by Jon Cleary
“I think that was slightly different, Mr. Junor,” said Malone. “That was confidential information being sold to private investigators and credit organizations. We’re not going to buy anything.”
Junor flushed, his red face turning almost purple; Palady said, “I’m sure Mr. Junor didn’t mean it that way, Inspector. We’ll cooperate, but you do understand, I’m sure, we’ll need some sort of warrant that, as it were, gets us off the hook on this rule of confidentiality.”
“I can refer the whole thing to the Securities Commission, if you like.”
Palady recognized the threat. “No, no, there’s no need for that. It’s just that . . .” Then he spread a hand, giving up: “What exactly do you want to know?”
“Ishmael—” said Junor warningly.
“Harold, there is an old money-lender’s proverb written on the back walls of cupboards all over the world. A bank’s principles should never exceed its principal, or what’s an auditor for? Ask your questions, Inspector.”
Malone had long ago given up passing judgement on other people’s pragmatism: you took your answers and only thought about conscience later. “Mr. Terence Kornsey, first. Nearly four hundred thousand dollars has gone through his account with you in the past three months, most of it sent overseas. Where did it go?”
The two bankers exchanged glances before Junor said, “To our branch in Hong Kong. It was being held there for Mr. Kornsey to collect it. I got the impression it wasn’t intended as a long-term deposit.”
“How about earlier? Had he sent any other money overseas?”
“He’d only been with us three months. His first deposit, as I remember it, was a hundred thousand dollars, something like that.” He had a banker’s casualness about money; he could have been talking about petty cash.
“Who recommended him?” said Clements. “He wouldn’t have come to you without references, not if he wanted to transfer money overseas.”
Again the bankers looked at each other. Then Palady said, “I’m afraid we can’t stretch the confidentiality rule that far—”
“Was it Mr. Robert Sweden?” Malone threw a wild one.
It landed smack in Palady’s face; he blinked as if he had been hit. Palady fumbled with it, then looked again at Junor, who seemed reluctant to help him out.
“Come on,” said Malone impatiently, “he’s dead, too. He’s not going to come back and sue you.”
Palady at last nodded. “Yes, it was Mr. Sweden.”
“Did you ever transfer any money overseas for him?”
“No,” said Junor, “he was really a pretty small depositor, by our standards. He mentioned to me once that he intended to lodge a large amount and would want it transferred overseas, but he never got around to it.”
“Who recommended him?” said Clements.
Again Palady left it to his general manager; Malone all at once saw him as Pontius Pilate, in banker’s grey instead of toga. If Shahriver Credit International were closed down in Sydney, he would survive. He would just pop up somewhere where the rules of banking could still be bent, where there were depositors looking for ways to cheat the tax man.
Junor looked out through the glass wall of Malone’s office. The crowd in the outer room was thinning. Two men were going out in handcuffs, escorted by Phil Truach and another detective; the sharp solicitor was patting one of the prisoners on the back, telling him not to worry. If Junor had been looking for some comfort in the outer room, he found none; he turned back to Malone and Clements. At least, so far, he and his managing director were not in handcuffs.
“The recommendation on Mr. Sweden came from our Manila office. I don’t know who told them he should be accepted as a client. We don’t ask those questions of each other,” he said and sounded like someone from an etiquette school.
“Do you have any Filipino clients here in Sydney?” said Malone.
“We have all nationalities,” said Palady.
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Palady pursed his thin lips. “Inspector, I think you really are going beyond your province—”
“I do it all the time, Mr. Palady, I’m a bugger for it. Sergeant Clements will tell you the Commissioner drops me daily little notes about it. But it saves time, Mr. Palady. Yours and mine.”
Palady was unfocussed, as if he hadn’t got the joke, if there was one; then abruptly he looked resigned. “Let’s do a trade, Inspector. If we tell you all we know, how much will you tell the Securities Commission?”
