Autumn Maze (19 page)

“To the FBI in Washington. You acting for them now?”

“We do, but not on this one. The US Marshals' Service has been in touch with us. Kornsey was
their
pigeon. They've been looking after him under their Witness Protection Scheme.”

“What was he—Mafia?”

Kenthurst nodded. He was dressed in a navy blazer, tattersail-checked shirt, police tie, cavalry twill trousers and desert boots; he looked like a staff officer from Duntroon, the military school near Canberra. A major-general, at least; Malone wondered what a superintendent's pay was compared to his own. There was no rank of inspector in the Federal service. “He turned informant against the Mob in New York, his evidence sent three of the bosses to jail for life. He's been in Australia seven years under the Protection Scheme. His real name is—
was
Vincent Bassano.”

“Did you people know he was here?”

“No. They don't take us into their confidence on those things. We knew nothing of him till they contacted us this morning. My commander put me on a plane for Sydney after we'd talked to them. I'm sorry about spoiling your afternoon, but I have to be back in Canberra this evening, the Prime Minister is having a dinner for senior officers.”

Can't miss that, can we?
“How did you know where to find me?”

“Your wife told me.”

Malone hated the thought of Lisa being disturbed for police business, especially on the
weekend.
“What do the Yanks want us to do?”

“They don't want any more than the usual paperwork.” Kenthurst smiled, his teeth very white under the dark moustache. “That he's officially dead and buried—”

“He's not, not yet. All we have of him is a foot and half a leg.”

“That should satisfy them. I'd guess they work the same way as us, get the paperwork done so his name can be removed from the payroll. They paid him full subsistence for two years. Then he's bitten them for odd sums since then.”

“He was adding to it, you know. He'd raised capital from somewhere, he was using it to deal on the futures exchange.”

“Do you think his Mafia mates caught up with him? They blew up his parents while he was giving evidence. Bombed their house, killed them both. Nice types.”

Malone pulled on a sweater against the cool of the afternoon as the sun moved round behind the clubhouse. From over at Coogee oval, a hundred yards away, there came a roar as someone scored a try in the rugby match being played there. A youth and a girl leaned against the wire netting at the end of the court, watching a mixed doubles match; the boy and the girl each had a hand grasping the netting as if trying to hold themselves upright while their passion for each other weakened their knees; their other arms were wrapped round each other, hands groping over buttocks like horny crabs. From the courts there came the soft thump of a ball on racquet and the occasional shout or squeal. An ordinary Saturday afternoon as background to talk of murder and Mafia; but Malone knew the world was painted in colours as juxtaposed as these. “They could have, but we've got no evidence. At the moment our lead suspects are Japanese and Filipinos.”

“Japs? You mean the
yakuza
?” Kenthurst twisted his thin lips, the moustache wriggling. “We don't want
them
. They're here, we know that, but so far they've kept a low profile. The PM has been preaching closer trade ties with Japan, but there's a limit.”

Malone grinned. He had met Kenthurst five years ago for the first and only time and found the man humourless and stiff with Canberra starch and superiority; promotion and time had humanized him.
“
Spoil his dinner for him tonight, tell him who we think are now in business.” He stood up. “Between you and me, Ron, I'm having to treat this case pretty gently. It's linked with the homicide of young Sweden, our Minister's son.” Kenthurst pursed his lips. “Don't mention that at the dinner tonight or it'll curdle the vichyssoise. We've got no evidence of a direct link, but if the Yanks have anything that might help on what they know of—what was his name? Bassano? If they have anything, I'd be grateful for it. Are you the one handling things direct with them?”

“For the time being. I don't think it's going to last more than a week or two.”

“Stick with it, as a favour to us. I don't want this spread around any more than is necessary. I've got a Minister, two ACs and an Opposition Leader breathing down my neck and I don't like the smell of any of it.”

