Sydney Noir Read online

  The boat floated in the water, going nowhere, stilled against the breeze. She talked quickly, with anxious animation. “I switched the drinks. He didn’t notice, he was stoned anyway. He was right there, where you’re sitting. Passed out.” She paused, staring at the bench, and shook her head. “I was so sick of it, you know? And I just thought, I know what it will be like, he just won’t tell me next time he mixes the drinks, and that would be worse.”

  “You didn’t think they’d believe you? If you told them?”

  Her face lost its hardness, threatened to crumple. “Maybe, yeah. But I didn’t want them to know.” She was ashamed, she was trying to paper it over, and I felt the bitter tide of my anger rising again, that impulse to shred the photos, to wreck the studio. To leave the man dead and alone. “I think Virginia kind of knew, for a while,” she said. “I don’t know.” The idea was unthinkable: I pushed it away, but it pulsed with cruel possibility.

  “So where is he?”

  She looked back toward the house. The boat seemed to be traveling so slowly, but we were farther out into the harbor than I had realized. The bridge cast a perfect shadow of itself onto the water. In the distance Luna Park showed its ghastly open mouth, its Ferris wheel an oversized toy. “We should head back,” she said. “Virginia’s probably home.”

  I wanted to know, although part of me wanted not to. “Skye, where is he?”

  She gazed at the little waves slapping the hull. “Stop looking for him,” she said, her voice tired and flat. “He’s not coming back.” The boat felt suddenly like a flimsy thing, suspended over cold depth. She adjusted the tiller, her body again filled with focus, tuned to the machine, the water, the weather. We picked up speed. “I could have said it was an accident and he fell, he was drunk, whatever.” The breeze carried her words away as she spoke. “But maybe it wouldn’t have looked exactly like that, his body. I don’t know.”

  He was in the water then: this was what she had been telling me. Not telling me. I didn’t know how long bodies stayed underwater. A long time, probably, if weighted correctly. Every object around me now seemed full of sinister possibility: the new-looking anchor, the coiling rope, the heavy wooden boom of the sail.

  “What about Virginia? Does she know?”

  Skye shrugged. “Maybe she guessed.” Her confession was over, such as it was; she would not look at me, or the water, only toward the house. The breeze lifted her hair, blowing it across her mouth and her eyes. She was a girl again for a second, lanky and unself-conscious, inhabiting the child I remembered, and then the impression slipped. “You don’t have to tell her,” she said.

  If not me, then who would? I tried to remember if we had been like this at fourteen, with this kind of remove from moral structures. I could imagine it in Virginia, but I didn’t trust anything I remembered of my own past self.

  I tried to see something of Virginia in her, as though finding likeness between them would somehow provide a clue to the whole tragedy. I found only superficial resemblances. The tilt of her jaw in profile, the shape of her brow. Skye’s tawny blond hair was nothing like Virginia’s sleek dark mane. Maybe Virginia had once been this brittle, but surely never this damaged. To me she had always been imbued with a terrible power, all due to my adolescent desire.

  Had Virginia returned to the house, shadowing her sister, to learn the truth? Or to protect her in case the truth leaked out? I reached inside for the familiar longing for her, and was surprised to find it flattened, somehow two-dimensional, a dead echo of itself. The glare was just starting to leach out of the sunshine as the afternoon turned toward evening. The shadow of a tall gum tree fell across the dock as we approached, and for a moment I saw March’s photograph there, Virginia framed by darkened greenery, waiting.

  THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT

  by Mandy Sayer

  Kings Cross

  Frank lived in a dive in Kings Cross filled with junkies and prostitutes. Three stories high and about a hundred years old, this hotel was either rented by the week, or by the half hour, depending on your requirements. Frank had rented room 11 for as long as he could remember, because he worked as a courier for the neighboring strip joints and clubs. Now in his midsixties, he’d done the same job for almost half a century, and was ready to pass the business on.

