by Mark Dapin
I knew that Jeremiah Cain’s World Famous Boxing Troupe travelled with a sideshow that included the Wild Man of Borneo and his Pygmy Queen. I also knew that both showies were actually undersized Abos from Beagle Bay, with bones stuck through their noses. But I was confident I could arrange things to Sinatra’s satisfaction, even if I had to take one or two liberties with anthropological fact.
The midget boong moll was sent down from Queensland with a bodyguard, to make sure she didn’t escape. Her minder was Lazarus Lakes, the middleweight champion of Mt Isa, who had been travelling with Jeremiah Cain since he lost his boxing licence due to a misunderstanding about the amount of lead a fighter is permitted to carry in his gloves. Lazarus had never been to Sydney before, but soon fell in love with the glamour of institutions such as the New York restaurant, the likes of which he had never seen in Winton, or even Cloncurry. I mistook his obtuseness for discretion and hired him as my personal assistant, and he has been joined to my side ever since, like an overgrown goyishe Siamese twin who cannot spell his own name.
But the Sinatra tour made my name, Anthony, and it made me a fucking motza. I learned everything I know about the entertainment industry from that crooning old cunt-hound and his arse-licking entourage. It wasn’t until I had Sinatra singing after supper one night in the Patton – on the promise of a Tasmanian Aborigine, a kind of pussy that Frank had thought was extinct – that I could truly call myself ‘the King of the Cross’.
[Ends.]
FOURTEEN
I came back from Vitto’s with coffee and croissants, to find Siobhan still lying in bed, humming a tune I recognised but couldn’t name, as she read through my raggedy cuts.
‘This stuff you did for the Belfast Telegraph is shit hot,’ she said.
We had breakfast and made love. Then we had lunch and made love.
Mendoza had called a meeting on William Street, in a lowrise motel that squatted in the afternoon shadow of a block of serviced apartments. I left Siobhan in bed, still reading Billy Cobbett. I walked along Darlinghurst Road, whistling Siobhan’s ballad until I found the words. It took me back to Irish music nights at Republican clubs in the Falls, where the bands played on as Geordies and Scousers tore their bars apart, as if music were a weapon and soldiers could be beaten by rebel songs.
Outside the William Street apartments was a filthy white van, parked in by a limo and a decorator’s ute. I stopped to write ‘clean me’ with my finger on the back door, then added ‘you cunt’.
Mendoza and Lazarus were waiting for me in the motel room, standing by the window. They had propped up the bed against the back wall, below a painting of white horses galloping through surf. In the middle of the room was a line of three chairs. Two of them pointed towards the door, the third faced the bed frame. Lazarus took the rear chair, and I waited for Mendoza to take his place in the middle, but he shook his head.
‘You’re in the hot seat today, Anthony,’ he said.
Lazarus passed Mendoza his briefcase. He showed us his back as he worked the combination.
‘What did you use this place for?’ I asked him.
‘The motel?’ he said. ‘I’ve never been here before.’
When Mendoza faced me again, he had my manuscript rolled up like a truncheon in his fist.
‘I read this last night,’ he said, ‘instead of making love to my girlfriend. Or Cecilia Preciosa Bang Bang McCoy. Or my hairy fucking hand.’
I smiled and nodded.
‘Bearing in mind my age,’ he said, ‘and the number of fucks I’m likely to have left in me, do you think this was a useful way to spend my time?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘“I do not know,” ’ Mendoza chanted, ‘said the Great Bell of Bow.’
I gave him another nod, as if he’d said something funny or interesting.
‘Why do you think the Great Bell of Bow said, “I do not know”, Anthony?’
I shrugged.
‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, ‘it’s because it was a mongrel dog maggot Pommy imbecile.’
He curled his fat lips over his teeth and slapped his palm with the paper roll.
‘This,’ he said, holding my manuscript close to my face, ‘is the stupidest piece of half-arsed dog shit I have ever read.’
