Stiff Read online

  Across the lane I could see Ciccio’s pile of empty Bisleri bottles through the gap where the sheet-metal halves of his back gate were held together by a sagging coil of heavy-duty chain. Catapulting across the Falcon’s path, I smashed my head into the gap, hoping to Christ I could force it wider. I felt the whip of steel links against my neck and heard the hinges scream.

  Bottles rose to meet me, an avalanche of empties skidding across the wet concrete into the yard. A smear of blue streaked past at the edge of my vision. Then one of the bottles was in my hand and I was back in the lane watching it tumbling end over end, it’s slow-motion trajectory ending in a milky wash of white as it shattered the Falcon’s rear window. The sound of breaking glass came back down the lane towards me, mingled with the rapidly fading screech of tyres as the car disappeared.

  My heart pumped hard and fast, fed by the jitter of adrenalin coursing through my veins. This was getting beyond a joke. Back down the lane my flattened pack of Winfields was demonstration of the driver’s murderous intent. Don’t you just hate it when somebody tries to kill you and you don’t know who or why?

  Ciccio had come to his back door, wiping his hands, the old card players behind him, craning for a view. I brushed past them, my voice rasping in my ears. ‘Corretto.’ I needed a drink and pronto.

  Ciccio fished around under the bar and came up with a bottle of grappa. He tipped a hefty measure into a strong black coffee and watched me down it in one. It was nearly enough to stop my hand shaking. But not quite. I took the second and third slugs neat.

  ‘Fucka idiots,’ he said. ‘Orta be a law.’

  That was it. Things were getting far too hairy to be tolerated any longer. This sort of thing was well beyond the requirements of my job description. If you wanted a meeting stacked or a booth-by-booth breakdown of voting trends with emphasis on the flow of preferences, I was your man. Needed your how-to-vote cards printed cheap? See me. But being a homicide victim? I didn’t have the training.

  I took a last shot of grappa, punched a fresh packet of fags out of Ciccio’s vending machine and ordered my rubbery legs out the door and around the corner to the cop shop. By the time I got there, my hands had stopped shaking enough to prise the cellophane off the cigarettes. ‘Someone just tried to kill me,’ I said.

  The uniformed walloper behind the counter was an athletic-looking lug in his late twenties with the full-page crossword in People open in front of him. He looked up like he resented the intrusion. ‘That so, sir?’ he said, his eyes taking a long slow cruise over my three-day growth, past my skewiff tie to the damp patches the puddles in Ciccio’s yard had left on my pants.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘First they broke into my house, then they tried to run me over.’ The grappa seemed to have finally settled my nerves. I managed one of the smokes out of the pack and inserted it between my lips.

  ‘And who would this be you are referring to, sir?’ Next he’d be saying ‘’ello, ’ello, ’ello’.

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out,’ I said.

  He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and clicked it emphatically. ‘Your name?’

  I was thinking about the rego number of the Falcon. The image kept fluctuating in and out of focus. Something, something, eight six five. I must have moved my lips. The cigarette fell to the floor. As I straightened from picking it up, the copper leaned right across the counter, following my progress, wrinkling his nose.

  ‘Have you had a drink at all today, sir?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well yes, but…’ I couldn’t quite find the matches. ‘You wouldn’t have a light, would you?’

  The copper gave me a facetious look and squared off the edges of a little pop-up card on the counter that read Thank You for Not Smoking. Why don’t they ever just say No Smoking? I patted myself down and felt a lump in my inside jacket pocket, a trafficable quantity of a prohibited substance. The idea of this visit, I concluded, had been a deeply flawed conception.

  Talk about making a bad impression. I had got myself so far behind the eight ball that the only way I’d ever convince this guy of anything would be to tell him the whole story. Even then I couldn’t see him believing me, let alone taking any useful action. An unknown assailant, no apparent motive, no injuries, no witnesses, the complainant some half-pissed bozo with a pocket load of wacky weed. I turned on my heels and strode out the door. From now on I would rely on my own ingenuity. It wasn’t much to be going on with. I started by botting a light from a passer-by.

