Darlinghurst Road (7 page)

“Have you seen her?”

“Doesn't ring any bells, why do you want to
know?”

“Do you care?”

“I like to know who I'm talking to.”

“It doesn't matter, either you've seen her or
you haven't, this job's just a pay check isn't it?” She added with
a taunt.

“Okay, we're done here, time to go.”

“Suits me, why talk to someone who doesn't
care.” She said with a shrug.

“Care about what?”

She said in a softer tone, “Another human
being, the girl I'm asking you about is another human being. Her
name is Vicky and I'm trying to find her before the police do.”

That conversation began my friendship with a
very special lady by the name of Sister Mary Kathleen. There are
people who care, some that care deeply I'm sure but occasionally,
rarely, there is someone who really does believe in the equality of
all people and who truly lives that old saying: “Do unto others, as
you would have done unto to you.” Katie, it was a pleasure.

Paul

The first time I met Paul, he was in the back
of his taxi with a rag and an industrial size bottle of Armor-All.
I asked him why he was spending so much time polishing his vinyl
seats “won't that just make them slippery?” Paul smiled a cunning
smile and explained that not only did he coat the seat with
Armor-All but he had also adjusted the bolts to create a sizable
gap between the two sections of the seat. On weekends, the drunks
would get in his car, not able to sit still on the slippery seat,
change would fall from their pockets and slide down the highly
polished gap in his back seat. On Monday he would pop out the seat
and collect his dividend. Australia no longer has dollar bills
opting instead for small one and two dollar coins so I'm sure you
can imagine that his haul from his own personal slot machine was
quite significant.

Another one of his favorite tricks was to
keep his change in an old style calico bank bag, conveniently
stored in his trunk. When he dropped a fare at the airport, a guy
would hand over a twenty for say, a nine dollar fare. Paul would
apologize profusely, “I've just changed out some big bills, I'm so
sorry, let me get my other change bag.” Moving slowly in his best
imitation of an old man, he would go to the trunk, come back and
start counting out small change feigning poor eyesight, “let me
see, I have a bunch of change in here, I'm so sorry about the
silver, let me see, there's ten cents...” As Paul fished around in
his bag of small denomination coins he would move like a snail
round a glass, the guy would get nervous, think about his flight,
start checking his watch, look at the old guy who had just taken
five minutes to count out less than a dollar in small change and
say “look, don't worry about it, just keep the change, I have to
go.” Paul assured me that he made thousands of dollars a year out
of those trick and judging from the gleam in his eye, I believed
him.

Michael

Michael was a victim of the System if ever
I've seen one. Abandoned by his mother when he was only a few
months old, Michael was kicked from foster home to foster home;
each one worse than the last. It was the nineteen sixties and there
was not the same level of scrutiny as there might be today. Michael
was severely beaten on many occasions: a cupped hand slapped into
his ear resulted in a deafness on one side that made communication
difficult for him, another head blow at another time gave him a
form of epilepsy.

When he came of age, Michael left the foster
system and entered the prison system on charges of petty theft.
Prisons are made for murderers and armed robbers, not people like
Michael and he was beaten, raped and used on a regular basis. The
man they released was a different man to the one that they
incarcerated; Michael now suffered from a mental illness and
aimlessly walked the streets of Sydney until was he was locked up
again.

This time was different, the prison doctor
signed off on his release to a psychiatric hospital and Michael was
sent to yet another institution. The hospital was Michael's home
for nearly sixteen years until the State Government decided that
the real estate was of more value than the hospital. A new policy
of community something or the other translated to more or less
opening the doors and sending people like Michael out onto the
streets to fend for themselves. After a lifetime of living in
institutions, Michael was on his own and he found it impossible to
cope. The police found him dead one morning, a homeless derelict,
slumped over on a bench in Green Park and covered with newspaper.
Michael died the same way that he had lived all his life:
alone.

Sean, Wendy And One Very
Naked Girl

Sean was a comedian. I don't mean that he was
just a funny guy but that he was a stand up comic, a minor
celebrity who had a show on TV. Somewhere in his ancestry there was
Irish blood and although he was probably a few generations removed,
Sean used it as a prop for his comedy with great effect. We were
neighbors for a short time, it was before his TV show, Sean was
separated from his wife, doing a comedy act on the Sydney club
circuit and waiting for his big break.

It was Saint Patrick’s Day and a very drunk
Sean knocked on my door. He was holding two glasses of beer, he
invited himself in and handed one to me. I held the glass up to the
light and my initial impression was confirmed, I looked at him
dubiously and said “It's green!”

“Yeah, it's Saint Paddy's Day, green beer,
it's what you do.”

“Not sure about green beer mate, something
not right about that, did you make it?”

”It's just a bit of food coloring you idiot,
it won't kill you, drink the bloody thing down and let's go.”

“Go where?”

“Back to my place, I need your help.”

We went back to his apartment, Sean took me
into his bedroom stepping over clothes and ladies underwear on the
floor. On the bed was a naked woman, asleep, dead or passed out I
wasn't sure which. “Sean, I give in, what's going on?”

“THERE!” He pointed.

“Is she okay?”

“I think so, she's drunk but I can't get her
up.”

“Then let her sleep it off, she'll go when
she wakes up.”

“Got to get her out of here, I'm trying to
patch it up with my wife and she's on her way over.”

I've dealt with a lot of semi-conscious
people at The Palace but I couldn't wake this one, she was out to
the world. It was like a slapstick comedy, we heard the knock and
both froze.

Shit, it's Wendy!”

“Get rid of her.”

“Christ, how?”

Sean went to the door, I stayed hidden in the
bedroom with naked Jane Doe. I heard the voices outside, Sean was
trying desperately to convince Wendy to go for a drink but she
wasn't biting. At first I thought it was outside then realized it
was closer, Jane was in her own twilight world and her hand had
moved dreamily to her crotch.

