Dark Summer (26 page)

He was there, sitting in his 1960 green 3.8 Jaguar, his toy. It was beautifully preserved and he
had
told her, not boastfully but matter-of-factly, how he had broken the arm of a kid he had caught trying to steal the hub-caps. She parked the white Capri a hundred yards up the slight rise behind the Jaguar, got out and walked down and slid in beside White. To any casual observer it would have looked like an assignation, a thought that made her smile. She was fastidious about her men and Dallas White would have been one of the last she would have picked as a lover.

“G'day. You're late.” If he had any charm at all he didn't waste it on women.

“I had some trouble at the hospital. With a junkie.”

“Jesus, they're a pain.” It didn't seem to occur to him that he was talking of a customer who, multiplied by thousands, was going to make them rich. It was like a fast-food franchiser complaining because
his
customers were ruining the environment by throwing away their styrofoam containers.

Then he told her what they would have to do with Denny Pelong. After he had said “Kill him,” she sat staring out across the blue waters of the bay as the wind, increasing from the south now, began to chop the blue into white chips. The temperature had dropped suddenly and the white clouds had turned grey, kangarooing up from the south. A crowd of tourists was hurrying back across the narrow causeway from the tiny island off the point; elderly Americans from one of the cruise ships that came into Sydney at this time of year. Some had come ahead of the others and were congregated round a grey-bearded Aborigine who stood in front of a small arsenal of boomerangs, assuring the tourists that these were better weapons than Scud missiles, that if they missed their target they returned to sender and could be used again—“President Bush has personally ordered a dozen, just in case.” The Aborigine and the Americans smiled at each other, both of them appreciating the sales talk, and money and boomerangs passed from hand to hand. Then the tourists got into two coaches and were driven away and the elderly Aborigine packed up the remainder of his stock, put it in the boot of a new Ford Fairlane and drove off. He had missed The Dreamtime, but the present was paying off.

“Do we have to go that far?” Janis said at last. “Get rid of him?”

He had waited impatiently for her to say something, beating a gnarled hand on the steering wheel. “Look, you better get your priorities right. You wanna make money, a lotta money, or you wanna
pussyfoot
around, being squeamish? I don't mean you gotta kill him personally, we'll do that for you. We already got rid of one guy for you—”

“Maddux, you mean? I didn't ask for that.”

“Who said you did? Look, Janis, you gotta understand—we act on initiative, we don't hang around for policy meetings. We ain't some political committee, meeting to find some reason why something
shouldn't
be done. We hadda get rid of Maddux and quick. He was gunna tell someone he'd found that shipment of ours on the bottom of that ship at Glebe Island. I dunno who he was gunna tell. Maybe his union mate Roley Bremner? Customs? I dunno. He might even of been working for Denny Pelong. But he hadda be shut up and Gary did it. The cops think he did it, but they can't prove nothing.”

“Who
did
tell Customs about the shipment? That was a pretty substantial loss. I can't take too many like that.”

“I think it might of been that fucking Malone, the cop from Homicide. He's a real pain in the arse. We give him one warning, when we dropped that little prick Grime in his pool, when we found out Scungy had been grassing for him. Scungy was on to us, you too.”

She felt a sudden stab of unease. “Me? How?”

“He followed me and Gary one time when we met you. We tried to catch him that night, but he got away from us. We was gunna do him, but that same night someone got to him with the needle. By the time we caught up with him, he was dead. We found him in the entrance to the flats where he lived. So we put him in the car and took him out and dumped him in Malone's pool. We thought it a bit of a joke at the time, but now I dunno.” He looked more surprised than perturbed, as if doubting his own actions was not usual with him.

“We still don't know who killed him.”

“There was another one last night, a young guy named Lugos, he worked for Denny Pelong. Same method, needle in the bum.”

“There was a third. A prostitute down in Palmer Street. She knew Lugos, his name was Leroy Lugos. He ran some girls around the Cross. I'm counselling one of them. She was in to see me at
lunchtime,
she told me about Leroy.”

