The slides that had shown graphs, charts and pictures of businesses Watson intended to carve up had been replaced with something altogether more entertaining. Poor Lenny clicked through what was essentially a stop-motion picture show of George Watson on all fours in the boudoir of one of Tilly’s establishments. Behind him, a working girl cringed as she banged his backdoors in with a generously sized, strap-on prosthetic. “Well fuck me.” Watson said.
“Looks like we might be a bit late for that…” Calyute howled and slapped his knee “Dorothy.”
A daze-like state came over poor George. A life’s work in reputation building was in shreds. Lenny, inexplicably, just kept clicking through the photos. Clearly he was trying to get to the other side in the hope that all would be forgotten, but as he moved through the smutty slideshow he dragged Watson further through the ringer. It was only when Stan toppled the projector that the depravity stopped. But by then, word was out; Watson was one of them “sexual perverts” or worse yet, in the eyes of his peers “a homosexual.” Remember this is back when men were “real men.” Acceptance of what we then called deviancy wasn’t commonplace among the average working man, and it certainly wasn’t so amongst the criminal element. This was a golden age of masculinity, where the likes of Rock Hudson graced our screens and showed us what it meant to be a real man. Yes. I know. Ironic. Watson’s legs folded beneath him and he fell to the floor in a heap.
Paulie Zambrotta stood and addressed the room. “Clearly has been left to its own devices for too long. No one from inside this organisation is fit to run the place. I’d like to stake my claim as a good God-fearing family man. I believe I’m the right man to level Sodom and Gomorrah and to create a more morally pure environment.”
“Gadigal. Cammeraygal. Wanegal. Borogegal.” It was Calyute’s turn to stand up. “These are just some of the 29 tribes that make up the Eora nation. A nation displaced from their homeland when you settled Warrane in 1788. Whether by blood or by peace. I will take this land back. I will give it to its rightful owners. The time of the white man is done. It’s time to make things right.”
“Ain’t no coon taking over the richest city in Sydney,” William Arthur Mason, famed racist troglodyte, stood so quickly he toppled his chair. “Over my dead body, boy.”
“That would be ideal, you goat fucking redneck nobody,.” Calyute exclaimed.
The place fell into madness. Sydney’s cobbles were no longer safe. Over the coming months, they would turn into something of a battlefield, on which several tribes would fight for the very soul of the city. The streets would run red with blood.
Chapter 47
When Harris asked Charlie how his driving skills were, Charlie answered, “Forwards and backwards like the clappers. Not so good at turning or parallel parking.” It seemed Charlie had made a habit of getting drunk in town and taking the wrong car back to the camp. He didn’t own a car. So, he must have been pretty drunk to think they were his.
And so, Charlie drove the men back into town. Harris and Lescott felt the least they could do for the poor young man with the tragic past was to let him come along. Perhaps by bringing the boy’s abductor to justice, he’d find closure. It was Lescott’s turn in the back seat. He could see from Harris’ troubled expression that he’d learned something, but the conversation was difficult and would require discretion in the face of their new friend. Charlie, who really did drive like the clappers, drove the car through the desert towards town. “We’re going to speak to Hawke. He knows more than he’s letting on.”
“He’s not going to help.” Charlie looked in the rear-view mirror as he fiddled with the dials of the radio. “I’ve asked him over and over. He doesn’t want to help”
“Tell me Charlie. Do you know what a standover man is?” Lescott smiled as Charlie shrugged. “It’s a man who makes people do things they really, really don’t want to do. And that big ugly lump in the seat next to you. He is such a man. Hawke won’t know what fucking hit him.”
Charlie looked the disgruntled Englishman up and down, “I think Harris is pretty handsome…”
Lester Hawke was sitting inside his office playing a game of patience when the three men walked into the station. He was in the middle of a very boring day. He’d read a couple of magazines, he didn’t read books. He’d walked out to a local bakery and bought a family size meat pie for breakfast. He’d made short work of that by himself. Then he spent a couple of hours gazing at Christina, the librarian on the front desk that day. He’d spent an inordinate amount of time on that. He started by imagining white cotton knickers, nothing fancy. Then he’d allowed himself a treat by imagining more exotic materials, cuts and colours. Silk, lace, stocking, suspenders. The lot. That sweaty fat glorified security guard sat in his office as hard as a rock, or rather as hard as his poor circulation would allow.
