The Big Ask (23 page)

Angelo's shadow play was the least of my immediate priorities. Until Donny got in touch, though, I decided I might as well go through the motions. I chased the boys off to Tarquin's place, swathed the gun in clingwrap and buried it in a shallow hole at the base of the lemon tree in the backyard. Then, so that I'd have something to report to Ange, I called Jack Butler and mooted a strategic alliance with Save Our Trains.

Old Jack had no illusions that he would survive the first round of the exhaustive ballot. On the second round, his handful of votes would be up for grabs. I offered him an inducement to swing them my way. He agreed to think about it.

I checked the day's papers in case some new crisis had set a cat among Angelo's pigeons. Nothing jumped out at me. But beyond all the end-of-an-era stories about the demise of the Soviet Union, the
Age
ran a piece about women candidates for ALP preselection. Lyndal Luscombe was quoted as urging Labor to honour its commitment to greater gender equity. The party, she warned, was at risk of appearing hypocritical. As if that wasn't a danger with which we had long learned to live.

At 5.45, I trudged through the Exhibition Gardens to my assignation. A damp chill was rising from the lawns and the tail-lights of the Friday rush-hour traffic blazed red to the horizon.

The Gardenview Mews was on Rathdowne Street, across the road from the park, set inconspicuously into a row of terrace houses. The name was spelled out in foot-high brass letters above an entrance archway. Nothing indicated that a place of public accommodation lay within. From Angelo's point of view the place had two great advantages. Not only was it unlikely that he'd be noticed as he came and went, but Parliament House was a scant ten-minute walk away. He could meet me at the Gardenview Mews and be back in his office before anybody noticed he was gone.

I walked through the arch and found myself in a motor court overlooked by a double tier of balconies. These were trimmed with cast-iron lacework, as was the ground-floor walkway that ran around three sides of the quadrangle. Cars were parked nose-in against the walkway, recent model sedans mostly. At the open door of one of the rooms, a young couple with the look of the landed gentry were unpacking a designer-togged toddler from an upscale station wagon. A paunchy man in a business suit, his tie loosened, came down the stairs from the upper levels and began filling an ice-bucket from a machine on the walkway. We all nodded at each other amiably.

The have-a-nice-day clerk in the office at the end of the walkway confirmed that a phone reservation had been made in my name, took an impress of my credit card and handed me a brass-tagged key to a room on the ground floor. I let myself in, admired the three-and-a-half-star rating and turned on the television. Agnelli's arrival coincided with the sting for the six o'clock news.

‘You haven't got much to report yet, I imagine,' he announced, shedding his jacket and sprawling on the settee. ‘But no harm in touching base.'

I killed the set and gave him the rundown on my approach to the Save Our Trains candidate, making my phone conversation with Jack Butler sound like a round of shuttle diplomacy.

‘What'll he settle for?' asked Angelo, rooting about in the minibar. ‘Bottom line.'

‘Public support for the issue while wearing my hat as a former transport adviser, personal solidarity and a five hundred dollar contribution to his campaign expenses.'

‘And what's Lyndal Luscombe offering?'

I shrugged. ‘Jack's not giving much away.'

Ange settled on a pack of peanuts and reclined on the bed, munching. ‘She's the main game. Get close to her. Offer her a preference swap, then renege in the final round. If she wants to play with the big boys, she'd better learn how the game works. Your pay-out cheque's in the mail, by the way.'

Angelo then spent twenty minutes giving me the benefit of his opinion on the key ethnic powerbrokers in the electorate. Venal idiots, one and all, he concluded. My mind, however, was elsewhere. ‘Any further aggravation from the Haulers?' I asked. ‘Our decoy duck has gone under, I'm afraid.'

‘Good.' Angelo dismissed the issue by lobbing the empty peanut package into the wastebasket. ‘Save you having to close him down. The Haulers are back on the reservation for now. They've agreed to suspend hostilities in the interest of the party's overall electoral prospects.'

‘Our man will be glad to know his failure has not been in vain then,' I said.

Angelo had moved on. He picked up the phone, dismissing me with an airy wave. ‘I'll drop the key off on my way out,' he said, ‘after I've made a few calls.'

