Frederick's Coat (21 page)

‘You don’t want Danny to suffer the consequences of his own actions?’ she said. ‘How about me? Would you exempt me from my sordid behaviour, my wretched years of doing anything to get my next fix?’

He said, ‘You’re not young, with artistic potential.’

‘But I am your mother.’

‘I didn’t think they handed out prizes for just the birthing part.’ He wasn’t falling for this. Yet he said, ‘I’d really like to give you some money.’

‘Why?’ she said. ‘When I haven’t given you an answer for Danny?’

‘Guess I feel I owe it.’

‘For just giving birth to you? You said—’

‘Not a prize I want to give. It’s a gesture,’ he said. ‘And the fact that life seems to hand more to some than to others without their
deserving
it. For better or worse.’ Had never talked like this in his life.

‘Meaning what?’

He drew in breath. ‘That coming here, even the act of finding you, has put something to rest I didn’t know needed it.’

‘If I hadn’t been clean …?’

‘Then I would’ve found a mess of a mother I couldn’t have talked to like this.’

‘Are you glad, then?’

He didn’t answer immediately. Let it reach deeper. ‘I don’t know. How about you?’

‘You look better up close than the person I saw from a distance. I even went into your Balmain bar, charmed the Maori guy you had on the door. Nice place you’ve got. I loved the waterfall. And the way you walk around, chatting with your customers when I can see now it’s not your natural style.’ She smiled then. ‘No. But you’re not so much a thinker as someone who dwells deep.’

He smiled back. ‘Danny’s mentor, a guy called Wilson, calls it the whale that only comes up to breathe at night. Even in a business dealing with the public I’m a private person.’

But Anita shook her head. ‘With so much stuff wanting out.’ A statement not a question.

‘As Danny’s friend, Frederick, said to me once, “I am what I am.”’

‘But he took his own life. You’ve embraced yours. Just it didn’t work out for your son. And maybe …’ she looked briefly at her hands, nibbled-down fingernails Johno hadn’t noticed before. Lit a cigarette, her hands trembling slightly. ‘Maybe it won’t?’ Now that was a question, yet asked in hope.

He told her of his years growing up with only a father. She admitted to having a fling with Shane McNeil’s father. Johno, surprised at how shocked he was, admitted he’d been no angel of fidelity to Evelyn either.

‘Yet now I have the choice of the whole shop, I’m happy with one.’ Told her about Melanie, and how good a singer she was.

So they talked music, and Anita knew her seventies soul. Johno found himself laughing quite a lot more than he’d ever expected to. He even hummed the tune of Blue Mink’s ‘Stay With Me’ and Anita sang lines of the chorus and not too badly either.

‘Danny’s Drawings,’ she said. ‘I love the name. And how appropriate.
All right, his art’s too way-out for me. But I stared at his work and thought, I’m his grandmother?’ Her laugh had emotion in it, trust too. ‘If I hadn’t been so scared of attracting your attention I would’ve cried on the spot. At what I missed out on, with you and my grandson.’

‘Who you’re saying might not beat this problem?’ Johno stood up, ready to leave.

His mother stood up too. ‘It’s funny, when I was hooked I used to think life was a movie and I was in it. Not starring, but at least a
bit-player
. When I got out the other side I saw how pathetic that was.’

‘Danny doesn’t even watch movies.’

‘Pleased to hear that. ’Cause self-delusion is a harder bridge to cross.’

‘Anita? Why have you told me all this but with no suggestions, no solution?’ He really wanted to know.

‘Got a feeling we won’t see each again,’ she said. ‘And I could never have had an answer. We are what we are, like it or not.’

He nodded. ‘We might cross paths again.’

‘No. Twice in forty years says not likely. But it was nice seeing you. Sorry it had to be in these circumstances.’

Both standing there, awkward, back to being strangers, nodding stiff goodbyes.

F
or over two hours he sat in the car, watching Danny’s apartment building. He saw Wilson arrive and, over an hour later, come out. No sign of shady characters likely to be Danny’s suppliers. In a way Johno was glad — this shit was killing him. He’d have no control.

