by Mark Dapin
I began subtly suggesting to the Little Fish that it might be time he found a nice girl and settled down to start a family. I actually knew of a highly skilled eastern suburbs prostitute who was about to retire, and I was able to recommend her to him through personal experience. But by this time the Little Fish was not interested in Rivka the Roarer, nor any other girl who was born a woman.
One night I was inspecting Aphrodite’s with Lazarus – who, since you don’t ask, is still in fucking hospital, shaking like Ira’s orgasm from the fright you gave him – when my bodyguard, normally the soul of discretion, brought up the subject himself.
‘When did you start arse-fucking ladyboys?’ he asked the Little Fish over a bottle of the worst champagne.
Generically, men called ‘Lazarus’ suffer from an existential problem: in order to rise from the dead, they must first die. The Little Fish, although largely unschooled in the Christian Bible, instinctively understood this. First he grabbed the champagne magnum out of the bucket and broke it over Lazarus’s head, then he thrust the jagged mouth of the bottle into his face. Lazarus picked up the table and tipped it over, and the two of them staged a magnificent fist fight. If I were a betting man – rather than a bookmaking man – I would have put my money on Lazarus, due to his extensive experience with Jeremiah Cain’s World Famous Boxing Troupe. However, in this particular blue, Lazarus was unable to overcome his early disadvantage of being battered with a bottle. He wrestled well, with blood blinding his eyes, but didn’t see the Little Fish’s mouth coming towards him like the open jaws of a shark, to bite a chunk out of his cheek.
Lazarus was clawing at the Little Fish’s eyes while the Little Fish slammed his head into the floor. He had a skull as thick as a bank-vault door, but the Little Fish possessed power in his arms and a slight advantage in size. Lazarus threw punches from his back. The Little Fish sprang upright and jumped on his head: once, twice, three times. The third jump killed him.
He came back to life, of course, although he spent three weeks in a coma. The Little Fish visited him every day in hospital, and sat by his bedside, sometimes in tears. He didn’t seem to remember how the blue had begun, and believed I had deliberately stoked animosity between the two of them.
I sometimes sat with Lazarus too, and it was during these visits, listening to the Little Fish, that I realised he had no idea he was fucking a former Patton bouncer and genuinely believed his girlfriend was a woman, from the bulge in her throat to the bulge of her cock.
How were your other businesses going?
The new arrangement in the Cross was holding up well. Only a few lone psychos reckoned they could go against the premier, the commissioner, Jake Mendoza, the Little Fish and the property-development community and, when lone psychos band together, they rarely form a lasting partnership. A loose gang of lunatics had gathered around Fat Frida’s Palmer Street brothel, formerly run by the Maltese – do you see what I mean about imbeciles flocking to fill a hole? – and Fat Frida got it into her best-employed-bobbing-up-and-down little head that she could frighten the Little Fish into letting her girls into Aphrodite’s, using Ronnie ‘Iron Fist’ McQueen, the most brainless man in Sydney.
The Iron Fist approached the Little Fish outside the club, gave him Fat Frida’s proposition, and was promptly put on his back by a left hook and a head butt. We often seem to return to the subject of nicknames, Anthony. The Iron Fist’s was viciously literal. He was called the ‘Iron Fist’ because he wore a silly fucking glove made of lead, like a medieval gauntlet. You never had to guess which hand he was going to hit you with – unlike the Little Fish, who could suddenly switch from southpaw to orthodox and back.
The first time the Iron Fist came for the Little Fish, he left his hand at home. The second time, he stormed past the bouncers at Aphrodite’s, his fist on one hand and a piece in the other. The Little Fish knew he was coming – everybody knew he was coming – so he made sure his shooters were stashed in appropriate places around the club. The Iron Fist said to the Little Fish, ‘This is your last chance, cunt,’ and the Little Fish reached for a Webley behind the bar and shot him twice in the back, in self-defence. Nobody in the world liked the Iron Fist, so the Little Fish’s was virtually a victimless crime. Although there were eighty-three people in Aphrodite’s, including six coppers, none of them saw the shooting, because it coincided with the moment in the floor show when Tina’s Talking (although now noticeably sagging) Tits turned a full circle and stood to attention to the beat of a drum. The absence of witnesses made it unclear exactly how the Iron Fist had been threatening the Little Fish with his spine and shoulders, and the Little Fish, an incapacitated war hero, was without strong memories of the incident. With no witnesses, no evidence and no aggrieved party, the charges were no-billed, and the Little Fish was left with the mistaken impression that he could neck anybody he wanted and walk away.