‘Long as they're not international,' I said. ‘And leave the minibar alone.' He was already dialling, a million miles away.

As I crossed back through the Exhibition Gardens, avoiding the deep shadows, sticking to well-lit paths, it occurred to me that the Gardenview Mews would make a useful bolthole if I got the heebie-jeebies at home later that night. The room was paid for, after all.

A soot-smudged white Commodore was parked in the street outside my house. Donny climbed out as I approached and eyed me anxiously. ‘You rang,' he said. The statement contained an obvious question.

I shook my head. ‘They haven't been back. But I need to talk to you.'

‘Good idea,' he agreed. ‘I've got a proposal for you.'

I unlocked the door and waved Donny inside. He lumbered down the hall ahead of me like a bear going into a wardrobe. ‘How's the boy today?' he said. ‘That fire must have given him a hell of a scare.'

‘A mother like Red's got,' I said. ‘He can handle anything.'

Donny loitered in the living room flipping through my CDs while I screwed the top off a new bottle of Jameson's. ‘Chris Isaak,' he said approvingly. ‘Roy Orbison with a creepy edge.' He'd already had a drink or two; in the confined space I could smell it.

‘I hear the cops are very interested in the whereabouts of Darren's gun,' I said, handing him a glass of neat whiskey. ‘Word is it wasn't found on the body.'

He picked up my wavelength. ‘Probably at the bottom of some river by now.'

We sat down in the easy chairs, the bottle on the coffee table between us. ‘I've been trying to imagine what happened that morning,' I said.

Donny avoided my gaze. ‘Better if you don't know.'

‘Yeah?' I said. ‘And why is that?'

Donny took a sip, then stared down at the pale liquor, rotating it meditatively in his glass. A silence hung between us. Donny was measuring his words, finding the right way to distribute the load.

‘There's only two people who know what happened,' he said at last, raising his eyes. ‘Me and the man who killed Darren Stuhl.'

‘And who was that?'

‘Farrell.' He said it as though stating a self-evident truth.

‘Farrell? Why would Farrell kill Darren Stuhl?'

Donny's great shoulders rose and fell. ‘Dunno,' he said, abjectly. ‘Looked to me like he might've just done his block.'

My glass was suddenly empty. I reached for the bottle and refilled it. ‘And you saw this happen?'

Donny sipped again, heaved a reluctant sigh and proceeded to his confession. ‘I get up on the pallets, right, start speaking my piece. About fifteen, twenty people gather around, Farrell and his pals included. Farrell starts giving me the raspberry. Nothing to write home about. As soon as I start talking about Bob Stuhl and the way he puts his drivers at risk, Darren appears. He jumps up beside me and sticks his gun in the side of my head.' He mimed the action, finger and thumb cocked. ‘Then Farrell jumps up there, too, and starts dragging Darren away.'

‘All part of the Haulers' service,' I said. ‘Managing the management.'

‘Farrell's lot start shoving chests, telling people to piss off, it's all over. Roscoe takes a swing and an all-in brawl erupts. Len's getting clobbered so I jump down to help. Then, fast as it started, it's over. Everybody takes off. I go scouting for Len and Roscoe. Out of the corner of my eye, I register a flash of movement between two parked trucks. Farrell's got something in his hand and he's slamming it down on Darren Stuhl's head.'

I stopped him there. This was a matter in which I had a particular interest, thanks to Noel Webb's Theatre of the Spanner. ‘What was it?'

Donny shrugged again. ‘Dunno. But it must have been solid because when I saw Darren's body later, he had a bloody big gash on his forehead. Anyway, Darren goes down like a ninepin. Just then, Roscoe calls out to me. A bunch of Farrell's mongrels have got him cornered. I dash over and help him sort things out. When I look again, there's no sign of either Farrell or Darren.'

‘Did Farrell realise you'd seen him?'

He shrugged again. ‘He had his back to me,' he said. ‘He might have spotted me in the wing-mirror on one of the rigs. I don't know for sure.'

‘So why didn't you tell all this to the cops?'

Donny shook his head ruefully, sagged back into his seat and showed me his palms. ‘Perhaps because Farrell had done me a good turn hauling Darren off me like that. But mainly it was because I liked the idea that I had something on him. I thought I'd bide my time, see if I could use it during the union election campaign.'

