transparent material. A young man came out of one, followed by a big-breasted pale woman in a bikini and high heels. She was adjusting the top. The man looked as a first-time parachutist might upon landing.
I took a seat on a slippery banquette in the corner. The door with the green lights opened and a long-haired man in a leather jacket came out. His face was mostly nose, spread over it like a frog.
‘He’s only fucking human, Pop,’ he said over his shoulder.
The man in the fine-striped shirt and stockbroker braces behind him said, ‘Nobody’s proved that to my fucking satisfaction. Just do it.’ He came into the doorway. ‘Cam’s mate? Come in.’
He waited for me to go in and closed the door, went around a glass-topped table covered in papers, some in piles clamped by bulldog clips. Two three-drawer filing cabinets stood together against a wall with four small security monitors on them. That was it for furnishings.
‘So what’s your name?’ he said.
‘Jack Irish. I’m a solicitor.’
Popeye Costello had a round face and round glasses and a big grey-flecked moustache. He scratched it, scratched his bald head. ‘You the one knocked that fucking Marty Scullin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Goodonya. The cunt. You could’ve sold tickets, got a full fucking house at the MCG. What can I tell you about the Dill.’
‘The Dill?’
‘Wayne Dilthey.’
‘I’m interested in a woman called Janene Ballich. His name came up.’
‘She worked here a coupla months. JJ she called herself. Nice kid, country kid, bit raw, the punters like that. Bit thin too. Not the needle though. Show one fucking track here, they get the arse, that’s what I call human resources management, i.e. junkies are more trouble than they’re fucking worth.’
‘And Dilthey?’
‘Yeah, the Dill. Worked for me, ’92–93. Came from Brisbane, bloke I know up there gave me a ring.’
You never know what you can ask. ‘What was his job?’
Costello shrugged, held up big hands. ‘This and that, y’know.’
I waited but I knew there wasn’t any point. ‘Janene disappeared in 1994,’ I said.
Costello tapped his fingernails on the glass tabletop. ‘Didn’t know that,’ he said, ‘but they do, they do. The kid was no Einfuckingstein, that can be a major risk factor. They get taken in by these cunts, the talkers.’
‘Like Wayne?’
‘As a for example?’
‘Her mother says Wayne was Janene’s agent, so to speak.’
Costello laughed, a good laugh, showed his lower gold fillings, you wanted to laugh with him. ‘So to fucking speak,’ he said. ‘The prick.’
I had to feel my way here. ‘Taken in and they disappear?’
He tapped nails again, still amused, but I was on borrowed time. ‘Well, disappear,’ he said, ‘what’s that mean?’
‘Possibly dead,’ I said.
More tapping. ‘Or possibly just fucked off. Check Kalgoorlie, check Darwin, check fucking Port Hedland. Thousands of fucking disappeared kids, mate, can’t all be dead.’
His telephone rang. He listened, grunted, found a remote. Out of the corner of my left eye, I registered the monitors come on. I looked: reception, bar, overheads of the big room, two people on the floor, a woman, flashes of naked flesh.
‘Fuck,’ said Costello, weary. ‘Another fucking idiot. I shouldn’t have to do this anymore. Excuse me.’
He got up, not hurried, left the room. I watched the grey murky screen. A man was on top of the woman, the officers didn’t seem to be coming to her aid. Then someone appeared and kicked the man in the head, it jerked him sideways. It was Costello. He kicked the man again, grabbed him by the collar and the seat of his pants, lifted him bodily, ran him headfirst into the bar counter, stepped back, did it again, carried him off-screen.
A minute or two went by, watching the screens. The wrestler wasn’t leaving by the front entrance, nothing happened there, just the tuckshop lady talking to someone in uniform, a security guard. No, it was a cop. Not urgent talk, the cop was laughing. She gave him something. It looked like a Freddo. It was. He opened it and ate it.
Costello came through the door. ‘Shit,’ he said, on his way back to his chair. ‘Always when the fucking gymrat’s on his smoko. Doesn’t fucking smoke either. Naturally.’
I said, ‘I don’t want to waste any more of your time. Wayne and Janene.’
He was pulling at his cuffs, getting comfortable again, not a sign of exertion or unease on the round face, a man in round glasses who had just kicked another man in the head twice, lifted him clear of the victim, run him into the bar twice. Then he had possibly taken him down a fire escape and thrown him into the alley.
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
