was coming of it. Don’t worry, brother, it’s all up here, he said, pointing to his head.
New Year, 1959 rolled around. The cops hadn’t tumbled to my new address or phone number, and there’d been no more anonymous calls or undeserved traffic fines. Money was coming in at a rate that would see our set-up costs recouped before too long, and meanwhile I had something to keep me out of trouble. And it was all legal.
Yeah, I wasn’t travelling too badly at all, I thought. I’d have that Customline back soon. Maybe I’d get a Bel Air next time.
Chapter 3
A hot Sunday in late January, I walked up to Crown Street and had a late lunch of bacon and eggs at the Italians’ while I read the paper. Elvis Presley was in Germany earning $82.50 a month in the US army. Over in Cuba a ‘beat-generation leader’ called Fidel Castro was stirring things up. Meanwhile, the Russians had discovered a youth drug called Substance H-3. There was a picture of a bloke doing a handstand on a table, one hand. I swallowed an Aspro, paid up and left.
A bloke was waiting for me outside the cafe, leaning against a car, his arms folded. He had short, bristly hair, a round face, protruding lower jaw. I knew the face. Detective Sergeant Fred Slaney. He pointed at me.
‘You, come here,’ he said.
He opened the passenger door of the car. ‘Get in.’ I did. He walked around, got in, started the car and drove up William Street.
‘Where are we going?’ I said.
He didn’t answer. He drove into the city, off Pitt Street into a laneway called Central Street.
‘Are you taking me to the CIB?’
‘When I want you to talk I’ll let you know, maggot.’
He drove through an archway into a courtyard. He parked the car, got out, said, ‘Come on,’ and we went into the old building next to Central police station.
We went upstairs to a small room, bare but for a table and two chairs. Slaney went off and came back in less than a minute, carrying a folder.
He sat down, indicated for me to sit in the other chair, opened the folder and flipped through some papers. Then he leant back and looked at me.
‘September 1957. Someone knocks over the J. Farren Price vault. Forty thousand quid’s worth of jewellery. Six weeks later Chief Superintendent Ray Waters disappears. His car is found at Mascot airport. Items from the Price robbery subsequently turn up in Los Angeles. Why do you think that was, Glasheen?’
I said nothing.
‘Well? What do you think happened? Don’t be shy.’
‘I believe there were rumours to the effect that Waters had bundied with the gear, that he was somehow mixed up in the robbery.’
He said, ‘I worked with Waters on a number of cases.’
I nodded.
‘And I know he didn’t organise the Price robbery.’
I nodded again.
Slaney closed the folder, sat back. ‘But I also know he had an interest in it. He was in line for a half-share of the fenced value.’ He paused. ‘Ten thousand pounds, so he reckoned.’
‘A lot of money.’
‘And I was expecting half of his share. That’s how we used to work, sharing the take.’
‘That’s very touching.’
He leaned forward. His fist shot out, caught the side of my jaw, knocked me right off the chair.
‘I’ll let you know when I want your smart-arsery. Get up.’
I did. He continued like nothing had happened.
‘So, I was expecting a half-share of Waters’ ten grand.’
‘You must have been upset when he disappeared.’
‘I was more than surprised, you might say. So I personally looked into the matter of Ray’s disappearance, on my own time.’ He smiled at me. ‘Among Ray’s notes I found an address in Pittwater. And naturally I—’
There was a tap at the door. A voice called out, ‘Mr Slaney?’
He got up and left. Ten minutes later he returned with another bloke, a grubby little feller. Slaney left us together in the room, said he’d be back shortly.
The little bloke hardly looked at me. He walked around the room, blew his nose into a dirty hanky.
‘It’s not fuckin’ fair. I fuckin’ told him what happened, I told him the truth. I didn’t give him up. He doesn’t give a man a chance, that bastard.’
‘Who, Slaney?’
‘Yeah, fuckin’ Mr Slaney. You got a ciggy?’
I gave him one. He lit it and looked at me for the first time. ‘Thanks, mate. What are you here for?’
‘I don’t know.’
He nodded like he didn’t believe me, then went back to pacing the room, muttering to himself.
After twenty minutes, Slaney came back with another copper.
‘All right, come on, you two. You get to know each other, did you?’ I looked at Slaney and he laughed. ‘I mean, you’d’ve been wasting your time if you did.’ He walked over to the grubby bloke and punched him hard in the stomach. He fell to the floor. Slaney kicked him.
‘Get up, you scum.’
The little bloke slowly got to his feet. ‘It’s not fair, Mr Slaney, I never—’
Slaney head-butted him and then gave him another kicking.
It went on like that for five minutes or so, then Slaney said, ‘All right. We’d better get going now.’
The little bloke was lying on the floor, bleeding. Slaney said to me, ‘Give the little cunt a hand up.’
I helped him to his feet. The four of us went out to the courtyard. Slaney said, ‘You come in the car with me, Glasheen.’
We got in his car and he drove off. The sun had gone down and there was a gritty wind blowing. The bible bashers were in Park Street singing songs to a crowd of idlers. We drove into Clarence Street and over the Harbour Bridge. Sunday evening, it was quiet on the roads.
We took the first exit off the Bridge, left into Lavender Street and along to Blues Point Road. Slaney said nothing the whole time. But he was breathing noisily through his nose and his eyes were wide. Alcohol on his breath.
The police radio was on: there had been an accident at Broadway, a disturbance in a boarding-house at Redfern, a break-in at a gift shop in Mosman.
Slaney drove down to the end of Blues Point Road