  Trish had locked the office and stuck a Back in Five Minutes card inside the door. I locked the door behind me, left the card in place and dialled Greg Coates’ number. ‘Couldn’t you stretch a point?’ I wheedled. ‘Just one little file. Another Turk, name of Memo Gezen.’

  ‘Jesus, not again?’ he said. ‘Unless it’s official, I can’t help, at least for the time being. I’ve stuck my neck out for you far enough for one day. Beside which, if I was you I’d be more interested in what a certain Italian of our mutual acquaintance is up to.’

  ‘Agnelli? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Get off the grass, mate. I’ve been applying the blowtorch to some friends of mine at the state office, and very tightlipped they were too. All this ringing around Agnelli’s doing, he’s not peddling gossip. He’s lining up support for a career move.’

  Somehow this did not surprise me. A lot of lawyers fancy themselves as legislators and Agnelli had all the required qualities—vanity, ambition and untrustworthiness. It had only been a matter of time before his parliamentary aspirations surfaced. ‘Yeah? So which seat is he after?’ I couldn’t see Agnelli contesting anything marginal.

  ‘This is where my sources got very circumspect. But if I were you I’d try imagining him in a frock and sensible shoes.’ This had to be bullshit. No way was Agnelli dumb enough to make a play for Charlene’s seat. No way would the faction allow a popular member to get dumped in favour of a sleazebag like Agnelli. I pleaded for the names of Coates’ sources at state headquarters, but got no more out of him. I accused him of having me on, sticking it up me for the business with the Bayraktar file. By the time he hung up I was convinced he was serious.

  And the truth or otherwise of what he was saying was not the only issue. Speculation of this sort had a tendency to take on a life of its own. And as Agnelli himself pointed out, some sections of the press would only be too happy to jump on the bandwagon. Let alone the idea that one of her most senior staff members was stabbing her in the back. If I didn’t nip this little furphy in the bud toot sweet, it would be all over town before you could say knife in the back.

  It took me half an hour, but I finally got through to Agnelli. All it would take for him to put Coates’ gossip to bed was a simple denial. That, and an oath on his mother’s soul. ‘Something urgent has come up. We need to talk.’

  ‘I’m in a meeting right now.’ Other voices eddied around in the background. Agnelli put his hand over the receiver and said something. When he took it away the noise had stopped. ‘I’ll come in,’ I said. ‘Ten minutes is all I’ll need.’ I wanted to be looking at Agnelli’s face when he talked to me. After we’d cleared the air on his plans for the future, we could move on to the legal issues thrown up by Memo Gezen’s confession. ‘I can be there in half an hour.’

  ‘No.’ Agnelli all but jumped down the phone. He immediately back-pedalled, softening his tone. ‘I’ll call you back, okay?’ Click. The prick hung up in my ear.

  Well, fuck you, pal, I thought. I dialled the House again, asked for Charlene and got put through to the party room. She was in the chamber, someone told me, the final reading of the Insurance Bill. The information came as a relief. The impulse to call Charlene with uncorroborated gossip that one of her most trusted lieutenants was planning to do a Macbeth smacked of lack of judgment. Sitting in front of me on the desk was Ennio Picone’s phone message slip. I decided to activate the nonna network.

  ‘Maestro,’ I cried. ‘Many apologies for not calling earl
ier.’ I took my time, confirmed Charlene’s appearance at the Carboni Club dinner dance, made the right noises as the old man went on and on about the catering arrangements. Finally I popped the question.

  ‘Angelo Agnelli,’ I said. ‘He’s got terrible manners, I know, but Charlene finds him useful. Only I think he might be looking around for a new job. Have you heard anything?’ Maestro Picone shrugged audibly.

  ‘Old Mrs Agnelli senior, you wouldn’t consider having a quiet word with her for me, would you? See what you can find out.’

