Going All The Way

CHAPTER ONE

The night manager stands in the doorway of the motel on Darlinghurst Road. Lights a cigarette. The bloodstained sheets still upstairs in room 303. The vision of the girl cut to pieces flashing like pop-ups in his mind. A crime scene tape across the door. Two uniform cops standing outside the door. The walls grimy. The nylon carpet, thin, sticky, and stained

A sea of people moves back and forth under the neon haze. Strip club spruikers shouting, people laughing, threatening, drunk, stoned, wide-eyed, and sober. Tourists, mums and dads, wild suburban boys and girls all out for the party. It is insane what has happened.

He wears black jeans; a black long-sleeved shirt; hard, thick black shoes on his feet. He is handsome with strong cheekbones, solidly built with light brown hair. The smoking hasn’t damaged him yet.

He hears the switchboard ringing, quickly shuts and locks the front door. He reaches over the reception desk, the cigarette pressed firmly between two fingers in his left hand, hits answer with the middle finger of his right hand, picks up the handset.

‘Cross Motel.’

‘What happened?’

It’s the owner, Mick.

‘You have to come in.’

‘Bullshit I do. What happened?’

‘A junkie, a working girl, her trick cut her to pieces. It was fuck…’

‘Paying guest?’

The night manager swallows, takes a quick hit of his cigarette, smoke blowing out his nose and mouth when he says, ‘You know my deal with Katya.’

‘But it wasn’t Katya, was it? It was some junkie whore friend of Katya you let use the room for free. Or you charged her, pocketed the money, and now the cops are there. The media might turn up too if it’s a quiet night.’

‘Cops don’t care about freebie motel rooms.’

‘You know that the law does care. That’s right the law says that everyone’s got to register, and did you know that by law, I’m supposed to keep those registration cards for seven years.’

‘Sorry, Mick.’

‘You getting any PI work?’

‘Not a lot.’

‘You might need some and a good lawyer. You’re on your own on this one,’ he says and hangs up.

Someone is knocking on the front door.

The night manager turns and looks. It’s two suits with cop written all over them and three other guys. Behind them, two guests from Albury, who were earlier asking him about the Mardi Gras even though it was winter and the Mardi Gras was in March.

He unlocks the door. He can’t quit this job. Would Mick sack him? He needs the money to stay afloat. The Albury tourists gawk. The three guys line up at the lift in front of the tourists.

‘Who are they?’ The night manager asks the bigger suit.

‘Forensic boys.’

‘Where are their suits and little shoes and…’

‘They’ll put them on upstairs,’ the bigger detective says, ‘that alright with you, boss?’

Travis says nothing.

The guests get in the lift with them. The two detectives look at Travis, the bigger guy again says, ‘Got your guest list up to date?’

‘I’ll print one for you.’

Both cops carry guns — the bigger guy carries his on his hip, the other guy has a shoulder holster. Travis goes back to the front door, locks it. Comes around behind the reception desk and the bigger guy with red hair says, ‘I’m DI Olsen, this is DC Lynch,’ he says pointing to his offsider.

Olsen has pale, almost translucent, white skin to match his red hair. His bicep muscles press hard against the black suit. He has a thick, bull-like neck from working out; a gym junkie or ex-rugby league player. Dangerous looking man. He stands round-shouldered, says, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Travis Whyte.’

‘Travis? Haven’t heard of a Travis before.’

‘Haven’t heard that before.’

‘Got balls too, Travis.’

Travis doesn’t say anything. Olsen shrugs his big shoulders, stares blankly at Travis, says, ‘What the fuck happened, Travis?’

‘The girl took a trick up to her room. About ten minutes later I hear screaming, but I don’t know if it’s inside or outside,’ he says flinging his arm out in the direction of the street, ‘then again, the screaming; loud, wild screaming. I go for the stairs, bolt up to 303. Must be the hooker. The door is wide open. I see her lying on the bed, cuts and blood all over her. She’s frozen still, bleeding so much… The sheets already soaked in blood. I’m hyperventilating, standing by the bed, no sign of the guy. I turn around. He’s in the doorway, the trick, with a knife. He points it at me. He’s wearing black gloves, runs the knife slowly across his throat, no expression, but turns and runs. I ring the ambos.’

