He shook his head. ‘Wish the missus was here; I could do with a cuppa.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Dead. Month back.’
‘Get on with it, Dave.’
His cigarettes had fallen on the floor and he reached down for them; the effort brought the blood back to his face, and I watched him scramble and wheeze until he had one lit. ‘Big job on, of course. Interstate money.’
‘Where from?’
‘North. Kevin and the others are gonna do it. Cost money to get ‘em out.’
‘Why them?’
‘It’s a fuckin’ cowboy job, that’s why. You’d have to be bloody desperate to try it. They’ll have other guns on ‘em while they re doin’ it. I picked that up by accident, wasn’t supposed to.’
‘Where and what?’
He sucked on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. ‘I don’t know, that’s the truth.’
He could have been lying, it was impossible to say; he was going to lie at some point, I was sure of that.
‘Why the message to Cathy?’
‘That was a blind; Kevin reckoned she’d get a car and get some dough together. The cops’d watch her and he could stay outa sight-keep clear of her.’
‘Where?’
‘Don’t know.’
That was all I’d get from him, I knew. We were manoeuvring each other; he’d said enough to make it not worthwhile for me to blow him to his principals; but if the worst happened and he had to front them he could claim he hadn’t sung the whole song. They might leave him a toe.
I pulled on my jacket and shoved the gun in under my arm. ‘I’ve got you by the balls, Dave. I can drop you in it with the cops or the other side. You know that?’
He nodded. ‘Why would you?’
‘I wouldn’t need a reason. Last thing-give me the number at the Bellevue. That’s it, just three little words.’
‘Five oh six.’
‘I thank you. You’re on your own now, Dave. You’d better play it by ear.’
If you’ve got the room number, fifty dollars will get you the name of any hotel resident in the city. Room 506 at the Bellevue was occupied by a Mr Carpenter of Southport. My informant, who arranged transport for the guests and did a stint on the desk, threw in for free a physical description and that Mr Carpenter would be leaving the hotel at 10 a.m. the following day. He was new at the job-he could have negotiated that into another twenty.
The example of Dave Follan turned me off drinking for the night. I went to a film that tried to make me cry; it didn’t, but it could have. I walked up through Hyde Park to Darlinghurst to drink coffee worth walking that far for. The blocking of the streets has caused the girls to move to William Street where they seemed to be crowding each other a little. In Darlinghurst you do it in a terrace bedroom rather than the back seat of a car, but it’s the same thing. I thought about Cathy who made calls and went out to dinner more these days, but that’s the same too.
Ten o’clock found me illegally parked and alert outside the Bellevue Hotel. Carpenter was easy to spot-a beefy, florid guy wearing a beige safari suit that might have cost five hundred bucks but still looked like a rag. He put two sizable suitcases into a new Falcon wagon and we were off. My ancient Falcon followed the new model like a discarded bull trying to keep up with the new leader of the herd.
The drive wasn’t far and wasn’t scenic. The Falcon pulled up outside a blighted-looking terrace house in Enmore on the Newtown side. It was as unneighbourly a house as you’ll see around there-on a corner, with an empty factory next door and the railway across the street. The house was a grimy, crumbling hulk, but it had one big advantage-you could get away from it in at least four different directions, and one route, by the tunnel under the railway, would take care of a pursuing car.
One of the plusses for my car is that it can look abandoned. I sat in it, hunched down, about four houses and two rusty galvanised iron fences away and watched the house. Two kids who should have been at school wandered past and looked incuriously at me. A dog helped things along by pissing casually against the front wheel, rubbing himself briefly on the tyre and ambling off. After a while a car pulled up outside the house, two men alighted and went inside. Pretty soon they all came out: Carpenter, the two new arrivals and three other men, one of whom was Kevin Kearney.
Kevin had grown a beard, lost weight and dyed his hair three shades darker, but his cocky walk, compensating for the fact that he was only five foot six, and the aggressive set of his shoulders was unmistakable. The party split up between the wagon and the car with Kevin riding separately from Carpenter. I had a moment’s worry, but it passed-the cars followed the same route.
We drove in convoy to Five Dock. They pulled up within sight of the Great Western Highway intersection at a place where the canal goes under the road and there is a wide dividing strip and big grassy stretches on either side of the road. Houses are few and back where the priorities of highway and park have pushed them. I drove on and took a turn after the canal so that I could come back on the other side of the water and watch the group safely from pretty close quarters. The two parties coalesced, then split again. Carpenter and Kearney went towards the highway; Carpenter looked to be talking fast. The others broke into two pairs and moved around on opposite sides of the road. The two men who’d arrived later in Enmore went up a grassy bank to a high point above the road. A concrete bridge crossed another loop of the canal up there and they stood by it, looking down at the road and Kevin’s two mates who smoked, glanced up and down the road and looked anxious.
Carpenter and Kearney joined them and Kevin did some nodding. Where they stood was a collection of yellow and black striped council gear-uprights, reflector lamps, long wooden bars-just the stuff for traffic diversion and road blocking. Carpenter turned and looked at the two by the bridge and Kevin’s eyes followed his.
The two hill climbers came back down, the smokers stamped out their butts and everyone climbed aboard again for the ride back to Enmore. Carpenter’s car peeled off and headed towards the city but Kevin and his mates were delivered safely home just as the westbound 12.45 rattled past their front door.
I was pushing my luck by trailing the other pair once they’d deposited the fugitives, but I risked it. They drove to Annandale and disappeared into a trucking yard. The sign on the fence said that interstate and international freight was handled there. The curious thing was that I had a sense of having picked up a tail myself on this run. I tested the feeling around an Annandale block or two, but I was either wrong or it dropped off. It was something else to think about on the way back to Glebe for a late lunch and a very late drink.
Some of it wasn’t hard to understand. The job was a hi-jack with no honour among thieves. Kevin and the boys were going to be under surveillance; Carpenter was putting up the money. Three things were unknown: what the cargo was, why Follan had called it a ‘cowboy’ operation and why Kevin hadn’t been in touch with Cathy. She wasn’t green; she would probably have driven the prime mover for Kevin if he’d asked her. The biggest question of all was-what was I going to do about it?
The first move was to get in touch with Kevin, and I didn’t fancy doing that by driving up to the door. I sent him a telegram-to the name Kevin Vincent at the address in Enmore. I asked him to phone me and to keep everything under his hat; Kevin’d like that-there was an old-fashioned streak in him. His call came at a bit after five.
‘Haven’t seen you for a bit, Cliff. Have you still got all your hair, boy?’
‘Yes, Kevin. And your phoney brogue’s as bad as ever. But I’ll play along-why do you ask?’
‘Because you’ve got a lot to keep under your own bloody hat and I wondered if there’d be the room, like?’
‘Knock it off, Kevin. You’re about to do something very silly.’