Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  She disappeared and Clements said, “This isn’t the first time she’s had cops at her front door.”

  The two detectives waited patiently. Out on the broad street an ambulance came along, did a U-turn and slowed in front of the Brode house. Then it moved along and pulled up half a dozen houses along.

  “Shall I ask ‘em to wait?” said Clements.

  Then Mrs. Brode came back, opened the security door. “My husband will see you. But he’s not well, so please don’t stay too long.”

  They followed her down the long wide hall. She was in her forties, Malone guessed, smaller than she had looked through the security door. But she walked with the squared shoulders and firm step of an army sergeant-major. The sort of wife, Malone thought, a man would find hard to treasure. And at once felt the ghostly crack of Lisa’s hand across the back of his head.

  “Here they are, Ray,” she said, as if Malone and Clements had no name, no identity.

  She stood aside and the two detectives went by her through a doorway into a large room that was apparently Brode’s office. As he passed her Malone caught a glimpse of her full on for the first time. Under her dark hair there was a small sharp-featured face full of intelligence; her wide brown eyes had all the shrewdness of a veteran bookmaker. For some reason Malone saw her with Madame Tzu, someone who could hold her own with that formidable lady.

  Brode sat behind a desk that looked large enough to be a converted pool table. Behind him three large windows, all barred, looked out on to a garden ablaze with colour. The colour was a contrast to the drabness of the room, the bars a barrier to it. Malone wondered if Brode ever turned to look out at it.

  Brode didn’t rise, but waved the two detectives to two chairs opposite him. “Forgive me for not getting up—I’m not well . . . Thanks, Gwen.”

  “Watch yourself,” said Gwen, and went out, leaving the door open.

  Brode smiled weakly. “She’s my security guard . . . Well, what can I do for you gentlemen?”

  “Do you need a security guard?” Malone bowled a bumper first ball, right at the head.

  Brode frowned. He didn’t look in the least unwell, but he was wary. Not of viruses but of questions. “Why would I need someone like that? I was joking—”

  “Mr. Brode,” said Malone, bowling a little closer to the wicket this time, “why did you lend your apartment in The Mount to Li Ping and the two young engineers from Olympic Tower?”

  Brode looked at his desk as if measuring its largeness. Green folders covered most of it like sods of turf; a computer stood on one corner, its screen blank, secrets hidden. The room had a high ceiling and one of the light brown walls held a double row of framed certificates; Brode, it seemed, had been honoured for everything but innocence. The furniture was dark and heavy and Malone wondered if it had been left here by the original owner. The chairs in which he and Clements sat could have accommodated a Sumo wrestler.

  “They told me they were scared,” Brode said at last.

  “Of whom?”

  Lisa always insisted on the difference between who and whom and he had fallen into the habit; or been dragooned into it. It made him sometimes sound a little prim, but there is not much difference between primness and an edge to the voice.

  Brode gestured; he had big hands that moved like heavy birds. “I don’t know. Li Ping’s brother was shot—”

  “You knew she had a brother out here? Who told you that—General Huang?”

  “General Huang?” Brode made a good pretence of looking puzzled.

  “Come on, Mr. Brode. Mr. Shan.”

  Brode all at once began to look unwell; he leaned forward as if he had a stomach cramp. “How much do you know?”

  “Enough.”

  “What sort of answer is that?”

  “I’m afraid it’s all you’re going to get.”

  “Your wife works with me sometimes. Has she been telling you things?”

  “Don’t rile him with a question like that, Mr. Brode,” said Clements as if he were the essence of patient behaviour. “It’s the Irish in him. We’re gunna stay here till we get the answers we want, whether you’re well or unwell. Do you have a gun?”

  Brode sat back as if a gun had been presented at him. “A what? You’re joking! Jesus, if it was known a city councillor had a gun . . . During the gun amnesty, after the Port Arthur massacre, I gave speeches about it, about handing in all weapons—”

  “So you did and we were glad to hear of it,” said Malone, who couldn’t remember reading or hearing any word about the speeches. But at that time there had been a barrage of rhetoric and Brode wouldn’t have been the only one unheard. “Did you know about the money that was deposited in the accounts of General Huang’s son and daughter?”

