True West Read online

Knowing this, not fighting it, Lee turned the Ford toward

  the freeway north, the sunlight warm on his knuckles and face as he joined the heavy traffic, barely noticing it over the rising expectation of seeing Frankie when he returned to the house in Inglewood. He didn’t look at the burnt-out restaurant on Beaufort Street, or the hundreds of posters with their slogans and caricatures of Jews and Asians. Within the time it took to relive the memory of Frankie in her room, gently holding his forearm, he was there. He parked on the verge, noticing for the first time the twin frangipani trees that had grown above the height of the guttering, and whose white flowers with

  their sunburst yellow centres were angled into the sunlight.

  He pulled open the creaking flyscreen door and entered the

  cool dark hal way. Frankie was in her room, wiping her workshoes with a spit-dabbed tissue, and she looked at him and

  nodded, then patted the bed alongside her.

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  10.

  The disapproving look on the man’s face told Lee that he

  was military, casting his eyes over the messy bedside and the boots and socks strewn around the room.

  ‘Get in the shower. We’ve got work. Bring your weapon.

  I’ll be outside.’

  The man left, and Lee went to the kitchen and drank a jug

  of tap water. Stood under a blasting cold shower, his skin

  prickling where he’ d been scratching on his face, neck, arms and chest. It was like he was still dreaming. Like he was a ghost instead of flesh and blood.

  He dressed in jeans and a shirt. Put on his boots. There

  was a slowness to his movements that suggested soreness

  from the previous day’s work-out in the gym, but he was

  still distant from himself, observing the weight of his legs and the tightness in his wrists and shoulders without the

  problem of pain, inflammation or stiffness. He transferred

  his cash to his pockets, and tucked the Luger into his jeans, 113

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  then took it out and checked the safety.

  He was alone in the house. Just the sound of distant traffic on Beaufort Street and the lofted singing of honeyeaters in the backyard.

  The man was outside. He wore aviator sunglasses and a

  peaked cap, blue overal s and boots. He was a six-footer with lean, muscled arms and a face so sunburned that the skin on his cheeks had the look of old chamois. He stood beside a

  peach-coloured Commodore. Lee stopped short of him and

  put his hands on his hips. He wasn’t going anywhere until he saw some proof.

  ‘Get in.’

  Lee got in his seat but didn’t buckle up. The man gunned the engine and started to reverse.

  ‘Wait!’ Lee said, reaching for the handbrake.

  The man stopped the car, nodded toward the glove box,

  waited for Lee to open the manila envelope. Inside was a

  mugshot of his father, wearing the brown leather jacket that Lee had bought him for his thirty-eighth birthday, those three months ago. The same goatee beard he’ d worn the past year.

  The same chunky Bedouin silver ring on his right index finger, the heavy silver earrings. Same dark eyes, one noticeably

  smaller than the other. The scar that bisected his left eyebrow.

  The mugshot board with its magnetic white letters was

  dated July twelve – two months ago – coinciding with his

  disappear ance. The quality of the image was poor – a mugshot photocopied and put through a fax machine, but it was him

  alright. And that jacket made the date real.

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  His father looked out at the camera with an expression

  that Lee recognised. It was the look he gave when he was

  orating. Fierce but with his eyes scanning, hypervigilant. His confidence forced. In the photograph he appeared smaller,

  somehow diminished. He wouldn’t be frightened, but he

  would be suffering. His intake of speed had been relentless over the past ten years and he drank whisky like water to level himself out. That supply would have been cut off the day he was locked up.

  Lee’s head was full of questions. Why hadn’t his father

  contacted him, found a way to get a message out? Knowing

  that in the vacuum caused by his disappearance Lee would get in trouble with the others. Where was he being held?

  As though reading his mind, the other man spoke. ‘I don’t

  know where he’s locked up. I just know what you heard the

  other night. He’s been charged with possession of dope and

  an unlicensed firearm, and he’s in protective custody. And if you want to see him again, you got to pay your dues, for him, and for the cause.’

  Lee put the picture back in its envelope, but the man took

  it and slung it onto his side of the dash. ‘You don’t get to keep that.’

  They reversed onto the quiet street. Frankie had told him

  that it was a lower middle-class neighbourhood. Teachers.

  Public servants. Business owners. Geologists, engineers and the occasional tradie who’ d done well on the mines. None

  of them aware, or caring, of what went on in house number

  thirty-three. It was an address, according to Frankie, that 115

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  would be celebrated, come the revolution. That Lee Southern’s name would be part of it, too.

  Anybody else said that, Lee’ d laugh in their face, but his eyes had been closed, his head cradled in her lap, Frankie’s fingers stroking his scalp.

  It was easier to ignore Frankie’s comment and lie in her lap and listen to her reading Nietzsche from his thumbed copy

  of Thus Spake Zarathustra. He’ d read it cover to cover all his life, and rarely understood its meaning, but Frankie recited it beautiful y, like poetry. God might be dead, she said, but here were psalms for a godless world. ‘I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, wil find banks full of roses under my cypresses.’ Lee didn’t tel Frankie that he identified with Nietzsche mostly because of what final y broke him – the sight of a man beating a horse in the street. All of the words he’ d written and his hopes for an evolved human consciousness brought down by the stubborn

  reality of human nature.

