Crooked (7 page)

Glory McGlinn stubbed out a fag in a dolphin-shaped ashtray, and blew a long cloud of smoke up to the ceiling. ‘I don't trust him, Johnny,' she said.

Johnny Warren was curled under the small dormer window, all knees and elbows, reading a comic book. ‘What was that?'

‘Tommy Bogle. I don't trust him.'

‘Well, I reckon that you're being a bit harsh.' Johnny lowered his comic, glancing at Glory over the top of the page. ‘I've known Tommy since, well, as long as I can remember.'

Glory wasn't happy with the way Johnny's ideas about Tommy seemed to have changed in a matter of days. ‘I reckon he's a crook.'

‘There are some that would say we're all of us crooks,' Johnny laughed and, getting no response, went back to his comic.

Glory tightened her viyella dressing gown and sat down at the dressing table before three arching mirrors. Johnny had been working himself into a regular state ever since Tommy walked into their lives. He and Tommy spent half their mornings yammering on about the old days and the club at Kings Cross, until Johnny had clean forgot what the Cross was really like. The way Glory remembered, it wasn't only Reilly's boys who fancied the place, but every other two-bob bludger who turned up on the doorstep and asked for a ten to keep going. Out in Liverpool
there was nobody to grudge you the business you did, and many who were actually grateful for the service. It was true that she hadn't liked it at first. It was a fair distance from Enmore and that meant long hours of travel, but with her mother helping out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Kimberley at school, they'd fallen into a rhythm that was as easy as breathing.

Johnny and Moylan were already expanding the club. They were now running a small game on Wednesdays, in addition to their regular Fridays, and Moylan was talking about putting in a new bank of telephones, maybe renting a larger place on top of the pub. So long as they slung their fair share to the coppers there wasn't nobody bothered about what sort of business they did. Glory was happy and thought Johnny was happy too – then all of a sudden Tommy walks in and Johnny is sweeping everything aside, saying he wasn't spending the rest of his life struggling in a backwater when the Cross was the place where the real money was, and he'd be damned if any bloke could make him lay off.

‘Forget about it,' she told him. But no matter how much money they made from SP it was like Johnny had got this idea into his mind, and that's it. They'd argued about it for days and days but she just couldn't stop. She was fearful, the way Johnny was talking, that he'd get himself knocked, and she'd come home to find a copper on the doorstep, with his shiny copper's buttons winking through the fisheye. Johnny told her that she was being a 'fraidy cat when she ought to have been thinking about the future, about giving Kimberley all the advantages they'd never had – that she was asking him to be a bum when he was going to be the best that there was … Johnny, he'd always had his tin can wired up to the moon.

Glory pulled some cotton wool from the roll and took off her cold cream with three savage wipes. Johnny put his face beside hers in the mirror, their cheeks pressed together.

‘Bugger off.' Glory gave him a shove.

Johnny stumbled until the backs of his knees struck the edge of the bed. He sat down, running his fingers through his hair. ‘I reckon it's Reilly you ought to be getting worked up about. He shouldn't get away with the stuff that he does. Not after he's ransacked our club, beaten up Tommy, and shot Ducky as well.'

‘How do you know Reilly killed Ducky? Because Tommy says so?'

‘It stands to reason. Ducky was probably doing a bit of his own thing round the Cross, just like we were. Maybe he was starting to get a hold on things, and Reilly wouldn't cop something like that.'

‘Yeah, and maybe Ducky went crazy with a gun just like the coppers said.'

Johnny looked hurt. ‘He was aiming for a break.'

‘Yeah, but it still could've been like it says in the papers.'

‘What about the coppers wiping the prints off the guns?' Johnny insisted. ‘Reilly's the only bloke could arrange something like that.'

But Glory wasn't about to be put off. ‘Moylan thinks I'm right. He says it could've been exactly like it says in the papers.'

‘Mick's an idiot. He dunno a thing,' said Johnny, looking sulkier than before.

‘I reckon you're being a bit harsh after what Moylan's done.' Glory sat next to Johnny on the bed. She touched him on the arm. ‘What's wrong with Moylan?'

‘I seen the way he looks at you.'

‘What?'

‘I seen it, the way he goes on.'

Glory sprang up off the bed and walked across the room, standing as far away from Johnny as possible. ‘I reckon you're imagining things.'

‘No, I'm not,' said Johnny. ‘I reckon I've hit it right on the head.'

‘Are you saying you don't trust me, Johnny Warren?'