But his leering was disturbed when he looked up through the blinds in his office and saw the men enter, he could see something was off. The mood of the two Sydney detectives had soured noticeably, and there was a furious anger about them. It was directed at him. Something he knew he couldn’t contend with. So, he made a fucking run for it.
As Hawke ran a run which was more akin to a fat duck’s waddle, he cursed the jumbo meat pie he had eaten not an hour before. The flaky golden pastry, the tender chunks of beefsteak swimming in a meaty gravy. His self-castigation ceased abruptly when Harris rugby-tackled him with all the force of a young Clive Churchill. They were sent sprawling onto the floor.
“Do you know what happens to coppers who go down for perverting the course of justice?” Lescott asked, without waiting for an answer, he pressed on, “They become a well-worn cock-glove for some big old boy they put inside. It’s horrible really. The physical pain. The mental degradation. You been inside, Harris?”
“God no. I’d rather die.”
“You, Charlie?” Charlie shook his head as he grinned from ear to ear. Hawke and his cronies had bullied Charlie’s tribe for years, he couldn’t keep a straight face given the tables had now turned.
“Gives me shivers,” Lescott blew air from his lips and shook his shoulders to push the point home.
Hawke groaned as he pushed himself up against the wall. The threat had been a good one, but it was the rugby tackle and the man’s own frightening appetite which had left him feeling quite unsettled. Something quite odd was happening within him, as he sat there against the wall, he let out long involuntary burps.
“Start talking. There’s an individual, or individuals capable of horrible things roaming around Alice Springs undeterred. You’re going to tell us how to find them.”
Hawke went to talk but it wasn’t words that came out his mouth. It was food. Half-digested meat pie to be precise. Hawke threw up all over his front as the men watched on in disgust.
“What do you know about punishment by exile?” Hawke asked the men when he had taken a moment to catch his breath and wipe the rich brown vomit from his torso.
“Ronnie Prince sends… Sent people to the Central Coast. When they’d brought the business into disrepute.” Harris was worried. He knew the kind of man who would be placed in exile. It was a practice reserved for the lowest of the low. Murder, beatings and rape were commonplace amongst run of the mill criminals at the time. Some crimes, however, were considered too vile for even the filth that littered the mob. Child molesters, rapists, paedophiles and their ilk were deemed an unacceptable element that drew too much unwanted police attention to criminal activity. Harris sat on a desk and placed three cigarettes in his mouth, he lit them and passed one to Charlie and Lescott.
“Can I have one of them?” Hawke asked.
“No. You fucking can’t.”
“I don’t think he likes you, Lester.” Charlie beamed.
“Sorry. Why’s fucking Tiddalik with you boys? He’s a cleaner.”
“No.” Lescott scratched his jaw, he was due a shave. “You’ve seconded him to help us look into the disappearance of one of the Anangu. A child…”
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“Fuck’s sake.” Hawke looked down at his feet angrily. “I was promised that they’d keep their noses clean while they were here.”
“How were these assurances made? Monetarily?” Harris knew the score, he’d paid off local police forces between Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie so that they would turn a blind eye to outsiders in their towns.
If the pub in which they’d taken part in a bar brawl had been a dive, there is currently no word known to mankind that describes the establishment the three men now strode into. It was something in between a bushman’s shack and the congregation area of a sanitorium. It was rundown, overrun by flies, and filled with a stomach-turning sour stink.
The big bearded landlord looked comfortable leaning up against his bar while he watched a swarm of flies circling a half-eaten, half rotten bacon sandwich from days before. “We don’t serve blacks. You know that, Charlie Tiddalik.”
“We’re here on police business,” Lescott spoke, “He’s here with us.”
