Frederick's Coat (3 page)

A
pril 1993. A turning point, when he’d long forgotten the notion. In his teens he used to note these milestones, for better or worse. Like that fight with the older boy. The shock of his father revealing he was from a family of criminals. The unforgettable day of his mother rising from her presumed grave.

In the here and now, Long Bay Prison, Sydney, the house where anger ruled supreme, it was some crazy fellow inmate arbitrarily deciding that he, Johno Ryan, and his friend Shane McNeil were the enemy.

It took Johno over two years of incarceration to get it, to wake up early one morning and hear his own inner voice telling him he was just a no-good bludger leeching off society. Two years for his mind to process every braggadocio conversation, including some of his own with Shane, boasting of crimes committed and how they missed the good life, and it all boiled down to precisely nothing. To an empty, unexamined life going from one crime to the next, without ever stopping to ask the question: What am I? Who am I? Since looking back on his and Shane’s brief criminal careers he’d never felt a sense of satisfaction. All right, the moral question hadn’t occurred, he only knew something was missing.

Not that those thoughts did him any good as he tried to figure out how to counter the intended attack by a convicted murderer, how best to do the hard business so even a crazy psychopath wouldn’t come back for seconds. Whatever the outcome, there would be serious consequences.

The judge had called their offending ‘organised crime’, unaware that the same police who compiled the evidence against the duo were
part of it. And who was going to round up a cartel of crooked dock workers? Their union, Painters and Dockers, would wage holy war. So, both cops and dock workers got away with it, while Johno and Shane were the fall guys.

At the time it had felt so wrong, so unjust, their former mates and partners-in-crime clinically giving evidence against them. Now, Johno Ryan realised, they were all out of the same box of rotten apples.

He also let another truth come through: how little thought he’d given his wife and two kids. They’d become abstract concepts in photographs Blu-tacked to his cell walls, not real people with real feelings. He never got falsely sentimental over them like some inmates did — couldn’t. Jesus, a man knows by definition he’s not a good husband or anything of a father if he’s serving time behind bars. He goes into survival mode. Yet something had got through the barriers.

At the time of this incident he’d not seen his family in over a year, after he wrote Evelyn to say the visits took too much out of all of them, not least her: driving all the way from the western side of Sydney once a month, with two young kids in tow, for an hour-long visit. Better to let him get on with doing his time. Feeling mighty proud of himself for setting aside ten thousand dollars made from cashing stolen travellers’ cheques during five months on bail awaiting trial, a new rort he wished he’d got onto earlier — the thrill of forging a signature under the scrutiny of a bank teller. Evelyn’s parents cut off all association with their imprisoned criminal son-in-law and weren’t in a position to help her financially. Eventually Johno stopped his denial that his wife was well looked after in his absence; even his father bunged her a hundred a week. A single mother of two young children, she was hardly living the good life.

Evelyn wrote to say that his decision was a relief — three hours of driving, longer if the traffic was bad, and the petrol cost. ‘Emotionally draining, too,’ her letter said. ‘And the kids don’t like it. They don’t understand what it’s all about, going into this strange, frightening place, seeing the visitors’ room full of scary people covered in tattoos
and wearing permanent scowls. What kid needs that?’

Told his father and grandfather to stay away, too; Laurie wrote an angry letter accusing Johno of not honouring his obligation to his family, meaning himself and Reg. ‘I raised you on my own. Your Gramps helped.’

Correct, but that same father had gone missing a lot of nights, binge-drinking, absent for days on end. It hurt, even if Johno only ever discussed it with Shane. ‘We are a close-nit family,’ said his father’s misspelt letter.

‘Close-knit or not, I am not accepting visits from anyone,’ Johno wrote back. Shane reckoned he was crazy — he loved his own mother’s visits, and his father sometimes came, too — but Johno wasn’t getting dragged further down by emotional stuff.

Now this: a crazy lifer had picked Johno for no reason, unless it was his demeanour — that aura Shane said he gave off: Don’t come near me unless you’re invited. He was highly selective who he talked to in prison, hardly mixed with anyone and stayed well clear of groups, sick of hearing boasts about big crimes committed or intended, endless outpourings about violence, plotted acts of revenge, when it wasn’t sex talk.

By the second time round Long Bay prison exercise yard, Johno and Shane knew the bloke wasn’t alone. Neil Jones had at least two accomplices, known thickheads, but followers, in love with violence.

