Darlinghurst Road Read online

  Robert

  Robert was an old wall boy who had made good. I knew him from the Palace and I had kicked him out on more occasions than I could remember. Robert managed to escape The Cross and now here he was, back again. This time was different. He was working in an all night cafe on Oxford Street and I would see him just about every shift when I bought my late night food.

  Even if drugs are not a factor, it can be extremely difficult for a kid to get out of prostitution because it's all they have ever known. Almost every single person they have ever met has tried to use them in one way or another so they find it hard to trust. The main factor though, is that society itself makes the transition difficult. Think about it: to get a job you need an address, proper identification and some sort of verifiable background be it school or work. As adults functioning in society, we take all that for granted but think for a moment about someone who has not been part of that society since they were a child! Robert was one kid who made it out of the quicksand of Kings Cross to become a successful adult. A nice guy and a story with a happy ending.

  David And Victor

  David and Victor were regular customers. They were two buddies who hung out with each other and both were characters in their own right but when you put them together: could really make you laugh. David was a temperamental chef who had served a two year prison sentence for using a knife in a way not taught in cooking school. A bar fight turned nasty and David won the fight but lost his freedom as a result.

  Victor spent years working as a teacher then changed professional hats in his forties, went to law school and started a small practice. Victor lived in a house that he inherited from his parents. It was an older home on a large block and right next door was a very expensive, very exclusive private girl's school. Over the years, the school had expanded and had gradually taken over the block.

  Victor was the last holdout, he refused to sell at any price and to him, it was nothing but a game. He fought a few legal battles, stood his ground and had some fun at the expense of his wealthy neighbors. Victor confided to me that he actually didn't care and would secretly like to move but he refused to give them the satisfaction of pushing him out of his family home. The mental image that he painted always made me laugh. The house was surrounded like a moat by a school full of noisy teenage girls and here was this old gay lawyer just sitting on his porch in the late afternoons as though it was all just perfectly normal.

  Rachel

  Prostitution is all about money and usually most of that money ends up in the pocket of someone else; pimp, brothel owner, escort agency or drug dealer. In all my years of dealing with prostitution, I have only ever met one woman who was in it for the sex. “I'm a nympho or something, must be, I like sex, I can't help it, it's how I'm wired but why go to work all day for peanuts then hit a bar at night, get picked up by some guy and give it away for free when he probably would have paid for it.” With that logic to guide her, Rachel quit her job in retail and moved to Kings Cross.

  Rachel lived in my building off Victoria Street, we were good friends and she was a great neighbor. She rented a small room near Earl Place for work purposes so in that way, her private life was her own. Rachel was a late starter in the business and was not a drug user so she could afford to be a little more discerning about her clientele. Still, it was the streets of Kings Cross that she was working and the men cruising for sex after a few drinks were not what you would call the crème de la crème of clients.

  Up market escort work was not an option for Rachel. The agencies tend to hire the girl next door type and that was not Rachel; a mother would probably have a heart attack if a son brought her home. She was nice to look at but not a model, Rachel had a number of tattoos including a few that kind of jumped out at you, she dressed for comfort and was a woman with a big personality that could on occasion be loud.

  Rachel was in some ways, what you would call an old soul. If you took the time to look past the tattoos and the brashness, a whole new person would be revealed: A well read, deep thinker who could intelligently debate everything from politics to poetry. Rachel and I had some great conversations that were a million miles away from our mutual work lives of sex, drugs and debauchery. It was refreshing and it was fun.

  Alistair

  If you’ve ever seen the English actor Richard Harris then you can easily picture Alistair. Probably late sixties I would imagine but then the booze is often not kind in the way it that gives the illusion of a later age. His clothes were usually tailored, quality tailored, you could see that even with an untrained eye like mine. Like their owner, his clothes were showing their age and though his dress was always impeccable, he was more often than not very badly disheveled; more Sydney gutter than London Saville Row.

  Tall, cultured and always drunk, Alistair spoke with an upper class English accent and had a manner about him that would conjure up images of a courtlier day. Victor, who knew him well, said that Alistair was an English school master who apparently, had once taught at Oxford before the alcohol destroyed his career. Whatever the story was, Alistair ended up in Sydney, permanently inebriated and a regular customer of the Pleasure Palace.

  Occasionally a customer would ask to leave something behind the counter before going upstairs to the darkness of the club; usually wallets and other personal property. They figured that their gear was safer with the staff than a quick fingered wall boy! Alistair handed me a plastic grocery bag and headed for the stairs “look after that will you... good man.”

  I had already buzzed the door to let him in and he was gone by the time I looked in the bag. It was a half eaten rotisserie chicken, the bag was all greasy and I wondered what the hell he wanted me to do with it! That was the first time and I let it go but it soon became a habit so I told him no more. Alistair's other problem was that he would try to smuggle in booze.