He pulled off the first page and began to recite: ‘“Jack Mendoza was borne” – with a fucking “e”, Anthony; where were you educated? Medieval England? – “in 1920 in a Jew-ish family” – what’s that, Anthony? A family that shares certain characteristics with the Jews? – “in Balmain, where his dad was a draper and a Mercian” – do you know what a Mercian is, Anthony? It’s a native of fucking Coventry – “and his mum was a simple housewife. He fell into a life a crime at any early age, through the inference” – I presume you mean fucking “influence” – “of a bad crowd. He lift school” – did I fucking really? – “at fifteen, and was further educated at the school of hard knocks” – hard fucking cocks, more like – “and the bluestone university” – the “bluestone college” was Pentridge, and I’ve never even visited that cunt-hole – “where he majored in standing up for himself and his fellow Hebrew brethren.” ’
He screwed up his face and screwed up my manuscript.
‘Is this some sort of fucking joke, Anthony?’ he shouted. ‘I’m eighty-one years old and I’ve wasted six of my last precious days on God’s earth telling my life story to a fucking retard.’
‘It’s only a first draft,’ I said. ‘We can cut out the bits you don’t like.’
Mendoza hammered his fists on his thighs. ‘You’re not a fucking journalist at all, are you, Anthony?’
I shrugged.
‘I trusted you, Anthony,’ he said. ‘Do you know why I trusted you? It wasn’t because I liked your silly fucking head, with your bug eyes and your bulging neck and your short hair like some kind of bathhouse homo, and it damn well fucking wasn’t because I thought you were a piece of Pommy fucking Grub Street pond scum. It was because I’ve got something on you, shitman.
‘Remember little Leah? The fifteen year old who takes it up the tailpipe? Well, she’s my girl, Anthony. She works for me. She’s a porn star, and so are you. We got you on camera, filmed through the light fitting, Vegemite-mining an underage country runaway. Because the Hamilton Hotel is one of mine, as you would have discovered if you were a real muckraking journo and not some Munchausen’s-by-proxy mental case who goes around pretending to be a writer to torment vulnerable war veterans.’
Suddenly I hated Mendoza. I promised myself to choke the life out of the feeble old fraud. He was a butchered chicken from that day, and would only seem alive because he was running around without a head.
‘But one thing really surprises me,’ he said. ‘Lazarus and I finally got around to watching the video of you and Miss Anal Sex Queen 1986 – that was the year of her birth, if you remember – and I can tell a lot about you, Anthony, from your fifteen-minute, four-position performance. I can tell that you care if the little slut is enjoying herself, that you’re counting to keep yourself from coming, and that you like it best with her on top. I can also tell that, as far as I can see, on close examination of the available evidence, by any reasonable measure, to all intents and fucking purposes, you’re not even fucking Jewish.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I’m not.’
‘So what the fuck are you then?’
At that moment an explosion of glass sent Mendoza flying to the floor, as a bullet, like an insect enraged by light, buzzed through the open window and slammed into the mirror behind his head. I leaped on Mendoza’s back. His bony shoulders dug into my chest, and something cold and hard pressed against my pelvis. Another two gunshots tore plaster out of the back wall, showering my eyes with dust.
Lazarus stayed in his chair, pulled out his pistol, but didn’t seem to know where to point it.
‘Take cover and return fire, you fucking idiot!’ I shouted.
His hands were trembling. A pair of bullets pierced the painting
on the wall, ripping the hindquarters off a stallion. I figured there must be two shooters, firing in a V-formation from the apartment building’s balconies. I shot back once with the derringer, but it was useless at this range.
I knew Lazarus carried another weapon.
‘Give me your gun!’ I shouted to him.
His eyes were dull and watery.
‘Pass me the fucking gun!’
He handed it over slowly.
‘Now get the fuck down!’ I ordered.
He stood the fuck up, and lurched towards the bathroom door, drawing fire away from Mendoza and me. Then he stopped and turned back in our direction.
‘Fuck off!’ I shouted, waving him away with the pistol. ‘Get fucked! Go!’
Lazarus’s gun was the Webley .38 service pistol Mendoza had stolen from the army in 1944. It wasn’t even loaded.
