Crooked (19 page)

Chooks ventured, ‘Just because you've got feelings, doesn't mean you understand them. A bloke can be mixed up more than he knows.'

‘You telling me I'm mad?'

‘Hell, no. I wouldn't say that. Just a bit stressed.'

Johnny reached out and gave Chooks a hug. Chooks grinned back at him, though he couldn't conceal the concern in his eyes.

Johnny said, ‘I reckon I'm going troppo. I can't take it any more.'

‘Chin up,' said Chooks, taking a long, embarrassed slurp from his glass.

But Johnny was on the high road to nowhere. He just couldn't stop. ‘I can't provide for myself, can't provide for my family. I've sunk lower than a lizard's belly. I hate myself, and I dunno what to do. I can't see a way out.'

‘Gosh,' said Chooks, and ordered another round.

Johnny left Chooks asleep at the counter and stalked out of the pub. He ducked down the side alley that ran out from the parking lot by a corrugated iron fence. He crossed the next street without looking, and plunged down a narrower lane. Up ahead, a blue light shone down on a grey paling fence adjoining a series of buildings at the back of the pub. On instinct, Johnny stepped back behind several stacked crates of empties as a car moved towards him from the darkest end of the street. He caught the driver's face in the window and was so astonished that, for almost a full minute, he doubted his eyes. He watched, almost paralysed with fright, as Lennie McPherson climbed out, plunging down the back alley out of which Johnny had just come.

Johnny gathered his wits together and started to follow. He was acutely aware of sounds that only moments before he'd failed to notice. The chink of beer bottles subsiding, the crackle of electricity along overhead wires. The rapid motion of a cat crawling out of a tin drum, the shapes of things glooming darkly together. Johnny watched as McPherson stepped up onto the loading dock at the rear of the pub. The dock was elevated, with a stained metal ramp leading up to the entrance. Johnny climbed the ramp, and stepped back between a defunct automatic cigarette machine and a canister of high-octane gas.

Five minutes later Mick Moylan arrived. He shook hands with McPherson, and the two men began talking. Johnny didn't
understand the implications of their conversation, mostly he was struck by its conspiratorial tone. Everything seemed clear! Everything seemed proved beyond any possible doubt! He went over events of the last couple of months and they all added up.

Johnny stepped out of his hiding spot, stunned into action. Too late, he heard the click of a safety catch and swung round to see Tommy standing behind him, the mouth of his gun barrel staring straight at him. Johnny threw himself forward, forcing Tommy's gun arm up with the surprise of his weight. A shot rang out, imprinting a seven-point star on the tin of the roller door as they went flying backwards.

The impact as they hit the ground almost knocked Johnny unconscious, but he got up and ran towards the car.

Johnny fumbled for the keys and revved the engine. He was swaying all over the road, but the road was lonely and clear, with no traffic coming or going in either direction. He dropped down off the highway and looked over the water, the lights of Kingsford Smith Airport reflected across it in zigzags. He parked the Valiant by the seawall in case he'd been followed and started to walk. The air was bright and got brighter still, illuminating every postbox and pothole with a heartbreaking clarity. Johnny reached his front gate and climbed the front steps.

He saw everything in advance … Glory standing in the hallway as the gunman moved towards her, showing his revolver. Johnny ran, taking a last long stride as the gunman fired from mid-range. He watched Glory fall, a flower of blood spreading over her dress. The pain hit Johnny like a bullet in the chest. He crumpled to his knees. The gunman turned toward him, and fired again.

J
ANUARY
1968

Gus wasn't very pleased with the way things had turned out – they'd been working the case for almost six months with almost nothing to show. He couldn't help thinking that part of the problem was the way they were working it. They did a bit here, did a bit there. Chased something else down. It got awfully exciting up to a point, then it all petered out, like ripples in a puddle.

Gradually the case got dropped from the front page of the newspapers, moving down the list of policing priorities almost in tandem. Secretaries and typists grew suddenly scarce. More and more detectives were returned to their regular tasks. Then, earlier that morning, they made it official. The task force was disbanded, the remaining detectives to be detailed elsewhere, a reward was put out, and the case shoved away under ‘File and Forget'.

Gus wasn't angry, exactly. He was ill at ease. But Agostini was livid.

