Dark Summer (31 page)

“What are you two up to?” he had said. “And don't try any bloody lies with me!”

She had seen at once the change in him. All attempted urbanity had gone, he had reverted to type, he was the old gang boss, the emperor. She had looked to Jack Junior to answer, but he was blank-faced. “I don't know what you're talking about, Dad.”

Aldwych had stared at his son; then he had switched his gaze to Janis. “Okay then, what are
you
up to?”

She decided to take him on head-on: “If I'm up to anything, as you call it, I don't think it's any of your business, Mr. Aldwych.”

“It is, if it concerns him.” He nodded at his son. His old man's face had not suddenly become young again, but it had hardened, as if muscles under the slack jaws and loose cheeks had regained their
strength.
“Don't get too clever, girl, or you could end up out in the bush somewhere.”

“Dad!”

“Shut up, Jack. I'm trying to save your hide. Now which of you is gunna tell me what's going on?”

It was Jack who told him: “Dad, we've got a scheme going . . .”

Aldwych, without rising from his chair, if not urbane then at least composed, had generated a chilling anger as Jack had outlined the scheme. He had not exploded; the very low temperature of his anger was more frightening. For the first time Janis realized how Aldwych had risen to the top, that he was a coldblooded killer who, even if he did not do the killing himself, would order it without compunction. She was suddenly and for the first time in her life terribly afraid.

“Jack, I never touched shit—you know that. I hate the fucking stuff.” He was talking to Jack Junior as if Janis was not in the room. “It was a promise I made to your mother—the only time we ever talked seriously about what I did. I hated it, anyway. I still do. Why the hell did you have to get into it? Christ, don't we have enough money? Haven't you got enough to occupy you, running the companies? What the hell do you
want?”

Jack Junior looked down at his hands, as if he hoped to find an answer there that would satisfy his father; but his hands were empty. Both the father and the girl next to him recognized the weakness in him. Aldwych with sorrow, Janis with contempt.

Janis said, “He wants power. The same as I do. I want money, too. This was all my idea and Jack came in because he loves me.”

She wasn't sure why she was defending Jack. She wasn't even sure he loved her, he'd certainly never told her so. But to mention love was always a good ploy, it softened the heart. If Jack Senior had a heart, something she was beginning to doubt. Though that thought didn't diminish him in her eyes. Her own heart did no more than pump blood.

Aldwych turned his head, looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there. At first she thought he was going to ignore her, turn away again, then he said, “You got him into this?

She
hesitated, still afraid, then nodded. “Yes.”

“How many helpers have you got?”

“Just two.”

“Who are they?”

“What are you going to do with them if I tell you?”

He ignored that “Just tell me!”

For a moment she thought of defying him; but she could see the ruthlessness in him now. She had never had to face anyone like him before, a dictator who brooked no opposition. “Two men on the wharves. Dallas White and Gary Schultz. Dallas White is running for union secretary and we're financing him. We'll run the wharves when he gets in, we'll be able to bring in our stuff more easily.”

“Bullshit.” Aldwych looked back at Jack Junior. “Do you know these blokes? You didn't bat an eyelid when Malone mentioned them.”

“I didn't know about them till Janis gave me their names out in the kitchen, when we were getting the tea. That's the first I knew who they were. I knew she had some helpers, but I'd told her I didn't want to know. All I was doing was supplying the finance. Just like a bank.”

Aldwych permitted himself a thin grin. “You're no different than a lotta the so-called legitimate banks. Some of them didn't wanna know, either.” It had been one of the pleasures of his retirement to see how some of the big-name banks had been suckered by some of the entrepreneurs. He had felt almost pious: at least his robbing of banks had been straightforward, a hold-up or a break-in. “Well, anyway, your little scheme is over. Finished.”

Jack Junior and Janis exchanged glances then she said, “It's not as easy as that, Mr. Aldwych. We're committed.”

“Committed to what?”

“We've got a shipment of cocaine coming in—the ship it's on is already in port. We've paid half, we have to pay the other half on delivery.”

“Forget it.”

Janis
suddenly generated her own anger, her fear of him for the moment pushed aside. “It's not as easy as that! It's too big—it'll be worth at least five million on the street—we're not going to give that up!”

Aldwych had been defied before by women, by brothel madams such as Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, the two toughest women Sydney had ever known; but this girl was different, she was challenging him without any of the back-up those other women had had. He studied her, wondering just how much hold she had over Jack Junior. “Who's the shipment consigned to?”

“It's a shelf company, Dad. One that's got nothing to do with our legitimate ones.”

“Where's it coming from?”

“From Antofagasta, in Chile. It's come down there from La Paz in Bolivia.”

“Why cocaine? Heroin's the big seller.”

“That's next,” said Janis.

“Next?” Aldwych raised an eyebrow. Despite his distrust and dislike of this girl, she intrigued him. He had never worked with women at an executive level in his gang days; there had been only one executive, himself. “How did you get into this?”

“I went to Los Angeles . . .”

That had been nine months ago, when her ambition to be rich had started to stir, before she had even begun to think of
power.
She had applied for a study grant and a benevolent government, eager to promote its image of helping women, had given her one. She had gone to Los Angeles, made a perfunctory study of the drug problem there and the efforts to combat it, and spent most of her time making contacts in the trade itself. Then she had met the man from Cali in Colombia. She had had to spend a weekend with him in Las Vegas because, as he had told her, he was a ladies' man and all the women in Cali, even the ugly ones, missed him when he was out of town. He was insufferable, but he was part of the cartel and she had suffered him with a smile and the appropriate praise for his sexual prowess. She had perfected the co-ordination of closing her mind and opening her legs at the same time. He was United States—and Europe-oriented and she had had to explain to him where Australia was and that the natives were civilized enough to want to buy drugs; in the end he had seen the possibilities of the market
and
agreed to supply her once she had established the credit he demanded. He was a ladies' man but not in business.

