King of the Cross

by Mark Dapin

  I waited until he had finished his speech, then asked, ‘So you haven’t seen him then?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Spiegeleier.

  I bought a flat white, and Spiegeleier asked after Siobhan.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘You met her at the right time. Do you know the headline I’m working on? CHILD STARS BREAK HEARTS AT YESHIVA GALA.’ He folded his lower lip over his chin, as if he were about to turn his face inside out. ‘This isn’t the life I planned, Tony. Did you hear what Siobhan said about Mike Gore? He’s “still fucking half the news desk”! He’d be fifty-three, Tony. That’s a year younger than me.’ He patted his own cheek, swatting an imaginary mosquito. ‘I haven’t had a woman,’ he said, ‘since 1999.’

  His hands circled his throat.

  ‘It’s not because Gore’s good-looking,’ he said. ‘He’s like me, as bald as a bloody dildo with a face like a basset hound. It’s because he still gets the glory stories, and all the little girlies from the Home Counties come to his desk and ask for advice on how they can grow up to be an investigative reporter like him. They want him to be their mentor, Tony. Do you know who was the last journalist to want me as a mentor? You.’ He pressed a dimple into his chin. ‘I’m a failure, mate.’

  I wished I hadn’t sat down.

  ‘I should’ve stood up for you,’ he said, ‘But look what I’ve done instead. You’re working for him now, aren’t you? I’ve sold your soul to the fucking devil.’

  He gulped down my coffee. I looked into an empty cup.

  ‘I didn’t used to be like this,’ he said. ‘I used to have balls like Sherrins. They were so big I could hardly walk. I broke stories about cops on the take and politicians with their pants down. I won awards, mate. And I’m not talking about the Women’s International Zionist Organisation (NSW Auxiliary Chapter) Award for Services to the Community in the field of publicity. In which I came second, last year, to Max fucking Markson.’

  I told Spiegeleier he should come out to dinner with Siobhan and I some time, but I had to get on and find Natural Science because Mendoza needed him. I decided to go door to door with the picture, starting on Kellet Street. The owner of the Continental Barber shop said he had shaved Natural Science’s head, and the woman in the launderette remembered watching his washing, but not this week. I was about to ask at the New York restaurant when I noticed there was already a missing-persons notice in the window. For a moment I thought it must be for Natural Science, then I realised it was Mendoza. But it wasn’t, of course. A handwritten caption under a smudged photocopy of a Polaroid of an old man read Have you seen Maurice (M&M) Mickle? M&M has’nt been here since 2013. BUT has’nt missed a meal at the New York in TEN years. Have called hospitals and pleas BUT nobody knows his where abouts. If you have any info, tell RITA at the till. We are all worried about you, darling xx.’

  It was like Spiegeleier said: people go missing from the Cross all the time.

  I found Dror checking the security cameras outside the Pussycat Bordello. He tested them every month, usually to make sure that they weren’t working, so nothing would be filmed that could be used in evidence by the police. Now he was trying to get them going, in case there was another armed attack.

  ‘You heard from Natural Science?’ I asked.

  ‘Natural?’ said Dror. ‘Yeah, I got a postcard from him yesterday. He’s in New Caledonia.’

  ‘What’s New Caledonia?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s an island full of big boongs like him,’ said Dror.

  ‘So, what?’ I asked. ‘He was supposed to be bodyguarding the old man, when he just got the idea to pack his suitcase and go to New California?’

  Dror shrugged, and passed me the postcard. On the front was a picture of a pair of oiled breasts. On the back, Natural had written, Dror, Having fun in the sun. Weather’s hot, chicks are hotter. Hope you’re coping without me. See you, Orpheus.

  ‘Why would he just run off like that?’ I asked.

  ‘How would I know?’ said Dror. ‘I’m not an anthropologist. Talking of which, I hear you’re not a journalist.’

  I smiled lopsidedly, like an idiot.

  ‘You’ve got a problem with the truth, mate,’ he said. ‘You need some truth drug.’

