Now and Then, Amen

by Jon Cleary

  It was rude and Malone knew it, but Tewsday had to be shaken out of his set jelly. The plump face flushed and Tewsday sat forward as if he were going to shout to the chauffeur to pull up. His mouth opened, then closed, and he sat leaning forward, breathing heavily; for a moment Malone thought he had had some sort of attack. Then slowly he relaxed and sat back. A hide like his would never burst under apoplexy.

  “You’re everything I’ve heard about you, Malone. Intrusive, insulting . . .”

  Who have you been listening to? But Malone didn’t ask that. He sighed and said, “If people were more co-operative, I wouldn’t need to be like that. Let’s cut out the bull, Sir Jonathan. I’m looking for who murdered a young nun, who, as far as I can tell, had more good points than she had bad ones. She had compassion and she cared about people worse off than herself and some bastard killed her for being that way!” He couldn’t help the heat that had suddenly appeared in his voice.

  Tewsday shook his head, looked more composed now. “It was not like that, Malone. Not like that at all. But I’m not the one to tell you all about it.”

  “What about Paredes or Domecq?”

  “You might get somewhere with them.”

  “Where do I find them?”

  Tewsday hesitated, then said, “They’re staying with Mr. Hourigan and the Archbishop.”

  Malone had the feeling that Tewsday had said too much and knew it. But he was protecting himself; one could see him hastily building the wall round himself. They rode the rest of the way in silence. At last, when they had crossed the Harbour Bridge and were sliding into the central business district, Tewsday said, “Where would you like to be dropped?”

  “Anywhere will do. It’s time I had a think walk.”

  Tewsday looked at him curiously. “Arnold Bennett?” Malone looked at him blankly and Tewsday explained: “He was an English novelist, before my time, but I read him and other dead writers. Howard Spring, J. B. Priestley, Hugh Walpole, Maugham. I’m an old-fashioned man. Bennett used to go for what he called think walks when he had what they call writer’s block.”

  “I’ve never read him. I guess I suffer from policeman’s block. I got the expression from my wife.”

  “Don’t tax yourself. Stay in the car. Gawler can take you where you want to go.”

  The car drew up outside Ballyduff House, a seventy-storey glass-and-granite monument to Hourigan enterprise. Tewsday got out, ignoring yet obviously conscious of the curious stares of the passing citizens: princes, especially unroyal ones, like to be acknowledged. That the reaction of the local elements would be more resentment than admiration didn’t worry him.

  “Good luck with your problems, Inspector. I think you may have quite a few.”

  Malone watched him cross the pavement and go into the building, leaning back against the weight of his stomach, his top chin lifted arrogantly. Malone settled uncomfortably back into the luxurious leather of the seat, feeling that the first of the tiger snakes had just got out of the opened can.

  He pressed the window-button and the glass slid down between himself and the chauffeur. “Your name’s Gawler?”

  “Yes, sir. Gary Gawler.”

  “I’d like to go to Homicide. It’s up in Liverpool Street. You’re American?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw the tourist advertisements with that guy Paul Hogan and I decided to give it a try. Give it a burl, as you Aussies say.”

  “What did you do in America?”

  “Oh, this and that. I’ll move on to something else after this, I guess. But Sir Jonathan is a good man to work for.”

  “I’m sure he is. Where did you come from in the States?”

  “Chicago. Which end of Liverpool Street, sir? I’m afraid I’ve never had to drive Sir Jonathan to Homicide.”

  7

  I

  WHEN FINGAL Hourigan first met Jonathan Tewsday in 1955 he should have recognized a young man as ruthlessly ambitious as he himself had once been. He was a real estate salesman, a junior one at that, and he would not have been selling the Hourigan home in Bellevue Hill had his boss not been knocked down by a car.

  “A woman driver?” said Fingal.

  “Yes, sir. His wife.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “I don’t think so. Evidently she got Reverse mixed up with Drive.”

  “They’re all the same,” said Fingal, who had never allowed Sheila to drive, even before she had become deranged. “Tuesday? The second day of the week?”

  “No, sir.” He handed Fingal his card. “Some day I hope it will be as well-known as your own. With all due respect.”

