Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  Swann tweaked the dial and listened to the voice fade, drawn back into the speakers like a reluctant ghost.

  ‘This is a sensitive matter,’ Heenan said. ‘It’s Stormie Farrell, the premier’s father. He’s about to do something on the front lawn of his place. We pay the neighbours and the local Bentley coppers to tip us off, for this exact bloody reason … She couldn’t say what he was up to, except that he’s naked and turfing things onto the front lawn.’

  ‘I know Stormie, at least I’ve met him. My stepfather took me to hear him speak at a funeral, at the Freo cemetery …’

  ‘Yeah, he’s a legend, as they say. But he’s a sick man now, Frank. His liver’s shot, his blood’s poisoned and his head isn’t right. He’s becoming increasingly erratic, volatile even. Before the press get wind of it, I want you to have a word with him, talk him down from whatever trip he’s on. I’d do it myself, but Stormie hates my guts. Reckons I shave my legs. Calls me the hairless catamite – in public. And that’s when he’s sober.’

  Swann eased the Statesman off the freeway down the long concrete curve onto Manning Road. Glimpses of the Canning River between the playing fields of Aquinas College, some remnant banksia scrub and the old workers cottages dotted around patches of the pine plantation that had once stretched to Victoria Park.

  He pulled into the street of weatherboard cottages built up from the riverbank, the tannic smell of tea-tree wetland soaking the still air.

  Swann could see the address without having to check the letterboxes. A single-storey salmon brick cube with orange terracotta tiles, built into a slope of limestone rubble and casuarina needles. No front lawn, like the other neatly tended gardens around. And smoke, from a bonfire, the wrong colour – thick, black and turbid, pulsing into the midday sky. There were neighbours standing on the edges of their properties, not daring to go further, one or two of them shouting.

  Swann glided the Statesman along the curb opposite the fire and caught the stink of burnt plastic and hot metal. He ignored the jeers directed at the old man standing near the fire under the shade of a casuarina, in his underpants, stroking a large white rabbit. Next to him, leaning on the trunk of the sheoak, was an ancient, single-barrelled shotgun.

  The old man watched Swann with a squint as he walked up the drive.

  ‘You mind?’ Swann asked, indicating the garden hose coiled in a dried-out tangle of nasturtium. Without waiting for an answer he leaned over and hefted the hose and twisted the rusty tap on. Water trickled then grew in pressure as he approached the fire, uncoiling the hose as he went.

  Televisions, four of them, laid at crazy angles on a jumble of car tyres, burning little jets of incandescent green and sparks of gold and red, sucked into the blackening sky by the roiling heat coming off the tyres. They looked like they might explode at any second. Swann could see his reflection in the screen of a big TV on casters that dated from the sixties, wood-veneer and steel dials, would have once been top of the range. Besides that, two small black cubes that motels favoured. On the apex of the burning tyres was a newer model, all chrome and sleek plastic with a built-in VCR, which looked new despite the melting base and blackening glass.

  The fire didn’t like the water that came out with a surprising pressure; it gave a startled and angry hiss. Swann had a sense of the shotgun behind his back, glanced to see the old man now perched up the driveway on the rear bench seat of a cherry-red Thunderbird convertible, the rabbit on his lap and now a rooster under one arm, swigging from a goon of wine. The T-Bird was garaged under a pergola roof. The shottie remained leant against the casuarina.

  Not all the tyres had caught fire, and Swann angled the jet of water into the base of the flames, snuffing out the burning tyres one at a time. He circled round the fire and and watched the old man standing out of his seat on the massive boot, trying to encourage the rooster back into the car.

  ‘Bloody vandal!’ Stormie Farrell shook his fist and gave Swann the forked fingers. ‘A man’s allowed to light a fire!’

  Swann lifted the jet of water for a moment and sprayed the old man, who dropped his goon and tipped back into the seats. The rabbit leapt out and followed the rooster inside the house. Stormie Farrell scampered after them.

  There were cheers from across the street. ‘First wash he’s had in years!’ shouted one of the neighbours, an outraged codger with dagwood wings of grey hair, dressed in footy shorts and thongs.