I let Fat Frida’s dish go cold, then, six months later, I burned her whorehouse down.
I would have done more, but I was very, very tired.
Why was that?
There is one area I haven’t yet said much about, Anthony, and that is my domestic life with Deborah and Ira. By this time, I had two separate families, each with one child. Deborah and my son lived in Vaucluse, Ira and my daughter in Kensington. As I have mentioned, I kept no secrets from my wife, except in cases where she didn’t need to know.
In the early days of our marriage, when I wouldn’t come home, I think Deborah genuinely believed I was inspecting my clubs, checking out the acts and so on – which, in a way, I was. Of course there were problems. For instance, every now and then I caught a dose. In these instances I had to go home to Deborah and admit that I was a man with a very low libido and didn’t feel able to sleep with her for about a month. It was never difficult to talk my wife into a prolonged period of abstinence, so this arrangement worked for both of us. It had the added advantage that she was unsuspicious when I was away, since she knew I was incapable. During these times, I generally sought relief in the mouth of Ava the Swallow or some similar circus performer.
On the nights I was with neither Deborah nor Ira, I was sampling the full smorgasbord of international dishes that Kings Cross had come to offer. I was never a Sinatra, obsessively collecting examples of women from every race and culture on the planet, but I regularly indulged my more exotic tastes with women from Mauritius and the Cocos Islands. They’re brown on the outside but pink on the inside, Anthony, as you no doubt don’t know.
If Deborah suspected anything about my one-night stands, I don’t think she cared, but she never came to terms with my relationship with Ira. You see, Anthony, I was in love with Ira. Not in the limp-wristed, soft-cocked, moony-eyed way you might be in love with a girl, not to the exclusion of all others or any garbage like that, but she made me smile when she came into the room, and she sucked cock like she was siphoning petrol from a puddle at the base of a cliff. Deborah was terribly jealous of ‘that woman’, as she called her, when she really had no reason to be. I would never have divorced Deborah. Men of my generation don’t just walk away. But when Deborah heard the Little Fish and his strange partner had accompanied Ira and me on a weekend away, she banned him from the house. This was exceptionally hard on the Little Fish, who had been a regular guest at our Shabbos table for nearly fifteen years.
I tried to intervene on his behalf, but found myself unable to overturn Deborah’s ruling. I think this, more than anything else, is what turned the Little Fish against me, his faithful friend since schooldays.
[Ends.]
TWENTY-TWO
I got a call from Jed saying he’d been asking around about Natural Science.
‘Sorry, mate,’ I said, ‘I should’ve told you. It turns out he’s in New Caledonia.’
‘Well, I got a message he’s at the tattooist’s in Darlinghurst Road,’ said Jed.
‘That’s closed up,’ I said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’
‘So don’t bother looking,’ said Jed. ‘Pr
etend he’s gone to Scotland instead.’
‘Who left the message?’ I asked.
‘Fuck knows,’ said Jed, ‘but he mentioned your name and Mendoza’s too.’
Jed said he’d meet me at the unit. It seemed dramatic, but we’d learned in the army never to enter an empty building alone. He turned up with the last flush of bruising still glowing on his cheeks, and short lines of tight stitches crossing his forehead like railways tracks. I was waiting outside with the derringer in my pocket. He wore a small backpack full of kit. He slapped me on the shoulder. I grinned at him. Oh fuck, this felt good. Back to work with the Jedi.
