The Bear Pit (33 page)

When Eustace and Ladbroke had gone, Aldwych went into the outer office, told the two secretaries to go for a walk and sat down at one of their desks. Then he called Homicide: “Scobie?”

“Jack. What's on your mind?”

“Scobie, just to prove we're mates, I'm telling you what I've just learned. Forget Joanna Everitt—Jack and me were not the targets.”

“
You're sure? Where'd you get this?”

“You sound disappointed. So'm I, in a way. I'm sure, Scobie. I got the drum from the horse's mouth. Well, he's a horse's arse, actually.”

“You're not going to tell me where you got it, who he is?”

“Just take my word.”

“Then do you know who paid for the hit?”

“No, I don't. If I knew that, I'd tell you.”

“You don't know, but you're making an educated guess?”

“You're a hard man to be mates with. No, I dunno and I'll leave the guessing to you. But forget the bitch.”

“Well, thanks, Jack. Yeah, I'm disappointed, it was never an odds-on bet that it was her. Take care.”

“You too, Scobie.”

Aldwych hung up, sat a while pondering who had paid the hitman. He was sure that Billy Eustace knew; or had made an educated guess. Whether, as Police Minister, he passed that on to the Police Commissioner was another matter. Aldwych remembered police commissioners who had passed nothing on to their political bosses. But those had been the good old days . . .

Aldwych stood up as the two secretaries came back to the outer doorway. “Finished, Mr. Aldwych?”

“Not quite, girls. But don't go, just one more call.” He took a small diary from his pocket, checked a number, then called it. “Joanna? Jack Aldwych. You gunna be home the next half-hour?”

“I'm leaving for work in half an hour—”

“We'll give you a lift. Don't argue, Joanna. Just be waiting for us.” He put down the phone, smiled at the two secretaries. “The wife's sister. Too independent for her own good.”

V

Aldwych
and Blackie Ovens waited in the Daimler outside Joanna Everitt's apartment block. Across the street Aldwych had seen the parked car with the two plainclothes men in it. “Cops, Blackie. They'll be following us when we pick up our girl.”

“Just like the old days, eh?”

Then Joanna Everitt came out of the block and Blackie got out and went across to her. She turned towards the unmarked police car, as if she might call for help; then she changed her mind and came across to the Daimler with Blackie. She got into the back seat, where Aldwych sat.

“I usually drive myself to work—”

“We'll do that for you,” said Aldwych. “You can catch a cab home.”

As Blackie took the car away from the kerb Joanna said, “What do you want? I can scream my head off and those guys back there will come to my rescue. They're cops—”

“I know, Joanna. No one's gunna hurt you. I'm here to tell you you're not gunna be hurt. Relax.”

She sat back in the seat, but still looked suspiciously at him. She was dressed in a green suit with a yellow blouse; she wore expensive shoes and carried a matching handbag. She looks like a top-price hooker, thought Aldwych, but that was only because he hated her.

Instead he said, “You look like a million dollars. Don't she, Blackie?”

Blackie Ovens just nodded, keeping his eye on the road. He hated these buggers who thought that a couple of old coots in a Daimler shouldn't be on the road. Twenty, thirty years ago he would have chased them and ironed them with a tire lever. There was no fun to growing old.

“Thanks for the compliment,” said Joanna. “Some day I'll have a million dollars, maybe more. Like you.”

He grinned. “I'm still a battler at heart. Ain't that right, Blackie?” Then he looked back at Joanna. “Girlie, I picked you up to tell you you're off the hook.”

She was puzzled; not by the term but at what looked suspiciously like benevolence. “Off the hook? What do you mean?”

“
I've had it on good authority that you didn't hire that bloke August to hit me or Jack. Or both of us.”

“I told you that!” She leaned forward, then gathered herself and sat back. She said nothing for a while, even turned and stared out the window. Then she looked back at him: “Look, Jack, I've started a new life. I've changed my name—everything in the past I'm putting behind me—you, Jack Junior, the time I spent in jail—”

“Listen to me, girlie. I'm letting you off the hook, but I'm not giving you absolution or whatever it is the priests dole out. If ever you come near me or Jack again, I'll have Blackie call on you—”

“Boss,” said Blackie Ovens, eyes still on the road, “I don't do women, you know that.”