  Frank rose at about five p.m., as he did most afternoons, and showered and shaved in the shared bathroom—a mold-furred cubicle with leaking taps and a dedicated sharps bin. Back in his own room, he dressed in his best suit—the one he reserved for funerals and court appearances. His only son, Jimmy, was turning eighteen today.

  He checked the duffel bag in the wardrobe, which contained thirty-four grand in cash. Frank locked the wardrobe and shoved his revolver into his inside coat pocket. As he opened the door, he glanced again at the eviction notice lying on the floor: the Astoria had been sold to a foreign company and all tenants had to vacate the premises by the end of the week. The word on the street was that it was going to be renovated into multimillion-dollar apartments.

  He stepped out onto the footpath. The neon sign from a bar across the road blinked erratically. A siren wailed in the distance. In the old days, the locals had called them “Kings Cross lullabies.” And back then he used to deliver chicken dinners and hamburgers to all the hungry strippers on eight-hour shifts stuck in joints along the Golden Mile. Now, most of the clubs had shut down due to 1:30 a.m. lockout laws. These days the only orders he received from working girls were for ice and Ecstasy.

  He was to meet his son at an old haunt farther along the Golden Mile, at a restaurant that had once belonged to his first boss, Lionel Silke, the former King of the Cross. Everyone around town knew that Silke had earned his title by bribing cops, blackmailing politicians, and dealing smack. His nickname had been Sir Untouchable. Frank remembered that at the height of his fame, Silke had owned five strip clubs, as well as twelve nightclubs, six restaurants, and three illegal gambling dens. He’d also bought up a high-class brothel.

  Frank strolled south down Darlinghurst Road, weaving between the scores of suited professionals pouring out of the train station on their way home from work. Most of them were carrying briefcases and muttering into headsets, not watching where they were walking, and bumping into each other. These were the kind of people who would move into his hotel, once it had been turned into slick apartments. Farther down, outside McDonald’s, Frank saw a big-breasted blonde in her late sixties wearing thigh-high boots. Doris had kept an eye on him when he’d first come to the Cross, and had once given him a spirited blow job in a darkened doorway of Kellett Lane. Doris didn’t drink or take drugs; the only times she was forced to work the streets were when she ran up too many gambling debts. Frank picked up his pace and rushed toward her—a friendly face from an easier time. But when he got closer he realized the woman wasn’t Doris at all—just a grandmother with a beehive hairdo, holding a baby in her arms.

  Frank crossed the road. All his mates were now dead or in jail. There were only two or three hookers left on the street, and they were just weepy teenage girls who lived under the railway bridge down the hill in Woolloomooloo. The joint that used to be the Pink Pussycat had been renovated into a homewares store, the former sex toy shop next to it was now selling scented candles and lead light lanterns.

  Through the restaurant window, he could see Jimmy sitting at the front table, clutching a can of VB, gazing out at the passing parade. Father and son locked eyes and briefly waved to each other. Jimmy had been the unintended consequence of a conjugal visit at Silverwater when Frank had been doing time. The kid had grown up with his mother, in a government flat in the coastal town of Wollongong. She was a woman who preferred rough trade in the form of men who were doing time. Jimmy was a tall, pale-skinned boy with rounded shoulders, who always looked as if he’d just been punched in the gut and was still striving to catch his breath.

  Frank opened the door and they shook hands. “Happy birthday, son,” he said, motioning to the waiter. Every year they did th
is—celebrated Jimmy’s birth—while the mother had the son at Christmas and Easter. Frank whispered an order over the bar and sat down at the booth. In the sixties, the restaurant had been filled with dark wood furniture and had served heavy Italian food; today it was a minimalist white box with a blackboard menu featuring something called “Truffle Foam.”

  He took his phone from of his pocket, turned it off, and rested it on the table. “So, how’s your mother?” he asked. He automatically took out a cigarette, remembered the new antismoking laws had just come into effect, and, sighing heavily, slid it back into its pack.

  Jimmy shrugged and replied, “Or’right.”

  Frank saw the kid was wearing tracky-daks. Well, that was the first thing that would have to change. And he’d have to learn to speak properly. No one in this town respected a mumbler. Or a man who couldn’t look another man straight in the eye. If nothing else, Lionel Silke had taught him that.

