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To most, Wollongong was a holiday town on the south coast of New South Wales, replete with a golden chain of surf beaches, cafes, eateries, and a thriving shopping district. To me, ‘The Gong’ hid a thriving criminal underbelly, much like the 1986 David Lynch film, Blue Velvet. The place was a veritable melting pot of volatile ethnicities: Macedonian, Greek, Yugoslavian, Lebanese, and Italian, all vying for their piece of the underworld. Fringe properties housed makeshift meth labs, and cannabis crops thrived in the dense rain forest escarpment.
It was a place of heavy industry with lots of port activity, and during the post war years the promise of manufacturing work enticed European men to emigrate, my Nonna being one of them. In recent times, local journalists reported the shootings of local criminal figures with ties to the Balkan mafia. Positioned between Sydney and Melbourne, The Gong was an ideal location for the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. Dealers sold to the white-collar crowd in Sydney, and supplied the growing lower socio-economic users on the far south coast.
In the minimal Friday morning traffic, I thought about the impending machinations I’d have to go through to get a week off from my boss.
Reggie Cash—surely, that wasn’t his real name—was a decent boss. My instinct told me he’d fled the U.S., maybe running from a tax fraud charge, and had fled to Australia to cover his tracks. He married an Aussie, and now considered himself an Aussie by proxy. I didn’t care about his troubles—as long as they didn’t affect me.
I had two insurance cases that needed closure, but I needed to act on Rob’s murder case immediately.
Spying and filming people who were going about their daily business, when they were supposed to have severe back injuries, was fun and interesting work, yet living in my car for endless hours was giving me back problems. Waiting for someone to emerge from their house only held its charm for so long, and was beginning to get tiresome. Recently, I’d started second-guessing my choice to take on private investigative work. I’d received accolades from those agencies that recognised excellent work in the form of commissions and financial bonuses, before I settled on working exclusively for Reggie.
I drove north on the Princes Highway, took the off ramp at West Wollongong, and eased into the driveway of a drive-thru coffee house. Maybe a caffeine bribe would assist with negotiations.
A variety of girls dressed in black crop tops and short shorts served the row of cars in front of me. A bright-eyed Polynesian girl approached my window with a smile, and tapped my order into her iPad—two tall blacks, hot.
Once armed, I drove to my office at Cash & Messenger on Ralph Black Drive, fifty square meters of industrial office space leased from the council. I eased the car into a small space at the end of the parking lot, and walked through the glass doors into the makeshift offices that once housed an indoor childhood play centre.
I carried the coffees into Reggie’s workspace, the first office on the left. File boxes littered the floor, and his desk was inundated with papers, folders, and an old PC. In the beginning, Reggie had dropped the white pages into my lap and told me to cold call the names in the files. I had, and even built up some trust, but phone work wasn’t my forte. I’d convinced him to hand me those cases no one else wanted, to send me out to housing commission sites, and interview welfare folk trying to make a quid suing rich folk. If a great grandmother fought a corrupt councilman, I’d make it so that she’d win. If some degenerate bogan wanted money for smokes and booze, I’d swing it to keep the status quo. No point taking away from those who had nothing.
Reggie had the habit of jumping out of his seat whenever someone entered his office.
I placed his coffee on a small free space on his desk. ‘Morning, Sunshine.’
He took the cup and swiped his smartphone with his left hand as he took a sip. ‘Jesus wept.’
‘What’s going on, Reg?’
‘The wife dragged me to this baby shower yesterday. Have you seen these fucking things? Do you know what they did? After an hour chatting about baby clothes and outfits, they decided it was time to play a party game. They got these diapers, about ten diapers, right? They melted a spoonful of chocolate into the diaper so it looked like.... You know what I’m saying, right? Then they passed the diaper around, and they had to smell the chocolate and try and guess the flavour of the chocolate.’
His face creased up and he stuck his tongue out. ‘Is that fucked up or what?’
I shrugged. ‘Did you have a go?’
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!’
I laughed.
‘By the way, Reg, we call them ‘nappies’.’
‘Right. ‘Nappies’.’
‘Reggie, something’s come up. My uncle wants me to look into something. It’ll be off the books. I figure it’ll take five days. Tops.’
‘Matty, we’ve got fifty-eight open claims. I can’t have you running off on your own.’
I had trouble with Reggie in the early days. He had the tenacity, either by ignorance or through malevolence, to forget my fortnightly pay. On the first occurrence, I forgave what could’ve been an honest oversight. When my second pay didn’t materialise, negotiations ended when I had Reggie against the wall, my elbow wedged firmly against his neck. Since then, we’ve been on even terms, and the pay’s been consistent.