  ‘You call me Brad. It isn’t my real name, but it’ll do.’

  They were headed west, taking side streets until they

  crossed the train lines and freeway. Past a large football

  stadium, some light industry, then back into the suburbs,

  following the eastern edge of the train line as it turned south, past a cemetery where men and women in black jackets and

  dresses milled about in the carpark smoking and looking at

  their feet. Past a hospital, and then onto a small busy street, the footpath crowded with lunchtime traffic. The shoppers

  weren’t much older than Lee, and he figured that they were

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  near a university. Brad pulled the Commodore to the kerb

  outside a dentist’s office clad in pink stucco. Turned off

  the ignition. Pocketed the manila envelope. Took off his

  sunglasses and turned to face Lee.

  The engine ticked and cooled. Students wandered past.

  ‘You got your weapon?’

  Lee nodded.

  ‘Loaded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Brad shook his head. ‘Then put it on the floor, where I can see it. Reach into the glove box and take out the paper bag.’

  Lee did as he was asked. Inside the paper bag was another

  weapon, a black pistol – what would’ve once been called a

  lady’s gun. As soon as he felt its weight he kne
w that it was wrong.

  ‘This ain’t even real. It’s a toy gun.’

  ‘No kidding. I’m in charge of you today. You’re not taking a real gun on a job until I know what I’m dealing with.’

  Lee saw it now – the R&I bank branch across the road,

  beside a bottle shop. He put the toy gun back in the bag.

  ‘It’s lunch hour. There’s one staff member on duty. No

  cameras. You go in wearing your glasses and my cap, and

  show the teller this note, but you don’t pass it over.’

  The note read: This is a robbery. Empty your till. No fuss and you won’t get hurt.

  ‘You know the deal, kid. You want help getting to your

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  father, you help with our fighting fund.’

  Brad put the cap on Lee’s head. It was still warm. He folded the note and held it up. Lee looked at it, and at the bank.

  He took up the paper bag, and twisted its mouth. He kept

  the note in his fingers.

  ‘You’ve got five minutes. You’re not out in five, I put my foot to the floor. This is a stolen vehicle and the plates are stolen.

  You don’t know who I am, and even if you did, you even think of speaking, we got ways to shut you up. You’re in the big

  league now. We got eyes and ears and supporters everywhere.

  Go and do what needs to be done.’

  Lee’s heart began to beat faster. His palms were clammy. His guts were a mess of nerves.

  Brad put a hand on Lee’s shoulder, shook him a little. ‘Kid, have fun. This is the fun part of the job. Do this right, and everything’s gonna be sweet for you, and your dad.’

  Lee opened the car door and stepped into the sunlight. He

  wasn’t dressed any different to the students who passed him in groups of two and three, hefting schoolbags, shopping bags, half-cartons and pizza boxes, and it was only the smiles on their faces and their self-conscious laughter that made him alien among them. He slipped in behind a boy with the arse

  hanging out of his jeans and a girl in tracksuit pants who were swaying into each other and holding hands. Lee turned across the road and kept his head down, and went to the door of the R&I. He forced himself to not look around the street.

  Inside, it was just as Brad said, a small branch office with wood-veneer wal s and one teller behind the bench – a young 118

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  woman wearing a sleeveless uniform over a white col ared

  shirt. She didn’t look until he was right in front of her. Now he understood why a note was necessary, and he was grateful to the man in the car – he didn’t trust himself to speak with any authority. She looked up and smiled and her eyes were pretty and her black eyeliner made her eyes even bluer and he passed her the note.

  The toy gun remained in the paper bag while he watched

  her read. The odd thing was that her expression didn’t change.

  She didn’t appear frightened. Her eyes scanned his face like she was reading him and then she held out her hand. ‘You got a bag or somethin?’

  He only had the small paper bag, and felt a fool, and now

  he would have to speak, but she smirked and reached beneath her booth and took up a cotton money bag stamped with the

  R&I logo and she opened her till and started stuffing the bag with notes.

  Lee watched her fingers skim the plastic scoops, flipping

  banded cash into the bag. Without being asked she went to

  the register next to her and opened its money tray and did the same. Lee kept an ear trained on the door and his eyes on the girl. When she was finished she passed him the stuffed bag

  with all the formality of someone serving a sandwich.

  Lee tipped his cap and took the bag, making for the door.

  He heard her dial on a phone. Outside, the light was glaring, and Lee looked for the Commodore, which was turning across

  the street and cruising up to the footpath. All Lee had to do was climb inside. He buckled up and the Commodore moved

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  round the corner into a suburban street that took them to

  the edge of Kings Park. Lee hadn’t touched the money, and

  he stowed it beneath his seat along with the toy gun and

  the Luger and the cap. The Commodore rose along the bluff

  over the river that was calm as a pond, then drove through

  the woodland at precisely the speed limit until they reached the botanical gardens and pulled into a newly bitumenised

  carpark.