Malone looked at Clements: there was no offended look on the big face, no look of outraged piety. “You’re not taking notes, Sergeant?”
“No, Inspector. My biro’s run dry.” So had his voice.
Malone looked back at Palady and Junor. “Righto, gentlemen, let’s say I couldn’t find the Securities Commission if you led me to their front door. What have you got to tell us?”
“We have three Filipino clients,” said Junor. “They are all in company names. I have no idea what their business is, we’ve never enquired.” He saw Clements’ raised eyebrow and he said rather testily, “Okay, it may seem slipshod to you, but that’s the way we work. We provide a service for those who are looking for a particular service.”
“Like laundering money or helping tax dodgers?”
Both bankers looked hurt, though they had to act the part. Malone said, “Forget Sergeant Clements’ remark. He’s the moral minority in Homicide.”
“I’d heard you were that, Inspector.” It was Malone’s turn to raise an eyebrow and Palady went on, “After we met you back in 1991, I made some enquiries about you.”
“You make enquiries about cops but not about your clients?”
“No offence was meant, Inspector.”
“All right, none taken. But don’t you take offence if I suddenly stop being polite. Get on with it, Mr. Junor. Can you name the three Filipino companies?”
“Bataan Importers, that’s run by a Mr. Suto. Imelda Investments—” He smiled, for a moment looked genuinely amused and relaxed. “No, no connection to that lady. It’s run by a Mr. Rey, and Imelda is his wife’s name, he says. Then there is Pinatubo Engineering, the managing director is a Mr. Tajiri.”
“Tajiri? Is that Filipino?”
“No. Mr. Tajiri is Japanese, we understand, but his company is registered in Manila.”
“Engineering? What does it build?”
“I have no idea.” Junor’s shrug implied he had no curiosity, either.
“Have you met Mr. Tajiri?”
“No. All our dealings have been with a Mr. Belgarda. We understand he was the original owner of Pinatubo and stayed on when he was bought out.”
“Did Mr. Sweden or Mr. Kornsey ever mention any of these companies to you?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Discretion is our trademark,” said Palady. “We try never to make a connection between one client and another.”
In Homicide there were rarely, if ever, opportunities to admire the suspects. In other criminal fields Malone had, albeit reluctantly, come to marvel at how men (and women) could juggle their morality; that is, if they ever had any to begin with. Which he doubted in the case of Palady. He said with no hint of asperity, “Do you ever lose any sleep over what you do for your clients?”
“Morality, Inspector, is built on sand. A wise banker never interferes with the foundations.”
“Who said that? Another old money-lender?”
“This one,” said Palady and tried to look modest if amoral.
Then the phone rang: it was Kagal. “Inspector, could you come down to Casement and Company? Mr. Ondelli said to say that one of those blips he mentioned has come up. He said you’d understand.”
7
I
THE POLICE Minister’s office was not a temple in his own honour, as it had been for one or two of his predecessors. The walls were not hung with photos of himself with notabilities: there was no shaking hands with the Queen, the Pope, visiting presidents, the Prime
Minister, the Premier and any white-collar criminals who had given him their vote before they had been caught. The Minister was not without ego, but he did not need advertisements to massage it.
He was with his wife and Assistant Commissioner Zanuch; he was saying, “Bill, this has got to be tidied up. The media are having a ball with it, as if it was me who’d been toss—thrown off that balcony.”
“Derek, we’re doing the best we can. I talked with Fred Falkender this morning, he’s giving out no more to the media than he has to. What you read and hear, if you look at it, it’s all conjecture, guesswork. They know nothing.”
“The point is, what do we know? This guy Malone, what’s he come up with? I look at these bloody summaries—” He gestured at the file on his desk. “Nothing!”
Rosalind looked at Zanuch. “Do the detectives have to report everything every day as it happens? I mean everything they find out?”