Johnny sat there, irresolute on the bed. ‘Hell, no,' he said, and stared down at his toes. ‘I do trust you, Glory. Moylan's the one I don't trust.'

It was only half an apology, but Glory accepted it, and sat down beside Johnny again. After a while, she put her head on his shoulder. Johnny stroked her hair, and Glory burrowed a little deeper into his chest.

Johnny said, ‘I've been doing some thinking. I reckon I've got to knock off Dick Reilly. I reckon there'd be somebody willing to give good money to a bloke who could do something like that.'

At first Glory was too startled to say anything at all. Then she said, ‘But think, Johnny. Think. Something like that – Reilly's mob, they wouldn't let it go. They'd come at you for something like that.' She looked at him strangely. ‘I hope this isn't Tommy putting ideas into your head?'

‘Nah,' said Johnny. ‘Nobody,' he added, a few seconds later. ‘Just something I thought of.'

Gus took the stairs two at a time, each of them spit-marked and ground down like a soap dish. Several doors faced in on the third-storey landing, the fourth was inset with a pebbled-glass window and a sign that said ‘Sprogg, Gudgeon, Hunger & Gillespie – Solicitors' in a semicircle of black letters.

Gus knocked, heard a muffled answer, and stepped inside.

The desk was set back in the dimness. Behind it a man sat over a large mound of paperwork, dressed in a jaunty brown pinstripe, a forgotten cigarette adding spirals of smoke to the clouds on the ceiling. His features were careless and thickened with alcohol.

‘Mr Gillespie?'

Charlie stubbed out his cigarette and stuck out his hand. ‘Charlie Gillespie,' he said warmly. ‘How can I help you?'

‘I'd like to ask you a couple of questions with respect to your client Raymond O'Connor.'

Charlie waved at a chair. ‘I take it this is official?'

Gus pulled his badge-wallet out of his jacket.

‘That looks real enough, detective,' said Charlie. He turned towards a clutter of green glass decanters bunched on a wood and glass tray at his elbow. ‘Did you say you were joining me?'

‘No,' said Gus. ‘O'Connor was your client?'

‘Yes, that's right.' Charlie took a pull from his tumbler. ‘Then again, I've got a lot of clients, nearly all of them criminal.'

‘I'm assuming you know something of the circumstances surrounding his death?'

‘I know what I've read in the newspapers. O'Connor failed to turn up for his appointment on Monday. He was meant to hand over some cash to front, er, pay the QC who was representing him in a case down in Melbourne.'

‘That kind of help doesn't come cheap.'

Charlie drew his eyebrows sharply together. ‘They hang them in Melbourne. It's not the kind of thing a bloke's liable to chance. Anyway, late that afternoon I read how the poor bugger had been shot.'

‘Was he angry at McPherson?'

‘I really wouldn't know.'

‘Was he anxious about money?'

‘I'm not sure where you're taking this, detective. He was a trifle hard up. He was only out of gaol for a brief period before the unfortunate, er, incident occurred.'

‘The Melbourne matter?'

‘Quite,' said Charlie. Then he added, ‘Of course, my client said he didn't do it.'

Ignoring this, Gus pressed on. ‘Tell me, if the bloke was hard up, how was he funding this fancy defence?'

‘Frankly, detective, I didn't enquire. I think there was a girlfriend, Twiggy –'

‘Twiggy Lonragen?' said Gus, a little too fast. Gus remembered Twiggy from his days at Darlinghurst Station.

Charlie gave a tight, artificial smile. He glanced at his watch. ‘Like I said, I really wouldn't know. Now, if you'll excuse me?'

Gus wandered out into the evening filled with a sense of anxious disappointment. He had gone to see the lawyer expecting something, though he didn't know what, not exactly. Sure enough, the bloke had looked a bit cagey, then so many lawyers
did, but whatever he was looking for he was nothing the wiser. He climbed into the unmarked and thought about Twiggy. He could go and see her, have a talk to the girl. He turned the ignition, gave a left-hand signal, swung into a side street, and threaded his way through the calcified alleyways known as the Doors.

There weren't any streetlights in the lower sections of Palmer Street. Just a long line of tumbledown terrace houses that plumbers had long since abandoned, plastered with scabrous paintwork, leaky downpipes, and long, glittering expanses of damp. The door of each terrace was painted in bright pinks, mauves or reds, and under each fanlight stood somebody's Jane or Mary, slouched against the doorframe, sprawled in an armchair flung haphazard across the stoop, or squatting on the doorstep, knees pointing to the stars. They flicked through comic books as they waited for passing trade. Soft music rasped out of a wireless and drifted about on swirls of pink light.

