Chapter 6
It was three thirty and once again the sun pushed the cloud and mist away. From the darkened hollow of the lounge Max stared idly through the shaded verandah greenery to the colour of the day beyond the shadows of the cliffs. Another hunk of wood for the fire and Max finally relaxed. The money he’d left in the kitchen cupboard had been tampered with and he would wait for McLuhan to return before he found how much had been taken.
He was thinking how an ironic twist in life could jolt a family from its treadmill continuum and abandon it to the vagaries of chance. He thought it was funny that the history of some of his fellow humans could be recounted in a matter of moments, while others he knew could live a lifetime in a hectic hour or so. His memory had failed to hold in store all those he had known who had suffered death because of their disregard for caution. Their lives had been run along the quintessential death road; every step was a violent injection of adrenalin into their beings. His friends of long ago would have had it no other way. Those who survived the iconoclastic period now languished in a life of useless nostalgia or regret.
Max had allowed his own nature to chart his life. Even though he was no less responsible for the outcome of his random existence, he was addicted to the uncertainty, the passion and the melodrama of crisis. Yet it was with enormous restraint that he sat back and watched his own children moving into the world he had abdicated years before. He had wanted to block their drift with intellectual stanchions, but the lessons of his own upbringing under the eyes of repressive reform institutions had told him to lay off; and with no more than an occasional gentle puff on their sails he had watched his kids steer their own course.
Now with his children gone for the day, as he had intended, Max selected Dostoevsky from the bookshelf and turned the pages to where the slip of white paper marked his place. As his eyes told him of Raskolnikov, his mind dwelt in other quarters. He waited for his visitor to arrive and it would be an extra feather in his battered cap if he could advertise his shift from the mindless years of violence to the sedate intellectualism of his world today.
At four he lifted his eyes from his book and listened to the footfall up the stairs. The tall man was graceful in movement as he lifted himself through the trapdoor. He stooped and rapped on the glass of the sliding door, his vision being limited by the dimness inside.
‘Come in, Frank. It’s been a long time.’
Frank Donleavy smiled as the gruff uncultured tones of his old mate awoke a vast network of memories, kept under wrap until the time of their resurrection. He met Max’s hand with his own and his eyes registered the new lines in that tough, bearded face.
‘Well, well!’ said Max as he groped with his emotions.
‘Well, well!’ Frank repeated the ritual that had begun one late night at the back of the Sound Lounge in the earliest years of the sixties. The fist that had hit him all those years ago had begun from a point near the ground and had been driven by the biggest set of shoulders he had ever encountered. He had felt his head snap and his body had followed like the tail of a comet.
When he scrambled from the gutter, his assailant had already turned his back and was on his way inside the discotheque. Frank chased the big man through the door and for the next ten minutes the two of them battled in a relentless struggle for supremacy. Their eyes met during a lull when the lungs of each fighter were screaming for air. Simultaneously they dropped their arms by their sides and smiled.
‘Well, well!’ Max had wheezed through his sweat and blood.
‘Well, well!’ Frank groaned in mimicry.
‘I reckon we’ve sorted that one out, hey? The name’s Max!’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it, Max.’ Frank bent at the waist and sucked oxygen hard. ‘I’m fucked. And I’m Frank. Donleavy. Fucking Frank Donleavy.’
‘Ya the bloke who flattened the big bloke in the red shirt, hey?’ Max sat down in the gutter and stretched his legs out in front of himself.
‘Yeah.’
‘Ya left him half-fuckin’-dead in the alley, ya know?’
‘He a mate of yours?’ Frank asked quietly.
‘Mate? I don’t have mates who can’t look after themselves.’
For hours they sat and mused in the gutter of the Kings Cross nightclub. Music became loud as the back door opened and muted when shut. Steak on grill and oily smoke wafted across from the kitchen window.
‘Shit on ya, Frank. That punch of mine would’ve flattened Tony Madigan. Ya mother married a fuckin’ brick, hey?’
They had managed the sixties together, dropping amphetamines and used women wantonly. They excelled at bouncing hapless heads of awful people between their fists. Then Frank had followed his travel bug to Africa and Max had returned to his gang and a life of brutality and waste.