‘I guess they were always going to do it,' he said, as he sorted through the large pile of paperwork on the adjacent desktop.

Gus closed the lid of the file box he was packing, and taped it shut with a tag labelled ‘Unsolved'. ‘I know you've got problems with the investigation, and I reckon we're all disappointed. But Reilly had everybody in those notebooks – gangsters, politicians and businessmen. I guess we failed to cut through that guff and get to the case.'

‘I don't see anybody asking any coppers any questions.'

‘I thought we discussed this. Being in the notebooks doesn't constitute any evidence against them.'

‘They're such good coppers, then why are they in the books?'

‘Maybe Reilly tried to reach them.'

‘So what did they do?'

‘Turned him down, I guess.'

But this only made Agostini laugh harder. He gave Gus a look not so much of anger but pity. He picked up the packed box and carted it down the stairs into storage.

Gus scrambled to his feet and tugged at the blind. He went back to his desk and was idling through paperwork, lost in thought, when the dull clatter of the telephone rang him out of his stupor. He clambered to his feet and dived for the telephone.

‘They told me you're the bloke to speak to about the Reilly case.'

‘Then I guess they were right,' said Gus. ‘Have you got something to tell me?'

‘Yeah, Reilly was shot by this bloke that I know of.'

‘Has this bloke got a name?'

‘Yeah, but I'm not telling you his name.'

‘Uh-huh,' Gus answered sceptically.

‘I also got proof.'

‘So tell us about the proof.'

‘Well, for starters, I know that the bloke was shot first with a sawn-off and then with the cannon.'

‘Cannon?'

‘That was only Johnny's name for the thing. It was a Parker Hale safari rifle with a telescopic sight.'

Gus felt prickles. He wrote the name ‘Johnny' on the desk blotter beside him. ‘Can you lay hold of these guns?' he said, cautiously now.

‘He broke them down and dumped them in the river. But I reckon the rest is worth money.'

‘I'm happy to talk about that. Is there somewhere we can meet?'

‘Do you reckon I'm stupid? First up, I want an ironclad guarantee about the reward with the pardon. I'll call back in five.'

Gus stood with his hand on the telephone, listening to the line flatten out. Ideas assembled themselves in his head and he considered their possibilities. He remembered a bloke named Johnny who he'd interviewed way back in the case, and immediately began pacing up and down between the packed boxes of paperwork trying to recollect the details. He unpacked the filing boxes stacked across his desk, then unlocked the steel cabinets where the unsorted file notes were kept. He ran his finger down the index of frayed ends, dead ends and abandoned inquiries, and came up with a name, Johnny Warren.

Gus dimly remembered interviewing Warren at his Brighton-Le-Sands flat, but seemed to recall he was alibied up. He leafed through the record of interview, and found a roneoed copy of the register from South Sydney Juniors at the back of the bundle. It seemed to bear out the truth of the alibi, but in light of the telephone call it could stand further scrutiny. He also found a note stapled behind the entry, cross-referenced to a set of crime sheets from the Rockdale Police. The note said that one night in January, just three weeks ago, Warren had returned home after a night at the pub, shot his de facto wife Glory and turned the gun on himself. Glory died instantly, with Warren passing away under police guard at St George Hospital several days later. There was also a child concerned in the case, who had been sent on to the Strathfield Girls' Home for Orphans.

Gus put the superfluous files back in the cabinet, nudged the drawer shut, and was deeply absorbed in the record of interview, when the telephone started ringing again. He ran down the room and dived for it. But Agostini was already there.

Gus skidded to a halt on the far side of the desk. ‘Who was it?'

‘Wrong number,' said Agostini, hanging up with a frown.

Chooks was standing in a telephone booth on a corner in Greystanes with his finger frozen to the dial, unsure what to do and too scared to decide. He put down the receiver, peered up at the sky through a tangle of electrical wire. The clouds were edged purplish. They gave off a green kind of light. It was raining in earnest before he got home. Several minutes later he was ensconced in the kitchen, chewing the end of a pencil and writing a letter to Marge's dictation. ‘Dear sir,' he started, with Marge peering over his shoulder, making corrections. He continued:

Chooks put the letter in the back pocket of his trousers and took the bus into town. He clattered out at Central, trudged up to CIB, where he handed the envelope to a uniformed copper, and came home undetected.