Zero at the bone, p.9
Zero at the Bone, page 9
‘It’s all right, detective. The boozer’s trifecta, old mate. Emphysema and lung cancer, some pretty bad cirrhosis in my liver. They reckon it’s a matter of a year, if I’m lucky . . .’
Swann’s drink arrived but he wouldn’t look at it. He caught the eye of the barman, who looked guiltily away. Reggie laughed. ‘Thomas here’s been trying to slip me Claytons. The cordial you drink when you’re not having a drink. Can’t fool an old soak like me. No substitute for gin is there, Thomas? Though I suspect he’s being light on the nips. Nother double, thanks, Thomas, and I’ll be watching.’
Reggie necked the rest of his drink, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and watched the barman pour the shots into a measure. He took a restorative tug on his cigarillo, put it into the ashtray, where it continued to pulse a ribbon of smoke. He raised his glass in an ironic toast. ‘There’s none of us getting out of here alive, detective. Although I’m sure you don’t need reminding.’
Swann had known a lot of alcoholics over the years, had been there himself. Most had a deep core of sadness in them, a collapsed star of anger. But Reggie wasn’t like that. He drank because he liked to drink, liked to be drunk. He never became leery or maudlin or bitter. He remained his own good self, only amplified.
‘What’s the pain level? And who’s looking after you?’
‘A gentleman by the name of Dr D’Aeth, would you believe it. Comes highly recommended. A Calvinist. A real Calvinist. We get on like a house on fire. Odd that.’
Swann had intended to ask Reggie what he knew about the brokers handling the Rosa Gold float. Reggie knew the establishment inside out, although he had burnt his bridges over the years. Clearly, now was not the time.
But as though Reggie had read his mind, he asked, ‘And what are you working on now? Anything I can do to help, of course. Take my mind off things, dear friend.’
They hadn’t noticed the barman slip out behind the wood until he blocked the light streaming through the doorway. He was a big man, and cast a bigger shadow. A police siren could be heard in the distance, getting closer. On the pavement a crowd was gathered, looking up the street, eyes shielded from the glare. The barman turned to Swann and Reggie, drew fingers over his stubbled chin. ‘Nother bank robbery. The R&I, just over on Francis Street. Bloke on a Harley, they reckon. Shot up William Street a minute ago.’
Cheeky bastard, thought Swann. Robs a bank on Gus Riley’s hog and then makes his getaway past Riley’s house on William Street. Six banks now, in a fortnight.
Swann took the Capitol Services spruik sheet from his pocket, unfolded it and passed it to Reggie, who squinted. ‘Rosa Gold, eh? Incorporated August, scheduled for a float in November. Quick work . . .’
‘But not floated. Never listed.’
Reggie nodded thoughtfully. ‘That happens. Either investors smell a rat, or occasionally the company decides to go it alone. I haven’t heard anything about Rosa Gold, but Capitol . . . they’re solid, respectable. My father’s brokers. I still have shares bought through them, because of my father. Although nowadays they’re strictly institutional. This chap here, the broker in charge . . .’ Reggie smiled his smile, the one that concealed an emerging secret. ‘No longer works for them. But we’re related. Not sure how you’d define our relationship, but he’s the nephew of a cousin of mine. You might have read about him. Was badly beaten in a home invasion. Yes, around that date. November last year.’
Reggie picked up his stub of pencil and scribbled down an address. ‘He lives in Subiaco. My cousin owns the block of flats, along with half the suburb. Mind if I join you? Get a ride down to Subi? I’ll wait for you in the hotel.’
Swann put a hand on Reggie’s forearm to steady him. Reggie had once been a solid man, as Swann had found when he’d had to carry him, drunk and unconscious, up a flight of stairs on his shoulder. But now Reggie felt light and frail, all the weight fallen off him, wincing as he settled onto his feet and shuffled towards the door.
Crossing Rokeby Road, Swann slowed while he checked the address against the rows of Deco apartment blocks on his left. He found the Miramar and pulled in to the footpath behind a TR-7 convertible. The sun sat low in the west, and the stucco Miramar was cast with flushes of pink as the light thinned.