“I know that,” said his boss amiably. “I'm just trying to frighten the shit outa her. I've done that, haven't I, Joanna?”

“No, you haven't. I'm not afraid of you, I never was. And you can tell that to Jack Junior and that stuck-up bitch of a wife of his.”

There was no ferocity to what she was saying; they could have been discussing the weather or the traffic. Aldwych just sat studying her, deaf to what she was saying. He disliked her; no, hated her. He had never hit a woman, not out of any gallantry but because he had feared Shirl. If ever she had learned he had hit a woman, even one of his brothel girls, she would have left him. Shirl would not have liked Joanna, but she would have protected her.

At last he said, “What are you gunna do with your new life?”

They were riding over the Bridge, the police car two cars behind them. Blackie eased the Daimler into the transport lane, heading for the southern toll gates; the cab between him and the police car blasted its horn, telling him to get a move on. He ignored it, kept to his usual steady sixty kilometres an hour; the days were long gone when, as the getaway driver in several of Aldwych's bank hold-ups, he hadn't known what a speed limit was. The cab swung over into the inner lane and went past in a rush, the driver yelling abuse at him. Twenty, thirty years ago, Blackie thought . . .

“Fucking wog,” he said, then looked in his driving mirror. “Excuse me, miss.”

“
We're both racists,” Aldwych told Joanna. “Too old to change. What are you gunna do with your new life?”

“I'm establishing myself at the casino. Then—”

He waited, then said, “Then?”

She was relaxed now. She turned in the seat and looked almost friendly. “There's a rumour there may be another casino licensed to operate, out of Sydney—”

“Where?” He succeeded in looking genuinely curious.

“The rumour is Coffs Harbour. I'd like to finish up there, managing the floor. I understand the gambling game now, every aspect of it, and I'm a good manager.”

“I'm sure you are. Well, well. Coffs Harbour. I thought of retiring there once. Nice place, lots a nice friendly people. All waiting to be fleeced.” He grinned at her.

“It's their money,” she said. “Casinos just provide a service.”

“Like ambulance stations?”

“When did you become anti-gambling? You robbed people right, left and centre.”

“I robbed banks, not people.” He managed to sound pious, St Aldwych of Assisi throwing crumbs to the battlers.

When they dropped her at the casino, Blackie got out of the car and opened the door for her, like a real chauffeur. The parking valets looked at her, wondering if she had been making a bit on the side with one of the high rollers.

“Been nice meeting you, Joanna,” said Blackie. “Look after yourself.”

“Oh, I will, Blackie.” She looked back into the car. “Goodbye, Jack. I hope we don't meet again.”

“Oh, we'll meet again,” said Aldwych, but under his breath.

They drove away and he sat in the back of the car chewing his cud as if it were candy. He looked up and saw Blackie eyeing him in the driver's mirror. The two old men smiled at each other.

“Well, Blackie, waddia know? I never tasted revenge before to see if it was sweet—I just done it.
But
up in Coffs Harbour—”He laughed, a hearty sound from the belly, a sound that would have frightened the birds out of the trees around Assisi. “I'm gunna be licking my lips.”

VI

George Gandolfo couldn't believe what he was hearing:

“We'll do lunch with Clizbe and Balmoral,” said Peter Kelzo.

“How do you
do
lunch?” asked Joe St. Louis.

Kelzo did his best to look patient. “Joe, for Crissakes, it's just an expression. When I get elected, I'm gunna be spending a lotta time with the high life around town, the smart-arses with university degrees and all that. I'm gunna have to use words like incredibly this and that, or basically or at the end of the day. It's the way the smartarse end of town talks.”

“I wouldn't trust that Clizbe,” said Gandolfo.

“George, that's what democracy is all about. That's what Socrates said—you gotta grab democracy by both ends of the stick.”

One of these days, when he slowed down, George Gandolfo was going to look up everything Socrates had said. In the meantime: “Why are we gunna have—do lunch with them?”

“We're gunna bring ‘em into our camp. I've got the buzz—Billy Eustace is kicking them outa Boolagong. We can't get Jerry Balmoral inna there—that old witch Gert Vanderberg isn't gunna let democracy in the gate.”

