Cheaters

by JR Carroll

  He read the novel for an hour or so, becoming quite involved in it, and then came a knocking at the door. His first thought was Longmore. He folded back the corner of the page he was on, put the book on the floor and got up. This is it, he thought. They’re going to take me away for a proper interrogation this time. I’m going to be charged. I’m going to the nick. Ah, well. Goodbye to all that.

  He opened the door, and it wasn’t Longmore standing there. No cop in sight as far as he could see. Instead there was this very fetching young woman with foxy-blonde hair and the most arresting blue eyes. She wore a black leather jacket and black jeans, and was carrying a motorbike helmet. He just looked at her.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Michelle, Michelle Fleming. Are you … Robert?’

  ‘I am,’ he said.

  Michelle said, ‘There’s something very important we need to talk about. Is it all right if I come in for a few minutes?’

  Forgetting for the moment the deplorable state of affairs inside, he said, ‘Certainly,’ stood aside, and in she walked.

  Inside the busted-up apartment Michelle had a quick look around. For someone who was thrusting herself into a perfect stranger’s private space, unprepossessing as it was, she did not look at all uncomfortable. She stood in the middle of the room, holding her helmet and allowing her gaze to settle on Robert, who was standing in front of her with his arms folded – a typical gesture when he was nervous – and a bemused expression on his face. He could smell her perfume, and the leather jacket, which creaked when she moved slightly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Michelle,’ he said. ‘Please sit down.’

  ‘Thank you.’ There was more creaking of leather as she positioned herself on the end of the couch, leaving room for Robert. Clearly there was nowhere else to sit in this dump.

  ‘And what can I do for you?’ he said, still standing.

  Michelle looked him over for a long time, as if trying to come to an opinion of him, and then said, ‘I’m the girlfriend of Danny Gold.’

  Pause. ‘Danny Gold.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Now he sat on the couch alongside her. There was nothing for it but to play a straight bat.

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘Danny and I were very close,’ she said. ‘I miss him a lot.’ Her voice broke on the last word, and she brought a hand up to her chin.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Robert told her.

  ‘There’s nothing you can say. Danny’s gone, and he’s not coming back.’

  Robert was feeling uncomfortable. What was she after?

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m not here to make trouble for you. I want your help, that’s all.’

  ‘My help? What can I do?’

  Michelle said, ‘I know the girl, Florence, didn’t kill him. I know who killed him. That isn’t the question. But she robbed Danny as he lay there bleeding, didn’t she? She took his watch and tried to sell it to a pawnbroker. How could she fucking do it?’

  Robert was wringing his hands, which were sweating. He could feel a stomach cramp coming on. ‘Michelle,’ he said, ‘I can’t speak for Florence. I hardly know her. But I can tell you this: she is not at heart a bad person. She is an abused person, a victim. Now she’s going to pay for it all, very dearly.’ He grabbed a cigarette and lit it. ‘When she saw what happened to Danny, I don’t know what went through her mind. She is not sophisticated.’

  ‘You don’t have to be too sophisticated …’

  ‘Wait a minute. She saw … a gold watch. She saw dollar signs in front of her eyes. Here was something for nothing.’

  ‘There’s never something for nothing,’ Michelle said.

  ‘You know that, and I know that. Florence didn’t. She saw a jackpot from out of the blue. A gift.’

  Michelle sighed and said, ‘She could have helped him. A decent person would have.’

  ‘As I said, I can’t speak for Florence. I don’t know her well, and I wasn’t there.’

  ‘But you were here. You were here when she came home.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘With Danny’s watch, and his wallet, and his money. You saw what she’d done.’

  Robert closed his eyes. The cramp attacks were hitting hard. ‘The money’s gone,’ he said. ‘Someone else took it. You see the damage? We were broken into and robbed. So maybe there’s some kind of justice operating.’

  She looked around, not very interested, then fixed him with her strange eyes. ‘What about the wallet?’