“That may well be. But we don’t serve blacks. You two can come inside. He waits outside.”
Charlie bit his lip as humiliation sank into his bones. It clenched his jaw, and wet his eyes. It was a stark turnaround from the respect Harris and Lescott had unconditionally granted him. His head dropped between his shoulders and he turned to walk back out. He stopped when the room shook with the sound of five gunshots. He turned to see Harris slamming his revolver down on the bar. The landlord’s eyes were wide, the whisky, gin and rum that had seconds before been in bottles on the back bar trickled down and pooled on the floor. “What are you drinking, Charlie?”
“Well. I quite like whisky. But they seem to have run out.” Charlie looked at the barman uncertainly before looking at Harris, who gave him a firm reassuring nod. “So, I’ll take a beer.”
“Three beers.” Harris cleared his throat as he ordered. He was a strange sort of fellow. He knew that sometimes clearing one’s throat loudly was a damn sight scarier than empty threats.
“We don’t… We don’t serve blacks.” The barman trembled. He was wavering.
Harris looked down at his gun, “Did you happen to count how many times I fired? Five. This is a Colt Detective Special. It holds six .38 Smith and Wesson cartridges. That’s one left in the barrel. Do you know what a .38 Smith and Wesson cartridge does to a fleshy set of genitals from point blank range?”
The barman shook his head.
“Me neither. But my horoscope told me that today is a good day to learn new things.”
The barman gulped loudly. It felt like he was trying to swallow a dry golf ball.
“Sorry about my err… Mate, he’s not been house trained yet.” Lescott pulled out his warrant card and flashed it in front of the barman, who went about nervously pouring three beers. “We’re looking for Craig Booth? Before you say you don’t know him. He’s a funny looking fella. Kind of like his face is too big for his head. He’s from Melbourne, so he might sound a bit funny too.”
The landlord looked at the three faces in front of him. Harris looked murderous. Charlie looked smug. Lescott, well Lescott actually had quite a nice manner. Perhaps Lescott was the barman’s ticket to the other side of the hellish situation he found himself in. “He’s out back. He likes to play dominoes in the yard.”
Lescott took a sip of his drink and made for the yard, “You wait here.”
“I want to come. Don’t make me wait here.” Charlie was exasperated. He didn’t want to be left behind, understandably so.
“Don’t worry mate. It’s police business. Fred’s got it covered.” Harris reassured his new friend. “You and I will stay here while this nice fellow behind the bar pours us a couple more beers.”
“We don’t…” The landlord went to speak, it was no more intentful than muscle memory. He stopped himself.
Lescott stepped into the “backyard”. Yard is perhaps a glorification for what was essentially a patch of desert with a couple of lawn chairs scattered in the shade of the building.
Craig Booth was sitting outside idly tossing dominoes onto a rickety portable camping table. He was the embodiment of loneliness, sitting there playing by himself. As Lescott said, he was a strange looking bloke. His face was indeed too big for his head, but his eyes were also quite close together. He looked like a man who had recently lost a good deal of weight. His clothes were too large for his frame and his skin drooped from the bones in his face. He wore a pair of grey slacks, a short-sleeved shirt and a bushman’s hat. He was kitted out for desert life. Clearly, this was no short trip to the desert to let the heat die down, this was a long-term situation. Without looking up from the stack of dominoes he spoke, “Can I interest you in a game of dominos, friend?”
“Not this time, Craig. This has to be brief.” Lescott waited for Booth to look up in his direction. He didn’t.
The familiar use of his first name caught the man off-guard, he hadn’t expected anybody to know him out here. He kept looking down, deep in thought. He bore all the signs of a man worried for his life. He had been in the dustbowl a while now, continually looking over his shoulder. Perhaps today was the day his employer had sent someone to finalise his punishment.
“Booth…”
Booth sighed and looked up. “Little Freddie Lescott! As I live and fucking breathe.” Booth spoke excitedly. But Fred Lescott didn’t reciprocate and watched as disappointment broke across Booth’s face. “You’re all grown up. You look just like your old man…” Booth laughed. He was shocked. “Didn’t you go to New South Wales to join the jacks like your old man?”