‘You said he had no blood on him?’

‘Yeah, I don’t get that. He had a backpack he held by his left shoulder.’

‘No blood on him?’

‘No.’

‘You try and help the girl?’

‘I talked to her, talked crap about football, cricket, anything. I held her hand, told her that she was going to make it, told her to hang on. Kept talking until the ambos arrived.’

‘What about you? You don’t have any blood on you either?’

‘I changed. I had these clothes with me for going out later.’

‘Where are the clothes you had on when you were in the room.’

‘In a plastic bag in the back office,’ he says pointing behind him.

‘What happened when you checked her in?’ Olsen asks.

‘It was a cash job. We agreed on $120 for the room. The guy paid.’

‘He get a good look at you.’

‘Yes.’

‘You got a registration card?’

‘No.’

Cops look at each other, say nothing.

The switchboard starts ringing. A guest is knocking on the door. The night manager answers the phone. Lynch opens the door, vets the guests with the guest list, then lets them up in the lift. The night manager puts the handset down, enquiry fixed. Olsen repeats his question.

‘You get a good look at him?’

‘Yeah, he was right in front of me.’

‘He knows you work here, now…’

‘I know what you’re getting at. We don’t have CCTV, but the council must on Darlinghurst Road, you can get…’

‘You telling me my job, again, boss?’

‘No.’

‘What time do you knock off?’

‘Half-an-hour from now. 11pm.’

‘Give me the plastic bag with your clothes. The lab boys will test them. I’ll walk you down to the station after you knock off, for a statement, and we’ll get you to do an identikit of the attacker.’

Travis nods but thinks, fuck this. I don’t need this shit. The guy saw me. He fucken saw me. He’s out there somewhere.

‘John, we go upstairs now,’ Olsen says to Lynch.

Silence inside the small reception area, but always the constant buzz of people outside the door, yelling, laughing; craziness.

The street on fire.

The switchboard rings again. He hits the answer button hard, says, ‘Cross Motel.’

‘Travis.’

‘Ahn, is that you?’

‘Yes, you have to help me find Billy.’

‘Oh wow, Ahn, tonight of all nights, you ring me. Oh shit. You want me to find Billy? What the fuck is that?’

‘He’s missing. It’s what you do. You find people. I’ll pay your daily rate.’

‘You mean your father will.’

‘Whatever, I need you.’

‘How long has he been missing?’

‘Ten days.’

‘Oh fuck, Billy might be doing what Billy does.’

Travis thinks, even for Billy, this is too long to not even contact Ahn. Then he thinks of the money. Who is running Billy’s club? He might be able to string the search out for a while.

‘Travis?’

‘I’m not feeling that great, Ahn. Big trouble in the motel tonight. Cops. All kinds of shit.’

‘What happened?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

‘Come over when you knock off. I’ll give you the key to Billy’s place. He doesn’t disappear like that anymore, he’s changed. You might find something at his place to…’

‘I get it. I’ll pick up the keys after I speak to the cops. But only for you. If it was anybody else.’

‘Thanks, Travis.’

‘I’ll call you when I’m done with the cops.’

Olsen walks him to the Kings Cross Police Station, buys him coffee on the way. The night manager does an identikit.

‘He was uh, medium height, short brown hair, his face, it, I don’t know, he was nothing special. Plain. He was plain and boring. Black or blue jeans. I can get him in my mind now, a brown jumper with a check shirt. I could see the collar, nothing else.’

‘Was he big? A thickset kind of guy,’ Olsen asks him.

‘No, he was normal, not overweight, not big, not fat. I hate to say it, but he was, nothing stood out.

On and on he goes.

Olsen takes Travis from the small room, his hand in the small of his back, guides him into a smaller office. Lynch joins them. Olsen takes his gun off his hip, puts it on the desk, stares straight into Travis’s soul, says slowly, firmly, ‘I want to know, Travis. Why no registration card? Why was this transaction cash? No receipts, no paperwork at all.’

‘I do it sometimes.’

‘Do what?’

