City of Vice (Carter Thompson Mysteries Book 3)

Book summary

Carter 'Cash' Thompson, a former cop turned night manager at a seedy motel, finds himself entangled in a murder investigation when a young girl is found dead. Struggling with guilt and seeking redemption, Cash teams up with his cop friend to hunt down the killer, navigating a dangerous world of crime and deceit.

Excerpt from City of Vice (Carter Thompson Mysteries Book 3)

Carter Thompson pulled a crushed pack of cheap Chinese cigarettes out of his jeans pocket, shook one out, found a lighter on the passenger seat, lit the cigarette while driving one- handed. Drove down past Central Station under the bridge on Eddy Ave, had the harness racing on 2KY. Picked up his can of Bourbon and Coke from the console, took a slug, put it back. He started thinking about Aimee again, it happened like that out of nowhere. He’d remember something she did for him or even see her in his mind’s eye in the kitchen beside him or in the passenger seat of his old beloved Valiant Safari Sedan. That car was gone too, crashed it. He had been lucky to get out with no serious injuries. But Aimee was gone forever.

Shit.

Life.

He made it to Bondi as Better Dance Now ran second flying down the outside. He bet to win only. He parked outside the Surfside Six Apartments, where he worked as the Night Manager. Cheapskate boss wouldn’t even give him a parking spot. The owner was an Italian guy, Mario Conte. He owned five of these apartment buildings around Sydney. They were let on a week-by-week basis. The longer you stayed, the better the deal. This place was seven stories high with ten apartments on each floor. A pool on the roof. Conte called them studio apartments. Rent was high for what you got, but people loved living in Bondi. Loved telling friends they lived in Bondi and the apartment building was on Campbell Parade, the main drag opposite the famous beach.

Carter had lived in Bondi when he worked for Steele in the Prosecutors Office. It was a special branch of the NSW Police. Back then he had a license to do anything as long as he got results, and he did. Another memory that was like a kick in the balls.

When he got out of the car, there was a cool breeze off the ocean, the streetlights were on but most of the shops were closed. A couple walked along smiling, eating ice-cream, then three guys dressed in black shuffling along looking moody, not talking, and a woman wearing black jeans and a purple camisole top, smoking. Cash sighed deeply, here we go again. He pressed the code to enter the apartment building. The whole place was a throwback to the days when you could score a bag of weed in the Bondi Hotel public bar like you were going to the milk bar for chocolate. The tenants could range from international models here for a few weeks work or play to people from Loser-City-Central. A couple of model agencies used the Surfside regularly. It had some downmarket sleaze attraction, like a kind of poor man’s Chelsea Hotel but in Sydney. The whole guest list was a microcosm of life. There were washed-up gamblers like him, a few sex workers, hospitality staff, people arriving in town not knowing what they were going to do. Office workers, unemployed who struggled to come up with the rent every week or fortnight. It was up to Cash to kick them out. Cash, a nickname his father had given him that stuck wherever he went.

He greeted the evening receptionist. A sweet kid named Sandra. Tougher than you thought though, and you had to be with people at times desperate to avoid the rent due.

‘Cash, you’re looking fine tonight.’

‘Don’t feel it.’

‘That would be the joint you smoked on the way here.’

‘You know me, but not that tonight. I don’t know, just don’t feel right.’

‘I get it, Cash, we’re not fulfilling our potential here.’

She winked at him, which put a smile on his face. She could do that.

‘No, we are not,’ he said. ‘Anything I should know?’

‘Gerry said he’d be down later. Mr Conte has said Peter Lewis in room 305 has run out of chances.’

‘I kick Lewis to the curb but guess what? The next guy who comes in does exactly the same. These guys don’t want to be arsed out. They’ll pay in the long run. They’ll hit a 20-1 or 30-1 shot and pay up front for a while.’

‘Mr. Conte doesn’t like to show weakness.’

‘No, he does not. Anything else?’

‘No, that’s it.’

‘Thanks, Sandra.’

‘I’m off then,’ she said and left.

He pulled the chair on wheels up to the desk. He was a good ten kilos overweight, could feel the fat bunching up over the belt buckle of his 501s and it made him feel like shit. He had to get back to the gym. He reached down and grabbed the Sydney Morning Herald out of the desk draw. Conte paid for it. Big deal. Free newspaper. But Cash read it cover to cover every night. He had no real work to do. He worked when people paid the rent and chased them when they didn’t it. That was it. Most bookings were online, and he vetted people on arrival.