“Nothing like my old man…” Lescott snapped. “But yes. I joined the force, that’s why I’m here.”
“Have you seen much of the old man lately?”
“No. We’re what you call… Estranged.”
“You should go see him. He’s your father.”
“Don’t you go worrying about his welfare. He’s not worried about yours. I still remember he would come home and bitch and moan about Craig Booth, the wrong’un who ran girls in St Kilda.”
“Not anymore, Freddie.”
“He used to tell me Mum that Craig Booth liked a drink… That he drank too much… That he was a bad drunk… But not an angry drunk… A lecherous one. You had a bad habit of getting rough with people if I recall correctly.” Lescott kept going.
“Can we not do this please?” Booth pleaded.
“Is that what they said to you? Those young lads you liked so much? Is that why you’re out here?”
“Do you think I want to be the way I am? I’m doing my best. I keep myself to myself out here. I avoid temptation. I keep a handle on my drinking. I’ve changed.”
“I think you are what you’ve always been.” Lescott sat down, “An Aboriginal boy is missing. Snatched up from out in the desert. No older than eight years old. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”
Booth’s face dropped. Like his worst fears had manifested before his very eyes. But, Lescott noted a distinct lack of guilt in his demeanour. “When?”
“Just over a month.”
“Yes. I know something about that. More than I would like to.” Booth fell silent. Lescott didn’t push, there was clearly turmoil inside the man, and he would speak when he could. “I know I haven’t always been a good man. I’ve done things I shouldn’t have done. I’m a rotter. But never an innocent child. The lads I… Bullied. I found them in pubs, not schools.”
“If it’s redemption you’re looking for, deliverance from your sins… Speak to a priest.”
“Two of us came up here together. Me and this evil little clam called Hoskins. I swear to God. He was straight from the heart of hell. We shared accommodation for a while. But I was trying to keep myself straight, so I got Zambrotta to sort alternative housing. Hoskins didn’t want to go straight. He had a thing for fire. He was always burning something down. He called it cleansing. He fell in with some scumbags on the wrong side of town. Some white. Some black. There was drugs. Violence
. And kids. No older than the boy you’re looking for. And like I said, that’s never ever been my thing.”
Booth paused. Something rotten was stewing in his mouth. He was fearful of this man, and for a hardened criminal like Booth, that was saying something. “He had an unhealthy obsession with death.”
“Like murder?”
“No.” Booth sighed, he really didn’t want to be talking about this topic, it was clear he would have rather put the whole thing behind him. “Not dying. Death. What came next. He was damaged from his childhood. He detested life, and he detested the living. But he had a hard on for the dead.”
“Literally?”
Booth nodded. “He used to talk about them with this horrible hungry look in his eyes. I thought he was all talk to begin with. But I’m not sure. He used to say death was the only way of achieving true subservience.”
“Fucking hell,” Lescott reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a couple of cigarettes. He handed Booth one to calm his nerves but the man’s hand shook furiously.
“He was one of them, you know, necromancers.”
“…Necrophiles, you fucking idiot.” Lescott shook his head. “Where is he now?”
“I haven’t seen him in a while. He came to my flat one night. He had these kids with him. Child prostitutes, I assume. I pretended I wasn’t home. Never saw him again.
Lescott stood up, he’d heard just about enough. “Where’s the house?”
“He demanded we move into this big old place on the Old Eastside. I didn’t know why, it was a shithole. Turns out the neighbourhood’s known for poverty. It’s famous for the transient community of displaced blacks. Addicts, they pimp their kids out to anyone who’s got a shilling to spare.”
“This fucking country is going to shit.” Lescott was taken aback by the news. He’d heard stories of Aboriginal prostitution that dated back to frontier times, but child prostitution… It was sickening. “Where do I find you, if I need to speak to you again?”
THE DEVIL IN THE RED DIRT: DIVIDED IN LIFE. UNIFIED IN MURDER Page 38