  And that’s when he offered me the Es.

  Back at my unit, Siobhan was rearranging the furniture while singing ‘The Minstrel Boy’. My mum used to sing ‘The Minstrel Boy’; it doesn’t have to mean anything. I had no furniture left, apart from the dining table and the bed, but she had moved the bed below the window where the dining table used to be, and tucked the dining table into the corner in place of the bed. She said it would make the room seem lighter in the mornings, and the corner would be a cosier place to eat dinner. She had pushed a candle into the neck of a wine bottle and set the table for two. She must’ve gone out and bought a set of placemats.

  ‘I’ve got pills,’ I said.

  She passed me a beer from the fridge, and we each put an E on our tongue and washed it down with Crown Lager.

  I guess I knew what was going to happen, but ecstasy’s an experience you can control. You don’t say anything you don’t want to say, and I needed something that would help me open up, and maybe relax Siobhan while she listened to me.

  The flat smelled like a balti house. She stirred curry and rice in a shiny new pan while she told me about her day. She’d found a young police officer to help with her research into the Cannibals. He was happy to answer her questions, off the record, as long as he could look at her tits. He said the bikers were starting to fade into a part of the old Kings Cross, like Vitto’s or the New York, and pretty soon they’d get closed down, like the Rex Hotel. Their strengths were always their brotherhood, their muscle, their guns, their drug connections and their discipline. The Lebs used to have everything but the discipline. For years, they had paid off the Cannibals, used them, and watched how they worked, and now they were ready to take them over. The shooting came at a good time for the Lebs. It meant they didn’t have to get rid of the old guard themselves.

  Whenever Siobhan stopped talking, she sang a bit of a song about one Irish boy or another. I leaned over the stove to get a look inside the pan, and she pushed me aside. She told me she was making chicken biryani. She couldn’t possibly have done that with the ingredients in my cupboard, so she must’ve been shopping. She dished up the curry in a bowl I didn’t recognise, using a spoon I’d never seen before. She had bought me cutlery and crockery. The curry tasted good, and got better and better, even though I wasn’t eating it.

  ‘I think the E’s kicked in,’ I said to Siobhan.

  She beamed at me.

  ‘I think I love you,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone on eccie thinks they love everyone,’ she told me. ‘Eat your biryani.’

  I put the spoon to my mouth, kissed the yellow rice, then put it back down on my plate.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ I said.

  ‘You’re doing this the wrong way around,’ she said, turning her beer bottle upside down to demonstrate the idea. A dribble of beer poured onto her plate. ‘First you say: “I’ve got something to tell you,” then you say, “I think I love you.” ’

  ‘No, I’ve got something else to tell you,’ I said. ‘I’m not really a journalist. I didn’t write those Billy Cobbett stories. I mean, I helped with them, but they weren’t mine.’

  ‘You mean you worked with someone else on them?’ she asked, more interested in softly pricking her fingers with the teeth of her fork.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘he worked with me.’

  She frowned. ‘What’s your point, Tony?’

  ‘My name’s not Tony.’

  She sliced her chicken into small pieces.

  ‘I think they put something in your pill that they left out of mine,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Nick,’ I told her.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘Shall we listen to some music?’

  ‘I was never a writer,’ I said. ‘I was a sol
dier.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ she laughed, but not really. ‘Why are you saying this, Tony? Why are you trying to spoil my dinner?’

  ‘I love you and I’ve got to be honest with you,’ I said.

  I told her the story and, when I had finished, she smiled at me.

  ‘Come here,’ she said, ‘you silly boy.’

  I craned across the table to meet her kiss, and she stabbed me in the throat with her fork.

  ‘You bastard fuck!’ she screamed. ‘You raped me!’

  I clutched my throat and tried to keep her back with my other hand.

  ‘You fucked me, then you told me you were a British soldier! You might as well’ve crept in with a mask on and pinned me to the bed, because that’s no worse than what you did, you fucking baby-killing rapist bastard fuck!’