He no longer enjoyed his job; it seemed pointless now. He should sell everything and be done with it. Go and visit European cities with Danny and Mel. Trick or drag Danny onto the plane if he had to, promise to buy him cocaine while they were overseas, break his word in the name of the higher good. Danny’s good.

Parked where he was, he copped Wilson both ways on his side of the pavement. He got out.

‘Well, I wondered if that was you.’ Wilson beat him to the draw.

‘Knew I should’ve worn a disguise. Want a chat?’

‘Yes.’ Wilson got into the car. Johno knew he’d look away more than make eye contact, which suited Johno just fine.

The feeling of guilt wasn’t helped when Wilson said, ‘You should go and spend time with him.’

‘Nothing I want more.’

‘He’s perfectly normal. It’s just that his head is in yet another space. Chemically assisted, yes, but he won’t bite you.’ Wilson spoke to Johno and not the windscreen as he usually did.

‘Not his bite I’m worried about.’

‘Come on, Johno. You’d never lay a hand on him.’

‘I might if I found him taking drugs.’

‘You mean defiantly? As in against your fatherly authority?’

‘Give me a break,’ snapped Johno. ‘Our relationship was never like that, never. But nor was I a pushover, letting him do whatever he wanted.’

‘My apologies,’ Wilson said to the street. ‘I was just trying to find your level. Ask me how his art is.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Wild,’ Wilson said and turned to Johno. ‘Not undisciplined wild. Just set free wild. Some of the major artists have been hooked on drugs.’

‘He hasn’t earned his place at the majors’ table.’ Johno was firm.

‘Well, something has set the bird free,’ Wilson said. ‘I’m not
advocating
for or against, since we’re talking drugs. Might be heightened emotions at losing his friend Frederick — I don’t know. What I do know is, he’s producing art that can hold its own against all but the very best.’

‘What does that mean? I thought he was already in that league?’

‘You didn’t hear that from me. I’ve always said that he’s a work in progress. Now I’m saying much progress has been made. But he’s not quite there yet. Great that he’s not so self-conscious — he’s stopped trying and just lets it happen.’

This news surprised Johno; he’d assumed that Danny’s artistic output would be rapidly declining, in quality and quantity. ‘How does he talk? I don’t know anything about drugs.’

‘Most people wouldn’t pick up the difference. His loving father probably would. But not like, say, a drunk slurring his words and not making much sense,’ said Wilson. ‘You told me your father and grandfather drilled the anti-drugs message into you. I hate to state the obvious, but that may tell us something.’

‘What, the genetic thing?’ Johno heard his mother being less charitable: a cop-out.

‘It’s all only theory. But we can say it has nothing to do with how he was brought up.’

‘Glad you said that.’

‘One of his problems is he had no tribe. Even I, a bachelor and a social loner, have my university tribe. Danny is tribeless,’ said Wilson. ‘Rather like you, Johno.’

‘I have my customers, a few friends. We don’t all have to belong to a tribe.’

‘Wrong. It’s inherent in human nature. We are social animals. You’re just one step back, but you still operate within the tribal system. What do you think of putting up a couple of his new paintings at your place?’

‘No more space left. He’s already the sole feature everywhere you look,’ said Johno. ‘You selling on his behalf?’

‘I’d not be complicit in helping fund his drug supply. You know the market has already set his price at a minimum four thousand. Even for someone with no clue about money I think he’s figured that one out.’

‘And none of my business?’

‘He’s almost twenty. No need to ask what you were doing with your money at that age.’

‘Fair enough,’ Johno said. But he knew he’d still have to take dramatic action soon.

‘T
ito. You’re just in time for lunch,’ said Shane. Initially he’d thought Tito was indifferent to his own smouldering good looks, but now he knew the young man was as vain as his cousin Paolo, with twice as much reason.

The ease with which Tito pulled women made him the envy of many, but least the guy didn’t preen himself or pay a fortune for a haircut. And he didn’t let them hang around him like trophies, nor did he wear his underworld status on his person like old-days crims, with big diamonds on their left pinkies, vicuna overcoats that could only be worn a couple of months a year in Sydney’s warm climate, the usual gold everywhere.

Hugging Shane as the Eyeties do, Tito glanced at the frying pan and said, ‘Chops? For lunch? No, thanks. I can wait.’