‘Cash transactions an…’

‘I spoke to your boss, Mick, he said you have an arrangement with a street girl, Katya. This right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘I don’t believe you, Travis.’

‘That’s your business.’

In his mind, Travis could see Katya in her spot across the road from the Cross Motel front door. Where was she?

‘You checked a guest in. A prostitute. There was a used needle in the room. No registration card. No record of them, and ten minutes later she’s cut to pieces in room 303. Her name is Ann, Travis, she has a mother out there somewhere.’

‘No comment.’

‘You are in deep shit, Travis.’

‘No comment.’

CHAPTER TWO

Travis walks out of the police station. Olsen had hit him with question after question. Like a front-row forward in a state-of-origin game, buttering up again and again. Travis took the hits with a no comment, then Lynch started in with the accusations.

‘You’re a thief. Cheating on your boss. A rat, stealing money from him. A girl is lying near dead. You need to say something.’

‘No comment.’

He needed a lawyer. Ahn could find him one. Pay for it too.

The truth is he is flat broke and needed the $120 to keep him going until payday. His list of bad habits almost always has him teetering on the brink of going under.

At the top of the stairs leading to the concrete of Fitzroy Gardens, his finds it a little hard to breathe. He stops and bends down. He can’t breathe, he struggles trying to catch some air. Sits down on his arse gasping for air. Embarrassed as fuck. Can’t catch a breath, he puts his hand across his chest, tries to suck in air, at last, a breath, a few more deep breaths. He kneels, stands. Holds his arm across his chest, breathes in deeply, then breathes out slowly, counting, one and two and three and four and five. Repeats it in the middle of the park twice more. His breathing back to normal. He sighs. Something he learnt from the New York Times online.

He walks slowly back to the Cross. Gavin, the night porter, does a sideline dealing in speed, and Travis needs some. Gavin will give him credit. He has to find three people. Katya had been with Perry when she rang. Asking for a free room for Ann. Travis saw dollar signs. Straight away he knew he would pocket the cash for the room for gambling and drinking money. Perry is bad news, a male crossdresser. Travis doesn’t properly know; doesn’t care. Perry is also a smack and speed dealer and worst of all, a pimp. Trading in misery. Katya adores Perry who in turn feeds her smack habit with free gear. Can they have known the attacker all along? Find Katya. Find Perry. Find the attacker. Because he doesn’t want the guy finding him. Maybe he was watching now. That knife concealed.

Travis hustles back across the square, past the El Alamein fountain, eyes darting left and right back up into the mess of The Cross. People buzzing, shooting all around him, in his space. It is freezing. He has his laptop, the laptop bag-strap across his chest, making him look like an office worker or geek or worse. Travis is from Melbourne. He is twenty-two. When he was nineteen, he was on the radar of all the AFL clubs, he was going to be drafted, a first-round pick for sure, top five, until the night before the draft when his world came tumbling down. He escaped to Sydney, got his Private Enquiry Agent license after doing a course in a function room above a motel in Kingsford. Told himself he was working in the crappy motel only until he could afford to be a PI full time. He could find people. He had a sort of rep for it. Only the jobs were spaced too far apart.

He snorts two lines in the back office of the Cross Motel. Takes two one-gram bags with him. Time to find these people. His car is parked in a car park on Ward Ave in an apartment building. The owner lets staff of the motel park there. He is a friend of Mick’s. He opens the door of his white Triumph Dolomite Sprint. This model of Triumph is fast. The previous owner had told him there was something extra too, under the hood, Travis knew nothing about engines, but he test drove it and it flew. It was old and clunky but fast; the Millennium Falcon on the streets of Sydney. He shot out of the driveway onto Ward Ave and drove fast as he could to Bondi.

Ahn opened the door wide, wearing a black dress, red lipstick, and nothing else.

‘You going to let me in?’

She stands to one side. He slowly brushes past her into the hallway. She closes the door and turns and put her arms round his neck, nuzzles her face against his shoulder then kisses him on the neck. He smiles and says, ‘Nice welcome,’ and leans down and kisses her on her red lips, and she kisses him back hard, passionately. He lifts her up, pushes her against the wall and