Gus parked round the corner and walked back along the block. The air was sticky and warm, filled with the unmistakable aroma of industrial carbolic. He knocked on the door of the bald-faced stucco terrace where he knew Twiggy and another girl shared shifts round the clock, but the place was shut up.

Gus climbed back into the unmarked, and scoured the waterside district for almost an hour. He tooled along tiny shadowed side streets, watching bright shifting shapes until the brightness faded altogether, and he breathed in the dank, fishy smell of the Harbour. He had almost given up hope, was telling himself that his mission was useless when, in a stark patch of waste down by the expressway, he saw two shadows churning under a broken street lamp.

Gus pulled in to the side of the road and clambered out of the car. ‘Oi,' he yelled. ‘Police.'

A sailor whirled round and stared, panicky eyes catching the light.

Gus sauntered forward. ‘Didn't anybody tell you not to choose molls off the street?'

The sailor blinked twice and stumbled backwards.

Gus poked him in the ribs. ‘Well, go on …' he said, then watched, grinning, as the sailor spluttered something, turned around and ran.

Twiggy was standing alone under a blue cone of light. Her red sateen dress was rucked up over her thighs, her face turned away, staring into shadow. ‘What is it, copper, want your half of the take?'

‘Come off it, Twiggy. You know who I am. You know I'm not on any weekly payroll.'

‘I dunno a single copper who worked Darlinghurst vice for more than a month and didn't take contributions.'

‘Except me.' Gus hoisted a rabbit-fur coat off a stack of used tyres and held it towards her.

But Twiggy ignored him. She pulled out a powder compact and began dusting her nose. ‘Oh, what a laugh. Ha. Ha. I'm splitting my sides.'

Gus put a hand on Twiggy's shoulder. He spun her around. ‘Twiggy …' he started, then stopped – the light spilling suddenly over her face showing him the gash on her cheek, covered in pink fibrous matter where she was daubing on make-up. ‘How did you get that?'

‘I dunno,' said Twiggy. ‘I really couldn't say.'

‘Did some hoon do that?'

‘I dunno, and I reckon that I don't have to answer.'

Gus tried to be patient. ‘Just think for a minute. Maybe you should.'

‘Yeah, so I can wind up in some forty-four gallon drum bobbing in the Harbour.'

Gus tried, ‘Give me something. Maybe I can help.'

But Twiggy only laughed. ‘Just how are you going to do that?'

‘Well, I won't arrest you, for starters,' said Gus, playing tough. ‘Then I won't put it out on the street that it was down to you I found out whatever I do.'

Twiggy flared. ‘Okay, then. I'll tell you something. Ducky was mad, but he wasn't that mad. He knew how to handle himself.'

‘So?'

‘I seen him and I talked to him on the night of the shooting. He was off to see Reilly.'

‘Dick Reilly?' said Gus, his eyes rounding out in astonishment.

‘Yeah, Reilly was helping him.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Of course I'm sure. He was always doing stuff for Reilly. And Reilly looked after him. He knew Ducky was loyal.'

‘What else?' Gus tried to probe further. But it wasn't any use. Twiggy backed away.

‘I reckon that's too much already.'

Gus turned to go. ‘Make me a promise. Get off the gear and do something useful.'

‘And what would that be?'

‘I dunno,' Gus shrugged. He got into the unmarked and wound down the window. ‘Need a lift somewhere?' He nudged the car forward.

‘In that old rattletrap?'

Gus laughed, then put his foot to the floor and flew up the rise. He reached Kings Cross during the worst hours of traffic congestion. Sailors waving beer bottles caroused in the gutter, and a man in a striped butcher's apron, with a large orange fish on his head, wandered aimlessly through the cars. Further along, under the glittering puffball of the El Alamein Fountain, a young couple were spooning and an old geezer sang out his encouragement, beating the rhythm on a bottle of metho in a brown paper bag.

Gus parked the unmarked and pounded the pavement. He
went over the case in his mind and gradually things took on a whole new complexion. If O'Connor was coming from the Kellett Club on the night he got shot … well, there was something odd about it, something that could stand further scrutiny. Gus passed a well kept terrace with a fragrant frangipani in the front garden, and a dilapidated flat building with red stuccoed window boxes a-riot with angry geraniums. He passed a tumbledown mansion cut into squats, with wet laundry looped about the spiked iron railings and a flower garden blossoming with urine-stained mattresses and unloved appliances.

