I approached the Mafia table and hung around, hoping to pick up a little of the conversation. After a minute or two, the Ferret turned to look at me.
“Can I help you?” he asked. I was disappointed to notice that his accent, far from being Sicilian, was true-blue Aussie. Still, that didn't mean a whole lot. In most of the gangster movies I had seen, they all had American accents. I couldn't really expect him to have half a goat draped around his neck and a shotgun slung on his back. I went for a winning smile.
“Are you enjoying your meal, sir?”
“It's very good. Thank you.”
I smiled again, but he seemed to expect me to leave.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
“Nothing at all, except a little privacy. That would be nice.”
“Of course, sir.”
I didn't really have much choice. Plus, I still had a job to do. I went back into the kitchen and found the microwave. It was a huge, industrial-sized thing with enough dials and knobs to confuse an airline pilot. I shoved the plate in and put it on high for a minute. Then, in the recesses of Rachael's uniform, I found a pad and a pencil and went off to take the order from table seven. Or table five. It wasn't difficult to find them. They were the four drumming their fingers on the table and looking around with a desperate air. I rushed up and apologized.
“Never mind, never mind,” said a middle-aged guy. “Just take the orders, please.” His tone was acerbic. “We want one linguine al troppo with extra Parmesan and the spinach pesto; one calamari Mediterranean with a green salad on the side, NOT on the plate, that's with Thousand Island dressing, naturally; one alla Borghese WITHOUT the Parmesan but WITH the mange tout; and a Fabrizio ravioli, provided it's al dente. Plus, we'll have four Campari Sodas.”
I nodded furiously and wrote down four pepperoni pizzas. I recognized him, you see. Mr. Gray, my math teacher in Year 8. Frankly, I thought that screwing up his order was completely inadequate payback for a year of differential equations and a classroom management style that consisted entirely of purple-faced invective, but you have to take your chances when you can. Plus, with any luck, I'd be out of there before smelly things started to hit the fan.
“And where's the wine list?”
“On its way, sir.”
I ran back to the kitchen, slapped the order onto the table and grabbed the carbonara from the microwave. Plate was bloody hot. I did the little “ouch, ouch” bit as I ran back, getting the thing down onto the tablecloth moments before my fingers started smoking. Now, what was it next? Ah, yes, the dessert menu for someone or other. Boy, this was a tough job. My fingers were smarting and my forehead was developing a thin sheen of sweat that I confidently expected to drip onto someone's plate. I hadn't moved three paces before I was stopped in my tracks by an agonized scream behind me.
The man with the carbonara had gone an interesting shade of purple and was pointing desperately at his open mouth. Thin wisps of smoke were issuing from the gaping orifice. I scuttled back.
“Remarkable taste, isn't it, sir? I trust it's to your satisfaction.”
For a moment, it looked like he was going to collapse onto the table. I hoped to hell I wasn't going to have to do the Heimlich maneuver. That was tucked away in my brain next to the lip-reading skills. Luckily, he recovered a little and, gasping like a gaffed fish, finally found his voice.
“Are you mad?” he spluttered. “This thing is boiling! It's approaching the surface temperature of the sun! It's cauterized my lips!”
No pleasing some people, I thought. First it's too cold, now it's too hot. I was about to point this out to him in my normal tactful fashion when the supervisor shot out of the swing doors like a greased torpedo and was at the table in slightly less than half a second.
“Is everything okay, sir?” she asked. Clearly a born optimist since it was apparent to everyone that the answer was unlikely to be “Never been better, thanks for asking.”
“No, it bloody well isn't. First the food was stone-cold and now it's like molten lead. I have never, in my life …”
The supervisor gestured for me to go. I was happy to oblige, I can tell you. To be honest, I had my suspicions that I'd blown my tip from table seven. Or was it table five? Still, it gave me an opportunity to check out the Mafia table again. I swept past the foursome with the mad mathematician and he took the opportunity to pluck at my sleeve.
“Wine list?”
“No thanks, sir. I'm trying to give up.”
