The casino, p.3
The Casino, page 3
Ewan settles back on his recliner and loosens his shoulders. He tries to relax, but a minute later, he’s on his feet, heading towards the hotel. The automatic doors blast out arctic air as he approaches.
Upstairs in the atrium, Ewan is looking at his watch when two men step close. They’re both big. Thick necks and heads. Prison tatts on one. The other is dressed up, his bulky frame squeezed into dark pants and a black cotton business shirt. The one with the prison tatts grabs Ewan around the arm. ‘Hey, buddy.’
Ewan tries to pull away.
The one in the black shirt whispers, ‘Calm down, mate. We’re not here to start anything. We just want a quiet chat. Does that sound alright?’
Ewan brushes the hand off him. ‘Lead the way.’
They settle in a booth in a bar on the second floor.
‘You want a beer?’ says the one in the black shirt.
Ewan shakes his head.
‘Suit yourself.’
The one with the tattoos heads to the bar and returns with a tray containing two bottles of XXXX Bitter and a portable telephone. The other one takes a sip of his beer then squints at the phone, slowly pressing the keypad with his giant fingers. He brings it up to his ear and says, ‘It’s me. I’ve found him.’ He hands the phone across the table to Ewan.
‘Is that you?’ asks a distant voice.
‘Who’s this?’
‘Ewan, it’s Leo Norton. How’s the Coast? Nice, I imagine. Lucky for some, yeah? It’s fucking pissing down in Melbourne. Been like this all day.’
Ewan waits on the line for a few silent seconds, then says, ‘What can I do for you, Leo?’
‘Well, as you know, you and I have a little problem, don’t we?’
‘I’m sure it’s something we can work out.’
‘That’s the spirit. Now, just so we’re clear, Ewan. You can’t be fuckin’ running around cockblocking young fellas like my son, and punching people in the balls. They don’t like it. I don’t like it. I reckon it’s a bit like you punched me in the balls.’
‘I’m sorry you feel that way, Leo. It won’t happen again.’
‘Oh, no doubt, no doubt. But the thing is, I’m a forgive-and-forget type of guy when you get to know me, and’—he isn’t, by all reports—‘well, I want us to be on the same page, Ewan, I really do. So what say you and I try and bury the hatchet?’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Good, good. You know what they say, it’s easier to bury the hatchet than a body.’
‘Oh, I haven’t heard that one.’
‘It’s bloody true, let me tell ya.’ Leo gives a throaty laugh. ‘I could tell you some stories.’
‘I’m sure you could.’
For a few seconds, Leo goes quiet.
Ewan waits.
The other blokes sit in the booth, bored, sipping at their drinks. The rougher one is staring intently at a barmaid across the room.
Ewan cottons on. ‘Is there something I can do for you, Leo?’
‘Actually, yeah, yeah, come to think of it, there is. There’s something I could use a hand with—your delicate touch, so to speak. I need help with something in Queensland and you being up there already is quite convenient. I want you to check on someone for me.’
‘And this will settle our little disagreement?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘What about the girl and her father?’
‘Well, that’s another story. But let me put it this way, if you help me with my little problem, I’ll have a word to the boy. He’ll come round. My son isn’t unreasonable. He can be a dickhead from time to time, but I know how to talk to him.’
‘I’d appreciate that. And your nephew?’
‘Well, unfortunately, he is a fucking dickhead twenty-four seven, but don’t worry about him. I’ll sort him out.’
‘If I do this job for you?’
‘We’re just helping each other out, Ewan. That’s all it is.’
‘What do you need?’
‘A friend of mine is missing. I want you to find him. It’s what you do, right?’
CHAPTER 7
LANA PUTS IN A full morning on the station’s most pressing case: the shoplifting ring hitting up department stores on the Coast. Brian Siegler has been dragging this dog of a thing around with him for six months, getting nowhere. In that time, the thieves have become more coordinated and brazen. They’re working in teams now, and the moment one of them is caught, they immediately lawyer up—all clear signals this is a serious, syndicated business.