Then he saw it. The missing blue Holden sprouting four tail fins and a week's worth of parking tickets. ‘Jee-suss,' he swore.

Gus stared at the battered blue vehicle for a very long time. The bonnet was up and the carburettor was gone. The rear tyres and four hub caps were missing. Breathless, he scrambled to his feet and strode up the block, not pausing for breath until he was standing on the footpath outside the Kellett Club.

Ernie Chubb, Reilly's squinty-eyed gnome, was squatting on his haunches in front of the door. He was dressed in a pair of pink checked trousers, with his shirtsleeves rolled meaningfully above the elbows, showing the matching chrysanthemums tattooed on each arm. He blew out a large fan of smoke. ‘Hang about, mate. This is a private establishment.'

‘No worries,' said Gus, spreading his fingers. ‘I just want a word with Dick Reilly.'

‘Yeah,' said Chubb, dropping his fag into the gutter and standing up. ‘But it could be this Dick bloke doesn't want a word with you.'

‘How about you ask him?'

Chubb put a hand on Gus's chest, and gave him a shove. But Gus didn't move. He hesitated, then said, ‘Tell him I'm an old mate of Harry Giles's.'

Chubb fell back. ‘Mate of Harry's? Why didn't you say so?'

Chubb banged on the peephole and ducked through the door, returning a few minutes later to show Gus down a cruddy-looking hall to the back of the club. There was a door at the far end with a light underneath. Chubb pushed the door open, and Gus stepped inside.

Reilly was cocked back on a mauve rondo couch in the corner, shirt-collar unbuttoned, tie yanked down, blue sock-feet propped on a straight chair in front. He looked up as Gus entered.

‘So you must be Harry's little mate?'

‘Yeah, that's right,' said Gus, slowly.

Reilly mused, ‘Quiet sort of bloke, Harry was. I disremembered him for a minute there, you know. But Harry's done me a couple of turns, before it all came unstuck. Poor bastard.' He let his socked feet plop gently to the floor and drew his thick eyebrows together. ‘Do you want a drink then?'

‘Sure, why not?' said Gus, feeling awkward.

Reilly heaved himself up off the sofa, and walked round a stubby glass bar piled up with decanters. He slopped out some whisky, put a green plastic coaster down on the table, and put the glass on it. He picked up a soda siphon and squirted some fizzy water into another glass. He was talking all the while, ‘My mother, God rest her soul, she never approved of drinking or cursing and wasn't afraid of dressing the knots off us kids neither, and do you know what? I reckon she was right. I can tell you I've tried to knock off from swearing hundreds of times and I may as well sprout wings. But drink …' Reilly took a steady gulp. ‘I reckon that was your mate Harry's problem. Cigarette?' he added, pushing a green agate box across the table.

Gus shook his head. The drink was obviously a mistake. He wasn't about to compound it.

‘You a cigar bloke then?' said Reilly, extracting a cigar from his outer breast pocket.

Gus shook his head again.

‘Well, good for you, copper.' Reilly reached out and slapped Gus on the knee. ‘I never had a smoke in the whole of me life neither.' He laughed and grinned then, after a minute, put down his glass. ‘I reckon this must be about Ducky O'Connor.'

Surprised, Gus said, ‘I was hoping you could help us out with a couple of questions.'

‘I'm always happy to help out the coppers,' said Reilly, causing Chubb, who was standing behind him, to splutter and cough. ‘Jeez, Ernie.' Reilly whipped his head round. ‘You swallow a blowfly or something? Here, get some of this into you –' He shoved the half-empty tumbler of water into Chubb's hands, then turned back to Gus. ‘I heard Ducky shot himself by accident or something.'

‘There are some unexplained features.'

‘You reckon it was deliberate then?'

‘We're not sure. I'm trying to find out.'

Reilly scratched at his ankle and frowned. ‘Ducky, see, he was a highly complex and tragical sort of character. He came to see me a couple of years back, I reckon that must've been when it started. He'd been beating the crap out of them bennies and purple whatnots and the white stuff he gets from the chow-slushies and snorts up his nose. He wasn't real pleasant to be around and everybody was complaining. I asked the bloke, “Have you got a problem?” He tells me, “Nah, I'm not addicted.” Of course, I don't believe him, but I let the matter drop. And that was my mistake. Because it's not long after that that he gets himself arrested for shoving his good time up some sheila and it turns out she was a kid. He says to me, “The coppers set me up.” Me?' Reilly stretched a hand out in front of his face. ‘I reckoned his brains were running that far out his nose that he dunno the difference.'