Frederick's Coat (20 page)

H
e hadn’t done this before, looking to hire a private investigator, but thought it would be straightforward enough — a matter of meeting the person face-to-face to know if he could be trusted. The rest the PI could do.

The first guy could have come right out of a protection unit in prison, like some overweight paedophile with slicks of hair flattened across his skull by pungent-smelling grease. Johno asked him a few questions and that was enough. ‘This job’s not for you, mate.’

‘Don’t we know each other?’ was the first thing Johno said when the second guy walked into his office. Still big and burly, but dressed more sharply — must have practised the look in the mirror, taken it from some movie he’d seen. And no box-office hit, this was C-grade, way too contrived, the just-so loosened plain black tie, white shirt well ironed and yet crumpled in the wrong places, hair in need of a cut and yet styled that way, perfectly unnatural. His black leather briefcase that had been around or else put through a concrete mixer and no doubt full of listening devices and cameras and PI paraphernalia.

‘Yeah. I’d say we do.’ The former flying squad detective had the nerve to grin.

‘You and Marshie and the other guy — what was his name?’

‘You must be psychic, saying “was”. He’s now the late Nick the Prick. Fell over with a massive heart attack, only forty-one.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Johno said, deadpan.

‘And you’d know Marshie did time?’

‘Word does get around if it’s a cop.’

‘Poor bastard got caught up in the sweep, so to speak.’

Memories of paying this man, Rod Croydon —
my mates call me Croydo
— when he was a detective sergeant rubbed against an old wound he thought had long healed. ‘Yeah. I heard. Were you hiding under the table when they came for your mate?’

‘I’m good at what I do, Johno Ryan. That’s as a former cop and now as a PI. I kept under the radar even before they had that saying. Now, how can I help you, former truck-heister, before we get onto morality?’ Said with that same cocksure grin.

‘What’s the difference between morality and being a cunt — and that was all three of you?’ said Johno. ‘Carrying detective badges.’

‘No reason to still be bitter. Now, you need a PI to — let me guess. You got some competition for this very nice bar-cum-restaurant and you want to see what can be found on them? Getting ripped off by your bar staff, I bet? That’s an area I know well. Problem’s endemic in the grog industry, fucking light-fingered staff. I love nailing them.’ That irritating grin again as he added, ‘Reminds me of the old days. Funny old world, isn’t it? I mean, who’d believe?’

‘That’s right. Who’d believe I’d want to do business with someone who sent me and Shane McNeil down?’ The memories came back.

‘Correction,’ said Croydon. ‘You sent yourselves down. Cutting us out when that wasn’t the arrangement.’

‘As I recall, the arrangement was all of your making.’

‘Come on, Johno. It’s a new world now, and I’ve moved on and you sure as hell look like you have. Quite a place you’ve got here. A fucking waterfall in the middle of Balmain? Mate.’ Too familiar by half.

‘Like you said, who’d think it?’

‘Look, why don’t we smoke a peace pipe over a beer and get this job done? Tell you what: don’t pay me unless I do it to your satisfaction. That’s how confident I am.’

‘You know what would satisfy me, Croydon? To see someone nail you.’

‘Memories cut both ways, Johno Ryan.’ Croydon stood up and gave a wicked smile.

‘Bet you wish we were in a police cell so you could give me a good flogging.’

‘Plenty of other places, sonny.’ The ex-cop had walked to the door; the office wasn’t the largest of spaces.

‘Wherever you like.’ Johno felt that little trembling, ridiculously like fear, that he knew could grow into blind violence.

Now he was telling Melanie, ‘But the third guy wasn’t too bad. He had an honest manner. Even his name, Selby Whiting, had a ring to it.’

And when Melanie said nothing, Johno asked, ‘What? You don’t approve?’

‘I just think something vital’s lost when you spy on your own flesh and blood.’

Exact same thought he’d had, but his kid was dicing with danger. And how come she got more, well, assertive in her own apartment, and more docile when at his place?

‘My son’s a heavy drug user, if not an addict.’

‘Johno. Please,’ she said. ‘I’m not the enemy. I’m not a drug dealer.’

