THE SOLOIST IN THE PUB was what I call a street-fighting singer. When she couldn’t hit the notes, she screamed noise at them. Still, she wore the obligatory black cocktail dress, cut low at the front, to attract those who preferred to look rather than listen.
I climbed a bar stool beside a short thick-set man, deep in thought. It was such a hot night that I fancied a beer rather than my usual glass of wine. I wanted to be alone with my worries, so I was annoyed when the stranger turned to speak to me. Oh well, at least he drowned out the singer, losing a wrestling match with a difficult number.
It was the standard strangers-in-a-pub conversation. Yair, I was new here. From Brisbane. Yair, he was a local. Yair, I was a bookmaker’s clerk. Yair, he was a professional fisherman. But he wanted to get out. Enough of the pleasantries, we talked about him from then on.
‘My brother was two grades below me at school. I was the smart one in the family. He’d kill me if he heard me telling you this, but they even kept him down one year. We both ended up as fishermen. But he got out; he set up that floating casino on the Tweed River.’
Now I was interested, as I usually am when the topic turns to gambling. ‘The African Queen. Your brother’s Angelo Sebastion?’
‘You know him,’ the man said, almost in disgust. ‘Anyway, I’m Luigi Sebastion. People call me Lui.’
I introduced myself and admitted I only knew of Angelo Sebastion.
‘All us other fishermen said they’d never allow him to set up a gambling boat,’ Luigi moaned into his beer. ‘We said that Jupiter’s Casino would have too much pull; that they would stop him, by saying that drunken gamblers would fall off the boat and drown. But Jupiter’s is in Queensland, and the Tweed River is in New South Wales. Governments love money. And now he’s making a squillion of it for the government, and four squillion for himself.’
Luigi shut up and looked at me in earnest, for half a minute. ‘You seem like a bright young bloke. Professional fishing is fucked. Between us pros and all those bloody amateur anglers, we have just about fished out every bay below Cairns. But I’ve still got dough. I can get my hands on nearly a million. You come up with an idea for turning that into two or three mill and I’ll look after you.’
I believed the man. I can read a bullshitter nine times out of ten, and he was not bullshitting. If one little murder hadn’t been occupying all my thoughts, I would have planted a big kiss on Lady Luck’s rich red lips. Sure, I would have helped Luigi spend his, I mean our, million. More basic survival concerns held back my excitement.
‘I would have to think about it,’ was my noncommittal answer.
It was enough to send him off again. He leaned closer to me, and looked around. ‘You know some of the other fishermen are bringing in drugs, but I won’t come at that.’
This sounded like juicy gossip. ‘How?’
‘What happens is a ship passes the coast, but out at sea. They don’t even need to come within sight of a harbour. They drop the drugs overboard, tied to a buoy. The fishermen know what the buoy looks like and where it is. They collect the drugs in their nets and bring it all in. No customs, nothing.’
‘What sort of drugs are we talking about?’ I asked.
‘Some cocaine; mainly heroin. But I won’t come at that.’
Heroin, a white powder that might look like cigarette ash, if you don’t look closely. I could see Marcus Georgio’s office in my mind. The upturned glass of water, next to the burning cigarette and the white powder I took for ash. The thin corpse on the carpet. In the cupboard, the bleach, which you can use to clean fits. Even the ties in the cupboard, and the tall, thin, model-like figure of girlfriend Crystal Speares, also a cigarette smoker, as were many smackies, seemed to fit suddenly.
‘Look, I gotta go,’ I said to Luigi. ‘But I might have a notion for you. Could I meet you tomorrow, say at eleven in the morning? We could discuss this business idea some more.’
Sounded all right to him. About eleven in the bar, or in the car park.
I didn’t give a shit about formulating a business plan with Luigi Sebastion. But I wanted to find out more about the Gold Coast international heroin trade.
Georgio liked to get his picture taken at places on the Gold Coast where the glitterati congregate. He liked to be seen with women with slender bodies. If I told the Gooroo these and other details, I was sure he would set the market at even money that Marcus Georgio had been a drug dealer and a drug user.
