Honorable Assassin (30 page)

The New South Wales Police were not
indicated in the corruption scandal that rocked the Victoria Police
for the past year, though there were some questions about evidence
being reintroduced to the streets. The individual cases and
questions never made it to Theodore Barlow’s level. He had entered
the rarified air of the elite governmental employee and was no
longer to be bothered with such minor matters. The affair at Hill
Top piqued his interest, however. He had never lost his love of the
investigation.

According to the police reports, there was a
reinforced security van modified to carry liquid funds but the box
and the bags were tampered with and no report of loss was filed.
There was a guard, allegedly shot by the driver. There were a lot
of armed gangland figures that had no business in the small town,
and there was a half buried razor strip down the road. Further down
the road there was a bridge that had been demolished and a number
of stranded vehicles that had no business being there. There was a
displaced tow truck driver, a guard who had almost been killed when
he was run over, and another who claimed to have been dispatched to
a tavern for a beer. The local police had held them as long as they
could and released most of them two days after the lawyers showed
up.

Superintendent Barlow suspected the
Russians. They had been coming into the country in increasing
numbers and setting up businesses, many of which were suspect.

Chief Inspector Andrew Slaughter was called
in for a conference. Slaughter knew that Theodore Barlow had a
habit of looking the other way when the criminals hit each others’
operations as long as normal citizens were not affected. There had
been a number of such operations in the past few years where the
police could not have been nearly as effective as the other members
of the underworld. He also knew that the influx of Eastern
Europeans and Russians in the past decade had been a cause for
concern. They were ruthless and flaunted their savage methods.
Moreover, they exported cash back to their home countries, a most
unacceptable practice. It was bad enough they didn’t pay taxes on
it but to send it overseas for laundering was hurting the economy.
Barlow often likened it to the Cuban boat people crisis in America
where Fidel Castro had emptied his jails into the streets of
Miami.

Chief Inspector Andrew Slaughter was
promised additional funding, taken from the new anti-drug fund, to
investigate the incident and those involved. He was also given the
nod to go after the emerging power centers in Sydney: the Orientals
and the Soviets.

Jimmy Cognac and Henry Cuthbert were
together the entire day. They were going over the same thing Andrew
Slaughter and Theodore Barlow were discussing and the questions
were much the same. Why was everybody there, who knew they were
there, and how had they been manipulated so easily? Jimmy did not
want to end up in the same condition as his predecessor. Jimmy had
been living the high life in Victoria mostly due to the fact that
his people had a lot of constables on the payroll. A lot of things
were ignored, a lot of competition was killed or run out of the
area, a lot of the competition’s merchandise wound up under Jimmy’s
control. Things were different in Sydney.

The New South Wales Police Force is divided
into 80 different jurisdictions. Coordination had been
understandably difficult in the past given the distances involved.
The dawning of the computer age was changing all that. Files could
be sent instantly and in their entirety. Inventories of the
evidence lockers could be brought up and updated constantly as well
as who checked out what evidence and more importantly, when the
evidence was returned. The Sydney area got the computers first and
an initiative was on to supply the entire province with them. Many
of the older, provincial police felt there was no need for them and
that they would continue doing their jobs as they had for the past
number of decades without the damn things. This was more outside
the city. The younger members of the force were proficient and
eager to use the networked system to their advantage.

Part of the advantage of the new system was
in cataloguing photographs. The database could eliminate anyone not
fitting the description, saving hours of pouring over the old piles
of mug shot books. It also pulled up a photo with an ID number.

The system pulled up Jimmy Cognac’s face in
no time. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes with gypsy features.
A gap between his front teeth and a scar across his lip, right
above the gap made him quickly identifiable.

The system held Henry Cuthbert’s smiling
face. He was tall and blond with heavy features and a florid
complexion that mixed poorly with the light hair. His eyes were a
dark blue and his lips were thick.

