The Big Ask (21 page)

‘There's faster ways to go,' I said. Then I told him about my visitors, pouring it out in a breathless stream. ‘They threatened to come back and kill me if I don't do what they want within a week.'

Donny's face became redder as he listened. ‘He
pissed
on you?' he said. ‘And you reckon these guys are working for Bob Stuhl?'

‘They definitely gave that impression. Dropped his name a few times. He must have a direct line to the cops. They share their suspicions, he expedites the process.'

‘Bob fucking Stuhl,' muttered Donny. ‘What a ruthless bastard. Got his start in business cutting the brake lines of his competitors. I wouldn't put it past him to engage in a bit of vigilante action if he thought it'd nail his son's killer. But maybe it wasn't him who sent them. Could've been the Haulers, trying to set me up. Or even the cops themselves.'

I crushed my cigarette into the wet gravel and lit another. The smoke churned my empty stomach. ‘Whoever they were, they scared the shit out of me,' I said. ‘So what am I going to do, Donny?'

He tilted his head. A growl was coming from the road, the gear-shifting roar of an approaching truck. It was moving fast. Donny grabbed my arm and tugged me towards the parked cars.

Suddenly, a blinding bank of headlights exploded into the compound. A towering prime-mover rocketed towards us, hit its anchors and carved a path through the gravel, fishtailing wildly. As it slowed, the passenger door flew open. Frank Farrell leaned out, one foot on the step. A bottle flew from his hand, tumbled through the air and burst against the site office, spreading a sheet of flame across the wall. The truck revved up again and disappeared behind the portable. Above the roar of its engine I heard the sound of shattering glass.

I ran for the door and wrenched it open. The rear window was shattered and the photocopier was an oily chemical blaze. Flames licked the ceiling and acrid black smoke belched everywhere. Red was stumbling backwards, arm raised to shield his face from the heat, coughing and spluttering. Donny rushed past me and grabbed the boy by the collar. We all fell out the door, retreating crab-wise into the yard, crashing to the ground in a cursing tangle of limbs.

The truck was speeding away, heading for the gate, engine shrieking. Donny sprinted after it. As it turned up the road, he pulled a pistol from his waistband and fired after it. Pam, pam.

That was Donny Maitland. Never a dull moment.

The office was going up like a bonfire, crackling and popping as its contents were incinerated. Another few seconds and Red would've been among them.

‘Holy shit,' the kid declared. His attention was so firmly fixed on the fire that he hadn't noticed Donny's fusillade.

Cinders were raining from the sky and we retreated further from the heat. Donny began trudging back from the road, eerily lit by the leaping flames. The gun was nowhere in sight. I ran my hands over Red. Satisfied that he was uninjured, I bundled him into the Honda, its sales-lot paintwork already flecked with thumbprints of soot.

‘What's going on, Dad?' the boy pleaded, subdued and bewildered.

‘Wait here,' I ordered. My tone brooked no contradiction. For once, it got none.

Donny and I stood watching his headquarters burn.

‘Roscoe wanted to turn up the heat,' he said. ‘Looks like he got his wish. A bit of tit-for-tat, Haulers style.'

‘First spray cans, then Molotov cocktails,' I said. ‘Now gunfire. What next? Hand grenades?'

Shadows danced across the towering container-stack walls of the compound and the stench of burning plastic poisoned the air. The yard was a desolate inferno, one of the rings of hell.

Donny said, ‘You're right. I acted without thinking.' He patted his hip. ‘These things can be a real temptation.'

‘You should've told me you were planning an armed struggle,' I said. ‘I could've asked Agnelli to fund some guided missiles.'

‘This isn't usually my speed, Murray,' said Donny. ‘You know that. Call it a lapse of judgment. I realise I can't shoot my way into the union. And, let's face it, I'm never going to get elected either. The wheels were already starting to fall off. Now it's gone way too far. Jesus, Murray, the kid could've been killed. I'm tossing in the towel. It's not worth it. Fuck the union.'

Headlights swept across the yard. A security-service patrol car came through the gates. It screeched to a halt beside us and a watchman stuck his horseshoe moustache out the window. ‘What happened?' he said.

‘A cigarette in a wastepaper basket,' Donny told him. ‘Spread to a can of fuel. Nobody hurt. Can you get on your radio, call the fire brigade?'