The noise was unmistakable, Jane was
pleasuring herself and starting to get loud. Sound carries through
a small apartment and Wendy pushed her way into the bedroom to
investigate. It must have looked a real scene, I was sitting on the
bed trying to wake her up, Jane is almost finished what she is
doing, at that moment she spread her legs wide, moaned and said to
no one in particular “Come and fuck me!”

Wendy gave Sean the filthiest of looks and
stormed out of the apartment. Sean shrugged his shoulders, put his
arm around me and said “fuck her, she only wants the money, I got a
bloody TV show did you hear, that's the only reason she came
around?” I had another green beer with Sean then left him to deal
with Jane; my guess is that he was in less of a rush to get rid of
her this time.

Billy

Billy liked guns, women, fast cars and the
money that bought them. There was a touch of Hollywood about old
Billy, he liked to project the image of a tough guy and was well
suited to the small security business that he owned.

A sideline of his business was a discreet
inventory service that he called a “Sunday Stock-take.” After
regular business hours, a break-in would occur, the owner would be
at a restaurant somewhere with his family, surrounded by people
while Billy, as security officer, would respond to the alarm and
deal with the police, making sure to get a nice report for the
insurance company.

We were both regulars at the same pub and
struck up a friendship. Billy was a big talker around the girls and
liked nothing better than to flash his money around in a fat
wallet. One night, after his unsuccessful approach to a brunette,
we were walking out to the parking lot and two guys jumped us. I
was on the ground seeing stars when I saw Billy, clearly shaken but
still on his feet, pull his gun and shoot them both. They lived and
Billy was well known to the police so he wasn't charged but it
certainly was one hell of a night.

In my later travels, I remembered hearing
that Billy had married and moved to Brisbane. I was close by at the
time so I looked him up to see if marriage had tamed him. Instead
of having a beer with Billy, I had a cup of coffee with his widow.
She told me was that Billy had recently committed suicide. The
police told her that he had been found in his parked car in the
Brisbane red light district of Fortitude Valley.

Billy had been shot in the head with his own
gun and the coroner concluded that it was suicide. She didn't know
why because she thought that he was happy. They always seemed to
have money and Billy bragged to her about the big bucks that he was
making from his little one-man security business and she never
thought to question it. It was obvious that she was heartbroken and
confused. When she started asking questions about his previous
life, I politely made my exit; Billy was Billy, he told her what he
told her and it was not my place to rewrite the history of her
husband.

A year later in Kings Cross, I heard a
reliable rumor that Billy had been involved in the Brisbane drug
trade at the time of his death. To me, it didn't matter if he
pulled the trigger or if someone else did; dead was dead and I felt
so sorry for the woman that he left behind who probably had no idea
why her life was destroyed.

I can still see her crying her eyes out in
that small apartment and wondering why it had happened. There were
questions in her mind after his death that she perhaps, with
hindsight, should have asked him in life. It would have been a
waste of time though because he would never have told her the
truth. Billy was a big talker around the girls that's for sure; but
it was always bullshit.

Roger, The Tourist
Trap

Roger was a real interesting type of drug
dealer in that he never actually sold any drugs. Don't get me
wrong, Roger looked the part, talked a really good game and even
had the cops fooled to the point that they arrested him. After the
local police analyzed his product, they discovered his game, went
about their business and basically ignored him.

Roger spent his time hanging around the big
Interstate railway terminal in Sydney looking for young, gullible
overseas tourists. The product he sold was some sort of dried plant
that looked apparently like pretty convincing marijuana. A good
salesman, Roger would give them the lecture about aggressive
Australian police always on the lookout for foreign tourists buying
dope. With his silver tongue, Roger would convince them not to even
think about smoking the weed until after their train pulled
out.

It was a perfect scheme, the cops had no
interest in him apart from the nuisance factor because he wasn't
doing anything more illegal than the local garden center. The
customers were long gone and by the time they discovered the
deception, they were on an interstate train and had no way of
turning back around even if they wanted to.

Every time I think of Roger, I have this
vision in my head of a pimply European backpacker, looking out the
window, counting the minutes until the train pulled out and he
could get high. Getting up, finding the restroom, sitting on the
toilet then puffing away like there's no tomorrow. What's that old
saying again: Caveat emptor!

Alina

Alina was Russian, her English was poor but
improving and she was on the run from an abusive husband. It was a
marriage of convenience: Australian residency in exchange for
marital duties but the cooking, cleaning and sex quickly became
beating, torture and rape. Not content with simply using her for
himself, Alina's husband forced her to work as a prostitute. He
dropped her off on the corner of Darlinghurst Road and told her
“Kings Cross, this is where the whores stand.”

When the right moment came, she made her
escape and having few other options, Alina instinctively ran to the
place where she felt safe: a Russian Orthodox Church in the Eastern
suburbs not far from where she lived with her husband. They were
not really sure what to do with her and somewhere along the line of
inter-church networking, Alina ended up under the wing of Sister
Mary Kathleen in Surry Hills.

Katie nursed her for a while at the half way
house and when she was sufficiently recovered enough to venture out
on her own, Katie found her a job as a housekeeper in a big hotel
and then went to work herself, sending the Police after Alina's
husband.

He was arrested but made bail and it wasn't
long before he tracked Alina down to the half way house. Katie was
not worried about the threats he made to her personally, it was not
the first time that she had been called an interfering bitch but
she was concerned for Alina. Always ready to use whatever resources
she could muster, Katie approached me about taking her in for a few
weeks until the trial. “He's going away, no doubt about it but not
if he finds her, she's scared and so am I, she needs to be
somewhere that he'll never find her.” Katie fixed a stern look on
me and demanded “say yes!”