The system had no photograph for Thompson
Barber. He had never been arrested. He was questioned after the
Hill Top affair, but he was never arrested or fingerprinted. Every
other man on that job with the exception of John who was still in
the hospital was arrested and photographed.

Thompson Barber came up as a non-entity. The
population records were incomplete, much of it never got input into
any system, records got lost, systems crashed and wiped out years
of work. There were many reasons Thompson Barber might have been
dropped from the records so there was no red flag flying. Thompson
might have been the only man to reach the level he had without
having been arrested. He had, after all, gone through the ranks in
meteoric fashion and been stuffed into his position out of
necessity. He was attracting attention now though. Chief Inspector
Andrew Slaughter had instructed his inspectors to find out who the
man was and where he had come from. They turned the judicial eye
upon him and lit up the spotlight.

The Australian Provincial Police have never
been known for subtlety. They are the brutal product of a brutal
land. The city police departments are a bit more restrained but
still need to deal with a country full of drunks, immigrants and a
rising tide of drugs. When called on to act, they do so with all
the necessary force.

Terry was giving a pimp a little talking to
when the two constables approached him. It was not the money the
man owed, that had been forthcoming, it was the way he treated his
girls. It was personal. Terry should have known better but he was
still way too young to be in the position he held and his past
successes had made him cocky.

The pimp knew better than to press charges
on the man who had just tuned him up. That would have ended badly
for him. The constables would probably charge him with disorderly
conduct, but they had no idea how disorderly he could be. They ran
up on the scene expecting to restrain him and take him in and got a
little more than they had bargained for.

The alley was dark and Terry was done giving
his subject instruction. The two constables could not run silently
but did manage to get to within a few feet of Terry before he saw
them. The billy club was swinging toward his head but that was as
close as it got. Terry ducked under the swing and launched himself
head first at the constable’s midsection. If the man had been ready
for it he might have tightened up but it would not have prevented
the two cracked ribs he got. Needless to say he dropped like a
stone. The second policeman caught Terry across the back with his
club, but it was an awkward swing and did not have the requisite
force behind it. Terry caught him with a backhand, also with little
force behind it, but when the constable raised his club for another
swing, he left himself open. Too fast for the man, Terry dropped to
one knee and brought his fist up between the man’s legs. There was
a sickening slapping sound and all the air went out of the
constable’s lungs. The only sound in the alley, now, was the
groaning and wheezing of two downed men and the retreating
footsteps of a thoroughly chastened gentleman of leisure. Terry
caught himself just in time to prevent putting a bullet into each
of the downed officer’s brains. He shoved his revolvers back into
their holsters and started moving. The first officer reached out
for his ankle. Terry kicked him in the face and ran.

“That was stupid,” said Henry. “First of
all, it’s not your job to protect the stupid, drug addict whores
from their pimps. If they had seen you slapping him around they
probably would have jumped you themselves. Whores need to be kept
in line that way and they love their men for it.”

“They can’t do their jobs from a hospital
bed. Besides, how can a woman give a blow job with a broken
nose?”

“Tommy, it doesn’t matter. You are not in
that business. Your business is to make sure they pay on time. I
don’t care how they get the money or who they get it from. It
doesn’t matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to you either.”

“Ok. I just don’t like to see men hurt
women.”

“Get used to it and get over it. Now, the
real problem is the patrol you hit. They will be looking all over
the city for you. I assume they got a good enough look at you to
identify you?”

“Probably. It was dark and I hit them pretty
fast. I didn’t recognize them so I don’t think they knew me. They
didn’t see what I was driving.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“I’m not. What do you think? I could turn
myself in.”

“No, that would be stupid. I’ll send out
some feelers. Stay out of that area for a while. We’ll see.”

“Ok. Has that manager of Coley’s paid up
this week?”

“Don’t worry about him. Send Ralph over
there at closing time with a cricket bat. He’ll pay.”

“I’d pay if Ralph showed up with a cricket
bat,” Terry smiled.

