River of Salt
Page 29
A little after nine p.m., the streets now quieter, the light in the office finally went out. Four minutes later an old-fashioned, broad-shouldered, pinhead goon appeared and checked the street. He wore a heavy, dark suit, had a nose that had been busted more than once, likely an ex-pug. He hardly paid any attention to the young guy across the road with the flowers, vainly waiting for a date who must have stiffed him. The goon opened the door to the building and the mark stepped out. A short man with a gut, broad shoulders. His suit and hat were expensive and he was carrying a Gladstone bag that Blake guessed was full of cash. The goon waited while his boss opened the door of a Mercedes parked directly in front of the building. The mark climbed in and drove off. Last time Blake had been forced to follow. This time he was pretty sure the mark was heading home.
Blake retrieved his car and drove. Fifteen minutes later he cruised past the iron fence that protected the big gabled house in the green suburb. The Mercedes was visible, parked nose first in a garage, its rear to the street.
He’d seen enough. He drove to the YMCA, parking his car two streets away, and took a bed at the Y, giving the name John Paterson. The advantage of the Y was there were another five guys who could have passed for him and vice versa. He didn’t like the shared bathroom, the cold tile floor, the scummy shower stall but then he didn’t need to use anything but the urinal. He closed his eyes, slept lightly, alert to the sound of doors opening and closing and footsteps down the hallway. He was out of there by five. To kill time he drove to the river and watched fishermen. There was something timeless and relaxing about watching a man fish.
Even though it was only nine thirty in the morning, the first race still hours off, the carpark was not unpopulated. He sat in his car and waited until he saw the Mercedes enter and peel off to the area reserved for bookmakers. Then he climbed out, put on a pair of cheap sunglasses and the long white cotton coat. The beauty of the coat was it made him invisible, just another parking attendant. He walked straight into the bookies’ carpark past the old boy with the bifocals and the hearing aid.
‘Morning, Roy,’ he called as he went through. Last time he’d made a point of catching the man’s name. Roy grinned and waved, pretending he knew him. Twenty yards on, the brakelights of the Mercedes went out: freshly parked. A dozen other cars waited in a line, at a glance empty, but he couldn’t be certain. He strode quickly now, arriving perfectly on time as the driver door of the Mercedes opened on the man whose office he had been watching last night.
‘Mr Hennessy?’
‘Yes?’
The faintest trace of suspicion, a cunning man whose bookie’s brain was used to calculating odds in a split second, realising too late that the odds were all wrong.
Blake had decided on the Beretta. ‘Say hi to Jimmy for me.’
He fired close up into the forehead, knew it was a kill shot but fired another to the chest just in case of a miracle. Another car was arriving as he closed the driver door and strode off. In the distance he noticed a man in a suit swivelling. He knew he had heard something, just not exactly what. He waved goodbye to Roy, who had not heard a thing. At his car he removed the white jacket and tossed it on the ground. Then he climbed in and drove away.
Near Southport he parked. Watched by a lone circling gull, he got out and hurled the Beretta into the river of salt. He hoped he would never have need of it, but if he did, there was still the Browning. He drove back, respectful of the thirty-five mile per hour speed limit, enjoying the shadows of gums on the tar. He looked over and saw Jimmy sitting beside him.
‘So what do you think?’
‘You done pretty good.’
‘We done pretty good.’
Then the seat was vacant again and he was imagining other souls from his journey. Jim the pilot who had flown him to Australia, Carol a hot body making milkshakes, Edward with his swag and Duck thumping his toms always just a little out of time. Once he was south of the Heads, he stopped at the first service station he found, a little store with one pump and ice-cream signage out the front. He might treat himself to an ice cream, he thought. When no one came to fill up the car, he decided to do it himself. He finished and was almost at the office when a sandy-haired man about fifty, wearing a stained grey uniform shirt emerged, flustered.
‘I’m sorry, I just … I couldn’t believe it. I was listening to the radio.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Somebody shot JFK. They’re saying he’s dead.’
Yeah, life was a big mean wave. Just when you think you have it licked, it kicks you in the teeth. That could have been you pulling that trigger, he thought to himself. You never asked how or why, you just did what you were told for a steak dinner. You don’t deserve any goodness in your life. You have brought misery and death and despair. And sure, they might bring it on themselves with greed or malice, and if you didn’t do it, somebody else surely would. But that didn’t make it right. How can you live like that?
The answer, he knew, was waiting around three hours away. He leaned back into his seat and kept his foot even on the accelerator, cocooned in the smell of leather and a lingering odour of leaking oil. The crazy thing about the crazy world we live in, is that anything is possible. One day we might even put a man on the moon. He’d volunteer for that. Just so long as he could take Doreen with him.
Acknowledgements
Crane quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem ‘Adonais’. Lines from ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ © Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1958.
