I take another look at the woman and ask her, “What do you want?”
She stares at the old man. The gun propped between her thighs, barrel centered on his body mass. It strikes me that I’ve never heard her say a word. Even the rare occasions we bugged the office or the car. Not a sound. Maybe she doesn’t speak English.
“I want him to pay.”
Her voice is calm. Unaccented, stripped of emotion. Translucent. But I recognize myself in the eyes that meet mine. We can do business.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
“Please, detective, we will take my car, I think it is a little safer. There are certain design features, you understand.” The old man trying to keep control.
The woman gets to her feet and gestures toward her son. The old man takes hold of the suitcases, places them into a small elevator. She prods him with the gun until he steps in. The doors close and we look each other in the eye.
I wonder if she recognizes me. The stalker in the car across the road. The cop with the warrant who turned up on their wedding anniversary. I’ve grown old watching them. Maybe she doesn’t recognize me at all.
I almost tell her. Right then. Just the two of us, as the elevator takes the old man and his son down into the garage. I almost tell her what he did. And why I couldn’t — can’t — stop. But he’s sent it back up; the doors open and we step in. The hand with the gun drops down at her side. I make no move to disarm her.
The Mercedes fills the garage. I’ve tailed it often enough to know it like it’s my own. Tinted windows, bulletproof so the story goes, and bodywork that only hints at the depths of protection.
The old man pops the locks on the Merc, but as he lifts the first suitcase into the boot, his wife fires a shot into the wall behind his left shoulder. She doesn’t flinch. My ears feel like they’re hemorrhaging. The old man swings the bag out again, shuffles to the side of the car, and sets it gently on the backseat, places the second one on top. The woman climbs in alongside, rests one hand on the stained tan hide, and follows her husband’s movements with her gun hand.
The old man slams the boot shut and moves to the driver’s side, stopping to shut his wife’s door. She fires another shot through the gap, vaguely aimed at his feet; it ricochets; the old man skips and jumps, but doesn’t bleed.
“The detective drives.”
The old man climbs into the front passenger side and I slide in behind the wheel, adjust the seat. The engine turns over like a big cat being stroked. The old man rummages for the garage remote. There’s a beep from the backseat and the door opens soundlessly.
We roll out into the sunlight and I accelerate smoothly down the drive. The front gate swings open to another beep from the backseat and McLean Crescent opens up before us, houses to the left, Rosherville Reserve to the right. Barely eleven a.m., croissants and coffee still being dawdled over on the next-door balcony. A dog and kids bounce out of a car and make for the beach. In the park, flush up against the old man’s fence, a fierce game of cricket breaks out between a bunch of big blokes with tattoos. A row of motorbikes line the boundary.
By my right temple, a corner of the driver’s window crystallizes. A fine webbed tracery appears as if by magic in the dark glass, a complex mosaic of radiance and black.
No sound but the crack of bat against ball, or a sniper rifle with a suppressor from among the trees on the other side of the park.
I brake.
The old man touches me gently on the forearm. “The bulletproofing on this car is very good. It’s working as it should.”
I release the central locking, lean across him, and open his door.
“I needn’t detain you any longer. Your wife, unfortunately, I’ll need to charge with certain firearm offenses, but I think after a medical examination they may not proceed.”
The old man looks at me, unguarded. He forcibly regains control of himself. “What do you mean?” He doesn’t move.
The cricket game in the park is getting rowdy. Howzat!
“Condolences on the loss of your boy. We’ll need a statement but there’s no rush. You, sir, are free to go. Now.”
“You can’t do this. I came to you for protection. I want to speak to someone in charge. I want—”
“I made him call you,” the woman says.
I lean over, unclip his seat belt, and shove. He’s old but he’s strong. He resists. Wraps his fingers around the seat belt.
“I wanted it to be you,” she says, and slides forward in her seat, jabs the muzzle against the old man’s fist, and squeezes the trigger.
The echo of the shot swallows his shriek. He tumbles out onto the driveway.
“I knew you’d know what to do,” she says, letting the acceleration push her back into her seat. I put my foot down. The car door slams shut of its own volition as I power out of the drive.
I see the old man in my rearview mirror, scrambling on all fours across the gravel, tugging to close his gates, the remote in his wife’s hand locking them open. There’s a rumble like thunder as half a dozen Harleys sidle through the gate and I turn my eyes to the road.
McLean sweeps left back into Cyprian. We glide up Parriwi but I don’t stop until we reach Military Road and the safety of the Saturday gridlock.
I turn in my seat to look at the woman. She leans forward and places the gun gently onto the center console. A small patch of her husband’s blood is smeared over her chin. I use my thumb to wipe it off. She reaches out and pushes my hair back behind my ear. Like a mother would.
“I always wanted a daughter,” she says and sits back, her arm draped around her only son.
Good Bloke
by Peter Doyle
Edgecliff
It was the usual thing: nine in the morning, Di settled behind the reception rostrum at New Beginnings Self-Care Center, the ambient playlist (Celtic harp today) murmuring in the background, a crystal wineglass of chilled Pellegrino with a sprig of mint and a slice of lemon. At thirtysomething, or maybe forty, Di looked healthy and elegant — balanced, you might say — and not like she had to work at it.
New Beginnings took up three rooms on the top floor in the rear of Riga House, a squat blue-gray box on noisy New South Head Road, opposite Edgecliff Station, which may have been a smart address once, back in the days of brown pebblecrete and white stucco, but nowadays, as the real estate guy had said, it was all about affordability. Di had opted for the second-most affordable suite in the place, nearly at the end of the corridor, beyond Competitive Dentistry and LaMarque Depilations but not as far back as the mysterious Just in Time Credit Solutions. Right opposite her was the frosted-glass door of Good Bloke Labor and Logistical. Contract laborers, warehousing services. The business, if you could call it that, run by Justin, her ex. A whole other story.
Despite the general seediness, Di had done the best she could with New Beginnings — potted palms and silk grass, a nice lounge, a small, not-tacky fountain, and simple consultation rooms at the back. The way she had it, she could sit at reception and do her work, see the customers coming down the hall, and have a nice smile ready for them before they even noticed her there.
When she’d arrived that morning, Timmy had been skulking near the lift doors, chatting with her two practitioners, hired just for the day. Charming them. He’d given Di his lost-boy grin. The lank hair over one eye, tat-shop leather coat with frayed lining trailing halfway down his thigh over battered jeans, all made for a nicely achieved vagabond look (or was it bold musketeer?), which worked on her a bit, she had to admit, but not that much. Di had headed straight into New Beginnings, the practitioners, Maddy and Kim, behind her, and in the absence of an invitation to come inside and wait, Timmy had shuffled back into the lift.