I was twice as alive as before he turned up. I could see and hear everything, from the street chatter of strangers to the rhythm of Jed’s heartbeat. We walked down the strip like whorehound tourists, but in our hearts we were soldiers on a mission. It was strange, really, because we never felt much like that in the army. I moved in perfect time with Jed, checking to the left and right, watching his back while he looked ahead.
The tattooist’s window was boarded up, its door chained shut, the whole building sealed with tape. We checked the exit onto Kellet Street, but that was barricaded too. We’d have to get in the way the commandoes had, behind the facade and through the roof. Jed climbed first, shinning up the drainpipe and smiling like a pirate. This was better than being soldiers, this was being kids. I wished we had thought of a codename for the operation. I scrambled onto the roof, scraping skin off my elbows, imagining camouflage paint on my cheeks and a knife between my teeth. Jed pulled a pair of bolt cutters – bolt cutters! – from his bag, tore away the crime-scene tape, unchained the frame of the skylight and wrenched it open. Ideally we would have abseiled down on rappelling ropes, just for the buzz of it, but without the right equipment we had to dangle and jump. It was a three-metre drop onto a hard tiled floor, but I made it all right. Jed landed with a roll, just to show that he could.
We hit the ground in the waiting room, where the couches had been shredded by gunfire, and the mermaids, hearts and roses flaked, scorched and curled from the walls. Jed drew his pistol, I pointed the derringer, and together we burst into the studio, laughing.
In the middle of the room, bound to the tattooist’s chair, was a black man who had once been Natural Science. Somebody had cut off his nose and his lips, and left his teeth scattered around his feet.
I patted down the body and found Natural Science’s wallet, passport and keys. Jed said we should leave in case there was a bomb.
‘How the fuck are we going to get back up to the skylight?’ I asked.
We couldn’t, of course, so we had to kick the back door in, which we might as well have done in the first place, if we were going to do it at all.
You can’t cry for every casualty in a war. You have to protect yourself against grief and horror. We learned that in Kosovo, sifting through the mass graves. You have to discipline your mind so that it doesn’t think about what it must’ve been like for that poor bastard tied to the chair and tortured. You have to look at a body and think, ‘Well, that was someone once, but it isn’t now,’ and get on with your own life. That night, we had a drink for Natural Science. I phoned the police from a call box to tell them where to find the body, and I tried never to think about him again.
The papers needed a name for everything. They called Natural Science ‘The Body in the Tattoo Shop’ and later ‘Orpheus of the Underworld’. The tattoo studio became ‘The Ink Blot’, as if the building itself were to blame for the killings. The Cannibals were victims of ‘Bikie Wars’.
I was having a beer with Jed in the Southern Star when Suicide, the president of the Cannibals, appeared on Channel Nine news, wearing a collared shirt fastened up to his throat to cover the huge flaming tattoos that licked his neck. The barman turned down the jukebox and turned up the television, while Suicide read from a written statement. The point he wanted to make was that bikers weren’t interested in drugs or violence, and these lunatics who were targeting them weren’t interested in bikes. They were just thugs, gangsters and gutless murderers, mowing down innocent motorcycle enthusiasts going about their lawful hobby.
The ranks of the Cannibals included men with university degrees, responsible jobs and amateur boxing titles. Their name referred to their habit of cannibalising old bike parts to restore vintage choppers, which was an important part of their lifestyle. And, like the Oddfellows or the Lions Clubs, they regularly raised money for kids with cancer. They were persecuted because of the clothes they wore, and misunderstood because they had sometimes failed to explain themselves. But they were just a bunch of ordinary Aussies who wanted to be free to live the life they chose, assisting deserving charities and celebrating their larrikin brotherhood with barbies in the summer and a two-up game on Anzac Day.
After the news was a panel discussion with the Premier of New South Wales; a criminologist; and a biker expert who was wearing a black T-shirt to show off the tiny skull tattoo on his forearm. Between them, they were trying to work out what needed to be banned.