  The fire guttered down to a few twists of smoke. Swann soaked the periphery of the scorched grass and laid the hose on an unlit tyre so it continued to gush into the cinders. He wiped his hands on the blanket of needles and cracked the shotgun to make sure it was unloaded, and wandered up the slope towards the T-Bird. From a distance, the late-fifties model looked in mint condition, but up close it was pitted with dents and dings and scrapes of different coloured paint. The roof was down and the interior was covered in fish ’n’ chip wrappings and empty goons.

  They were all the same brand, which told Swann the old boy was a steady but serious drinker – liked to maintain the charge and not get buried under sleep, like most spirit alkies he knew.

  The front door remained open, and Swann entered. All the rooms branching off the central corridor were dark but the kitchen at the back was noisy with the sound of a record scratching under a needle at high volume, static crackling and a background seashell hiss.

  But the kitchen was empty, except for a square outline without dust on the formica table where Swann presumed the newest television must’ve rested.

  He heard the engine of the T-Bird turning over but not sparking, and went back out the front. The old boy was behind the wheel now, dressed in a faded purple safari suit and Elvis shades, pumping the gas with a bare foot. He’d found the time to comb and oil his grey hair, which glistened in the sun.

  Stormie Farrell gave up when he saw Swann, took his hand off the keys. His eyes sparkled. ‘Frank Swann, home-delivered,’ he said. ‘What say we get down to Coco’s for happy hour? My shout.’

  The sickly aroma of cheap wine that settled around Stormie wasn’t enticing, but Swann was curious. How had the old boy known Swann was coming over?

  The engine kept ticking without sparking. Stormie Farrell cleared some space on the passenger seat with a sweep of his hand. Rabbit pellets in the floorpan. ‘What are you doing, Frank?’

  Swann circled the car and reached by Stormie’s arm and took out the keys, popped the bonnet. Went out front and lifted the heavy steel lid and fastened it. Removed the distributor cap. Just as he suspected – someone had taken out the rotor button. He refitted the cap, dropped the hood. Went round and took a seat beside Stormie Farrell and passed over the keys. The sabotage was probably Heenan’s, clipping the old boy’s wings.

  ‘Come on, Swann. Fix ’er up. You owe me, mate.’

  Swann’s eyebrows rose to say, ‘How so?’

  Stormie Farrell’s face wrinkled like he was about to shout, but it was just him trying to think.

  ‘How did you know I would come?’

  Farrell threw back his head and laughed. Beyond him, across the other side of the street where the neighbours had gathered to snipe, the old man’s laughter turned heads. Presumably, they had called the police, who’d been schooled, for favours accruing, to call Heenan. The recognition that Swann wasn’t there to arrest the old man, or put him in a straitjacket, began to dawn. One young man in board shorts and singlet picked up a rock and approached the verge.

  More nimbly than Swann might have expected, Stormie Farrell flipped his legs out of the T-Bird and scrambled over to the shotgun. Hefted and waved it around. The young man backed away, showing Farrell the rock.

  The shottie wasn’t loaded, but according to the law, going armed in public was still an imprisonable offence. Not that the Tactical Response Group ever made any arrests. In every case that Swann could remember, once the call went out the black-clad TRG simply turned up and shot dead the offender, before returning to their black van.

  ‘Mr
Farrell!’

  At the sound of Swann’s voice the fierce grin slipped away, revealed the face of a resentful schoolboy. Stormie even dropped his chin and rounded his shoulders. Without being asked, Farrell handed over the shottie, stock first, eyes down. But when he spoke, his voice was a rumble, and Swann remembered his stepfather Brian’s words that Stormie Farrell was the best bloody orator he’d ever seen, could inspire a corpse to stand up and march, rally against the bosses.

  Swann could see the premier in Farrell Snr’s sharp blue eyes, the underbite in his jutting jaw when enraged on the podium; hear the boiling tar in his voice.

  Whatever netherworld Stormie Farrell now inhabited dropped away, and his eyes were lucid, and angry. ‘You owe me, Swann. Or have you got selective hearing too? Who do you think gotcha yer new job? My son? Surrounds himself with arse-clowns and thinks he’s ready to swim with the sharks. Fucken idiot. He’s traded on my name all the way. And that’s all I got left. Look around ya. Had to burn all my tellies just to get his attention. Couldn’t stand the sight of him grandstanding, on every fucken channel. Wants to be a businessman eh? Whaddya reckon about that?’

