Dark Summer (20 page)

“It was all over, Molly. Look at the dates—it was all over three years ago. It started when you and Jimmy were having that rough time, when I thought you were gunna break up—you told me so yourself, you said you were gunna leave him—”

“I was pregnant with the twins—and he was sleeping with you! I could kill you! And him—oh, I'm glad he's gone! I'm glad, glad!”

Malone stepped out into the narrow hallway, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him. The sisters had lowered their voices, evidently not wanting the rest of the family and the neighbours to know what was going on between them; Malone could hear the angry murmuring, but not make out what was being said. A small boy, about Tom's age and size, came to the end of the hallway and glared at Malone.

“Where's me mum? Who are you?” He was afraid of no one, a Tiger of the future.

“I'm a policeman. Your mum's in the bedroom—she asked me to step out here while she talks to your Aunty Sheryl. It's okay, go back where you came from. That's what your mum would want.”

“
Are you gunna make trouble for Mum?”

I've already done that:
the anger behind the closed door sounded fiercer. “No. “I'll be gone in a minute. Go back.”

The boy gave him another belligerent look, like that of a certain Tiger hero being sent from the field by a referee; then he spun round and was gone. Malone drew a deep breath, wanted to be gone from here as soon as possible.

He opened the pass-book, which was still in his hand. It had only four entries, the first three months ago. They were for varying amounts, but all in round figures: $2000, $1500, $1500, $2500, all in cash deposits. Jimmy Maddux, it seemed, had had another life locked away in the black metal box.

There was a sudden silence behind the closed door; then it was pulled open and Sheryl stood in the doorway for a moment. “You bastard! I hope you realize what you've done!”

Then she pushed past him, hitting him in the ribs with her elbow, and disappeared into the back of the house; the voices out there were abruptly stilled. Malone stood in the hallway, wondering if he shouldn't just open the front door and walk out. Then he looked in at Molly, still sitting on the bed, her face red and tear-streaked, the letters now just a torn litter of scraps spread around her like mocking blossoms.

“I'm sorry, Molly. I should've taken the box away with me—”

She shook her head dumbly. Then she gave a great sigh, more like a giant sob; he had heard one or two people make that sound just before they died, an inarticulate last goodbye. She stared at him, as if not seeing him; then her eyes came into focus. She looked at the pass-book in his hand, said in a soft, matter-of-fact, resigned voice, “More bad news?”

“I don't know. Did you know about this?”

She took it from him, looked at the entries, then looked back up at him, puzzlement wiping the blankness from her face, “I've never seen
this
! Where'd he get all this money?”

“I don't know, Molly. Unless he won it on the horses or the dogs—?”

“I'd of known. I know the bookie—he'd of told me—”

“
Well, there's that, and the gold pass . . . When did he get that?”

“I dunno—I never knew he had it. But he took the boys to see the footy—I suppose he must of used that pass—”

That would have been at least four months ago, before the football season had ended; could the gold pass have been a first payment? “I'll leave everything else, but I'll have to take this pass-book and the gold pass with me, okay?”

She handed back the pass-book, taking one last look at it and shaking her head. “Will I get it back? I guess the money belongs to me and the kids, right? He owes it to me,” she said bitterly, her grief for the moment forgotten.

She had the battler's practicality; money might slip through her hands, but she would keep grabbing for it. He couldn't blame her. “You'll have it back as soon as I've traced where it came from.”

She looked down at the contents of the metal box still spread on the bed. She picked up the two packets of condoms. “I wonder who he used these on? He always made me take the Pill after the boys were born. The twins were an accident—I forgot to take it and he was ropeable about that. Jesus, what a shit! I knew he was a bastard, but you expect that, don't you, I mean part of the time? We ain't perfect, none of us, are we?” She began to scoop up the scraps of the letters. “Take these with you, will you? Otherwise I'm likely to try and stick 'em together, so's I can read 'em again and make myself sick. Get rid of 'em somewhere, burn 'em.”

“Whose letters are they? Just Sheryl's to him? Nobody else's, like someone explaining about the money?”

