by Peter Corris
‘I don’t think so.’
‘He was a Homicide Squad D. Good cop, but the grog got to him and he was invalided out. I was having a few drinks with him a week or so ago, just shooting the shit, you know. The Beckett case came up. Leo was pissed, of course. He was on the team that looked into it. He reckoned certain people took certain sums of money to suppress a ransom note.’
‘That’s vague,’ I said. ‘What people? And who paid up?’
‘That’s where I played it smart. Leo hasn’t got any time for me. If I showed an interest he’d clam up for sure. I sounded him out about the reward. He thought it lapsed when the old man died.’
‘So?’
‘I told you there were things we could do together. This is one of them. We have to go to Grogan, get him oiled just right and tell him how things stand. We cut him in for a third if everything works out.’
‘What if he won’t play?’
‘I happen to know he’s drawing a disability pension he’s not entitled to and that he’s got assets he hasn’t declared. If he gets stroppy . . .’
So there it was. Cyn always said that the people I associated with made me violent, insensitive and untrustworthy by osmosis. I resisted the idea but here was a good chance to test it. Barry White had his copy of the contract in his pocket and mine was in my filing cabinet. I could always pull out of this if it got too sticky, couldn’t I? I went to the nearest pub with White and bought him three schooners of Old with his money while I drank a couple of middies of light. The beer didn’t seem to affect him until someone spilled a drink that splashed his newly pressed trousers.
‘You black cunt,’ White said. He lurched towards the man, a stocky Maori in singlet, jeans and work boots.
‘What did you say?’ The Maori put the drinks he was carrying down and set himself.
White threw a punch that missed and tipped him off balance. The Maori had been ready to punch but White’s stumble forced him to hold back. That gave me time to move in, grab the Maori’s cocked right and jam it up behind his back. I pushed him a couple of steps so that he was up against a wall and couldn’t get any leverage to swing back with his left. He was strong but when you’re in that position strong doesn’t help, any movement hurts like hell.
‘He’s drunk, mate,’ I said in the Maori’s ear. ‘And he’s a sick man. Look at him. You hit him and you’re likely to kill him. He’s an ex-copper, as well. You don’t need that kind of trouble.’
‘Okay, brother, okay,’ the Maori said. ‘D’you want a go?’
‘I’ve seen all the blood and broken glass I need to see for the rest of my life. Just let it be.’ I released him and stepped away quickly, deciding to kick at his right knee if he was still belligerent. He glared at me and maybe the broken nose and scars convinced him.
‘You’re lucky you’ve got a sharp mate, pisspot,’ he said to White as he wrapped his big hands around the drinks. He walked away to the other end of the bar.
White was dabbing at his damp pants with a dirty handkerchief. ‘Good team, Hardy.’
‘Fuck you,’ I said. ‘I ought to tear that bloody contract up.’
‘You won’t.’
He was right. The small confrontation with the Maori made me realise how much I was relying on old tricks like armlocks and new ones like staying sober. If I wasn’t quite over the hill I was certainly nearing the top, and a six-figure score would help me to face the summit with much greater equanimity. White didn’t know where Leo Grogan lived, but he knew where he’d be at 10 a.m. the following day—in the bar of the Cleveland Hotel in Chippendale. White himself lived in a room in a boarding house in Rose Street and I agreed to give him a lift home. We walked to where I park the Falcon in Upper Forbes Street and White sneered as I undid the club lock.
‘You’re in the fucking Dark Ages, Hardy. I used to have a Commodore with one of the first automatic locking systems.’ He held up an imaginary remote control. ‘Press a button. Beep, beep, and you’re sweet.’
I put the lock on the floor at his feet, started the motor and didn’t say anything. He reached down, a bit unsteadily, picked up the device and examined it.
‘Piece of shit. I knew blokes who could knock the lock out of that in two seconds flat.’ He dropped the lock on the floor and got out his tobacco.
‘Not in the car,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about policemen, I suppose?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘I know people who can take out any car alarm system ever made and start the motor from the pavement.’