  The random questions, coming at him from all angles, or anyway two angles, didn’t appear to faze Brode; but then he had been a councillor, municipal and city, for twenty years. Life on Leichhardt council had been like spending Monday night in a shooting gallery.

  He took his time, then said, “Yes, I knew.”

  “Who told you? General Huang?”

  “Do we have to keep referring to him like that?”

  “You don’t like being linked with the Chinese army? Righto, if you’d prefer Mr. Shan—” Remembering Greg Random’s instruction. “You’d prefer to keep the general’s name out of the media. Why?”

  “I think it’s better that way.” But didn’t say why he thought so.

  “Because he was a sacked general? Did you know he was army when he first came to you?”

  “Who said he came to me?”

  “We understand you were the one who got the Olympic Tower project through council,” said Clements. “Were you to have had dinner with Mr. Shan and the others the night they were shot?”

  Malone held on to his head, didn’t turn it at this unexpected question. Where had Russ got that one from?

  “You see, Mr. Brode, we’ve learned the booking for that particular booth in which they were killed was for five people. Les Chung was the fourth, but he was talking to Inspector Malone at the moment the gunman walked in and let fly. Were you the fifth booking?”

  “No.” No hesitation.

  “Do you know who it might of been? Madame Tzu? Jack Aldwych?”

  “I have no idea. I never met any of them in restaurants after—” He had slipped and he knew it.

  “After what?” said Malone, taking up the bowling again. “After you and the developers had made the usual arrangements?”

  “What arrangements are those?”

  Malone refrained from rubbing his thumb and forefinger together; but the itch was there. “We know, Mr. Brode, that money changed hands.”

  “Would you care to make that charge in public?” It sounded almost a pro forma answer: he had been accused many times and he knew the counter.

  Malone stared at him: he, too, had played this game, but always as the accuser. “Sure, we’ll do that. You want to ring John Laws or Alan Jones? Talkback hosts love that sort of talk.”

  Brode sat very still, one clenched fist resting on his desk as if he were about to lift it and bang it down; but he was too experienced for those sort of theatrics, this audience was too hard-bitten. He relaxed, spread his hand on the desk. “Okay, there was an arrangement. The fucking project wouldn’t have got off the ground if it hadn’t been for me—” He was working up steam, in a moment he would be waving the flag of civic pride.

  Malone held up a hand. “Simmer down, Mr. Brode. We’re not here on council business. Sergeant Clements and I have seen so much corruption—”

  Brode had simmered down; he actually smiled now, though it was more a smirk. “In the Police Service you would have. Some of your guys had it down to a fine art, didn’t they? At least councillors go in for honest corruption, we don’t hustle hookers or drug dealers—”

  “Don’t let’s get too moral,” said Malone wearily. “Tell us, have you received any threats? Death threats?”

  Beyond the bar
red windows, out in the garden a gardener had made an appearance, was leaning on a rake and talking to Mrs. Brode. Or being talked at. She said something, then stalked back towards the house. The gardener looked after her, half-raised a hand to give the finger to her departing back, then looked towards the windows and dropped his hand. Mrs. Brode, Malone decided, would give the finger to any death threat.

  “I don’t know whether they were meant as death threats,” said Brode. “But yes, I’ve had a call. Les Chung told me I should take a holiday, get out of town for a while.”

  “Les Chung? He gave you his name?”

  “Well, no. But I recognized his voice.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday morning.”

  When you suddenly felt unwell? But Malone didn’t ask that question; that would only put the secretary Rosalie and Lisa, too, on the spot. “You didn’t know we had picked up Li Ping and her friends at The Mount?”

  “The manager rang me to say there’d been some sort of cock-up—”

  “It was a balls-up, actually,” said Malone. “But we sorted it out. We had quite an interesting talk with your young friends.”