And then, just when I thought the whole thing was destined to remain a complete and utter disaster, a monumental waste of time, I had the biggest stroke of luck….
Scene 141, take 1
Interior: Italian restaurant. Medium shot. Don Carlo Vermicelli is sitting at a table. He has a napkin tucked into his shirt and there is a plate of pasta and meatballs in front of him. To his left is his consigliere, Michael Cornetto, wearing a sharp suit. On his right is a thickset man with dewlaps and interesting acne. This is Luigi “Powertool” Scarlatti, a man whose expertise with chainsaws, drills and orbital sanders does not extend to the production of rustic outdoor furniture. Behind the group two men stand, silent, with goats slung across their shoulders and pump-action shotguns strapped to their backs. Cut to close-up of Don Carlo, who appears to have padding inside his cheeks. Or it might be a couple of errant meatballs.
Don Carlo: He'sa not showing me respect. I needa respect. My family needsa respect. And I tell you, Michael, that I respect his family, but he don't respect my family. There'sa no respect. So I wanna his family whacked. With respect. Then maybe he respect me, respectfully, like I respectfully respect him. Whaddya want, kid?
Medium shot. Calma, disguised as a waiter. In one fluid movement she flings off her huge smock uniform, exposing a charcoal gray suit and Uzi submachine gun. The group is stunned into immobility.
Calma: The game's up, Carlo. We have it all on tape. Yes, that's right—the goats were carrying wires. You're going down, Carlo. Down for a long time. We've got you cold on supplying narcotics, running the East Side numbers racket, prostitution, extortion, loan-sharking, tax evasion, laundering detergent and riding a bicycle on public roads without a helmet. It's a federal rap and you're all out of options. You'd better come quietly.
Cut to close-up of Don Carlo.
Don Carlo: Who are you, kid?
Calma: Harrison. FBI Special Agent Calma Harrison. But my friends call me… FBI Special Agent Calma Harrison.
Cut to close-up of Michael Cornetto. His eye twitches. Cut to Luigi Scarlatti. His hand reaches inside his jacket and grips the handle of an electric paint gun. Cut to Calma. Her eyes narrow. Slow motion. Luigi pulls out the paint gun. Calma squeezes the trigger of the Uzi and bits of goat, meatball and exterior emulsion spray all over the walls….
CUT!
Scene 141, take 2
Interior: Italian restaurant. A top-heavy female waiter in a uniform tailored for an African elephant scuttles toward a table of four businessmen. She hovers on the fringe, in the forlorn hope that she might appear inconspicuous. She overhears a snippet of conversation.
The Ferret:… we mustn't miss this opportunity, gentlemen. There is a huge shortage of top-grade heroin on the streets at the moment….
The waiter drops a carafe of water onto her toe, screams and dashes through the suddenly stilled room and out the swing doors.
CUT! That's a wrap!
Chapter 14
Reviewing the situation
Have you ever seen that old movie Singin’ in the Rain? It's pretty sad, generally, but there is this great scene where Gene Kelly dances down the street. It's pouring with rain, but he is really happy, splashing into puddles and singing and dancing his socks off. I felt just like that. As soon as I got out of that restaurant, I felt exactly like old Gene Kelly must have done. Okay, it wasn't pouring with rain, I didn't have an umbrella and I wasn't singing or dancing, but other than that it was a pretty faithful reenactment of the whole scene. I even did a little skip
around a lamppost. You know, hanging on with one hand and swinging all the way round. I couldn't wait to tell Kiffo. I was so happy.
Until I collided with a large woman who'd been walking a pace or two in front of me. I suppose my momentum, as I completed the lamppost circuit, must have thrust my feet into her back. It was careless of me, but I had felt so full of energy that I couldn't contain myself. Her shopping bags went flying. There were apples and cans of stuff rolling all over the place. The woman fell to her knees. I felt really awful.
“Oh God! Sorry,” I said as I bent down to help her to her feet.
She turned around and I found myself face to face with the Pitbull.
“Miss Payne!” I said. “I am so very sorry! Please forgive me.”
