Old Scores

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  ‘You’ll have to be smart. Threatenin’ his wife, kids won’t work.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. What’s old Tom driving now?’

  She gave him a sly look that folded into a smile. ‘You wouldn’t?!’

  Old Tom, who lived in a bungalow across the road, and who’d cursed her sons as animals, who’d dobbed them in a dozen times. Last time Foley was in Perth he’d stolen Tom’s Falcon, used it in five bank robberies before torching it in the wheatbelt.

  ‘You forgiven him, have you?’ Foley asked.

  ‘That bastard? Never. He’s driving a new Fairlane.’

  ‘That’ll work. Now, Ma. This is for you.’

  Foley passed over a worn manila envelope, heavy. ‘That’s four thousand in small notes. Hide it in your usual places around the house. When they come, you can say you saved it up, in bits.’

  But his mother wasn’t listening, instead staring at the bedrooms off the side, empty now but for the dents and scrawls her boys had made, and the posters on the walls.

  6.

  The alarm clock trilled its way across Swann’s bedside table and fell onto his head. It was old and heavy, large as a grapefruit, and its ticking during the night made him bury his head beneath his pillow. The clock rolled off the bed and onto the floorboards. He buried his head again.

  ‘Come on, lazybones. Where’s my cuppa?’

  Swann groaned. ‘Time is it?’

  ‘How would I know? It’s next to you.’

  Swann opened his eyes and Marion’s face was right there; her brown eyes flecked with gold, her buck teeth and tousled hair. He kissed her and tasted the mustiness of his own breath, rolled onto his back and hefted up the clock, the weight of a dinner plate.

  Marion was the early riser. Swann preferred to sleep from midnight through to mid-morning, and over the previous years he’d been able to rise just as Marion was leaving for work.

  But the premier wanted his offices debugged before the day’s business started, and that meant Swann getting up at 5.30. Because of the ticking clock, and the amount of celebratory rum he’d drunk the night before, he’d got off to sleep sometime after three.

  ‘Thing’s stopped. Ok, I’ll get going.’

  Swann kissed Marion again and pulled the sheet over her warm shoulders, the sight of her pale outline another reason to stay in bed.

  He pulled the curtains and made a face, the light fierce. Padded down the hall past the empty bedrooms where his daughters once slept. Blonny, their youngest, had moved out a fortnight ago to live with friends, and they were still getting used to it.

  *

  Swann’s new office was in one of the beige blocks that had appeared across the city in the sixties. The style was brutalist, the fabrication materials on show. Pale cement and brown anodised glass, layer upon layer, resembling the carpark alongside it. The tenth floor was open-plan with a view over the Swan River and the Narrows Bridge. Out of the stainless steel Schindler’s lift, Swann made his way though islands of boxes and files and men in overalls wheeling about filing cabinets. His cubicle had a view of more cubicles and a plain concrete wall. There was a clock above his desk, the size of a truck wheel, visible to everyone in the vast room. A red second hand the length of his arm crawled around its plain face. He prayed it didn’t come with an alarm. To avoid looking at the clock, which wasn’t easy, he eyed the nearby stairwell while the young, bright-eyed secretary in a pencil skirt pointed out his electric typewriter and described how to dial out on the phone, and relay messages, and press hold.

  Swann didn’t know how his position as Heenan’s fixer related to the desk, but all of the people around him, mostly young and on the telephone, worked in what the secretary called Media & Comm. Some of them smoked and read the newspaper and others wore headphones plugged into transistor radios. They had the look of Louise’s university friends: serious and smart and sleepyheaded at the same time. The young man in the nearest cubicle, wearing jeans and desert boots and a shirt and blue tie, his hair short on the back and sides but with a mop of curls on top, gave Swann the thumbs up, and then watched with curiosity as Swann laid down his Gladstone bag and tested his chair.

  The cubicle, desk and chair were new, smelt of acetone, hot glue and plastic, but the set-up was comfortable. Swann took the Statesman keys from his pocket and slid them into his pencil drawer. Heenan hadn’t asked for the keys back, and Swann hadn’t offered. He’d swept the premier’s offices at Parliament House for bugs and two of the adjacent meeting rooms, as instructed, his daily duty while Parliament was in session. Heenan suspected the Libs of planting bugs before their retreat to the other side of the building, but Swann hadn’t found any. His duty for the rest of the day was to examine the building’s internal telephone network, to check its overall security. But first he needed a coffee, and a cigarette.