As Lana slowly moves through a pile of crime reports, making the odd note, her mind constantly returns to the severed hand. Every page she turns, she sees it.
Lying under the beach towel in the sand.
Hacked off.
Like her own hand.
It’s not so much the violence implied, or how close to home it was, it’s something else. Lana finds herself visited by superstitious thoughts.
It’s a symbol.
It represents something.
She shakes it off.
But not five minutes later, Lana’s staring at her own palm.
Another of the detectives, Lowell Sennett, catches her zoning out. ‘You a palm reader now? What’s it say? Is solving this shoplifting bullshit in our future?’ Lowell has been sucked into Siegler’s strike force as well. He’s on loan from the Consorting Squad, and is now stationed two desks away, in front of his own pile of files.
‘Piss off.’
He laughs at that. ‘What David Jones store are they going to knock over next?’
‘I said piss off, Lowell.’
‘You were thinking about the hand, weren’t you? From the beach?’
Lana sighs. ‘I was, actually.’
‘You know, I helped out with a case a couple of years back, up in Brisbane. This guy chopped up a body like that. Used a hacksaw.’
‘You catch him?’
‘Yeah, in a roundabout way. He was some young fuckhead auditioning for the Agroliri family. The bloke was a nut.’
‘Who was the victim?’
‘Some accountant who pissed off the Agroliris. The killer, bright spark that he was, decided he was going to send a message. Chopped off this accountant’s hands and feet. I can still see those damned crime scene photos in my sleep. Bloody shocking. We got the guy, in the end. Plenty of evidence. The idiot told a bunch of people what he’d done, but the family got to him first. Turns out they didn’t like the attention it was bringing in. He disappeared not long after.’
‘What was his name?’
Lowell worked his jaw. ‘You know, I can’t remember. It’ll be on file somewhere.’
Lana notes it down. ‘What are you doing now?’
‘I’m watching the clock. I don’t even know what these files are,’ he says. ‘Hey, you ever hear from Henry?’
‘Henry Loch?’
‘Yeah, he never calls me.’
Henry Loch is long retired. An old Homicide cop. Lana and Henry broke a big case a few years back. Strike Force Diablo. In the doing, Henry uncovered a whole other angle to the investigation and it spooked the local crime boss, Colleen Vinton, so much she paid him to leave town.
‘I haven’t heard from him either,’ she says.
It’s a lie—not that Lowell notices.
Henry Loch sends her a card every Christmas, all postmarked from New Zealand. He reckons he’s happy enough. He owns a gym franchise these days, after coming into money. His little boy is growing up. It’s all a big turnaround for Henry. Henry was a textbook obsessive. Driven and desperate. He thought the job was going to save him, but instead ordinary life did the trick. Funny how that goes. Lana never writes him back. She doesn’t send Christmas cards. She doesn’t call.
But the letters keep coming.
Every year.
•
Lana heads out after lunch, mainly to stretch her legs and distract herself. There’s a Target department store in the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre that has never been touched. Siegler maintains that it has the best security on the Coast, but Lana has a hunch: maybe it has the worst security staff on the Coast. Maybe they’re in on it?
She swings by and chats up the store manager. He introduces her to the head of security—a tank of a man called Ado. ‘I bloody told the other one everything there is to tell,’ Ado says, talking fast. ‘We run a tight ship over here.’
‘How many of you are there?’ asks Lana.
‘Me and three other blokes. There’s another three on the Monday, Tuesday crew.’
‘You know them?’
‘Most of them. The central office subs people in and out if we’re short.’
As they talk, Ado takes her on a tour of the shop. The place is impeccable. Clothing sits neatly on the racks. The racks sit flush with one another. The perimeter floor they’re on squeaks from a fresh polish.
Lana stops, pretending to study a brown blouse. ‘Ado, can I ask you something on the quiet?’
‘You can ask me whatever you like, at any volume you want.’
‘You know what my lot is like, right?’
Ado goes deathly still. ‘I think I know what you mean.’
