The Black Russian

by Lenny Bartulin

  Scribe Publications

  THE BLACK RUSSIAN

  Lenny Bartulin is the author of A Deadly Business (2008). His poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including HEAT, Meanjin and New Australian Stories.

  LENNY BARTULIN

  Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

  PO Box 523

  Carlton North, Victoria, Australia 3054

  Email: info@scribepub.com.au

  First published by Scribe 2010

  Copyright © Lenny Bartulin 2010

  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 the publisher of this book.

  Quote From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

  © Glidrose Productions Ltd, 1957, reprinted with permission from

  Ian Fleming Publications Ltd

  Quote The Art of War: The Denma Translation, translation, essays and commentary by the Denma Translation Group, ©2001 The Denma Translation Group. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA. www.shambhala.com

  ‘If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day’

  Words and Music by Robert Johnson

  Copyright © (1978), 1990, 1991 MPCA King of Spades (SESAC) and Claud L.

  Johnson (SESAC), Administered by MPCA Music, LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data

  Bartulin, Lenny.

  The Black Russian: a Jack Susko mystery.

  9781921753602 (e-book.)

  A823.4

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

  www.scribepublications.com.au

  To Jules

  SOMETIMES, IT WAS JUST BAD LUCK. Life was a lot of walking backwards into the future, so you could expect to fall into a muddy ditch every now and then. Brush yourself off. Do what you can. But Jack Susko was beginning to feel there was probably more to it than that. He had started to look for reasons. He was weighing up String Theory. Because bad luck was never just simple, even if on the surface right now it looked pretty straightforward and clear.

  The lady with the .38 snubnose in her hand said: ‘Everybody against the back wall. But not you, Jack. You stay right there.’

  Thunder and rain outside, camera flashes of lightning. Two hundred thousand dollars packed into a couple of suitcases in the corner. Ten grand stuffed down Jack’s pants. Dead guy on the sofa. And the Russian, like a statue of menace, refusing to do as he was told.

  ‘If you have a brain, mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘I suggest you use it.’

  The .38 tilted up a little. ‘Don’t think I won’t do it, Mr K.’

  A moment passed by, heavy as lead. The Russian waited, but then conceded and took a small step back. The gun swung around onto Jack. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘How about you hand that postal slip over?’

  The lucky door prize that everybody wanted. It had come in the mail, all by itself, slipped under the door the other day while Jack was at work, minding his own lack of business. Sorry we missed you. Regular Parcel. Available after 4.30 p.m. Except that in the end there was nothing regular about it. Especially compared to the parcels that usually arrived at Susko Books. And now here he was, staring down the barrel like a big black hole.

  She held out an impatient hand. ‘Don’t make me shoot you, Jack.’

  He unbuckled the flap of his bag and reached in. Looked up from the gun into her rich brown eyes. A second slotted into place as though on the dial of a giant iron clock; then another. What the hell use was quantum physics now?

  Contents

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  ~

  1 ~

  JACK SUSKO WAS GRATEFUL, but it was not the kind of inheritance that changed your life. Twenty-year-old, functional Japanese family sedans in light metallic blue had never been high on the list of all-time top one hundred things in the world you could inherit. Even if it came with faux-sheepskin seat covers and an interior that smelt intensely of fruits-of-the-forest, no matter how long you kept the windows open. If he was a little disappointed with Aunt Eva’s generosity at the end of her life, it was that the air-conditioning did not work. And right now the radio said it was thirty-eight degrees Celsius in the city. Jack was on Oxford Street, at 4.30 p.m. on a Friday, with traffic tight and stalled behind a broken-down bus. And it had been a long day. And he was still hustling his weary trade in weary books. And he had not smoked a cigarette for almost seventeen-and-a-half hours.

  To my dear nephew Jack, I leave my 1989 Toyota Camry. The air was thick with humidity, stained with exhaust fumes. Heat rippled off every surface: even the asphalt was sweating. Drivers blasted out a Morse code of frustration with their horns and pedestrians fanned themselves with magazines and swung violently at the flies. Jack was meant to be at De Groot Galleries in Woollahra an hour ago. November was nearly over. Hopefully he would get there before Christmas.

  The car was a surprise. Jack had not seen his aunt in many years, not since she used to look after him on the weekends, when he was about twelve or thirteen. He remembered that her husband had already died by then: and that she had a son called Carl. Jack used to read to her sometimes, crime novels and romance stuff, short stories out of magazines. Her eyes had gone, she said, but the truth was she liked a drink. She used to say ‘Gentle this up for me, love’ when she thought the ginger ale in her glass was out of proportion to the brandy. The lawyer told Jack she had died of liver failure. ‘Still,’ he had added, ‘eighty-six ain’t a bad time for it to happen.’

  Aunt Eva was a Susko. With a bit of luck, alcohol tolerance was in the genes. Since giving up the tobacco, Jack had indulged a little.