  He was just about to dig out his chipped enamel mug from the Gladstone bag when he felt someone behind him.

  He turned, and there was Gregory Corvo, dressed in black, from his cowboy boots to his crocodile-skin belt to his black leather necklace and onyx pendant. Two gold earrings in each ear offset his slicked hair, the dark eyebrows and the five o’clock shadow over his pale jaw. His hands were held in an oddly gentle embrace, fingers interlocked, placed at his belly.

  ‘Mr Swann. My apologies for not formally making a meeting time.’

  Swann was so shocked at the plaintive note in Corvo’s voice that he swivelled around in his chair, and gave young Gregory his full attention. Corvo took this as a sign that he might approach. He dragged across the nearest seat, and placed his hands on his knees, cocked his head, licked his lips. Blinked.

  Gregory was a notorious thug, and the sight of him making a small target was so unusual Swann found it hard to keep a straight face. Swann had watched Corvo grow up in Northbridge, always around his father Tony’s illegal gambling club, sometimes acting as cockie before graduating to running his own gang of teenage kids dealing pot and rebirthing stolen cars, standing over the smaller local businesses, trading on his father’s name.

  Swann wanted to ask Corvo how he’d found him, and why, but first there were the formalities. ‘Congratulations on your wedding, Gregory. I saw the pictures in the paper – very tasteful.’

  Corvo smiled, but immediately looked worried. ‘My Sophia, she’s pregnant. I’m happy. My mother and father are happy.’

  Gregory had married into the Adamo clan – Sicilian into Calabrian. Swann had heard on the grapevine that Corvo’s new venture, a club owned by himself and two of Tommaso Adamo’s wilder sons, wasn’t working out so well.

  Swann could guess – the Adamo boys helping themselves to the till, drinking all the profits, harassing the dancers, bashing the punters.

  ‘What can I help you with, Gregory? You seem nervous.’

  The observation was a provocation, and it worked. A flash of pride in Corvo’s eyes, and the setting of his shoulders. His hands stopped their false wringing.

  ‘My father sent me. He’s the nervous one. There’s a rumour in all the clubs that the Burswood development, the one the premier announced yesterday, is for a casino. Not housing, like the premier says. Our interests …’

  Swann nodded, and Corvo didn’t need to say more. The illegal Northbridge clubs had operated since the 1920s. The clubs were well run and attended, and their success made little kings out of the likes of the Adamo and Corvo men. But if a legitimate casino opened up, they’d be out of business, putting to waste the fortune they’d paid in bribes over the years.

  Corvo was showing a deal of interest in his hands again, tamping down his natural pride, for the sake of his father’s orders. Clearly it was his first time acting the diplomat.

  ‘Spit it out, Gregory. No need to be coy. You’re not a good enough actor.’

  That got the reaction Swann hoped for. A renewed flush of anger in his eyes, and an immediate relaxing of his body, settling into its usual posture of menace. Swann could see the desire for violence in Corvo,
but also the desire to please his father, the anger swallowed down, balanced out in a jittery calm.

  ‘We want to know what’s going on. And if there’s going to be a casino, how we can get in on it. Any information you might have, it’s valuable to us. Very valuable.’

  ‘Is there something else?’

  Now Corvo’s true nature revealed itself in a malicious smile.

  ‘There is. My father told me to … convey this … He said that there was no point offering you money, but that some information we have might be useful to you, and your response may be useful for us.’

  Just as Swann suspected. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Trevor Dragic. I heard this from one of Adamo’s sons, Sep. Trevor’s trying to get someone to knock you.’

  ‘What do you mean, trying? No takers?’

  Corvo looked a little embarrassed, on Swann’s behalf. ‘You didn’t leave him with much money. He’s only offering two thousand. That’s walking-around money for the Adamo boys.’

  Swann rubbed his chin. ‘Cheap prick. Two thousand. What’d Sep say?’

  ‘Said he knew some smackhead cray fishermen who’d do it. But not until they’ve blown their money. The season’s only just ended. He reckons it’ll be weeks before the boys have put their wages up their arms.’