  Now Brad turned in his seat, grinning.

  ‘That girl,’ Lee said. ‘She was in on it, right?’

  ‘Like I said, I’m not gonna take you on a job till I know what I’m dealing with. Pass me the bag.’

  Lee reached under the seat and handed it over. Brad put

  his fingers into the bag and peered into it like a kid hungry for lollies. Lee looked at his own hands and watched the

  trembling dissipate as adrenalin dumped from his system.

  Brad passed him a lit cigarette and he took a satisfying drag and looked out the window at a king jarrah tree and the raked gravel beneath it. He wondered why Brad wasn’t driving away instead of sitting in the empty carpark, something that would be noticeable to any copper on patrol, until he understood

  that this too was part of the test.

  ‘You ever deploy?’ Lee asked.

  Brad chuckled. ‘Nah, I lucked out. Joined up a few years after that commie prick Whitlam ended Vietnam. There was no war

  while I served, so like a proper white man, in seventy-eight I quit, and went lookin for one. Found what I was searching for in southern Africa. First Rhodesia, and then a few years later I 120

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  joined the SADF, and fought the nigger commies in Angola. The best years of my life, no doubt about it.’

  Brad seemed just as amped by the robbery as Lee, or perhaps it was the memory of Africa. Aware that he was still being

  tested, Lee asked the kind of question his father might ask.

  ‘What’ d you make of apartheid as a system? They reckon it’s not gonna last.’

  Brad grimaced, shook his head. ‘You think cos I fought

  there I cared about it? I did, I suppose. It was where I learned to be a white patriot. But I’m no South African. Apartheid is what you do when it’s too late to do anything else.’

  Brad’s eyes had taken on an inflamed look, staring into the gardens but seeing something else. ‘But it’s not too late for us, and I’m proud to serve alongside you in the cause. You did

  good today. That’s near ten thousand dol ars. You got brass ones, I’ll give you that.’

  Brad patted him on the neck, climbed out of the Commodore

  and went to the phone booth at the edge of the carpark. Lee watched him drop a coin and dial, leaning into the shade of a gnarled old bloodwood, a hand shielding his mouth.

  The keys were still in the ignition. The money was at his

  feet. All Lee had to do was shift over and …

  But Brad was looking at him. Nodding to the voice on the

  other end of the line. Hanging up and clenching his jaw and fists, striding back to the car.

  ‘I’ve commended you and received authorisation to

  commend you official y. I was going to suggest the pub, but –’

  ‘You got some bad news.’

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  Brad rolled the Commodore out onto the quiet park roads,

  the avenues of honour where the plaques of dead soldiers

  sat at the foot of each eucalyptus, thousands of them in

  every direction. There were Southerns numbered among the

  plaques, and on the wal s of the memorial that they passed in silence, turning down the hill toward the city centre.

  ‘Not bad news. Just … news.
’

  Brad parked the Commodore in front of a deli. He emerged

  a minute later with a copy of the Daily News that he dropped in Lee’s lap. He didn’t wait for Lee to begin reading, just started the car and pulled away.

  There it was in black and white. The headline read drug lord charged with murder of his brother.

  ‘This is how it starts. They turn us against one another.’

  Lee didn’t understand what Brad meant until he read

  deeper into the article. The arrest of Greg Downs for the

  murder of Brady Downs was made on the sworn testimony

  of a ‘supergrass’ who was in protective custody. The informer was not only a fellow gang member, but one of the Knights’

  leadership group, in retaliation for threats made against him, and his family.

  Lee’s father.

  Not named, but it couldn’t be anybody else.

  Lee understood what that meant. For his father, and for him too.

  Greg Downs, who’ d taken over the leadership of the Knights when Lee’s father disappeared, now charged with his brother’s murder, on Lee’s father’s word.

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  ‘This can’t be true.’

  Brad stared down the road. ‘Because he’s no dog? He might

  be. Any father might be, if his family’s threatened. And you’re his only family.’

  Lee dwelled on that for a minute, but it didn’t smell right.

  ‘You knew this already. What else?’

  Brad pursed his lips, nodded. ‘Only that he’s been promised full immunity from prosecution, should he testify in court.

  And that he’s safe. Somewhere Downs can’t get at him.’

  ‘There’s nowhere that safe. Not for the money Downs’ll be

  offering. Not if my father is the only witness …’

  Lee nearly said it. More rumours he’ d heard over the years, of people who’ d crossed the Knights, and got disappeared, or were found murdered in their cel s. Drowned in their bathtubs.

  But you don’t say such things, to anyone.

  Especial y not an outsider.

  ‘You think your father killed Brady Downs, like they say?’

  ‘Let me out, here.’

  They were in heavy traffic on Vincent Street. Brad glanced

  at the Luger in Lee’s hand, pointed at his side.

  ‘Put that away, son. I didn’t mean anything by it. It was a dumb question to ask.’