Babylon South. Jon Cleary
lean on the counter, please.’
‘Eh?’
‘The security shield.’ She pointed to the strip of steel that was sunk into the woodwork of the counter, ‘If there’s a hold-up that shoots up and you get your arms chopped off.’
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Banks used to be safe.’
‘Not any more. Will you excuse me a moment, sir?’
She went away and Dural stood at the counter looking at the steel strip. He’d heard about bank protection methods; there was one guy in Parramatta who was said to have had his head almost taken off by something like this. It was nice to know his money was safe.
The girl came back, signalled for him to go to the end of the counter. ‘The manager would like to see you, sir. We’ll have to issue a new book.’
He was taken in to see the manager, a square-faced, square-minded man who was out of place in a King’s Cross bank. He longed for a transfer to head office, where the chances of being held up or getting AIDS or having a passbook presented that looked like something off the sole of a shoe were practically nil.
‘You are Charles Dural?’
Dural produced his old driving-licence, just as greasy and tattered as the passbook.
The manager looked at the licence. ‘That’s years out of date, Mr Dural. I guess you were driving an FJ Holden then?’
Dural wondered if he had already sent for the cops; but he humoured the smug bastard, It was a 3.8 Jaguar, actually. Look, Mr—’ He glanced at the name-plate on the manager’s desk. ‘Mr Rosman, just between you and me I’ve been in prison for the last twenty-three years and a bit. I had a cheque account here at this branch – I suppose you’d of still been in high school then – and when 1 knew they were gunna send me up for a long time, I changed over to an interest-bearing account. I dunno what interest I been getting – if you ever sent me any statements, I didn’t get ‘em. This book says I left £3,202 in it when I went in. You oughta owe me quite a bit of interest, right?’
‘I suppose we do—’ the bank manager looked uncomfortable. ‘The truth is, Mr Dural, in this area we have to be, well, extra careful. You have no idea some of the types come in here. I’ve got three bag-ladies as depositors—’ He stopped, as if afraid that one of the bag-ladies might be Dural’s mother. ‘Well, you know what I mean. We just have to be careful.’
‘I’ glad to hear it.’ Dural was surprised at his own patience; in prison he’d have blown up if he’d been interviewed by a screw like this uppity bastard. ‘Now could you let me know how much you’re holding for me?’
It took ten minutes to reveal that he was now worth 23,332 dollars and 22 cents. It seemed to him that he was suddenly wealthy, but the bank manager didn’t appear impressed with his rich client. ‘It doesn’t go far these days, Mr Dural. Perhaps you’d like us to invest it for you? Interest rates are still high. Unit trusts are the thing.’
‘I’ think about it.’ He had heard the talk in gaol amongst the white-collar crims that this was a boom time. He had wondered why, if everything was booming, so many of them were doing time. ‘I don’t wanna rush into nothing.’
He drew a hundred dollars, got his new passbook and went out into the street again. He hadn’t walked more than a hundred yards (he still thought in yards, feet and inches; he’d never get used to the metric system) before he was aware that this wasn’t his Cross, not as he remembered it. It had always been an area where there were more sinners than saints; now it looked sleazy, a corner into which had been swept the dregs and grime of the city. Sex had always been sold in the Cross, but, as he remembered it, there had been a time and a place for it; now, even in early afternoon, there were girls in doorways and on street corners. He was shocked at how they were dressed; in the old days the cops would have run them in for indecent exposure. A police car drifted by, the young cops in it looking out at the girls with plain boredom.
One of the girls accosted him. She was about sixteen, her ravaged face ten years older than her body; she wore a gold body stocking and black fishnet panty-hose and smelled as if she had fallen into a vat of Woolworth’s perfume of the week. ‘You want a bit, luv?’
‘How much?’ He wasn’t really interested, except in the price of nooky these days.
‘Fifty bucks.’ She saw the look of surprise on his face. ‘You from the bush or something? What you expect, something as cheap as doing it with a sheep?’
‘It’s twice what I used to pay. And the sheep didn’t answer back.’
‘You want a cheapie, try the Orient Express down there on the corner, the Filipino. She’ll give you a quicky, a knee-trembler for ten bucks.’
He shook his head and walked on, more and more disillusioned with every pace. The traffic was thicker and quicker. He stepped off on to a pedestrian crossing and was almost run down by two young men in a Toyota with two surfboards strapped to its roof. One of the young men, earring flashing, his snarl just as bright, leaned out of the passenger window.
‘Why don’t you look where you’re fucking going, dickhead!’
Dural took two paces to his right, grabbed the young man by his long bleached hair, pulled his head halfway out of the window and punched him on the jaw. Then he shoved the unconscious youth back into the car, leaned in and said to the startled driver, ‘Okay, smart-arse, move on!’
He stepped back and heard the clapping behind him. He turned round and there was a bag-lady, standing beside her loaded pram, clapping him. ‘Good on ya, mate! We need more men like you! Good on ya!’
Dural grinned, then went on across the street, feeling a little better: he had done something for the old Cross where decent crims like himself, not today’s shit, used to hang out. He passed a group of kids who looked as if they had spent last night in the gutter; they glanced at him and sneered, but said nothing. The sharper-eyed amongst them had suddenly recognized the brutal toughness in his face, the muscles under the too-tight suit. All at once he hated everyone he passed, the sleazy strangers on what had once been his turf.
A taxi cruised by and he hailed it. He got in beside the driver, a kanaka, for Chrissakes. ‘The Cobb and Co.’
‘What’s that, mate?’
‘A pub. Where you from?’
‘Tonga.’
They had told him in Parramatta that the place was now overrun with wogs, slopeheads and coons. He was beginning to feel like that mug in the story. Ripper van Winkie. ‘One time you used to have to pass a test before you got a taxi licence, be able to know every street in the city. Especially the pubs.’
‘Mate,’ said the Tongan, ‘you wanna sit here and discuss Australia’s history, it’s gunna cost you money. The meter’s running.’
‘You’re pretty bloody uppity, ain’t you? Who let you in here?’
‘Your government. I’m studying economics and you taxpayers are paying for it. We’re the white man’s burden. Now where’s this pub?’
‘The corner of Castlereagh and Goulburn.’
The driver thought a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not any more, mate. That’s where the Masonic temple is now. You don’t look like a Mason to me.’
‘Jesus!’ Dural slumped back in the seat. ‘Okay, take me into town and drop me anywhere.’
‘Put your seat-belt on.’
‘Jesus!’ He clipped the seat-belt across himself, felt he was locking himself into some sort of straitjacket; there’d been no seat-belts when he’d last driven a car. He began to get the funny feeling that he had been freer in prison.
An hour of the inner city was enough for him. He was amazed at how much Sydney had changed; the much taller buildings than the ones he remembered seemed