‘What’s doing, Max?’ asked Frank as he found Dali’s chair by the fire. His face wore a smile.
‘Boredom and frus-fuckin’-tration, me ole mate.’
‘I’m glad you phoned. Sorry I was out. But we get out of the place as often as possible. Ghastly people next door. I say!’ Frank tipped the end of his nose upward with his little finger in a gesture of disdain. ‘We’re a bit closeted up there in the sky.’
‘Yeah? Hey, I nearly slammed the fuckin’ phone down on its fuckin’ cradle when I heard ya stupid voice on that fuckin’ machine.’
‘What can I say?’ Frank ushered his arms in supplication. ‘You won’t touch technology?’
‘Don’t like creeps intrudin’ into my peace of mind. Don’t mind technology, Frank. I’ve changed since the old days. But when technology sticks its gummy leg out and trips ya on ya arse then it’s time to fuck it off. Hey?’
Beer flowed and whisky flowed and eyes became red and happy and their voices grew happier and louder. The two men jumped from one piece of banality to the next, both glad to talk about anything with a friend. Then Frank asked, ‘Your wife?’
‘Buried her along with my youth, mate.’ Max replied and they drifted into silence. Their eyes crept over the room and outside to the approaching evening. The heavy surf was a shifting sound in the distance.
‘Your young bloke pulled my temporarily demented daughter from the surf. I’m indebted and fucking glad. Rane? Have I got it right? I don’t get it.’
‘Polynesian god, mate.’ Max retorted almost defensively. Then he laughed. ‘Anyway, might’ve cheated a bit. But I love the sound of rain. Haw Haw Haw!’
‘You must be the only cunt in the world who keeps his word, Max.’ Frank declared solemnly. ‘Except for me, of course.’
‘I didn’t know of your thing with Victor Jory, Frank.’ Max leant forward with a joint. ‘The Shadow! Yeah! Remember those fuckin’ rubbish comics! An’ the serial at the flicks? Lamont Cranston, hey? Bet ya kid hates ya fuckin’ guts for stickin’ him with a label like that. For Christ’s fuckin’ sake, Frank!’
‘You ought to talk!’ Frank laughed. ‘McLuhan! If ever a bloke’s labelled for life it’s gotta be McLuhan. Bet he gets the medium message/massage fuckup?’
‘Mac’s the world authority on Marshall McLuhan, mate. He’s the world’s fuckin’ pedant on message and massage.’
Frank carried his smoke out to the verandah and he stood peering through the sight-zone in the greenery. The helter-skelter of traffic on the cement bridge at the end of the lake held his attention. It fascinated him. Vehicles raced across like strings of sausages, intermittently bursting forth from the green of the traffic lights. Max carried a bottle of whisky and filled two glasses. Frank took his and balanced it on the railing.
‘What the fuck ya doin’ in that fuckin’ place?’ asked Max suddenly.
‘Uh? Oh yeah! Marquesas!’ Frank replied with a start. ‘It’s got furniture and it was available. Great view but fucking noisy!’
‘Too nosey?’
‘Too nasty also.’ Frank admitted. He was at ease on the verandah. Late afternoon imbued colours with a sparkle, as if the sun exuded just that little extra before it disappeared behind the cliffs. ‘Max, you been reading the papers?’
‘Yeah! Ya wonderin’ about fuckin’ Krulis?’
‘Fuck you, Max!’ Frank laughed and swigged his whisky. ‘You’re right in the navel, aren’t you? Yeah! Dear old Milan. He’s come a long way since he pitched up at my place with his little black bag of tricks. The papers seem to have it in for the poor bastard. Any strength in what they’re saying?’
‘Dunno, Frank.’ Max replied equably. ‘He’s a different form of life nowadays. I reckon he’s coated himself with all the layers of protection ya need at The Cross. Havta I s’pose. Ta survive.’
The marijuana slowed their conversation. Frank described his life in Africa and Papua New Guinea and when he saw the vacant eyes he swung the talk back into the more comfortable arena of their mutual past.
‘D’you remember that prick Fitzgibbons?’
‘Frank!’ Max said squarely. ‘I just been drillin’ the kids about his type. Didn’t want ‘em to feel easy at The Cross. Yeah! Fitz still lurks. Three stripes at The Cross. Yeah! A fuckin’ sergeant! Fuck me dead, Frank!’