He climbed the steps that were shot with kikuyu grass feelers that had spread from the lawn, bore water stains like blood up the flanks of the building. He lit a cigarette and rolled his neck in his shirt collar. He felt grimy and hot despite the cooling air. The urge to call it a day and join Reggie for a beer was strong. As he did every afternoon when the urge to drink was strongest, Swann replaced the image of the bar with the picture of slipping into the ocean at sunset, the water cool against his skin and the sea breeze clearing his head.
Swann knocked on the door of number twelve. As he waited, he looked out across overgrown gardens to the rear of King Edward Memorial Hospital. He knocked again and dropped his butt in the ashtray by the stairs. He could smell mutton chops and apple sponge from the flats around him. The sound of a radio news broadcast, some jazz saxophone. A tumbler in a lock.
He was only a step away but out of instinct thrust his foot into the crack between door and jamb, felt the pressure on his insole as the door was pressed against him. He noticed for the first time the repainted area around the lock in the doorframe, saw the splits in the wood where the door had been jemmied open. He leaned in with his hip.
A metre away was a young man, one hand on a Zimmer frame, the other holding a Colt .32 aimed at Swann’s belly. The blue eyes were wide, the trembling in his gun hand rising up his arm until he slumped against the corridor wall, took the gun in both hands, but still couldn’t control his trembling.
Swann held up his palms in mock surrender, took a step away from the door. It was never a good thing to be on the wrong end of a pointed gun, especially when held by a terrified novice. ‘I’m Frank Swann. Reggie Mansell gave me your address. I believe he’s your —’
‘Uncle Reggie?’ Dennis Gould dropped the gun to his side, slid a hand over the Zimmer frame and pushed off the wall. Rolled back on the frame until he’d left the corridor. Swann followed him into the lounge, a shadowy mess of dank clothes and beer bottles. He could smell stale food from the kitchenette. Single bedroom off to the side. Next to the unmade bed was a steel frame, the kind old people use to get situated on the toilet.
‘Sorry about the mess. My cleaner doesn’t come until the weekend.’
Gould walked with the help of the Zimmer along the windows and scrolled the venetian blinds. Blocks of afternoon light fell into the room. On the coffee table next to the leather couch was another pistol, a long-nosed .38 Special, and a box of scattered shells. Swann had a picture of Gould, drunk and late at night, passing the pistol from hand to hand, mulling it over.
Dennis Gould eased himself onto the couch, manually lifting his left leg next to his right. He watched Swann watch him.
‘I know who you are. You’re the copper from the Royal Commission. Reggie’s talked about you.’
Swann took a seat on a rickety old bentwood, leaned forward. ‘You close to your uncle?’
Gould nodded. ‘Used to be. Haven’t seen him for ages. My fault.’
‘What happened to your leg?’
Gould grimaced. He still had the Colt .32 in one hand. Didn’t look like he ever put it down.
‘Three blokes came through that door one night, around this time, just on sunset. Caught me in the shower. They wore balaclavas. One of them had a ballpein hammer. A big one.’
Swann nodded. They’d done one leg, but left the other.
‘One of them got me in a chokehold, till I passed out. When I came to, they had me on the kitchen table. Stuffed my mouth with a dirty dishcloth, pinched my nose closed. Smashed my left kneecap with the hammer. Shattered it. Then did my ankle the same way. The pain, I can’t begin to —’
‘They say anything?’
Gould was young, in his late twenties, but in the fading sunlight he looked like an old man. One patch of bright silver hair over his right temple. A handsome face. The only colour his lips, dabby white tongue. Spoke slowly, like a stroke victim. ‘They didn’t need to. I knew what it was about.’
‘Rosa Gold?’
Gould looked him in the eye for the first time. He was barely hanging on. Disappointed. ‘You’re not here to help me.’
A statement, not a question.
‘Depends what you mean by help.’
‘Revenge. I want revenge. But this leg. It’s fucked. I thought Uncle Reggie might have —’
Swann shook his head. Lit a cigarette and waited, exhaled into the dying light. All that anger, and no place to take it. There was only going to be one ending. ‘You know your uncle’s sick, maybe terminal?’
He said it quietly, still looking at Gould, who had to look away. ‘Can I have one of those?’
Swann passed him the packet of Craven A. It was a fair guess that if the kid was out of cigarettes, it was because he never left the apartment. Had his cleaner shop for him.