‘These are the best,’ Shane said. ‘From a real butcher, not a supermarket bulk-buy, all fat and no meat.’

‘Didn’t you know buying in bulk applies to quality stuff, too?’ Tito glanced around: it was his first visit here. ‘Nice pad. But I prefer mine smack in the city. No action this side of town. Not that I’ve got to know Sydney properly.’

‘I must be getting old, preferring the quieter life. But we have our moments, eh, Teets?’ said Shane. ‘Sometimes ask myself what I did to deserve living like this after all that time in jail. From one nice place to another.’

‘Because of it, you mean? You did your apprenticeship, Shano. So accept and enjoy, my friend.’ 

Shane, wishing he had Tito’s sense of entitlement, said, ‘I only waited three months for you to pay me a visit. How you been?’

‘How’ve I been? You see me several times a week. Like yesterday.’

‘Sure, but this is personal. Huh?’ He’d caught the huh habit. ‘Even if you turned down my fair-dinkum Aussie lunch. These are hogget chops. Real meat connoisseurs don’t touch lamb. Ask a sheep farmer if he eats lamb and he’ll tell you, nah, too bland.’

‘Sure. And you had a lot of experience being a sheep farmer,’ Tito grinned, patted Shane’s cheek. ‘Ma-aa-ah. I only eat meat at night. I prefer fish, or anything pasta.’

‘Pasta, pasta, pasta,’ Shane said. ‘Alla time pasta.’

Tito said, in Italian, ‘I thought you would’ve eaten like us by now.’

‘I mostly do. But don’t you get sick of pasta?’ Shane replied in Italian, then back to English. ‘Normally I’d throw these chops on the barbie. But living on my own? One person and a barbie is kind of sad, yeah?’

‘You think so? Wouldn’t worry me. It’s like they say about drinking on your own. Makes no difference to me. Not that I drink that much.’ Gave Shane a little look.

‘Soothes my troubled soul, kid,’ Shane said. ‘I got a piece of New Zealand blue cod in the fridge if you want.’

‘I might just have some of that. Kiwi cod is good. I heard New Zealand’s a very nice place to visit, mountainous like Sicily.’

‘Where you’ve been — how many times?’

‘Hey, I’m still half-Sicilian on my mother’s side.’

‘But you grew up here. Said you’ve never been to Italy.’

‘Part of my heart will always be Italian. Why you’re one of us, ’cause Gerardo saw something Italian in you. We got respect for you,’ said Tito. ‘This fish, when’d you buy it? I only do fresh fish, like in
near-biting
me. Even a fillet has to move a little in the pan.’

‘My walking beat goes right by the fish market,’ Shane replied. ‘Bought it from the Italian guy who owns—’ Shane didn’t even get the name out.

‘It’s not owned by him. The Family owns it,’ Tito informed him. ‘Good cashflow business. Should be called Giuseppe’s Laundry, huh?’

Not surprised, Shane said, ‘He loves it when I talk his lingo. Asked where I learned to speak it so good, and I told him I’ve had lots of Italian lovers. Shoulda seen his face change. You guys hate it that a woman can love fucking like a man.’

‘I bet he didn’t laugh.’

‘No.’ Shane knew when to drop the subject. ‘I made a simple salad to go with meat or fish, case I changed my mind.’ As he headed for the fridge Shane had the sudden thought that, in a movie, this is when Tito might have shot him.

So, halfway across the kitchen he stopped suddenly, bent down to make out he was tying a loose shoelace. Looked up to see Tito’s expressionless yet classical features looking at him. What? Shane could have had a gun strapped to his ankle. Just his imagination running loose.

Tito said, ‘My Uncle Victor can’t do that, bend down and tie his shoelace. His gut gets in the way. Pretty funny.’

‘Like that Bernadette woman, eh?’ Shane thought he’d test his friend.

‘Yeah. Big fat sow. But I felt sorry for her.’

‘Hey …?’ Shane rather surprised. ‘Me, too. Real bad, in fact.’

‘Arrested by about ten robo-cops pointing guns at her, fucking bullies. Gets twelve years — a woman? But they got onto her leaving the country, so she was never gonna make it. Don’t ask me how these customs people, or whoever they are, decide this person or that person is a bad egg. Do you know?’

