Still Riding on the Storm Read online

  ‘Jesus! So soon?’ said Billy Dunne.

  ‘The sooner we put this cheeseburger out of his misery,’ said George Brennan, ‘the better for all concerned.’

  Price Galese nodded in agreement.

  ‘I was just going to make him disappear,’ said Eddie, ‘but we’ve decided to make a bit of an example of this rooster so if any other mugs come into town trying the same caper, they’ll know what to expect.’

  ‘Yeah?’ said Les. ‘What are you going to do, Eddie? Cut his head off and leave it on a sharpened pole in the middle of Martin Place?’

  ‘Actually,’ grinned Eddie, ‘that’s where you come in, big Les. I’m gonna need you for about an hour tomorrow night.’

  ‘Ohh Christ!’ groaned Norton, wishing he’d never opened his mouth. ‘Why?’

  The grin never left Eddie Salita’s face. ‘Because you’re one of the nicest blokes going around, Les. That’s why.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed George Brennan. ‘Anyway, what are you doing tomorrow? It’s gonna be a cunt of a day.’

  Norton got to his feet and lumbered to the fridge for another Eumundi. ‘Why fuckin’ me?’ he grumbled, shaking his big, red head. ‘And on me day off, too.’

  ‘Because, like Eddie said,’ smiled Price, ‘you’re one of the nicest blokes going around.’ He handed Les his empty glass. ‘I’ll have another Scotch and soda while you’re up, old mate.’

  George Brennan wasn’t wrong in what he said about the weather. It was still cold and raining when Les surfaced around 11.30 the following morning. Warren was seated in the kitchen reading the Sunday papers, a plunger full of steaming hot coffee in front of him; he was in his shave coat and hadn’t been up much longer than Norton. Les said g’day, poured himself a coffee and sat down opposite his flatmate.

  ‘So,’ said Norton, reaching across for one of the papers, ‘how’s the wild, wonderful, wacky world of advertising going?’

  ‘Not bad,’ answered Warren, not bothering to look up from his paper. ‘How’s the big, bad, beautiful world of bouncing?’

  ‘Good,’ replied Les. ‘I meet new people every night and get to bash them up.’

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Warren. ‘One could say you and your friend Billy have done for the tourist industry around Kings Cross what Pol Pot did for inner city housing in Cambodia.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Norton, trying his best not to come in. ‘And one could also say that between you and that Singleton bloke, you’ve done for advertising what myxomatosis has done for rabbits.’

  ‘A fair comment,’ conceded Warren, still not bothering to look up from his paper. ‘And have you noticed something, Les?’

  ‘No. What’s that, Warren?’

  ‘There’s more rabbits round now than there ever was.’

  Norton shook his head and opened the Sun-Herald. ‘There’s just no winning with you, is there, Woz?’

  ‘Not for a big, red-headed goose from Queensland, there’s not.’

  Warren finally looked up from his paper and half-smiled. ‘Don’t be too long with the comics, will you?’

  While Les and Warren were getting their Sunday morning banter and breakfast together, Eddie Salita was letting himself in the front door of the Tamarama Surf Club. He’d made a couple of phone calls to different people earlier; now there was someone he had to see who was a member of the small surf club perched on the rocks between Bondi and Bronte. It was still raining and miserable and the patrol had given up the ghost. What clubbies were around were huddled around a two-way radio in an alcove overlooking the beach, discussing whether to bring the late Sunday arvo drink forward to around 1.30. A couple of them looked up when Eddie seemed to appear out of nowhere and quietly tapped the oldest of them on the shoulder — a dark-haired bloke about the same build as Eddie, only an inch or two taller.

  ‘Eddie,’ he blinked, when he turned around, ‘how are you, mate?’

  ‘Good, Jimmy,’ replied Eddie, deciding to leave out any comments about the weather and get straight past the point. ‘Is that sweet what I rang you about earlier?’

  ‘Good as gold,’ replied the older clubbie. ‘No worries at all.’

