The Birthday Present
by Mandy Sayer
Kings Cross
Frank lived in a dive in Kings Cross filled with junkies and prostitutes. Three stories high and about a hundred years old, this hotel was either rented by the week, or by the half hour, depending on your requirements. Frank had rented room 11 for as long as he could remember, because he worked as a courier for the neighboring strip joints and clubs. Now in his midsixties, he’d done the same job for almost half a century, and was ready to pass the business on.
Frank rose at about five p.m., as he did most afternoons, and showered and shaved in the shared bathroom — a mold-furred cubicle with leaking taps and a dedicated sharps bin. Back in his own room, he dressed in his best suit — the one he reserved for funerals and court appearances. His only son, Jimmy, was turning eighteen today.
He checked the duffel bag in the wardrobe, which contained thirty-four grand in cash. Frank locked the wardrobe and shoved his revolver into his inside coat pocket. As he opened the door, he glanced again at the eviction notice lying on the floor: the Astoria had been sold to a foreign company and all tenants had to vacate the premises by the end of the week. The word on the street was that it was going to be renovated into multimillion-dollar apartments.
He stepped out onto the footpath. The neon sign from a bar across the road blinked erratically. A siren wailed in the distance. In the old days, the locals had called them “Kings Cross lullabies.” And back then he used to deliver chicken dinners and hamburgers to all the hungry strippers on eight-hour shifts stuck in joints along the Golden Mile. Now, most of the clubs had shut down due to 1:30 a.m. lockout laws. These days the only orders he received from working girls were for ice and Ecstasy.
He was to meet his son at an old haunt farther along the Golden Mile, at a restaurant that had once belonged to his first boss, Lionel Silke, the former King of the Cross. Everyone around town knew that Silke had earned his title by bribing cops, blackmailing politicians, and dealing smack. His nickname had been Sir Untouchable. Frank remembered that at the height of his fame, Silke had owned five strip clubs, as well as twelve nightclubs, six restaurants, and three illegal gambling dens. He’d also bought up a high-class brothel.
Frank strolled south down Darlinghurst Road, weaving between the scores of suited professionals pouring out of the train station on their way home from work. Most of them were carrying briefcases and muttering into headsets, not watching where they were walking, and bumping into each other. These were the kind of people who would move into his hotel, once it had been turned into slick apartments. Farther down, outside McDonald’s, Frank saw a big-breasted blonde in her late sixties wearing thigh-high boots. Doris had kept an eye on him when he’d first come to the Cross, and had once given him a spirited blow job in a darkened doorway of Kellett Lane. Doris didn’t drink or take drugs; the only times she was forced to work the streets were when she ran up too many gambling debts. Frank picked up his pace and rushed toward her — a friendly face from an easier time. But when he got closer he realized the woman wasn’t Doris at all — just a grandmother with a beehive hairdo, holding a baby in her arms.
Frank crossed the road. All his mates were now dead or in jail. There were only two or three hookers left on the street, and they were just weepy teenage girls who lived under the railway bridge down the hill in Woolloomooloo. The joint that used to be the Pink Pussycat had been renovated into a homewares store, the former sex toy shop next to it was now selling scented candles and lead light lanterns.
Through the restaurant window, he could see Jimmy sitting at the front table, clutching a can of VB, gazing out at the passing parade. Father and son locked eyes and briefly waved to each other. Jimmy had been the unintended consequence of a conjugal visit at Silverwater when Frank had been doing time. The kid had grown up with his mother, in a government flat in the coastal town of Wollongong. She was a woman who preferred rough trade in the form of men who were doing time. Jimmy was a tall, pale-skinned boy with rounded shoulders, who always looked as if he’d just been punched in the gut and was still striving to catch his breath.
Frank opened the door and they shook hands. “Happy birthday, son,” he said, motioning to the waiter. Every year they did this — celebrated Jimmy’s birth — while the mother had the son at Christmas and Easter. Frank whispered an order over the bar and sat down at the booth. In the sixties, the restaurant had been filled with dark wood furniture and had served heavy Italian food; today it was a minimalist white box with a blackboard menu featuring something called “Truffle Foam.”
He took his phone from of his pocket, turned it off, and rested it on the table. “So, how’s your mother?” he asked. He automatically took out a cigarette, remembered the new antismoking laws had just come into effect, and, sighing heavily, slid it back into its pack.
Jimmy shrugged and replied, “Or’right.”
Frank saw the kid was wearing tracky-daks. Well, that was the first thing that would have to change. And he’d have to learn to speak properly. No one in this town respected a mumbler. Or a man who couldn’t look another man straight in the eye. If nothing else, Lionel Silke had taught him that.
The champagne arrived in a silver bucket and the waiter poured them two fizzing glasses. From the blackboard menus they ordered organic pizzas topped with homemade goat cheese. Frank toasted the kid’s birthday and they both began to drink. They made small talk until the food arrived and then ate in silence.
Frank wiped his mouth with a serviette and drained his glass. “Son,” he said, “now that you’re all grown up, there’s something I need to tell you...”
Jimmy stopped chewing and met his father’s eye. “Is it about Mum?”
Frank shook his head. “No, it’s about family. My side of the family.”
Jimmy sat back and fingered the stem of his glass, waiting for him to continue.
Frank gazed through the window, watching a small package exchange hands outside the railway station. “You know it was my older sister Nell who got me my first job up here in the Cross?”
Jimmy looked at him blankly and shook his head.
“She was an exotic dancer in a few of the clubs. She worked with snakes.”
Jimmy’s eyes widened.
“And it was her idea to have someone deliver takeaway food to strippers in the clubs. I worked for tips. And boy — were they generous.”
From a passing waiter Frank ordered two shots of whiskey and asked for the bill. He explained to Jimmy that when he’d first started the business, he’d been only fifteen. Within a month or so, working every night of the week, he’d made enough money to move out of his mum’s home.
His single mother had three other kids to raise and was happy to have one less mouth to feed. Soon young Frank had set himself up in an attic room on Victoria Street, two blocks from the Golden Mile, while Nell lived on her own in a posh apartment on Macleay Street. It was the late sixties and the Cross was crawling with American servicemen on R&R from Vietnam.
The bill and the whiskeys arrived and again Frank reached for his cigarettes. “It was all going along hunky dory. Business was good.” He downed his shot and Jimmy followed. “Even Lionel Silke got me working for him. Running errands and shit like that.”