‘Oh, you fucked fucking fuckhead,’ I said to Lazarus, and rolled back onto the ground.
I crawled on my elbows to the front door, as if I were scrambling under barbed wire, then came to my feet when I was out of sight of the window. The door was about a metre from the axis of the V. The snipers were blasting the back teeth out of the window when I charged into the street and grabbed cover behind Mendoza’s Corniche.
Either all the pizza he ate had turned Jed’s brains to mozzarella, or he didn’t realise I was in the room with Mendoza. I couldn’t understand why he would be shooting at anyone, but I knew he would stop trying to kill me once he saw who I was. I threw the empty Webley high into the air, gave Jed a minute to call off his partner, then stood up, waving my arms.
Both men shot at me. One missed everything, the other hit a no-entry sign.
‘Jed, it’s me!’ I called out. ‘You stupid fucking cunt!’
I rolled under the car, and they shot out the tyres.
Mendoza himself pelted out of the door, shooting high and wide with a Heckler & Koch. He hadn’t yet gauged where the gunmen were positioned, so he stood in the street and stared up at the sky, like a tourist under Centrepoint Tower. He looked heroic, stupid and dead. It took him a couple of seconds to pick out the guy on the motel balcony who was kneeling with his rifle butt hard against his shoulder. Mendoza let off two shots at the sniper, and he turned and ran. The other shooter had already retreated into the building.
Police cars screamed down William Street, running against the traffic. Cops sprinted into the lobby of the apartment building and towards Mendoza in the car park. He dropped his pistol and raised his hands. I decided to stay put under the Corniche, while they handcuffed Mendoza and pulled Lazarus out of the motel room. When the tarmac seemed clear of size-twelve shoes, I edged out from beneath the car.
A policewoman standing on a step watched me with zoological curiosity. She waited until I had dusted down my trousers, then marched me into the motel room with the others. Mendoza was showing a police sergeant his permit to carry a pistol.
‘This,’ said the sergeant, examining the licence, ‘is for a revolver.’
Mendoza stared at it closely, as if he’d never read the small print before.
‘This,’ said the sergeant, showing Mendoza the bagged-up Heckler & Koch, ‘is a semiautomatic pistol.’
‘That’s not my gun,’ said Mendoza.
‘So whose is it?’ asked the sergeant.
‘It’s mine,’ I said.
‘And would you, sir, have a licence to carry a semiautomatic pistol?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
Mendoza managed to look composed and unsurprised.
‘Look, Sergeant,’ said Mendoza, ‘who’s your boss at the station? It’s Ray Robertson? Or Blackie Whitburn?’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ said the sergeant.
A detective was examining the bullet holes in the painting. ‘Ray Robertson left the force in 1994, Jake,’ he said. ‘Blackie Whitburn passed away three years ago.’
‘What about Len Forbes?’ asked Mendoza.
‘Retired with Robertson,’ said the detective. ‘Under the same cloud.’
‘Stan Fuller?’
‘Dead,’ said the detective.
The policewoman looked through Mendoza’s wallet.
‘I know who you are,’ she said, suddenly. ‘Didn’t they used to call you “Mr Vice”?’
‘No,’ said Mendoza.
‘It was “Mister” something though, wasn’t it?’ she asked. ‘“Mr Greedy”?’
‘Mr Greedy’s one of the Mr Men,’ said the detective.
‘“Mr Evil”?’
‘You’re thinking of Granny Evil,’ said the detective. ‘In Melbourne.’
‘It’s Mr Mendoza,’ insisted Mendoza.
Dror barged in with a baseball cap on his head and a heavy sweat on his lip. He looked as though he’d just left the gym. He seemed to know a couple of the police, who let him inside the motel unit but stopped him before he could reach Mendoza. He shouted was everyone all right, and did anyone need a lawyer. He’d heard what was happening on the radio. I knew he meant the police scanner, and the cops must have realised too, as even the friendly officers bundled him out. I was still hyped up, waiting for another attack – wanting it, even. This time, I would know to go for Mendoza’s Heckler & Koch. That was a nice weapon. The old man had used it well, but I could have done better. I could have taken out one of the gunnies and watched his body tumble off the balcony and break on the ground.