‘But you don’t think trying to find out who’s dealing drugs to my son is the right thing?’ He shifted position on the sofa where they were sitting.

‘Don’t move away like that,’ she said. ‘I know this is killing you. It’s tearing me up, too, seeing your anguish.’

He looked at her for some considering moments, slid back to where he was. ‘Start again. First, let me finish. This private detective found that a gang of young guys, early twenties, are the street-dealers, the direct contact with Danny. They report to a couple of heavies. They’re the ones I want.’

‘Is that it? Problem now solved, or …?’

‘The problem could be solved.’

‘Except your son goes down in the plane crash.’

‘He goes down anyway.’

‘Or,’ said Mel, ‘his talent is his saving grace and, as he matures, he sees what he’s doing to himself and kicks the habit, given he’s not on heroin. Which I understand is near impossible to kick. But cocaine has somewhat less of a hold. Yes?’

‘Says a woman looking for a happy ending,’ said Johno, not meaning to hurt her or be sarcastic. But he continued, ‘Life ain’t like that. And Danny isn’t what you’d call a robust person who has it in him to quit.’

‘He’s an artist. Not meant to be robust.’

‘Not meant to be on coke, either,’ Johno said, ‘not if he wants to be painting into old age. Even to middle age.’ Johno pulled out his hard face; he didn’t know he was doing it, just saw the change in Melanie’s expression, a frown, but too late now. ‘Or I can stop these people in their tracks.’

‘Oh? How would you do that? Get the cops involved?’

‘Get them not involved. I already told you about the ex-detective turned PI. Attracts a certain type I’m chemically averse to. I know people.’

‘So do I,’ Mel said. ‘But none who’d take on organised criminals.’

‘I meant at supplier level. I know the direct sellers are just pawns in the game. But I’ll hit the soldiers and might even surprise the big guys at the top.’

‘My, you make it sound like a simple military operation.’ Was she being sarcastic? ‘And you have a thriving business, as I recall. Why would you put that at risk? How long do you think it would take them to replace these people? Don’t they call them mules or something?’

‘A mule is the mug who brings the drug in,’ said Johno. ‘Then it comes down a chain. That’s about all I know of the business. I intend going as far as necessary to get them off my son’s back.’

‘I understand,’ Mel said. ‘It angers you and, I hasten to add, me as well. Just in a different way, since it’s not my kid involved. Might be said I’d rather have her back with this challenge to face than not here.’

Chastened, he said, ‘Sorry.’

She reached for both his hands. ‘You need to think it through, hard as it is. Know I’m here for you always.’

Johno stood before his double parking spot in the apartment block basement, thinking it was time to get rid of Frederick’s trolley. Or, if Danny didn’t want that, then it could be stored in his car park, given he’d never learned to drive. Danny had asked his father to purchase his late friend’s rented flat and he had moved in.

But how did Johno take the trolley to Danny’s — push it? What would people think, seeing a well-dressed, clean-shaven man acting like some reluctant street person? Or he could have some fun and take a whisky bottle with him, sing as he walked, make out he was drunk. Nope, much too extroverted for Johno Ryan, and a lot of locals knew him.

Danny could come and collect it himself. He wasn’t the type to worry what people might think of him pushing a supermarket trolley down a busy city suburban street like some glamorous imitation of a tramp.

Should he call Danny or should he surprise him, just press his buzzer and see if he sounded guilty when he answered?

He was kind of relieved when his mobile rang and the caller ID said
S. Whiting.

‘I’ve found her.’

G
ive the woman her due: she opened the match with the coolest of expressions.

‘How’d you find me?’

Didn’t look that bad for a woman of, he wasn’t sure, sixty-plus. Hadn’t seen her since he was fifteen and then only for a few minutes. Yet she was strangely familiar.

He tried not to show he was assessing — judging — wondering, even marvelling at the fact that this was his mother, Anita.

Her dress was summer-light material, no sleeves and no sagging skin on her arms. Yeah, good-looking — still. Complexion of a woman half her age, except for the telltale smoker’s city map lines around the eyes. Dark hair heavily streaked with grey, nothing fancy about the practical cut. A funny way of looking at him warily, half side-on, at least initially.