  The champagne arrived in a silver bucket and the waiter poured them two fizzing glasses. From the blackboard menus they ordered organic pizzas topped with homemade goat cheese. Frank toasted the kid’s birthday and they both began to drink. They made small talk until the food arrived and then ate in silence.

  Frank wiped his mouth with a serviette and drained his glass. “Son,” he said, “now that you’re all grown up, there’s something I need to tell you . . .”

  Jimmy stopped chewing and met his father’s eye. “Is it about Mum?”

  Frank shook his head. “No, it’s about family. My side of the family.”

  Jimmy sat back and fingered the stem of his glass, waiting for him to continue.

  Frank gazed through the window, watching a small package exchange hands outside the railway station. “You know it was my older sister Nell who got me my first job up here in the Cross?”

  Jimmy looked at him blankly and shook his head.

  “She was an exotic dancer in a few of the clubs. She worked with snakes.”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened.

  “And it was her idea to have someone deliver takeaway food to strippers in the clubs. I worked for tips. And boy—were they generous.”

  From a passing waiter Frank ordered two shots of whiskey and asked for the bill. He explained to Jimmy that when he’d first started the business, he’d been only fifteen. Within a month or so, working every night of the week, he’d made enough money to move out of his mum’s home.

  His single mother had three other kids to raise and was happy to have one less mouth to feed. Soon young Frank had set himself up in an attic room on Victoria Street, two blocks from the Golden Mile, while Nell lived on her own in a posh apartment on Macleay Street. It was the late sixties and the Cross was crawling with American servicemen on R&R from Vietnam.

  The bill and the whiskeys arrived and again Frank reached for his cigarettes. “It was all going along hunky dory. Business was good.” He downed his shot and Jimmy followed. “Even Lionel Silke got me working for him. Running errands and shit like that.”

  Frank picked up the bill, ran his eyes over the figures, and dumped a few notes on the table. “I got you a present, son,” he said, standing up. “But I left it back at the hotel.” He pulled a packet of Camels from his inside pocket. “C’mon, Jim, let’s walk and talk.” He patted his coat pocket and was reassured to feel the lump that was his gun.

  Out on the street, Frank lit his smoke and they strolled beneath the blinking neon lights. He had no other children and was greatly relieved to have this father-son discussion. He had to tell somebody—preferably his own son—before he kicked the bucket.

  “There was a time when Silke owned every joint in this town,” Frank recalled, gesturing down the street. “And even though he was a gangster, he always paid on time. And he always paid in cash.”

  Jimmy nodded obediently and shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this,” said Frank. “Don’t worry. You’ll see.”

  They crossed the road, dodging traffic. Frank ducked into a bottle shop and bought a liter of bourbon. Back on the footpath, he cracked the top, took a gulp, and passed it to Jimmy. They kept walking north, toward the fountain.

  “Then one day,” Frank continued, lighting another Camel, “all of a sudden, it’s my eighteenth birthday. And all the girls in the clubs are making a fuss of me. And then I get this message. From Lionel Silke. To meet him in his office.”

  “What’d he want?” asked Jimmy, suddenly interested.

  They passed a man begging for change and Frank slipped him a note.

  “What’d he want?” echoed Frank, snatching back the bottle. “Well, he wanted to show me how much I meant to him.” He pointed to a corner building across the road. “See that second floor? That was his office—” He sat down on a bench and took slow swigs of the bourbon.

  Jimmy remained standing, impatiently shifting his weight from one leg to another.

  “So I go up the stairs and see him standing at his filing cabinet. Suddenly he pulls out a gun and points it at me. Right at my fucking head.”

  Jimmy paled and glanced around the street.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” said Frank, stifling a laugh. “The next thing I know, Silke is handing me the gun and wishing me a happy birthday.”

  Jimmy looked puzzled and so Frank stood up to explain. “Y’see, the Yankee sailors were bringing heroin off the ships and Silke needed a go-between to get the gear around. The gun was for my protection, see?”