  Glass whiskey bottles in a dark club that had a no alcohol policy was both unsafe and illegal so it had to stop. I caught him a few times then the sly old bastard started to get clever by using smaller bottles hidden in various places. It became a game for him but it wasn't for me so eventually I stopped him from going upstairs and he wasn't very happy.

  Lucy

  Lucy worked behind the bar in an Irish pub just off William Street. She was sixteen when her family emigrated and when Lucy spoke, it was with a gentle Irish lilt that transported you to another place and you could almost picture the rolling hills of her homeland. Lucy was a warm person who fitted in perfectly yet seemed almost out of place in the job that she had chosen. There was a quality, I guess you might call it class, that could be seen from across the room.

  Good men, at some point in their lives, often spend time thinking about how a woman can be attracted to the so called bad boy. It baffles them to see her with him. Often drunk or wasted to the point of embarrassment, he treats her with contempt yet she clings like a vine to a tree. I don't think that I'm good nor am I particularly bad in spite of the life that I have lived but I am a good judge of character and I knew from our first meeting that Rodney was not to be trusted.

  Rodney had a slight Irish accent and his people were originally from Belfast but from what I understood, his childhood memories had faded fast to the point where Northern Ireland was all but forgotten. This was a man with very few things in his character to redeem him. Rodney drank the alcohol that Lucy paid for then returned her generosity with insults and humiliation.

  As time went on, Lucy ending up working the streets of Kings Cross and the man who sent her out to do it every night, sat back and enjoyed the profits that her body provided. In the space of a few short years, the combination of drugs, prostitution and beatings had ravaged her face and body to the point where a doctor would have been hard pressed to tell you her age. It took a few minutes of conversation to place her, the Irish lilt had become a voice that was cracked and dry. The Lucy that I once knew, would never be again and there was a real sadness in that.

  Stewart

  Stewart was the
nephew of a leading Sydney bookmaker who was a real big player in the racing game. When he left school, Stewart went to work for his Uncle who began to teach him the fine art of setting the odds. After serving his apprenticeship plus a few more years for good measure, Stewart decided to branch out on his own. Those plans came to a sudden end when his uncle was caught fixing a race and was warned off the course for life. The racing scandal was a big news story at the time, Stewart shared a last name with his uncle and that name was not all that common. Stewart stuck around for a while and then drifted to The Cross for want of something better to do.

  Racing was all he knew so I guess it was natural that Stewart would turn to making an illegal book when the time came to make money. His office was the pub and Stewart had learned his trade from one of the best. The bets were small and manageable, everybody in the pub knew Stewart the bookie, life was going well again.

  They call it the race that stops a nation. The Melbourne Cup is a world famous Australian horse race that has been run on the first Tuesday in November every year since the late eighteen hundreds and the amount of money wagered on this one particular race is staggering. This is a race beloved by ordinary Australians, armchair jockeys who might only have a bet once a year.

  It's also a race that professional gamblers and knowledgeable amateurs stay away from because the field is so tight that it can be almost impossible to pick with any certainty. Betting on a horse race is not like buying a lottery ticket, each ball from the lottery machine has an equal chance of coming out but not so a horse. There are so many factors to consider and in any race, there is always one or two horses that have a far greater chance of winning than the others but in a world class event like The Melbourne Cup, the small odds paid are often not worth the trouble of studying the form. It's a big money race but a little guy's race and the bets are usually small; there's just a lot of them.

  There's always the exception to the rule and Stewart was approached by the son of a well known organized crime figure. The plan was to launder some dirty money by making a few legal bets interstate then recycling the winnings back into one of their more legitimate businesses. Unlike America, proceeds from gambling in Australia are not taxable as income so to be able to say “I won it on the horses” and back it up with receipts can be a very effective way of money laundering. These were big bets and he wanted Stewart's expert advice. The number I heard was in the millions and it was probably right.

  Stewart, whether by coercion, the promise of a big pay day or both, decided to take the bet and get involved. I've heard it said that even the best battle plans are torn up as soon as the first shot is fired and in this case, the plans began to fall apart before the gun was even loaded. Their agent in Melbourne didn't spread the bets around in the way that Stewart had told him to do and it wasn't long before word spread through the small community of licensed bookmakers that something was amiss. The multi-million dollar plunge scared the bookies into thinking that whoever was making the bets knew something about the race that they did not. It was only a matter of time before the racing authorities found out and informed the police. The Melbourne agent rolled quickly and the money was followed back to Sydney.

  The son was arrested but the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. Stewart the unlicensed bookie became the scapegoat for the whole operation. The court sentenced him to three years for money laundering, fraud and something else I don't remember. It was a bad business right from the start but with the son involved, the outcome was predictable. I knew his father and the son was a very poor copy indeed.

  Donna

  The eyes always give the game away, those tiny little pupils that say it all, heroin eyes. Donna looked at me and smiled seductively “what's the big deal, it's late, no one knows and no one cares so just look the other way for a few hours and if you're in the mood yourself, maybe we work something out for later, you know what I mean?”

