‘YOU AWLRIGHT, GOOROO?’ I screamed, as I watched Bradshaw calmly flick the safety catch of his gun.
Gooroo found the strength to knock his desk over, so its top was between Bradshaw and him. Cheerful’s corpse was the only protection I had. The desk I had dived towards was behind me.
My mentor’s voice shook. ‘Yair, I’m sweet. But Bradshaw’s running a short-price favourite against the two of us.’
I screeched. ‘Why don’t you use your gun, Gooroo?’
He screamed back. ‘What bloody gun?’
Our exchange made Bradshaw smile, and he removed his finger from the trigger of his weapon. He wanted to play.
I yelled back at Gooroo. ‘No gun? You’re supposed to be a big-time bookie. Next you’ll be telling me you haven’t got a buzzer on your desk to call your heavies.’
Bradshaw giggled.
I was growing hysterical, but it was time for a Gooroo speech. ‘Listen to me, Steele. We’re both gunna fucking die. We’re both gunna die. You understand? We’re both gunna fucking die, but no bedwetting private-schoolboy fucking stiff like Bradshaw is gunna kill us. You got me?’
Gooroo’s bluster was meant to give me confidence. Its effect was the opposite. ‘That speech probably means you have no heavies. Buddha, Gooroo, what sort of a crim are you?’
Bradshaw could not resist this. ‘See what I mean about natural selection, gentlemen? Some members of a species have no idea of self-preservation, let alone self-advancement.’
At least Gooroo had bars across the windows, for protection. The glass smashed into the room and a hand holding a long-bladed fishing knife poked between two bars and steadied itself. The hand lingered until Bradshaw turned towards the noise. I had to admire his professionalism. He got three shots away before the knife sank into his heart. Only an expert with a knife could have made that kill. The scream outside told me that at least one bullet hit its target. Bradshaw sank into a heap on the floor.
I got up and looked with distaste at my bloody hands. I wiped them on the pockets of my jeans, which were also covered in Cheerful’s blood. I could not get the blood off my bandage. Gooroo stood up and whistled in relief. ‘You know, Steele, maybe Kathy Billings and Natalie are right. You should get a real job. Anything has to be better than sitting at home bored all day.’
He moved towards the jug to fill the percolator as a fist pounded on the steel door. I knew the voice behind it only too well. ‘Let us in, Steele,’ Frank Mooney insisted.
I looked at the Gooroo, who asked, ‘Is he planning to kill us too?’
I was at the stage where I was taking little for granted. ‘Who knows? But I don’t think so.’ I pointed at Bradshaw. ‘The fish he’s after has already been caught. By a fisherman, I suspect.’
The Gooroo undid the lock. For some reason, Mooney was dressed in his sergeant’s uniform instead of his usual tacky leather jacket and suit pants.
But the first man to step into the room was an American Army Colonel. He walked slowly and carefully around Evatt, inspecting the bookie’s dead body while making sure he did not get a drop of blood on his highly polished shoes. Satisfied, he took a close look at Bradshaw.
Mooney was talking to me, but the words were not clear. I heard the Gooroo answering Mooney back, but couldn’t pick up what either was saying. I was trying to remember the name of the Colonel who had interrupted Bradshaw and me at the VIP lounge of Coolangatta airport.
He knew me, right enough. When he’d finished his second tour of death, he turned to look in my direction. I will swear the bastard smiled. Colonel Clark, that’s what Bradshaw had called him. Clark changed his mind about smiling, and looked severely at the scene. But I had seen it: Clark’s appreciation of death in the back of a Tweed Heads butcher shop.
Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives.
Mooney started to poke at my shirt to get my attention.
‘Stop that,’ I said. ‘I’ve had it with being pushed around.’
Mooney stopped as Senior Constable Bill Schmidt, wearing a suit, hurried into the room. ‘I think the one outside is dead, too,’ he said. ‘I’ve called an ambulance.’
‘Who is he?’ Mooney asked the constable.
I answered for him, pointing towards Bradshaw’s body. ‘He’s a fisherman, or was. I think you’ll find he is Angelo Sebastion, late owner of the African Queen, licensed gambling boat. Bradshaw killed his brother.’
‘You slimy Fed bastard!’ Mooney, just to remind us that he was indeed a lunatic, yelled at Bradshaw’s dead body,
Bradshaw had picked Georgio and Evatt badly, but he was spot on about the crazed Mooney. And Mooney had Bradshaw pegged. The State and Federal coppers knew more about each other than they did about themselves.
