Follow the Money

by Peter Corris

  ‘When and if he rings I’ll try to trip him up on that.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t ring?’

  ‘I think he will. People can only play a double game for so long. He might feel safer now that Freddy Wong’s out of action but he might not. There could be someone worse in the wings. Same with Houli and Talat; he might think the stakes have gone up for them. A deal with the police, a version of witness protection, not that he’d be willing to bear witness, is his best chance.’

  ‘If the cops play it straight. D’you think they will?’

  ‘No. We have to be on our toes and it gets very complicated if Ali’s dirty. Are you worried about getting your story?’

  ‘No. I’m worried about Rosemary. She wants to come back.’

  ‘Tell her not yet.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Insist.’

  ‘How much luck have you had at insisting a woman do something she doesn’t want to do?’

  I told him to be careful, lock his door, stay in company and keep the instant backup number Chang had given me close to hand. It didn’t seem likely that Houli would come after us, but it was possible. And Malouf/Habib himself might not make the quiet approach he’d spoken of. We still only had his word that he wasn’t involved in the death of the substitute. And what of his school chum on a lonely beach in the far north?

  I got a call-waiting signal and rang off, after promising Sabatini I’d contact him immediately if it was our man. It wasn’t.

  ‘Cliff,’ Megan said, ‘what the hell have you been up to?’

  Is that what it comes to—your children addressing you the way your parents did?

  ‘The usual,’ I said.

  ‘I saw the news and I recognised the house and the Falcon and that was you being bundled into the police car with the coat over your head. Did you shoot that man?’

  ‘No, he shot at me but he missed.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about the case you were on involving men with shotguns.’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’m too old for it. I was too old for shotguns twenty years ago. We’re all too old for shotguns. There were developments, changes. Things got heavier. The car’s a bit of a mess; those pellets bugger up the duco.’

  She let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Fuck the car. Anyway, you’re not up on a charge or anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it still dangerous?’

  ‘Could be, but don’t worry, I’ve got allies.’

  ‘You once told me to be wary of allies because they tended to be balanced by enemies.’

  ‘Did I? That sounds glib.’

  ‘It is, but it’s good glib. Well, I wanted to tell you that you should call on Hank if you need help. I know I’m going back on what I said before, but I really don’t want to be one of those women who stop men from doing what they want to do. I can tell that Hank’s bored with the routine stuff and when he saw the news he lit up. He was energised. I prefer him like that and I told him so. Just take care, Cliff, and come and see us when you can.’

  ‘I will. How’s everything going?’

  ‘He’s kicking.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Yep, a boy, and he just gave me a bloody great thump.’

  Malouf/Habib rang me at noon precisely the following day.

  ‘You took your time,’ I said, ‘Richard, or is it William?’

  He chuckled. ‘You’ve done some homework.’

  ‘Me and others. What made you decide to call? I thought you might have given up on the idea.’

  ‘No, you didn’t think that or anything like it. Never mind why, we’re here now.’

  So much for my notion about tripping him up.

  ‘The police are interested in a deal,’ I said, ‘under certain conditions, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally, and you’re authorised to speak for them? I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Just at this initial stage, to set the rules, then it’ll be out of my hands.’

  ‘Okay, what’re the conditions?’

  I’d thrashed this out thoroughly with Chang and Ali, trying to guess not only what Malouf/Habib would accept, but what he’d anticipate in a negotiation. I wanted to avoid police-speak, but still get the flavour of a police arrangement across.

  ‘First, the name of the man identified as you, and some evidence that you didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Go on, I’m jotting this down.’

  So to speak, I thought. I could hear his fingers on a keyboard.

  ‘A solid indication of what this is all about. Some explanation of the word you used—cancerous.’

  ‘Mmm, and . . .?’

  ‘That’s all for now. They’ll want hard evidence, documents, emails, banking details, photographs, whatever, to back up what you say. Hard evidence against Selim Houli.’

  The self-satisfied chuckle again. ‘Not against Freddy Wong?’