  ‘Certainly nailed his colours to the mast, Stormie.’

  ‘Yeah, the mast of a fucken pirate ship.’

  Stormie Farrell ran the sole of his bare foot over a chunk of limestone. ‘I’m not a well man, Frank. I should shut my mouth.’

  With the anger gone out of him, Farrell Snr looked frail and thin and sickly, barefoot in a purple safari suit two sizes too small, picking up pebbles with his toes.

  ‘When was the last time you spoke to your son?’

  Farrell Snr shrugged. ‘Months, years, dunno. He used to trot me out. Now he’s ashamed of me, just like his mother was. She used to call me The Goat, in front of me own kids. He was her golden boy, doted on him, the little Prince, but I’ve always been tough on him …’

  ‘You want me to pass on a message?’

  Stormie grunted, the words not easy. ‘Yair. You can tell him that he’s off his rocker. That you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. That he’s betrayed the workers and the whole fucken movement. But that if he wants any advice, he knows where to find me.’

  Swann cursed Heenan under his breath. Babysitting the premier’s father, keeping him out of trouble, hiding from public view the premier’s shame – he hadn’t signed up for this. Swann glanced at the shotgun, thought about taking it with him.

  ‘Don’t worry, don’t have any shells. I was in the second sixteenth. Since the desert, and then Kokoda, I can’t sleep unless I’ve got my gun around. She goes everywhere with me.’

  Swann heard something behind him and turned to see the rabbit, bigger than any he’d ever seen, staring at him with rheumy eyes. ‘Barry goes everywhere with me too, don’tcha Barry?’

  The rabbit hopped over to Stormie and sniffed at his feet. Swann took it as his cue. The sea breeze whispered through the casuarina, releasing the smell of tea-tree and pine sap and childhood memories; a note of nostalgia that took him by surprise. He felt a pang of sadness for Stormie Farrell, something he often felt around old men. Farrell Snr’s race was run. His mind was going, and his body was failing, but to Swann he looked like a boy again, crouched over in badly fitting clothes, barefoot, rubbing the rabbit’s soft coat.

  5.

  Des Foley was tired by the time he reached the tin wastelands of East Perth. He needed to sleep but continued to his mother’s house. Once this caper blew up they’d have surveillance on her, night and day, and she’d be lost to him again.

  The coppers didn’t know he was coming, but he still needed to be careful. There was always a chance a neighbourhood-watch dobber or someone with an eye on the hundred-thousand bounty would put him in. He’d grown up on the street and many would recognise him, even if he looked the part of a wandering dero. Having parked the stolen Mazda on a backstreet in Maylands, he’d followed the river dressed in a stinking old bluey that’d belonged to one of the men – he’d already forgotten their names.

  With his dirty sandshoes covered in red dust and blue overalls and dyed black hair under a truckie’s cap, he looked like any number of the black, white and brindle vagrants who drank in Hyde Park.

  Foley entered the street but had to stop, to check again. There was his mother’s rental down the road, a two-storey Federation made of red brick with a sagging balcony and rusting lattice, the tin roof stained and buckled. But half of the other buildings on the street were gone. A few weatherboard shacks and bungalows remained, but were spaced with blocks of vacant grey sand, littered with plastic scrims and broken glass.

  This had always been a busy road, part of the reason his mother established the shop there, having moved Des and his brothers out of the nearby housing estate, to try to get them square. It was a steep rent even then, and her clothing alteration business – a trade she’d learnt in Fremantle jail, working with an old Singer and a steam press – brought in just enough to cover the bills.

  She worked long hours, his old mum. Made all their clothes too. The other kids at school soon learnt not to laugh at the Foley boys’ custom slacks and denim shorts, the shirts of cast-off cotton.

  One thing hadn’t changed on the street: the grit underfoot and the black smears under the eaves of the remaining houses, a product of the recently decommissioned power station a block away. As a child growing up, the puddles nearby had all been heavy with grey sludge. He’d thought it beautiful after a rainstorm when the macadam of the road shone with a petrochemical rainbow.