Lana smiles, lowers her voice to a whisper. ‘There’s plenty of funny money around my work. I’m not swanning in here from on high. What I want to say is, if some of your fellas are collecting money—oh, not you, Ado, of course, not you—but say, one of your boys is on the take, I just want you to know that we’d overlook it. We’d one hundred per cent overlook it. We just want to catch these guys ripping everyone off, and the thing is, we’re getting close. Who knows what sort of nonsense they’re going to start sprouting off once we have them down at the station. But if someone helped us, we’d never turn on them.’
‘I see,’ says Ado. He’s not happy.
‘Can you float the idea around?’
‘My boys would never do anything like that.’
‘Just … just put the idea around. You guys all talk, right? Maybe it’s another store, another team. Just put the word out. Here’s my card. Give me a bell if you hear anything.’
Ado looks at the tiny white card in his bear-like hand.
‘Homicide Division,’ he reads. ‘What are you doing looking at bloody shoplifting if you’re in Homicide? Has someone died from this?’
‘Not yet, unfortunately.’
Ado’s eyes light up. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a female detective.’
‘Well, it’s your lucky day then.’
‘Seems like a weird thing for a woman to do.’
‘You’re not saying I’m weird, are you, Ado?’
The man starts to fluster instantly, the skin of his neck washing bright pink. ‘Oh, no, I’m just … my sister is …’
‘I’m just joshing you. It’s a weird thing for anyone to do.’
‘I don’t think I could do it. Probably beats the shit out of this, though.’
Lana looks around the store. White floor, white ceiling, white light. ‘I dunno. This doesn’t seem so bad. I’ll probably end up in security one day, when I’ve had enough.’
‘I’d hire you.’
‘You would?’
‘Sure. Lots of female shoplifters. They’re bloody good at it, too. And it’s not like me and my lot can just hang around the lingerie aisle all day without getting noticed.’
‘You reckon this crew we’re chasing are women?’
Ado looks at her, confused. ‘Are you kidding? Almost definitely.’
‘All the crooks we’ve nabbed so far are men.’
‘And how did that turn out?’
Lana makes a point of writing this down.
CHAPTER 8
IT’S LATE AFTERNOON AND the shadows of the high-rises roll over the bonnet of the car. Lana cuts onto the esplanade, heading south, following the ocean down to Nobby Beach. It’s not a business call.
On arrival, the crime scene is long gone. It’s a Saturday and the families are out in force. Towels and beach umbrellas where the yellow perimeter tape once flickered. Looking at it now, Lana can’t even plot out in her mind where the hand was found exactly. She’s still standing in the dune grass, studying the contours of the beach, when Charlie comes in beside her and gently nudges her shoulder. ‘Hey.’
Dear Charlie.
Tall and broad, Charlie is five years her junior, but could pass for ten. Everything about him is easy. He has his easy job at the casino and easy dreams of buying a house one day, but that’s about it. He wants a dog. He wants the quiet life and good weather. And yet, he also wants her and has zero misgivings about it. It’s as if Charlie has never had a suspicious thought in his life. Somehow it works.
‘Are you going in tonight?’ she asks him.
‘Start at eight. First shift upstairs.’
‘The big time. Look at you.’
‘I know, right? Not bad for a bogan from Townsville.’ Charlie’s in pluggers and board shorts. He has a plastic bag in his hand and hoists it up. ‘I brought your togs.’
‘My toorgs. Ah yeaaaah, might have a little dip in my toorgs,’ she says through her nose, mimicking his accent.
‘You’re bloody mean to me.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Come on. Last one in is a rotten egg.’
They wade through the shallows between kids on surf mats and bodysurfing dads. Out in the quieter water, Charlie holds her and tells her about his day. But not for long, the man is at home in the sea, having grown up around it, so a little swim is enough. Within ten minutes, he’s back onshore, leaving Lana to float alone. A friend of hers once described the sea as a hole in the ground—he wasn’t a fan—but Lana can feel the magic of it, the warmth and impossible breadth. It doesn’t give a shit about any of us. It’s oblivious to everything. The truth is, it’s probably both things: a heaven and a hell.
Today, she’s drifting in between.
