management company which owned hotels, apartment buildings and shopping centres across Australia and into Malaysia.
Now they hobnobbed with politicians, campaigned winning horses at the Magic Millions and had built – as a gift to the city of the Gold Coast – a security compound for battered women and their kids.
And between them, these two Aussie icons had fathered fi ve sons with nothing on their minds but easy money, fast cars and stupid women.
Jenny had been part of the team that put away George, Christian and Luca Bartolo for the importation of twenty-three kilograms of cocaine. They’d fi ngered the mule – a Portuguese-Australian fi shing-boat owner – and sequestered him for three and a half days at his Southport unit, ignoring phone calls and early morning drive-bys and taking it in turns to keep the mule quiet. When a messenger masquerading as a pizza boy was sent over to pay a visit, the cops ordered the fi sherman not to open the door.
The Bartolos held out almost until day four, but fi nally the lure of $18 million worth of drugs proved too much. They stormed the apartment, demanded the drugs, threatened the mule with handguns and almost hugged the twenty-three plastic packets that were sitting in a black Puma sports bag on the kitchen bench. Which was when Jenny’s crew stepped into view and arrested all three, the whole thing on tape and a Crown witness who stank of fi sh.
‘Surprised to see him here again?’ asked Mac, as the latest round of dishes arrived.
Jenny shrugged. ‘He got nine years, six non-parole. Must’ve behaved himself.’
Mac poured the last of the Wither Hills sauvignon blanc, dead-soldiered it in the ice bucket and nodded to the waiter for another.
There was a candle in a red glass between them, the dying light of day fl ickered on the Pacifi c. Around them were fl ash women in big hairdos, pearls and high-rise heels, but looking at Jen in her Levis Mac reckoned he was ahead on points.
Jen’s face had changed slightly since Rachel was born, a little less plump but with a lot more laugh lines. She was still very pretty. She was on twelve months’ maternity leave from the Feds, the end of which was eleven weeks away. Every bone in Mac’s new-father body wanted his wife to stay at home with Rachel, but he knew Jen was ready for that fi ght; ready like he was never going to be.
‘Sorry about uni,’ mumbled Mac. ‘And the freelance stuff – it’s routine work. Nothing to worry about.’
Jenny smiled, sipped the wine. ‘It’s me you’re worried about, isn’t it, Macca?’
He looked out over the sea and exhaled. Part of him wanted to tell her that he didn’t want her going back to being a frontline cop, not against the scumbags she dealt with. He’d grown up in a cop household and it was bad enough being a boy with a detective dad.
He didn’t want Rachel having to wear all the crap that went with it.
Mac could have done that whole song and dance – he’d sure rehearsed it enough. But he could also own up to who he’d married.
He remembered the night he’d realised that his own family was not the neat patriarchy projected to Rockhampton. His mother Patricia had just gone back to Rockhampton Base Hospital where she was a senior nursing sister. Mac was ten and his sister, Virginia, eight and there’d been some mix-up one afternoon about who was supposed to pick up Ginny from her swimming squad. Frank had made sure the argument was all about his wife going back to work and Mac remembered lying in bed, hearing his mother say, ‘Well that’s who you married, mate. Why don’t we start with that?’
Mac looked back from the window, they locked eyes and Jen smiled. Mac smiled back, raised his glass and felt a sigh rush between his teeth.
‘A toast,’ said Mac, raising his glass. ‘To mothers, wives and cops.’
They clinked and drank, then Jenny got out of her chair, came around the table, kissed Mac on the left ear, put both arms around his neck and snuggled in. ‘I love you, Mr Macca,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘You’re a beautiful man.’
They staggered slightly as they walked south on the Esplanade. Jenny’s right arm was across Mac’s shoulderblade and she leaned into his neck, the warm breeze off the beach blowing her scented hair and wine breath into his face. Jen was incredibly strong – she’d gone back to the pool when Rachel was one month old and was already swimming for an hour at a pace that Mac couldn’t hit for two laps.
They made into the dark of Hedges Avenue, the beachfront road where the millionaires lived, when they both heard something and stopped as Jen put her hand up. Below the breeze they could hear a girl’s voice, pleading, sobbing. It was almost ten-thirty pm as they stared into the dark driveway of an apartment block under construction. Mac followed Jen as she started walking down the driveway. The sobbing came up again, this time with a yelp.
‘Hello,’ yelled Jenny. ‘Are you okay?’
A plaintive, late-teens voice called, ‘Help me!’
Jenny sprinted into the dark, heading towards a small light behind the builders’ dumpsters at the end of the alley. Mac followed, breathing shallow, body and brain on high alert, his instincts wanting to tell Jenny not to go in there. Further into the dark, and then under a small service lamp at the end of the alley, they rounded the dumpster and stopped. George Bartolo smiled back at them from where he was crouched beside the bin, holding a young blonde woman by the hair.
Jenny shaped up to him as George stood and threw the girl aside, who almost fell over in her heels, the night breeze blowing her purple baby-doll dress up to her ribs.
The girl looked at Mac, sniffed. ‘Sorry – it wasn’t my idea.’
‘You shut your fucking mouth!’ yelled George as Jenny moved closer, her fi sts clenched.
Mac was putting his hand out to pull Jenny back when he felt cold, hard steel behind his left ear. Then there were three small clicks that could only come from one source. Slowly putting his hands out, Mac turned slightly to his left and saw the Thai at the other end of what looked like a silenced 9 mm handgun.
‘Jen,’ he shouted, but she didn’t hear him.
‘I’m sorry,’ cried the fl oozy – manic-eyed with fucked sinuses
– who was now panicking at the appearance of a gun.
‘ Jenny! ‘ yelled Mac.
She turned, froze and stared at Mac, who gave her the look, but she didn’t run as he’d hoped.
George moved in and stood too close to Jenny, hands on his hips.
She turned back to face him while he made a show of looking down her muslin shirt and letting his fat tongue run along his bottom lip.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘It’s our little oinker.’
As Jenny stood her ground, staring George in the eye, something welled in Mac. Pride and fear.
‘George is it?’ said Mac, keeping his hands where the Thai could see them, though he felt the silencer go in harder behind his ear.
‘What’s it to you, pig-lover?’ snarled George, not taking his eyes off Jenny.
‘Forget him, George. This is you and me,’ said Jen.
The cocaine skank muttered something and her hand went to her face. Blood fl owed freely down her wrist.
‘Those Dunns or Lamas?’ continued Mac, nodding down at George’s silver-tipped, red and black boots.
George fl inched for a split second, wanting to get vain about his fancy footwear but quickly snapping back to the hard-man.
‘Are you relating to me, eh, cop-fucker?’ George shifted his gaze to Mac, his bottom lip full and wet like a spoiled child’s. ‘Fuck’s sake, mate, I spent six years in fucking Woodford being related to every day
– now you’re a fucking shrink too?’
‘Leave him out of this, George,’ said Jen, but Mac wanted eye contact, wanted to goad George into a comment that would make his wife snap. It wasn’t entirely risk-free, but a simple diversion was all he had to work with.
‘Sorry,’ said Mac. ‘Didn’t mean to insult you with the Charlie Dunn thing. They’re Tony Lama, right? Couldn’t be anything else.’
George took his eyes off Jenny again, shifted his weight around her and eyeballed Mac. The drug lord’s eyes had that extreme paranoia that too much cocaine produces; he loved that someone had noticed his fi ve-thousand-
