King of the Cross

by Mark Dapin

  I recognised a couple of faces in the media pen from the evening news, and one from Mendoza’s photographs. Sharon Stevens had chosen to stay outside with the press, rather than go in with the family. Mendoza was right. His daughter had beautiful hair.

  ‘Sir!’ she called as I walked past. ‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

  I followed Lady Lash into the redbrick chapel, where she turned to the right, to sit with the women. The men gathered on the left. At the front, below the lectern, stood Daniel Mendoza, whose face was his father’s twisted in a bench vice, and without the laugh lines, the lie lines and the cold, amused eyes. His younger children surrounded him like bodyguards. His thin wife looked distant and pained, as if she had heard too many jokes delivered badly and the effort of smiling had palsied her face.

  ‘You must be Nick,’ said Daniel, holding out his hand. ‘My father told me all about you. He said you know all the family secrets, and where the bodies are buried.’ He grinned, as if this was just an expression, and his family secrets didn’t actually involve buried bodies.

  Daniel had lost his accent in the Pacific Ocean, and sounded like an American with a cold. He wore a dark, tailored suit, a cream shirt and black tie, with Donald Duck socks. His breast pocket was torn, hanging down like a dog’s tongue, to show that something had been torn out of his life.

  ‘As my father’s lifetime right-hand man and only legitimate heir, I’d normally have to stay in Sydney and help you finish your book,’ said Daniel, ‘but, as you know, I’m based in Vegas, and I’m on the verge – the absolute edge – of making one of Dad’s greatest dreams come true. It looks like I’ve finally got the casino licence for Christmas Island, and we’re going to ship the Luxor Hotel there. It’ll be incredible – beyond anything Dad could’ve imagined – the only pyramid in the Indian Ocean. In 25,000 years archaeologists will ask, “What kind of civilisation could have built this structure? Were they, in some distant way, related to the pharaohs of Egypt?”

  ‘A casino isn’t just a centre for gaming, either,’ said Daniel. ‘It’s a destination in itself. We’ll put on all kinds of international acts: singers, dancers, stand-up comedians . . .’

  As Daniel’s hands painted his casino in the air, the mourners queued for their seats at his father’s funeral.

  ‘Look at them,’ said Daniel. ‘Who are these people? Fucking low-lifes, the lot of them. My father knew premiers and police commissioners. He was a friend of Frank Sinatra. He promoted Digger Ronnie Blake and Lucky Jack Gold. Where are they today, Nick? And, for that matter, where is Arnold Zwaybil?’

  A small, wiry man, dressed in a leather coat and pork-pie hat, squeezed between larger bodies than his to make his way to the front.

  ‘My God,’ said Daniel, ‘it’s Izzy Berger.’

  Berger grasped Daniel’s hand and wished him long life.

  ‘The entertainment industry has lost an icon,’ said Berger, ‘and I have lost a dear friend.’

  Beneath the brow of Berger’s hat, I could make out a deep dent in his forehead.

  ‘He was a man of vision,’ said Berger, ‘and also a vision of man.’

  A solid, black-haired guy approached Daniel, but stopped a little way off. He had thick thatched eyebrows and an urchin’s sad smile. When Berger saw Jack Brun, and went to chase him for a fifty-dollar debt, the man stepped forward and hesitantly held out a tattooed hand.

  ‘I didn’t know your father,’ he said to Daniel, ‘but my own father held him in high regard. When I was young he used to tell me stories about him. He called him a great man. Whatever people say, you should be proud that he was your dad, as I am proud that my father is mine.’

  ‘Who’s your dad?’ asked Daniel. ‘Do I know him?’

  The black-haired guy leaned in to Daniel and whispered. Daniel nodded and patted him on the shoulder. As he walked to the back of the chapel and took a seat alone, Daniel asked me, ‘Who the living fuck is Gozo Joe Stone?’

  A soft, chubby hand gripped my sleeve. Spiegeleier was tugging at my arm.

  ‘I thought the press were supposed to stay outside,’ I said.

  ‘Mendoza asked me to speak to you,’ said Spiegeleier. ‘He wants me to give you your job back.’