The policewoman searched me and found the derringer.
‘I’m good for it,’ I said.
Lazarus was back in his chair, staring at the wall. Even the police barely bothered to talk to him. Mendoza dropped a hand on his shoulder. The detective walked over, holding a notepad and pen. He was a rhino-faced bruiser in his mid-fifties, just old enough to have worked in the glory days.
‘Are we looking at a new gang war, Jake?’ he asked.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Mendoza. ‘I don’t have a gang.’
‘So what have you done to piss these people off?’ he asked.
‘I don’t even know who they are,’ he said.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ said the detective.
‘And yet you’ve got no trouble with the idea that Lazarus and I, with a combined age of one hundred and forty-six years, are a criminal gang?’
‘What about your young friend here?’ asked the detective, pointing towards me.
‘I’ve no fucking idea what he is,’ said Mendoza. ‘He’s a man of fucking mystery, that’s all I know.’
The policewoman checked my gun licence against my driver’s licence.
‘Nicholas Anthony?’ she said.
‘Yeah, that’s me.’
FIFTEEN
[Seaview House, Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point. 15-03-02. 2:07 pm.]
My name’s Nick Anthony. Some of my mates call me ‘Slick’, others call me ‘Tony’.
Where did Klein come from?
I read it off the war memorial, when I was doing recon for my interview with the Jewish Times.
What religion are you?
I don’t know. Church of England. Something like that. I’ve never given it much thought. You don’t, do you, unless it’s something weird. I’m not Catholic.
Why did you pose as Jewish?
I never said I was Jewish.
And you’re not a journalist either?
Not by training, no. I’m a soldier.
In which army?
The British Army. I was dishonourably discharged two years ago.
What for?
Dealing ecstasy.
So why aren’t you inside?
They didn’t want to prosecute me. It would’ve brought the whole unit down. Everyone was using. They caught me by accident. They weren’t looking for drugs. Somebody in the unit was selling arms to the Kosovars. They searched the barracks but they didn’t find any weapons, because the Kosovars had them all. But they lucked on my stash and that was that: ten years of service down the drain.
; I said I had post-traumatic stress disorder and needed a hundred Es for my personal use, to help me cope with the nightmares. The docs signed off on that. I’d served in Northern Ireland, Kosovo. I’d been in the army since I was nineteen. I was obviously fucked in the head.
Did you come to Australia to infiltrate my operation?
No, I’d never heard of you.
So why did you come here?
I wanted to become a journalist.
Don’t fuck with me, Slick.
Why would I? I’m telling the truth.
Start from the beginning.
I was born in a military hospital in Colchester, Essex. My old man was a sergeant in the army. He was a hard man, but he’s nice enough now. I grew up wherever Dad was stationed – in Belize, in Gibraltar, in Winchester, but I ended up going to secondary school in Aldershot, the home of the British Army, as it says on the road signs. Moving schools is tough on a kid. As soon as you make friends you lose them. You’re always having to fight for your place.
I liked to read, so Dad thought I might be a poof and decided to toughen me up. He used to take me out into the woods and show me how to draw maps and make hide-outs. He bought me an air rifle and we’d find places to shoot birds. He was a good bloke, you know. Old-fashioned but well meaning. I like him a lot. My mum too. I was the only child. Did I say that? I think that’s important.
Not to me, it isn’t, Slick. I’m not writing your fucking memoirs. Where is this story going?
Mate, I never rushed you.
Yeah, okay, okay, go on. But get on with it.
I wasn’t a great pupil –
Oh, for fuck’s sake . . .
Listen to me. It’s all part of the story. I wasn’t much use in class because we had moved about so much, and nobody in my family’d had an education, and Dad kept taking me to the woods when I should’ve been doing my homework. I was good at football, but my best subject was English. We had a great teacher – Mr Sutton – who encouraged me to write compositions. I always thought that when I wrote my first book I’d dedicate it to Mr Sutton.