He was trying not to imagine this woman — his old lady — on her back servicing a customer to get her next fix. But the thought still popped up and it filled him with — well, disgust, and yet maybe, like Frederick, she couldn’t help what she was. He’d expected Selby Whiting would discover his mother had died a long time ago, having succumbed to drugs. But she looked clean. Not that he knew what a clean former drug addict looked like. In prison he’d avoided drug offenders like the plague, and not just because he’d been brought up prejudiced against anything to do with drugs. They all lack scruples.

‘Private investigator.’ Johno was surprised at his own emotional state — way too high, just like that dive had been way too deep.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Fancy this. How long’s it been?’

‘I was fifteen.’

‘So I was thirty-five. And now you’re forty.’

‘This is your flat?’ A second-floor pad in the main street of Kings Cross, a cesspit of drug addicts and all their lowlife associated parties. He’d had three offers of sex between parking his car down a side street and reaching here. No lift — up creaky stairs that took him back to the outside wooden stairs of Evelyn’s flat a lifetime ago. Memories. Why do the bad ones stick? The place was so tiny he could have touched the walls if he’d spread his arms out.

‘I share it,’ she said. ‘How did you get my surname? From your father? I saw he died a while back.’

‘You must be getting old if you’re reading the death notices.’ He meant it as light relief.

‘Not me. I heard on the underworld grapevine that an old stager in the minor league had passed on. I beat him on that count. He used to say I wouldn’t reach thirty,’ she said with almost a sad expression. ‘If you can call my life living.’

‘He only had a description and your first name. The PI, I mean.’

‘So say it,’ she said. ‘Say my name.’ Striking the first blow.

‘If you don’t know it by now, you never will,’ he said and gave something of a smile to say that he wasn’t playing that game but nor was he spitting her out.

‘Suit yourself. You want something to drink?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘You don’t look like a non-drinker,’ she said. ‘Drinkers are a breed I can spot. But not like I can spot a fellow junkie.’

Johno had his answer, or so he thought.

‘Reason I’m still here,’ she said. ‘Money circumstances made me give up about, oh, twelve years ago now.’ She waited for his reaction. The softest brown eyes for someone who’d done it hard. He’d better get his emotions reined in or this would be all over before it started. Couldn’t believe he was reacting like this, feeling a stupid urge to
take her in his arms and have a good bawl.

‘I thought addicts can’t quit,’ he said.

‘Let me tell you they can,’ said Anita. ‘If they really want to or, in my case, they run out of ways to turn a buck. I can look back on it now and see supposed addiction is like wrongly held assumptions. You are what you believe you are.’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, impressed. ‘Guess you do.’

But then she ruined it when she pointed at her crotch and said matter-of-factly, ‘No man wants old pussy.’

‘That’s a nice thing to hear after twenty-five years.’ Johno could feel the illusion crumbling — if he’d had one to start with.

‘The world I inhabited is short on niceties,’ she said.

‘So why wouldn’t you move to another world if you’re off the stuff?’

‘Here’s what I know. Nothing else.’

‘So not even a few memories of life before it started?’

She came forward in her armchair and said in a quieter voice, ‘You go to all this trouble to come here and give me a damn lecture?’

‘Hell no,’ Johno said. Had to hold his judgement at bay, too, as his mother lit a cigarette. He’d forbidden Danny to smoke in their apartment.

‘I bloody hope not,’ she said, sucking at the fag. ‘So, why are you here?’

‘If we can go back to those memories,’ Johno said, ‘before you came to Australia?’

‘What’s that got to do with it? I fell down. Stayed down. Kind of got back up. I’ve got no illnesses, my heart feels strong and I can at least remember yesterday. Forty-three years here, seventeen in New Zealand, but what do I remember most and what place do I dream about?’ she said. ‘Back there. Home, even when it was never that. I mean with a happy-happy loving family.’

He wasn’t sure about her cynicism. ‘I’ve got a Kiwi mate stuck back there, too. Like you, he’s lived here longer and yet it still tears him up.’

