Peter Temple - Black Tide

‘The Fin Review piece,’ he said. ‘Senator Coffey changing his story. You get the point?’

‘No.’

‘Think the media would follow that up.’ He smoked, a man born to smoke.

I waited. ‘I’m listening. I shouldn’t be, but I’m listening.’

Dave put his left hand on the wheel, curled the fingers around it. He didn’t look at me. I looked at his hand, a boxer’s hand, at his neat small nose. He’d got the punches in first, no-one had ever marked his face.

‘The point here, Jack,’ he said, ‘the point’s simple for an intelligent bloke like you. Change Hansard, shut up journos, that’s kinder stuff for these people. It’s nothing. Coffey, Senator Coffey, he got fed the question, didn’t know what he was asking about. Anyway, he liked the sound of it, he went on the fishing trip. A wall fell on the cunt. Integrity went south, just its little arsehole winking in the dark, once, twice, gone.’

He still didn’t look at me, examined his cigarette. ‘For these people,’ he said, ‘getting their way is easy, it’s trivial. It’s just business. What’s the price? What’ll you take? Don’t want money, what do you want? They shut down the local jacks everywhere that way. Long ago, just peanuts for them, peanuts for the monkeys. The money, you can’t count it, there’s nothing they can’t buy. No-one. You’re dealing with people, they can’t buy you, they’ll load you up, kill your friend, kill your wife, kill your child, kill you, it’s all the same.’

I was feeling cold inside now, winter inside and out. ‘I don’t think you should be telling me this,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to know it. I’m not involved anymore. I wanted to help Gary Connors’ father by finding Gary. I’ll find another way to help him.’

Dave wound down his window, wet air came in, cold city air, on it the faint sound of music, voices from somewhere. He tapped ash off the cigarette, had a last draw, sent the butt arching across the street to die in the gutter, wound up the window.

‘I can appreciate the way you feel,’ he said. ‘Things we’d all like to step out of, shut the door.’

‘I’ve stepped out,’ I said. ‘The door’s shut.’

Dave turned his head and looked at me, the first real look. ‘No, Jack,’ he said. ‘That’s not possible now. They know you. Know your friends, your sister. Know you talked to Meryl. Help us see this thing through, find Gary, that’s the best chance you’ve got.’

I was getting colder all the time. ‘Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are they? Who’s tapping my phone? How do you know about the Fin Review clipping?’

‘Only twelve people inside Black Tide,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Waterproof to fifty fathoms, we thought. One-way valve system, stuff comes in, nothing goes out. What happens with these operations usually, there’s people upstairs want reports every second day, they pass them on, there’s leaks like half-time at the football. That’s why the other side’s only about a day behind you. Not Black Tide. No reporting till we were finished, that was the deal. So when we got shut down in ’96, we knew we had a dog inside. Dogs maybe. And we knew the pressure to squash us came from outside.’

He took out another cigarette, lit it, opened the window a crack.

‘They,’ I said. ‘That part of the question. Who?’

‘Don’t worry about that part.’

‘I don’t even know why you want to find Gary. Why do you want Gary?’

‘Gary’s important to Black Tide. You don’t need the detail. It’s better that way.’

‘Detail?’ I said. ‘You call knowing who they are fucking detail? I’m not going on any expedition with you. I’m not a concerned citizen. I’m just the bystander. More or less innocent. And I thought you said Black Tide was shut down?’

Dave sighed. ‘Not appealing to your sense of civic duty here, Jack,’ he said. ‘Your instinct for survival. I’m relying on that. Your mark’s on the slate, these people like a clean slate. Weeks, months maybe. Could be a year. But they’ll wipe you, believe me.’

He turned his shoulders towards me, rested big fingers on my arm. ‘Jack, this isn’t some minor racket, rebirthing BMWs, that kind of thing. This is huge. The money’s everywhere. Billions every year. Take you around this town, all the cities, take you around the bush, pick a town, show you buildings, businesses, whole law firms, real estate agents, travel agents, stockbrokers, hotels, resorts, greengrocers, restaurants. Name it, I’ll show you. Drug money underneath, drug money in the cash flow.’

‘Is that what Black Tide was about? Drug money?’

He paused. ‘We were getting close, Jack. Going in the right direction, then we touched a nerve and a boot came out and kicked us up the arse. Big boot. Big kick. Now you’ve touched the same nerve. You can’t untouch it.’

I didn’t know what was going on but I was getting the idea. Not the point, perhaps, but the drift. Slowly. He was talking about TransQuik, about Steven Levesque.

‘There’s nothing I can do for you,’ I said.

Dave smiled. It was a small smile, but it improved the hard face no end. ‘You want Gary,’ he said. ‘We want Gary. In the beginning, we kissed him goodbye. Dead. Now we think he’s alive. We think so because they think so. If he was dead, they’d know. Being the ones who made that arrangement.’

‘They? I’m sick of they, Dave.’

‘People who want Black Tide stopped. Powerful people outside, their friends inside.’

‘What about Gary’s car?’

‘Gary drives off a cliff? Forget. It’s a good sign.’

‘I’ve been told Gary was definitely in the car when it went over the cliff.’

‘Been told? Visitors the other day give you another call? I’d treat that information with caution.’

How did he know about my visitors? I said, ‘Jellicoe, Gary’s mate from the bottle shop. What about him?’

‘Where’d you get that from?’

My turn to ignore questions. ‘Koch and Bryce and Novikov. What’s that mean?’

‘You heard that where?’ A hint of disquiet in the dry voice.

‘Detail,’ I said. ‘You don’t need the detail.’

Dave coughed, shook his head. ‘Well, reinforces my confidence in you. The visitors the other day, what was the message?’

‘This is tiring. I repeat, I don’t want to be in this.’

‘Mention Gary?’ he said.

‘No. Just Canetti.’

‘What about Canetti?’

‘Said he was engaged in important government business and his wife was not taking pills, imagining things. Like being told he was missing, possibly dead. Probably.’

‘What’d you tell them?’

‘I told them my only interest in Canetti was that he was following Gary on April 3.’

Dave’s mouth opened slightly under the thatch. I could see the tip of his tongue. ‘Established that, have you?’

I nodded.

‘Following him where?’

‘At a bottle shop in Prahran.’

‘What else do you know about them? Gary and Canetti?’

‘Nothing after that. That’s it.’

‘Give you a number, your visitors?’

‘Yes.’

‘Call it. Tonight. Tell them that since Gary’s dead, you have absolutely no further interest in Dean Canetti.’

‘And then?’

‘Then turn the mind to Gary.’

‘You’re taking it for granted that I trust you. Why is that?’

‘Why wouldn’t you trust me? We both want to find Gary. Your visitors want you as far from Gary as possible. It’s not Canetti they’re warning you off with that bullshit about Meryl. It’s Gary.’

I thought about this. Then I said, ‘Dave, I don’t know where to go on Gary. I’ve done the things that usually turn up traces. He’s not using plastic, he’s not buying tickets or hiring in his own name. I presume you know this. What’s left to do, I don’t know.’