White turned away, looked out across the bay. Far over, as he knew, was where Denny Pelong lived. Nearer, running out from the southern point, was the long wharf of the Kurnell oil refinery; a tanker was moored there now, discharging oil. He had learned from talk on the waterfront that security had been tightened there since the start of the Gulf war. He had no interest in any wars but his own, he couldn't care less what the fucking Arabs did so long as they stayed off his turf.

“It's gunna rain. I washed the car this morning, I don't like getting it muddied . . . I think there's a third party in this game, but I dunno what they're up to. Do they think they're gunna scare the shit outa us and get a piece of the action, either from us or Denny Pelong? Pig's arse, they are.”

She wondered if Jack Junior conducted his business meetings in these terms. She had just read a book in which Wall Street types, straight out of Yale and Harvard, had been as foul-mouthed as the street types she dealt with at the drug clinic. Had her father been as vulgar as this at his stockbroking meetings? Only after his suicide had she realized she had never really known her father. He had been jovial and affectionate towards her and her brother, but he had loved the good life, the constant liquor, the lunches and dinner parties, the Mercedes and the yacht, and when the good life had been taken away from him, all the joviality and affection were suddenly gone and he was a weak and bitter man. Her mother, who had loved the good life just as much, had caved in after the suicide and gone back to the religion of her childhood, had given up laughter and taken to mealy-mouthed piety, swapping Zampatti for sackcloth and blaming herself for her husband's suicide. Janis sometimes wondered where the steel in herself came from.

“What about the Vietnamese, Trang, whatever-his-name-was?”

“We done him. We found out he was dealing for both us and Pelong. We couldn't let that go. That's conflict of interest. They oughta send guys to jail for that, but they don't, not the white-collar crims.” Like all crims, he didn't like the law being manipulated for those who were not, strictly, professionals. He looked sideways at her, grinned. “You got a conflict of interest, you know that? You sell the shit to the junkies, then try to tell 'em how to get off the stuff.”

“
You think I ought to go to jail?”

“You'll never go to jail, love. You're too fucking smart. You know, I been working for you, what, three months? You come up with cash for the stuff, no worries—but where d'you get it from? Someone's backing you. Who is it?”

“Dallas, you don't need to know that.” She had no doubt that he would find out eventually, but for the moment it was her own secret. Jack Junior had warned her that if ever it became known that he was the source of her funds, he would drop out. She had been surprised how respectable he had wanted to remain, while greed gnawed at him like cancer. That, she gathered, was his mother still exerting her influence from the grave.

“If we get rid of Denny Pelong, I think our cut of the take has to go up. It's me and Gary who're taking all the risks.

“Who do you think is taking all the risks in the Gulf war? It's not the generals. But that's the way things are, Dallas. The guys who supply the money and the brains, they stay away from the shooting.” She had a woman's contempt for war as a means of resolution.

He grinned again. “You think of yourself as some sorta general?”

“If you like, yes. And I'll decide how the take is going to be cut up.” She was a little surprised at her own bravado. But even as a child she had always been prepared to take on challenges: abseiling with her brother, water-skiing with her father. She had no physical fear and she was not going to be intimidated by this thug she had recruited. “You'll get your fair share, but don't you tell me how much it's going to be.”

The grin remained frozen on his rugged face: it pointed the thin line between a smile and a snarl. “Don't get fucking smart with me, love.”

