Chapter 14.
Family Matters
Agent Hoffa was looking into the mirror of her mother’s bathroom, at her flat on the 13th floor in Double Bay, getting ready to go to Sargent Tiernan’s family party, when her phone rang for the 5th time. Agent Hofer decided she better check the phone, just in case it wasn’t her ex-boyfriend, Charlie, this time. He often got drunk and wept and begged her to take him back, especially, on weekends and public holidays.
It wasn’t Charlie.
But a series of MMS pictures from Agent John Johnson. She hesitated before opening the pictures. You never know what you might see, she thought. And you can’t unsee anything. She knew this from experience.
The pictures were a series of stills, showing a marina, a superyacht, two men talking, a group standing around chatting and enjoying themselves; a kitchen, some stairs, and then a room with a fat man pointing a gun at the camera.
‘Oh bugger!’ Agent Hofer expostulated. This must be Giovanni Sciarra, and he is about to shoot Agent Johnson!
-----------------------------------------------------
‘Crikey! That BBQ was bloody hard to clean, Sargent Tiernan said to his wife, as he stepped back into the kitchen to start making salads, and prepare the steak and sausages. His wife, Gloria, looked up from the keyboard of her laptop and frowned slightly. ‘I’ll be finished this article in a minute, and I’ll give you a hand’, she said distractedly, retuning with intense concentration to her task.
‘These are hard days for journalists’, luv’, Sargent Tiernan replied, placing his warm hand on his wife’s shoulder. He knew that Gloria had to work all hours, in the rapidly changing media field.
The mobile phone vibrated on the table and without thinking, Gloria Tiernan, reached over and answered the call. He face morphed into a strange expression. ‘You better listen to this’, she said, looking straight at her husband. ‘I think it’s important’.
Sargent Tiernan listened to the call that came from Agent John Johnson’s number. First he heard footsteps, and then, the words, ‘So, signora, I ordered this cake, eh? And then the unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
The phone began to vibrate again and he heard a waiting call alert. Sargent Tiernan answered. ‘Sarg, he’s at Rushcutters Bay inside the Sciarra Outfit’s yacht!’
‘Call for backup, Agent Hofer.’
-----------------------------------
Just as Sciarra shot the gun, without even thinking about it, I pushed his hand upward, and the bullet entered the ceiling. Then I jumped up and grabbed the gun out of Giovanni Sciarra’s hand, and quickly moved to a better position.
I could see the woman in the black dress had cannily used the cake board as a shield, but the cake itself, had fallen sloppily onto the floor.
‘We didn’t trust you from the start, did we sis’, stated Damon, staring at me with great malevolence, and then, looking toward Angie, who evidently was his sister. Why hadn’t that occurred to me before?
‘No, we were keeping an eye on you, and we were careful – well, until Pasquale ballsed things up’, Angie said, looking from me to her grandfather.
‘So you are responsible for Angels Place’, I asked.
‘I didn’t want to be’, Angie replied defiantly.
‘You do as you’re told girl’, Giovanni Sciarra cut in roughly. I saw Angie glare at her grandfather, as though to say, I’m a match for you. I wondered if there was a power struggle going on here, but as a female, I didn’t like Angie’s chances, with this pack of misogynists.
Giovanni Sciarra must have pressed some kind of alarm system, somewhere, because I could hear the sound of running feet and the door began to slide open. I pulled the Glock out from the back of my wig and pointed one at Giovanni Sciarra and the other gun at the security guard, which I had passed on the stair, as he burst through the door.
‘You’re bluffing girl’, the guard shouted and made a move to lunge at me. But before he could do so, Damon threw himself in front of the guard and cried out wildly, ‘no!’
I didn’t move, as Giovanni Sciarra screamed hoarsely, ‘finocchio, control yourself! You bring shame to us!’
We all watched as Damon flushed with either embarrassment or defiance.
‘This is not the old country, nonno’, Angie said, softly, yet dangerously. Many men and women are gay. They don’t hurt anyone else, so what is the problem?’
Sciarra said nothing, but he looked like he wanted to kill his grandson with his bare hands.
Salvatore ‘The Wolf’ Rattis slithered through the door, holding a gun. He looked jumpy and anxious, and he was breathing fast. He was looking at Tika.
‘I wanted you and you were not there.’
Tika shrugged and said, ‘I had to work, you know’.
‘I should be your number one priority’.
Tika was beginning to look worried, like it had just occurred to her that Rattis was not entirely in a reasonable state of mind.
‘Look at you’, Sciarra sneared. ‘You taking the drugs!’