That shut him up. He slumped down in his seat and I could sense the good feeling the beer had given him already ebbing away. The question was, did he come up passive or aggressive? We drove down William Street. Daylight saving had just ended and a bit after seven o’clock the light was fading and the girls were beginning to emerge. White gazed out at them, and I glanced at him to gauge his response.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Will you take a look at that.’
A six-foot transvestite or transsexual stood on the kerb outside a luxury car showroom. She had long, shimmering silver-blonde hair and wore a halter top, miniskirt and thigh-high boots to match.
‘Her dick’s probably bigger than yours.’
‘What’s the difference?’ he muttered. ‘A hole’s a fucking hole.’
I dropped him in Rose Street opposite a three-storey terrace that would fetch a fortune when it stopped being a dosshouse. I’ve seen plenty of those places in my time; the metho bottles in the backyard can outnumber the sweet sherry flagons. White had wound his window down and stuck his face out on the drive in an effort to clear his head. He climbed stiffly from the car and leaned through the open window.
‘I’m broke, Hardy. That seven hundred was all I had. Can you lend me a few bucks?’
‘Sure,’ I said. Just tell me who staked you in the first place.’
‘You’re a bastard.’
‘I have to be. I deal with them every day. Don’t lie to me, Barry. The way things are, every word we exchange is important.’
‘A woman. I’ve made her certain promises.’
‘She’s an idiot.’
‘Maybe, but she doesn’t think so.’
Human beings are hard to understand. I’ve known a few intelligent, resourceful women who’ve fallen for useless, violent men, some who just couldn’t get interested in any other type. I took two twenties and a ten out the change from the drinks and passed them to him. ‘Don’t drink it all, Barry. You need to rinse out that shirt and you could do with a deodorant and a mouthwash. See you tomorrow.’
He took the money and didn’t speak. I watched him in the rear-vision mirror as I drove away. For a few seconds he wavered between turning left or crossing the street. Left took him to the corner and the pub. He squared his shoulders and crossed the street. There were signs that Barry White wasn’t a completely spent force, but that didn’t make me trust him one bit more.
I drove home to Glebe, stopping to buy some fish and some white wine on the way. I grew up on a diet of fried meat—chops, steak, sausages, bacon. That kind of tucker, plus large dollops of frustration, blocked my father’s arteries and saw him off at a fairly early age, but I seem to have inherited my mother’s constitution and temperament. She ate, drank and smoked what she liked, made it to seventy, and went complaining about her short innings. These days I exercise some dietary caution, but not with fish; the only way to cook it is the way my Uncle Jim said. He used to catch flathead, bream and tailor off Maroubra Beach after pulling up sandworms for bait with his fingers. ‘Fry the fuckers!’ was Uncle Jim’s advice, and that’s what I did.
I’ve lived alone since Glen Withers married her policeman. I occasionally see a former girlfriend, Terry Kenneally, who came out of longish relationships more or less intact, like me. We have a meal together, go to a movie and sometimes to bed. There’s nothing possessive about it. We’re both looking for company and sex without complications. I can’t say I prefer the arrangement to a passionat
e, committed relationship, but it’s not too bad. I enjoy the gaps and solitary spells, knowing that they’re not permanent.
I was in just such a spell at the moment with Terry, who was a tennis coach, away interstate with one of her hopefuls. Over the meal I lowered the level of the wine to halfway down the label and then quit, I made coffee and sat down to think about what I could be getting into with Barry White. It was hard to be optimistic. For years stories had circulated about cops with treasure troves—bales of marijuana, talcum powder tins full of cocaine, suitcases of money. As far as I knew none of these ships had ever come in, and the old rogue cops were all doing time or paying off their lawyer’s bills by instalment. Still, White’s story had a different ring and the man himself wasn’t the standard sticky-fingered corrupt moron.
