Crooked (17 page)

Just eight minutes after Allan departed the Premier's wing of the state office block, Charlie clambered out of a taxi and made his way towards the entrance. He rose up in the empty elevator, crept through the back door and, after a few minutes conversation, tucked a brown manila envelope into his outer-breast pocket and stepped onto the footpath again. His first port of call was the office of Jack Mannix, ex-Minister for Justice in the former Renshaw Cabinet. Charlie didn't bother to knock. He just threw the door open. Mannix, blustery-faced, jumped up from his chair and started across the carpet.

‘What are you doing here?'

‘I'm fine, thanks, Jack. How are you?' said Charlie, grinning at him amiably but pushing straight past. He sat himself down in the chair Mannix had just vacated, and propped up his feet, pulling the long manila envelope out of his pocket. ‘My name's Gillespie, but you can call me Charlie if you like. We met at the racetrack a couple of times. Anyway, I just thought I'd stop by, show you something that belonged to an old client of mine that got dropped in my cubbyhole.'

Suspicious, Mannix moved towards Charlie with his right hand outstretched. But Charlie snatched the envelope away. He opened it, took out a roneoed sheaf of documents copied from the infamous notebook and let Mannix take a peek.

‘What's this supposed to be, some sort of joke?' He took another look at the sheet, then added warily, ‘I'd say that's a fake.'

‘If only,' said Charlie, making a soft clucking sound. ‘No, old boy. I'm afraid it's the genuine article. My police sources are solid. They swear it's true blue.'

Mannix sank down on the desk and stared glumly across the room. ‘What do you want? Money?'

‘God, no.' Charlie contrived to look shocked. ‘What do you think I am?'

‘I dunno what you are,' said Mannix, but there wasn't any anger in his tone. Quietly and heavily, he announced, ‘You're blackmailing me.'

‘I'm doing nothing of the sort,' said Charlie. He dropped his feet from the desk to the floor and got up. ‘You always seemed like a good sort of bloke, Jack. Only reason I thought I'd stop by was to tell you what's coming.' He opened the door and looked back, grasping the handle. ‘I don't know much about this sort of thing, really. But I reckon the newspapers don't hit their deadline until three. Strikes me, I was you, I'd want to take advantage.'

Renshaw, of course, knew nothing of this as he got out of his taxi by the gates of the Parliament. The press was packed solid to the edge of the footpath, hanging off the spiked iron railings that bounded the forecourt, or scurrying away to some clear empty space from where they could fire off questions. Renshaw grinned back at them, waving his hat, and gradually the whole mob of them creamed back from his passage, clearing a path, and he was standing in the wide open space under the awning.

He stared out across the dense crowd of faces. ‘I'm sure you all know that serious allegations have been made about criminal figures and senior politicians in the Askin Government. Specifically, the names of several high-ranking MPs are contained in a
black notebook found by police –' An elbow came up and knocked Renshaw's hat sideways. He shifted slightly on his feet. ‘The Labor Party believes that there needs to be a full and open inquiry into associations between criminals and major government figures. When Parliament returns, we will be calling on Premier Askin to summon a Royal Commission –'

‘Don't you mean senior Labor Party figures?' yelled a reporter from the back.

Renshaw cupped a hand to his ear. ‘I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly.'

‘Don't you mean Labor Party figures?' yelled the reporter again.

Photographers stooped backwards, soundmen taped their equipment to an ever-widening tree of microphones, television cameras cranked into action and caught Renshaw on film, as he widened his eyes and ballooned out his cheeks. ‘I don't understand,' he stammered on a pathetic rising note, making somebody laugh.

Whoop!' cried Askin. ‘Whoop! Whoop!' Askin was sitting at a table in the corner of Chequers nightclub behind a green marbleised pillar replete with sea-style encrustations and a mermaid on top. Smoke curled languorously up from cigar ends to the pressed metal ceiling and from everywhere came the clatter of glassware and the tinkle of silver. The orchestra gave a flourish and coloured water gushed up from a fountain in front of the bandstand. The floor show began.

Askin got to his feet, bright-cheeked and cockeyed. ‘It stinks in here. Let's find a quiet place. Browne knows one, don't you, Frankie?'

‘Sure do,' said Browne, who was talking loudly and at length to a party at the table adjacent.

‘Bloke's got a black book that'd knock your copper's socks off,' said Askin, and gave Allan a nudge.

Browne threw back his head and roared, and Allan laughed too, but foolishly. Then Askin was shooing everybody up a circular stairway that curved around an ornamental pond crammed with baby crocodiles.

