The policeman shook his head slowly and his smile was as cold and cheerless as a Baptist chaplain. The second cop moved in behind Salmon to do some shepherding.
‘You’ve got it wrong, Harvey,’ the bag man said. ‘We wanted the money and no one wanted the names. No one wants you either.’
The other cop nudged Salmon. ‘Come on.’
‘No!’ Salmon spun around desperately and looked across the room at me. ‘Help me!’
The cop swung the bag in his hand and smiled again. ‘He’s done all he can. Harvey Salmon’s flown to Rio. Come on.’
Salmon sagged and one of them grabbed him and held on hard. I sat there with an empty gun in my pocket and five hundred dollars in my crotch and watched them leave the room.
Three days later I sat in the home of my friend, Detective Sergeant Frank Parker, and told him about it. The telling took a bottle of wine and set up a strong craving for one of Frank’s cigarillos. I fought the craving; no sense losing all the battles. Frank listened and nodded several times while he smoked and poured the wine.
‘It’s pretty neat.’ he said when I finished. ‘Must’ve been a lot of money in that bag?’
‘Where would that have come from d’you reckon?’
Frank leaned back and blew smoke up over my head. ‘Let’s see, I’d say it would have been grateful contributions from people Salmon had kept quiet about. Mind you,’ he gave me the sort of smile you give when you read a politician’s obituary, ‘that’s not to say that some of their names wouldn’t have been on the final list he was going to hand over.’
‘Jesus. I still don’t feel good about watching him being carted away to be cancelled.’
‘Nothing you could do. Describe the man in charge, Cliff.’
‘Big,’ I said. ‘Six one or two; heavy but with a lot of muscle; smart suit; fresh everything-shave, haircut, the lot. Looked like he’d still be good at breaking heads and that he learned not to say “youse” and “seen” for “saw” not so long ago.’
Frank nodded and drew in smoke. ‘He’s an Armed Robbery “D”. Henry “Targets” Skinner. His turn’ll come.’
‹‹Contents››
Tearaway
‘He’s a tearaway, Cathy,’ I said. ‘You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. The best thing you could do would be to forget him. Get out of Sydney; go to Queensland. Kevin’s caused you enough misery for a lifetime, it’s all he’s good at.’
‘He never hurt anybody,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Never. Not anyone!’
‘Just luck. He carried a gun-he pointed it, he never fired it but that’s just a matter of luck. One split second can change all that and make him a murderer. That’s still on the cards.’
I thought I had to be hard on her, but it turned out I was too hard. She’d come to me for help; she tramped up the dirty stairs and down the gloomy corridor and knocked on my battered door and all I’d done was cause her to drop her head onto my desk and cry buckets. I never did have much tact-a private detective doesn’t use it much-but this wouldn’t do. I came around the desk and gave her a tissue and made her sit up and swab down. Her boyfriend, Kevin Kearney had broken out a police van two days before. Kev and his three mates were on their way to their trial for armed robbery. One of them was shot dead twenty feet from the van; Kevin and the other two had got away. He hadn’t contacted Cathy which was probably the first good turn he’d done her.
When she’d stemmed the flow and got a cigarette going, Cathy filled me in on the shape and structure of her distress.
‘He got word out to me that he was going to run. I got a car and some money and we were going…’, she stopped and looked at me hesitantly.
‘Call it Timbuktu, Cathy,’ I said. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Well, I heard about the break on the news. Christ, I nearly died when they said one of them’d been shot. But…’
The cigarette wavered in her hand and she looked ready to cry again.
‘It wasn’t Kev,’ I said gently. ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all. He didn’t come-no phone call, nothing.’
‘I read about it. The cops say they’ve got no leads.’
She flicked ash; she was perking up a bit. ‘Same here.’ She opened her bag and took out a roll of notes and put them on the desk.
‘Nine hundred bucks. It’s the money we were going to shoot through on. Kev’d beat the shit out of me if he knew what I was doing, but I want you to find him.’
I looked at the money, thinking a lot but not saying anything. Cathy stubbed her cigarette out in an ashtray alongside the cash.
‘Look, he’s guilty, he’ll get-what? Ten years? He’ll serve-what? Six? That’s not too bad. I can wait. On the run he’s likely to get killed, and then I’d kill myself.’ She grinned at me, finally showing some of the spark that made her one of the most popular whores in Glebe. ‘You’d be saving two lives, Cliff.’
I grinned at her. ‘When you put it like that, how can I refuse? But seriously, Cathy, it’s bloody dangerous. Harbouring’s a serious charge. One of them’s dead, the cops won’t really mind if they take out another couple.’
‘I know. Just do what you can. He might’ve decided it was safer to go another way, he could be clear. I just want to know something.’
‘All right.’ I took the money; I didn’t have any qualms about the way it had been earned-hell, I’d worked for doctors and lawyers; all manner of professional people.
‘Where do you start?’ Cathy said.
‘With whoever it was gave you the nod about Kevin’s break.’
That pulled her up short-it touched on the code of Cathy’s world: don’t name names, don’t describe faces, don’t take cheques. I waited while she lit up again.
‘No way around it, love. It’s the only way in.’
‘Kevin wouldn’t like it,’ she blew smoke in a thin, nervous stream. ‘Well, it was Dave Follan.’
She told where and when Follan drank, which was better than getting his address. I told her I’d stay in touch with her and report everything I learned straightaway. She came around the desk on her high heels, put her behind in its tight denim on the desk, leaned forward to give me the cleavage and kissed me on the cheek.
‘That’s like having fish fingers at Doyle’s.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. I’ll do what I can, Cathy. But I tell you one thing, you contact me if Kevin gets in touch with you. I don’t want him wandering around with the wrong ideas about me.’
‘He’s a sweet guy really.’
‘Yeah.’
She left and I leaned back in my chair and thought about Cathy and Kevin. I’d known them both in Glebe since they were kids. Kevin wagged school, stole things and played reserve grade football where he learned to drink and fight. I saw him play for
Balmain a few times; I saw him in a police line-up and then I saw him in a car that belonged to someone else. I was working for the someone else at the time, so I had a talk to Kevin. His ideas about property were loose; he was apologetic but unfussed about the car. I took it away, and we parted with mutual respect.
Cathy’s path to the game was the usual one-good looks, lazy parents, bored teachers, boring schools, no skills, good times. She was at it by fifteen, and nine years later the marks on her were plain. Cathy had seen and touched it all; raw life and death had pushed and shoved her. She’d pushed back with good humour and a generous heart and very little else. She once told me she’d never read a book, and had watched TV for seventy-two hours straight when she was stoned. Her pimp-who I didn’t know was a pimp at the time-hired me to protect him from another pimp. It all got messy and I ended up protecting Cathy. Then she met Kevin and he took over all the work.
When you want information about crims, talk to the cops, and vice versa. They spend half their lives on the phone to each other. I called Frank Parker and asked him what he’d heard about the escapee Kevin Vincent Kearney.
‘Not a thing.’
‘His best girl’s anxious.’
‘So she should be. Is she willing to help us catch him before he does something silly?’