King of the Cross

by Mark Dapin

  I had to stop thinking like that. What did I care if a lawschool cricketer from High Wycombe acted hard on Darlinghurst Road? They weren’t having a go at me. I switched from screwing out the boys to checking out their Home Counties girls, with their hair scraped back and tied up, and big looping earrings. I watched their fake-tanned breasts quiver under low-cut T-shirts, and I thought if I could have any woman in the world it would be Siobhan.

  ‘Stop leching,’ said Siobhan unfairly. ‘Dan’s sorry he sacked you, you know. He wishes he’d stood up to his publisher.’

  ‘To tell the truth,’ I said, ‘he made the right decision.’

  ‘No, Tony,’ she said, ‘someone like you could’ve transformed that paper. You might even’ve got Dan back on track, once he saw what you could do. That thing you have, it’s a gift, Tony. It’s precious.’

  People were standing around on the corners, waiting for the night to begin. A bouncer wearing a number on a lanyard around his neck chatted with a shopkeeper while an Asian girl read the Daily Telegraph under an awning. Another woman came and stood beside her, and suddenly there were half-a-dozen people, all in the same spot, like a queue without a bus stop, or a gang of builders waiting for a white van. I could tell the bouncer wanted to order them to move along but couldn’t point to anything they might be doing wrong.

  I led Siobhan into Kellet Street, around the back of Darlinghurst Road, where the strip clubs, from their rear entrances, were more clearly brothels. They had all put out their bins on the kerb for collection, crammed with unimaginable waste. Through the window of the Continental Barbershop I could see an old man who looked a bit like Mendoza, draped in a smock, his cheeks lathered for a shave. A little way down the street I showed Siobhan the New York restaurant, huddled between two neon-lit doorways. She read from the menu on the window. The daily special, described in hesitant arthritic letters on a scrap of lined paper, was fillet steak with potatoes and two veg.

  Two white vans were parked opposite, in the loading zone outside the Mansions Hotel’s pokie-room casino. One was marked Jim’s Mowers, the other was making a delivery to the hotel kitchen. There were a lot of white vans around. It was difficult to tell one from another.

  We stood in the doorway of the New York, ignored by customers and unnoticed by staff, until Siobhan coughed, and they all looked at us at once. Each of the restaurant’s formica tables was taken by a slate-haired, cancer-skinned man sitting on his own.

  ‘One minute, darlings,’ the waitress said to us.

  She looked around the small room, sucking her teeth, until she found a tattooed pensioner who was staring at his plate as if he could read the future in the pattern in his gravy.

  ‘Billy, love, could you go and sit with Derek, please?’ the waitress asked.

  ‘But Derek’s a dog, Rita,’ said Billy.

  ‘I know he is,’ said Rita, ‘but these young lovers need a table to themselves.’

  ‘Why don’t you move Apache Frank?’ he asked.

  She glanced at a tall man with a ponytail that hung to the small of his back. ‘Because Frank’s asleep,’ she said.

  When Billy came to his table, Derek settled his bill, stood up and left. He paused at the doorway to say goodbye to everyone except Billy. Two old men lifted their forks and cocked their heads, including Apache Frank, who had only been pretending to be asleep.

  We sat under a ceiling fan and looked at our reflection in cracked mirror tiles on the wall. Rita brought us the menu. Most dishes cost about eight dollars. It was only eighty cents extra for a bowl of soup, but Siobhan wasn’t interested.

  ‘Everybody else is having the soup,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s because they’ve got no teeth,’ she said.

  The old man from the barbershop hobbled in, freshly shaved. A couple of the others looked up at him and nodded. He found his own table in a corner and, after a moment’s wait, the waitress brought him soup.

  Slow Eddie, still wearing his battered pork-pie hat, looked around for a free place. The waitress sat him next to the shaved man, and they ignored each other. Eddie knew he recognised me from somewhere, and winked a hooded eye.

  ‘There’d be hundreds of stories in this room,’ said Siobhan.