  He waited for a reaction from Brode, but there was none.

  Malone went on, “When did Les Chung call you?”

  “About ten minutes after I got the call from the manager. Actually, it was Les who said there’d been a cock-up.”

  “He was threatening you and he talked about a police cock-up? Come on, Raymond. Why are you putting Les Chung in the shit? I know Les, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to make threats over the phone. If you want to work off some score against him, try something better than that. Les Chung and Jack Aldwych don’t make phone threats. They’d call on you personally . . . Who made the call?”

  Then Mrs. Brode was standing in the doorway, giving orders. “You will have to excuse my husband, Inspector. It is time for his medicine.”

  He’s getting it. But Malone didn’t voice the obvious. “We’ll just be a few more minutes—”

  “I’m sorry, it has to be now. Will you please leave?”

  “If we have to, we’ll be taking your husband with us. To Homicide.”

  “Homicide?” Her face pinched.

  “Didn’t I mention we’re from Homicide? Where did you think we were from? The Fraud Squad?” It was dirty, but he couldn’t resist it.

  It seemed to take some of the starch out of her. She stood very still for a moment, then with hurried steps she came into the room and stood behind her husband, one hand on his shoulder. It was probably unintended, but it looked like a posed statement: we are a team.

  Brode put his hand up to cover hers. “It’s all right, love . . . Okay, Inspector, maybe it wasn’t Les Chung. But it sounded like him.”

  “So who do you think it was? Guo or Tong? They couldn’t have called you after the balls-up. They were with us, being questioned. I think you’re making all this up, Raymond.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Mrs. Brode. “He’s trying to protect me. I got the call. Here. Two nights ago.”

  “So why did you try to lay it on Les Chung, Raymond?”

  Brode didn’t answer that, but said, “Nobody has any reason to threaten us.”

  Malone smiled. “Raymond, if you’ve been taking handouts on Olympic Tower there are a dozen people who could threaten you. The Premier, the Minister in charge of the Olympics, the Lord Mayor—Yes, Mrs. Brode?”

  He had seen her hand tighten on her husband’s shoulder. “Yes, what?”

  “I thought you wanted to say something?”

  She shook her head, said nothing. Her husband reached up again and pressed her hand. “It’s all right, love, there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t think I can help you any further, Inspector—”

  “Where does Madame Tzu fit into all this?” asked Clements.

  Brode frowned. “She’s a partner in the project, that’s all.”

  “No,” said Malone, “she’s more than that. Who paid you the initial bribe?”

  Brode stared at him. His wife took her hand off his shoulder and reached forward—for the paper-knife on the desk? One of the paperweights? Then she straightened up again, as if reason had taken control of her. Both husband and wife suddenly looked unwell, the medicine was the wrong dose.

  Then Brode said, “Madame Tzu. But you’ll never find any evidence.”

  “Was the money paid to you, Mrs. Brode?”

  She said nothing, but the answer was there in her face.

  “How much? Half a million, a million? It doesn’t matter—we’re not chasing the money.” He stood up. “But watch out. Let us know if you get any more threats, Mr. Brode. These days people are killed for much less than a million—” He was laying it on. Petty spite can sometimes taste so good; even saints have savoured it. “We’ll see ourselves out—”

  “No, you won’t,” said Mrs. Brode, and led them out of the room. Walking behind her Malone remarked that her stride was quick and firm again. She opened the front door, pushed out the security door, but barred their exit for the moment.

  “My husband is a wheeler-dealer, Inspector. Some people are born accountants, lawyers or policemen—he was born a wheeler-dealer. It’s what I fell in love with, am still in love with. I wouldn’t want him any other way.”

  “Thanks for your frankness, Mrs. Brode,” said Malone, and meant it. “Take care.”

  “Oh, we’ll do that,” she said. “We’ve been doing it for twenty years.”

  The two detectives left her and went down the steps and out the front gate. The postman had been and the mailbox was stuffed with what looked like junk mail.