He had a point, though. I was leaving him in the lurch.
‘What if I close one of O’Donnell’s cases?’ I said.
Garrick O’Donnell, a freelance investigator working out of the same office, worked hard at avoiding work, and his cases tended towards the violent.
Reggie raised his eyebrows. ‘Sure. Okay. How about the Frank Brodie case?’
I sucked air in through my teeth. ‘Frank Brodie, ex-bikie member of the Comancheros who fell out of the gang and tried to go legit. Claiming compensation for a back injury that rings falser than a politician’s promise. Is that the one?’
‘That’s the one. His case file is with Centrelink, but they can’t suspend his compensation payment unless we provide something to the insurer. Garrick says he can’t find Brodie’s property.’
‘Is Brodie still at Robertson?’
Reggie nodded. Robertson was an hour and a half round trip.
‘Tell you what, Reg, if you give me a week off, I’ll close the Brodie case today.’
Reggie checked his watch and scratched his smooth cheek. I’d proved good to my word with Reggie, but the American in him liked hanging it over me.
‘Catch the prick on video, okay? I need it wrapped up before Fair Trading comes back to me with injunctions.’
‘Take a breath. I’ll get it done.’
My office was the smallest one at the far end. I didn’t mind that it had no windows or a door. The small rectangle of carpet consisted of a standard desk and four filing cabinets. I grabbed my camera bag, laptop, and a flash drive, then went into O’Donnell’s office space, found Brodie’s file, and made my way out to my car.
At that moment, I thought about the line from Dirty Harry, in which the young fresh-faced partner asks Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, ‘Why do they call you Dirty Harry?’ Callahan replies, ‘Because I get every dirty job that comes along.’
***
I headed south through Albion Park, took the turn at Jamberoo, and crossed open plains until the road plunged into the familiar rainforest of Macquarie Pass. I slowed to forty, negotiated the steep hairpin turns, and wound my window down to let the fresh smell of the rainforest waft in.
I came out at the top of the escarpment and drove into Robertson, home of The Big Potato, at just after eleven. Using the address details in the case file, I found Brodie’s property, which, contrary to O’Donnell’s claim, had been easy. Located on the western boundary of Robertson village, it consisted of rural land with a homestead dumped into the middle of it, accessible via a long dirt driveway, via a cattle crossing.
In worker’s compensation cases, I’d come to the realisation that some people can be either morally deficient or ethically corrupt. Frank Brodie possessed both iniquities, claiming a large sum of money against a Mum and Dad business for alleged injuries to his back when a delivery of goods went awry and allegedly landed on top of him. His claim had placed their honest business in serious jeopardy.
I parked half a kilometre past the property, got out, and opened the tonneau that covered the ute tray—an advantage to the utility coupe that often came in handy. I pulled out my canvas camera bag, connected the two hundred-millimetre zoom lens to my camera body, grabbed a bottle of water from a small esky, and walked back along the road until I reached the perimeter of Brodie’s property. I found a shady spot in a natural culvert off the road, which provided ample coverage thanks to a spreading lantana bush.
I lay down and connected my camera to a mini-tripod that had a built-in, foldout resting arm for the lens, and swept the property from left to right. I remained in that position for half an hour.
A figure emerged from the house, possessing a balding pate, tattoos, and long ginger beard that matched a photo I’d seen of Frank Brodie. He went to work on a Holden ute—bending over the engine bay, lifting tool boxes—doing all the things he wouldn’t be doing if he had a prolapsed disc.
I adjusted the focus and started filming.
He worked for over an hour, until he wiped his hands and went back inside the house.
I got up and packed my things away, and caught movement on my left.
The large figure of Brodie came around from behind the lantana with a sour look on his face, and swung high.
I dodged it and gave him a swift hard jab to the stomach.
He exhaled and his momentum gave way.
I put in two quick punches to the ear, which does more damage to the head than it does to the fist.
He dropped to the ground, clutched his head and swore.
I slung the camera bag over my shoulder. ‘You move well for a bloke with severe back injuries.’
Brodie just sat and looked winded.
I went back to my car and immediately backed the video files to my laptop, and a separate flash drive. I looked back as Brodie ambled back onto his property.
He cast one despondent look in my direction and kept going.
The drive back to Cash & Messenger proved uneventful. Reggie wasn’t there, so I left the flash drive on his keyboard, then went into O’Donnell’s makeshift office. I placed Brodie’s file on the desk, wrote ‘Closed’ on a Post It note, and stuck it to the front.
Up yours, you Irish fuck knuckle.
