Crooked by Camilla Nelson Read Free Book Online

‘I’m right on the level.’
    â€˜Does Tanner know this?’
    Wally moved a little further into the corner. Fearing they could be overheard, even there, he said in a voice barely audible, ‘I’m saying those guns have been wiped.’

One month after Johnny shut down his Kings Cross establishment, Glory was sitting in his new betting club on the main street of Liverpool, together with Johnny and their new friend Mick Moylan, who was thumbing through the ledgers as they counted the night’s takings. Above her, the starting prices were chalked up on a blackboard under a sign with a painted kangaroo, saying, ‘Hop in – You’re Welcome’ and in smaller letters underneath, ‘Gentlemen Please Oblige by Not Carrying Form Guides and Papers when Leaving the Premises’.
    The operation was small but thriving, with four telephone lines and an eager stream of punters trickling in from the pub. They took bets on the dogs, the trots and the ponies, then spread a bit of green baize after the last race on Fridays, and played three shoes of baccarat until when in the morning.
    â€˜The thing is,’ said Moylan. ‘Once we get this joint off the ground we’ll move onto another one, big but not flashy, with glass chandeliers and dancing girls in black egret feathers and a giant roulette wheel –’ he held out his arms – ‘maybe thirteen foot across.’
    Johnny interrupted. ‘Just where are you going to lay hold of a thirteen-foot roulette wheel?’
    â€˜Monte Carlo,’ said Moylan, though last week he’d told Glory he had a timber trader lined up in the back streets of Bangkok.
    Moylan was a large, almost elephantine man in hismid-fifties, with a blanket of dyed hair rising in unequal mounds on either side of a straight part. He had an enormous cyst on the side of his mouth, and eyes that were glassy and perennially bloodshot. Johnny had run into him at South Sydney Juniors some weeks before. Moylan had just arrived in Sydney from London, and somebody had told him that Johnny was an experienced club manager looking for a break.
    â€˜I dunno,’ said Johnny. ‘I reckon you’d be better off with craps.’
    â€˜Craps?’
    â€˜Yeah. Once was, I ran a craps game with the prettiest pair of dices you ever seen, fetched in a packet,’ Johnny laughed.
    There was a creak on the stairwell. Johnny’s old mate, Chooks Brouggy, stuck his head through the door.
    Chooks was a short bloke of unfortunate physique, with a miserably skinny neck, and hair the colour and straightness of straw sticking out around the edges of an old pork pie hat. His shirt was half-tucked into a pair of blue dungarees with the buttons undone, so his chicken-ribs were showing.
    Johnny looked up from the notes he was bundling. ‘Jeez, Chooks. Didn’t I tell you not to take your eyes off the door?’
    Chooks shuffled his toes. ‘Yeah, but it’s Tommy Bogle.’
    Johnny started up from the table. ‘I hope you got rid of him. Quick smart.’
    â€˜I thought you ought to see him.’
    â€˜Well, do me a favour and quit thinking. I need one of Reilly’s boys poking around here like a hole in the head.’
    â€˜He’s one of Dick Reilly’s boys?’ said Moylan, looking up from his ledger.
    â€˜Shit, yeah,’ said Johnny, growing angry at the memory. ‘That bloke Reilly reckons he owns this town, like it was Pittsburgh or something. But I’ve got news for him. Out here in Liverpool he don’t own a thing.’ He turned back to Chooks. ‘Go down there and tell Tommy from me to get stuffed.’
    â€˜Hang on a tick.’ Moylan turned towards Chooks. ‘Maybe the bloke’s got a reason. What did he say?’
    Chooks glanced at Johnny, as if waiting for Johnny’s permission to answer. Glory watched on, acutely aware that they owed Moylan a whole lot, but knowing Moylan had a habit