  Fingal was unimpressed. “Okay, sell this house and find me another. One with a water frontage.”

  Jonathan Tewsday sold the Bellevue Hill house within two days for seven thousand pounds above Fingal’s reserve price. The profit was a drop in a bucket to Fingal, but he took note of it; profit was always profit, especially when it was tax free. Within the week Tewsday had come up with a waterfront property at Vaucluse that, he said, was going for a song.

  “I don’t write songs, I write cheques,” said Fingal. “How much is it?”

  “Thirty-two thousand pounds.”

  Fingal went out to Vaucluse to inspect it, bought it, then said, “Knock down the house. I’ll build my own.”

  Tewsday all at once caught a glimpse of Fingal’s wealth; in the 1950s no one paid a small fortune for a property, only to knock it down. Then and there he decided that, somehow he was going to attach himself to Fingal Hourigan’s wagon. He never over-estimated anything (except, of course, prices promised to prospective house sellers), least of all his chances; but, even though young, he was not myopic about the future and could take the long view. He knew that, sooner or later, he could be of use again to Fingal Hourigan.

  The opportunity came six months later. There were no commercial developments in the eastern suburbs, where Tewsday operated, that would interest a man of Fingal’s investment scope. Tewsday looked across the harbour to North Sydney; he needed a telescope, but he saw all he needed to see. The northern end of the Harbour Bridge promised to lead to a twin city to the main business district on the south side; already the smart developers were moving in. Without his boss’s knowledge, Tewsday took a thirty-day option in the firm’s name on a row of houses just off the northern approach to the Bridge. Then he went to the offices of Ballyduff Holdings in a building not far back from Circular Quay. It took him three days to get into Fingal’s office. While he waited he wondered why such a wealthy company should headquarter itself in such an old unattractive building. He was not to know that it was another manifestation of Fingal’s fear, still with his memories of Chicago, of being too conspicuous. The building of the castle at Vaucluse would be an example of conspicuous anonymity, but it would be the first break-out from his long-held fear of the ghost of Capone.

  At last Tewsday was shown into Fingal’s office. Fingal looked at this persistent young man for the first time; that is, really looked at him. He saw a man in his mid-twenties, hair already thinning, stomach and a second chin already developing, a fastidious dresser who wore expensive English shoes: Fingal always started his scrutiny from the feet up of anyone who interested him. This Jonathan Tewsday had eyes the colour of sultanas, well suited to his puddeny face; his mouth had all the flexibility of a veteran con man’s. Fingal decided at once that he couldn’t be trusted, so he listened to him, for he believed that trustworthy men never made money as fast as the other kind. Though he did not make the admission to himself, they were vultures of a feather.

  Tewsday, for his part, was examining the man he hoped would soon be his employer; or, eventually, his partner. He was a dreamer, though he would give dreams a bad name. Fingal was now fifty years old, but looked at least five or six years younger, despite the streaks of grey now appearing in his thick brown hair. He had virtually lost his American accent and when it did occasionally surface people put it down as Irish. He was soberly but expensively dressed; he had acquired a patin
a of conservative success. Or successful conservatism, which was of greater value in the Australia of that decade. The new rich did not wear white shoes and tycoons had not yet taken to wearing gold chains; new money tried to look like old money from the feet up. His office complemented his own appearance, all dark panelling, brass lamps and leather chairs; the paintings on the walls were sober Australian landscapes, not a bushranger nor a bared breast in sight. Fingal might have been a Supreme Court judge or the Governor of the Commonwealth Bank. But Tewsday, who had done his homework, knew he was sitting opposite a man as rapacious and unscrupulous as himself. It made him feel good.

  “You have ten minutes, young man. Get started.” Tewsday opened his brief-case, an English leather one bought three mornings ago at Kitchings: he, too, knew the value of looking conservatively successful. “Mr. Hourigan, have you looked at the possibilities for development in North Sydney?”

  “Yes,” said Fingal unencouragingly, though he had not.

  Tewsday didn’t miss a beat. “Then you know the difficulties of dealing with a suburban-minded council that doesn’t know the value of a bribe?”

  Fingal smiled; but only to himself. “What have you got in mind?”