‘Oh? Would I know this bloke?’ She sounded wholly Aussie.

‘You might. We met in jail. He’s in the wholesale weed game. We’re still mates.’

‘I heard about that, too,’ she said, showing little change of expression. ‘You going to jail. But …’ those bare, pale copper arms went out, ‘I also know you’ve come a long way since then. So I’ll ask again. Why are you here?’

‘Well,’ he started tentatively, and knew why — Danny. ‘Far as I’ve come it’s like I’ve gone backwards.’

‘The business is in trouble? No. You don’t dress like a big-spender. Fact I’m surprised how under-dressed you are, not a bit of bling to be seen.’

‘The flash look never appealed, and my business isn’t in any trouble. The opposite. It’s booming.’ Why the hell did he have to pause to suck in a breath? ‘But my son isn’t.’ Johno got it out in acted deadpan manner. When inside he was roiling. She nodded he should continue.

‘The question I’m here to ask, Anita,’ he said her name rather gently, ‘is what made you what you became? Because my son — your grandson — has a drug problem.’

‘I know about him. Danny.’

Johno smiled, kind of. ‘You got a PI, too?’

‘Sydney town’s just a village. People talk. I’ve followed you over the years.’ Every draw on her cigarette satisfied a need. ‘An ex-con with your kind of success gets talked about more. Your first Danny’s Drawings in Ultimo? You don’t know how many times I stood across the street wanting to come in and just say gidday. What would you have done?’

‘I don’t know,’ Johno said, but he did: she wouldn’t have been welcome.

She said, ‘Might have been like the first time, when you stood there while I walked down your street with your father’s abuse ringing in my ears.’

‘Your relationship with him was none of my business. You left me in his custody. Like I got left my son. I don’t think Danny would be that moved if his mother turned up,’ Johno said. ‘If you want to know, I did
hurt for you that day but what could I do? I was a confused fifteen-
year-old
kid. It was like a bomb went off in my face. You were supposed to be dead. Why did you come that day?’

‘State I was in at the time, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘Guess I wanted to see you. I was going through a bad period, which I thought I mightn’t survive. Last time you were a baby just starting to walk.’

‘And what were you?’

She gave him that sharp look again, born of decades on mean Cross streets. ‘Guess I’ll have to tell you a bit more, won’t I?

‘My stepfather murdered my two-year-old sister, not in a fit of drunken rage but because he was jealous of the attention the little kid got from my mother. I guess that set the pattern of my life and my siblings.

‘The child-killer dog got life, minimum twenty years’ prison. My old lady got sent round the twist by what happened, guilt at choosing such a man, losing her kid like that. She drank heavily. Her kids ceased to exist, we took care of ourselves. Hardened our little hearts.’

Her mouth tightened, grooves appeared in her cheeks, her eyes glistened with angry tears.

‘Not how you were raised, is it? That bastard old man of yours would’ve loved you and made sure you never went hungry. But he liked a beer on a hot day, as they say. And you …’ She gave him an all-over look.

‘I never let booze become a problem,’ he said. ‘Felt it could have.’

‘The fact you went to the trouble of finding me says you really love your Danny.’ Hearing his son’s name spoken by her sounded strange.

‘Laurie was a good father — if I don’t count the times he was out partying when I needed him there. But I wasn’t, as they say, scarred. Nor is Danny, or not from anything I’ve done. I’ve been a good father and now I’m trying to understand why he’s doing this.’

‘I get that,’ said Anita. ‘Got a girl I worship, too, and she’s not even my daughter. She flats here. She needs me and I’m here for her. She’s out right now doing the business with a john. I don’t allow it here —
Hey? Don’t drop your head like that. Every world has its own reality. You were in jail — you should know better than most how cruel life is. And now you’re trying to understand your lost son’s world. Like I said, I do get it, Johno.’

First time she’d said his name.