He got up again, opened the front door, lit another Double Happiness. It was 11pm, people were still going to and fro, but it wasn’t overly busy. He could hear the surf crashing onto the beach, it was overcast, the moonlight trying to break through. It had started to gently rain and cars sluiced by left and right on the damp road. He could see the fluorescent streetlights along the path through the park to the beach and the pavilion. Some nights the pavilion rocked with bands and parties but nothing tonight. Bondi was the place to live. The place to party. The place to be. It had the cool surf beach and ocean pool. The Bondi Icebergs Restaurant at one end; North Bondi RSL at the other end. The Icebergs Club, so called after the members who swam in the ocean pool twelve months a year no matter how cold. It had been a working man’s club, where you could get a cheap midi of Resches beer and a counter meal for not very much. Someone with money saw the opportunity, and now it had expensive bars and restaurants and million-dollar views, but the Icebergs still swam spring, summer, autumn and, yeah, winter.

He flicked the cigarette away, turned to go back behind the desk. Sally from 405 was standing there holding a can of some kind of sweet alcoholic drink. She said, ‘You used to be a policeman, right and a PI?’

Ah, oh, he thought.

‘Yeah, I did but I don’t do that anymore.’

‘I can’t get hold of my sister. She’s missing. I told you a few days ago. You said you’d help.’

He locked the reception door behind him, went to the comfortable chair on wheels. Sat down again, hefting his weight onto it, said,

‘You’ve been drinking.’

‘So, what?’

Sally had confessed to him one night she was bulimic. They were friends of an odd sort. He wondered how the fizzy alcoholic drink fitted in. Would she throw it up in her loo on arrival upstairs?

‘Explain, missing.’

‘I can’t get her on my mobile.’

‘That’s it.’

‘Yeah, but it’s like a week and you promised me.’

Sally was a beautician, about five-foot-nothing in the old scale and, yeah, skinny as hell but pugnacious, like she enjoyed a good talk, a bit of hot and cold. A street fighter in a tiny little body. She had the face of an angel ringed by straggly, dirty blond hair.

‘Have you been to see her?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t need to. We talk on the mobile all the time,’ she said, taking a gulp on the pink can, ‘text and talk, and I mean every single fucken day.’

‘Every day.’

‘Every single day.’

‘Thanks for clarifying that. What’s her name?’

‘Andrea Huston.’

‘Married?’

‘Was.’

‘Hmmm, give it a few more days, huh, she’ll turn up.’

‘Can you take me to her place, tomorrow?’

‘Like I said, give it a few days, huh.’

‘Can’t take me after work?’

‘Sally, I have to sleep.’

‘You find time to bet, smoke weed and drink with Gerry, but you can’t help a mate? Is that it?’

Cash sighed, said,

‘I don’t do that anymore.’

‘Once a cop, always a cop, I heard.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘Potts Point.’

‘What’s she do?’

‘A waitress.’

‘You call her work?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t remember where she works. She has like three jobs and changes all the time. I can’t keep up. We talk on the mobile, every day, remember, cop?’

‘Maybe tomorrow, when you’re sober, it will come to you.’

‘Every day me and my sister have talked and texted for the past two years. Every single day.’

‘You keep saying that.’

‘You’re not going to help me?’

‘I don’t get why you can’t see her. I mean Potts Point is only ten kilometres away. There’s a bus and train straight to Kings Cross, five- minute walk from there.’

‘She has a weird life. I don’t fit into it, except for on the phone.’

Cash shook his head at what she had said, asked,

‘How old’s your sister?’

‘Thirty- something.’

‘Does she take hard drugs?’

‘She used to, still smokes a little weed like us, hey, Cash? Are you going to help me or not?’

‘Let’s give it another day or two.’

‘Right, thanks.’

‘You could go on your own, you know.’

‘Scared of what I might find.’

Cash felt like a prick but he didn’t do that anymore. He couldn’t let people down, said,

‘Have you thought of calling the cops?’

‘Like I said, she has past habits, which means past run-ins. They don’t like her, she doesn’t like them and me too, I had dealings too. You’re my friend.’

‘Couple of days, get back to me.’

Sally turned, opened the door to the stairwell and left without saying goodbye.

Shit, her sister would be fine. She probably met some guy she liked, they hit it off, did drugs together or something, had sex all week, probably still at it, like dogs rutting in the street. But the whole episode had made him feel like shit. He took a few slugs from a little flask he had. Rolled a one-paper joint out in the back office. He’d smoke it later in the car park after he finished reading the paper. He settled in for the long night.

***

Gerry never came downstairs to see him. Cash had enough weed for now, anyhow. Gerry was his weed supplier, friend and a new player in the drug scene. A couple of years before, Gerry had crashed his motorbike in the rain in the middle of Taylor Square. With the compensation money from New South Wales Roads, he set up his drug dealing business and forged a rep as a dangerous guy to mess with.

***

Jorge, the morning receptionist, arrived. He was an American guy getting paid cash in hand by Conte. Blond, good- looking, surfer type in a healthy kind of way. Young too, only twenty, but had travelled a lot. Cash liked him but never got into it with him much as he wanted home so bad at 7am it hurt. He always felt sad at this point too. Conflicted. Going home to nothing. Hoping to sleep until midday or 1pm. Had to call his daughter also. She worried.