  Tewsday told him, producing the sketch plans he had commissioned with an architect friend. “This row of ten houses overlooks where the new freeway will run. There is room there for a twenty-storey office block, plus half a dozen shops.”

  “Are the houses owner-occupied?”

  “Only two. The rest are tenanted.”

  “Is it zoned for commercial development?”

  “Not yet. But if the price is right, it can be. I can guarantee that.”

  “What’s in this for you, Mr. Tewsday?”

  “I want to come to work for you, Mr. Hourigan. Five thousand pounds a year, plus expenses, to start with.”

  “Nobody starts as high as that with me. You have a lot of chutzpah.”

  It was a word that Tewsday had never heard up till then; the European Jews who would one day be a force in the country’s economy had not yet shown the local natives what chutzpah was. But Tewsday not only had an eye for opportunity, he had an ear for meaning and he caught it. “Mr. Hourigan, you wouldn’t have appreciated me if I’d come in here and under-valued myself.”

  “What are you besides a smart-arse who can buy and sell real estate?”

  I’m never going to love this man, thought Tewsday; but he had never believed that love made the world go round. “I’m that rare bird, an accountant with imagination.”

  Fingal this time allowed his smile to show. “Mr. Tewsday, I don’t employ accountants unless they have imagination. You’ll have some competition. I’ll give you a six months’ trial. Three thousand a year and expenses, supply your own transport, take it or leave it.”

  “Those are coolie’s wages, Mr. Hourigan.” He took a risk with his chutzpah.

  “Then you’d better get used to dim sims and fried rice.” Fingal pressed a button on his desk and almost immediately the door to the outer office opened and a secretary stood there. “Miss Stevens will show you out. You can start Monday, report to Mr. Borsolino. You’ll get on well with him—he’s an accountant with imagination.”

  Tewsday stood up, closing his briefcase. “I haven’t said I accept your offer, Mr. Hourigan.”

  Fingal looked up at him. “You came in here with your mind made up to accept the job no matter what I offered you. It’s only because you’re so keen that I’m giving you a trial. But you’ll have to learn to be less transparent, Mr. Tewsday. You’ll never get anywhere in business by laying yourself out like an open book. Any imaginative accountant will tell you that an open book is just asking for trouble. Good-day.”

  When Tewsday had gone, Fingal got up and walked to the window of his office. He looked out past one or two buildings that partly obscured the view of the harbour, across the water to North Sydney. He should have moved in there sooner; but money had been so easy to make here south of the harbour. Beginning with the wool boom during the Korean War, during which he had bought his first merino sheep stud, money was becoming more manifestly visible than at any time since the 1920s. A new young, aggressive breed of developer was beginning to emerge, some of them refugees from postwar Europe. The old refugee, from Chicago, had to stay ahead of them. The number of upstarts was growing, smart-arses who had no respect for tradition. He had little time for it himself, but one could always call upon it as a last resort.

  Jonathan Tewsday reported the following Monday to Robert Borsolino, a slightly older smart-arse who knew a younger one when he presented himself. “What am I supposed to do with you?” His imagination didn’t run to making use of juniors; they might depose one. “Did Mr. Hourigan say?”

  “I’m to be left to my own devices.” Fingal had said no such thing, but Tewsday knew that middle-level executives, especially ones not much older than himself, did not go to the chairman and managing director and query his reasons for his directives. “Or vices, as the case may be.”

  “Don’t be a smart-arse,” said Borsolino. He was a thin, dark-haired man with a very thin veneer of good temper. “Three thousand a year, eh? Prove you’re worth it.”

  Tewsday went over to North Sydney, picked up the deputy-mayor and brought him back to the south side of the harbour to lunch at the Hotel Australia. Bill Oodskirt, the deputy-mayor, was flattered; his usual rendezvous for such dealings was the fish cafe at Crows’ Nest. He was a short, fat little man with plastered-down red hair; he was a butcher by trade and, stripped, would have gone unnoticed in his own shop window. His collar was too tight and he was constantly tugging at it, as if he were choking.

  He choked when Tewsday offered him a thousand pounds. “This is highly unusual, Mr. Tewsday.” He meant that he had never before been offered more than a hundred pounds, but Tewsday deliberately misunderstood him.

