Peter Temple - White Dog

Costello was pensive. ‘The Dill,’ he said, ‘he had this idea, he thought he could run a high-class catering business.’

‘Not just a pimp?’ I said.

Costello was looking at the screens. Nothing was happening, the place was almost empty, most of the officers had gone on to do their duty in Camberwell, the cop downstairs was gone, gone to patrol the lawless mid-afternoon streets, the taste of a free Freddo chocolate frog in his teeth.

‘The cunt thought aiming high was the ticket,’ he said. ‘Looking for the geese with the golden eggs.’

‘Aiming high?’

‘Ambition’s not a bad thing in a young bloke,’ said Costello, not looking at me. ‘But the Dill, he had no fucking idea. He wanted everything at once, like the world owed it to him. Brisbane, can’t take it out of them. You can put a Buck’s suit on the pricks but they’re always fucking Brissie, big time’s the Breakfast Creek Hotel, have steak and beer for every meal.’

‘I’m not quite with you,’ I said.

Costello took off his glasses and closed his eyes, pinched his nose. ‘The Dill reckoned he could milk the big end of town. Follow the money, he says, you can’t go wrong. Provide a complete service. They want it, they get it.’

‘It didn’t work?’

‘Seemed to go all right.’ He opened his eyes, put on his glasses. ‘Bought the suits, the Porsche. Came in here one day, looking nice, he’s got a deal for me, a big favour, cut me in cause he’s grateful to me. Two hundred grand up, hundred per cent interest inside four months.’

‘Hard to refuse,’ I said.

‘Know what I’m talking about?’

I nodded.

‘I told him, thanks very much, kindly fuck off. Big mistake, Wayne says, he’s tight with blokes reading the drug squad’s mail, nothing can go wrong. I said, you ignorant prick, don’t ever come back here, fuck off back to Queensland before you get grill marks on your balls.’

‘When was this?’

He scratched his moustache. ‘Early winter ’94, I remember the fucking heating was playing up, girls bitching, nipples like corks. Not many complaints from the punters, mark you. May, June ’94, that would be right.’

I said, ‘This was part of Wayne’s complete service? Women, the stuff?’

‘Women?’ A lift of the chin, glasses catching the overhead light. ‘Menu, mate,’ he said. ‘Girls, boys, micks, dicks, cock-frocks, fladgers, bondies, whatever. Customer-driven, that’s the ticket.’

‘And Janene? On the menu?’

Costello shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ he said.

‘Then there’s someone called Katelyn Feehan.’

‘No. Doesn’t mean I don’t know her. Cash-in-hand business this, mostly. Call yourself Eva Braun if you like.’

I took out the photograph Mary Ballich had given me. ‘Janene and Wayne and Katelyn, I’m told,’ I said.

‘Well, the cunt,’ he said, a note of admiration. ‘Pinched her, little bastard.’

‘Known to you?’

‘My word. Mandy Randy the schoolgirl. Three or four shifts a week for a while, two, three months. I wanted her in every day. Fighting off the pricks for personals. That went down big with the other girls, I can tell you.’

‘Personals?’

He said, ‘Sorry, Jack, didn’t know you’d been in the seminary. In the booths you get a close-up. See the business, bit of touch, depends on the girl.’

He looked at the photograph again, whistled, shook his head. ‘The cunt. Pinched her off me. Probably snaffled fucking Donna now that I think of it.’

I took back the picture. ‘Cash in hand,’ I said. ‘So you’d have no details?’

A pitying look. ‘Mate. Like the French Foreign Legion here.’

A buzzer.

Costello leant down to a speaker box. ‘What?’

‘A Mr Brown,’ said the voice of the tuckshop lady.

‘Send him,’ said Costello. He stood up, offered me his right hand. ‘Business,’ he said. ‘Nice to meet you, Jack.’

I stood up. ‘Thanks for talking to me,’ I said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘Thank Cam, just don’t quote me,’ he said, smiling. ‘To anyone.’

I thought that it would be bad to meet him when he had a reason not to smile at you. ‘Take that for granted,’ I said. ‘How do you think I could get in touch with Wayne?’

Costello blinked twice, shook his head. ‘Well, there’s that shit where you all put your hands on the glass. What’s it called?’

‘A seance.’ How had I missed the signals? The tenses?

‘Two in the head in a motel up there near the SA border,’ he said. ‘Some nothing shithole. Early ’95, February, I think. No one charged to the moment, far as I hear.’

Last port of call, he was seeing me to the door. ‘Any idea?’ I said.

‘Mate, stuff like that I’ve got no ideas. That’s the reason I’m still here.’

In the street, the storm was over, clouds blown away, the light neon blue and dying. I walked up King Street against the ebbing tide of sombre-suited workers, people waiting at home for the lucky ones, people to kiss at the front door, small ones to pick up and hug, smell the clean and innocent skin and hair of the newly bathed and be for an instant clean and innocent too.

No chance of that for me.

At length, I came to Carrigan’s Lane and parked across from the office, beside the clothing factory. It had a soul once — the women and girls who worked in it and came out on smoko and at lunch to stand on the pavement, lean against the brick wall, suck on cigarettes. There was always giggling, they laughed a lot and did quick mocking pieces of theatre that were obviously imitations of people in authority. They sang snatches of pop songs, sometimes short solos, often operatic. The young women gave the older ones cheek, lots of cheek, in return they got gestures of disdain, hand and head and whole upper body eloquent, and joking threats of violence. Sometimes there would be real aggression between the younger ones, some grudge taking fire, but older peacemakers stepped in, quick to pour scorn on both parties.

In the first years across the street, in the tailor’s shop, I could stand at the window and watch all that. I was watching on the last day. They came out with their final paypackets, stood around, young, old, no laughing, no singing. They touched, there was hugging, quick kisses, they told each other it wasn’t goodbye. Some came out of the door and could not bear it, walked, just a hand raised and a ciao.

These thoughts were in my mind when someone knocked on the car window next to my head.

I started, heart jumping, looked up, bade the window come down.

‘Where’d you get this car?’ said Kelvin McCoy. ‘Property of some poor bastard gone to jail because of your incompetence?’

‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘I’m not averse to being paid in kind. You once offered me one of your creations. A steam-rollered bunny pasted on a field of used condoms. I recall it vividly. In nightmares.’

‘Big mistake, knocking that back, Jack,’ he said. ‘Typical misjudgment. Fifty-eight grand at auction last year.’

I motioned for him to move away from the door and got out, got a full view of the man. McCoy’s postbox-like upper body was draped in layers of textiles, four or five of them, including what appeared to be a sleeping bag and an old fishing net.

‘Any pleasure at profiting from the sale of the disgusting object,’ I said, ‘would have been offset by the disgrace of being known to own it.’

McCoy looked me up and down in a theatrical way. ‘In the suits a lot these days. I’d stick to the carpentry, mate. Never were can’t make a comeback.’

‘Speaking of style,’ I said, sniffing, ‘is that Trawlerman’s Armpit aftershave? If not, I suggest you check the net you’re wearing for overlooked catch. Fish dead for a month or so, possibly longer.’