Johno assessed the would-be attackers, their reputations and, more to the point, their personalities. Figure those out and he had their measure. Same as in a poker game, which he’d found he was quite good at from those long days of hanging around in the pub where his father was bookmaker. In jail his ability to read personality and character made him a few bucks, kept him in tailor-made cigarettes and purchased small luxuries from the prison store. Except this was a different poker game.

Then a thought popped up out of the blue:
What about your wife and kids having to wait another six months, even several years, if you hurt this guy and his two pals?

So he said to Shane, ‘I think we should talk to Dixon.’

Dixon Kanohi, one of several prison kingpins, could be epically violent but had smarts too; a Maori from New Zealand who liked Johno, and the feeling was mutual, even if they’d never be close friends. Kanohi said it was like not loving your dog too much in case you have to eat it. But they did have meaningful conversations, even if Kanohi did most the talking. And he did get Johno his plum job working in the kitchen.

‘Are you kidding me?’ said Shane. ‘A big blue’s set-up and we get shivved?’ At least he wasn’t exaggerating. ‘Fuck that. I’ll take the Cannibal.’ Jones was serving life for murdering his girlfriend in a hideous manner. They said he cooked and ate parts of her.

‘
I’ll
take him,’ Johno said. ‘Just we might be able to avoid it.’

‘Oh yeah? And the whole prison is calling us gutless and worse?’

‘What’s worse than being called gutless?’ said Johno.

‘Kiddy sexos.’

Johno stared at Shane. ‘I dare any man say that to me.’

‘Just telling you, if that boogle-eyed flesh-eater doesn’t back off next time round, then I’m in,’ said Shane.

‘And I’m not?’

But then entirely new thoughts arrived:
The kids won’t recognise you even now. Come on, man. See sense for once.

‘I never said you weren’t,’ Shane replied.

‘No? But it did cross your mind I might’ve lost my bottle.’ Johno stopped walking so Shane had to stop, too. They were known as the Siamese Twins, used to share a cell before being allocated individual cells right next to each other.

Shane said, ‘I’d never say that, J. Jesus, come on.’

‘If he makes the first move, you go for him and I’ll do the rest.’ But his mind asked:
What about them? What about your family?

‘Let’s peel off, go see Dix,’ said Johno.

‘And look like we caved to a madman?’ Shane said. ‘He doesn’t scare me.’ Talking himself up.

Again Johno stopped. ‘What I’m scared of is being here one day longer than I have to. You like this fucking joint?’

He headed in Kanohi’s direction, Shane no choice but to follow.

Johno had heard prison kingpins being compared to, say, army generals, or CEOs, or even warlords. But that wasn’t right. They were too flawed, owned by their rage, and a certain vanity. A big prison like Long Bay had more than just one lone, standing warrior. Kanohi had his territory and he kept to it; shrewd, instinctive and intelligent, he knew every inmate, who was a threat to his power and who wasn’t. He left alone the independents like Johno who had allegiance only to their close friends and just wanted to do their time. Still, it was wise to pay him public homage — a packet of cigarettes, but never a plug of hashish as this convicted high-level dealer in dope didn’t do drugs, or just deference.

‘Hey, Dixon,’ Johno said. ‘I ever tell you I got Maori blood? Fair dink.’

‘You waited what, two years, more, to tell me this? When I saw it in you from the off?’ Kanohi impossible to read with that distracting face tattooed like a Maori warrior from ancient times, the permanently red eyes. ‘What you after, Johno? Or should I say, what do you want me to do about Cannibal over there looking at you like you stole his bitch?’

‘If he had reason to.’ Johno gave an innocent’s shrug. ‘But I don’t go with blokes. Jones just made up his mind.’

‘Like you did in coming crying to me,’ said Kanohi. The fern-curls, reducing circles, cross-lines, big, perfect swirls on each cheek, arches flaring out from his nostrils, made him look even more fierce.

‘Nah. A Maori would never cry, not a warrior,’ said Johno.

‘We do, actually,’ said Kanohi. A mountain of a man, he could move fast, knock someone out with either hand, had a head-butt like a billy goat. In a fight he’d keep pounding his victim, have to be hauled off, but only by his close mates, or the guards had to pepper-spray and cuff him. He could rage for days.