Ratsis turned his attention and his gun on Sciarra. ‘Yep I’m a meth head. What you going to do about it?’
With an athletic lunge, Angie threw herself forward, and swiftly took the gun from Rattsis.
‘Girls you get yourself outside and far away from here OK’, she said, looking intently at Tika and the rest of the girls. They got up and started to move out very quickly toward the door, which was closed.
‘Open it’, she ordered her grandfather. He did not move, but glared at her like the malevolent toad that he was.
Ratsis grabbed Tika by the arm. ‘You’re not going anywhere’, he said, with chattering teeth.
‘Yes she is’, I replied, as I leaned over and pressed the button under the arm of Sciarra’s chair, which I had seen him use to open the door.
He was so obese and slow moving that he made no move to stop me.
I straightened up and watched the women file out; except Tika, that is, who was being restrained by the explosive and deranged looking Ratsis.
Then, as though in a dream…or nightmare, I became aware that Angie had her gun aimed at me.
‘Let me tell you something, whatever your name is, about what it is like to be born into a Ndrangheta family’, she said, as I listened. ‘It’s growing up and thinking crime is normal; it’s having no choice but to be complicit in these crimes, and later, to find yourself permanently embedded in a crime organisation, motivated by greed, and the lust for power. An organisation which is comprised of your family, of whom you belong by blood, but which is so morally bankrupt that it makes you sick’. She paused for a moment and looked hard at her grandfather. ‘I was outspoken when I was younger, I never wanted to be part of any of this.’ She waved her hands about. ‘His response was to dig me in so deep, to dirty me with all the sleaze and crime, so that I could leave, only, with my head being served to my parent’s on a plate’. She spat with disgust onto the golden carpet.
‘stai zitto!’ Screamed Sciarra, whose face was red and dewy with sweat. He looked toward Rattis and some of his authority returned. ‘Get back to cooking up the drugs, the Europeans want their money. Now or.....finito’. He drew his finger like a knife across his throat.
Angie was still pointing the gun at me and I was still pointing one gun at the security guard, and the other at Sciarra. Nobody moved.
Then the lady in black, potato sack, put down her cake board shield, ripped off her wig and almost, casually, took the gun from Angie. It was Agent John Johnson. My mouth dropped to the floor.
‘Well, I think I’ve got all of that recorded and it’s been sent off into the ether’, Johnson stated in an amiable manner. He turned toward Sciarra. ‘I think we have enough info here to do you slowly, sir’.
We became aware of a hubub of the sound; of helicopters, of boat motors, of people yelling and screaming. I looked up to the surveillance mo
nitor, and saw police storming the yacht.
Ratsis threw Tika aside. She slumped to the floor as thought drained of energy, and he bolted out the door yelling, ‘they’ll not take me alive’.
An image of Ned Kelly came into my mind. It was comical. I almost laughed.
A short while later, when the police entered the room, it was almost a letdown, as Sciarra simply sat unmoving and staring straight ahead, in his throne like chair. The security guard and Damon embraced and looked sadly at each other, as they were led away, and Angie nodded her head toward me, with begrudging respect, before she too was taken away.
‘Look after this one, she’s alright’, I said, as an officer chivvied the tottering Tika out the door. She merely gave me a look of supreme bafflement. I think the night had been too much for her.
Sciarra had to be lifted from his chair and half carried, half pushed, out the door. He could barely walk and puffed and panted as he went slowly up the stairs. He was an old and terrible man. I did not feel sorry for him.
I became aware of the sounds of many happy people, counting down to midnight, as their words rose up, and floated on the air; then, much Hip, hip hooraying, shouting and general revelry.
I became aware of John Johnson moving into my personal space and kissing me softly on the lips.
‘Happy new year’, he whispered.
‘And to you’ I said. ‘And may it be a good one’.
He smiled, and then, looked puzzled and angry. ‘Did you put a loaded gun under your wig, Agent Carras?
‘No’, I replied, ‘there were no bullets in the chamber’. I smiled sweetly, he shook his head, and we returned to work.
With a cursory examination of the yacht, various unregistered weapons had been recovered and some very incriminating footage from the surveillance cameras. Tomorrow, another police outfit would move in and systematically begin dismantling the yacht, but for now, we were finished here.
I was alone with Agent Johnson.
‘It took you long enough to make your presence felt’, I said, drily.
‘Sorry about that’, he replied sheepishly, but I’ve pegged you as a girl who can look after herself.