‘Use it how?'

‘That's a question I've been asking myself ever since,' he said. ‘Let's just say it seemed like a good idea at the time. Even when Darren turned up under the truck and it was obvious that Farrell was trying to set me up, I still didn't say anything. To make things worse, I pinched Darren's gun off his body when nobody was looking, just in case.'

‘Just in case of what?'

‘In case it came in handy,' he said. ‘If things got rough in the campaign.' He was a punctured tyre, still holding its shape even though the air was gone.

‘You've got to go to the cops,' I said.

‘I've left my run too late. They won't believe me. I was too confident early in the piece. I didn't think they'd believe I was stupid enough to kill Darren Stuhl then stick his body under my own truck. Well, they were wrong about Darren but they were right about the stupidity. I could win an Olympic medal for idiocy. And now that I'm a suspect, they've got even less reason to believe me. Like you said, why would Farrell kill Darren Stuhl? I've set myself up for a fall here, mate. And it all came to a head last night. First your visitors. Then me, blasting away at Farrell's tail-lights like a madman.'

I struggled to process the implications of Donny's words. And to cross-reference them against my own actions in showing the gun to Farrell.

Donny might have been first ashore on Fuckwit Island, but he wasn't Robinson Crusoe on the atoll. Now I'd have to tell him what I'd just done. That I'd given Frank Farrell the opportunity to finish the frame-up job he'd commenced when he dumped the deceased Darren under Donny's Dunlops. ‘Darren's gun,' I began.

Donny leaned forward, squared his sagging shoulders and interrupted me. ‘Thanks to my mistakes, Murray, you've got a sword hanging over your head,' he said. ‘I said I'd see you right and that's exactly what I'm going to do. Remember I said I had a proposal to put to you?'

‘I'd be lying if I said you had my unalloyed confidence at the moment, mate,' I warned. ‘And like I was about to say…'

‘Jacinta's been on my back about taking a trip to the Philippines,' he interrupted. ‘Very nice at this time of the year, I understand. Especially if you've got local contacts who can show you some of the more remote places, the ones off the beaten track.'

‘Some men are going to kill me and you're talking about taking a holiday?' I said incredulously.

Donny ignored me. ‘It'll take me a couple of days to get a visa and book a ticket,' he said. ‘But I reckon I can be there well before your deadline expires. Soon as I arrive in Manila, I'll give you a call. Then off you toddle to the cops.

Say exactly what you were told to say. That I killed Darren and you've been covering up for me. Tell them whatever you think it'll take to get the bastards off your back. The cops, Bob Stuhl, whoever they are.'

I considered what he was saying. Not only would it take the pressure off me, it would place Donny out of range of Bob Stuhl's vigilantes. There was only one problem. ‘You realise this means spending the rest of your life on the run?'

I said.

‘That remains to be seen,' said Donny. ‘Once the legal wheels start to turn I can play it by ear. In the meantime, it's not like I've got anything to keep me here. The union campaign's history and I'm sure Heather can find somebody else to boss around. The main thing at the moment is to get you off the hook. And since I hung you there in the first place,

I don't want to hear any argument about this, Murray. I've made up my mind.'

The back door slid open. ‘Honey, I'm home,' yodelled Red. ‘What's for dinner?' He erupted into the living room, then pulled up short, sensing the sombre atmosphere.

‘G'day, young feller,' said Donny. ‘Enjoy our little barbecue last night? Your dad's just been helping me plan my holidays.'

Red idled in the doorway, grinning sheepishly. Donny downed the last of his drink and stood up.

‘Red,' I said. ‘Isn't it time you rang your mother? And before you go, Donny, I've got a travel tip for you. Come out the back way.'

When we reached the lemon tree, I scraped at the dirt with the side of my shoe until a plastic-sheathed parcel appeared.

‘Darren's gun isn't at the bottom of the river,' I started.

‘You might still need it.'

Donny's determination to head for the hills of Mindanao was only strengthened by the news that I'd flashed the pistol at Farrell. ‘I've got even more reason to go now,' he declared.

‘Thanks to me,' I said.