  I had to be careful that he didn’t lead me into places I wasn’t prepared for.

  ‘The police assume you’re talking about organisations. They know Freddy Wong had connections far and wide. They assume you’ll have . . . relevant information about others.’

  ‘Who killed Freddy?’

  The question caught me off-guard and I almost answered. I stopped myself and simply said that I wasn’t at liberty to say, but he got something out of my hesitation.

  ‘I’m guessing you were there and that’s why nutty Lester came after you. I’m guessing May or Sun Ling.’

  ‘Guess away.’

  That was a nugget for me—he didn’t know where Sun Ling was, but he did know something about them. The more I heard from him the more I formed the opinion that he was a very dangerous man. There was something objective, analytical, about everything he said, as if he were attempting to anticipate two or three moves ahead and come out on top.

  ‘I assume you’re recording this, Hardy?’

  I was. Chang had given me the equipment, but I didn’t respond.

  ‘You would be. That’s good. There’s no point in trying to trace the call though. This phone’ll soon be . . .’

  ‘At the bottom of the harbour?’

  He laughed. ‘Good try. I’ll be brief and try to satisfy your conditions. The dead man was what you might call an undocumented person. He was a Lebanese relative of mine I . . . introduced into the country. He was working with me on this project until about the time I decided to go, as it were, freelance. Lester Wong killed him thinking he was me.’

  ‘That’s hard to prove, given that Lester’s dead.’

  ‘I can back it up, at least part of the way.’

  Slippery, I thought, very slippery.

  ‘As for the other conditions, I’ll give you some names and let your . . . principals make what they will of them: Harvey Dong, Ah Pin, Mustafa Khalid and . . . let’s say, Grant Simmonds.’

  I said, ‘That’s not much to go on,’ but I was talking to myself. He’d hung up.

  I met Chang in Burton Place, the square down a level from Oxford Street. I had Googled the names and got results for three of them, not Grant Simmonds. I told him about the call and passed my printouts to him.

  He stirred sugar into the long black he’d ordered and ignored the papers. ‘You didn’t get a hint about his source of information . . . locally?’

  ‘Not a clue. He’s very smart. You heard the recording, the one time I tried to trick him he was onto it like a shot.’

  ‘He says Lester killed the mystery man?’

  ‘Yeah, and that he can back it up. To use his words, “in part”.’

  ‘I found it hard to listen to; it sounded as if he played you like a fish.’

  ‘I doubt you’d have done any better.’

  He pulled the sheets towards him and looked through them as he stirred his coffee. He was seeing that Harvey Dong and Ah Pin were Hong Kong criminals, the heads of gangs within the Triad structure. Mustafa Khalid was the leader of a Lebanese militia group involved in the intricacies of Middle Eastern politics. The gover
nments of several states had declared him an outlaw and he and his followers were now best described as bandits with terrorist tendencies.

  Chang looked up. ‘Nothing on Simmonds?’

  ‘No. I’m assuming your magnificent databases will turn up something.’

  ‘Sarcasm,’ he said, ‘a sign of insecurity, our profilers tell us. I’ll check on him.’

  ‘What do I tell Sabatini?’

  ‘Tell him nothing.’

  ‘What will you tell Ali?’

  Chang shook his head, drained his coffee, got up and walked away.

  I guessed that we were allies in deceiving our comrades and I remembered what Megan said I had told her about allies.

  I didn’t have to do anything about Sabatini. Rosemary flew back into Sydney and took all his attention. Perhaps he was tired of the waiting game, and he had my assurance that I’d give him everything I had when it came time for him to write a full story. If it became time; the international flavour of the names I’d passed on to Chang had me worried that the whole case might move out of state police hands and be taken on by the feds or the intelligence agencies.

  I needn’t have worried.

  ‘This Simmonds is a consular official in Hong Kong,’ Chang told me at our next meeting. We were in Sydney Park in St Peters, walking the paths. The four towers, the lungs of the old brick factory, were casting long shadows and the wind was chill.

  ‘Consular. That means he deals with immigration matters, visas and such.’