“Somehow I don’t think so. Anyway, lay low
for a while. I’m trying to get Jimmy to transfer a couple of men
from Melbourne to give you a hand. You’re getting too well known on
the street so you need to lay low. If they show up here, at the
warehouse, I’ll tell them to fuck off but you’ll need to be more
careful. You’re not in the bloody schoolyard any more. They put the
tag on you and who knows what might happen.”

Terry pulled out a cigarette, thoughtfully
tapping it on the desktop. He had seen what happened to men who
fell out of favor. The fact that it had been his fault did not
bother him and the thought almost made him smile, but he needed to
hold a stern visage and did so. He had recounted what had happened
to Randy Arganmajc in gory detail. The shock had worn off but he
had felt the helplessness of being strapped to a chair in the
mansion’s basement and he never wanted to feel that way again. He
lit his cigarette and promised to take a less physical role and a
more administrative one.

The money that was collected in Sydney never
got pooled for long. It went into bank accounts on a daily basis.
It did represent a lot of money but it was never in one place at
one time. It could not be targeted. The monies that could be hit
were the payments for drug shipments and the daily or weekly
transports from the other areas. These were large enough to make it
worthwhile, but there were too many people watching Terry for him
to make a move. Gordon was incommunicado and Ginger required a
week’s notice. Terry seldom got a week’s notice. The multiple
losses that the organization had suffered within the past year had
tightened up the communication chain a great deal. Nobody knew when
a large load was coming in until it was almost there.

So Terry played his game and settled into
his role as leader of enforcers. He never showed his feelings about
it but he was becoming more and more uncomfortable. He saw the
methods employed by his associates and also those used by the
newcomers. The Russians were even more brutal and the Orientals,
while more subtle, were terrible. The truth was that if the
Australian underworld was destroyed it would stop nothing. The
replacements were going to be worse.

Sitting in his apartment, half drunk on
cheap gin, Terry made a decision.

~~~

Chapter Thirteen: Longing for Home

Superintendent Theodore Barlow was not
expected to be in his office on Saturdays. He blessed his
long-suffering wife as he turned the key in the office lock. The
truth was he missed the investigations and some of the grime of the
streets had never washed off his skin. He wore a better grade of
suit these days and drank a better grade of scotch, but he had
always been fond of the physical process, not the political
wrangling. The fact that he had made it up the ladder was much due
to that long-suffering wife who had forced him to go to fund
raisers he had no desire to attend, and dinners he had no appetite
for.

There was an emptiness to the Town Hall on
Saturdays that Barlow particularly enjoyed. There may have been
some interns and clerks finishing up the week’s load but for the
most part the building was deserted except for the new annex where
the main police station was housed. The deserted corridors echoed
and rang with his footsteps and gave him an almost nostalgic
feeling. The air conditioning had been shut down in the main body
of the building but Barlow’s office had its own unit.

Saturdays gave Superintendent Barlow a
chance to reflect, to work on some of the high profile cases that
were no longer really a part of his daily duties and to plan. He
had ordered some files delivered to his desk the day before and was
pleased to find that they had been delivered. The first file he
cracked open on the morning of December 15 was labeled
Henry Cuthbert
.

Henry was suspected to be just what he was,
a middle management mob figure. He had been arrested a couple of
times and had spent time in prison for assault in the late
eighties. He had never cooperated with the police and had gone back
to his shady dealings after being released. There was a mug shot
included in the file. It looked like just another mug shot to
Barlow; just another scumbag looking sorry to have been caught.
There were also some surveillance pictures in the file, black and
white, grainy and worthless. His home town was listed as Molong. He
had two brothers, one of them deceased, the other still living
there. He drove a working man’s car and lived in a middle-class
neighborhood. He had been noticed a couple of times lately. He had
been accused of leaving a bomb at the clubhouse of a golf course
but there had been no bomb in the case. He had been one of the
group of men involved in the debacle south of the city. Once again
he had refused to cooperate and the constables were forced to
release him.