I shouted my thanks after her. Outside the front door, I looked at the envelope. My name and address, care of Bendsten Research. Under that, in capitals: PLEASE
DELIVER BEFORE 8 PM TODAY. PLEASE DO NOT MAKE TELEPHONE CONTACT WITH
MR IRISH.
Inside, one sheet of A4 bearing a short message.
29
I sat in front with the driver. The taxi had picked me up on the corner of King William and Brunswick as the message said it would. Then the driver, a man in his sixties with the anxious look of a whippet, showed a talent for dawdling along, holding up traffic, then racing through traffic lights in the first second of red.
We drove all over the place: down Brunswick, left into Johnston, left into Nicholson, down to Victoria, right, right again into Lygon, left into Queensberry, right into Swanston. Twice he pulled to the kerb for a minute or two, twice he did illegal U-turns.
After the second one, at the Faraday intersection, he drove half-way down the block and pulled up next to a man in a suit leaning against a parked car.
The man didn’t hurry, opened the back door of the cab and got in. ‘Evening, Jack,’ he said. ‘Left into Grattan, Dennis.’
He was big, a few kilos over correct weight, full head of greying hair cut short, shelf of moustache underpinning a delicate nose.
We crossed Rathdowne and went down Carlton Street beside the gardens.
‘Left into Canning, right on the other side of the square,’ the man said.
He had the cab stop at the back of the small square, next to a dark Ford. ‘Give us twenty minutes, Dennis,’ he said. ‘Then pick up our guest on the corner. Let’s get out, Jack.’
We got out.
A wet and windy Melbourne night, a small square of balding trees and scuffed grass, around it the terrace houses blank, defensive, leaves drifting through the streetlight like falling pieces of the sky.
155
He unlocked the driver’s door of the Ford, motioned me to the passenger side. I got in.
New car smell.
‘Dave,’ he said, holding out his right hand, moving his buttocks, getting comfortable.
‘Smoke?’
‘No. Dave’s not enough. Not nearly enough.’
‘Cloak and dagger. Always make you feel a bit of a prick.’
I said, ‘Who are you?’
He found a wallet. I held it to the streetlight. He reached up and put on the interior light. Photograph. Commonwealth seal. Italic type saying the card served to identify the bearer as a member of the Commonwealth Office of Crime Intelligence.
Light off. I gave the card back. ‘Don’t know why I bother,’ I said. ‘You can probably get these made in a booth at Kmart. I’m in your car for one reason, Dave. To give you a message. Listening?’
He didn’t look at me, studied the misty windshield, nodded.
‘This is the message,’ I said. ‘Gary Connors, I don’t give a shit. Dean Canetti, the same applies.’
He extracted a Camel filter from a packet next to the gear lever, wound his window down a paperback width, lit the cigarette with an old Ronson lighter, blew smoke sideways. It blew back.
I said, ‘Thanks for the ride, Dave. I can manage the walk back from here. Goodnight.
And goodbye.’ I felt for the door handle.
He glanced at me. ‘Pissed off? I’d be pissed off. Read that Fin Review clipping?’
‘How do you know about that?’
He ignored the question. ‘That’s the only public mention ever of Black Tide,’ he said.
‘Black Tide? Blue Omo? What the hell is it?’
He didn’t look at me, looked at the windscreen. ‘There’s only a few people know.’
I should have got out and walked home. ‘Listen, Dave,’ I said, ‘there may be some mistaken identity here. You may be mistaking me for someone who knits beanies for a living.’
156
‘The Fin Review piece,’ he said. ‘Senator Coffey changing his story. You get the point?’
‘No.’
‘Think the media would follow that up.’ He smoked, a man born to smoke.
I waited. ‘I’m listening. I shouldn’t be, but I’m listening.’
Dave put his left hand on the wheel, curled the fingers around it. He didn’t look at me. I looked at his hand, a boxer’s hand, at his neat small nose. He’d got the punches in first, no-one had ever marked his face.
‘The point here, Jack,’ he said, ‘the point’s simple for an intelligent bloke like you.
Change Hansard, shut up journos, that’s kinder stuff for these people. It’s nothing.
Coffey, Senator Coffey, he got fed the question, didn’t know what he was asking about.
Anyway, he liked the sound of it, he went on the fishing trip. A wall fell on the cunt.