Frank chortled at memories of probationary constable Fitzgibbon. The young policeman had travelled from Queensland to join the New South Wales Police Force in 1961 and by early 1962 was walking the beat along the streets of The Cross. On a hot Saturday night he had accompanied his senior partner to a break and enter at a brothel in Killit Lane. Frank and Max had parked nearby when they noticed him patiently marking time outside on the street. They had gone off to the pub and two hours later when they returned the young probationary constable was still outside the brothel. They had greeted him with humour. He ignored them.
A week later they met him again outside that brothel and he was smoking a cigarette with an interesting aroma. This time when they greeted him he smiled and ebulliently displayed his infatuation with the night. His cap was on the iron-frame fence and his hair was unkempt. It was obvious he had no idea his cigarette had been spiked and that he was beginning to unravel.
‘Usually begins this way, hey?’ Max observed drily when they got onto their bikes.
‘He was a wanker from way back, Max.’ Frank laughed as he spoke for his mind was welling with the memory. ‘Do you know Milan gave him his first blow job?’
‘Ya fuckin’ kiddin’!’ Max exploded in a fit of laughter.
‘Hang on, Max!’ Frank wiped his eyes of hilarity. ‘I’ll rephrase that. Milan fixed it with one of his molls down at the Birds Nest in Orwell Street. She gave Fitz a real humpty-doo headbang. I was down in the club at the time when Carmen the Queer whispered a show was on upstairs. We shoved on up and some of the molls had a chair outside the door. I had a bo-peep through the fanlight and there was Fitz having his balls drained. Jesus! The next week the bastard broke her arm because she wouldn’t swallow him. He’s a fucking psychopath, that cunt! A fucking psychopath from the moment he fell out of his father’s arsehole.’
The process by which a naive police initiate gravitated to the order of corruption began with an invasion of the pleasure senses and an eventual settlement of the sensible pleasures of greed. The indoctrination of police novices is a structured necessity of The Cross. Each business was located within the structure and contributed in some form to the maintenance of the structure. This was a function or a result of the dichotomous relationship between police and crime. The dialectic dependence between police and crime was facilitated and enhanced by the structures inherent at The Cross. It was as if its reputation spared it from examination; as if being expected made it inevitable and thus excusable.
‘Yeah! But the bastard’s changed.’ Max added with gusto. ‘He’s worse! He got away with the Golden Nugget shootin’! It sort of set the fuckin’ pace, if ya know what I mean. The Cross is chokin’ with his kind now. It’s bigger, dirtier, richer and here’s a lot more fuckin’ wol control. The cunts are up ta their fuckin’ eyeballs in heroin and hittin’ the mugs who scam their bets. Just the same as poor fuckin’ Bobby Walker got his. That poor fuckin’ cunt! Couldn’t make a fuckin’ telephone call without some cunt blastin’ shit out offim with a fuckin’ machine gun! Ya can’t score a joint without a hit of arsenic or morph! Young Mac brought some shit back from The Cross a few months back and it stank of dog’s piss! They whack rat’s poison in everythin’. Battery acid! Ya gotta develop a stomach for that stuff! But there’s blokes out there who’ll stick anythin’ into their corpses. Fuck me roan! Oh shit! Talkin’ of battery acid. You couldn’t forget our old mate Liberace?’
‘Liberace! Fuck no! He tossed down with me for a few days back in ‘61. He’s a harmless cunt! Tried to suck me off once. I nearly let him I was that fucking desperate. But not that much! No, Max! Don’t look at me like that? Have I ever put the muscle onto you?’
Max ignored Frank’s jest. ‘Ya were always hard up, mate. But never enough to be swayed by that poor cunt. Yeah! He was a real silk with the safe, hey? I ran the bike through The Cross a few months back and nearly ran over the poor bastard. He was a fuckin’ mess! I tell ya, Frank! He copped nitric acid in the puss. Lost an eye! He was still patched up a bit but ya could see the skin had melted. Like wax candles. He was on a bad bet. Threw in with some money specialists and paid the price of idiots. He’d be better off dead!’