  If Agnelli’s grandmother didn’t know what he was up to, Picone would work his way through the family tree until he found someone who did. Right up his autostrada, this sort of thing, keep him happy for days. Naturally he’d want something in return. I’d deal with that when the need arose. He promised to call back as soon as he had news.

  While I’d been talking to Picone, Trish had come back, bringing with her a pile of photocopies, the agenda papers for that night’s branch meeting. Most of the time chairing branch meetings was a tedious chore, a quasi-official part of my job. But it was also a way of maintaining close links with the local rank and file support. So if Agnelli was planning a challenge, he would sooner or later have to make his intentions known among the natives. Which was something he could hardly do without me finding out.

  Trish dumped the papers across my desk in a row of neat but still uncollated piles. An agenda, minutes of the previous meeting, a sheet of draft resolutions, a discussion paper on federal resource development policy. Such was the ammunition with which the membership waged its eternal war against the pragmatism of those it sent to parliament. A ceaseless and often hopeless battle perhaps, but a politics of persuasion, not of muscle-flexing and murder attempts. Not like some places I could think of. Sydney, for example. Or a lane off Sydney Road.

  My thoughts must have shown on my face. I looked up to find Trish squinting across the desk at me. ‘You look a bit like a bloke who used to work here,’ she said. ‘He was in more often than you, and wasn’t as much of a derelict.’ She was right. I was beginning to resemble one of our more unwanted customers. I guiltily stubbed out my cigarette on the inside of the wastepaper basket. ‘He didn’t try to burn the place down, either,’ she jibed. ‘Better smarten up, Murray. Your four o’clock appointment’s here.’

  Gavin Mullane was something indescribably minor in the Miscellaneous Workers. His father had been the area’s Lower House MP for longer than anyone could remember, and it had long been agreed within the faction that when he eventually fell backward on his parliamentary superannuation Sonny Jim would succeed him. I made myself respectable and went out to greet him, ‘Great to see you, Gavin,’ I said and took the poor bastard next door for a coffee. Behind his back as we passed Trish made a repetitive stroking gesture, thumb and forefinger touching at the tips.

  Young Gavin had grown up in the shadow of his father, an experience that had left him damp. The family tendency was to thin lips, Presbyterian noses, and the kind of unflinching worthiness that could put a doorknob into a coma. The fact that Junior still lived with his parents, though well into his thirties, was perfectly understandable. I could see them sitting around together, reading Hansard and listening to the wireless. Gavin let me buy the coffee without offering to pay.

  The idea of dynastic succession among the Labor aristocracy was an affront to my democratic sensibilities, but in Mullane’s case I could see its merits. To pass the time until his inheritance arrived, the heir apparent was serving his political apprenticeship as councillor for the north ward of Coburg. Even within the sorry milieu of local government he displayed such a conspicuous lack of talent that it was universally agreed that the sooner he went elsewhere the better. All the way to the back benches of the state legislature if necessary.

  Eventually nature would take its course. Mullane senior and his ageing cronies would die off, and the young dauphin would be despatched to the tumbrels. But right now there was no point in rubbing Daddy up the wrong way. Besides which, the old man kept his ear pretty close to the ground in the party room. And who knows what juicy snippets had been dropped at the Mullane family dinner table? On more than one occasion Junior had inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Mullane waited until Ciccio brought the coffees, then bent gravely across the table. ‘Somebody’s going to be killed,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

  I froze in mid-sip.

  ‘The way they come down that hill, it’s only a matter of time before there’s blood on the street.’

  With relief I realised Mullane was merely peddling his current pet project, a personal campaign for the installation of a pedestrian crossing at Edwardes Lake, a splotch of recreational water bang in the middle of his council ward.

  ‘You reckon you could hassle Charlene to hassle the Minister for Transport to hassle his department to hassle the Road Traffic Authority, ASAP?’

  ‘No hassle,’ I said. ‘At least not from Charlene’s point of view. She’s behind you 150 per cent on this.’

  In fact Charlene wouldn’t go near the Minister for Transport with a twelve-foot Croatian. And she and the Treasurer had already privately agreed that in an area already so adequately resourced infrastructure-wise, road funding would be better directed to pressing community development and social justice issues—such as capital construction costs of the Carboni Club.