  The traffic started to move again. Jack crawled up the hill and finally turned into Jersey Road. Finding a park in Woollahra was the equivalent of striking oil in a pot plant. He eventually wedged the Toyota into a spot down Spicer Street, between an arctic-white BMW 7-series and a shiny black Range Rover Sport. He hoped nobody rang the police to have the Toyota towed away as an abandoned car.

  Jack slung his bag over his shoulder and walked up to the main strip. The high-quality cotton of his pale-blue shirt, the light, comfortable linen of his loose-fitting, khaki drawstring pants, and his bare feet flip-flopping in a pair of brown Havaianas did nothing to keep him cool. It was like he was wearing a wetsuit under his clothing. No doubt the brokers knew the smart money that morning was in anti-perspirant.

  The plane trees along Queen Street provided some relief. Beneath their expensive shade, people were shopping and drinking lemon-flavoured mineral waters, licking gelatos and walking their panting pooches. In sunglasses alone there was about a million bucks strolling around. There seemed to be a particular way to wear them, to
o, with an almost blank but faintly smug expression that said: And? Jack was going to have to practise in front of the mirror when he got home.

  De Groot Galleries was behind a large glass door and up a flight of polished timber stairs. He had to wait a moment as two yellow-vested couriers came down with a large canvas between them, sealed inside thick bubble wrap. He held the door open as the couriers grimaced and sweated and worked the angle so that they could pass through. They looked hot and irritated. Jack did not envy their career choice.

  A stern voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Do you know what you’re doing? That’s worth a lot of money.’

  One of the couriers rolled his eyes. The other whispered:

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Jack looked past them, into the gallery above. The slope of the ceiling cut everything off from the waist up, but he could see a pair of black high heels, flared and sharply creased black pants, and a broad black belt with a silver buckle. Hands rested on wide hips like a couple of guns ready to be drawn. Jack waited for them to fire, but the legs walked away.

  He let go of the door and started to climb the staircase. An air-conditioner thrummed somewhere: cold air poured over him and froze the sweat beading down his back. He shivered with pleasure. At the top he stepped into the gallery, a square, open space with a parquet floor, white walls and lots of lights. At the street end was a large window with a partition screen set in front of it. Paintings wrapped in plastic leaned against the walls: there were rolls of bubble wrap on the floor, tape guns and scissors and a cordless drill. On a small table in the centre of the gallery, a bunch of lilies slumped over the rim of a glass vase.

  The lady in the black pants stood beside a long, steel-framed desk, in another room that made up an area off the main gallery. A step with a thick yellow safety stripe led into it. Smaller, framed paintings were in the process of being hung on the deep red walls. The woman had her back to him, leaning forward slightly. She had a mature figure and filled the black pants with middle-aged plumpness. Jack could hear pages being snapped over energetically.

  ‘Mrs de Groot?’ he said.

  Just then a small, thin man walked in through a door, carrying a box. ‘We’re closed,’ he said and kept walking, past Rhonda de Groot and straight over into the main gallery. He wore a tight, short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, faded jeans and a pair of pale-blue espadrilles. Keys clipped to a belt jangled at his hip. His white sinewy arms held the box awkwardly; for a moment he looked like a kid struggling with the adult-sized world.

  Jack watched him. The man put the box down beside the lilies. Straightened up, hands on hips. ‘Can I help you?’ he said, in a whiny and unhelpful voice.

  ‘My name’s Susko. I’m here to see Rhonda.’

  ‘Mrs de Groot is extremely busy. Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Is that her?’ Jack pointed. ‘Why don’t you ask?’

  Before Mr Hawaii could respond, the woman by the desk turned around. She was reading something from a sheet of paper. A pair of narrow, frameless glasses rested on her nose. ‘It’s all right, Max,’ she said. ‘Mr Susko is late.’

  Max gave Jack a look that said: What a surprise. Then he headed back into the smaller gallery room, through the doorway there, and down a narrow hallway. He took little, mincing steps, as though somebody had just poured something cold down his back.

  Rhonda de Groot dropped the page she was reading onto the desk. She removed her glasses and looked up at Jack, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Do you have it?’ Her South African accent was mild but clipped enough to add a coolness to her irritated tone.

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Good.’ She glanced around the gallery. ‘At least something has gone right today.’

  Jack opened his bag and reached inside. Rhonda de Groot was taller than he had imagined, judging by her voice on the phone. Her bust strained against the buttons of her white blouse, while her thighs threatened anybody with ideas. She had short, loosely waved, dyed-blonde hair; brown, redtinged sore-looking eyes; and a round face covered in a lot of make-up. Early fifties, at least. Beneath all the hard work there was a little natural talent left, but it was fading and Jack wondered if maybe Rhonda de Groot was sick of rouging her cheeks every morning before work.

  ‘Is it the one I’m after?’ she asked. ‘I’m not interested in any other shows.’

  Jack held up the catalogue. ‘Art Gallery of New South Wales, February 10 to March 4, 1983.’

  She held out her hand. Rhonda de Groot had rung him last Wednesday, annoyed and in a hurry. She had been on the phone all morning, she said, and nobody had been able to help. Her client was a very demanding pain in the arse. Susko Books was last on her list. Her first words were: ‘I don’t even know why I’m calling you.’