‘Me? Nah.’ Shane chuckled. ‘I just do what I’m told.’

‘Yeah,’ Tito said. No more.

‘How about you?’ Shane asked. ‘Didn’t want to move up here, I bet?’

‘You bet, you lose.’ Tito smiled. For such a handsome man he didn’t show many teeth. All eyes and eyebrows and hair like dark silk. ‘I like Sydney. Melbourne’s too flat.’

‘What? You do a lot of walking like I do?’ Shane knew he didn’t.

‘No. It’s the landscape. Houses clustered on the sides of hills and cliffs overlooking the sea, lots of sandy beaches and the sandstone rocks. I like the pastel hues.’

‘Oh yeah? Pastel hues? Can’t say I picked up on that. But now you mention it.’

Tito was watching Shane throw some flour on the fish fillets. ‘And the Opera House? Man, it’s everything they say it is and more. Just sitting there, you know? Like out of a dream.’

‘You have those kind of dreams? Panoramic, an old mate of mine used to call them.’ Shane meant Johno, who else.

‘I don’t need to be asleep. I see the landscape, colours, buildings, even the fucking churches, man, as you’re looking at me right now. Straight.’ Tito with a George Clooney, all-eyes grin.

‘Is that right?’ Shane put oil and a dab of butter into another pan, looked at Tito. ‘Yet make one wrong move with a guy like you and it’s all over.’ Statement, not question.

Tito, with that shrug of a hundred meanings, said, ‘Oh, well. Guess that’s the other Tito. Like you got another Shane.’

‘Gerardo said a man is a private one and a public—’

‘He tells everyone that. Told me when he came out. Guess the private man Eduardo Puisi was another man altogether.’

‘Eduardo the late,’ said Shane, fishing but trying not to be obvious.

‘Tortured him.’

‘Yeah, so I saw in the paper.’ Shane gave one of his learned Italian shrugs. ‘Shit happens to shit, I guess.’

‘You guess?’ Tito shook his head. ‘Leaves you and me okay, huh, Shanero?’ Called him that, Italian-like, sometimes.

Shane turned from the stove. ‘That’s for sure. No one’s going down for anything that comes out of my mouth.’ Fired up on his own words, he grabbed Tito’s right hand. ‘Family,’ he said. ‘Stick together, live together.’

‘Die of old age,’ Tito finished the refrain. ‘Or fucking cancer. Just our luck, eh, Shane?’ Didn’t mean it for a second, both grinning.

‘Can I ask you something, Teets?’

‘Not personal … I never talk about women. Not like Aussie blokes all the time talking about her tits, her
growler
. It’s a growler? A woman’s
beautiful place and he calls it that? Nah, but you don’t talk like that, do you, Shane?’

‘No way. Must be to do with respecting your mother,’ Shane said. ‘What I wanted to ask is why you don’t put a wall between you and the collectors. Keep you further back. You know? I’m asking because I care about you.’

‘I know you do.’ Tito stepped up and put a hand on Shane’s shoulder. There could be a knife in that hand, Shane thought. ‘I love fish like that, golden brown.’

‘Great. You were saying?’

‘I’m all right. I should’ve told you,’ said Tito. ‘Gerardo’s my father. But I took my mother’s brother’s surname because his family brought me up, the old man being away all that time.’

‘Is that right?’ Shane wasn’t all that surprised; he’d picked up on things said over the years in Barwon. ‘If I’d been out I would’ve raised you as my son, too. You’re a good kid and—’ had to check himself.

‘And what, my friend, who’s also a good man?’

‘Just saying you can’t stay in our business and not expect to do time. Just how it is. But with walls between you and the action, the chances are minimal.’

‘I hear you, brother,’ said Tito meaningfully, squeezed Shane’s shoulder. ‘Have you at my back any day, old-timer.’

‘Who you calling old?’

‘Old man who sits reading a newspaper —
a newspaper
— every morning at the fish market while everyone rushes by doing it hard, making a living.’

‘You saying it’s a cushy number? It is. Thanks to your father.’

‘My old man, not my father. You love only those you know. But I respect him …’

‘Sort of … uh?’ said Shane.

