Darlinghurst Road (10 page)

Stewart, whether by coercion, the promise of
a big pay day or both, decided to take the bet and get involved.
I've heard it said that even the best battle plans are torn up as
soon as the first shot is fired and in this case, the plans began
to fall apart before the gun was even loaded. Their agent in
Melbourne didn't spread the bets around in the way that Stewart had
told him to do and it wasn't long before word spread through the
small community of licensed bookmakers that something was amiss.
The multi-million dollar plunge scared the bookies into thinking
that whoever was making the bets knew something about the race that
they did not. It was only a matter of time before the racing
authorities found out and informed the police. The Melbourne agent
rolled quickly and the money was followed back to Sydney.

The son was arrested but the charges were
dropped due to lack of evidence. Stewart the unlicensed bookie
became the scapegoat for the whole operation. The court sentenced
him to three years for money laundering, fraud and something else I
don't remember. It was a bad business right from the start but with
the son involved, the outcome was predictable. I knew his father
and the son was a very poor copy indeed.

Donna

The eyes always give the game away, those
tiny little pupils that say it all, heroin eyes. Donna looked at me
and smiled seductively “what's the big deal, it's late, no one
knows and no one cares so just look the other way for a few hours
and if you're in the mood yourself, maybe we work something out for
later, you know what I mean?”

“Sorry love but you can't work in here and
that's about all there is to it okay.”

“It's not hurting anyone, why are you being
so mean to me.”

“It's not personal, it's policy, it's not
going to happen so let's just leave it at that and off you go.”

“This is the first time I've been here,
there's girls who work in here all the time so why kick me
out?”

“Look, we've already had this conversation,
time to go now.”

“FUCK YOU!”

“You're still here!”

“FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, I HOPE
YOU FUCKING DIE YOU MORONIC FUCK!”

She angrily flicked her lit cigarette at me
and departed. Wow, a pleasure to meet you too lady, don't hurry
back. Every time I saw her after that, Donna would give me a dirty
look and not say a word.

Trevor had a policy of: if you need to throw
someone out and they want trouble, always stay inside the store,
never do anything on the street because inside the store, we own
the cameras, the staff and all the evidence. The policy was a very
correct one and it kept us out of trouble on plenty of
occasions.

One Thursday night, somebody yelled that a
girl was being assaulted in the street. I went out for a look and a
little bully boy was taking out his frustrations on Donna. I pulled
the guy off her and pushed him inside the store. The bully went to
take a swing and I shoved him down the stairs into the coin booth
area where David, Victor and a few other guys were standing. David
liked to brawl and smiled mischievously when he asked me if I
needed a hand. The guy turned on David and ended up on with a
broken cheek bone for his trouble.

I had no choice but to call an ambulance for
the guy and that meant cops. Victor took David home and naturally,
I kept my mouth shut about his involvement. The police officer who
took my statement gave a knowing grin when I said he must have
taken a tumble down the stairs and the guy didn't seem to want to
disagree with that version so they left it at that.

I was surprised that she didn't take off.
When I went back upstairs to call the cops, I found her sitting on
the floor in a sort of daze. She heard me on the phone and decided
that that was her cue to disappear but I intercepted her. There was
a small bag in her hand, she looked at it, then me and I understood
why she wanted to run. It was her drug paraphernalia and a small
quantity of heroin. Donna started to break down and I hugged her as
she cried. We stood there for a few minutes until the sirens were
close, I threw the bag behind the counter and gave it back to her
after the police left.

The ambulance people treated Donna and she
was okay apart from a few bruises. Donna turned out to be a really
sweet girl and nothing like the angry person that I thought she was
after our first meeting. That night she was strung out, badly in
need and I was blocking her from making the money she needed to
fulfill that need. Heroin withdrawal is physically painful and
mentally traumatic, it was easy to forgive her.

Jim

Jim was a senior detective in the Major Crime
Squad who had retired early after taking a bullet on the job. His
pension was adequate, his wife worked but Jim liked to have a beer
on weekends, play the ponies occasionally and generally have a few
extra bucks in his pocket. To supplement his income, Jim took a
part time job behind a bar and that was how I met him. We got along
well and like me, he had bunch of stories from his job so we often
a laugh or two. I remember one night, I was reading a newspaper
article about a taxi driver who had been assaulted. Jim said to me
“Christ that's a shitty neighborhood, I wouldn't go there in a cab
late at night, it's home to some real winners out there.”

I wasn't all that familiar with the suburb so
I asked him to clarify. “Put it this way, a few years back, I was
out there investigating a murder. Forensics told us which direction
the shots came from, so I went up and knocked at the door. They
came out and I asked the guy casually did he happen to hear any
shots last night, as he's saying no, I look down and right beside
this big concrete planter on the front porch is three shell
casings, I looked at the shells, looked at him, so you heard
nothing? The guy still denied it!” I listened to the story and
asked “what did you do then Jim?” He laughed “grabbed him by the
collar, pointed out the shells and told him, don't fuck with me
stupid!” I could picture the whole scene playing out as he told
it.

On the subject of real dumb criminals, I
played citizen detective with Jim one night and it was a bit of
fun. We were finishing up for the night around the same time and I
bumped into him at an all night gas station. Jim was filling up and
I was buying something I don't remember. The attendant was upset
when we got there because he had popped into the Men's room and
someone had stolen some scratch lottery tickets in the minute that
he was gone. Jim told him to call the police then looked at me
“feel like playing detective? Think I might just have a hot tip.”
As he was speaking, Jim pointed to something on the ground outside
the door. It was a ticket. We stepped out and just like Hansel and
Gretel, followed the bread crumbs of discarded tickets. The thief
had started scratching them as he walked off, dropping the losing
tickets on the ground. We followed the trail across the road to a
parking lot behind a fast food restaurant. Sitting in an old Toyota
was our thief, still scratching away. Jim walked straight up to him
and yelled: “POLICE, out of the vehicle, NOW!” The thief complied,
Jim put his arm in a lock and marched him back to the gas station.
The police were there and Jim handed over his prisoner. As we
parted company that night, Jim said to me “did you hear what he
said? He told the police that if he won, he planned on paying for
the tickets out of his winnings, when they told him it didn't
matter because he couldn't win on a stolen ticket, he said... I
didn't think about that!”