The premier, looking out with toad’s eyes from behind his spectacles, wanted laws against everything: men riding motorbikes in gangs; gangs riding motorbikes wearing badges; and men wearing badges in gangs. The criminologist pointed out that there were already laws against men shooting each other, but that hadn’t stopped the killings.
‘Are you saying,’ asked the premier, his voice trembling with his jowls, ‘that you are in favour of carnage on our streets?’
The criminologist said outlaw bikers were a tiny minority of motorcycle-club members, and called themselves ‘one-percenters’ because the other ninety-nine per cent were law-abiding citizens. Why should the premier make thousands of ordinary motorcyclists suffer for the actions of a few hundred renegades?
The premier said it was hardly a hardship to a decent motorcyclist to refrain from riding around in armed gangs, terrorising the community.
The presenter asked if any of the panel had any idea what was behind the recent killings.
‘Criminality,’ said the premier.
The expert said we were witnessing a time of change in the outlaw clubs, which were traditionally based on brotherhood blah blah fuck blah, blah blah fuck. I went to the bar to get drinks for me and Jed, and when I came back the expert was still going on about the outlaw code of honour, which always seemed to me about as real as their commitment to road safety. The problem was, he said, that the old-style bikers were being usurped by criminals who were using the image and structure of biker gangs as cover for their unlawful activities. Some of these new breed of ‘Nike bikies’ didn’t even own bikes. The premier agreed this was a new and disturbing trend.
‘So what’s the point of banning bikers who do ride bikes?’ the criminologist asked him.
‘Non-riding bikies will be dealt with under our proposed insignia laws,’ said the premier.
‘What?’ asked the criminologist. ‘Are you going to ban Nike?’
‘No,’ said the premier, imitating patience, ‘we are going to ban open warfare by outlaw gangs.’
‘But that’s already banned,’ said the criminologist. ‘The bikers are the symptom, not the disease.’
‘Here we go . . .’ said the premier.
‘This isn’t about a bunch of clowns in leather jackets, breaking the speed limit,’ said the criminologist, ‘it’s about the international drugs trade.’
‘Oh, come on, Geoff,’ said the expert, who agreed that a small number of bikers might be involved in drugs, but there were many others – including men he was proud to call his friends – who rode with the clubs simply for comradeship.
‘If drugs were legal,’ said the criminologist, ‘there would be no outlaw bike gangs.’
‘If drugs were legal,’ said the premier, ‘we would have begun the slow descent into hell.’
Unfortunately that was all they had time for that evening, although viewers were encouraged to phone a toll line and give their opinion on what people with
motorbikes shouldn’t be allowed to do.
On the same day as the police found ‘The Body in the Tattoo Shop’, a couple of garbos emptied ‘The Body in the Bin’ into the back of their truck, then vomited when they saw somebody in the Cross had thrown away a broken old man. It was M&M from the New York restaurant and, like all old men who die alone, it turned out he was somebody back in his day: a handy welterweight, a merchant seaman, a jazz saxophonist, a trade unionist, a kindly old fella who was everybody’s friend.
I saw Siobhan’s byline on a couple of the stories. She was the first writer to suggest M&M might have been killed because he looked like Mendoza, but her theory seemed ridiculous because the paper ran its favourite photograph of Mendoza – a sharp young gangster, looking out from under the fishnet legs of a stripper – next to a picture of the New York’s photocopied missing-persons poster.
Siobhan actually called me to find out if I knew what had happened to Natural Science. I suggested we meet for a drink, but she said she was too busy following up leads and verifying her sources, and doing other things that I wouldn’t understand because I wasn’t a journalist and never had been. She asked if Mendoza had ordered Natural Science’s execution as a deserter, or if I had murdered him myself because he had found out my secret.
Then she softened and said how sorry she was to hear about Natural Science, and how disgusting it was that somebody could do that to another person, and how she hoped Mendoza caught them and made them swallow their own teeth.
‘Isn’t that what you’ve got planned for me?’ I asked.
She called me a fucking idiot who would believe anything about the Irish.
‘Your kneecaps are safe, soldier boy,’ she said. ‘I know you need them for sucking off your officers.’