  ‘Just thinking aloud, Gregory, and feel free to stop me anytime. Dragic wouldn’t be that stupid, would he? Those cowboys of the ocean are wild, but they’ll spill soon as they’re arrested. Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘You’re right, Mr Swann. But I wouldn’t underestimate Dragic. They say he’s back in Macedonia, and that he’s in with some Albanians. There’s plenty owe him favours here too, and he’s got the ear of the coppers from …’

  Corvo didn’t need to say it. Dragic was one of a number of Perth businessmen who’d come up through the smack trade. He would have paid bent coppers like Benjamin Hogan over the years, and perhaps still contributed to the Christmas fund. But not even Hogan would knock Swann for a couple of thousand. He was now chief of the CIB, and had revenue streams coming out of the brothels, illegal casinos and dealers all over the city, without having to lift a finger. He’d tried to kill Swann once, but was making too much money to bother with an old vendetta.

  ‘Thanks, Gregory, but I don’t think Hogan would waste his time.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Mr Swann. To the matter of Burswood, our business …’

  ‘Tell your father I haven’t heard those rumours. But if I do, I’ll be in touch. Between us, only.’

  ‘Thankyou Mr Swann. And goodbye.’

  ‘No need to thank me, yet.’

  Swann turned his back on the departing Corvo, pulled open the Gladstone and fished out his enamel mug. He replaced the bag under his desk, where it couldn’t be seen. The bag contained his tools, many of them expensive, some of them illegal.

  He patted his shirt pocket and took out a cigarette. He dug into his trousers and found his zippo lighter.

  He was just about to stand when the secretary who’d shown him to his desk arrived, glanced at the mug, the cigarette and the lighter in Swann’s hands. ‘Mr Swann, your next visitor is waiting. Shall I bring him over?’

  Swann couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Next? You mean there’s more?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Yes. They’ve been here all morning. They’re waiting in the atrium. But we only have four seats there.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Last time I looked? Eight.’

  Swann saw his next visitor coming, a rogue giant among the boxes and cubicles, shoulders hunched and fists clenched, followed by the stares and whispers of the young workers.

  Gus Riley was dressed in his regular stained denim jeans and steel-capped boots, but was also wearing his sleeveless leather jacket bearing the club patch. His goatee beard was trimmed but his red hair was long and lank.

  Riley was the new president of the Nongs, Perth’s third largest bikie club, but its most notorious.

  ‘Swann! You fucker!’

  There was blood on the knuckles of Riley’s left hand. Swann looked at the secretary, still frozen to the spot, and put two and two in the hat. There were people waiting in line to see Swann. One of them would be nursing a sore head. Riley wasn’t the type to wait in lines.

  Riley threw himself down into the seat and smiled. ‘Last time I saw you, you was black and blue. Landed on your feet mate. Fucken foreman material …’

  ‘How did you find me, Gus? Not like I’ve been here long.’

  ‘The fat bastard works for the premier. Heenan. Has a taste for some of our strippers. I went to him, and he said come to you. Said he can’t be seen talking to me, but that you could pass on the message.’

  The last time Swann had seen Gus Riley, Swann had needed a .38 revolver to negotiate his way out of the Nongs clubhouse. Riley and his mutts had taken on a contract to kill him, paid for by the current head of the CIB, Ben Hogan.

  ‘You still owe me an EK Holden, Riley.’

  Riley laughed. ‘I know, I know. Good news is that train’s about to arrive. But first I’ve got a little something to run by you.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’ Swann leaned back in his swivel chair, put his hands behind his head.

  ‘Look at this.’

  Riley leant forward and produced a crumpled brown paper bag that smelt like bad polony. He curled the edges of the bag until Swann could see the dried apricot-shaped meat at its bottom.

  ‘An ear.’

  Swann felt his stomach tumble. The ear didn’t look good, and it didn’t smell good, but he’d never let Riley see his discomfort.

  ‘Yeah, Swanny. An ear. A human ear. Belonging to my mate Stiggs. Been missing since last week, when I sent him on a recon mission.’

  ‘Do tell.’

  ‘It’s these Kiwi bastards. The Outlaw Mob. You heard they’ve been muscling in?’

  Swann shook his head. He genuinely hadn’t.