As I walked out, the singer was strangling the Bette Midler song The Rose, which I read somewhere was a tribute of sorts to American rock singer Janis Joplin. She had died of a heroin overdose some twenty years earlier at the age of twenty-seven, the age I was approaching Smack could kill you without a doubt, and it could also get you killed.
___o0o___
COOLANGATTA AIRPORT WAS BUZZING, even at 10 p.m. Lots of Japanese tourists, but what took my eye were two nuns standing in line behind a slim 190cm army officer with savagely short grey hair. You would call the sixtyish military man distinguished if you were impressed by all that brass, glittering from his shoulders. He looked oddly compatible with the nuns, all serving a Higher Power that demanded strange costumes of Its disciples.
As I went up to check the flights to Tassie, via Sydney, I began to cool on the idea. It felt as if someone else was planning my holidays. I was not keen on other people arranging my life. Whoever killed Marcus Georgio was really starting to piss me off. And I felt even more pissed off when my name was called through the public address.
The Gooroo should know better than to page me, unless it was a matter of life or death. I listened to my name being called three more times to make sure I had not misheard. I went to reception as requested, if only to silence the transmission of a murder suspect’s moniker through these echoing airport halls.
A redhead with a plastic smile, beginning to melt in the heat of overwork, grabbed the message from a pigeonhole. Could I go to the VIP lounge? Why not? I would have gone in the past, only no one was considerate enough to invite me.
I followed the pointing finger and sensed that someone was following me. When I reached the lounge, a hand from behind me opened the door. The hand belonged to a tall classy bloke, about thirty-five, designer shirt, designer tie, designer trousers, designer shoes.
‘Thank you, Mr Hill,’ said a designer voice, cultivated, deep and medium posh.
Designer man closed the door behind us and motioned towards my choice of chairs around an oval table. I moved towards the table, but did not sit down. He took this as a request for an introduction, and stuck out his hand. Jerome Bradshaw of the Australian Federal Police. He wanted to chat with me, but first, he wanted to put me at ease. ‘Let me assure you from the outset, Mr Hill, you are not in any trouble.’
That was a relief. I was in trouble with the state coppers for murder. At least no one had assassinated a foreign diplomat on my behalf, to put me in the poo with the Feds. Bradshaw sat down. I sat down.
The Fed leisurely explained himself. ‘You have incurred the displeasure of a Sergeant Mooney and a Senior Constable Schmidt.’
‘Have I?’ I asked.
‘Yes, you have. They left a present for you, in the form of the corpse of one Marcus Georgio.’
I could see that Bradshaw was trying to shape up as my mate. As far as I was concerned, the only differences between this Federal cop and State coppers were better dress sense and rounder vowels. I pointed to the phone in the corner. ‘Do you mind if I ring a solicitor? I don’t know this area real well, but I should be able to find one or two playing the tables at Jupiter’s Casino. It’s not eleven, so they shouldn’t have blown all the money from their clients’ trust accounts yet.’
‘You have a cynical attitude towards authority, Mr Hill. In the case of Mooney and Schmidt, it’s quite justified. But, in my instance, you will come to realise that our interests coincide. Haven’t you seen yet that Mooney killed Georgio?’
I scoffed. ‘I don’t know, you southerners, always bagging us Queenslanders. Now, why would Detective Sergeant Mooney kill Georgio?’
Jerome Bradshaw slowly poured himself a glass of water from the transparent jug set in the middle of the table. ‘It was the termination of a business contract. Mooney and Schmidt are the absentee landlords of a large marijuana plantation in North Queensland. Georgio was in charge of Brisbane distribution. But you know a little of Georgio’s lifestyle. He needed a lot of money, so he broke the unwritten financial clauses of the contract. Mooney decided to terminate that contract.’
I believed all this, as much as I believed anything a copper told me. But the story was still as loose as a failed entrepreneur’s memory. ‘And what’s the Federal cops’ interest in all this?’ I asked.
‘That cannabis is travelling all over Australia, across state borders, and some of the profits are travelling overseas in undeclared cash and gold. Our political employers were unhappy when they heard.’