  “Mr. Oodskirt, you’re worth it, every penny of it. You have the influence in Council, I know your record. You vote and two-thirds of the Council vote with you. All you have to do is have this section of Rogers Street zoned for commercial development.”

  “We’ve been thinking about it,” said Oodskirt, who always liked to find excuses for his venality and corruption. “Yes, we’ve definitely been thinking along those lines.”

  “Of course you have!” said Tewsday, showing enthusiasm for his victim’s imagination. “Sydney is going to be the New York of the South Pacific and North Sydney will be a major part of it. And you’ll be a part of it, too.”

  “It’s a lot of money,” said Oodskirt, having a sudden attack of guilt, something he couldn’t explain, since he’d had no previous symptoms.

  It was not a lot of money, if one took the long view. Tewsday knew that within ten years the site would be worth ten times the present price; it took imagination to see that far ahead and calculate such a sum, but Tewsday could feel it in his bones. Oodskirt, on the other hand, though he cut up bones every day in his shop, had no imagination. He never saw further than next week and the next envelope under the table.

  “As I said, Mr. Oodskirt, you’re worth every penny of it. A little more claret?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Oodskirt’s collar suddenly seemed to have got looser. He sat back, a big shot whose worth was appreciated. “Better than the old Porphyry Pearl, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is,” said Tewsday, who wouldn’t have drunk the cheaper wine if he had been dying of thirst. He was already a wine snob, for which no breeding is necessary.

  The following week the Rogers Street block was zoned commercial. The week after that Tewsday bought the ten houses in Ballyduff’s name, withdrew the option money and paid it back into his former employer’s agency account. His former employer knew nothing about the withdrawal and the redeposit till a month later when he received his bank statement. By then he knew there would be no catching Tewsday.

  A month later Tewsday was sent for by his new employer. “You’ve bought us a parcel of trouble, young man.”<
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  “I don’t understand—” For once Tewsday couldn’t finish a sentence.

  “The two owner-occupiers in those houses in North Sydney have moved out. The rest, the tenants, are staying put. On top of that, squatters have moved into the two houses the owners have vacated.”

  “I don’t think we have a problem, Mr. Hourigan. The courts will evict them.”

  “Borsolino says that could take twelve months or more. Furthermore the Commos in the unions are taking up their cause. That feller Nev Norway has got into the act. You know him?”

  “I know of him, Mr. Hourigan. I’ve never met him personally.”

  “I met him once, right after the war. He’d turn this country into a Soviet republic, if he had his way. He has no time for capitalists like you and me.”

  Tewsday was flattered to have already the same status as his boss. “Everyone has his price, Mr. Hourigan.”

  “I doubt it with Norway. Try your luck, but never mention my name. You’re on your own. Fall on your face and you’re fired.”

  Tewsday went down to see Nev Norway, at his union’s offices not far from the Darling Harbour wharves. He didn’t wear his new Richard Hunt suit or his suede shoes; he went in an open-necked shirt, the collar worn outside his jacket in true working-class style, and a pair of his father’s old leather shoes that he dug out of a family trunk. Both his parents were dead, glad to have gone to their graves to escape from a son who had disappointed them by showing an interest in nothing but making money and who, on his father’s death bed, had told the old man that he had voted Liberal in the last elections.

  “You’d have known my dad,” said Tewsday, flattening his vowels, dropping the accent he had been cultivating. “He was a tally clerk down there on the wharves. Any Day Tewsday, they used to call him—he’d go out on strike any day you called him.”

  Nev Norway was not taken in by his visitor’s appearance or his accent; this kid was a toff, or aspired to be one. Norway himself was not built to be a tailor’s dummy; he was almost as broad as he was high and had a face to match. He was famous for his red cardigan, worn in all weathers; it was rumoured that Lenin, on a secret visit to Australia in 1904, had been present at Norway’s birth and swaddled the newborn babe in his own cardigan. He was shrewd, had a dry sense of humour and was as ruthless as his Russian idols had been. It was said that he had wept for two days when Stalin had died, though no one had actually witnessed that incredible collapse.