  She asked what exactly I was doing for Mendoza, but I didn’t exactly know. I said I was helping him with a book.

  ‘Ghost-writing?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re writing about his ghosts,’ I said. ‘But I’m not a ghost writer.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your own voice.’

  She had the most beautifully even teeth.

  She reached across the table. ‘You’ve got real man’s hands,’ she said, playing with my fingers. ‘They’re not like writers’ hands. They’re like brickies’ hands, all callused and scarred.’

  ‘I worked as a brickie’s mate once,’ I said.

  ‘Isn’t it funny how writers always have these weird jobs,’ said Siobhan. ‘I spent a summer as a psychic’s assistant. Were you at college when you were a brickie’s mate?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t at college.’

  ‘Do you talk to Mendoza about what’s going on in the Cross?’ she asked.

  ‘About the troubles?’ I said. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Don’t call it “the troubles” if it’s a war,’ she said.

  She smiled. She was beautiful. I wanted to lick her teeth.

  ‘What’s he like to interview?’ she asked.

  ‘He describes things that happened honestly, I think,’ I said, ‘but he can only see them in the way they affected him.’

  ‘That’s the same as any interviewee,’ she said, ‘isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.

  ‘Are you ready to order?’ asked the waitress, dropping onto the seat next to mine. ‘I can recommend the fillet steak.’

  She pronounced it ‘filly’.

  ‘I’ll have that, please,’ said Siobhan.

  I chose the schnitzel.

  ‘But what’s Mendoza’s justification?’ Siobhan asked me.

  ‘For what? His life? He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. I’m not sure he even believes in right and wrong.’

  ‘What does he believe in?’ she asked.

  I loved the sound of her voice. She spoke as if she were singing.

  ‘Taking what he wants,’ I said.

  ‘And what do you believe in?’ she asked.

  I touched my forehead and looked down at the table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That’s a typical interviewer’s tactic, eh? Asking about someone else to get the subject to open up about himself.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m happy to open up –’

  ‘So what do you believe in?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you’re obviously not orthodox.’

  Uh?

  ‘Religious,’ she said. ‘Orthodox Jewish.’

  ‘No,’ I admitted, ‘I’m not even Jewish. I just said that to get the job.’

  ‘Really!’ said Siobhan. ‘That’s fantastic! I did wonder about your . . . you know.’

  ‘Why is it fantastic?’ I asked.

  ‘That you could fool somebody like Dan – you know, a professional Jew. You must be great undercover, Tony.’

  ‘I’ve lied about everything,’ I admitted.

  ‘Who hasn’t?’ said Siobhan. ‘Tell me more about Helen. What was she really like?’

  ‘Ah, she was –’ I stopped. ‘You don’t honestly want to know, do you? You just want to hear the way I talk about her.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why would I care about your skanky ex-girlfriend?’

  ‘She was lovely,’ I said. ‘All my ex-girlfriends were lovely. I have the greatest respect for anyone who sleeps with me, and I send them cards and presents for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ she said, ‘because all my ex-boyfriends were bastards. I’d have them rounded up and shot if my uncle was still around.’

  At this point, look
ing back, I should probably have asked who her uncle was, but I was still trying to explain who I was, so I let it drop.

  ‘Was Helen a writer?’ asked Siobhan.

  I told her she wasn’t.

  ‘I don’t think I could be with somebody who wasn’t a writer,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you have,’ I said, meaning me.

  ‘Of course I have,’ she said, ‘but it’s never worked out.’

  Rita brought us each a side plate with two slices of white bread and a knob of butter.

  ‘Was Helen pretty?’ Siobhan asked me.

  I told her she was.

  ‘Do you want to get back with her?’

  I told her I didn’t.

  ‘Am I better than her?’

  I asked in what way.

  ‘In every way.’

  I told her she was.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now you can eat your schnitzel.’

  My schnitzel looked like emery cloth. Inside, it was grey and soft. Siobhan ate her fillet delicately but quickly, and mopped up the meat juices with a slice of her bread.

