Darlinghurst Road (5 page)

The guy started to say something but Duncan
turned deadly serious and cut him off with his thick Scottish
accent “listen laddie, games are over, get out of my fucking cab
before I drive you out somewhere quiet and break your fucking
back!” The terrified robber ran away and to back up the story,
Duncan took a switchblade out of his pocket to show us “like me new
knife?” He laughed, “have another beer boys, it's on him!”

Georgina

Georgina was named after the Georgina River
that begins at Lake Nash near Mount Isa in Queensland and ends at
Bourke in western New South Wales. The river flows near the small
town where she grew up and it must have inspired her parents in a
way that these things sometimes do. I know the area around her town
and it is indeed a beautiful part of the world. An industrial
accident took the life of her father and by fourteen, she had also
lost her mother as a result of Cancer.

The only other family she had was an Aunt and
Uncle in Brisbane and that is where she went next. She wasn't there
long before the sexual abuse started and her uncle became an object
of fear. A few weeks before her fifteenth birthday, Georgina ran
away and headed to where so many runaways go: the bright lights of
Sydney. The next and last stop on the journey is usually Kings
Cross and that was where she ended up after a few nights of
sleeping on the street.

Prostitution came next, so many men... so
many men taking her body that she sold for so little on so many
endless nights. Somehow, and she was never quite sure how, but
somehow, Georgina managed avoid the drugs that can so easily be
obtained and offer the illusion of escape. In my observation, that
always seemed to be the key to the exit door; the drugs were the
spider that trapped them in a web that they could never seem to
unwind. Without the drugs to hold her there, Georgina stepped out
of the life at the age of twenty-four and never looked back.

I haven't seen her for a while but the last
time that I did, she was looking well. Georgina works with children
now and lives in an outer Brisbane suburb where nobody knows a
thing about her past. We had dinner together like two old friends
and promised to keep in touch but as so often happens, we never
did. I'm sure that I reminded her of a part of her life that she
would rather forget but I can't say that I blame her. Georgina made
it, she understood the importance of looking forward not back.

Damian

Damian worked at the Palace and must have
smoked his weight in weed every week. By choice, Damian worked the
day shift primarily because he didn't function all that well after
dark. He seemed reasonably immune to the effects of marijuana in
much the same way as a heavy drinker might be to alcohol.

Damian would take frequent breaks and smoke
the stuff all day like some people smoke cigarettes but by the time
the sun went down, it would start to be obvious that he was well on
his way to being stoned senseless and it would be time for him to
retreat from the outside world. One morning he came in to work
early, a habit that I would have been glad to see him start because
I had severe doubts as to whether Damian owned an alarm clock.

The next face through the door was a
character called John, a flamboyant hairdresser turned heroin
addicted drug dealer. John knew that he wasn't welcome on my shift
so he took a quick look then disappeared back out to the street.
Damian excused himself, followed him out and returned a few minutes
later with a bulge under his shirt. He came behind the counter,
squatted down on the floor and shoved the contents of his shirt
into his backpack. It was a pound of marijuana and as I counted
down my register, I thought “that should keep him going for a
while!”

Snowy’s Retirement
Plan

Snowy acquired his nickname not from the
color of his hair but from the color of his merchandise. For nearly
twenty years, Snowy had sold cocaine and anything else that he
could get his hands on. A little man in the very big world of
drugs, he nonetheless became quite prosperous. That was fortunate
because Snowy certainly liked to live the good life. After a
particularly good year, Snowy decided to retire from the stress of
drug dealing but looking over his finances, he realized that he
although he had made a lot of money over the years, he had spent
just as much. That was when it first dawned on him that he would
probably need some sort of retirement plan given that the
alternative was to spend the rest of his life doing what he had
been doing for most of his life already.

Some men commit a crime because they are
smart and feel that they can get away with it, other men commit the
same crime because they are desperate and feel that they have no
choice, still other men are either just plain greedy or they do it
for reasons beyond the comprehension of ordinary men. Snowy fell
into the latter category. After two decades of successful criminal
activity; well known to the police, arrested twice but never
convicted, Snowy embarked on a course of action that defied
logic.

Avoiding his normal purchasing channels,
Snowy somehow made contact with a criminal group in America and
arranged a deal to import a huge quantity of cocaine. Most people
would keep quiet about something like that but not Snowy.
Apparently he was quite proud of his retirement plan and word got
around fast.

The police became interested and Snowy was
placed under surveillance about the same time as he found out that
his former supplier wanted to talk to him. When he went to the
meeting, the supplier made it clear that what he was doing was
unacceptable and demanded to be cut in on the deal. Snowy went back
to his apartment in Potts Point, called around on his tapped phone
and tried to secure the services of a hit man.

The police were now paying real close
attention to Snowy. Things being as they are in the crooked world
of drug commerce, the same information found its way back to the
supplier who was not impressed that Snowy was trying to have him
killed. Detectives on the case decided to set up a sting and a
meeting was scheduled with an undercover cop posing as a hit man.
When Snowy paid the guy, the detectives slapped on the
handcuffs.

Snowy sat in jail while his lawyer worked
hard to get him out on bail. The application was successful and
Snowy was free. Two things happened after that in very close
succession. After talking to the lawyer and finding out that he was
probably facing a long time in prison, the wheels started turning
in his mind. To add to his mental burden, within hours of his
release, Snowy heard a whisper that his old supplier was taking the
threat to his life very personally and had returned the favor by
putting a contract out on him. Snowy hit the panic button, he ran.
The police found him before his supplier did and Snowy, to the best
of my knowledge, is still alive but doing a long stretch in
prison.

