Roll With It (23 page)

The suit was sweaty and claustrophobic and Lou wished she could get some fresh air. The night was warm and her vision was being hampered by sweat in her eyes, as well as the black mesh. She stopped for a moment, leaning against a traffic light in front of Polyester Records.

Found her mind drifting, thinking of a cool shower, and of hands on her. Stig’s hands, which disturbed her and excited her in equal parts. The ex-boyfriend from hell, who had ripped off her not-for-profit workplace, and vanished without a decent goodbye, and now showed up with a Neanderthal mate, involved in who knew what? And yet … and yet … God, she hated the way her heart had started pounding, her physical reaction, when he’d appeared in the Soul Food Café. Even as the anger kicked in, she couldn’t deny that rivers were running underneath. And he’d known it, too, the bastard. She could sense it. She’d have to be careful if he showed up again. He’d surprised her last time, that was all. Next time, she’d have her walls up.

She tried to shake it off, starting to walk again, rattling her bucket at passers-by. Lou saw the couple walking on the other side of the road and peered through the eye-holes, trying to work out how she knew the guy. She was so crap with names, but better with faces. It struck her – he was the cop who had walked into the Soul Food Café and sent Stig packing. Out of uniform, he was the guy who had been with Jake when Jake had arrived at the bar last night. Tonight the cop was walking with a woman, hands in his pockets and taking in the crowd. The woman had her arms folded across her chest and was walking slightly ahead of him. She was in a business suit with a medium-length skirt. High heels. Corporate. He was in a T-shirt and jeans.

Lou watched him catch up to the woman and then ahead, so he got to the door of the Vegie Bar in time to open it for her. Chivalry, Lou thought, smiling. They were gone and she flicked sweat out of her left eye. Could feel a line of perspiration crawling down the slope of her breast, gathering on her nipple then falling, somewhere south in the suit. She shook the white bucket and got back to work.

***

Jake had driven home in a state of confusion. The texts from the cop had said ‘get in your car and go’, so he had. A normal drive home, nothing out of the ordinary. He’d hurried from his car in the driveway into the house, just in case, but hadn’t noticed anything apart from a couple of cars drifting past his house. A red SUV and a smaller car. But late afternoon sun hitting the car windows meant he couldn’t see in and anyway, they’d kept going. It wasn’t a white Ford with the guys from the car park at his work. He eventually got another text from Detective Laver, checking he was home safely and he’d replied, ‘sure:)’.

It was the American sitcom
Two and a Half Men
that got Jake back out of the house. A week ago, he would have settled in and enjoyed the show. Tonight he looked at his mum glued to the TV, laughing at Charlie Sheen, and Jake couldn’t do it, his head full of the wonders and wildlife of Fitzroy.

‘But
The Bill’
s about to start,’ his mother said as he reached for his keys, tonight wearing a brand new T-shirt with ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ on the front, red on black.

‘Tell me what happens later,’ he said, and headed for his car.

Now he was parking in a side street, off Brunswick Street, thinking he might just walk up and down, or maybe get a light beer in the hotel on the corner near the Fitz Café. Look at some books. This time tomorrow night, he and Lou would be in the Groc-o-Mart, placing their stickers. He was surprised to realise he was more excited than nervous. New Jake was in full flight.

As he locked the car door and wandered towards the lights, he was blissfully unaware of the car that had followed him all the way from Kew, now illegally parked with its headlights off.

Or the silver Honda that had pulled up right behind him.

The two occupants of the first car found themselves caught, watching the kid walk away but wondering about the dishevelled-looking man getting out of the silver Honda and fumbling with his keys. The kid not waiting for him, not even seeming to be aware of him.

The same guy who’d also followed the kid home.

A man who kept turning up.

It hadn’t started well. Laver and Marcia were still waiting to
be given a table at the Vegie Bar when Laver spotted Andrew Wo sitting in a dark corner, near the door.

‘Excuse me for one second,’ he said to Marcia.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Say hello to somebody.’