  The ambulance was drawing away from the house further down. Clements looked after it. “I wonder if Brode was ever an ambulance chaser? He’s got a law degree. It was there on that wall with all those other pieces of paper.”

  “He’d have chased a buck wherever he could get it,” said Malone. “This time I think he wishes he’d laid off.”

  9

  I

  “MS. FENG is at her aerobics class.” The young Chinese girl had greeted Gail Lee and Sheryl Dallen at the head of the stairs, as she had on their previous visit. It was as if she had an antenna that picked up the arrival of strangers as soon as they entered the downstairs doorway. “She will not be back for at least an hour. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Better still,” said Gail, “tell us where she goes for her aerobics.”

  The young girl looked no more than sixteen, but she was already halfway to being the perfect secretary, the human picket fence. “I don’t think I can do that—”

  “I think you can,” said Gail, and said something in Cantonese.

  The girl flushed, then said, “It is the Flower Girl gymnasium in Campbell Street.”

  Out in the street again Sheryl said, “What was that you said to her?”

  “Cantonese. I used an expression I don’t like to use in English.”

  “You’re an odd one, Gail.”

  Gail smiled. She had come to have affection for and reliance upon the other girl; they were going to be a good team. “Half-and-halves often are.”

  Sheryl nodded, though she would never know the problems that mixed-bloods had. She looked across the street to the Golden Gate. “The scene of the crime is in business again.”

  “I wonder if anyone sits in the back booth?”

  “Of course. The world is full of morbid numbskulls. Splash some blood somewhere and in no time you’ll have a crowd wanting to look at it.”

  Gail nodded, then moved on. “Let’s try the Flower Girl gym. Do you know it?”

  “Never heard of it. If their aerobics are anything like Chinese gymnastics, I don’t want to know it.”

  Campbell Street is a severed minor artery from Chinatown proper. Back in the 1920s and 30s it was a brothel area, sometimes with whole families in the trade; a nice girl was one who said Thank you after servicing a client. There have always been Chinese stores in the lower end of the stree
t and they have now multiplied. The Capitol theatre, a derelict near-ruin for years, has been rebuilt and the 1920s and 30s are back with revivals of old Broadway shows. The occasional hooker is still to be seen, but too often she looks as if she has strayed out of the stage door of the past.

  The Flower Girl gymnasium was above two grocery stores and approached by a narrow flight of stairs. As Gail and Sheryl went to go in, a man got out of a car at the kerb and approached them. Then he pulled up, recognizing them.

  “Hello, Gail. You after Miss Feng?”

  “Hello, Jeff.” He was a plainclothes man from Day Street. “You still keeping an eye on her?”

  He was young, eager for action, easily bored. “It’s a waste of time. Nobody’s interested in her.”

  “We are.”

  He grinned. “You’re not dangerous. Go ahead, be my guests. She’s up on the first floor.”

  Gail and Sheryl climbed the stairs, pushed open a door and entered the gymnasium’s main hall. At least a hundred people, men and women, old and young, were arrayed in rows, arms and bodies moving in slow motion as if they were all underwater.

  “T’ai Chi?” said Sheryl.

  “It doesn’t raise much of a sweat,” said Gail, “but it makes you just as aware of your body.”

  “Do you do it?”

  “Every Sunday morning. I go with my father and sisters. Dad goes to the rugby league matches on Saturday afternoon, watches all that biff-and-bash, then gets over it with T’ai Chi on Sunday morning.”

  Sheryl looked at the group, most of whom were clad in tracksuits or tights and T-shirts. “I think I prefer the sweaty approach. I like the shine of sweat on a thigh muscle.”

  “Yours or some guy’s?”

  Sheryl just smiled, then nodded at the front row. “Let’s interrupt Camilla.”

  Gail raised a beckoning finger and Camilla detached herself from the group and came towards them. She was not shining with sweat; she looked pale and tired. “Yes? Did you have to come here for me?”