“They’re supposed to. It’s all supposed to be in the running sheet, as we used to call it. Now it’s in the computer. But that’s not to say that some of them don’t keep things to themselves till they’ve checked and sometimes double-checked. That’s been happening since we got so much bad publicity over a few bungled jobs.”
“So Malone and his men may know more than they’re telling me?” Sweden was noted for his anger; as Minister of another department he had been known to hurl an ashtray at his chief executive. He bounced a fist on his desk. “Jesus Christ, I’m the Minister here and the victim’s father! Who do you have to be to be told the truth?”
Zanuch, like most ambitious men in a bureaucracy, had learned that it was never politic to tell all of the truth; even if one knew it. He tried to be tactful: “Derek, you’ve been Police Minister only three weeks. It’s the toughest job in the Cabinet—you probably know that, you’ve been in politics long enough. The Police Service is second only to the Navy in the way it sticks together, it’s closer-knit than the Army or Air Force. Ministers before you, from both sides of the House, have tried to hit it over the head and make it come to heel, but it doesn’t work. The service itself is partly to blame for the image it has, but politicians and the general public haven’t helped. It reckons it knows its job better and how to go about it better than anyone else, that it has the experience and outsiders don’t have it.”
He had spoken as if he were an outsider. Sweden, from his own long experience, recognized that Zanuch was playing his own game. “You make it sound as if the Minister is here as just some sort of figurehead, the one to take the political bumps.”
Zanuch took the slightest of risks; he just nodded. He could feel the ice cracking beneath him; he rose to his feet. “I’ll talk to Fred Falkender, see if he can fill you in more.”
“He probably doesn’t know any more than you or I. Tell him I’d like to see Inspector Malone tonight, at the apartment. Six o’clock.”
“I think you’d better tell him. He’s the AC Crime, Malone is his man.”
“Okay, I’ll do it.” He waited till Zanuch had left the room, then leaned back in his chair and looked at his wife. “If Leeds retires as Commissioner while I’m still Minister, I’ll see that Bill Zanuch takes his place.”
“Why?”
“He’ll do what he’s told. Even by an outsider.” He sat looking at Rosalind, elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands clasped; judges often sit in the same pose on the Bench. Rosalind suddenly felt uncomfortable, not a common feeling with her. “I’ve learned a few things about Rob, myself. I’m waiting to see if they come up in Malone’s reports.”
“Such as?” Her discomfort increased, though she showed no hint of it. He couldn’t know about her one-off affair with Rob.
“I think he was double-dealing at Casement’s, on the Futures Exchange. That could have been why he transferred to the banking side, afraid they were catching on to him.”
“Does Cormac know?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t have much to do with the day-today running of the office. All his time is taken up with the boards he’s on.”
“How did you find out?”
He made a steeple of his fingers; he was an archbishop now, though without any religion. “He used my name, without my permission, to get himself a few introductions. I only found out last weekend, I didn’t have time to tackle him about it. The introductions were to people it’d be political suicide—” He stopped, as if the word itself were poison. Then he went on, “People it wouldn’t pay for me to be associated with. An outfit called Pinatubo Engineering that I know the Securities Commission is already investigating.”
She relaxed; though she had looked relaxed all along. “Seems Rob had us all fooled. And I thought I knew all about men—” She shook her head at her own obtuseness. She had had one previous husband, a doctor with a wealthy practice and a drink problem; the divorce judge had awarded her half the estate and her husband had disappeared into an alcoholic haze somewhere overseas. There had been lovers before the doctor and between him and the politician and, despite her disarming remark, she did know all about men. “Are we going to find out anything more about him?”
“I did find out something else about him. He had an affair with Ophelia.”
How to react? Indignantly, in defence of her sister? Shocked at the treachery of her stepson? She chose to play puzzled: “What a ridiculous suggestion! Whatever put that into your head?”
“I went out to Rob’s flat one afternoon, I just decided to drop in. Just as I got there, I saw Ophelia coming out—she didn’t see me. A week later he was at our place, visiting. When he left he went upstairs to the penthouse—Cormac was away in Melbourne at another board meeting. Ophelia was there on her own. Rob stayed a couple of hours.”