“No, just Sheryl's.” He believed her; she was in no mood to protect the bastard who had been her husband. “She was always the educated one, she went to business school. I worked in a factory, she worked in an office. Her letters are
typed,
you notice? Geez, even I know better than that! Typing love letters! Take 'em, don't read 'em, promise!”

Her anger was starting to bubble again. He pressed her shoulder, then took the scraps of paper and stuffed them into his pocket. “I'll burn 'em, I promise.” He went out into the hallway, opened the
front
door; the heat outside attacked them both. “I'm sorry, Molly.”

“I know.” She pushed a wet strand of hair back from her face, squinted in the glare. “Life's a bugger, ain't it? But you get used to it.”

She closed the door on him. He opened the rickety gate and, true to the nature of the moment, it fell off its hinges. He propped it up against the fence, stepped out into the street and looked up and down its narrow length for the police car. It was parked up at the corner. Malone walked up towards it, to the young constable sitting on a fender, signing autographs for three young boys. He straightened up as Malone approached, waved the boys away and grinned in embarrassment. “Sorry, sir. They were after my autograph.”

“You're in the
seconds
and they ask for your autograph?”

“This is Tiger country, it's like that over here.” They got into the oven of the car. “Did you play any sport when you were young, sir?”

“A bit of cricket.” He had played for the State, never for the
seconds,
but he couldn't remember ever being asked for his autograph. Life was indeed a bugger, as Molly Maddux had said.

IV

Leroy Lugos pulled up the red Porsche outside Dennis Pelong's house in Sans Souci and sat for a moment looking out across the expanse of water where the George's River ran into Botany Bay. He couldn't understand why Denny lived out here in the boondocks, seven or eight Ks, maybe more, from the Cross, the heart of the nation; way out here, he was sure, cousins married cousins and other impediments to human intelligence occurred. If he had Denny's money, which he hoped to have some day, he would buy himself a penthouse right on the water at Point Piper or Double Bay, right there amongst the silvertail snobs, and he would shove it up their noses every day, metaphorically speaking, of course. He had too much sense to lay a finger on anyone, unless it was a woman.

The Pelong house was a near-mansion, dwarfing everything else in the suburban street; its security turned it into a near-fort. The high wall was topped with iron spikes and barbed wire; two
Rottweilers
growled at Leroy through the iron gates. He announced himself through the intercom and a thug, disguised as a gardener, appeared, opened the gates and led the dogs away.

“Go in the front door, sport.”

The front door was opened by one of the impediments to human intelligence. She was forty if she was a day, over the hill but unaware of it, a wog like himself but an Italian one.

“Lee-roy! What are you doing way out here in Sansuzy? Come in, come in! Denny, guess who's here? Denny, it's Lee-roy! He's come all the way out here from Sydney all by himself!”

She beamed at him and suddenly he realized that under the dyed beehive that passed for her hair, behind the thin pretty face with its three coats of paint plus varnish, Luisa Pelong was as shrewd as himself. He had met her only once before, at a nightclub in the Cross where Danny had thrown a party, and she had sat across from him hardly saying a word all night, playing the dumb blonde except that she wasn't blonde.

“Hello, Mrs. Pelong. Your husband sent for me.”

“Mrs. Pelong? Well, I do like that, definitely! It shows respect for older women, right? It's like that with you Greeks, ain't it, same as with us Italians. I never found out what it's like with my hubby's people, 'cause I dunno where he come from. Oh, here he is! Where did you come from, sweetheart?”

“I been out by the fucking pool,” said Sweetheart. “You know that.”

“Sweet,” said Luisa, touched his cheek and went away up a flight of marble stairs.

The house was all marble and chandeliers and enough gilt furniture to throw off a glare. “The wife decorated it.” Denny Pelong had the voice of a growling Rottweiler. “You like it?”

Leroy knew he had better like it or he would have his kneecaps broken. “Love it! Is she a pro?” That was the wrong word: Pelong's expression told him so. “I mean a profession decorator?”

“Nah, she just picked it up. You wanna sit out by the pool or come inna the study?”