  Eddie had known Jimmy Gower for years. Jimmy drove a taxi part-time and sold shoes and shirts around the pubs and that from the back of a Holden station wagon. It had racks in the back for the shirts and maybe a jacket or two and a small compartment on roof racks on the top with a sliding door where he kept the shoes. Eddie told Jimmy his wife’s sister was starting up a dress shop and could he borrow the station wagon to move a few clothes and things that night. Jimmy, rather than take a punt on his old mate Eddie Salita blowing both his knees off, was only too willing to oblige.

  ‘I thought I may as well get the keys off you now,’ said Eddie, ‘because we mightn’t be moving the gear till later on tonight. And it’d save me disturbing you if you’re in bed or watching TV.’

  ‘Sweet as a nut,’ replied Jimmy Gower, handing Eddie the keys. ‘You know where I live?’

  Eddie nodded in the direction of a block of home units halfway up Delview Street a little less than a kilometre from the surf club. ‘Just up the hill there.’

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded Jimmy.

  Warren and Les had managed to get their breakfast and sarcasm together, plus scrambled eggs and more coffee, and were both reading the Sunday papers while they figured out who was going to get out of doing the washing-up when Eddie knocked on the front door around 1.15. He was still wearing more or less the same clothes as the night before and Les grimaced slightly as he peered out over him at the rain still tumbling down.

  ‘Jesus! It’s still a prick of a day, Ed.’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped all fuckin’ morning,’ replied the little hitman, brushing some water from the sleeves of his black leather jacket. He followed Les into the kitchen where Warren was still sipping a coffee while he read the paper.

  ‘Hello, Woz. How’s things?’

  Warren looked up from what he was reading and smiled. ‘Hello, Eddie,’ he said, a little cautiously. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good.’ Eddie nodded toward the plunger sitting on the kitchen table. ‘That coffee still hot?’

  ‘Sure is,’ replied Warren. ‘You want a cup?’

  ‘Reckon,’ said Eddie, moving toward the table. ‘It’s colder than a well-digger’s arse outside.’

  Eddie poured himself a coffee and had a bit of a chitchat with Warren for a minute or two before finally catching Norton’s eye and nodding toward the loungeroom. Once out of earshot from Norton’s flatmate, Eddie got straight down to business.

  ‘Righto, Les. Here’s what I want you to do. You know Delview Street behind Tamarama Surf Club?’ Norton nodded as Eddie handed him a set of car keys. ‘I want you to pick up a white Holden station wagon there at 10.30 tonight. It belongs to Jimmy Gower, the cabbie.’ Norton nodded again as Eddie told him the address and the licence plate number. ‘Now, you know the Sandringham Hotel in King Street, Newtown?’

  Norton had to think for a second. ‘Yeah. I’ve driven past it a few times.’

  ‘There’s a second-hand clothes shop opposite. Pull up there at eleven o’clock. You’ll see a sheila in a blue raincoat. Just stop about five metres in front of her with the engine still running and the lights off.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. You won’t even see me.’ Eddie looked straight into Norton’s eyes. ‘All you’ll be doing is sort of running interference.’

  ‘Running interference.’ Les shrugged. ‘Okay, if you say so.’

  ‘Now,’ continued Eddie, still looking directly at Les, ‘you’ll see Rayburn come up and start talking to the sheila. When he falls over you just drive off.’

  ‘I drive off.’

  ‘That’s right. Not at a hundred miles an hour. Just cruise up to the next set of lights. Turn left and head back to Bondi.’

  Eddie took a sip of coffee. ‘And when you’ve gone about five clicks, wind the passenger-side window down.’ />
  ‘Yeah. Then what?’

  ‘That’s it,’ smiled Eddie. ‘Drive back to Bondi slowly and sedately. Just like Grandma Duck.’

  ‘And where will you be all the time?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ repeated Eddie. ‘Like I said, you won’t even see me.’ Eddie looked at his watch and finished his coffee. ‘Well, I’d better get going. Now you know exactly what to do, Les?’

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Norton. ‘Come on, I’ll see you to the door.’

  Les opened the front door and let Eddie out. As he did he grimaced at the chill in the air and the rain now coming down harder than ever.

  ‘Christ! Look at that.’

  Eddie zipped up his leather jacket, looked at Norton, smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘Heh, heh, heh! Good night for a murder, ain’t it.’ Then he was gone.