  ‘He’s dead, Dan,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t “want” anything.’

  ‘He thinks you need some writing practice,’ said Spiegeleier. ‘He left me a year’s wages to pay you, as long as I get someone else to write his obituary.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll ever make it as a journalist?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Spiegeleier.

  An old woman with a sharp nose and high cheekbones, and a narrow tear across the front of her blouse, walked down the aisle in small steps, like a hesitant bride.

  ‘Fucking Ira,’ whispered Daniel, ‘the bitch with no shame.’

  She looked nervous and sad. She reached out for Daniel’s arm. He leaned away, as if she were a monster. I touched her on the lightly on the shoulder, to comfort her.

  ‘Keep your hands to yourself, fuck-face,’ she hissed.

  Martin, the grandson, stood apart from the rest of his family, but greeted more mourners than Daniel, and spoke briefly with all of them. When Ira approached him, he waved her away. She dropped her eyes. He hugged and kissed a woman who looked like Mendoza in drag, who I guessed must be Hannah, the surviving sister. Slow Eddie Finkel whispered to him in Yiddish.

  Siobhan walked down the aisle, beautiful and veiled, and stood talking with Leila from Le Fontaine. It looked as if she had draped her face in fancy lingerie. I wanted to tear it off and eat her.

  When the room was full, the rabbi began to speak, and he had a voice like a soul singer, which made everything he said sound true.

  ‘Jacob Mendoza was a good man,’ he began. ‘That’s why there are so many good people here to mourn him. He was a family man who will be deeply missed by his loving son, Daniel, and daughter, Sharon.’

  Daniel scowled at the mention of his half-sister.

  ‘His wife, Deborah, a woman of valour, passed away, leaving him lonely but not alone.’

  The rabbi looked down at Ira, who had taken a seat next to Daniel. Daniel moved aside and Ira spread her dancer’s legs to fill the space.

  ‘He had many friends and companions,’ said the rabbi.

  Daniel dropped his face into his hands.

  ‘I knew Jacob well,’ said the rabbi, ‘through his generous responses to every community appeal. If a Jew was in need, he was there for them, and he never expected anything in return. One of his last and most wonderful mitzvoth was to present this synagogue with a gift of five million dollars to carry out much-needed renovations. He would no more see his shul suffer than he would pass a beggar in the street without giving tzedakah.

  ‘Jacob was an Australian icon, a man whose title was so well known it appeared in crossword puzzles. During the war against the Nazis, he served his country on both land and sea, and didn’t rest until the Axis powers were routed and he could trade in his proud uniform for a suit he’d cut with his own hands. He was an unapologetic patriot, a proud Australian. In the post-war years, his name became a byword for entertainment in this city. He named his famous Patton Club after the great American general who was his wartime hero and under whose command, it was sometimes whispered, he’d served in Sicily, where Jacob acquired his love of Sicilian traditions such as honesty, loyalty and discretion.

  ‘The Patton Club was a place where lawyers, judges and policemen had the opportunity to dine in the company of the foremost entertainers of their day. Jacob loved to drink champagne and laugh. He once said he would never rest until he put a smile on the face of every man in Sydney. Well, Jacob, you can rest now. Your work is done.’

  The rabbi’s words rose above the click of heavy heels marching in time, like drum sticks bouncing off the rim of a drum. I looked up to see two towering drag queens, each wearing butterfly sunglasses and a short black dress, strut to the front of the mourners.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Daniel.
‘What a fucking travesty. What a fucking farce.’

  The trannies tried to take the space between Daniel and Ira, but Daniel suddenly shifted down the pew, forcing them into a corner.

  They sat in front of me, their hats blocking my view of the rabbi. I guessed they were Savannah Plains and Angelica Angel. They arrived with Cecilia Preciosa Bong Bong McCoy, but I think that was a coincidence.

