam Deeb’s known to be worried. Our best guess is Farid’s increased the family profits to around two million a year and rising. Plus he knows how to launder it, which most of them don’t, no matter what you hear. Even had a plan for the family to go legit, until Rafiq fucked up. Excuse my French.’

  Karen smiled dubiously. ‘Having Imad in jail for a double murder can’t help the family reputation.’

  ‘Lot of sympathy for the pressures on migrant families, come from war-torn backgrounds, all that. If Rafiq gets off, they might still make it. I’m told if he does, he’s on the first plane to Beirut and Farid’s tearing up his Australian passport.’

  ‘A remittance man.’

  Harris looked puzzled for a second. The thing about the intensity of his eyes, Karen realised, was that they seemed to have been intended for a stronger face. Contact lenses? ‘Farid owns a third of a company that imports solar panels from China, he’s g
ot a formwork business that has fifty subbies. Three blocks of flats in Queensland. If they stopped doing crime tomorrow, the whole family could live well for the rest of their lives. Make Honest John the figurehead, donations to charity . . .’

  ‘But if Rafiq goes down, two out of four ain’t good.’

  Harris smiled and nodded, small jerks of the head. ‘Rafiq didn’t want to be the straight guy, he wanted to be a gangster like his big brothers, so he stepped up. Kind of like an initiation, to kill someone. And Teller, one of Sam Deeb’s top people. Talk about blooding yourself.’ Said almost with admiration, that admiration a man has for an opponent he is determined to destroy. A form of self-love. ‘I guess Knight told you all this?’

  ‘We talk.’

  ‘About all that, the family?’

  ‘Probably we can’t use any of it in court. Not optimistic, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Knight is, isn’t he?’

  ‘It’s not a strong case. They might plead to manslaughter.’

  ‘Rafiq Habib, for heaven’s sake! You take down most of these vermin and it makes no difference, I know that. But if we can lock up another Habib, that is good work.’ He tapped his fingers on his glass. ‘Russ is a good cop, don’t be put off by the weight. It’s glands. I’ve hardly ever seen him eat.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘He’s a great cook, actually. For others.’

  She said, ‘Don’t you ever get dispirited?’

  ‘Shift of conversation? Never.’ Said vehemently, as though it was a question he often faced. ‘And there’re always good ideas coming through, like this.’ He waved at a poster on the wall, advertising a paper the think tank was publishing about the Drug Buyers’ Act. It had been written by two economists and focused on demand, on the insatiable drug use of younger Australians that sustained the market. Stephen had never said it but she knew he saw it just as she did: people like Ian created people like the Habibs.

  ‘What about Byrne’s proposal, increase penalties for dealers?’

  ‘By a few years? If he was going to execute them it would make a difference. Worked in China. But this is just penny-ante stuff to keep the mug punters happy.’

  ‘A lot of people won’t like seeing their kids go to jail. Sledgehammer to crack a walnut.’ Devil’s advocate.

  ‘They need it explained by their leaders. Comes down to belief. Do we want to win this war, or not?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘How important is it to you, to win the war on drugs?’

  He was presumptuous, yet she had engaged in the conversation to this point and could not withdraw now. Slowly she thought about the question, and of course it led her to Ian. ‘It matters to me more than anything.’

  Harris moved away soon after that, looking satisfied. As though he’d made a convert, even though all he’d done was get her to say what she thought. He was one of those who believe that everything that happens is a result of themselves. Maybe one day he would go into politics.

  Our children, hostages to fortune. Karen should have had more with Phillip, at least one more. That would have provided balance between the generations. Perhaps Ian had been worn down by the force of Phillip and herself, the self-obsession. She was not sure why she’d had only one, she’d been an achiever: degree job flat holidays better job house international holidays . . . achieve and move on. That was clear now, but so what? She’d merely moved from being a box-ticker to a box-ticker who knew what she was. Knowledge came too late surprisingly often. What would she give up now, for Ian not to be a drug addict? Her job? Her divorce? The twins? It is good we cannot change too much, or choice would drive us mad.

  Ian had been a small child, dark-haired and pale, ribby. Not a lot like either of his parents, who were tall, but the image of Karen’s father when he was a boy. Ian grew up charming and intelligent, and at the age of nine had revealed a talent for goal-keeping that helped make him popular. Karen married Stephen and the twins had come along, and for a while there she thought she was blessed. She still didn’t know why Ian chose to go to live with Phillip when he turned fifteen. Obviously he’d been jealous of the twins, and of the attention they’d had from Stephen, but it was all relative. Stephen and she had taken great pains to spend time with Ian and show him love. But adolescence is not relative, it sees everything in absolute terms. The fact Stephen was a much better man than Phillip hadn’t counted a jot with Ian. Possibly, she later saw, it had upset him.