“You mean you spied on him?”
“Yes.” He gazed at her steadily. “Did he ever try to sleep with you?”
“No.” Her eyes were greenish-blue; her gaze was as level as a flat sea and as opaque. “Are we going to have a row? If so, I think it would be better if we waited till we get home.”
“No, I’m not looking for a fight. I’m sorry, „Lind—Oh Christ!” The hands crumpled one into the other. “I don’t know why I asked you such a question. It’s those bloody sisters of yours!”
“Both of them? It was only „Phelia a moment ago.”
Unlike her sisters, she had always been conscious of the proper time and place; she was like her father in that regard. She kept waiting for the door to open, for Derek’s secretary or that always-bloody-intrusive Tucker to appear and guess at the atmosphere. Below and around them police business went on, all the paperwork involved with murder and robbery and rape (the paperwork in the hands of men, she was certain). Somewhere in this tall hive a busy bee was filing papers, no matter how few, on Rob: nothing with her name on it, she was sure. But Ophelia’s? Or Juliet’s?
“Love, you know what those are like. They flirt like a couple of nymphos.”
“Have they ever flirted with you? Seriously, trying to get you into bed?” She would stab them through the heart if they had.
He smiled, but it was an effort. “Relax, they don’t play that close to home.”
“You just said „Phelia was sleeping with your son. My stepson. Isn’t that close enough to home for you?” She stood up, pulled on her gloves. She always wore gloves, one of her remaining tributes to her long-dead mother. Ileana had insisted that ladies always wore gloves, that when she had been a young girl in Bucharest before the war (there had been only two wars for Ileana, World Wars One and Two; no other wars had touched her) she had changed her gloves three times a day and she had had two hundred pairs. Rosalind drew on the gloves, drawing on Ileana’s ghost. “I’ll see you at home. You are wrong about „Phelia. And Juliet, too.”
Like her mother she could lie, to deceive herself as well as others.
II
Malone had never been in the dealing room of a merchant bank; indeed, he had never been anywhere near a stockbroker’s. He had seen movies, Wall Street and
Bonfire of the Vanities and had read Tom Wolfe’s book, but now he was seeing the actual it seemed more unreal than the fiction.
It was like an orgy of youth, though he didn’t see it in those terms. Young men, and women, in shirtsleeves, expensive shirtsleeves, shouted at each other; at phone-connected other brokers on other floors, on opposite sides of the city, the country, the world, they shouted even at the green-lettered terminals immediately in front of them. Malone could make nothing of what was being said, the language was just one long roar that only God and Mammon, for once on a network, could understand.
Ondelli, in a blue shirt with a white collar and a fashion-of-the-moment tie that resembled a length of regurgitation, led Malone round the edge of the boiling ring.
“Tokyo’s jumping!” he shouted. “The yen’s on the rise again!”
Malone just nodded. He hated to shout and he had no answer anyway: he had never seen a yen. This was another world where, if he was to believe the social commentators, the rise and fall of the Eighties had begun. He wondered how large had been the shouting mob back in those hectic years, and when he and Ondelli were beyond the hubbub, in a narrow glass-walled corridor leading to the general manager’s office, he asked the question.
“Back then we had three floors, we gave practically everyone a job who came in and asked for one. We had money running out of our ears, what did another paycheck matter? Or five or six or ten?” Ondelli shook his head. “It’ll never happen again, not in my day.”
“But some time in the future?”
“Sure. Why not? What else have we got to look forward to? Greed’s a recurring disease, we all suffer from it.” He grinned, but he had said it without shame. “You’re a cop. Do you think human nature ever learns anything from its mistakes?”
Malone conceded the point, paused before the closed door of Ondelli’s office. “These fellers you caught, are they bad buggers or just greedy?”