  She tried to stab me again, but I caught her wrist.

  ‘Now you’re breaking my arm!’ she screamed. ‘You fucking monster!’

  She dropped the fork. When I went to pick it up, she kicked me in the eye.

  ‘Help!’ she shouted. ‘Rape!’

  I reached out for her.

  ‘Don’t you fucking dare touch me, you squaddie bastard!’ She caught her breath.

  ‘You’re a fucking dead man,’ she said. ‘Do you know who I am? I’m Siobhan Hughes. My uncle was Francis Hughes, the hunger striker. My baby brother Joey was shot by the Brits. By you! You and your fucking mate Jed! For what? For fucking what, Tony?’

  ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know who you shot,’ she said, ‘you mercenary piece of shit. Get out! Get out!’

  She threw the bowl of biryani over me.

  ‘Take your fucking things,’ she said, throwing a couple of dirty shirts into a bag, ‘and fuck off!’

  She swung the bag at me, so it would hit me in the face.

  ‘Out!’ she cried. ‘Out! Out! That’s the trouble with you British bastards – you never know when to get out!’

  She hit me with a plate as I backed out of the door, smeared in rice and grease and blood. I stopped in the stairwell to get my breath back. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. Siobhan had kicked me out of my own flat.

  TWENTY-ONE

  [Aphrodite’s, 2 Roslyn Street, Kings Cross. 04-04-02. 2:00 pm.]

  I understand you’re living with Dror.

  No, I only stayed there for a couple of nights. I’m back at home now.

  Really? And how is your friend, the real reporter?

  She’s told a bunch of local Paddies to break my legs.

  They came and asked my permission.

  What did you tell them?

  The truth: that you’re a serial conman and I’d been taken in as well.

  Thanks a fucking lot.

  I said you were under my protection until this job was over, but after that it was open season.

  Great.

  And I warned them you might have a piece, which you stole from me.

  So now they’ll come with guns too.

  They would have anyway. They’re serious people. There’s a lesson for you to learn here, Anthony. Put succinctly, it is this: you are a fucking idiot, and a danger to yourself.

  Isn’t it time you started boring me?

  If you had any sense, Anthony, you’d treasure these moments. Mark my words, you’ll look back on these times and think, Those were great days, when I learned about life from Jake Mendoza and I still had the use of my legs.

  Now, the room in which we are sitting is part of a club by the name of Aphrodite’s, but it is not sited on the premises of the original Aphrodite’s, although you can see the old building from the street. I know the owner of this new incarnation of the club only by association, but I accept his homage to my original name in the spirit in which it was intended: blatant fucking unimaginative bandwagon-jumping plagiarism.

  Aphrodite, as you no doubt don’t know, Anthony, was the Greek goddess of love. The Greeks, as you no doubt do know, are famed for their penchant for rear entry. In Aphrodite’s in the early seventies there was rather more rear entry than I would perhaps have liked, and I’m still not sure how that came about. As I told you, the Little Fish dreamed of having a club of his own. I gave him Aphrodite’s to run, and told him to make it profitable. If he did, I promised he would inherit it as surely as the meek would one day inherit the earth, ie, not in my fucking lifetime, nor yours either, Anthony.

  People say the sixties was an era of social change, but it was really in the early seventies that civilisation went down the gurgler. For drapers and mercers it was a happy time, as men took to wearing flared, high-waisted pants, and shirts with collars like elephants’ ears, magnificent garments that utilised far more fabric than was necessary to cover a body. Even ties grew two inches wider. However, the most prominent symptom of social decay was the sudden rise of man-to-man arse-fucking among the general population. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the hair, or maybe it was the beards, which made some men’s mouths look like cunts, but suddenly there were shit-stabbers everywhere.