‘Wow,’ she said, pulling out her iPhone and starting to tap the screen.

Wo was sitting with a beautiful woman. Laver registered long blonde hair, stylish but simple clothing; pegged her as maybe in her early thirties, sitting very straight in her chair. Great posture. Laver forced himself to keep his eyes mostly on Wo as he approached.

‘Detective Laver. What a pleasant surprise,’ Wo said in his precise English.

‘I feel the same way, Andrew. How’s business?’

Wo smiled without warmth. ‘The trucking industry is always a tough one, Detective. Fuel excises, driver fatigue, government regulations on loads. It’s an endless headache.’

‘I’m sure,’ Laver said, taking in Wo’s companion.

‘This is my wife, Charlotte. I don’t believe you’ve met.’

‘No, we haven’t. A pleasure,’ Laver said and meant it. She held out a hand and he shook it. The skin was cold.

Laver turned back to Wo. ‘Andrew, I was wondering if you might have heard about anybody new in town?’

‘In what sense, Detective? Another trucking company?’

‘Possibly – maybe an importer. Somebody who might be a competitor who’s turned up unexpectedly from interstate.’

Wo’s face was a pleasant mask, not the least bit offended or worried by the question – possibly slightly bored. ‘I really wouldn’t know what you were talking about, Detective. There are so many cowboys with their own trucks and big ideas these days.’

‘Just a long shot, I guess,’ said Laver. ‘Better get back. Take care of yourself, Andrew.’

‘You too, Detective. I hope you get over your, ah, troubles.’

Perfectly delivered, without any chance of a comeback. Laver gave him a nod, offered another to Charlotte, and walked to the bench seats in the window where Marcia was now sitting, putting her phone away and glaring in Wo’s direction.

‘Who was that?’

‘Andrew Wo.’

‘A friend of yours?’ she asked. ‘A cop?’

‘One of Melbourne’s bigger drug dealers. On the rise.’

Marcia looked shocked. ‘And you went over and said hello, like he’s an old footy teammate?’

‘Best to stay on good terms where you can.’

‘The man’s a drug dealer.’ Slightly too loudly for Laver’s liking.

He leaned in and said quietly, ‘Unproven.’

She hesitated. ‘So he might not be?’

‘Oh no, he is. Worth millions already.’ Laver still keeping his voice low. ‘He’s got some of the best distribution channels in the country.’

‘But you exchange pleasantries, then sit here, both having dinner in the same restaurant.’

‘Marcia, a guy like him, you don’t throw him across a table and fish a bag of cocaine out of his pocket. It takes years to build a case and to swoop at exactly the right moment.’

‘So there are police working on it?’

‘Absolutely. I just don’t happen to be one of them.’

A waiter arrived with two glasses of wine. They sat in awkward silence until he was gone.

Marcia said, ‘So why say hello? Why dignify his presence?’

‘Because he might know things I need to know.’

Laver noticed she hadn’t clinked glasses before taking her first sip.

Instead she said, ‘Did he?’

‘No,’ Laver admitted. ‘Well, if he did, he wasn’t saying.’

Marcia shook her head in exasperation. ‘So this is tonight’s trick. As opposed to last night, where I think you might have been discussing us being together forever, with your work no longer coming between us, at the exact moment you got up to chase some suspect and left me sitting in this restaurant, never to return.’

And so it begins, thought Laver. ‘I did return. You were gone.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘When I did try to talk about us being together forever, you chose instead to sends texts to whoever is on the end of that phone.’

‘I have friends that aren’t you, Tony. Outside your world.’

Laver wondered what that meant. ‘Outside my world. Which is different to yours?’

She shrugged. Reached for her wine.

‘Marcia, I’m sorry about last night. There’s a lot going on.’

‘When isn’t there a lot going on?’

‘I’m not an accountant. I don’t work nine to five, deliver a pay cheque and a foot massage at the end of the day. You know that. You even liked that about me at the start.’

Again, a shrug.