  ‘Well, it’s not like they’ve been advertising. No bikes yet, and no patches. But they’ve set up a tattoo parlour in Beckenham, and a bike shop next door. Kawa-fucking-sakis and other Jap crap. They’ve bought a big old factory on a block up the street. Started fencing the place off.’

  ‘And you sent your mate Stiggs to have a stickybeak at the place. Stiggs isn’t exactly suited to undercover work. He still have tatts on his face?’

  ‘You can laugh, Swanny. Stiggs was one of my best mechanics. Best enforcers too.’

  ‘Was? There a body to go with the ear?’

  Riley stuck out his jaw, and scratched it. ‘Not yet. But not looking good, is it?’

  ‘And you’ve taken this to Ben Hogan. And for whatever reason he’s not helping you …’

  ‘That prick. The amount of cash I shovel him. Reckons there’s nothing he can do about it until they break a law. Doesn’t care there’s gonna be blood running in the streets. It’s war, man, until we force those black bastards back to New Zealand.’

  ‘Which leads me to the obvious question, Gus. Perth’s a long way from New Zealand. What are they doing here?’

  ‘In New Zealand, a gram of speed goes for fifty bucks. Here, because of the boom, the number of blokes into the goey, a gram sells for a hundred.’

  Swann whistled. It was true there had always been an unofficial locals-only bike club policy, something that kept the Eastern States clubs at bay. But now a Kiwi club had leapfrogged the Bandidos, Comancheros and Angels to get a nose in the trough. He was genuinely surprised that the CIB wasn’t enforcing the longstanding five-club policy the usual way: harassment of the newcomers, confiscations, red stickers on the bikes, some appropriate loading of drugs or stolen property, as had always been done in the past.

  Was Ben Hogan, and the rest of the Purple Circle who now controlled the CIB, waiting until the arrival of the new commissioner before they cracked some Kiwi heads, or something else?

  ‘The thing is, Swanny. Outlaw Mob’s a national organisation, unlike us. They’ve got serious money behind them, not to me
ntion muscle. They can afford to pay over the odds to operate here. More than we can pay, or have been.’

  Swann steepled his fingers. Almost certainly, Riley was right. But if he wanted a war, it would have happened. Riley had no idea how many Maori bikies were living anonymously in the community, waiting for a call to arms.

  ‘What did you want from Heenan?’

  ‘I wanted to tell the fat prick to tell the premier there’s going to be a war, and that the local coppers are going to stand by and watch, to see who comes out on top. Guessing he won’t want that, in his first weeks …’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  Riley leant forward, and a humourless mirth showed in his eyes.

  Here it comes, Swann thought. He put up a hand. ‘Two thousand?’ Riley’s laugh like a depth charge made the young man at the next desk flinch. ‘Fuck eh? Good news travels fast. But I heard two thousand and a taste.’

  ‘A taste of what?’

  ‘Whatever comes next. Access, for information, Swann. Currency of spies, dogs and women. The reason I’m here, talking to you. But if the hat fits …’

  ‘I appreciate you sharing, Gus. But back to your problem with our brothers across the ditch.’ Swann inclined his head, to give the impression that he’d given it thought. ‘I reckon you need to get organised. Put aside your grievances with the Barbarians and the Bad Breed, the Dingo Jacks, the Junkyard Dogs. David versus Goliath and all that. WA bikies versus the rest. The devil you know.’

  ‘Like a union, you mean.’

  ‘Yes, Gus, a union. Pool your resources. Go to the media and appeal to the West Australian in us all. Stand at the head of St Georges Terrace, under the Barracks Arch, on a soapbox, and warn of the foreign peril. You little West-Aussie battlers.’

  Swann stood, and Riley stood, and they looked across at the staff, some staring like roos in the headlights. They shook hands. ‘In the meantime, Gus, I’ll see what I can do with the premier.’

  ‘Thanks Swanny. You do your bit, and I’ll do mine. Like old times.’

  Riley strode off, lighting a cigar with blunt puffs, deep in thought. The secretary broke out of the nearest group and headed towards the atrium by the lifts. The others remained quiet against the walls. It occurred to Swann that none of them had any idea what his role was. They only knew that two of the state’s most notorious criminals had visited him, cap in hand. And that there were more supplicants waiting.