‘Bit late for that, love,’ Frank said.
‘I don’t think so. Cliff is… what’s the word? Whacked. But he has to stay awake while you make your calls. He’ll have to contribute something probably. Then he can sleep in Peter’s room.’
What if Peter breezes in from Nepal or Vietnam? I thought. I was losing it, as Sinatra said on his deathbed, but I knew Hilde was right and I accepted a mug of black coffee after she depressed the plunger. I loaded up a slice of the rye bread. ‘You heard her, Frank,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to put you through it but…’
Frank, in his early sixties but still limber from golf, swimming and love, rose from his chair and poured himself coffee. ‘Save me some of those bread and butter cucumbers,’ he said.
That was Frank. What I was asking him to do was to call in favours he’d rather not call in and talk to people he’d rather not talk to. There was no point in going to straight shooters in the federal or state police, Frank was going to talk to some of those others-the bagmen, the fixers, the jokers, as they were known. Frank’s contacts would be mostly retired by now, some voluntarily, some by mutual agreement. But they stayed in touch with the criminal world they’d paddled in for so long. They had to-there were networks of obligation there as well. They went to each other’s funerals, sometimes sporting their Masonic regalia, put condolence notices in the papers, and some genuinely grieved and some breathed sighs of relief.
I sat with Hilde and drank coffee and ate some of the food she’d laid out and we talked about her stints as Third World dental assistant and about Peter, of whom she was very proud.
‘I’m sorry to put Frank through this,’ I said. ‘He’ll hate talking to some of those bastards.’
Hilde nodded. ‘Yes. But in a way he won’t mind too much. He misses it all sometimes. I can tell. I see him going off to golf and I know that it’s a substitute for what was his real life.’
‘You and Peter are his real life.’
‘Yes. I know that and he knows it and that’s what makes it all right. Better than that. Good. But I could feel a… rise in his foot. No, what am I trying to say?’
After so many years in Australia, Hilde’s English is fluent but some things still trip her up.
‘A spring in his step,’ I said.
‘Yes. He is interested. A little bit of this sometimes is better for him than golf and gardening. I hope it’s just a little bit.’
‘It will be.’
We talked about nothing in particular for a while until Frank came back. He had a pad with some notes on it in his hand. ‘I’ll have to eat this when we’re finished. Put it on a piece of bread with ham and pickles.’
‘You are a fool,’ Hilde said.
Frank settled himself and poured some coffee. He added a touch of whisky and consulted the notes. ‘Couldn’t get much on Warren North, which is apparently his real name. Shadowy type. With ASIO for a while, then undercover for the feds. The feeling is he went rogue some time back but still represents himself as official when it suits him. Plausible in the part, they say.’
‘A killer?’
Frank nodded. ‘Rumoured to be. You know what it’s like in that game. More veils than Salome.’
‘No clues as to where he might go for a bolthole, especially with a hostage?’
‘Nothing. But you’ve got a bit lucky on the other side of the street. It’s all a bit vague, but there’ve been rumours of a shipment of heroin coming in and the usual channels being bypassed. And that’s made certain people very unhappy.’
Frank drank his spiked coffee and went quiet. I knew what he was thinking. He hated the bent cops and the semi-bent ones, and especially those who kept their own hands clean while facilitating the dirty work to be done by others. They were paid off, not in money, but in information that allowed them to make certain arrests and claim successes and earn promotions and perks-personal assistants, study tours, legitimate performance increments to their salaries. Frank could probably have gone to the top if he’d played this game but he refused and he hated dealing with those who had played it.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘The name North rang a bell or two and a couple of people are on the lookout for you. It’s going to cost you money.’
‘There’s money’
‘And it could get messy. If this information’s right, North could be regarded as expendable.’
‘He’s killed three people that I know of. I regard him as a waste of space.’
‘Yeah, but you’ll have to put some distance between yourself and him when and if the moment comes. You know what I’m saying, Cliff. You’ve got a few counts against you and there’s people keeping score.’
He was referring to my several licence suspensions and my brief stint in Berrima gaol. I tried for a contrite look.
‘Here’s one of the parts you won’t like. You have to have a meeting with Black Andy Piper. I don’t even like saying his bloody name.’
22
Ex-Chief Inspector Andrew Piper, known as Black Andy, was one of the most corrupt cops ever to serve in New South Wales. He’d risen rapidly through the ranks, a star recruit with a silver medal in the modern pentathlon at the Tokyo Olympics. He was big and good-looking and he had all the credentials-a policeman father, the Masonic connection, marriage to the daughter of a middle-ranking state politician, two children, a boy and a girl. Black Andy had played a few games for South Sydney and boxed exhibitions with Tony Mundine. He’d headed up teams of detectives in various Sydney divisions and the crimes they’d solved were only matched by the ones they’d taken the profits from. His name came up adversely at a succession of enquiries and he eventually retired on full benefits because to pursue him hard would have brought down more of the higher echelon of the force than anyone could handle.
I knew that Frank had had several collisions with him and had come off worse each time. I’d run into him once myself when I was trying to help my client face down a protection racket in the Cross. Black Andy and two of his offsiders had discouraged me to the extent of putting me in hospital for a few days. My client paid up and then sold up.
Frank and I sat silent with our memories.
‘Piper,’ Hilde said. ‘I remember him.’
‘You should,’ Frank said. ‘He put the hard word on you the way he did with every good-looking wife of every policeman.’
‘He had dyed hair,’ Hilde said. ‘And cold eyes.’
Frank sipped coffee that had to be cold by now. ‘That’s him. His hair was as black the day he left as the day he started.’
‘Where and when?’ I said.
Frank suddenly looked weary, as if bad memories and lost causes had tired him. ‘Tomorrow at noon. Greek restaurant opposite the Marrickville RSL.’
‘Does he know where… North is, or where he might be?’
Frank shrugged. ‘The word is that he might, if anyone does. I’d like to go along with you and give him a few kicks to the balls. That’s what he did to you, wasn’t it?’
‘Him and two others.’
‘Time to sleep,’ Hilde said. ‘A kick to the balls never solved anything.’
Peter’s room, still bearing some traces of his presence in the form of books on shelves and rock star posters, was strangely comforting. The three-quarter bed had a secure feel to it, unlike my bed, which somehow always feels as if there should be someone in it with me. As I drifted off I wondered if Peter had ever slept here with a girlfriend. Probably, and with Frank and Hilde’s blessing. Very different in my day… My mind was wandering and I was checking off things that had improved, with painless dentistry at the top of the list.
I slept soundly for a couple of hours and then was wide awake with a mildly buzzing head from the whisky. I dressed and crept around the familiar house in my socks. I drank several glasses of water with three aspirin and sat by the living-room window watching the day come to life. I opened the window and heard the seagulls on the beach and the hum of early morning traffic. I wondered where Lorrie was and what she was seeing and hearing. I knew she was tough, but confinement does strange things to the mind and some people never recover from it.