  The kid’s eyes widened and he nodded several times.

  “And after Silke gave me the gun, he told me there was only one rule . . .” Frank paused for theatrical effect.

  “And what was that?”

  Frank pursed his lips. “Only pull the trigger in self-defense.”

  He passed the bottle back to Jimmy and they continued strolling north. The sickly sweet smell of the nearby ice cream shop wafted down the footpath. Frank went on with the story, saying that his job had been pretty easy at the time: getting down to the Garden Island docks before dawn, exchanging cash for small brown parcels, and transporting them back to Silke’s office, where they’d be cut, repackaged, and sold to the dancers and customers. Silke would put up the capital and split the profits with his teenage protégée.

  “For a while we were pretty tight,” said Frank. “He hired me as his driver, his bodyguard, and his ear on the street. Any bullshit going down and I’d report straight back to him. He gave me heaps of bonuses . . .” They came to the Astoria Hotel and Frank flicked his butt into the gutter. “Life was pretty shit-hot, you know?”

  Jimmy smiled crookedly and let out a burp. Frank could tell the kid was already half-maggoted—the flushed faced, the swaying head. “C’mon, son,” he said, cocking his head at the double doors.

  He led the way past the dozing clerk and up a flight of stairs pocked with cigarette burns. Everything smelled of stale spew and cheap disinfectant. Frank unlocked his door, kicked the eviction notice out of the way, and ushered the kid inside. He flicked on the light and opened the bay windows overlooking Darlinghurst Road. Setting two chairs before them, he told the kid to make himself at home. For a few minutes they sat side by side in silence, passing the bottle back and forth, gazing out over the kingdom that had once been the Cross. Car horns bleated and two hookers were yelling at each other in front of the El Alamein Fountain. Still, it would never be like the old days again.

  Frank rested his feet on the sill and Jimmy asked what happened next, about the business with Silke.

  “A few months passed,” Frank said. He shrugged. “Life was good. Silke gave me a secondhand car. Treated me like family. Quite a few times he took my sister out and sometimes we’d all eat dinner together.” From where he was sitting, Frank could still see the window of Silke’s former office on the corner of Rosyln Street.

  Jimmy shifted and crossed his feet on the windowsill too. Frank glanced at him and thought they looked like the sheriff and the deputy in some Weste
rn movie, just waiting for some trouble to gallop past their porch.

  “Then one night I’m walking through one of the joints backstage when I hear this terrible ruckus. Chairs falling over. A woman screaming.” Frank took a long swig of the bottle and wiped his mouth. “So I bolt up the stairs and there is Silke, beating the shit out of Nellie. Whacking her across the face. Slamming her against walls. Dragging her across the room by her hair. Before I knew what I was doing, I had the gun in my hand. I don’t think I even aimed—I just fired the fucking thing—and the next thing I know, Silke is dropping to the ground and this gutful of blood is flying all over me.”

  Jimmy pulled his legs from the sill and sat up straight.

  “Then Nellie went berserk. Started yelling and whacking and punching me around. How could you do that? she screamed. After everything he’s done for you? She cuffed me in the mouth. You meant more to him than any . . . He treated you like a . . .” Frank’s voice trailed off and he shook his head. “And then it all made sense, Jimmy.”

  “You killed your own boss?” asked Jimmy.

  “No, fuckwit. I killed my own father. I just didn’t know it until then.”

  Jimmy’s expression blanched into one of shock. He was gripping the arms of his chair as if he were trapped in a plane taking a nosedive.

  “You see, Nellie was fifteen when she first came to the Cross and started working for Silke. And he was already married.”

  The kid frowned and wagged his head back and forth in disbelief.

  “She refused an abortion.” Frank stood up, walked to the wardrobe, and pulled out the duffel bag. “And Mum—well, my grandma, really—she raised me as her own.” He dumped the bag on the bed and gestured to Jimmy.

  The kid rose and lifting the bag, yanked back the zipper. A few wads of cash dropped onto the mattress. Jimmy’s eyes widened again.