‘Reggie’d never say it, but he could probably do with your help.’
Gould laughed. ‘Me help? What good . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence, aware of his self-pity in the light of Swann’s news.
‘He’s going to need a lot of help. He doesn’t have any close family. He speaks highly of you.’
Gould looked down at his leg, tugged deeply on the cigarette, nodded. He understood what Swann was trying to do, but said nothing. Looking after Reggie would be good for both of them.
‘As for that other thing. Rosa Gold. Perhaps I can help, but not in the way you think. I’m working for Max Henderson’s wife. Henderson was Rosa Gold’s consulting geo. He killed himself last week . . . with a firearm.’
Gould studied the Colt .32 carefully. Put it gently on the coffee table. ‘Go on.’
‘She seems to think that he might have killed himself because of something to do with Rosa Gold. I’ve just come from Company House. I know you were the broker in charge of floating the stock. I know who the directors are, bar one. I want you to tell me who that person is. And I want you to tell me why you were crippled.’
Swann read out the names of the Rosa Gold directors he’d written down. Gould looked at him strangely, and didn’t look away. ‘The other director of Rosa Gold. The one missing from the register. It’s . . . was . . . Max Henderson. He had an equal share, like all the others. Depending on what’s in his will, that place will now be held by his wife.’
‘Jennifer Henderson?’
‘That’s right. I don’t imagine she’d be selling her stake in a hurry. From what I’ve been led to believe, Rosa Gold is going to be enormous. It’s why the stock was never floated.’
‘Not because of you? Then why were you bashed?’
Swann lit another cigarette and passed it to Gould. At the mention of the bashing, his hands were shaking again. ‘Thanks. Do you have anything to drink? My cleaner . . .’
Swann shook his head. He’d save the bottle of Grant’s he had in the car for later, when he brought Reggie up to see his nephew. Clearly, they had a lot of catching up to do.
‘I wasn’t always a broker. It was Uncle Reggie who got me the job. I got boarded out of the Air Force. Drinking. Runs in the family. But Uncle Reggie, he’s always been a big influence on me. The things he’s done. I was doing well as a broker, built up a strong client base until the senior partners came to me with Rosa Gold. It was obviously just a ramp, something that’s happening more and more, now the metal prices are rising. Either way, there was pressure on me to spruik Rosa Gold to my clients. Institutional investors, all of them. Big money. And I flat out refused. It was me who was going to look like an arsehole when the shares dived, after the directors and their mates had taken their profit. I told my boss that I wouldn’t do it —’
‘And you threatened to go to the regulators if they did.’
Gould nodded. ‘They called my bluff. Regulation being something of a bluff itself. But I don’t think anybody at Capitol . . . I don’t think it had ever happened before, a junior broker standing up to them.’
‘Word got out to the directors of Rosa Gold somehow. How’d they know you were threatening to talk?’
Gould looked him full in the face. His eyes were newly fierce. Swann could see Reggie in him now, the same cherubic features masking a deeper strength. ‘I told them myself. I told one of the directors. A young fellow. My father knew his father, Judge Quinlivan. I can’t remember his first name. I knew the other directors by reputation. I don’t know how to talk to people like that. I thought he’d be most . . . I thought we spoke the same language.’
Swann looked at his notebook. ‘Gary Quinlivan?’
Gould nodded, tugged again on his cigarette, exhaled through his nose. Hands still shaking.
Swann stood and tossed Gould the rest of the packet. The sun had sunk below the tree line, taking with it the last rays from the apartment, suddenly in darkness. It didn’t look like Swann would get that swim tonight. He scooped up the Colt .32 and the .38 Special from the coffee table, stuffed the shells into his shirt pocket.
Gould said nothing, just leaned forward over his hands.
16
Gary Quinlivan put his nose as low on the cue as possible, sighted along the stick to the corner pocket, the smell of chalk on the rail of his fingers and the tip of his cue. The purple-striped ball was nestled amongst a shield of spot balls, the white three inches off the cushion near the middle pocket. He stabbed at the white ball once, twice, three times before he sent it cannoning off the cushion into a forty-five angle, cuffed the purple stripe and sent it rolling, gently, into the corner pocket.