  Knowing they’d both be sitting there all day if they waited for the other to do it, Les and Warren finally did the washing-up together, then spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV and roaming round the house trying not to get in each other’s way. Around six, Warren got stuck into a hash-joint and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and was starting to roar when the movie came on at 8.30. Despite Warren’s urgings, Norton declined to have a drink. As the hours ticked by and the rain continued to beat down, he could still see the look on Eddie’s face and hear his voice saying, ‘Good night for a murder.’

  The old Clint Eastwood movie wasn’t too bad and Les would have liked to have seen the end of it. But a little after ten, just as Clint stopped to reload his .457 Magnum after blasting another half-dozen villains all over San Francisco, he went into his bedroom and got changed into a pair of jeans, gym boots and a dark blue windcheater.

  ‘I’m going down the road to get a pizza, Woz,’ he said, standing in the loungeroom. Warren looked at Les through a drunken haze and cocked an ear to the roof. ‘On a night like this? You’re kidding.’

  ‘I know. But I didn’t feel like eating earlier. And now I’m starving.’

  Warren turned back to the TV and shuddered.

  ‘You’re off your head.’

  Norton shrugged a reply. ‘Probably. But I’m that hungry I’d eat the crutch out of a rag doll. And there’s fuck-all in the fridge.’

  Warren was about to say something when Les cut him off. ‘You want anything while I’m out?’

  ‘Yeah,’ hiccupped Warren. ‘Get us another large bottle of Coke.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too long.’ Norton jiggled his car keys and headed for the front door.

  He had no trouble find Jimmy’s car; in the glow of the nearest streetlight the white station wagon seemed to take on a yellowish tinge as the rain spattered across the roof and the small shoe compartment bolted to it. A low rumble filled the air and hung over the buildings and rooftops as if the echoes were reluctant to fade away into the darkness. Jesus! what a prick of a night, Norton cursed to himself as he clambered in behind the wheel and started the motor. He gave the engine a couple of gentle revs, checked his watch and peered out through the click-clack of the windscreen wipers. If I take my time, I should be at that shop right on eleven, he thought.

  He slipped the car into drive and eased off into one of the worst Sunday nights he could remember since he moved to Sydney.

  There was hardly any traffic; anybody with half a brain was either inside watching TV or in bed doing what nights like this were made for. Norton shook his head as he drove past Bondi Junction and thought about the barmaid from Rose Bay who had rung him earlier wanting to know what he was doing that evening. By now his adrenalin was beginning to pump and, despite himself, Les could feel the tension rising inside him. The music coming from the car radio wasn’t doing much for him either; it was as if all the disc jockeys’ moods that night seemed to match the miserable weather and every time a flash of lightning would stitch across the skyline, the accompanying static would grate on his already-twitchy nerves. There was a cassette half poking out of the car-stereo in the dash. Les pulled it out and held it up to what little light there was in the car.

  ‘Hello,’ he smiled to himself. ‘LA Woman. I didn’t know Jimmy Gower was an old Doors fan.’ He pushed it in and continued into the night.

  Most of one side had finished and the cool xylophone and ironic sound effects of ‘Riders on the Storm’ had cut in when Les turned off Cleveland Street into City Road and past the university. Somehow the music seemed to blend in with the night and Les could feel some of the tension leaving him until he started crooning along with the lyrics. They didn’t help to ease the situation.

  ‘Shit,’ Les said out loud. More lightning flashed and another chill ran up his spine; and it positively wasn’t the weather.

  The Sandringham Hotel loomed up in the gloom sooner than Les expected. He saw the shop opposite and slowed down, while Jim Morrison kept singing.

  Yeah, that’s me all right, thought Les. An actor out alone and no bone. He stopped the car and turned off the lights. Now where’s this sheila?

  With the ticking of the engine almost smothered by the rain, Les sat peering through the windscreen into the night. Although he’d also switched the wipers off he could still make out the second-hand clothes shop from the glow of a streetlight a little further down. Suddenly the girl in the blue raincoat seemed to materialise out of the shop doorway and Norton felt the hairs on his neck bristle. She moved to the middle of the footpath and stood there almost as if she was trying to make herself conspicuous. Then she took out a cigarette, lit it, drew back her head and the hand holding the cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke up into the air that soon disappeared into the inky mist. Ohh, what the fuck is this, thought Les. An old Marlene Dietrich movie? What happens next? Erich Von Stroheim walks up in a Nazi uniform? Piss off, Eddie. What is this shit? Despite the tension and possible danger, Les couldn’t help but somehow feel a sense of absurdity.

  Just as mysteriously as the girl came into view, so did another figure; stockier, taller, shorter hair with a determined swagger and dressed not unlike Les. Norton immediately recognised Johnny Rayburn and his lip curled.

  The girl appeared a little startled as Rayburn walked up and began talking to her. The brief conversation swiftly turned into a heated argument. Norton jolted forward as Rayburn gave the girl a vicious backhander that sent her spinning against the shop window and the cigarette off into the night in a shower of sparks. This was followed by a clout round the ears and Norton heard the girl scream as Rayburn grabbed her by the hair, twisted her head almost off her shoulders and spat in her face. He then speared her against the shop window, stepped back and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. Even in the rain-soaked blackness of the night, there was no mistaking the razor in Rayburn’s hand.

  Norton’s blood boiled. Ohh, no way, he fumed to himself. No fuckin’ way. Despite what Eddie had told him, Les made a grab for the door as Rayburn stopped and turned in the direction of the station wagon. Then a tiny red dot, not much bigger than a sequin but quite distinct, appeared on the bridge of his nose. Rayburn continued to stare in the direction of the car for a moment and the next thing his head disappeared. Norton blinked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. One minute Rayburn was standing there with a head; a split second later he wasn’t. There was no explosion, no scream, no sound at all. It just vanished in a huge spray of blood, hair, powdered bone and brain matter that was immediately absorbed into the mist wisping up and down King Street. The headless corpse seemed to stand there for a second like some ghastly apparition frozen in time, then it collapsed — knees first — in the direction it had been looking. The arms splayed out in front, the razor clattered across the footpath, and from the jagged stump where the head had been, purple-black blood gushed over the footpath into the gutter to be quickly washed away in the swiftly flowing stormwater. Norton still couldn’t believe his eyes.

  The girl could, and she didn’t need to be told twice. She made an amazing recovery and immediately legged it past the station wagon without so much as a glance
at the decapitated remains of Johnny Rayburn oozing what was left of his life onto the rain-soaked Newtown street. Norton remembered what Eddie had told him and decided this was as good a time as any to hit the toe himself.

  Despite the jangling of his nerves and the urge in his stomach, he got the car into drive and cruised up to the next set of lights as Eddie had instructed him. It was only when he reached them that he realised he’d forgotten to turn the headlights on. The lights had barely turned green when Norton switched his lights on and took the corner like Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit.

  The station wagon fishtailed round the corner in the wet and Les was five kilometres in the direction of Bondi before he knew where he was. Then he remembered what else Eddie had told him and with his heart still pounding he slowed down just past the Bat and Ball Hotel and wound the passenger side down. The window hadn’t been down ten seconds when a blue overnight bag landed on the seat next to Les. A few seconds later a pair of wiry hands appeared in the window followed by the arms, torso and legs of Eddie Salita which seemed to wiggle and slither and turn around before sitting up on the front seat alongside Les.

  ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ!’ said Eddie, winding the window back up. ‘You couldn’t drive any faster, could you, you fuckin’ big wombat?’

  Norton’s heart was still racing and his eyes looked like the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’ he said.

  Eddie jabbed an index finger toward the roof. ‘Up there in the David Jones shoe department. It’s been lovely, I can tell you. Sliding around in amongst 10,000 pairs of cheap Korean running shoes. While you’re driving like a maniac!’

  Norton looked at the little hitman casually wiping rainwater from his face and blinked. The shoe compartment. That was the last thing he expected. But then a wiry little guy like Eddie would fit in there without too much trouble. However, it did nothing for Norton’s nerves. In fact, if anything the sudden appearance of Eddie from out of nowhere made them worse.