I took out a fresh notebook and started plotting my course through some of the hazards. First things first, and my priorities are not necessarily those of the person who’s hired me. I had to check up on the reward. Were the terms and the accrued amount what White had stated? Along with that went a need to know more about Barry White himself. Was my suspicion right that he’d done some time, and if so, for what? I needed to know the personnel of the police instigating team and, if possible, get some idea of their conclusions. Had laying charges been considered and, if so, against whom? That led to the obvious question that shapes any investigation—who benefits? White and I had talked about Ramona Beckett’s victims as profiting from her death, but what about others—a lover, a family member? There was going to be some leg and telephone work involved as always and some favours to be asked for and maybe nothing to show at the end of it. But just maybe there’d be a good deal more to show than usual.
I watched the late-night news on television for a few minutes, long enough to tell that nothing had happened that hadn’t been predicted in the morning or developed during the day. I turned on the radio to catch Phillip Adams’ ‘Late Night Live’ program, but they were talking about the next millennium and I was happy just to wait for it. I played Paul Simon’s Graceland through for the thousandth time and went to bed with Graham Richardson’s autobiography which made me feel that the people I dealt with weren’t so bad after all. My tennis gear was lying in a corner where I’d dropped it after my last game with Terry. I went to sleep thinking about her long brown thighs.
3
I never took to jogging, and riding a bicycle around Sydney these days is no fun, what with the foul air and the traffic. Like a lot of other people I’ve found that walking is the best exercise. You don’t jar things, tend not to step in potholes and dog shit and you can think while you’re doing it. I do a few kilometres in Glebe most mornings unless it’s pissing down rain or I have to be somewhere early, and I try not to let that happen. It was March and cooler than it should have been after a summer that hadn’t been up to much. I walked briskly through the park along with joggers, power-walkers, dog-walkers and others just walking.
When I moved to Glebe in the early seventies, you couldn’t get down to the water below Jubilee Park. There were rows of old tin and fibro buildings in the way—a ship’s chandler, a timber yard, an auto-electrician. That all got cleared away and the park was extended to the waterline with more trees and a paved walkway running all the way around to the canal. It was a 100 per cent improvement, and the upgrade is still going on to the west towards Johnston Street. More buildings have been cleared and the land detoxified. The plan is to let a section of it revert back to the wetland it once was. Good news for the birds. Normally, I go up the Crescent past the Lew Hoad Reserve to Bridge Road and make my way home that way, but since the work started on the Harold Park Paceway I’ve changed my route. They’re extending the car park and building a stand out over Johnston’s Creek. I don’t approve. You used to be able to walk alongside the creek. It wasn’t the flashest walk in the world, but at least it was public space. I wandered into the football ground and sat in the stands for a think.
A lot of birds sat there with me as if waiting for the wetlands to arrive. I was unsettled by some of the changes going on around here—the flight path, the Paceway, the development in Ross Street where a hectare or so of warehouses had come down, the Glebe Island Bridge for god’s sake. I’d attended a meeting protesting the plan to build a marina on Blackwattle Bay and that was about as environmentally active as I’d been. I wondered, not for the first time, if I shouldn’t think about moving. I didn’t need a three-bedroom house with planes flying overhead, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d like to be except Bondi, and they were sure to start changing that soon.
I threaded my way through the streets and lanes that lead back to Bridge Road and the familiar sights and smells drove thoughts of moving out of my head. And no planes went over. I went home, showered and shaved and rang Frank Parker, who I knew would be at his desk at ten past nine. Frank and I go back a long way. He married Hilde Stoner who was a tenant in this selfsame house once, and they called their son after me. Frank’s been pretty much put out to graze in administration, but every now and then he gets his hands dirty. We exchanged the usual male bullshit and I asked him what he knew about Barry White.
‘A pity, that,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘He was the right sort of bloke for the job, or seemed to be. But the bastards at the ’Loo corrupted him. You’d have had to be a saint to resist some of the stuff that was on offer around there back then. Can I ask why you’re interested?’