The young man nodded, but the shutters came down.

‘Don’t read the papers, you don’t know what goes on in the world,’ Shane said. ‘I had a mate used to tell me I should read. We were banged
up together in Long Bay, where this all started, wayyy back. But did I listen to him? Not till I got out of Barwon and needed something to ease the boredom of just hanging around living the pretty good life did I start reading.’

‘I read a newspaper every once in a while. That fish smells real good.’

After lunch Shane made up his mind to ask, ‘Were you there when they whacked Eduardo?’

‘You’re not supposed to ask that.’ Shane knew those cold eyes.

‘I was locked up with him, knew him like a brother. I was shocked like everyone was to hear he’d grass like that. Never knew a stauncher man.’

‘He wasn’t so staunch and tough when it came to it,’ said Tito. ‘So I hear.’

‘You mean heard, like in person?’

‘It’s in the past.’

‘I bet not in your mind. Come on, we’re friends. Won’t go beyond here.’

‘What’s there to say, even if I was there? He was down for punishment, the severest punishment. So he got it.’

‘And you guys make a widow of the wife he gave Gerardo up for, left his kids fatherless, when I bet he loved them like all you Eyeties do.’

‘The papers went on about him having four kids, a wife who said her husband had turned over a new leaf.’ Tito sniffed, got serious. ‘You’d think the Pope got knocked off ’stead of a piece of grass filth.’

‘Did you ever like him?’

‘Never. From the first time I set eyes on him — I mean as a young adult, not a kid who saw him from time to time. When he wasn’t doing time, like my old man. Like you. Touch wood, not me yet.’

‘What I asked about before. I worry for you, Teets. They put you out front too much,’ Shane said. ‘Did he beg?’

‘Who? Eduardo?’ Tito showed all his teeth for a long moment. ‘Yeah. He did. Anything else you wanna know about a fucking coward who went down crying like a baby?’

‘No,’ said Shane. ‘Only thanks for sharing that with me. I was glad
he got his dues. Didn’t know then it was your father Eddie had sent down. Poor bastard. Like me, he wasn’t out for long,’ Shane said. ‘So he cried?’

‘Cried. Pissed himself. Shat his pants. Threw up spaghetti. Blood even came out his ears. No more holes left. And we did what we were told, removed his prick and balls and jammed them in his mouth. The guy was still alive. Shocked us all, have to admit. Sounds easy in theory, but much harder in practice.’

Back to more inane chatter, till it was time to go to a daily rendezvous from which the Family added twenty, thirty grand to its bank coffers, seven days a week. No cash changed hands and no mention was made of figures, names, let alone the product that was making them all rich. A construction consulting company, Stringline Advisers Limited, paid the salary of Shane McNeil by direct monthly credit to his bank account, as it did his rent. He was emailed addresses of construction sites to visit, names of people to introduce himself to, carried a safety helmet in his four-year-old Toyota Camry to wear on-site as he walked around listening to some foreman, usually with an Italian surname, tell him about progress. ‘Reports’ he could claim were written by him came in the mail every Thursday without fail. He only had to sign them.

These people were thorough, ensured he could stand up to any questioning on how he made his living. His purported expertise was in wall linings, a subject he had studied so he could play his role well. Tito Costa had his own sham arrangement. They paid tax like any employed citizen, kept their social venues to a handful of restaurants, always Italian. Their daily meetings were held in a café owned by Family interests a short walking distance from the upmarket Park Hyatt Hotel, where the key players often went for evening drinks but always behaved themselves. Shane still had memories of crims cutting up rough, wrecking a pub, in all-out brawls. Back then he saw that criminals don’t follow any civil rules. While this, part of the Family operation, didn’t feel remotely like a criminal enterprise.

On the downside, however, it was so low-key it always felt an
anti-climax. He kept waiting for something dramatic to happen but it never got close.

Even Sydney wasn’t like he’d imagined. He soon discovered that his few old friends had long since disappeared, were locked up, or dead. Had yet to make the effort of finding out what had happened to Johno Ryan, his exact whereabouts. Soon, he kept saying. Or he could have just asked the Family to find his old mate. Something was holding him back.