  Foley skipped over the low wire fence and went down the side gate of his mother’s house. He could hear the whirring of her machine in the ground-floor shop, a new sound on an obviously new machine. He leaned against the back door to listen for voices. When he was sure that his mother was alone he took out the spare key from its hiding place behind a loose brick, turned the lock and slipped inside.

  Quietly at first, but finding it hard to keep a straight face, Foley forced himself to sing loudly, and proudly, the Catalpa song. It was a code between them, the song of Fenian heroes rescuing Fenian convicts from Fremantle last century, a banned song during his mother’s childhood. She had taught it to him and his brothers, and Foley had sung it at a school assembly in such a pure voice that the deputy principal, an Irishman who openly despised the Foley boys, had wiped tears from his eyes with a cotton hanky.

  She didn’t shout his name, or yelp for joy. Laurel was too smart for that. She merely pulled the sliding door and fell into his arms, a small lady and getting smaller with age. He buried his face into her long loose hair, felt her ribs tremble at his fingertips.

  His poor ma. And he, the best of the sons, although equally lost to her. He wouldn’t be at her bedside when she died, or at her funeral; he’d be on the run or locked up. Just turned thirty, he’d spent eleven years in jails and borstals, more years lost. Of his two brothers still alive, one was jailed in Victoria and the other was a career soldier, stationed in the Top End. He had two dead brothers: one from an overdose, another killed in a knife fight with American sailors.

  She stood and petted him, pressed her hands over him, making him real. ‘Yes, yes,’ she whispered. ‘You’re looking after yourself. Good. Come through upstairs.’

  He climbed the creaking staircase while she returned through the shop, pulled over the open sign, locked the door.

  She made him tea and crumpets, and then pikelets with butter, and then two rounds of corned beef and mustard sandwiches, his favourite. He guzzled away a king brown while she made the rest of the loaf into sandwiches to take with him, the fact that he’d leave unspoken. Her eyes were sharp as ever. She still had the prison wariness, the reading of signs, after all these years.

  ‘Who’s the landlord?’ he asked, getting down to business in case they were disturbed, or he had to leave suddenly.

  She sniffed. ‘You remember old Schloime Mostel, ran the drycleaners round there on Royal Street?’

  ‘Old Slimey, yeah, I remember.’


  ‘Don’t. He was a good bloke. Sent plenty of business my way. If he noticed a loose hem or a worn collar …’

  Foley shrugged. ‘Ma.’

  ‘His son. Goes by Sam. He bought this place about a year ago. Put the rent up right away, nearly doubled it. If it wasn’t for your brother, and you …’

  Foley waved his hand. ‘And now?’

  ‘He wants me out. Won’t say why. But there’s something in my contract with him, reckons I’ve got to make it good, fix the place up to its original condition …’

  ‘This place was a tip when we moved in. Compared to how we found it, this is a fucken palace. Hang on. You mean original condition? Like when it was built? Brand new?’

  ‘What he reckons. It’s in my contract. Making good, he calls it. I admit I didn’t read it too close.’

  Foley laughed bitterly. ‘Fucken hide on him. Shekel grubbing –’

  ‘Remember how you was brought up, Desmond. It ain’t him being a Jew, it’s him being middle-class now. He’s a big-wheel accountant.’

  ‘Fucken slumlord, more like it. He’s trying it on. Who’s his flunky? Real estate agent?’

  He hadn’t needed to say it, but she could read it in his face. This wasn’t going to stand. As always, when he or his brothers made fierce, his ma looked proud.

  ‘Yair, there’s an agent, the local fella. But Mr Mostel does most of it himself. Keeps coming around, reminding me I’ve got to make it good. Hassling me ’cos I haven’t started.’

  Foley put out his hand and took his mother’s. It was dry and limp. ‘Don’t worry, Ma. I’m home now. I’ll sort the bastard out. Promise.’

  ‘You won’t be able to stand over him, not even you. He’s mean. Mean and short.’

  ‘Like I say, Ma, it’s my problem now. Does he know I’m your son?’

  His mother nodded. ‘You won’t scare him. I can tell. He’s like Keith.’

  Foley’s oldest brother, who took on five sailors with knives, and lost.