The driver obliged then got out to watch the show. Donny and I paced around to the far side of the fire. ‘Where'd you get the gun?' I asked. Across the other side of the yard I could see the pale shape of Red's face peering through the window of the Honda.

‘Off a crim who didn't need it,' said Donny dismissively. ‘These guys, your visitors. They gave you a week, right?'

‘That's what they said.'

‘And you trust me, right?'

After what had just happened, I felt entitled to a degree of scepticism. ‘I'm in a hard place here, Donny,' I said. ‘If it was just me, I might be able to deal with it. But I've got the kid to think about.'

The big truckie fixed me in his gaze. ‘I did not kill Darren Stuhl,' he stated firmly. ‘And I'll get you out of this fix, if it's the last thing I do. Just give me a couple of days, okay? I'll see you right, I swear.'

The wail of a siren wafted over the horizon. Donny glanced around, took a small automatic pistol from his pocket and thrust it towards me. The burnished metal of its stainless steel barrel glowed in the canyon between our bodies. ‘Do me a favour, will you?' he said. ‘Chuck this in the river.'

The siren grew louder. My hand reached out and the gun disappeared into my jacket pocket, dead weight. Donny jerked his thumb towards the gate. ‘I'll be in touch. And try to be more careful where you throw your cigarette butts in future.'

I left him standing there, watching the guttering slagheap of his ambitions, and drove out the gate. Red's curiosity filled the car's interior, palpable as gas under pressure.

‘Those men in the truck don't want Donny running against them in a union election,' I explained. ‘Matter of fact, they don't want anybody running. They're not big fans of democracy.' Or having their cars aerosoled.

‘Are they after you, too?'

‘Nah,' I reassured him. ‘We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.' Other men were after me.

A fire engine sped towards us, crowding the centre of the road, lights searing the night. ‘Exciting, eh?' I grinned, needing to say something, making a joke of it.

‘Shit, yeah,' Red agreed. ‘Wait until Tark hears about this.'

‘You think this could be our secret for a while?' I said.

‘How come?'

‘Put it this way, how would your mother react if she found out I'd taken you somewhere that got fire-bombed?'

‘But Tarquin won't tell Mum,' he said.

‘Not your mum,' I agreed. ‘But what about his mum? Thing like this, he'd be bound to want to tell her. Could be a bit of a weak link in the chain. He tells Faye, she tells Wendy, one thing leads to another. You with me?'

He was with me, all right. Shit like this didn't happen at exclusive boarding schools. And getting rescued from a burning building outclassed a ride in his stepfather's yacht any day of the week.

We turned into Footscray Road, a stream of thundering trucks even in the midnight hour. Their aggressive bulk dwarfed the two-door Honda, a pitiful trespasser in the kingdom of the whopping leviathan. Contemptuous of both common courtesy and the rules of the road, they cut and wove around us, buffeting our tiny sedan in their slipstreams. The human hands that guided them were invisible, indifferent, somewhere high above. Braking for a red light, I read the slogan on the bumper of the colossus in front of us.
Bob
Stuhl Is Big.

And his reach is long, I thought.

Despite Donny's alternative scenarios, I remained convinced that Bob Stuhl was behind my unwelcome visitors. Cut the red tape, that would be Bob's attitude.

Red twiddled the radio dial through snatches of music and the somnolent drone of late-night chat shows. Dark water beside us, the floodlit gantries of the container terminal on the edge of my vision, we drove into the empty places where the city washed against the sea.
Dirty deeds
, came the refrain. How cheap, I wondered, did a pair of hired gunmen come? For a man as rich as Bob Stuhl, such men could be bought for the price of a decent lunch.

We crossed a bridge over the Maribyrnong River and I turned to follow its course. Further upstream, it ran between playgrounds and golf courses, taverns and boathouses. Down here, near the bay, it was an industrial canal, a black ribbon flecked with litter. I pulled into the undercroft of an electro-plating works, Customer Parking Only, and told Red that I needed to take a leak.

Cutting through a construction site, I followed the embankment until I was well out of sight of the car. Inky water lapped at the pilings as a dredge motored past. An oily slick glistened in its wake like plankton rising from the deep. When it was gone, I stepped from the shadows, took the gun from my pocket and tilted it into the dull moonlight. Donny was right. Sometimes the temptation is irresistible.