  ‘The biker shootings’ve had a good run in Dublin,’ she said. ‘They’ve asked for more background. Do you think you could get me an interview with Mendoza?’

  I promised I’d ask him.

  The bill arrived on the back of a Post-It note, and we paid it at the mechanical till.

  ‘Well,’ said Siobhan, ‘we won’t have a meal like that again for a long time. I promise you.’

  She said we should find somewhere quiet to have a drink, but to Siobhan a quiet place was a place with quiet music. We walked down William Street to O’Malley’s, where she could hear a guitarist singing Christy Moore songs by the window. We drank pints of Guinness and listened to ‘City of Chicago’, and I remember thinking the world was a perfect place.

  SEVENTEEN

  [Ava’s Backpackers, 6–8 Orwell Street, Points Point. 20-03-02. 1:59 pm.]

  You are a shit writer, Anthony, and everything you write is shit. Despite all you have told me, I’m going to keep on calling you ‘Anthony Klein’, because it is not the name that is chosen for us that counts, but the name that we choose for ourselves. I selected a title that personifies power, courage and strength: Mendoza, the champion of the Jews. You pilfered a surname that means ‘small’, ‘little’, ‘lower’, ‘runty’, ‘petty’ or ‘slight’.

  You’re probably wondering why I’m carrying on with this fucking farce, acting like you’re Boswell to my Samuel Johnson, even though I know you can’t write a fucking word, and you don’t even know who Boswell was. Tell you the truth, I’m wondering that too. But I enjoy talking to you, Anthony. I’ve never been in therapy, but I imagine it’s something like this, except with a real Jew instead of an uncircumcised impostor. I’m enjoying the experience of mulling over my life’s successes, and the women I had forgotten I had ever fucked, such as McCoy’s various wives. Then there’s the fact that you might have saved my life. You might have got me killed too, but I could see you had the best of intentions when you ran outside and threw Lazarus’s gun into the air, then hid under my Rolls, attracting gunfire that destroyed the tyres. I could see your British military training was coming into play, and you were saving me like your forefathers saved the Australian infantry at the Fall of Singapore.

  You are a failure, Anthony. You have failed at school, with women, as a soldier and as drug dealer. You are thirty-one years old, and you haven’t got a house, a car, a job or a girlfriend. I’m not going to let you fail again! My book is the thing that will make you a man, Anthony! You will start it at the beginning and finish it at the end, and you will not fuck it up! You will listen to what I say, and you will try to take it in, because there are many lessons to be learned from my life! You will find somebody to help you write the fucking thing, because you are a spastic!

  Okay, okay.

  No, it’s not fucking ‘okay’, Anthony. I am giving you a gift. I am handing you a future. I am saving your life.

  What do you want me to say?

  I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to shut up and listen. I have received intelligence – which is not something you could ever claim, Anthony – on who was behind the attack on the tattooists and the attempt on my life. It’s taken more than thirty years, but I knew it would happen one day: the Malts are back.

  Maltese?

  No, the Maltesers. Of course, it’s the Maltese, Anthony. It’s always the Maltese. Have you heard of Charlie Adami, the president of the Mutineers MC? You might have seen him on television, whining on about how bikies are all misunderstood Father Christmases who cry into their hankies at romantic comedies? Adami is a second-generation Malt.

  His Mutineers were once members of the GraveDiggers MC, which sought to control the amphetamine and ecstasy trade in Newtown and the inner west. Adami’s faction split from the gang many years ago, after an esoteric dispute over who had second rights to a used woman. The GraveDiggers labelled them ‘mutineers’, and they adopted the name with the kind of fierce pride often displayed by imbeciles with nothing else in their life to feel satisfied about.

  Adami took his men to Parramatta, to build themselves up on pastizzi and pasta, before storming back to the city to attack individual GraveDiggers on the doors and in the street, and finally firebomb their Petersham clubhouse. The GraveDiggers knew Adami was a psychopath, and none of them had the guts to knock him, so the club surrendered and Adami closed them down and transferred their membership to the Mutineers. By the arcane rules that supposedly regulate the behaviour of these fat fools, the Mutineers were entitled to inherit the GraveDiggers’ territory – from King Street to Homebush – but, in the manner of the Maltese throughout history, they wanted the Cross too. It’s in their blood.