Kenthurst put out his hand. “Let me have what you have, the bare bones. Enough to satisfy my chief and the US Marshals' Service. Then we'll see what turns up when I put some questions to the Yanks.”

“A fax'll be on your desk Monday morning. Why did they send you all the way up here instead of just getting me on the phone?”

“That's where I'm to ask you a favour—for the US Marshals' Service. They don't want it broadcast that they've been hiding ex-Mafia out here, they'd rather the less people know about the Witness Protection Scheme, the better. If you can work it, they'd like it if you can keep Bassano's history out of your report.”

“That's asking a lot.”

“They appreciate that. But there are political implications—” He came from the city propped up by political implications; Canberra would fall down, a hollow shell, if politics, implied or otherwise, deserted it. “The Brits started this country by dumping their unwanted crims out here. You can imagine what the Lefties would make of it if the Yanks started doing the same thing.”

“How many protected ex-Mafia do they have out here?”

“I have no idea, they'd never divulge that. Maybe none, now Bassano's dead. Maybe a dozen.
You
notice how basketball, baseball, the American games are catching on out here?” He smiled to show he was just kidding. “So far the only ones who know who Bassano really was are my commander, you and I. Phone me Monday, don't fax.”

“I'll have to tell my boss, Greg Random. He's the one who decides what goes further.”

“Is he likely to make waves?”

“Greg? He wouldn't make a wave if he farted in his bath.”

“You should move to Canberra. You speak the language.”

“What's it like down there, now Labor's been re-elected?”

“Peculiar. The rumour is that Cabinet has made a mass appointment with a psychiatrist—with Medicare, of course—to see what will happen to their pysches if they act gracious in victory. They've only been taught to put the boot in.”

Kenthurst left to go back to Canberra, another planet. Malone went back on court and played badly. The Mafia and the
yakuza
: who needed them to call the shots? He mis-hit a forehand drive into Cayburn's back, causing another wave, this time of indignation.

When he got home, exercised physically and mentally, Lisa said, “Did that Federal man catch up with you? More trouble?”

After his shower he sat on the side of their bed in his underpants and told her; if the US Marshals' Service thought wives should be forbidden its secrets, then none of its marshals could be married. She sat opposite him in the bedroom's one tub chair, a slim leg showing through the opening of her bathrobe, her hair still wet from her own shower. She looked beautiful and desirable, but he had other things on his mind. “How do you fancy Tibooburra? Out there I'd be my own boss, just checking the rabbit-proof fence, drying out the occasional drunken drover . . . No Mafia, no
yakuza
, no politicians, no greedy money-hungry bastards—”

“You're getting angry.” She got up, came across and stood in front of him, opened her robe and pushed his face against her breasts. “There, have a nibble.”

He did. “You're disgusting. You think sex is the answer to everything. Where are the kids?”

There
was the sound of a key in the front door. “There they are now. Tough luck, old chap.”

She closed her robe and went out to greet the children, while he, half-aroused, sat on the side of the bed and wondered how many other frustrations he would face in the coming weeks.

II

“Our Premier is a bugger for stating the irremediable obvious.” Jack Aldwych was showing the benefits of his retirement reading, though he was careful how he got out
irremediable
, “That's as distinct from telling the truth.”

Bruna looked at him with surprise. “Such cynicism! You could be East European.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” Aldwych was in good humour.

“Of course.” Bruna, too, was in good humour. He always was when his daughters, any one of them, entertained him in the manner for which he had raised them. He loved these outings on the Harbour, moving majestically past lesser craft crowded with hoi polloi. Somewhere back in his lineage there was an ancestor who was an asterisk in the
Almanack de Gotha
, that bible of snobbery, and he had inherited the talent of waving at the peasants with the proper kindly condescension. The peasants, at least those on the harbour, usually replied with a hoi-polloi finger.