  ‘Right. Authorises visas and these days has a role in monitoring applications from skilled people and those with investment capabilities.’

  ‘Passports?’

  ‘Probably has a drawer full of ’em.’

  ‘Does this mean you’re going to hand this over to the feds or the spooks?’

  Chang, who had a long stride, stopped abruptly. ‘Shit, no! Certainly not at this stage. Doesn’t take much to put it together, does it? Chinese and Lebanese criminals get- ting entry to this country through corrupt DFAT officials. They get set up in already existing businesses which have been compromised in some way by Malouf’s dealings, and have had pressure put on them by Freddy Wong and Houli. Those two were looking to be part of the ongoing action.’

  I said, ‘He’s a crafty bastard, this guy, only gives us one of the officials and a couple of names. You have to wonder how widespread it is—how many crooks, how many businesses and how big.’

  ‘And how much money.’

  We were walking again. ‘Cancerous,’ I said.

  Chang stepped off the path to pick up a soft drink can. He tossed it at a bin; it bounced on the rim but went in. ‘It could be. Business is the lifeblood of ethnic communities in this city. It affects everything—family, religion, schools, politics, sport, the lot. If criminal organisations get control of big Chinese and Lebanese businesses—I mean in terms of money and personnel—it’d be a nightmare.’

  ‘It’s big, as he said. But you’re not going to pass it on higher?’

  Chang didn’t reply. We reached the pond, took a turn and headed back towards the towers. There was a dog exercise area away to our left and the sounds of the dogs and the children had a calming, normalising effect on me and apparently on Chang, who stopped and looked.

  ‘My people have been here for a hundred and fifty years,’ he said. ‘They were on the Victorian goldfields and then had the good sense to come to Sydney. They were market gardeners, laundrymen and shopkeepers. My great-great-grandfather fought in World War I. A couple of my great uncles fought in the next war.’ He laughed. ‘Mind you, a few members of my family were mistaken for Japs and interned. This place isn’t perfect, but I love it and I’m fucked if I’m going to let a bunch of foreign sleazebags come in and bugger it up.’

  At home, I punched the buttons to disable the alarm and put my key in the lock. I heard a soft footfall and felt something hard and cold in the nape of my neck.

  ‘Open the door and we’ll go in. Drop the keys as soon as we’re inside and keep your hands where I can see them.’

  What I could feel on my neck wasn’t the muzzle of a pistol. Bigger. A silencer. I did as he said, and as soon as the door was closed he slammed me against the wall. He was as quick as a cat and before I could catch my breath he had both wrists handcuffed behind my back.

  ‘Sergeant Ali,’ I said. ‘Sharpshooter.’

  ‘Don’t forget it. Move inside, we’ve got some talking to do.’

  We went into the sitting room and I froze as I heard him open a flick knife. He sliced my jacket down the back and pulled both halves clear of my tied wrists. He shoved me into a chair, put the gun and knife within reach and felt in the jacket. Deftly, he pulled out my phone and the recording device. He fiddled with it and swore.

  ‘Where’s the disk?’

  I looked at him and said nothing.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘You did us a great service getting rid of Freddy and Lester.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘William and me.’

  ‘William Habib, aka Richard Malouf?’

  Ali smiled. ‘Light dawns. I’m curious, Hardy, what made Stephen Chang suspicious of me?’

  ‘Is he suspicious?’

  He sighed. ‘You’re going to be a nuisance the way I knew you would be. Stephen’s been keeping me busy on a variety of things. Some of them touching on . . . what we’re talking about now, but I could tell he was holding a lot back. I know you’ve spoken to William recently.’

  As always, Ali was impeccably dressed and groomed. He was handsome, looked fit and clear-eyed—the image of a rising professional policeman. His body language exuded confidence, but I sensed that he entertained a small doubt.