  “Sorry love but you can't work in here and that's about all there is to it okay.”

  “It's not hurting anyone, why are you being so mean to me.”

  “It's not personal, it's policy, it's not going to happen so let's just leave it at that and off you go.”

  “This is the first time I've been here, there's girls who work in here all the time so why kick me out?”

  “Look, we've already had this conversation, time to go now.”

  “FUCK YOU!”

  “You're still here!”

  “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, I HOPE YOU FUCKING DIE YOU MORONIC FUCK!”

  She angrily flicked her lit cigarette at me and departed. Wow, a pleasure to meet you too lady, don't hurry back. Every time I saw her after that, Donna would give me a dirty look and not say a word.

  Trevor had a policy of: if you need to throw someone out and they want trouble, always stay inside the store, never do anything on the street because inside the store, we own the cameras, the staff and all the evidence. The policy was a very correct one and it kept us out of trouble on plenty of occasions.

  One Thursday night, somebody yelled that a girl was being assaulted in the street. I went out for a look and a little bully boy was taking out his frustrations on Donna. I pulled the guy off her and pushed him inside the store. The bully went to take a swing and I shoved him down the stairs into the coin booth area where David, Victor and a few other guys were standing. David liked to brawl and smiled mischievously when he asked me if I needed a hand. The guy turned on David and ended up on with a broken cheek bone for his trouble.

  I had no choice but to call an ambulance for the guy and that meant cops. Victor took David home and naturally, I kept my mouth shut about his involvement. The police officer who took my statement gave a knowing grin when I said he must have taken a tumble down the stairs and the guy didn't seem to want to disagree with that version so they left it at that.

  I was surprised that she didn't take off. When I went back upstairs to call the cops, I found her sitting on the floor in a sort of daze. She heard me on the phone and decided that that was her cue to disappear but I intercepted her. There was a small bag in her hand, she looked at it, then me and I understood why she wanted to run. It was her drug paraphernalia and a small quantity of heroin. Donna started to break down and I hugged her as she cried. We stood there for a few minutes until the sirens were close, I threw the bag behind the counter and gave it back to her after the police left.

  The ambulance people treated Donna and she was okay apart from a few bruises. Donna turned out to be a really sweet girl and nothing like the angry person that I thought she was after our first meeting. That night she was strung out, badly in need and I was blocking her from making the money she needed to fulfill that need. Heroin withdrawal is physically painful and mentally traumatic, it was easy to forgive her.

  Jim

  Jim was a senior detective in the Major Crime Squad who had retired early after taking a bullet on the job. His pension was adequate, his wife worked but Jim liked to have a beer on weekends, play the ponies occasionally and generally have a few extra bucks in his pocket. To supplement his income, Jim took a part time job behind a bar and that was how I met him. We got along well and like me, he had bunch of stories from his job so we often a laugh or two. I remember one night, I was reading a newspaper article about a taxi driver who had been assaulted. Jim said to me “Christ that's a shitty neighborhood, I wouldn't go there in a cab late at night, it's home to some real winners out there.”

  I wasn't all that familiar with the suburb so I asked him to clarify. “Put it this way, a few years back, I was out there investigating a murder. Forensics told us which direction the shots came from, so I went up and knocked at the door. They came out and I asked the guy casually did he happen to hear any shots last night, as he's saying no, I look down and right beside this big concrete planter on the front porch is three shell casings, I looked at the shells, looked at him, so you heard nothing? The guy still denied it!” I listened to the story and asked “what did you do
then Jim?” He laughed “grabbed him by the collar, pointed out the shells and told him, don't fuck with me stupid!” I could picture the whole scene playing out as he told it.

  On the subject of real dumb criminals, I played citizen detective with Jim one night and it was a bit of fun. We were finishing up for the night around the same time and I bumped into him at an all night gas station. Jim was filling up and I was buying something I don't remember. The attendant was upset when we got there because he had popped into the Men's room and someone had stolen some scratch lottery tickets in the minute that he was gone. Jim told him to call the police then looked at me “feel like playing detective? Think I might just have a hot tip.” As he was speaking, Jim pointed to something on the ground outside the door. It was a ticket. We stepped out and just like Hansel and Gretel, followed the bread crumbs of discarded tickets. The thief had started scratching them as he walked off, dropping the losing tickets on the ground. We followed the trail across the road to a parking lot behind a fast food restaurant. Sitting in an old Toyota was our thief, still scratching away. Jim walked straight up to him and yelled: “POLICE, out of the vehicle, NOW!” The thief complied, Jim put his arm in a lock and marched him back to the gas station. The police were there and Jim handed over his prisoner. As we parted company that night, Jim said to me “did you hear what he said? He told the police that if he won, he planned on paying for the tickets out of his winnings, when they told him it didn't matter because he couldn't win on a stolen ticket, he said... I didn't think about that!”