This was the first pistol I had ever held. My knowledge of guns extended no further than the stock phrases of a million movies. Rack it. Lock and load. Safety off.

There should be a catch somewhere, a button or lever to release the magazine. Yes, there it was, where the trigger guard met the butt. I ejected the magazine, slipped it into my pocket. I gripped the slide firmly between thumb and forefinger and drew it back. A shell popped out of the breech, flew over my shoulder, bounced off the concrete and rolled over the edge of the wharf.

The slide remained locked open, displaying the empty breech. I pulled the trigger, felt firm resistance. The thing was empty now, inert. I examined it more carefully, reading the inscription on the barrel. S & W Compact 40.

Okay. Compact was the model. Forty was the calibre.

S & W needed no deciphering. The magazine held six bullets. I slid it back into the grip and released the slide. If I had this figured right, there was now a round up the spout. Drop the safety catch and squeeze the trigger, it would fire. Feet apart, I aimed down at the water. Two-handed grip, the classic stance. Squeeze, don't jerk.

The gun bucked slightly and a sharp bang echoed off the blank face of the cold-storage depot across the water. The sound was swallowed up by the emptiness of the night. The spent shell tinkled at my feet. A faint smell of cordite mingled with the salt tang of the air. I peered down at the water, its surface unmarked. What did I expect? A dead fish to come floating to the surface?

I flicked the safety back on and kicked the spent casing into the water. I tucked the pistol into my waistband, zipped my jacket and walked back the way I had come.

Fuck with me now, Bob, I thought.

That night I slept soundly, the automatic beneath my pillow.

I was a man packing heat. Nothing could unnerve me. Not a damned thing. Not the cat that crossed my roof at one o'clock or the slam of a neighbour's door just after two. Not the rattle of a windowpane at three or even the twitter of birdsong at five-thirty.

At eight, when a garbage truck came down the street dragging an aircraft carrier behind it, I gave up the battle and brewed myself a cup of breakfast. According to the radio, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as of midnight, Moscow time. The things that happen, I thought, when you're not paying attention.

While Red snoozed on, I showered and shaved and examined my face in the mirror. It looked desperate. Donny had asked for a couple of days. I couldn't wait that long. At 9.15, I rang Frank Farrell. He answered with a grunt shrouded in static.

‘Hello, Frank,' I said. ‘How's the Citizen of the Year this morning? Or should I say the Haulers' resident terrorist?'

The line fizzed and hissed, an overlay of white noise. For a moment, I thought I'd lost him.

‘That you, Whelan?' he crackled. ‘What are you bitching about this time?'

‘I was ringside at your arson attack last night, Frank. Saw the whole thing. Donny Maitland won't go to the cops, but there's nothing to stop me.'

‘And tell them what? That your mate was party to the malicious damage of a fleet of vehicles belonging to this union? That he's taken to firing pot shots at passing traffic?'

‘That I saw you torch a building with a child inside.'

‘What child?'

‘My son, Frank. You nearly incinerated him.'

‘Jesus,' said Farrell. ‘I had no idea. Is he okay?'

‘If he wasn't, you'd be behind bars right now. Not that you should discount that possibility. Assault with intent to do bodily harm. Reckless endangerment of a minor. Can't see Howard Sharpe and Mike McGrath going in to bat for you over charges like that. They'll hang you out to dry, leave you twisting in the wind.'

There was another long pause. ‘I'd never knowingly hurt a child, I swear.'

‘Convince me in person,' I told him. ‘Midday at the main gate of Luna Park.'

‘This is a joke, right?'

‘Can you hear me laughing?' I said. ‘Just be there.'

Red emerged from hibernation and stuck his head into the refrigerator. If he'd been traumatised by the previous night's events, the emotional scars were not immediately evident. His appetite was certainly unimpaired.

‘Let's do something together today,' I suggested.

‘Not the museum,' he begged, his mouth full of ovenpopped grain treats. ‘Anything but the museum.'

At 11.30, we were cruising St Kilda, looking for a parking spot. Spring was putting in a tentative appearance and a good-sized crowd had turned out to express its appreciation. Volvo station wagons choked the streets and the bike-rental operators on the foreshore were doing brisk business. The bay was a sheet of burnished silver, flecked with yachts and wet-suited windsurfers. Lycra-thighed roller-bladers whizzed along the pier and seagulls wheeled and dived in the breeze like squadrons of demented Messerschmitts.