Integrity went south, just its little arsehole winking in the dark, once, twice, gone.’
He still didn’t look at me, examined his cigarette. ‘For these people,’ he said, ‘getting their way is easy, it’s trivial. It’s just business. What’s the price? What’ll you take? Don’t want money, what do you want? They shut down the local jacks everywhere that way.
Long ago, just peanuts for them, peanuts for the monkeys. The money, you can’t count it, there’s nothing they can’t buy. No-one. You’re dealing with people, they can’t buy you, they’ll load you up, kill your friend, kill your wife, kill your child, kill you, it’s all the same.’
I was feeling cold inside now, winter inside and out. ‘I don’t think you should be telling me this,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to know it. I’m not involved anymore. I wanted to help Gary Connors’ father by finding Gary. I’ll find another way to help him.’
Dave wound down his window, wet air came in, cold city air, on it the faint sound of music, voices from somewhere. He tapped ash off the cigarette, had a last draw, sent the butt arching across the street to die in the gutter, wound up the window.
‘I can appreciate the way you feel,’ he said. ‘Things we’d all like to step out of, shut the door.’
‘I’ve stepped out,’ I said. ‘The door’s shut.’
Dave turned his head and looked at me, the first real look. ‘No, Jack,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible now. They know you. Know your friends, your sister. Know you talked to Meryl. Help us see this thing through, find Gary, that’s the best chance you’ve got.’
I was getting colder all the time. ‘Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are they? Who’s tapping my phone? How do you know about the Fin Review clipping?’
157
‘Only twelve people inside Black Tide,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Waterproof to fifty fathoms, we thought. One-way valve system, stuff comes in, nothing goes out. What happens with these operations usually, there’s people upstairs want reports every second day, they pass them on, there’s leaks like half-time at the football. That’s why the other side’s only about a day behind you. Not Black Tide. No reporting till we were finished, that was the deal. So when we got shut down in ’96, we knew we had a dog inside. Dogs maybe. And we knew the pressure to squash us came from outside.’
He took out another cigarette, lit it, opened the window a crack.
‘They,’ I said. ‘That part of the question. Who?’
‘Don’t worry about that part.’
‘I don’t even know why you want to find Gary. Why do you want Gary?’
‘Gary’s important to Black Tide. You don’t need the detail. It’s better that way.’
‘Detail?’ I said. ‘You call knowing who they are fucking detail? I’m not going on any expedition with you. I’m not a concerned citizen. I’m just the bystander. More or less innocent. And I thought you said Black Tide was shut down?’
Dave sighed. ‘Not appealing to your sense of civic duty here, Jack,’ he said. ‘Your instinct for survival. I’m relying on that. Your mark’s on the slate, these people like a clean slate. Weeks, months maybe. Could be a year. But they’ll wipe you, believe me.’
He turned his shoulders towards me, rested big fingers on my arm. ‘Jack, this isn’t some minor racket, rebirthing BMWs, that kind of thing. This is huge. The money’s everywhere. Billions every year. Take you around this town, all the cities, take you around the bush, pick a town, show you buildings, businesses, whole law firms, real estate agents, travel agents, stockbrokers, hotels, resorts, greengrocers, restaurants.
Name it, I’ll show you. Drug money underneath, drug money in the cash flow.’
‘Is that what Black Tide was about? Drug money?’
He paused. ‘We were getting close, Jack. Going in the right direction, then we touched a nerve and a boot came out and kicked us up the arse. Big boot. Big kick. Now you’ve touched the same nerve. You can’t untouch it.’
I didn’t know what was going on but I was getting the idea. Not the point, perhaps, but the drift. Slowly. He was talking about TransQuik, about Steven Levesque.
‘There’s nothing I can do for you,’ I said.
158
Dave smiled. It was a small smile, but it improved the hard face no end. ‘You want Gary,’ he said. ‘We want Gary. In the beginning, we kissed him goodbye. Dead. Now we think he’s alive. We think so because they think so. If he was dead, they’d know. Being the ones who made that arrangement.’
‘They? I’m sick of they, Dave.’
‘People who want Black Tide stopped. Powerful people outside, their friends inside.’
‘What about Gary’s car?’
‘Gary drives off a cliff? Forget. It’s a good sign.’
‘I’ve been told Gary was definitely in the car when it went over the cliff.’
‘Been told? Visitors the other day give you another call? I’d treat that information with caution.’