  ‘Maybe you wrote it down somewhere?’ Jack had replied. There was a pause, but she did not hang up. She explained what she was after. Jack told her he would see what he could do.

  He rarely dealt with requests for art catalogues, but knew a collector from his days with MacAllister’s Old Books. Ray Campbell was an art-book specialist in Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. He looked like David Niven and wore tweed suits and liked to maintain a bohemian air that was becoming more expensive since the family money had run out. Sometimes he parted with his babies when things got a little tight. Lately, he told Jack, his pants had been splitting every time he sat down. Jack knew the feeling.

  The artist in question called himself Xanadu. He had achieved some level of fame in the 1960s and 1970s as a conceptual artist. The catalogue was for a retrospective show, titled For Me to Know and For You to Find Out. Jack had read a little of the catalogue essay, out of interest.

  Xanadu’s work is self-declaration, a communication through inexpressiveness, whereby all decisions are stripped of indoctrinating fabrics and freed in an unrelenting assault upon existing and not existing, upon factualised fiction and fictionalised fact. Xanadu’s invisible sculptures and see-through paintings undulate in tranquillity, sensuality, panic, rage and anxiety. Works such as The Beef Machine say it most succinctly: I am the expiring Universe.

  Jack hoped it had expired by now.

  ‘How much?’ asked Rhonda de Groot.

  ‘One hundred and seventy-five dollars.’

  ‘Fine.’ She tossed the catalogue onto the desk. ‘I’ll write you a cheque.’

  Jack nodded. Max walked back into the gallery. His look said: Still here?

  ‘Call Mr Vanning, Max. Tell him his stupid catalogue has arrived.’

  ‘Do I have to? I can’t stand that man.’

  ‘Yes. You have to.’

  ‘I’m going to need a coffee first.’ Max went to the desk and fished around in one of the drawers. He pulled out a ten-dollar note. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘Skinny flat.’

  Max pocketed the money.

  ‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ said Jack.

  Max ignored him and walked off. Jack looked at Mrs de Groot. ‘Could you make that out to cash?’

  Rhonda ripped the cheque out of its leather wallet. ‘Too late.’

  ‘Oh well. There goes race four, number two. And he was called Prancing Jack.’

  She handed him the cheque. ‘Good day, Mr Susko.’

  Jack slipped it into his wallet. Maybe the next customer he was due to visit that afternoon would offer him a glass of water.

  He reached the stairs just as Max was walking back up. His face was drawn and pale and his eyes seemed to plead. Over Max’s shoulder, Jack spotted three men following in single file. They all wore eye-masks. Like a bunch of Robins looking for Batman.

  The one directly behind Max noticed Jack. A second later, his arm came out and pointed a gun in Jack’s general direction.

  ‘Mouth shut,’ he said. ‘Walk backwards.’

  ~

  2 ~

  JACK’S STARS HAD SAID NOTHING ABOUT VENUS aligning with Mars for the first time in fifty years and him entering a whole new phase of the universe giving him hel
l. His week so far had more than hinted at it, but now it was official.

  ‘Move it,’ ordered the gunman.

  Jack held up his palms. Stepped back slowly. The guy was tall, muscular: number two haircut, black T-shirt and jeans. The edge of his white eye-mask sparkled with diamantes, giving his heist-guy-with-a-gun look an interesting twist. As the rest of the gang came to the top of the stairs, he shoved Max into the gallery, hard. Max tried to stay on his feet but fell to the floor as his espadrilles came off and his legs scrambled beneath him as though he was on ice.

  ‘I thought you said it was just the two of them?’ The gunman scowled at Jack and then glanced back at his partners. ‘Who the hell’s this guy?’

  Rhonda de Groot turned from the small painting she was unwrapping and saw the man standing over Max. Her jaw dropped a little, but nothing came out of her mouth. The second hood up the stairs rushed over and grabbed her by the arm.

  ‘Nice and quiet, lady.’

  ‘What … what’s going on? Who are you?’ Rhonda’s voice held firm. Shock was still a couple of seconds away from registering. Then she started blinking, as though dust had blown into her eyes. Jack knew it was the hot presence of the gun.

  ‘Better if you don’t talk.’ The second hood squeezed her arm, just above the elbow. He was short with a significant weight problem, curly blonde hair lank with sweat, a blue shirt like a tent and three-quarter-length shorts baggy over hairless, ham-sized calves. Black eye-mask with silver fringing. Maybe they were off to a fancy-dress party afterwards.

  ‘Did you hear me, Walter?’ The gunman still had his weapon aimed at Jack. ‘I said who the fuck is this guy?’

  Fat boy Walter shrugged. ‘I didn’t see him go in.’ The fringing on his mask glistened over his round, flushed cheeks.

  ‘Christ.’

  The third guy came over and stood with hands on hips. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said. He was about six foot and cowboy slim, wearing jeans and a tight white T-shirt. Thick leather band around his wrist, that appeared to have no other purpose than fashion. This time the eye-mask was plain and black.