The thought of Denny Pelong in a study was too intriguing to resist. “Let's stay inside. It's so bloody hot outside—”

“I thought you wogs loved the heat. Okay, let's go in here.”

He
led the way into the study. There was no marble in here; it was all panelled timber. There was a red leather suite, offset by a green leather wingbacked chair, a large antique desk, brass lamps, a huge globe of the world and a wall of shelves lined with books. Denny Pelong, in his white linen safari suit, fitted in like an expensively clad gorilla.

“The books are the wife's.”

Leroy glanced at them: Jackie Collins, Barbara Cartland, Judith Krantz and a leatherbound set of Mills & Boon. “She a great reader?”

“All the time. Siddown. You wanna a drink?” He opened up the world; it was a bar. “I only drink soft stuff till it's dark, okay?”

Leroy sat down, wondering if the heat had got to him on the way out here, even though he'd had the air-conditioning working in the Porsche. I dunno why I'm here, he thought, and in a minute I'm gunna start thinking I haven't arrived, I'm dreaming it all. This place is bloody unbelievable.

Pelong poured two bitter lemons, then sat down behind the desk. He was in his middle fifties, built like an old-fashioned front-row forward, all bulk and slow movement, with a broad flat face tinged with the dark complexion of his mother, a Torres Strait Islander whom he hadn't seen since he had run away from home when he was fourteen. His intelligence, Leroy thought, was second to anyone's you cared to name; but ruthlessness and a one-track mind had taken him to the top of Sydney's criminal heap. He was a murderer, only God and the Devil knew how many times; he had served time for only one killing, but he had been in jail at least another half a dozen times. He had two daughters, neither of whom, Leroy reckoned, had any chance of getting a husband, unless the poor bastard was suicidal.

“What did you wanna see me about, Mr. Pelong?” He was not respectful, just clever.

Pelong nodded, pleased to be called Mister. “You been having any trouble up the Cross?”

“No. Why?”

“Things are happening, Leroy. I lost a guy yesterday, a wharfie I had on me pay-roll—he kept an eye out what was coming in, gimme tip-offs if some other bastards were bringing in the stuff. He was gunna be a real help to us, he'd been running around like a blue-arsed fly in some election they got
coming
up. He was working to keep the present union bloke in office, some stupid honest jerk who wouldn't trouble us, 'cause he wouldn't know what was going on if we was up him. The opposition, they're the trouble. A Melbourne lot, real bastards.”

“So what happened?”

“They broke my guy's neck. Jimmy Maddux, that was his name.”

“He the guy that's in this morning's paper?”

“Yeah. He got on to me, told me he'd come across a shipment, it was stuck to the bottom of some ship with magnets or something. I seem 'em doing that in Europe and the States, it was on TV a coupla weeks ago.”

“I saw it.”

The ratings had been high for the show, augmented by the audience of the entire drug-dealing population of New South Wales. They had viewed it as an educational film.

“He said there was no chance of us hijacking it, so he was gunna tell his boss, the union bloke, and get him to let the police know. It would of made Jimmy look good with his boss and the boss look good with the cops. But the other mob got to Jimmy first. They broke his neck.”

He said it without horror or disgust, as if it were an everyday occurrence; Leroy felt his own neck go stiff. “Who are the other mob?”

“I dunno for sure. Some Melbourne jerks, I've heard of some of 'em, Snow White and a coupla others, but someone's running 'em and I dunno who it is. You heard anything up around the Cross?”

“Nothing.”

“The cops been near you?”

Leroy hesitated a moment. “You know I run some girls up around the Cross and on William Street, a sorta sideline?”

“Sure. That's your business, not mine. I done the same m'self years ago. They causing you any trouble?”

“No-o. But a coupla the girls, they lived with an old crow named Sally Kissen—”

“
Sally? Shit, I knew her! A good sort when she was young. I read about her, she was done in Sunday night—You mean your girls are mixed up in that?”

“No, not exactly. But the cops have interviewed 'em and then they came and talked to me. A guy named Malone, an inspector, and a big jerk named Clements, a sergeant. They have nothing on me, but I think they're gunna be watching me.”