Salmon got roughed up. They would’ve been the Federals last night; they’re not supposed to know about the money, but they couldn’t follow Neville Wran down Macquarie Street, anyway.’
‘Probably right. Whose idea was it to bring me in?’
‘Mine. I heard about you from Clive Patrick.’
‘Is he in Grafton?’
‘Yeah, copping it sweet. Be out pretty soon.’
I nodded and thought it over. I could take over now; the. 45 was a liability and I was sure I had more moves than whatever-his-name-was. But I thought I might as well see it through.
‘What about the other five hundred dollars?’ I said.
‘At the airport-after the swap.’
I drove to the airport. He checked a suitcase through to Rio having collected his ticket and an envelope at the desk. He had a smaller bag as cabin luggage which was about the same size as the bag he’d collected at Whale Beach.
Pan Am flight 304 to Rio de Janeiro was on time and would be boarding in an hour. He got his seat allocated and was heading for the baggage security check when things started to happen. First, a tall man stepped in front of us and showed us his face. He had a long, droopy sort of face, baggy eyes and was built on leaner lines than my companion.
‘I’m Salmon,’ he said. ‘Let’s have the bag and the ticket.’
The false Harvey Salmon was looking nervous; he fumbled in his jacket for the ticket and seemed to be playing for time. Two men detached themselves from a knot of people looking at a flights monitor and strode over to us. They were big, wore expensive suits and had short haircuts. One of them gripped the real Salmon by the arm. ‘Would you come with us, sir?’
Salmon gave the man a tired smile. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got it here.’ He tapped his breast pocket.
‘Just come along, sir, and you too, please.’ He looked sternly at the impostor and me and fell in behind us like a sheep dog. I thought he’d be a pretty good heel snapper from the smooth confidence of his movements.
‘Along here.’ The man holding on to Salmon steered us across the floor and behind some shrubbery to a room marked ‘Security’.
‘What is this?’ Salmon said. He got shoved firmly inside for an answer.
The room contained a desk with a chair drawn up to it and a row of chairs over by a big, bright window. The sun was shining in and throwing long shadows from the divisions in the window across the pale carpet.
‘We’re police,’ the arm-holder said. ‘If you and Mr Salmon would just go over there and sit down, please.’ He struggled to frame the polite words and to keep his diction smooth. Under the barbering and suiting there was a very rough customer. Salmon looked alarmed and angry; he moved his hand towards his pocket again.
‘I’ve got it here.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ the cop said. ‘Sit down.’
We sat, not side by side but a few seats apart. Salmon had broken out in sweat. The second cop put the bag on the desk and opened it. He nodded and turned to the impostor.
‘Good. Got your ticket?’
The look-alike nodded and the cop carefully extracted a bundle of notes from the bag and passed them to him. ‘Harvey Salmon’ counted them, separated some and walked over to me. He held out the money; I sat still and he dropped the notes in my lap.
‘Thanks, Hardy. I’ve got a plane to catch.’ He didn’t look at Salmon; he turned and walked out of the room. Salmon stood up and rushed across to where the policeman was zipping up the bag.
‘That’s mine,’ he yelped. ‘We had a deal. I get the money and you get the names.’
The policeman shook his head slowly and his smile was as cold and cheerless as a Baptist chaplain. The second cop moved in behind Salmon to do some shepherding.
‘You’ve got it wrong, Harvey,’ the bag man said. ‘We wanted the money and no one wanted the names. No one wants you either.’
The other cop nudged Salmon. ‘Come on.’
‘No!’ Salmon spun around desperately and looked across the room at me. ‘Help me!’
The cop swung the bag in his hand and smiled again. ‘He’s done all he can. Harvey Salmon’s flown to Rio. Come on.’
Salmon sagged and one of them grabbed him and held on hard. I sat there with an empty gun in my pocket and five hundred dollars in my crotch and watched them leave the room.
Three days later I sat in the home of my friend, Detective Sergeant Frank Parker, and told him about it. The telling took a bottle of wine and set up a strong craving for one of Frank’s cigarillos. I fought the craving; no sense losing all the battles. Frank listened and nodded several times while he smoked and poured the wine.
‘It’s pretty neat.’ he said when I finished. ‘Must’ve been a lot of money in that bag?’
‘Where would that have come from d’you reckon?’
Frank leaned back and blew smoke up over my head. ‘Let’s see, I’d say it would have been grateful contributions from people Salmon had kept quiet about. Mind you,’ he gave me the sort of smile you give when you read a politician’s obituary, ‘that’s not to say that some of their names wouldn’t have been on the final list he was going to hand over.’
‘Jesus. I still don’t feel good about watching him being carted away to be cancelled.’
‘Nothing you could do. Describe the man in charge, Cliff.’
‘Big,’ I said. ‘Six one or two; heavy but with a lot of muscle; smart suit; fresh everything-shave, haircut, the lot. Looked like he’d still be good at breaking heads and that he learned not to say “youse” and “seen” for “saw” not so long ago.’
Frank nodded and drew in smoke. ‘He’s an Armed Robbery “D”. Henry “Targets” Skinner. His turn’ll come.’
‹‹Contents››
Tearaway
‘He’s a tearaway, Cathy,’ I said. ‘You know it, I know it, everybody knows it. The best thing you could do would be to forget him. Get out of Sydney; go to Queensland. Kevin’s caused you enough misery for a lifetime, it’s all he’s good at.’
‘He never hurt anybody,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Never. Not anyone!’
‘Just luck. He carried a gun-he pointed it, he never fired it but that’s just a matter of luck. One split second can change all that and make him a murderer. That’s still on the cards.’
I thought I had to be hard on her, but it turned out I was too hard. She’d come to me for help; she tramped up the dirty stairs and down the gloomy corridor and knocked on my battered door and all I’d done was cause her to drop her head onto my desk and cry buckets. I never did have much tact-a private detective doesn’t use it much-but this wouldn’t do. I came around the desk and gave her a tissue and made her sit up and swab down. Her boyfriend, Kevin Kearney had broken out a police van two days before. Kev and his three mates were on their way to their trial for armed robbery. One of them was shot dead twenty feet from the van; Kevin and the other two had got away. He hadn’t contacted Cathy which was probably the first good turn he’d done her.
When she’d stemmed the flow and got a cigarette going, Cathy filled me in on the shape and structure of her distress.
‘He got word out to me that he was going to run. I got a car and some money and we were going…’, she stopped and looked at me hesitantly.
‘Call it Timbuktu, Cathy,’ I said. ‘What does it matter?’
‘Well, I heard about the break on the news. Christ, I nearly died when they said one of them’d been shot. But…’
The cigarette wavered in her hand and she looked ready to cry again.
‘It wasn’t Kev,’ I said gently. ‘Go on.’