‘Marcia, I killed a man and it’s been messing with me. I’m not the cowboy you seem to have decided I am. My career is flushed down the toilet. I can’t sleep for shit. I’m seeing a ghost. Really. I’ve had things on my mind.’

‘Well, this is the first I’ve heard about it.’

‘Because you haven’t been around. Not answering your phone, or at the theatre, out for another run with the gang from work.’

‘I have a life.’

‘But not with me, right now. When I need you.’

‘So suddenly you need me. To help prop you up in your little cop world until you get your slap on the wrist, tut, tut, Tony, and are allowed to disappear back into the murk.’

‘You don’t think it’s reasonable that I’m upset I killed a man?’

‘Well, you clearly didn’t when you murdered him.’

Murdered him. Christ.

Laver was contemplating how to answer that when he looked out the window and couldn’t believe his eyes. There was the kid, Jake, walking towards the city on the other side of the road. In baggy jeans and a black T-shirt, the usual silly hat on. But look who was ten metres behind him: the big guy with the orange hair, now, ridiculously, shaved into a mohawk. Tattooed arms swinging as he walked. Wanting the whole world to see him, the footpath traffic parting before him. His eyes firmly on Jake’s back.

Laver was already somehow on his feet when he heard Marcia’s voice, with a note he hadn’t heard before, truly shocked, say: ‘Tony! Don’t you even think about it.’

He stopped and looked at her, this woman he loved, was sure he loved, and said desperately, ‘I’m sorry. I am truly sorry. But I have to go. Just for a few minutes. I will be back.’

Her face was icy calm as she said through thin lips, ‘I won’t be here.’

‘A life might be in danger.’

‘When isn’t it, hero cop?’

He had nothing to say to that. He headed onto the street, Laver the cop in the ascendant even as he hit the footpath, moving fast. For better or for worse.

***

Enough with the Xbox. Enough with the fucking Xbox. Enough with sitting around the house with a finger up his arse. The Wild Man was on the move.

Stig knew some guy, yet another friend, who had got them into a house on Rathdowne Street, Carlton. Stig full of all sorts of helpful friends, unless it came to actually selling the drugs they needed to get rid of. Once they’d shifted in, two backpacks and some groceries, mostly beer, Stig had made a few phone calls, run into a few more brick walls in his supposed network of Melbourne criminal contacts, and had slumped back onto the couch, sinking stubbies, smoking away their profit margin, stewing yet again over all the contacts who still hadn’t rung him back, wondering about Barry at Heidelberg, getting spooked that Jenssen might be doubting their car-crash deaths by now. All jittery over whether this bloke hanging out with Louie was a threat. Stig frozen, stoned and useless.

And suddenly the Wild Man had had enough. Told Stig he could choose to sit around while this entire plan went to shit but Wildie wasn’t going to. As of tomorrow, once Stig straightened out, they were going to do this properly. Front the nerd Louie had been hanging out with, grill Louie if it came down to it. Contact the Groc-o-Mart manager if necessary. Sort shit out.

Stig stared at him, stupidly, nodding vaguely. Wildie couldn’t stay in the house. He grabbed the car keys and headed into the night. He needed to let off steam, and the only options were sex or violence.

King Street, in the city, was the place for violence, but instead he let his dick win out, driving to Fitzroy, thinking there should be a band playing at one of the pubs there, or at least people – women – getting drunk in the many bars. He was horny as hell.

But Wildie had barely arrived on Brunswick Street when, shit, he saw the kid from the supermarket emerging from a side street. Wearing his silly hat and looking in shop windows. Wildie barely able to believe it, thinking of Stig prone on the couch and deciding, fuck it, this was the perfect time to handle things his way.

The kid walked up towards Johnston Street and into a bookshop as Wildie crossed the road, wishing he knew the alleys better so he’d know which one to drag him down. Now he was standing slightly behind the statue of some clown in a side street that led to a pool hall Wildie wouldn’t mind checking out, the Red Triangle.

Wildie making plans in his head, thinking on his feet, and all while watching some idiot in a furry giant koala suit on the other side of the road, shaking a bucket for loose change.