Paula

I first met Paula after the death of Cathy.
She was a plain clothes Police Officer who came calling as a follow
up a few weeks later and wanted the guided tour. Official policy
was that if the Police wanted to do a walk through then we should
allow it but in reality, this was something that never happened.
Her partner balked at the idea and made an excuse to stay behind. I
walked her through the club then downstairs to the coin booths,
expecting her to be at least a little shocked but she didn't appear
to be. We came back into the store and her bored partner had his
back to us studying the cover of an adult movie. The poor guy
turned about twenty shades of red when Paula said in a loud voice
“hey, shouldn't be looking at those, you know they're illegal
right?”

After that visit, Paula would pop in
periodically and she always seemed genuinely concerned for the
welfare of those she met. We got along well and the conversations
we had were often long ones.

I was glad for her presence on one occasion
when two men came into the store with trouble in mind. They had
both been drinking and I told them no admission to the club until
they sobered up. Drunks were a problem upstairs, they generated
complaints and may turn into a liability if they injured themselves
or others. One guy decided to protest my decision by slamming a
fist down hard onto the glass counter. It didn't break so in his
frustration, he walked over to a display and started throwing some
of the stock around.

I yelled at him to stop and his friend
decided to join in the party by threatening to hit me. This all
happened very quickly and Paula, who had been standing by at first
to let me handle it, responded to the threat by confronting them.
“Police Officer, you guys need to leave now.” One guy made a move
to attack Paula but she moved a lot quicker and shot a long blast
of pepper spray directly into his face. The guy was on the ground,
covering his face and screaming. A second later, Paula had drawn
her gun, pointed it straight at the second guy and yelled “On the
ground NOW!” As he slowly complied, his bladder let go and the
dark, embarrassing stain crept across his pants. It was hard to
feel sorry for the guy given his earlier behavior.

When the paramedics had finished washing the
eyes of his friend, both men were arrested and I started to put the
store back together. After she did whatever she needed to do
outside with the other cops, Paula came back in, shook her head and
said “I don't know how you do this job late at night, I'd be so
scared.”

Russell

I hate to say it but there are some people in
this life who need to be contained in some way. Russell spent a few
years in the Navy before they figured out that he was not the kind
of sailor who brings honor to their uniform. In a friendly South
East Asian country, Russell spent his shore leave beating up and
raping a local prostitute. The Navy, who was not impressed with his
behavior, rescued him from the local authorities, threw him in the
brig for a while and then dishonorably discharged him.

At a loose end after the service and not
being the type to work in an office, Russell went to another
impoverished Asian country where he partnered with an old Navy
buddy to start a business.

The business was a bar. A word used loosely
as he explained it to me because the building consisted of a small
bar like structure downstairs that measured only a few feet across
to comply with some local law but the real business went on in the
rooms upstairs where the prostitutes worked. Russell killed a man
in a fight and after making the appropriate bribes, managed to
avoid spending time in a local jail. The police made it plain that
it was time to leave before he got into trouble again, so Russell
let his partner buy him out and with the proceeds, bought a plane
ticket back to Australia.

Kings Cross is the natural home for people
like Russell and before too long, he had established himself as the
owner of an Asian brothel. For the girls, it was not a very safe
place to work but typically, he only hired young illegal immigrants
that he could stand over and in that way, he could protect himself
from the repercussions of his violent behavior. There was nothing
nice about Russell, he was a rapist, a killer and a total
bastard.

Russell was a bully but he was a tough one
and performed most of own security work at the brothel. That was to
be his undoing. Another fight, another violent death and nobody
interested in taking his bribes this time.

Russell was sentenced to spend the rest of
his life in prison and personally, I think that was a very good
decision because, as I said, some people just need to be
contained.

Tommy The Frequent
Flyer

Tommy was a bank robber. It was not the sort
of occupation that you could list on a tax return but nonetheless,
Tommy did indeed rob banks for a living. I found out by accident
and kept it quiet; it's not the kind of thing one spreads around
about someone especially in areas like Kings Cross where discretion
certainly is the better part of valor.

Tommy was a thinker and his method centered
on his theory that the armed robbery of a bank is a crime the
police will take seriously. Therefore, if you hold up a bank the
police will come looking for you and with enough effort, they will
most likely find you. However, they can only find you if you are
there to be found and Tommy always made sure that he was not!

In practice, that meant Tommy had a policy of
never walking into a bank in Sydney for any reason. This was not
something that he had just started and over time, Tommy had set up
a small network of hiding places in every Australian state where he
kept a gun and anything else that he may need. When he was short of
money, Tommy would plan out where he wanted to hit, fly out of
Sydney, do two bank robberies in another state and then catch a
return flight the same day.

Tommy only did a trip every now and then so
it could be several years before he returned to that state again.
It was a good plan and it seemed to work for Tommy but for me, I'll
stick to making deposits. I always figured that there were better
ways of leaving town than in the back of a police car.

Diane And Her Cheeks Of
Red

The store may have been located in the gay
district but it was far from being exclusively gay. Female hookers
were part of the furniture and on weekends, the sex shop had the
allure of seedy naughtiness for straight couples. One Saturday
night, a couple came in. They purchased a vibrator, a movie and a
couple of other goodies then went downstairs to the coin booth area
for a look around. My sale completed, I stepped out to a warm
Saturday evening then stood in the doorway, getting some air
between customers and talking bullshit with our big Lebanese
bouncer.