‘Just at the wrong things. And I’m the same fulla who laughed at my
old man’s funeral and all the Maori elders glared at me. So I told them they were hypocrites. Everyone knew my old man was a bad dude. And I mean bad.’

Stopped there and stared, as if daring Johno to say one wrong thing. Then he asked, ‘This Maori blood you got, from your mother or father’s side?’

‘Mother. I grew up being told she’d died of cancer when I was a baby.’

‘But she’s alive and turns out, let me guess … a junkie, I bet.’

That caught Johno. ‘You a detective in your former life?’ Wondered if that was the wrong thing to say.

But Kanohi just lifted his impossibly broad shoulders, said, ‘Australia is where Maoris inclined that way come to indulge. Get away from the clan — we have other names for it, but it’s still a collective. You’d know, if you studied communism, like I have, how a collective imposes an irresistible force on people. Come here to Aussie and it’s all about individuality, free will and no one to tell you don’t touch. I read a lot. You should, too.’

Gave Johno something to grab onto. ‘I read the newspapers every day and I learned to enjoy a good book. Not about communism, though. That’s way too serious for me. I like American crime stories, specially black crims — the way they talk.’

‘The black characters entertain you, but you identify with one of the main white characters, see his potential, his good and bad points. Only natural. There’s the difference: I don’t identify with any character ’cause ain’t none like me.’

‘You ever read a novel where the guy’s old lady turned up out of the blue when he was fifteen, like mine did?’ Johno said. ‘A Maori
and
a junkie.’

‘Hope you’re not saying they go hand in hand?’

‘Does anything?’

‘No.’ Was that a look of acknowledgement? ‘So, you didn’t give her the time of day?’

‘Too shocked, mate,’ said Johno. ‘And where was the bond between us?’

Kanohi clicked his tongue. ‘That’s the trouble with us recidivist offenders. We’re always blaming our olds for being here. That you?’

‘Nope. Just trying to handle a situation.’

Looking across the yard at Jones, Kanohi said, ‘He’d better watch how he throws his eyes around or he’ll have another situation on his hands. See, he reckons he murdered and ate bits of his girlfriend because of shit his olds gave him growing up, says they were religious nutters and that entitles him to do what he did. ’Cept he’s wrong, like we all are. Okay if you know it. But he doesn’t and he won’t. Like most don’t. He was always going to kill
a
girlfriend. As to eating parts of her, you telling a Maori whose ancestors ate their cooked enemies?’ The evil laugh was clearly drama, but it was still scary.

‘But …?’ The bloodshot eyes looked at Johno from the tattooed face. ‘I can’t call him off.’

‘Not even for a brother?’

‘Aussie accent like yours, you’re no Maori brother. You just look like one who’s been through the bleach,’ said Kanohi, but without edge. ‘I’m a bit surprised you’re not handsome like most part-bloods. But you do have something about you, I guess. Why don’t you just fight the man and be done with it? If you’re what you claim, then warrior’s in your blood.’

‘Aussies can fight, too.’

‘Really? So show me some.’ Kanohi’s eyes were dancing — the light of madness, or sublime confidence?

‘Can I ask you a favour?’ said Johno.

‘Sure.’ Kanohi only had to raise one finger to say: but no promises.

‘Mind if I put my arm round you?’

‘Rather you just fight him. Missed your fights, the few you had here. Wanna see how you go. Heard you’re pretty good. Smash him,’ said Kanohi, ‘or he’ll smash you.’

‘I got a wife and two kids.’

‘Boohoo. I got that, ’cept I didn’t marry my missus. Seven kids, all but one of them bad little shits, and two nasty bitches in that litter, too.
Fat lot of use I am, doing fifteen years. But they get well looked after, I can say that.’

Kanohi looked Johno up and down, designer sunglasses atop his head. ‘I’d never have picked you as scared. Not that I know you well, just instinct. That’s why I’m letting you stand here and talk to me, even though you’re trying to slip in under the fellow Maoris act. You can’t do that to a man who’s made fighting a science. I’ve got every move figured out, starting with the verbal. But you seem a decent guy — that’s why I got you the kitchen job. And we’ve had some good, intelligent chats.’

‘I’m no use to my family staying in here one day longer,’ Johno said. ‘There’ll be extra time if I hurt him — and I will.’