“I’m not into real estate, sorry.” He turns to walk away.
“Me neither. I have a good few medicinal patrons in my location.”
He stops and shoots me a smile. I try not to stare at his rotting yellow-and-brown teeth. “Where is your location, mate?”
“Redfern.”
His eyes narrow. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“I don’t think so.”
He takes a deep breath. “I got weed, hash, ice, all kinds of uppers and downers. It’s good Aussie weed, I know the growers, from Griffith.” He pauses. “What do you need?”
“I’ll take your weed to start with.”
“How much you want?”
“How much will two thousand dollars buy?”
“A suitcase will set you back two. That’s for twenty kilos. It’ll retail for four after you rebag it.”
We have an agreement within a minute. I’ll bring two thousand, he’ll bring a full suitcase. He wants to meet that night at one a.m. in the cul-de-sac at the back of the Chippendale brewery. Oh shit.
He walks away, didn’t drink his beer, not one sip, leaves it on the bar. He waves at Slim and is through the double glass doors in double-quick time.
I call Lynchie straightaway to bring him up to speed.
“So you want to meet with him, do the deal?”
“Fuck yeah!”
“Okay, just asking. You reckon he’ll be alone?”
“My feeling is yes, but I’m not ruling anything out. This bloke works for the Griffith families. He can’t fuck up.”
“But he might only be interested in your cash with no trade... freelance.”
“That occurred to me too.”
“And two thousand dollars is chicken feed, surely.”
“Yeah.”
Lynchie goes into cop mode: “Okay, I’m gonna get there early, about eleven, and blend into the end of the street. And I’m gonna sign for a pump-action, just in case. I’m not fucking around with this bloke.”
It’s after one a.m. I caught four hours of sleep and now I’m standing at the corner of the Chippendale cul-de-sac under a streetlamp. I see Cowboy coming toward me wheeling a big tourist-style suitcase. I nod as he gets closer, then I walk up into the alley. I look at the pile of trash at the end of the lane where Lynchie is hidden, nothing suspicious there. Cowboy stops ten paces from me.
“You got the two thousand?”
“Yeah, it’s right here.” I pull a bulging envelope from my coat as Cowboy steps away from the suitcase.
“Put it on the case,” he says.
I move the few paces to the case slowly, not taking my eyes off him. Immediately as I place the money on the case, he lunges at me with a steel pipe in both hands, gripping it like a baseball bat. The sucker punch. First swing, he breaks my arm as I shield my face. I fall. I yell. He is quick to belt me on my shoulder and up the side of my face. He belts me again on my neck. Fuck, I’ve had it here! I think, or maybe I say it.
“You cunt!”
He runs at me with the pipe over one shoulder. I can only put both arms up to shield my head and kick at him, then BLAM! The whole alley gets lit up from the explosion rushing down the barrel of Lynch’s shotgun. BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Cowboy falls to one side midstride; his chest is ripped open and blood gushes through his shirt. I pass out.
Next I’m being treated by medics. The alley is filled with police cars and lit by their headlights plus the red, blue, and whites rotating, plus an ambulance and coroner’s van. Lynchie is sitting on the ground, spent. He is being interviewed by cops.
I call out, “It was a justified kill.” I say this over and over. “It was a justified kill.” I’m in shock. “A justified kill.”
It is around two a.m. and dark behind the old Chippendale brewery, back to normal. It is simply a dangerous place to be at night. The same goes for most other cul-de-sacs in the aboriginal enclave of Redfern at night. Black.
Chinaman’s Beach
by P. M. Newton
Mosman
A text message: WE MUST TALK. COME TO MY HOME. NOW. PLEASE.
It’s the please that stands out.
The old man never says please. You’ve spent a lifetime lifting rocks just to see what crawls out, cramped nights in cars watching the windows of his house, afternoons following him round the bookmakers’ ring at Randwick, pressing up behind him, so close you can hear the click of his tongue when he settles on a bet, and yet you’ve never heard him say please. Not once. Not to anyone.
I sit at the traffic lights and stare at my phone. That please sits mute and strange. A horn blast from the rear tells me the lights have changed. A slow grind forward, but we don’t go far. The rat run past Military Road on a Saturday morning is as choked with traffic as the main road. I come to a halt, still sandwiched between a Range Rover and the horn-happy bald bloke in an iridescent-red convertible. Sunlight catches Mr. Convertible’s Ray-Bans, classic Aviators of course, and bounces off the helmet of perfect blond hair on the woman next to him.
I know what I should do. Call it in. That’d be the sensible, proper course of action. I even snap to my contacts, scroll through, and hover, but then I let the phone drop back into my lap.
Almost make it to the bottom of Spit Road before the bridge goes up. Nothing for it but to switch off the ignition and wait. The deck swings open. The tips of masts glide through the gap. All those oversized yachts heading out for a day’s racing on the harbor. Never into boats, the old man. Middle Harbour Yacht Club almost on his doorstep and he’d never spent a cent buying friends and status down here among the deck-shoe mob. That’s what racehorses were for. A more forgiving crowd at the track. More fluid. Punt up, pay up. Buy fast horses. Win big races. And watch the doors fly open all over this town.
Great place to give your money a tub too. The track, that is. A rich man once likened yacht racing to standing under a cold shower tearing up hundred-dollar bills. The track and the bookmakers, well, they’re a lot kinder to money that might have a bit of dirt under its nails.
The Saturday Spit Road traffic inches down the hill to merge and crawl across the bridge. High sandstone and scrub to my right, a deadly drop down to blue water on the left. A crane, tall enough to build an office tower, rests on a platform of concrete just off the footpath. It lowers the makings of a new harborside palace down the escarpment like a big metal bird lining a big metal nest. Cost of a suburban Sydney apartment right there just in the tool hire. Weekend rates too.
The switchback off Parriwi, past large old houses with larger leafy gardens, safely enclosed behind walls of stones and security cameras, runs down to Cyprian and into McLean. The road cuts back and forth, revealing glimpses of tennis courts, pools, rockeries, and ferns.
The old man had gone for something more classic than a glass-and-pile shard clinging to the side of a cliff. A big house, behind a big electric gate, at the end of a cul-de-sac. I like to think I sent him here. The old mansion in Balmoral was where I’d sat outside and watched him from my car as he’d go from room to room, shuttering the blinds against me. He’d been well-settled there in Balmoral. Christmas drinks with the neighbors by invitation only, grudging respect turning to abject envy once they spied the jade, the silk rugs, the museum-worthy antiques. Hard-earned, that respect. I’d chipped away at it. Evidence to various commissions, the ones that compel you to talk then lock you up for lying but rarely, oh so rarely, ever charge anyone with the dirt that gets uncovered. Reputation ruiners, coupled with the odd drop of gossip to a hungry journo. Auto-da-fé by headline. No smoke without fire. The RSVPs dwindled. And then the old man who never said please sold up and moved.