Schmidt put on his thinking cap, demonstrating why he was worthy of future high office. ‘This could work out sweet, Frank. Sebastion might have been legal, but he was still into gambling, right? Evatt and the Sebastion brothers, and Georgio too, they were running an Australia-wide SP bookie racket. Bradshaw was investigating, and here we have the gunfight of the century as the result.’
Mooney was buying. ‘Yair, it fits. I just don’t like Bradshaw getting off with a clean slate.’ He kicked the body three times to express his distaste. ‘But I guess his Fed mates will find out what went down. Teach those bastards not to shit in our nest.’
I was curious. ‘Would that be a nest of grass, Mooney?’
‘Piss off, Hill. You’re lucky to get out of this alive; Bradshaw’s been gunning for you from the start. We could still get you for whatever we want, even murder. So shut your trap.’
Colonel Clark cleared his throat. ‘Well, gentlemen, I will be on my way, now that everything is settled.’
Mooney waved the American army officer on. But I put my hand on the Colonel’s shoulder. The officer drew in a deep breath to hold his temper at seeing a bloodied hand stain his uniform. I wanted to know the score, and I addressed Mooney. ‘Where did you meet Colonel Clark?’
The sergeant gave me a compliment. ‘You know him too, Hill. If you weren’t such a fucking clown, you would make a good cop. I saw Clark waiting in a hire car down the road.’
The Colonel began to move. I clutched a handful of his shirt in my fist. His eyes went wild and I realised this man probably knew ninety ways to kill someone with his bare hands. Still, I held firm to the fabric of his expensive shirt.
Mooney looked into Colonel Clark’s fiery eyes, to see the hatred and aggression there. He held his hand up in a stop gesture. ‘Take it easy, Colonel. We’re all the good guys together, remember.’
Mooney spoke softly to me. ‘Let him go, Hill.’
I protested. ‘But this bastard is in the thick of this. You can’t let him go.’
Gooroo moved up close to Clark. ‘A Colonel, hey? That’s pretty high up in anyone’s army. Were you involved in the recent Gulf War fracas against Iraq, by any chance?’
The Colonel stiffened his body, dropped his fists and closed them beside his outer thighs. ‘I am proud to say I served my country in that action.’
The Gooroo poured coffee into four mugs, not extending hospitality to the Colonel. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘You’d better do what Mooney says, Steele, and let Colonel Clark go.’
‘What am I missing here?’ I yelled.
Sergeant Mooney agreed with the Gooroo. ‘Let him go, Hill. You see that crap on his shoulder below your hand? You see the crap on my upper arm? His crap shits all over my crap. But I fought on the streets, not to mention in police stations, for thirty years for my crap. And I’m keeping it.’
I let go of the uniform. Clark walked slowly to the door. He turned around when Gooroo addressed him.
‘What was it, Colonel? About 10,000 body bags you shipped over in the first week?’
The Colonel said nothing, but stood to hear more.
‘You had contingency plans for at least 10,000 of your bodies to be brought back, dead. Which would mean contingency plans for four, five or more times that wounded. And you lost fewer than a hundred.’
Mooney and Schmidt looked at each other to see if either knew what this history lesson was all about. I put my face between theirs.
‘Don’t you get it?’ I said. ‘Morphine.’
‘Morphine,’ the Gooroo repeated. ‘Unrefined heroin.
‘After every major war, since at least the American Civil War, morphine or heroin addiction have increased in particular parts of the world. In this century, Paris in the twenties, New York in the late forties. We were late starters in Australia. Sydney had to wait till the seventies for the aftermath of Vietnam. Now in the nineties, we’re getting presents from the Gulf to supplement the gear coming from south-east Asia and Afghanistan.’
The Colonel maintained a professionally bored expression, untouched by any of what the Gooroo was saying. The military man straightened himself to his full height. ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’
He moved through the steel door, and out into the twilight.
Putting my hands into my jeans pockets, I felt all the money jammed in there. I retrieved the wad and let it drop to the floor.
I took out my wallet, and emptied all the money in it at Mooney’s feet. The sergeant looked down at the money before raising his head to snarl at me. Schmidt put a comforting hand on Mooney’s shoulder and led his superior officer to the door.
The bloody five hundreds behind the wallet, I threw towards the opened door. I followed the money trail.
Stopping at the threshold to the sultry night, I stooped down to pick up eight bloody notes. I dropped the money inside my shirt and felt the warm bills fall past my heart to rest in front of my stomach. I bade the Gooroo goodnight.