Leo Marrone cheered and slapped the bar. His two goons smirked, the smaller one with the perfect teeth and inkblot eyes nodded in respect. The bigger one went back to staring at the pinball machine he was batting around, his reflection bouncing off the smudged perspex of Barbarella and Conan.
It was Gary’s best shot; deliberate, yes, but something of a fluke. A one in ten shot, useful only if it intimidated his opponent, who unfortunately didn’t look the kind. Gary didn’t know who his opponent was, but he moved with a quiet confidence. He was short and thin, in his forties, one of the many men and women who’d sat on their barstools and watched Marrone win big over the previous three games.
Marrone wasn’t playing himself but sending out the small thug with the dead eyes as his proxy. The young Calabrian had a steady hand and a quick brain. He won all of his games, but didn’t make it look easy. Gary read his game early. When he wanted to stuff a shot he hit the cue ball with his eyes closed, when he wanted to sink it his eyes remained open. Three games in a row, with five thousand a game at stake. The loser was a lawyer, fresh from a day in court, shirtsleeves rolled up, necktie slung over his shoulder, red wash of drink on his face, stain of failure in his eyes. He lost fifteen thousand cash in fifteen minutes, then shook Marrone’s hand and walked out into the night. A gambler. A sucker.
That was when the short man in overalls stepped out of the crowd and put down his coin. He looked like a worker, with muscled forearms and a sharpie mullet, a single tear tattooed under his left eye. He took up a cue and balanced it over the palm of his hand, put it down and chose another, chalked it.
Waited, no expression on his face.
The fifteen thousand cash was on the bar next to Marrone. The pool room of the Zanzibar was crowded with hangers-on and clubbers, but nobody would touch Marrone’s money.
It was then that Marrone shouted fifteen thousand, flicked a finger casually to the cash and raised his eyebrows, black and thin like a whip.
The man nodded, began to frame up. No sign that he had any money on him. No sign on Marrone’s face that this was a problem. Concerned looks on the faces of some in the crowd, a greedy light in some of the others.
Gary wondered if the man knew what he was getting into, whether he knew who Marrone was. A blow-in from the east perhaps, or a miner from up north. Gary felt for him, admired his quiet determination as he pulled the frame off the arrowed balls and waited.
If he lost, he would owe Marrone fifteen thousand dollars. If he didn’t have it, Marrone had plenty of dirty work to set him.
Gary looked to Marrone and saw something new in his eyes. A brightness, but a glaze there too on the surface. Marrone caught him looking, and his eyes hardened, nodded to the goon to pass the cue to Gary.
Marrone had practically forced Gary to come out tonight. He was Tommaso Adamo’s main dealer and muscle, and he’d turned up at Gary’s apartment flanked by his thugs, all of them reeking of the same cologne. There was no excitement in Marrone’s voice when he told Gary that he should come raging. That he should wear what he was wearing and come out to the car. Marrone couldn’t help himself. Always that quiet menace beneath everything he said, the need to read his eyes for meaning. Adamo had hinted that he wanted Gary closer, that there was a role for him beyond his Rosa Gold duties and his smack dealing. But even when they’d left Gary’s apartment and were in the car park, Gary couldn’t tell whether Marrone intended to take him partying or bury him in the hills.
The bloke in the overalls potted three smalls but snookered himself between the cushion and three stripes. He jumped the stripes and made his small but missed the middle pocket.
Gary hadn’t let go of his cue. He didn’t appreciate playing pool for fifteen thousand dollars a game. That the money wasn’t his only made it worse. He didn’t want to lose Marrone’s money, even if the man spent it like water from a tap.
He had to focus. He ignored the looks of the crowd and the heat in his armpits, his sweaty hands. He chalked his knuckles and cue tip, blew off the dust. Leant across the table and sank an easy shot to the middle pocket. There were six balls left on the table, not including the black. Four of them were Gary’s. He made another down the table, which brought the white back to his cue.
He caught the eye of his opponent, who was clearly trying to vibe him out. That prison tattoo beneath his eye. Looking at Gary with hatred and derision, like he had no right to be in his company. The bloke was obviously an out-of-towner, another wise man from the east, who didn’t know how things worked here.