After Johno explained Danny’s gentle nature, his artistic talent, his different personality, Anita said, ‘Not a type I’ve come across on either side of the Tasman. Guess they wouldn’t survive in our dog-eat-dog world. But if you’ve come to me for advice after all these years then, I’m sorry to tell you, I only gained hardness from my experiences, not wisdom. But I know I allowed what happened to me in childhood to rule me, and I wasted my life. I don’t have any secrets for putting your kid on the straight and narrow.’

‘I was wondering if you had, like, an addictive personality.’ Johno got the awkward question out. ‘And maybe that’s part of Danny’s problem: he’s pre-wired like this. I don’t know.’

‘I had a personality like every child,’ Anita said. ‘I was born addicted to wanting love. But, seeing I didn’t get any, I searched for it in weed, drink and finally hard drugs. How it goes.’

‘Except I’m not letting it go there,’ Johno said and gave his own firm look.

She laughed then, a thin sound from a thin person. ‘Your old man could have given me a bit more understanding. Not saying he’s to blame, but he might’ve been able to lead me out to the light.’

‘Might,’ Johno said.

‘That’s right. I only said “might”. You’ve got a hard side, like he had,’ she said.

‘Not if I’m sitting here.’ At a table barely big enough for two, on old cane chairs, two mattresses on the floor, duvets with no covers, a skylight above, tiniest of kitchens with basic facilities, nothing was hidden except presumably a bathroom somewhere.

Johno thought that a couple of Danny’s paintings would not only liven the place up, they’d fit right in.

‘You think I know people,’ she said.

‘Not as friends. I wouldn’t expect that. But …’

‘I’ve never got near the main players. You want me to help Danny?’

‘The Maori mate I mentioned, I could go to him. But he won’t take any prisoners.’

‘And you would?’ she asked sceptically. ‘Put it this way. I would hate to be the ones supplying your son and meet face-to-face with you. Or you want me to ask around, see if I can get this boy special — unique — exemption?’ Paused and added, ‘Hah. And pigs will fly.’

‘I know how the world works. Just wanting to stop it working against my son. I want to try to understand an addictive personality, see if there’s any way I can stop Danny falling right off the cliff,’ said Johno.

‘Or throwing himself off,’ said Anita. ‘You see, I think this addictive personality stuff is a cop-out. Nowadays they talk about sex addiction, gambling addicts. It’s all bullshit.’

‘So where does that leave Danny?’

‘You’ll know without me telling you: it has to come from within. Your son — my grandson? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? My own flesh and blood and yet as much my grandson as I’m your mother,’ said Anita with a wry smile. ‘If it
is
genetic, then he’s inherited my
g
ive-up-too-easily
mentality. Don’t be giving him excuses, Johno. He’ll seize on them all and still look for more.’

Eventually he said, ‘I have money for you. Should’ve given you some years ago.’

‘To keep me permanently wasted?’ She couldn’t have looked less like a reformed drug addict then. ‘Now that would’ve truly taken me out early. As to money, I don’t need it. I’m in the welfare system. They pay me a sickness benefit. Me, who’s contributed nothing to society.’

He told her of his grandfather and then his father saying the same thing on their deathbeds. ‘Maybe last-minute guilt?’

‘Maybe misplaced guilt you wanting to give me money,’ she said.

But Johno still wasn’t feeling satisfied with this encounter. ‘What if I used some force to keep these people away from my son?’

‘A big tough guy like you, asking me, a former drug addict?’ She was either incredulous or a damn good actress. ‘You want a war?’

‘They started it.’

‘Listen, buster. A whole army of good-intentioned people couldn’t keep someone from getting drugs. If they want it, they’ll find a way. And what if drugs just plain make your son feel better?’

‘Feeding a kid sugary stuff and fat makes him feel better,’ Johno said. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s good for him. Least I can afford to get him doing cold-turkey someplace overseas. No. Hold on a minute …’ He stopped her from responding. ‘When you took drugs, is that what it did — took you out of it, took away the pain?’ Waited till she nodded then said, ‘Danny’s pain was losing his best friend — a homeless guy with severe depression who committed suicide. What I know is, someone took advantage of the situation, of his timid nature. And now he’s hooked or getting close. You at least know how to quit.’ So tell me —
tell
me how I can save my son from ending up in a place like this.