“How did you make the first payment?” Aldwych said.

“By draft to an account in Panama.”

“What about the final payment?”

“That's to be made here, we don't know who to. We lost a shipment earlier this week, but they haven't come near us for payment on that, since we didn't collect the stuff. They may or they may not. The arrangement is that we pay only when the stuff is actually handed over, but we don't know just how tough these people are.”

“From what I've read,” said Aldwych, who never missed a crime story in the newspapers or on television. Do bishops give up reading the Bible when they retire? “they don't give anything away for nothing. How's the stuff coming in?”

“It's packed between the plastic sheets in solar panels.”

Aldwych shook his head. “Jesus, even I know you wouldn't import solar panels from Bolivia. Their only bloody industry is growing the coca bush for cocaine and herding those animals that spit at you, what d'you call 'em, llamas? Solar panels! From
Bolivia
!” He shook his head again. “The Customs people here aren't bloody dills. But you're both bloody amateurs.”

“I suppose even you were an amateur once.” Janis was getting over her fear of him; and it hurt her to be told she was not a professional. “You made mistakes.”

“Sure, who doesn't? But I was never an amateur, not like you two.” He turned away from her. “If you didn't wanna know, Jack, does anyone know you're in this?”

Jack Junior looked at Janis, who said, “Nobody knows.”

“Okay, Jack, then you're out of it. As of right now. If you can't protect your arse, then I'll have to do it for you.”

“Where does that leave me?” Janis was angry again. “Where do I get the money for the final payment?”

“
That's your problem.”

“No, Dad, it isn't her problem.” Jack Junior was tentative in his defiance, but he was not entirely without courage; he was also not without honour, an ironic distortion of the code that his father had once lived by: “Not hers alone, anyway. I got into this mess with her—”

“You admit it's a mess?”

“Okay, yes, I admit it. But I can't leave Janis holding the bag. I'll see she gets the final payment to pass on.” He turned to her. “Then I'm out of it. If you want to go on, you go on on your own.”

“I can do it,” she said doggedly, hating them both.

“You really think a woman can run a big racket in this country?” said Aldwych. “And run the blokes who run a union? This is a man's country, haven't you woken up to that?”

“They are two women State Premiers.”

“Put in there because no blokes wanted the jobs. One State stinks of corruption and the other is so broke it should have Mother Theresa running it. Take the money from this shipment, Janis, and run.” He looked at his son. “What's the cut?”

“Sixty per cent to us—”

“Not us,” said Aldwych. “You.”

“Okay, sixty per cent to me, forty per cent to Janis.”

“All right, Janis, take your two million, less your expenses—”

“We split those,” she said. “White and Schultz have to get their cut. They're asking for more—”

“You see? You've already got trouble. You pay that. Banks never pay the expenses and Jack was just your bank. Don't argue, girl. Just consider yourself lucky I'm retired. Otherwise I'd feed you to the bull terriers.”

“Dad!”

“Shut up, Jack.” He rose from his chair. He had all of what looked like Sydney Greenstreet's dignity; but, it might have surprised him to know, it was his own. Even Janis, hating him, recognized it. “I won't be getting up early in the morning. You be gone, Janis, before I come down for breakfast—I don't
talk
to anyone at the breakfast table. And don't ever come to this house again. Goodnight.”

He went out and she stared at the empty doorway in a mixture of fury and amazement. He had wiped her as if she were no more than a chalk-mark on a blackboard. He had shown her what it was to be a real boss, an emperor. It added to her fury to know that she would never have the power he had.

“Come to bed,” said Jack Junior.

“We're not sleeping together!” She turned her anger on him.

“I wasn't suggesting it.” His mother's ghost still ran the morals in this house. All at once he wanted to be rid of Janis, he had seen the danger in her. He felt grateful to the Old Man, he would tell him so when this was all over. “Come on, I'll show you to your room.”

That had been last night and this morning they had left the house in Harbord at seven o'clock. Jack Junior had driven her home to Wahroonga, dropping her at the front gate in the quiet, tree-lined street where the smell of respectability was as pervasive as that of the flowers and shrubs in the well-kept gardens. If cocaine were sniffed here it would be done with the little finger raised and it would not be referred to as a snort. Snorting was what was done when referring to socialist politicians.

“Stay away from White and Schultz,” said Jack. “When the stuff is on the wharves, they'll let you know, I guess. But don't meet with them. When the contact calls for the money, I'll bring it to you.”

“In cash”

“I'll get it today. Look after yourself.” He drove away, thinking of the line in last night's movie that his father always clapped:
The shortest farewells are the best.

Janis had gone into the house, not the large one where she had been raised but the much smaller one bought after her father's death, and her mother, mouth withered with new-found piety, had shaken her head at her loose-living daughter but said nothing. Janis had showered, changed and come to work by train, travelling for the last time, she hoped, with the hoi-polloi. After this weekend, even though the dream of being an empress looked as if it had run on to the rocks, she would be rich enough to be at least a duchess.

She had left the Capri in the St. Sebastian's car park when Jack had picked her up last night.
She
did not go to the clinic in Darlinghurst Road, but came straight to the hospital. She had just finished with her second client, a sixteen-year-old boy who had been on heroin for two years, was skeleton-thin, hollow-eyed and already halfway to the grave, when her beeper buzzed. She went to a phone, rang the clinic.

It was one of the other counsellors. “Janis, there's been an Inspector Malone here looking for you. He's on his way over to the hospital now. I thought you'd like to know.”

The youthful addict shuffled past her, looked at her with dying eyes, went across the lobby and out into the street, where he disappeared, like smoke blown away, in the eye-shattering glare of the morning.

IV