  The Maltese are not generally smart, Anthony, but Adami thought solidly for about a decade and realised that what was holding back his gang was the fact that whenever they committed a crime they did it with their name on a little patch on the front of their jacket and their address on a big patch on the back. It occurred to him that maybe if they didn’t wear their colours all the time, they might get away with something once in a while. And imagine the havoc this would cause in the rest of the imbecile community, who would no more knock a bloke while wearing a T-shirt than drive around in a Hyundai Excel. Then Adami realised that if they didn’t need the jackets to sell drugs, they might not need the bikes either. With this revelation foremost in his mind, Adami planned to take over the Cross, which had been the territory of the Cannibals MC ever since I made the uncharacteristic error of leaving the drugs trade to a self-promoting shower of unshaven imbeciles.

  The Cannibals kept their pill press in the basement of the Ink tattoo studio. They knew the Mutineers would come for them, and that they would hit at the heart of their business, but they imagined they would arrive on bikes, en masse, wearing their silly fucking sew-on tough stickers and other clothing that was last fashionable – and last washed – in 1969, and therefore be visible from ten kilometres – or three decades – away.

  Instead, Adami, a former serviceman like ourselves, used his contacts in the army to get hold of special forces weaponry and mounted the commando-style assault you were fortunate to witness from the confines of McDonald’s, where you were staging what passes for a sophisticated, romantic rendezvous in the Hampshire town of Aldershot.

  And Adami’s pièce de résistance, his coup de grâce, his piss in their fucking petrol tanks, was the fact his men didn’t even bring their own Harleys: they stole them from the Cannibals.

  My sources tell me the Cannibals struck a deal with Adami to let his men into the Cross. And once they had dealt with their fellow imbeciles, the Mutineers turned their attention to more established powers. The Maltese have an unsettled feud with me, and Adami feels strong enough to even up the score. So they came after me, Anthony, after all these fucking years. The bastard sons of Gozo Joe Stone have returned to wreak their revenge.

  And what are you g
oing to do?

  What do you think I’m going to do, you imbecile? I’m going to call the old crew back together – McCoy, Big Stan, the Little Fish, all of them – and we’re going to face down these Maltese cunts once and for all. Lazarus, get them on the phone now – starting with the Little Fish. I need him the most of all.

  But they’re dead. They’re all dead.

  Don’t talk to me about ‘dead’, Anthony. Gozo Joe Stone is fucking dead and he’s reaching out to me from beyond the grave, trying to squeeze the life out of my throat with his fingers. Lazarus, get me the phone.

  Lazarus isn’t here.

  Of course he isn’t here. He’s in St Vincent’s hospital, the poor fella. Your adolescent gunplay nearly gave him a heart attack. He’s a good man – as tough as they come – but you can’t expect him to beat back the bikers with an unloaded gun.

  Who’s driving your car?

  The Roller? Some fucking cheating Arab grease monkey. I told you, Anthony, it’s in for repair.

  How did you get here?

  Natural Science is looking after me. He’s standing guard at the door. I will share my memories in front of Lazarus but not a giant rent-a-schvartzer with a cudgel for a cock.

  I didn’t notice him outside.

  I’m not surprised, Anthony. After all, Kings Cross is full of one hundred and forty kilo, six-foot-six niggers. He was probably hiding in a crowd of them.

  I’m just saying –

  Perhaps the New York Nicks are in town.

  Maybe you should get on with your story. You might drop dead tomorrow.

  I’ll go at a moment of my own choosing, Anthony. I can assure you of that. Which is more than I can say for poor Mad Dog McCoy, who passed away when his commercially acquired wife still had a dozen good fucking-years left in her, and thus perhaps he did not get full value for his money.