  ‘Jacob was a mensch,’ said the rabbi, ‘a Mr Big in every sense of the word. He towered over this city like a statue of liberty. And, truly, liberty was his credo. His lasting legacy will be his lifelong struggle for the rights of the individual to live free from excessive regulation. He championed socially progressive causes, such as the liberalisation of laws regarding the service of alcohol, the emancipation of sexual and other minorities, and the social integration of negroes and midgets.’

  Suddenly Angelica Angel screamed. She pointed to Daniel and Ira, and the clothes they had torn for their mourning, and slammed the heel of her hand into her head. Then she grabbed her dress and ripped it from the breast to the waist, exposing a narrow nipple sitting hard on a tightly drawn breast.

  Two Maoris hurried to the front and dragged her away.

  ‘Jacob was admired and respected by all who really knew him,’ said the rabbi. ‘Of course he had his critics, of course he made his mistakes, but this city, even this country, would have been a different place had he never lived. Jake Mendoza did what he had to do, he did what others feared to do, but most of all, to paraphrase his great friend Frank Sinatra: he did it his way.’

  The old men didn’t make the journey from the chevra kadisha to the burial ground. When my car left for the cemetery, I shared the backseat with Spiegeleier and Siobhan, and felt her thigh rest reluctantly against mine.

  ‘Will you help me with the book?’ I asked her.

  ‘Not in a million fucking years,’ she said.

  I felt as though I had seen enough of graveyards and graves, dark suits and sunglasses, and the wind always blowing. It had been a year full of loss, and it had left an empty space in my heart. I didn’t think a book could fill a hole that had been made by bullets. Perhaps it was time to stop pretending to be the man I wanted to be and start being who I was.

  Henry Aaron, the synagogue treasurer, led the pallbearers to the grave, where the mourners passed the shovel from the male relatives to Spiegeleier, then down to me. As I tossed my load of dirt onto the coffin, I found a tear in my eye. Mendoza was the worst person I had ever met, but he made me laugh. Fuck his book, though. I wasn’t staying in Sydney for Mendoza. I was back here for Jed. This time, we’d agreed in Aldershot, the boys were going to get payback. This time we were going to kill the guilty men. I’d sort out the Russian and the Geordie on the bike, but the way I saw it, Jed was murdered by the spy who arranged the shooting, and that traitor was going to hell the moment he dropped his guard.

  Stopcocks rose like question marks between the rows of graves. The mourners washed their hands and left them hanging in the air to dry. Dror was weeping by the graveside, in a beautiful Giorgio Armani suit. I told him how much Mendoza had valued him, how the old man spoke of him as the son he had always wanted, as opposed to the son he actually had. Dror said he owed Mendoza everything.

  ‘As the new boss,’ he said, ‘my first task is to end this war. I know it sounds cold, but I’ve already opened channels of communication. We can’t have the bastards going after Daniel or Sharon.’

  ‘It’s what the old man would have wanted,’ I agreed.

  ‘I think I can negotiate favourable terms with them,’ said Dror. ‘It doesn’t hurt that I’m Russian too. We might be able to keep enough of the businesses to leave something for the kids.’

  He tried to light a cigarette with shaking fingers. I offered him the flame of my lighter, and a firm, steady hand.

  ‘You’ll be looking for a lieutenant now,’ I said.

  Dror sucked on his cigarette.

  ‘I can’t think of any man I trust more than you, Slick,’ he said.

  We hugged and shook hands.

  ‘I wish you long life,’ I said to Dror.

  – Nicholas Anthony and Siobhan Hughes, Kings Cross, Sydney, June 2009

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Claire Waddell, Mark Abernethy, Alison Tait and Andrew Rule.

  King of the Cross owes debts to a number of ‘true-crime’ books of varying veracity, but particularly to Tony Reeves’s Mr Sin and Larry Writer’s exhaustively researched Razor.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  First published by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd, 2009

  This edition published by Penguin Australia Pty Ltd, 2015

  Text copyright © Mark Dapin 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This is a work of fiction. Whilst inspiration for this story is taken in part from historical events over a period of many years in the Kings Cross area of Sydney, there is no connection at all between any real individuals or businesses and the fictional ones in this book.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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  ISBN: 978-1-76014-054-0

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