Charlie exited after the others, who crowded ahead of him onto the footpath. Outside, the night was moonless and still, with stars in carnival colours like balls pitching up into a deepening sky. Packer took three or four sniffs of the metallic air, muttered his apologies and hobbled back to his paper. Allan followed suit,
leaving Charlie with Askin and Browne, who was weaving up and down the footpath, taking swigs from a bottle of Bells that he'd swiped from the club.

Charlie stuck out his hand and flagged down a taxi. Askin clambered in first, shoes on the front folding seat, felt hat tipped forward, with Charlie and Browne squeezed in either side. Streetlights shone down through masses of sweating foliage as they drove through the night, alighting in front of a bar on Macleay Street, under a giant jumping bronco studded with stars. They didn't enter through the front of the building, but scampered instead down an adjacent alley. Browne rang a doorbell on the side of the building. It was answered by a large woman in a yellow kimono.

Askin led the charge up the stairs. ‘Let's see what they've got. Let's see what they've got.'

Browne lumbered up after him, catching himself with both arms on the banister. Music and the sound of women's laughter wafted towards them as they crept down the hall. Charlie hesitated, deciding whether it was prudent to stay or to follow.

O
CTOBER
1967

Gus walked down the macadam at Brighton-Le-Sands, extracting the list from his coat pocket detailing the latest batch of names from Dick Reilly's black notebook that he'd been assigned to investigate. In front of him, a dreary half-mile of blue asphalt staged with telephone poles opened onto a haze of white water with the prow of a container ship edging out between the buildings.

Gus scuffed up a small yellow weed sprouting through the footpath. ‘Johnny Warren, you say?'

Pigeye ran a finger about the sweat-soaked band of his hat, and replaced it. ‘Yeah, Warren.'

Gus walked up the cement path and rang the doorbell. He kept on ringing until the door opened. ‘Sorry to trouble you –' he started, with his badge wallet out and open. ‘I'm Detective Finlay, and this is Detective Donaldson. I understand Johnny Warren lives here?'

Glory was standing behind the screen door. ‘So what if he does?'

‘I'd like to have a word with him,' said Gus. He put his foot on the doorstep and his hand on the latch. ‘May I?'

Abruptly Glory flipped up the lock and opened the door.

Gus followed her down the hall into the living room, a swift movement of his eyes catching the stacked empty packing crates,
indicating arrival rather than departure, and the scattering of toys. Johnny Warren was sitting in a red velveteen armchair with a child playing on the floor by his feet. His lavender braces hung down round his trousers. His eyes glanced moodily from right to left.

‘Johnny Warren?' said Gus, pulling out a chair from the adjacent table and straddling the back of it. ‘Your name has arisen in connection with an investigation we're carrying out into the death of Dick Reilly. I'd like to ask you a couple of questions –'

‘Yeah,' said Johnny aggressively, ‘and who are you?'

‘I'm Detective Finlay and this is Detective Donaldson from CIB,' Gus started, but Glory pushed past him.

‘Leave him alone. He dunno a thing.'

‘How do I know that if I haven't asked him any questions?' Gus asked, quite calmly, turning back to Johnny. ‘Just tell us what you do know.'

‘Well, I heard the bloke got himself shot, and I heard it was showy.'

‘What else did you hear?'

‘That he was a miserable bastard when he was alive, and now he's dead. I reckon you ought to be grateful.'

Gus scowled. ‘I guess you better tell me where you were then, on the night of the shooting.'

‘Why should I tell you that?'

‘You don't tell us here, you can tell us at the station.'

Glory interrupted, ‘Just tell them, Johnny.'

Johnny told them. ‘Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I was down at the pub the night Reilly got shot. I distinctly remember because I heard the news over the wireless, and I took a spare ten from my billfold and shouted the joint.'

Gus didn't move his eyes off Johnny's face.

‘You can check it out all you want.'

‘We'll check it out plenty,' said Gus, glancing around. ‘Who
knows, maybe the bloke who did it got paid enough to put a tidy deposit on a nice new flat like the one that you've got.'

For a moment Gus thought Johnny was going to rush at him. He braced himself. But Pigeye intervened, jamming his forearm across Johnny's neck. ‘We find out you're lying –' he said, and let the threat hang.

Johnny stood there with his hands working his sides. Eventually Pigeye jerked his arm away. He backed off with Gus into the afternoon light.

Out on the macadam, Gus came to a halt by the car door. ‘Do you reckon he might've had something to do with it?'

‘Johnny Warren?' Pigeye scratched at his armpit. ‘I reckon he hasn't got enough brains to strangle a mangy cat.'