  They ought to put a plaque to me in Darlinghurst Road, Anthony, and sink it into the pavement, because I originated everything. One of the most successful shows at this time was a revue at the Roundabout Club called ‘Girls Girls Girls’. This was a glaring misnomer if ever there was one, since there wasn’t a single fucking sheila on stage. It was just a night of transvestites dancing, and it should have been called ‘Dogs Dogs Dogs’. It was a big money earner for me – all the way up Roslyn Street, there used to be queues to get in – and also close to the heart of my lovely wife, whose idea it had been to reach out to various deluded imbeciles who didn’t even realise they were queer, and provide them with their own scabrous cabaret.

  In the days before strippers’ pants came off, some of the trannies managed to squeeze their taped-up testicles into the Patton and work as exotic dancers among credulous and weak-minded drunks. One thing that has always puzzled me, Anthony – and perhaps you can enlighten me here – is why men want to fuck transvestites. A male arsehole in a skirt is still a male arsehole, and you have to take the skirt off to fuck it anyway, so what is going on in your head when you see a coconut with hairy arms and an Adam’s apple dressed in his sister’s flowery frock and shoes, and decide, ‘My, there’s an attractive sight’?

  I said, what is going on in your head, Anthony?

  I don’t know. It’s not my thing.

  Not your thing, no. We all know what your thing is, don’t we? Human sexuality is complex and many faceted, Anthony, and I don’t care what men do with their cocks, as long as they do it in the privacy of my own clubs, and don’t rub my face in it. Do you like it when they rub your face in it, Anthony?

  Get fucked.

  Do you know why I keep you around, Anthony? You improve my vocabulary.

  So, being queer was illegal in New South Wales until 1984, and mugs who do illegal things are naturally attracted to illegal places. The queers had their hideaways, in the Rex Hotel and others, but there was nothing to stop the jacks from bursting in whenever they’d had a skinful and taking them outside for a flogging. The jacks loved belting the daylights out of queers. It was the main thing they used to do. I often wonder what modern police work involves now that they don’t go bashing poofs. I didn’t encourage queers to come to my clubs, but they knew if they did they’d be safe from the jacks. At least until closing time.

  Normally, I found that once a club had attracted a certain number of queers – somewhere between twenty and thirty – the other customers either punched seven shades of shit out of them or left the place to them. When two of my establishments reached this critical mass, I passed them over to queer managers and told them to run the places to suit the clientele, but not to come crying to me if they couldn’t keep the jacks on side.

  The queers came to Aphrodite’s, and I thought that would be the end of the place, but it seemed the rest of the customers were such pond scum they didn’t feel as if they had to enfor
ce the usual prison hierarchy of armed robbers, cats and rockspiders. At Aphrodite’s, paedophiles and trannies drank with the lowest kind of crims and, of course, the most twisted and perverted of the jacks, and barely a harsh word was spoken before midnight, when the place went off like a boxing tent.

  We got a lot of American soldiers in Aphrodite’s, and the niggers in particular were in great demand among the faggoty contingent. They didn’t do badly with the girls, either, although there was more than one marine who went back to his hotel to find his conquest had a cock. There are bodies that will never be missed, Anthony, buried in places that will never be found.

  The Little Fish, to my surprise, mixed easily and well with sodomites of every persuasion, so I gave him the Roundabout Club and ‘Girls Girls Girls’ to look after too. Thinking back, the Little Fish always had an odd taste in women. Part of the reason we were able to stay friends for so long was that our ambitions rarely overlapped and, on those odd occasions when they did, he was able to be mature about it.

  Occasionally the Little Fish and I would take our women away to Queensland for a weekend. I was usually – although not always – accompanied by Ira, while he would generally drag along some foul-mouthed whore from the depths of hell. However, on one particularly puzzling weekend in Noosa Heads, the Little Fish rented an apartment next to mine with Savannah Plains, a nice, well-mannered girl who nonetheless strongly resembled a prop forward who used to work the door of the Patton.

  I didn’t raise this matter with the Little Fish. I assumed he’d fallen victim to this strange contagion that had affected the entire city, and it was probably just a stage he was going through, caused by working in such close proximity with so many hideous fucking drag queens. In a way, I blamed myself.