  Phillip, with no more children himself, had been gleeful. She’d pointed out how much better it would be for Ian if he stayed with her, but her argument—her desire—had made Phillip even more determined to welcome Ian into the home he shared with Lucy, his second wife. It was an apartment in Ultimo as neat and sterile as the luxury hotel rooms in which they spent so much of their lives.

  Phillip had taken his son, and then not known what to do with him. There’d been a big merger that had put him in Singapore for a third of the last two years of Ian’s schooling. Lucy had been in Sydney, but she’d had little idea. Ian began to spend weekends at Killara, and a few times she hoped he was about to come back to her. He would complain about his lack of rapport with Lucy, and the circumstances of his life. She listened as patiently as she could, seeing some of the changes in him, the way his mouth no longer formed vowels properly, Well becoming Wall, Yeah turning into Yah. But other kids spoke like that too, it was the mode. With Ian, though, there appeared to be no compensating vigour elsewhere in his character.

  He never did move back, and slowly she realised—Stephen saw it first—that the complaining had become part of his character.

  Her son, her dear boy, was turning into an uncharming man, and it was partly her fault, the mess of things. That was hard, the long months when she gradually acknowledged there was nothing she could do, and it would have to be accepted. Later, when she found how much worse a life could be, she looked back with wonder at her impatience with fate.

  Ian’s decision to study media and communications had seemed a disaster. Even a degree in international relations would have been preferable, even an arts degree, anything to expand his mind. She didn’t want him to become one of those young people she was aware of all around now, who were excellent at communicating but had nothing to say.

  Phillip’s anger had been greater and different: simply a matter of amour-propre. His boy needed to study law or medicine, to set himself up for future success and reflect his father adequately. To choose otherwise was weak, and there were long arguments in which he told Ian about the importance of selecting a direction early and sticking with it. Naturally this struck no chord—a middle way might have worked, but Phillip did not have the time, or perhaps the imagination.

  So Ian changed his course, and Phillip took to sneering at him, to his face and to Karen. Even Lucy became worried and rang Karen, for the first time. There were more arguments and Phillip backed off, became merely cold and dismissive. Ian moved into a share house and Karen made an effort to acquaint herself with the subject matter of his degree, the intellectual sludge of its required reading. When they were together she tried to talk to him about it. He dismissed her, his father’s manner showing through. The arrogance without the wit or the charm.

  And then, the heroin.

  How can it be like this? she would ask when she woke at three in the morning with a racing pulse. How did it happen?

  At Karen’s second pre-trial meeting with Russell Knight, he seemed more optimistic about the case. This change she found annoying.

  ‘You had a word to them about pleading?’ she said.

  ‘It didn’t come up.’

  She sighed, aware of his bulk in her office, taking up so much space. Lawyers, the support staff here, no one was fat or even big.

  ‘You said you would.’

  His lips formed a moue and for a moment he appeared implausibly feminine. She had to stop herself from smiling.

  ‘If it came
up,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She suspected he was a man who would never apologise if he did feel sorry. ‘You should have told me!’ She’d convinced herself the trial would not go ahead, had taken another brief that would now have to be handed back. She’d rather liked that one, the killing of an errant husband by a contractor his wife had hired on the Lower North Shore. She didn’t want to do another Lebanese trial, wanted a break from drugs, from the way they spoke English, even the native born. That dub-dub throb running just beneath every sentence. She had a theory about that. The Muslim kids learned Arabic in order to pray, so they spoke it at home a lot, and it influenced their English.

  ‘Sorry. I wasn’t sure until last week. I was supposed to meet them and it fell through. I reckon it’ll be okay.’

  ‘Changed your tune.’

  ‘Karen, I’m really sorry. Okay? Really sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  She meant why had he changed his mind, and he blinked in recognition of this. ‘Thinking about the jury, talking to people about it, the way they go on. Rafiq’s a Habib, scourge of the city. These fucking drive-bys, three on the weekend. Can’t go anywhere without being sprayed with bullets. Jury’s chance to hit back. I think it might fly now.’

  She raised her hands in exasperation. And yet, lawyers can get too involved in the legal side, cops can be more in touch. It had been known.

  But not always. Often cops just want to win, and bend the case to fit their desire.

  She scratched her head, unladylike. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘Sure I am. Ninety per cent. There’s an insurrection out there, people are scared.’

  ‘It’s a last-minute alibi I’m worried about. If I were Andrew Ferguson—’

  ‘Which I’m pleased to say—’

  ‘He earns his money. If Rafiq goes into the box with a good story, we’re in trouble.’