  ‘The problem will be getting it past those pen-pushing pricks in Transport,’ I warned, conjuring up an elaborate map of the decision-making process. ‘But give her the bullets,’ I said, ‘and Charlene will fire them.’

  Mullane proceeded to crap on about traffic density ratios while I waited for a chance to change the subject. ‘Heard this talk about an early election?’

  ‘I’m sure the leadership has the matter well in hand,’ Mullane said primly. A tendency to mouth platitudes was another family trait he had inherited early.

  ‘Angelo Agnelli reckons early December.’

  Mullane opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and snapped his teeth shut. His was a face not well suited to deception. His jaw worked overtime. Something was trying hard not to burst out. ‘I’m not big on idle speculation.’ He pushed his chair out and stood up. ‘Practical issues, that’s what concerns me. Things that are important in people’s daily lives, traffic safety for one.’

  I headed him off before he started in again. ‘Couldn’t agree more, Gavin.’

  When we shook hands and Mullane turned away, he had the look of a man whose team is six goals up at three-quarter time, a man more pleased with himself than any paltry assurances about some stupid fucking zebra crossing warranted.

  By now it was four-thirty, more than five hours since Ayisha and Gezen had disappeared on me. I rang the League. A heavily accented male answered, one of their volunteer workers, I guessed. Ayisha was not here, he told me. Nor was Sivan. I left my home address and phone number with a message for either of them to call me urgently. It was a painful process of careful enunciation, slow spelling and double checking. Even then I wasn’t entirely sure I’d been understood.

  The agenda papers still needed collating, and in barely ten minutes I would need to leave to pick Red up. I sweet-talked Trish into helping me, a gesture towards restoring workplace harmony. She locked the front door and I laid the piles of pages out across the reception area floor, passing the finished sets to Trish to staple together. We were just getting up a head of steam when there was a tap on the front window.

  Herb Gardiner was outside on the footpath, a spry leprechaun, as cheerful as ever. I unlocked the door, but I didn’t ask him in. ‘Just happened to be in the vicinity, son.’ He glanced knowingly towards Trish and gave me a wink.

  You get some of these retired or near-retired guys with too much time on their hands. They start looking for an interest. The last thing I needed was the old goat taking me under his wing. ‘I’m pretty busy right now, Herb,’ I told him.

  He eyed the pages on the floor and dropped his voice. ‘That
your report?’

  I shook my head warily, not in the mood for any more confidential revelations of shenanigans at Pacific Pastoral. Gardiner lingered, looking for something to say. He seemed to be expecting me to speak first. It occurred to me that he’d had second thoughts about his comments on the prevalence of pilfering at Coolaroo. Nobody wants to go down in the books as a dobber. He checked out Trish to see if she could hear us. She was noisily punching staples into completed agenda sets. ‘What you said,’ he started.

  I got there ahead of him. ‘My report only covers the industrial situation,’ I said. ‘Anything else, I can be relied on to keep to myself.’

  This confirmed what Gardiner was waiting to hear. ‘Right you are, then, son,’ he said. ‘You’re calling the shots.’ Then he paused pregnantly, expecting me to continue.

  What else was there to say? I was tempted to ask him if he knew Memo Gezen. From what he’d said before about the ethnics keeping to themselves, I thought it unlikely. And even if he did, what useful information could he possibly have?

  Gardiner kept glancing towards Trish, then taking little steps backwards, as if to draw me outside. I didn’t have time for this kind of chit-chat. If I didn’t get away soon, Red would be left standing in the schoolyard all alone, frightened he’d been left there all night. ‘Back at work yet?’ I said, clearly a concluding remark.

  ‘Crack of dawn tomorrow,’ he said. An idea seemed suddenly to occur to him. ‘The reason I dropped in, that roof of yours. That builder mate of mine says he can nip around tonight, take a look. You going to be home?’ He said this quite loudly so Trish could hear.