Melissa

One lesson that I learned very early in The
Cross is that you can never trust an addict. If you don't learn
that fast then it's only a matter of time before you get burnt. An
addict will sell their body, their soul and yours as well if you
let them.

Melissa was in her late twenties but the
stress of working the streets of Kings Cross and an endless thirst
for heroin had aged her ten years or more. I bumped into her on
Darlinghurst Road and she gave me the sob story about how she had
been kicked out of where she was living. I had known Melissa on and
off for a couple of years but she was still only what you'd call an
acquaintance. She asked if she could stay with me temporarily and I
said no but she talked me around by offering to split the rent and
other bills. The offer was appealing and against my better
judgment, I accepted.

I had hopes at first but getting money out of
Melissa was like pulling teeth. Melissa managed to scrape up her
half of the rent most weeks but not much else. Sadly, most of what
she earned from selling her body went straight into her veins. That
made her unreliable and unpredictable so this was clearly not a
long term situation. Street grade Heroin is not the stuff movies
stars use and it is so easy, even for an experienced user like
Melissa, to overdose; a constant source of stress for those around
them and it gets real old, real fast. They know the risk themselves
but take the chance because the drug has such a hold. Heroin
withdrawal is one of the most painful things a human body can be
subjected to. People think that an addict uses because they choose
to... an addict uses because they can’t not use.

We had a rule that she wouldn't bring her
work home but she constantly broke it. On the nights that I worked,
it really wasn't an issue but more a case of out of sight, out of
mind. She would lose track of what day it was or be scared of
losing a job if there was nowhere else to go and her client was
nervous. A veteran streetwalker, Melissa always made sure that she
took the money up front so if the guy ran off, she didn't care.
There were a few funny moments I must admit and we often laughed
about the look on a guy's face when he saw me walking through the
door.

Melissa herself could be hilarious. Late one
night, we went for a bite at a twenty-four hour joint on Macleay
Street. We'd only just sat down and ordered a pizza when a drunk
weaved his way across our table; the guy had obviously recognized
Melissa and wanted some action. To my surprise, she said “back in
minute”, got up and walked out with him. Fifteen minutes later, she
strolled back in, head tilted to one side and looking like a
naughty school girl. When I gave her a look of not being very happy
with her, Melissa started giggling and said “hey lighten up you, it
was my turn to pay so I went outside and blew him, you are having
dinner with a hooker you know.”

Well, the inevitable happened and the
bickering turned to arguments; usually over Melissa bringing her
clients home. It reached the point when Melissa decided that she
wanted to live alone and declared, with some relief on my part,
that she had decided to move on. The parting happened at a good
time because I was over it too. Melissa said that she would stay
another week but moved out after a few days and my life went back
to where it was.

Christine

Christine had been selling her body for
heroin since she was fourteen and by twenty-one, she was lucky to
be alive. An addict must have a continuous source of money and all
those years of working every single night of every single week had
taken its toll and Christine was almost finished. She was a sad
case, sadder than most but there's an old saying around The Cross:
“nurse them and they'll die in your arms.”

I knew Christine through Melissa and because
of that connection, she would come into the store sometimes, try to
borrow money or just hang around hoping to get lucky with one of
the customers. One night, she over-dosed in the restroom, I called
an ambulance in time and she lived but it only kept her off the
street for a night or two. After that, I told her that she wasn't
welcome back but still she came. We played that game for a while
then I gave in because it didn't matter enough, it was a battle
that I was tired of fighting.

Christine rolled the dice once too often and
the heroin took her life as it always seemed it would. She died in
another sex shop down the road, someone else's restroom, someone
else's problem. The police came in that night and asked me to
identify her body. Apparently, somebody had told them that we were
friends because she was always hanging around on my shift. They
couldn't find anybody else so I went down a few days later and made
the identification. I thought at the time that I'm not sure how
hard they looked, but then she probably was not the highest of
priorities for them.

It turned out that I was wrong; the police
managed to track down her mother and they sent her over to me. The
story from her was that Christine ran away from home as a kid,
never to be seen again by her family. I didn't know what to tell
her. The police had already told her that her daughter was a
prostitute and that she worked the streets to support her heroin
addiction. I didn't have to break that to her, but it was tough
just the same.

That incident clinched it for me, I needed to
get out, The Cross can be such a depressing place at times. Who am
I kidding, it's depressing all the damn time but when you live it
every day, you just close your eyes to it and make another
buck.

A Decision Made

Living with Melissa had exhausted me mentally
and made me feel a little claustrophobic. It was always about money
with her; Melissa’s one constant. For me, living life was more
important and a little cash in my pocket made that a little easier
but if I was broke today then it didn’t make me sweat but with her,
it was an obsession. I understood it because of her addiction but I
found it incredibly hard to relax around hard core users like
her.

It wasn’t just Melissa, it was everything. On
my shift one night, I found a body, an overdose and the needle was
still in his arm. In the darkness, I felt the syringe before I saw
it. As I knelt down beside him to check for life, I looked up to
see two people having sex and the whole scene was just so fucking
normal. I walked downstairs to call the Police and then occupied
myself with the mechanics of dealing with the situation upstairs.
The next day, Trevor seemed more concerned with the fact that I
closed the club for an hour while they removed the body.