He took a sip of water. ‘It does not concern us that the Queensland police force cannot clean up its own backyard, but we don’t like their rubbish blowing into ours.’
For the sake of politeness to my interstate visitor, I agreed to accept what Bradshaw was saying. ‘Awlright, I can understand that, but why are you talking to me about this? I don’t do casual police work.’
The Fed shook his head. ‘You really do not have a choice, Mr Hill. You see, we know Mooney has been trying to fool you. I spoke to your old widowed neighbour, the one who likes to potter about in her garden. Actually, I told her that a natural predator is the most effective pesticide for aphids. She was most grateful. In return, she told me that two police officers, whom she described as the spitting images of Mooney and Schmidt, took you away. I discreetly waited near your flat, though I honestly believed that would be the last anyone ever saw of you.’
More sympathy for my anticipated murder by Mooney and Schmidt might have varied the even tone of Bradshaw’s voice.
‘Did you follow me down here from Brisbane?’ I asked.
‘I am afraid so. I do apologise for that invasion of your privacy. But, as I have indicated, we have mutual interests.’
Buddha, why hadn’t I sensed someone following my car, like in the American cop shows. Spun the EH snappily around the back streets of Southport and lost the turkey. Instead I reversed through a possible hole in Bradshaw’s story to make sure he was leading me down a straight road.
‘So I was set up for Georgio’s murder, but then Mooney told me to disappear?’
‘Is that what he did? Of course you realise, while you are away, they will be busily working to prove beyond the shred of a doubt that you killed Georgio.’
Even if he was right, I still copped two grand in the hand rather than a shove down Mount Coot-tha into the bush. If the Feds were moving in on the action, I stood to come out a surprise winner from this misadventure.
‘That’s it then,’ I decided. ‘I go on a holiday, and you catch the evil police officers who have defiled their uniforms. I come back. We live happily ever after, except for the bad bastards, of course.’
I started to rise, but Bradshaw put his hand on my left hand. For some reason I was reminded of the sadistic nun who broke it when I was seven to expel the demon causing my left handedness.
‘It’s not that simple, Mr Hill. I don’t want you to take this as a threat, but you are going to help us arrest Mooney and Schmidt, Mr Hill.’
I laughed. I mean, that’s what you do when someone tells a joke. ‘No, you see, Officer Bradshaw or Detective Bradshaw or whatever they call you, I’m really not interested. You think I want revenge, because Mooney and Schmidt tried to set me up for murder. By your own admission, the fit-up hasn’t stuck. After that, it’s none of my affair.’
I took Bradshaw’s hand from mine. ‘I suspect that you Feds and State coppers don’t get on. Again, that’s none of my affair. As far as I’m concerned, I can concentrate on backing winners tomorrow.’
Bradshaw nodded in agreement and spoke sadly. ‘Then, we will have to allow them to kill you when you go back to Brisbane.’
‘What?’
‘Once they have committed two murders, yours on top of Georgio’s, it will be easier to make their superiors do something.’
‘Run that by me again. Before, you said you weren’t going to threaten me.’
‘Inaction is hardly a threat. Besides, I presumed you would co-operate. If you do, you will be totally safe.’
Safe? I always thought, even though I was a bit of a bastard at times, that my basic principles were safe. You don’t bet odds on. You don’t chase women with violent partners. You don’t trust anyone making more than $50,000 a year. You don’t do deals with coppers. The problem with basic principles is that they can be in conflict. Bradshaw had found my weakness. He sensed that my first principle was, you don’t get killed.
‘Inaction is not a threat,’ I repeated. ‘That’s some catch.’
‘It’s the best there is,’ Bradshaw agreed.
‘Tell me what you want me to do,’ I said. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘We want you to ring Mooney.’
Bradshaw took a silver pen from his shirt pocket and a business card from his wallet. On the back of the card he wrote a telephone number. ‘That is Mooney’s silent number. Arrange to meet him tomorrow. Think of a good place. When you meet him, say you know about the plantation. Don’t worry; we will be there. It will all be over tomorrow.’
All over, but for whom?