How did he know about my visitors? I said, ‘Jellicoe, Gary’s mate from the bottle shop.
What about him?’
‘Where’d you get that from?’
My turn to ignore questions. ‘Koch and Bryce and Novikov. What’s that mean?’
‘You heard that where?’ A hint of disquiet in the dry voice.
‘Detail,’ I said. ‘You don’t need the detail.’
Dave coughed, shook his head. ‘Well, reinforces my confidence in you. The visitors the other day, what was the message?’
‘This is tiring. I repeat, I don’t want to be in this.’
‘Mention Gary?’ he said.
‘No. Just Canetti.’
‘What about Canetti?’
‘Said he was engaged in important government business and his wife was not taking pills, imagining things. Like being told he was missing, possibly dead. Probably.’
‘What’d you tell them?’
159
‘I told them my only interest in Canetti was that he was following Gary on April 3.’
Dave’s mouth opened slightly under the thatch. I could see the tip of his tongue.
‘Established that, have you?’
I nodded.
‘Following him where?’
‘At a bottle shop in Prahran.’
‘What else do you know about them? Gary and Canetti?’
‘Nothing after that. That’s it.’
‘Give you a number, your visitors?’
‘Yes.’
‘Call it. Tonight. Tell them that since Gary’s dead, you have absolutely no further interest in Dean Canetti.’
‘And then?’
‘Then turn the mind to Gary.’
‘You’re taking it for granted that I trust you. Why is that?’
‘Why wouldn’t you trust me? We both want to find Gary. Your visitors want you as far from Gary as possible. It’s not Canetti they’re warning you off with that bullshit about Meryl. It’s Gary.’
I thought about this. Then I said, ‘Dave, I don’t know where to go on Gary. I’ve done the things that usually turn up traces. He’s not using plastic, he’s not buying tickets or hiring in his own name. I presume you know this. What’s left to do, I don’t know.’
‘His old man. Talk to him.’
‘He knows less than I do about Gary. Much less.’
‘No. That’s now, the recent past. Gary can’t hide anywhere that’s to do with the recent past. Nowhere’s safe. If we find him, it’ll be because he’s somewhere he feels safe.
That’s going to come from way back. Talk to his father.’
I said, ‘Is this the psychology of flight or what?’
160
‘What it is,’ he said, ‘is the psychology of clutching at fucking straws.’
He put his right hand into his jacket and took out a small mobile phone. ‘This thing’s secure. Sounds a bit like I’m underwater, that’s cause you’re hearing me off a satellite talking through electronic condoms. Switch it on, press one-two for me. Keep it switched off except for five minutes around the hour. That’s when I’ll call you. Your cab’s waiting. It’s on me.’
I looked at him, heavy in the heart. ‘That’s a nice gesture,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘More where that came from,’ he said. Another smile. The second one.
30
In the morning the rain had stopped, sunlight fell across the kitchen, fell into my lap where I sat at the table reading the form for Geelong, eating anchovy toast, drinking tea out of a bone-china cup. The cup and saucer were the survivors of twelve my wife Isabel and I had bought at an auction. Cup rising to the mouth, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d used it since Linda became a feature in my life. After the bomb wrecked my floor of the old boot factory in North Fitzroy, I’d salvaged what I could, including the china cup and saucer, and moved to the stables. I’ll go back when the place is rebuilt, I kept telling myself.
But when the time came, Linda found good reasons why I should postpone moving back.
One morning, while considering the limitations of my wardrobe, I said, ‘It’s my home.
It’s fixed. I want to go home.’
Linda was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. I heard her rinse, swill the mouthwash.
She came to the door, no makeup, handsome. ‘For me, Jack,’ she said, ‘it’s Isabel’s home.’
I compromised. An agent found a tenant on a six-month lease.
Was that why I hadn’t used the china cup? What did using it today signal?
Questions too deep. Questions too meaningless was more like it.
I thought about the big man in the car. Dave. The cocooning comfort of the car, the sounds of the city night around us, muted, the leaves blowing across the streetlight, falling onto the bonnet. Secret operations betrayed, all-powerful drug money, his knowingness. Convincing. This morning, sunlight in my lap as comforting as a warm cat, it had an unreal quality. What made him think I could find Gary? What more could Des tell me?
161
The phone rang. A tremor of trepidation.