‘Thankyou’, I said. ‘And thank you for sending that chopper out to look for me, after I foolishly jumped into the sea, at Bronte - although I didn’t need it.’
‘You are welcome’, he said, as he inclined his head.
‘I generally feel that blokes are trying to smother me, and control my life. You are an interesting change’, I added, smilingly.
‘The thing is, I have this idea that women must help in building this world, if we want to make it a better place,’ Johnson said, and then added. ‘You know, that young woman, Angie, was right. A lot of women and men, come to think of it, are born with a gender straightjacket on. We are socialised to be a certain way. I mean, lots of boys are expected to be all macho, and supress women, and we are given a very narrow idea of masculinity.’
‘It is the same for women’, I said. ‘We too are imprisoned by femininity. You know my grandmother had a maid to do her housework, and a nursemaid to look after her children. She was expected to be passive and motherly, and never say a bad word. It all changed in my mother’s time, she had to clean her own house, and look after her own children. Now, we women are expected to work full time, clean our houses, and ship our children off the day care centres. And, if you question the prevalent orthodoxy, you are deemed unfeminine and probably dangerous.’
‘Are you thinking about having children, Agent Carras?’ spoke the voice of Sargent Tiernan, as his head appeared through the door.
‘No sarg, not at the moment.’
‘Good. So, can you get yourself off your feminist high horse, and back to the work?’
‘There are a few other items of evidence, which need to be collected’, I said, ignoring Sargent Tiernan’s male dinosaur imitation.
‘Go on Agent Carras, what are these items?’
‘At my cousin’s souvlaki shop, just down the road, there is a suitcase of money and a gun, and there is a very interesting book containing business transactions……oh! And some DVDS. These are all complements of Pasquale Scarmardo’.
Sargent Tiernan’s eyes bugged out, and he added, ‘I will be expecting a full report, Agent Carras. A full report.’
I merely nodded, and then said, ‘I will be requesting a couple of days off, too sir, if that’s OK?’
‘What! More days off!’
‘Sarg, I was on the run from a criminal organisation. The last few days were not exactly a holiday’.
‘Well, alright, but only few days. We’ll be needing you’.
---------------------------
A few days later, I drove out to Sofala, and had lunch with Dawnie and Chook. Then I drove with Chook, on that convulsing, gravel road, to dad’s old shack. We emptied dad’s ashes into the bush around there, and into the Turon River.
I spoke out loud, one of dad’s favourite poems called ‘Last Trams’, by Kenneth Slessor. Some words stayed with me, repeating in my mind, for many years to come:
Lost now in emptiness
Deep now in darkness
Dad had died five years ago, from a heart attack, and alcoholism. He hadn’t really looked after himself, not for a long time, and so, his death, in a way, wasn’t really a surprise. I hadn’t done anything with his ashes in all that time, except keep them in an urn in my lounge room. I had thought that, perhaps, I should take the ashes back to Cyprus. But dad had left that country when he was a teenager, after the war, and his childhood home was on the Turkish occupied side now. But, since staying at the shack that night and feeling a sense of dad’s presence there, whether real or imagined, I decided that this was dad’s spiritual home. And here, his ashes would lie, and slowly, return to the Earth.
The following day, I went swimming at Bronte Beach, with John Johnson. The day was really hot; the sun like a ball of fire, and the sand seared our feet with burning intensity, as we hopped down toward the cool water. As we padded about near the shore, he told me all about how the Italian mama at the cemetery had saved his life. I laughed out loud.
Thanks to Pasquale Scamardo, we had plenty of dirt on the Sciarra Outfit, with his book of business transactions and DVD’s showing recordings of drug deals. Scamardo didn’t really trust the Sciarra Outfit, it seems. Also, both he and Angie had been pressured into an engagement, against their inclinations, because Scamardo came from a family with transport, and shipping connections. But this business had been going downhill for some time, and needed an injection of funds to survive.
In the evening, we had dinner at a little Italian restaurant. As I tasted the delicious river trout in aniseed sauce, in the restaurant run by an old school friend, I thought how the Ndrangheta and Mafia do so much harm to their own people; they make prisoners of the women, and deprive the young of choice. But the roots of their power are very deep now, requiring them to be blasted from their thieves den. But doing this, also, causes plenty of damage, to the innocent.
But that is the thing with this job: it never ends. Plato, I think it was, said: 'Only the dead have seen the end of war’. I think this applies to crime too.
Oh! And tomorrow, Agent Johnson is coming over for dinner. I think I’m going to cook an Asian stir fry. It’s time to move on.
-------------------------------------
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends