Crooked by Camilla Nelson Page A

respect.’
    â€˜I got information says Ducky came to see you on the night he got shot.’
    â€˜Who gave you the drum?’
    â€˜His car is parked less than five minutes away.’
    Reilly got up. ‘Bulls, that is. Ernie,’ he added, swinging round. ‘I dunno why I’m listening to this.’
    â€˜Was it you who got McPherson to knock Ducky?’ said Gus, but he’d already lost. Chubb had a hand on his shoulder and was steering him forcefully out the rear exit and into the night.
    Gus stood alone in the alley for a minute, rallying his thoughts, listening to himself breathe. He tightened his shoelace on a crate labelled ‘Sunlight’, adjusted his hat, then walked back via Roslyn Gardens in search of the Holden.
    He had just reached the top of the rise when a Datsun started up. The glaring headlights picked him out – his shadow elongated over the road. He threw himself over the bonnet as the car came towards him. He grabbed hold of the wipers, but theytore away in his hands. He strove to force air into his lungs as the car swerved and turned. He found himself falling through a soundless uprush of black air and breathed the smell of wet leaves.

‘It’s a yeah or no answer. Yeah or no, that’s what your choice is. Either O’Connor’s come into the Latin Quarter to whack you, and you whacked him first. Or you flat out and whacked him.’ Reilly was pacing across the carpet, his eyes watery and distended with anger, swinging around every now and then to glare at McPherson, who was standing in front of the couch.
    â€˜Sure, the bloke had a few problems, but so what? He was a mate. And sometimes I reckon you’ve forgot what that means. Just like them hairies and conchies out on the street who don’t got no values. Thing is, a bloke is a mate then you’ve got to back him up, no matter what happens. I mean, what flaming kind of organisation is this I’m running, the kind that lets one bloke knock another bloke without asking me first?’
    â€˜Okay,’ said McPherson. ‘So I made a mistake.’
    â€˜Bloody oath you made a mistake.’
    â€˜It won’t happen again.’
    â€˜Start talking like that and you’re making me nervous.’ Reilly glanced at McPherson suspiciously, but he tried to simmer down. ‘I reckon we must’ve known each other since you was nothing but a two-bob crook and I got you that job at the Colony Club out at Tom Ugly’s Bridge.’
    McPherson’s face began to harden, but Reilly barely noticed.
    â€˜Remember that big awful nightclub with the orchestra pitin the shape of a clamshell, and the ballet girls in white swimsuits, and everything squared off with the coppers? Those days, a bloke ran into trouble, he knew that his mates were standing behind him. Anybody tried to take him they’d have to take the crowd at the back of him too. Seems to me there’s no other way that a crook can do business.’
    â€˜Those were the old days,’ said McPherson. ‘Right now we can’t afford to have mad buggers like O’Connor running around, upsetting the coppers and attracting attention.’
    Reilly turned round, catching the tide of anger in McPherson’s face. He grabbed McPherson by the lapels of his coat and thrust his own flushed face right up to his. ‘So you knock off his block in a room packed full of people and that makes it better?’
    McPherson didn’t twitch. He stood under Reilly’s sweaty flushed face and waited, until there wasn’t a sound but Reilly’s breathing. Then Reilly let him go. He spread his fingers in the air and stepped back.
    Reilly went on in an altogether different tone. ‘Me and you, we’ve always got along. In fact, the only times we haven’t got along is when we sit down for a chinwag and you go off and do the exact thing that wasn’t discussed.’
    â€˜I already said that I ought