I am very fortunate to work with Georgia Richter of Fremantle Press as my editor. Everything is better for having her eye across the manuscript and I thank her for her input. Thanks also in advance to Jane Fraser, Claire Miller and everybody else at Fremantle Press who I know will be working very hard on my behalf to bring River of Salt to the widest readership possible. The idea of this book came when I went to an Atlantics’ gig where my friend and colleague Martin Cilia, Australia’s premier surf-guitarist, was playing with the original members of that amazing band. This is a good chance to thank Martin for all the times we’ve sat around working out chords, bars and other licks. Finally my greatest appreciation to my wife and most ardent supporter Nicole, who gives everything of herself to her family and friends. Hopefully we’ll record her album next and she can thank Martin and me before heading to Philly and meeting Vin, Marcello and the gang in the flesh — if they haven’t been rubbed out.
WA PREMIER’S AWARD WINNER
‘Jesus Christ. I found one.’ These words are blurted over the phone to Constable Snowy Lane, who is preoccupied with no more than a ham sandwich and getting a game with the East Fremantle league side on Saturday. They signal the beginning of a series of events that are to shake Perth to its foundations. It is 1979, and Perth is jumping with pub bands and overnight millionaires. ‘Mr Gruesome’ has just taken another victim. Snowy’s life and career are to be forever changed by the grim deeds of a serial killer, and the dark bloom spreading across the City of Light.
‘Lively, funny, with enough plot for three novels.’ Sun-Herald.
FROM FREMANTLEPRESS.COM.AU
NED KELLY AWARD WINNER
Detective Daniel Clement is back in Broome, licking his wounds from a busted marriage and struggling to be impressed by his new team of small-town cops. Here, in the oasis on the edge of the desert, life is as stagnant as Clement’s latest career move. But when a body is discovered at a local fishing spot, it is clearly not the result of a crocodile attack. Somewhere in Broome is a hunter of a different kind. As more bodies are found, Clement races to solve a decades-old mystery before a monster cyclone hits.
‘Laid-back and laconic, with sentences as snappy as a nutcracker.’ Books+Publishing
AND ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES
ALSO BY DAVE WARNER
In 1999 and 2000, three women disappear from outside a nightclub in Perth. Snowy Lane is hired as a private investigator but neither he nor the cops can find the abductor. Seventeen years on, the daughter of a wealthy
mining magnate goes missing, and Snowy is hired to find her. In the tropical town of Broome, a spate of local thefts puts Snowy and DI Daniel Clement back on the trail of the cold-case killer. Snowy is determined that this time he will get his man, even if it costs him his life.
‘A fast-paced plot and writing that is dense with colourful vernacular and Aussie humour.’ Sun-Herald.
FROM FREMANTLEPRESS.COM.AU
NGAIO MARSH AWARD WINNER
Nick Chester is working as a sergeant for the Havelock police in the Marlborough Sound, at the top of New Zealand’s South Island. If the river isn’t flooded and the land hasn’t slipped, it’s paradise. Unless you are also hiding from a ruthless man with a grudge, in which case, remote beauty has its own kind of danger. In the last couple of weeks, two locals have vanished. Their bodies are found, but the Pied Piper is still at large. A gripping story about the hunter and the hunted, and about what happens when evil takes hold in a small town.
‘The characters work, the plot is cleverly executed and the sense of place is visceral. There’s touches of humour and self-inflicted jeopardy which are perfectly justifiable … an absolute standout book …’ Sun-Herald.
AND ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES
THE CATO KWONG CRIME SERIES
From the winner of the Ned Kelly Award for best first fiction, and winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award.
‘Bad Seed is hard to beat.’ Weekend Australian
‘Accomplished and entertaining.’ Sydney Morning Herald
‘Getting Warmer is a winner.’ The Saturday Age
‘Compelling crime drama.’ OUTinPerth
from FREMANTLEPRESS.COM.AU
THE RICHARD WORSE SERIES
‘Edeson’s writing has a rhythm all its own that is unlike other mystery stories and thrillers, and has to do with the ease and confidence with which he can take the reader from the familiar directly into a little bit of Worseworld. And it is with great glee that we often hear ourselves saying, ‘Surely he made that bit up, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’ … It all makes for a joyful ride, lots of smiles – and frequent checking of dictionaries and other references.’ Australian Book Review
‘A book for intelligent, urbane readers with a sense of humour.’ Good Reading Magazine
‘The array of scientific discussions and references are beautifully accompanied by a healthy dose of poetry and philosophy. As the characters pursue their various goals, questions of truth and humanity abound … there is plenty of humour to light the way, sometimes sarcastic and sometimes dark, but always intelligent.’ Underground Writers
AND ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES
MORE GREAT CRIME
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FROM FREMANTLE PRESS
AND ALL GOOD BOOKSTORES
First published 2019 by
FREMANTLE PRESS
25 Quarry Street, Fremantle WA 6160
(PO Box 158, North Fremantle WA 6159)
www.fremantlepress.com.au
Copyright © Dave Warner, 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover photograph: RugliG, Istockphoto
Cover design: Nada Backovic, www.nadabackovic.com/
Printed by McPherson’s Printing, Victoria, Australia
River of Salt, ISBN 9781925591576 (epub)
Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.