•
While Charlie naps on the beach, Lana heads to the local fish and chip shop to collect dinner. It’s never busy, but tonight there’s lively conversation circulating as everyone waits for their orders. The locals are talking about the severed hand. The shop owner thinks it’s bloody satanists, and has some harebrained theory, all shouted out at them from the servery window. Two mums tut-tut the whole thing. One blames the immigrants and the other goes with interstate crims. Lana stays silent. She watches an old man potter in for a pack of smokes from the vending machine. He gets his pack and yells, ‘What’s this?’
‘They found a hand on the beach,’ says the shop owner.
‘A what?’
‘A hand,’ says one of the mums, holding hers up.
‘Just a hand on its own?’
‘That’s right. Just the hand.’
The old man’s eyes glaze over. He leans on the cigarette machine. A second later, he snaps out of it. ‘Saw that in the war once.’ He departs without another word.
A third mum enters the fray. She orders calamari rings and minimum chips and tells the other customers that her daughter saw a bloke on the beach on the night in question.
‘What sort of bloke?’ asks Lana.
They all look over.
‘I’m a cop.’
The owner is incredulous. ‘No.’
‘Really?’ says one of the mums, sizing her up.
‘It’s true.’ Lana digs around in her handbag for her ID. ‘Is your daughter about?’
The girl is outside minding the family dog. Her story isn’t much: ‘This idiot’—she ruffles the dog’s rump—‘thinks he’s a dolphin. Loves the beach, but he’s also getting old and crotchety, and he’s not great with kids these days, so Mum’s been paying me extra pocket money to walk him down on the beach at night. Most people get a bit scared of the beach at night, but we live just across the street so it’s kinda my backyard. That’s how I saw the guy. Saw him a few times, actually.’ She describes a normal dude—white, late thirties, regular height and weight, no tattoos. He wore a cap some nights, despite the late hour. And board shorts. The only thing off was his shoes. ‘He had boots on, in the sand. Elastic-sided tradie boots.’ When Lana asks what he was doing in these boots, she gets, ‘He was just standing around, mostly. But he always seemed, I dunno, focused or something. Like he was looking at the place real intently. I kinda thought he was waiting for a boat to come in.’
‘Did you ever talk to him?’
‘Nah, never. I kept well back.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I dunno. He was just some dude.’
‘Would you recognise him again if you saw him?’
‘I guess I might. He looked like a surfer.’
‘But a bit off?’
‘Yeah, nah, not off. Just … I guess I just noticed him.’
The girl’s mum comes out of the shop with their dinner. ‘Yours is ready,’ she says to Lana.
‘Thanks. Here’s my card,’ Lana says to the mum. ‘If she remembers anything else, give me a call.’
•
Lana calls Bruno from a public phone, the package of fish and chips cooling in her hand.
No answer at his desk. Still not in, apparently.
Lana calls him at home and it rings out.
Strange. The old Bruno always picked up. He’d have been all over something like this. He would have stuck with the case.
She takes the food back to Charlie and they sit in the sand and eat. Charlie says something about a trip he’s planning, but Lana doesn’t hear it. A minute later, she dumps her half-eaten fish back in the chip pile and says, ‘I gotta head in for a bit.’
‘What? Now?’
She stands. ‘Afraid so. Duty calls. I got talking to this … ah, it’s boring. I won’t be long. I’ll see you in a bit.’
Charlie shakes his head. ‘I’m working.’
‘Have a good shift,’ she calls over her shoulder as she walks away.
He says something else, something quieter, but Lana doesn’t catch it.
CHAPTER 9
THE TRICK WITH PRIVATE investigation work is to remain eternally suspicious. Everyone lies. The client, the target, the investigator—everyone. At times, incentives align and people can be trusted, but not completely. To Ewan’s way of thinking, it’s best to assume the worst for as long as humanly possible, and to check and double-check, to do background research as far back as you can and to turn over every rock. The difference between the well-paid professionals and the alcoholic burnouts is patience and due diligence. This is why Ewan spends the first day of his new job on the phone.