She turned her head away, looked up towards the small crenellated tower at the top of a rise in the park across from them. It had been built some time before 1920 as a watch tower against smuggling; it amused her that two smugglers, herself and White, should now be sitting metaphorically within its shadow discussing the business of smuggling. Two young Aborigines in jeans and black T-shirts stood
looking
down at the Jaguar, their expressions impossible to read at this distance. The area around here was still, officially, an Aboriginal reserve; here, two hundred years ago, the Aborigines had looked down on the first European settlers as they had sailed into the bay. The first to step ashore had been the British; two days later two French ships, under Jean, Comte de La Perouse, had anchored off the small beach round the point. Anglo-French relations, for once, had been amicable, whether because they were at the other end of the world from their usual squabbles or because they wanted to impress the local savages with their civility, Janis didn't know. The Aborigines then might have looked down on the newcomers with the same expressionless stare as the two young men up by the tower. Whatever it was, it would not have been civil; civility does not come easily to people about to be conquered. Janis knew her country's history; had she not been so selfish, she might have been patriotic. She looked back at Snow White, who was only patriotic at sporting fixtures and then only if he had got good odds on Australia's winning.

“I think you should understand one thing, Dallas. I am not frightened of you, so don't threaten me. If anything happens to me, the financial backing goes out the window, understand? You need me more than I need you. It's just like the war, Dallas. Good generals and the money behind them are hard to find, but soldiers, grunts, I think they call them, are a penny a dozen, especially in a recession.”

He stared at her, then the grin thawed and he nodded his head in admiration. “Jesus, you're something! You make Mrs. Thatcher sound like Mother Theresa.”

“Well, just keep that in mind. Okay, if you have to get rid of Mr. Pelong, then do it.” She was surprised, but not much, at the matter-of-fact callousness of her instruction. But she had been callous to begin with, getting into this venture. She knew the percentage of those buying heroin who would die from an overdose: the collateral damage, as the military spokesmen would call it. It was all in a cause. Maybe not a
good
cause, but hypocrisy was not one of her faults. “If you have to, then you have to.”

“What about this other guy, the one with the needle?”

“Get rid of him, too, if you find him.” She had one moment of squeamishness; she could not bring herself to say the word
kill.
Which
was
hypocritical, though she would not admit it.

“Okay, I'll be in touch.” He leaned across and opened her door. “That's a nice perfume.”

That
surprised her almost as much as anything else he had said, “It's Arpège. Do you have a girlfriend?”

“A couple. Maybe I'll buy each of 'em a gallon of that. Here comes the fucking rain. I'm gunna get the car wet.”

She ran back up to her own car as the first drops began to splatter on the still-warm roadway. She was struggling to put up the top of the Capri when the two young Aborigines appeared, one on either side of the car, and took over from her. When they had the top secured, they stood back, both smiling, and one of them gave a mock bow.

She hesitated, feeling the rain becoming heavier, then she said, “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”

“Nah.” Both of them were good-looking boys, with a touch of white in them, the ultimate conquering. “We'd ruin your reputation.”

As she drove away they were still smiling: no,
laughing
at her. All at once, for no reason at all, she hated them. A mile further on, driving now through pelting rain, it occurred to her that the blacks were only part of her problem. Her father had left her with a burdensome legacy. She trusted no man, not even Jack Junior.

She would have felt her lack of trust vindicated had she seen one of the young Aborigines take a notebook from the pocket of his jeans and add the number of the Capri to that of the Jaguar 3.8.

II

“Do you like Australian wines?” said Lisa.

“Some of them,” said Peter Keller. The Germans, thought Lisa with Dutch prejudice, had never been noted for their diplomacy. “This one, yes, very much. It is from South Australia, the Barossa Valley? Where the Germans are settled? I wanted to go there, to feel at home, but my wife wanted to be on the beaches of Sydney. So did Romy.” He made an attempt at being a man martyred to the whims of his women. It didn't go down well with Lisa, who knew, as all women do, who are the martyrs in any
marriage.

The rain had stopped and the evening was mildly cool, though still humid. The Malones, the Kellers and Clements were dining out in the small patio between the house and the pool. Malone had lit some burners to repel any mosquitoes, and a gentle breeze, all that was left of this afternoon's southerly buster, rustled through the jacaranda in the Cayburns' back yard. The police guard had been removed this afternoon and Lisa felt that peace had once again settled on her house. The only jarring note, in her present mood, was Peter Keller. She felt guilty about her antipathy to him, wondering if it had something to do with her Dutchness.