  ‘I did speak to him,’ I said, ‘and it worries you that you don’t know what was said, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I said it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘I think it does, Karim. You probably don’t know that Freddy Wong was getting ready to dispense with Houli. Habib was setting up to double-cross Houli and Freddy Wong. What’s to say he won’t double-cross you? Hard to find someone to trust, isn’t it?’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Shut up and let me think.’

  ‘I’ll tell you who to think about—Stephen Chang.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve already thought about him. Pity, he’s a good policeman, but good policemen get killed in the line of duty all the time.’

  ‘Kill him and you’ll never draw another peaceful breath.’

  ‘I won’t kill him. It’ll depend on how things work out, but I think it’s most likely that you’ll kill him.’

  ‘You must have a weapon here somewhere,’ Ali said, ‘otherwise it could get messy. Let me see.’

  His eye drifted to the cupboard under the stairs. He opened the door and felt among the jackets and coats and bits and pieces hanging there.

  ‘Aha.’ He pulled out the .22 I’d got from Corbett and had more or less forgotten about. He held it by the end of the barrel.

  ‘A popgun, but it’ll do.’

  Everyone has a weakness and Karim Ali’s was vanity. He couldn’t resist telling me how Habib had engineered financial disaster for a large number of sizeable Chinese and Lebanese businesses in Sydney and had arranged bail-out finance which carried penalties that would bring whole conglomerations of family concerns crashing down. I didn’t really understand much of it, but I gathered that Habib could keep all the balls in the air for about as long as he pleased.

  Offshore, he had similar grips on DFAT personnel who were in a position to facilitate visas for criminals who wouldn’t have got through the first level of screening. The idea was that they’d bring their experience and capital to Sydney and operate an under-the-radar criminal network.

  ‘Worth millions,’ he said, almost savouring the word. ‘Millions.’

  ‘Dirty money,’ I said. ‘I thought you had a promising career.’

  ‘Too slow, much too slow.’

  ‘I can see Freddy and Lester and Ho
uli and Talat as enforcers, but I don’t see your role.’

  The expression on his face was almost a smirk. ‘That’s the cutest part, I—’

  ‘But Habib changed tack,’ I said, ‘pardon the pun. He took to his boat and ducked out of the arrangement. Let me guess—he thought he and you didn’t need the Wongs and Houli. You kept him abreast of things when the little chink in the plan appeared. He was sighted.’

  Ali nodded. ‘That was careless. I told him to change his appearance and use the moorings he’d set up, but he had the hots for Sun Ling. Gretchen. Putting it all at risk for a woman. Promising her the earth, and she’s a junkie.’

  ‘It’s been done before and it’ll happen again. He’s flakey now; wants to do a deal with Chang.’

  ‘No, he knows I’ll have to step in. The only deal he can do now is with me. When this is all up and running I’ll be in charge of the unit and Chinese and Lebanese crime will run . . . smoothly.’

  I shook my head. ‘Megalomania. I don’t think you’re on very solid ground.’

  ‘Compared to you, I’m on terra firma. You know as well as I do that a big-money, dirty-lawyer network operated here until a certain media magnate left us. The WASPS have had their go: it’s the wogs’ turn now.’

  I watched him as he handled my phone very carefully. It wasn’t a particularly interesting phone. He acquainted himself with its functions and I suddenly realised why and had to laugh. His hand shot out for his gun before he realised I hadn’t moved.

  ‘You’re waiting for his call on my phone,’ I said. ‘You fed him information when he called you. You don’t know where he is, do you?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘To use your boss’s expression about how Habib handled me, he’ll play you like a fish.’

  He took two steps and hit me with a hard chop to the side of my neck. I tried to duck but he was too quick and the blow had a paralysing effect. I could breathe and see but I couldn’t move.

  The phone buzzed. He had the voice message activated, listened, and let the message run out.

  ‘A woman,’ he said, ‘sounded young. You old goat.’

  Probably Megan, I thought. I was developing a contempt blending with my dislike for him and had to fight the feelings down. Such impulses cloud judgement, and I didn’t think Ali held all the cards, not yet. The feeling of paralysis receded, but I kept myself in the rigid position I’d been in as it hit me.