I’d have to give Frank some of the story to get what I wanted, but I wanted to intrigue him first. Frank Parker was a man with great curiosity. ‘A job. He’s got some information that could lead somewhere.’
‘Oh, very helpful. Just ask me anything, I’ll tell you everything I know.’
‘Hang on a bit, Frank. Was he ever inside?’
‘Let me think. Yeah, he did a very short stretch for conspiracy. I forget the details.’
‘Leo Grogan?’
‘Jesus, you’re dipping deep in the bucket now. What is this, Cliff—a rollcall of crooked cops?’
‘Was Grogan crooked?’
‘You bloodhound, you. Not especially, as I remember. I worked with him for a while, if you could call what he did working. The man was drunk from morning to night. Just could not stand to have a dry throat. Come on, Cliff. I can’t see the connection.’
‘The connection is Ramona Beckett and a reward for information leading to blah, blah. Can you find out who was on the investigating team?’
‘Sure.’
‘I’d like to talk to him.’
‘It’s twenty years ago. He could be dead or in Noosa.’
‘Seventeen years. I’ll go to Noosa if I have to. If number one’s dead I’ll settle for number two or three. It’s important, Frank.’
‘Look, Cliff, we’ve taken on a sort of consultant to look into old unsolved cases when anything comes up. Name’s Max Savage, good bloke.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘If I help you with this, can you bring him in?
‘I’d have to think about that.’
‘He wouldn’t want a bite of your reward. He’s okay for money.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Sorry, Cliff. Them’s the terms. I’ll get you all the dope I can, if you’ll play. But Max can get you more, much more. Added to that, I think you’d like him.’
I said nothing, intending the silence to be discouraging.
‘Tell you what. See how you go for a day or two. I’ll brief Max and he’ll scratch around. If you decide to call him in I’ll set up a meeting and I’ll advise him from my high position in the force to give you every possible assistance.’
‘You’re a manipulative bastard.’
He laughed. ‘You just got outmanipulated for once, that’s all.’
The Cleveland is a boxing pub. The walls carry photos of old-time fighters and some not so old. Les Darcy and Jimmy Carruthers hold pride of place above the bar; Griffo’s up there with Dave Sands and Vic Pat
rick and Tommy Bums and Jack Carroll. A couple of non-Australians get a grudging spot—Archie Moore, Freddie Dawson, Emile Griffith. The shrinking band of former fighters gathers there for reunions from time to time and they drink there regularly—not at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday though. There are two pool tables and couple of pinball machines but the pugs have been known to take steps if the players get too noisy when they’re doing serious things like discussing whether Jack Carroll could’ve taken Benny Leonard or how Fenech would’ve gone against Famechon.
It’s not what you’d call a dressy establishment. I wore drill trousers, a dark blue shirt and a cream linen jacket that has seen much better days. I’d eaten a ham sandwich and a couple of cold boiled potatoes before leaving home as blotter for the beer I’d be drinking. It’s a trade that’s hard on the liver. I spotted Barry White in a miasma of tobacco smoke at the end of the L-shaped bar. Just above where he sat, Ron Richards, who could beat anybody on his night, was glowering behind his gloves. White raised his hand to me and then signalled the barman. Fuck me, I thought, he’s going to buy me a drink. Then I remembered that it was my money. The middy was on the bar, sitting on a much-used coaster, when I got there.
‘Light? That right?’ White said. He was on a stool with two others drawn up near it.
I sat. ‘That’s right. Thanks. Cheers.’
‘Yeah. Why’d you drink that piss?’
I took a long pull at the beer. ‘Have you tasted it lately? It’s improved.’
He sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll be on it, or worse, if I get on this health kick.’
‘Don’t worry, Barry. There’s a way to go before you reach that point.’
‘True. Leo’s late.’
‘First hurdle.’
He drained his glass and pointed to it for the barman’s benefit. ‘Don’t say that and don’t worry—first drink of the day.’ He stirred the pile of change and the couple of five dollar notes on the bar in front of him. ‘See, I didn’t drink the lot.’