Jack Junior and Juliet's cruiser was a fifty-two-footer with two 450-horsepower diesels and an interior that always made Jack Senior think of a floating brothel, though he had never been aboard one of the latter. He had no idea what it had cost Jack Junior, but whatever the cost, it would have been too much; Aldwych himself had never gone in for expensive toys. Juliet had decorated it, not letting taste get in the way of its luxury. She spent money wisely; that is, never from her own purse. This was a company boat, something her father-in-law would not know till next year's accounts were in. In the meantime she wooed him with its luxury, trusting that he would fall in love with it and not complain about the cost. She had misread him.

She came and sat beside him under the awning on the aft deck. Her father had got up and gone into the saloon to put his arm round his woman for today, a grey-, almost white-haired beauty who was
notorious
as an always-available freeloader. There were two other couples on board, two young executives of Landfall Holdings and their equally young wives. Juliet knew that the two old men in her life liked to look at attractive young women; she knew her father was lecherous, but she could never be sure of Jack Senior.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“I'm expected to, aren't I?” His smile was friendly; but he could have smiled like that as he killed someone. He was still dangerous, she was sure of that, but the danger of him thrilled her. Had he been thirty years younger she would have married him instead of his son.

She put a silky hand on his hessian one. “Jack, dear, why don't you trust me?”

“Why wouldn't I trust you?” He had been interrogated by police and lawyers, the best of both breeds; he wasn't going to be thrown by a woman less than half his age.

“You don't trust women at all, do you?”

In the saloon he could see the white-haired woman responding to Bruna's fondling hand; he was a prude when it came to sexual advances in public. “I trusted Jack's mother.”

“Jack's told me about her. Hers was the only law you respected. She must have been a strong woman.”

Shirl hadn't been; but he said, “She had to be, to put up with me. You and your sisters are all strong women.”

“How did you know that?” She didn't simper or look coy, that was beyond her.

“Observation.”

“You ran the prostitution—” She hesitated.

“Racket?”

“Well—yes. Did you choose the girls?”

He smiled; she was naive after all. “Does Derek choose the clerks in the Police Department? I was the Minister for Prostitution . . . Back in the Middle Ages did you know there were Ministers for that? It was all well organized. So it was here in Sydney when I ran it. There were no Wogs and Chinks trying to
muscle
in with their half a dozen girls. All the hookers up the Cross belonged to me. That was before prostitution got out to the suburbs.” He looked up as Jack Junior came down the stairs from the wheelhouse. “Jack, we're talking about the good old days, when the economy was on the straight and narrow.”

“Prostitution,” said Juliet. “The straight and narrow.”

Jack Junior grimaced; then changed the subject: “They're burying Rob on Tuesday. Are you coming to the funeral, Dad? I'll come and pick you up.”

“I don't think so. Juliet, could you let me have a word with Jack?” He was more than just a guest on the boat; he was the admiral. The words were a request, but the look was an order. “Just a few minutes.”

She squeezed his hand to show him she was doing him a favour, then went into the saloon, gently lifting her father's hand off the white-haired woman's buttock as she went past. Jack Junior looked after her. “You shouldn't dismiss her like that.”

“
She and I understand each other . . . Jack, this Rob business, it's getting dirty.”

Jack Junior was not surprised; though he tried to go straight, there was inherited larceny in his blood. “I thought it might. What have you found out?”

“I rang up a few old mates. Scams are going on and it's not the local boys who are pulling „em off. The Japs and the Filipinos, they say, but they don't have any proof. I asked what about the Triads or the Vietnamese, but they said no. Has Julie told you that the Swedens' Filipino maid has disappeared?”

“Yes. D'you think the Asiatics tried to do Cormac in?” Like most Australians, those of the third, fourth or fifth generation, he lumped together three billion people, of fifty-plus languages, a dozen skin tones and half a dozen cultures. He was not uneducated or ignorant, just white and prejudiced. Though to be fair, until he had married Juliet he hadn't known there was any difference between Roumanians and Hungarians, neither of them was to be trusted.