I tried explaining. I told her that it was a pure accident, that I had no idea whatsoever that she was walking along that street, that I had been feeling particularly excitable and had simply acted on impulse. I even tried explaining about Singin' in the Rain but I think, by that time, I had lost my audience. I was scurrying around picking up cans of tuna, dusting off apples, wiping grit and traces of doggy doo off her bananas, and I suppose I might have seemed just a touch hysterical. Meanwhile, she stood there like an ancient monolith, Uluru or something. Still babbling, I pressed the rather sorry and misshapen groceries into her arms.
“So there you go, Miss Payne. No harm done, eh? Just a freak accident. Thousand-to-one chance, really! Well, I've taken up enough of your time. I'm sure you've got better things to do than spend your Saturday morning talking to—”
“I don't know what I have done to deserve this,” said the Pitbull. Her voice was very quiet and there was a catch in it, like she was on the point of crying. Her lip even trembled. “You have followed me to my home, you have harassed and badgered me. And now, you assault me …”
“I didn't mean to,” I said. “It was an accident. I swear I…”
It was as if I hadn't spoken.
“… in broad daylight, you assault me. I'm sorry, Calma, but I've had enough. I can't take it anymore.”
And she turned and limped along the street. I fought the impulse to run after her and try explaining again. I knew there was nothing I could do and that talking further would probably only make the situation worse. Boy, she seemed upset! If I hadn't known that she was up to her wrestler's armpits in illegal stuff, I'd have felt sorry for her. I really would. There was even a part of me that admired her performance. The trembling lip, the catch in the voice. If I didn't know better, I'd have taken it for genuine emotion. What an actor!
Okay, I was worried. I admit it. Frankly, the last thing you need when chasing a drug dealer is a drug dealer who knows you are chasing her. I had visions of me ending up in concrete boots at the bottom of a river or forming part of the foundations for the new shopping center. Nevertheless, I was also feeling pretty proud of what I had achieved in the restaurant. Digging in my purse, I found a dollar. Enough for the bus ride to Kiffo's place.
When he opened the door, he looked like he had been through the hot wash and fast spin cycle.
“God, Kiffo,” I said. “You look as if you've been ridden hard and put away wet. What on earth have you been doing?”
“Staking out the Pitbull's place. All night, if you want to know the truth.”
No wonder he looked exhausted. He could hardly stop yawning long enough to invite me in. I had one foot over the threshold before I remembered what his place was like. So I suggested that we go for a walk. Anyway, it looked like the only thing that would keep him awake.
As we walked, I asked him how the stakeout had gone.
“Nah, nothin’ doing. I got there about ten-thirty and she was definitely in. I could see her through the kitchen curtains. When I left, about six this morning, she hadn't budged.”
He was absolutely exhausted. His whole body was slumped, as if he were carrying an intolerable burden. I slipped my arm around his shoulders. I could feel his muscles tighten instinctively, but he didn't shrug me off.
“Wait till you hear my news!” I said. “I've been busy, too.”
And I filled him in on my undercover work at Giuseppe's and my run-in with the Pitbull later. When I told him what I had heard the Ferret saying, he brightened up considerably. It was as if the news washed away his tiredness. His eyes sparkled with excitement.
“I told you, Calma. I told you there was something going on. Now we know.” He was almost dancing down the street now, bandy legs skipping from side to side.
“Hang on, Kiffo,” I said. “We suspect that there is something going on. But suspicion is a long way from knowing. Listen, if this were a TV show, there'd be some balding guy in a shiny suit, saying to us, ‘Harrison and Kiffing, I need more than circumstantial evidence. Sure, we could put out an APB, bring her in, but her attorneys would make damn sure that the case would never stand up in court. She'd walk. Get me solid proof I can take to the DA. It's our only chance of an indictment.’ You see what I'm getting at?”
“No.”
I grabbed Kiffo by the arm and sat him down on a park bench that was grubby even by his standards. Scrambling around in my bag, I came up with a battered envelope and a rather leaky red pen.