“Meaning who?” asked Joe St. Louis.

“Meaning us, for Crissakes. Shut up, Joe, while I explain the facts of life to George. Balmoral ain't gunna get inna parliament this election, but we promise to take him over and groom him for the future. He's got what it takes for this new century—he's got bullshit all done up in a new shiny package. While we're taking over him we take over Trades Congress.”

“I gotta admire you, Peter,” said Gandolfo. “You take the long view.”

“It's the Greek in me.”

The
long view backwards
? But Gandolfo kept that question to himself.

And now they were doing lunch at the Summit, the revolving restaurant at the top of a tall tower in the heart of the business district. Kelzo had booked a window table and the five men sat there and looked out at Sydney as it slowly, ever so slowly, changed below them. The weather was perfect and any politician, or would-be one, could stretch his imagination up here and see as far west as the State's boundaries. It was the closest most of them could come to the long view.

“It's all ours,” said Kelzo, gesturing. “All we gotta do is plan.”

“I don't know I'm prepared to wait that long—” said Balmoral.

“Jerry, Athens wasn't built in a day—”

Rome, said Gandolfo under his breath, all at once protective of his heritage.

“—you're young, Jerry, we'll build you up—”

“What about me?” said Clizbe in the tones of a man who could see himself being pushed aside. “I'm young. Well, half-young.”

“Norm—” Kelzo was practising sounding patriarchal. “We need your experience in union matters. You don't wanna get into parliament, do you?”

“I dunno, I wouldn't mind. Maybe down the track. I'd like to retire into the Upper House. It's a nice retirement.”

“We'll look after you, Norm—down the track. Jerry, I promise you, ten, fifteen years down the track, we'll have you in The Lodge in Canberra. You and your lady friend. I saw you the other night out at dinner. She's one of them Olympic Tower people, isn't she? A nice touch, her being Chinese. You'll be the first multicultural couple in The Lodge.”

“You're a bit premature, Pete—”

“Peter.”

“—she's a bit stand-offish at the moment. But I'm getting there.” You knew that, if he had been there at other times, he would have got there with Queen Elizabeth the First or with Marie Antoinette. “Like you say, she'll be an asset.”

“
You see, Jerry, that was what I was saying. All we gotta do is plan.”

“In the meantime,” said Clizbe, “who does the donkey-work? The planning, I mean.”

“Why, me and you,” said Kelzo, but sounded like a general, or Pericles, inviting a corporal in for a chat.

“Who'll look after the finances?” asked Balmoral.

“George will,” said Kelzo. “You're good at that, aren't you, George?”

“I used to be,” said Gandolfo.

Kelzo raised his glass of Hunter red ‘95, a classic year, the waiter had told him. “Here's to us, a brotherhood.”

“How's your nose, Norm?” asked Joe St. Louis. “I'm sorry I decked you that time. Pete told me it was in a good cause—”

“Peter,” said Kelzo automatically, and smiled at Clizbe. “Bygones are history. Socrates said that.”

Bloody Socrates, thought George Gandolfo and looked at Balmoral, wondering whom he would be quoting when he got to the Prime Ministership and The Lodge.

11

I

IN THE
morning August paid his motel bill, wished the woman owner a beautiful day and drove back north. It was a good day for driving, too bright for murder but otherwise perfect. He switched on the car radio and heard Alan Jones, king of the talk-back, say, “There's a coincidence in this latest development—the Channel 15 reporter is the daughter of the Homicide inspector on the August case—”

He switched off the radio, slowed down the car, blinded by fury. He could see the Malones, father and daughter, comparing notes at the end of the day:
How next can we pressure Mrs. Masson
?

He pulled off to the side of the road, waited while the fury abated. He had always been subject to rage, but in the past it had been a cold rage. There had been the chilling anger at his father, the man with big ideas and no talent who had gone away to jail for the third time and never come back; there had been promises, promises, promises, but in the end there had been nothing, not even love. He had turned to his mother, but she had turned to God and there had been no love there, not for him. There had been several women, then his wife, and there had been no love there. Perhaps it had been his own fault, perhaps they had seen the emptiness in him and had not trusted it. Then he had met Lynne and suddenly there was love and no rage, cold or otherwise, at all. Now it was all over.