“Let's jot this down, shall we?” I scrawled three columns on the back of the envelope.
I handed the envelope to Kiffo.
“You see? There's nothing here. Nothing that we could use if we went to the police. They'd laugh at us. We need hard evidence, Kiffo. Something that isn't just our word against two respected members of society. Fingerprints, tape recordings, photographs. That kind of thing.”
I was starting to reconsider my career aspirations. Maybe I should become a police officer. Chief Superintendent Calma Harrison, the scourge of the underworld. Tough, streetwise, folding twenty-dollar bills into the top pockets of grasses, busting bent coppers, feared and respected. “She's tough, but she's all woman!” Or maybe a lawyer! I could just see myself pacing up and down in front of a jury, hypnotizing them with my impeccable logic and oratory skills in an emotional closing address.
So I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that all the facts point in one direction and one direction only. The defendant, Miss Payne, or as she is known in the seedy drug underworld, the Pitbull, has for years been polluting the streets of our city with the most evil of substances—heroin. She has been preying upon the young and the helpless for the saddest and most despicable reason of all—personal gain. Did she care that our nation's youth were dying in the streets? Did she care about their untold misery? She did not, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. She did not. I ask that we send a message in this case. A message to the law-abiding citizens of this wonderful country of ours. A message to the parents of those who have died and are continuing to die. A message that we care, that we are determined to root out this cancer in our society. I call upon you to hand out the most severe sentence the law will allow. I know that I can rely upon you all to do your duty. I rest my case.
I'd almost forgotten that Kiffo was still there. He folded the envelope and handed it back. We started to walk again.
“I guess you're right,” he said finally. “But if it's hard evidence we need, then hard evidence is what we'll get. If I have to stake out her house every night, we'll get it!”
“Maybe so, but after what she said to me today, you'll have to get it by yourself. I can't go near her house again. I mean, I'll do what I can, but I can't risk getting into trouble with the police. That's what she threatened me with in the prinny's office. Prosecution. And then it'll be game over.”
Kiffo snorted.
“You don't have a clue, do you, Calma?”
“What do you mean?”
“Prosecution, trouble with the police, all that stuff. You've no idea. Like I've got no idea with a poem, you've got no idea about the law. There ain't many things I'm an expert on, but the police is one. Let me give you a lesson. Firstly, police time. They're so busy tracking down thieves, doing drug busts and ha
nding out speeding fines that they've got no time to scratch their arses, let alone chase a schoolkid for hanging around a teacher. Secondly, you haven't done nothin’ to her. What's she gonna say? There's this kid who talked to me outside my house, then my dog chewed her shoe while I was meeting someone in the middle of the night. No, Officer, I didn't see her, but she had a pair of red shoes. And she bumped into me in town, on a busy street. They'd laugh at her, Calma. Maybe, if we were real lucky, charge her with wasting police time. And thirdly, she's up to no good herself. So who's the last people she's going to contact? The police, that's who. Nah, you don't have to worry about the Pitbull. She's not going to do nothin'.”
Kiffo fell silent. Given that he had probably used up an entire month of vocabulary in one hit, I wasn't surprised. He reminded me of one of those geysers in North America: dormant for years, maybe the occasional dribble, and then—boom—you find yourself drenched.
I don't think either of us had planned it, but we had wandered, by degrees, into my neighborhood. I thought about what Kiffo had said and he did have a point. If we had no evidence against the Pitbull and the Ferret, then what evidence did they have against us? And given the soaring crime rates in the city, why would the police be bothered with something so trivial? It seemed much more likely that the Pitbull was trying to frighten me with threats she knew she would never be able to follow up on. Scare me a bit and hope that would be enough to discourage me.
So I probably would have been much encouraged by Kiffo's analysis if it hadn't been for a couple of things. I could see the driveway of my house, and my mother's car was there. She should have been at work. But that wasn't the most worrying thing. By far the most worrying thing was the police car parked behind our old Ford.
The Crimes and Punishments of Miss Payne Page 11