  ‘The wallet?’

  ‘Danny’s black leather wallet. She had it, yes?’

  ‘… Yes.’

  ‘So where is it now?’

  Robert thought: good question. He was frowning, trying to remember. When had he seen it last? Michelle was watching him, reading his face, waiting.

  She said, ‘When someone steals a wallet, they usually toss it away when they’ve taken the money from it. But Danny’s wallet was never found. She didn’t throw it away, did she? She brought it back here.’

  ‘She did, yes.’ Robert was getting a funny feeling about this woman: something wasn’t quite right about her. She was so cool, sure of her ground …

  Wait on. ‘Michelle. If we can just change tack for a minute. I’m puzzled. How did you … You just said you knew who killed Danny. How can you know that? There hasn’t been an arrest as far as I know. And all this stuff about Florence – the watch, the wallet, what she did and didn’t do? How do you know that? Also, how do you know she lived here? Where did you get this address? How do you know my name?’

  Michelle hesitated. There was no way she was going to tell him she was a cop. This was not cop business: it was personal business. She was not going to tell him she had used her charms on Mike Buckland to acquire the information from his homicide mates. She had no intention of mentioning the name Lewis Kenny or even telling Robert why she was here, not really. None of that was his concern – yet. However, she had to say something. If she wanted his co-operation. There was going to have to be something in it for him.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I have friends who tell me things. You can find out whatever you like if you’re determined enough. You buy information the same as you buy a packet of cigarettes.’

  She wasn’t sure if that satisfied him or not. He was looking intently at her, working her out. She could see he wasn’t stupid, this Robert Curlewis. In fact he didn’t seem like a low-life at all, which was what she had expected to deal with: some grasping, sleazy shitkicker with no sense and the morals of a gnat. But no, he wasn’t like that.

  She said, quietly, ‘I’d be very grateful if you could locate the wallet.’

  But Robert was still thinking about her, this Michelle: the way she used a word like ‘locate’ instead of ‘find’, for instance. Most people would say ‘find’. Since she rode a motorbike, however, she obviously wasn’t your conventional chick. In fact there wasn’t much at all about her that you would say was conventional. So: where was the wallet? Last time he saw it they were on the bed with all the money, Florence sucking his dick … He was thinking about Patti, trying to get hard. Then he put Florence on her back and gave her the sweetest fuck. The last thing on his mind was the wallet.

  Did Larry take it? Maybe. But Larry took money from Florence’s bag. He wouldn’t take a wallet with nothing in it. No, not Larry, the late, unlamented Larry. Maybe it was still in the bedroom somewhere. What did Florence do? She took the money out and discarded the wallet.

  It had to be still in there, amongst the mess, under the bed, somewhere.

  ‘It might be still here,’ he said.

  ‘I’m prepared to offer a reward,’ she said.

  ‘A reward? But there’s nothing in it. It’s been cleaned out.’

  ‘No money in it,’ Michelle said.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said. He was aware that if he produced the wallet, he was automatically incriminating himself. He did not trust Michelle. There was this
gut feeling that he was being used or set up in some way. Oh, shit, these fucking cramps. ‘Michelle,’ he said. ‘I want to level with you. I’m sure you’re who you say you are. I’m sure you’re Danny’s girlfriend, that you’re not some … scam artist. But I don’t really know that, do I? I’ve never seen you before. You could be anyone and I wouldn’t know the difference. You see my problem?’

  ‘I do,’ she said, and then neither of them said anything, while they thought about it.

  Presently Michelle said, ‘All right, I’ll level with you too.’ She produced some papers from the inside pocket of her jacket. ‘Danny bought a car two days before he died. It was a 1971 Mazda Capella. I didn’t know he’d bought it, and I’ve never seen it. I found the bill of sale, registration papers and the keys among his things at home. My problem is, I don’t know where the car is, and I need to locate it.’

  ‘You need to locate Danny’s car. That’s what this is all about.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘A 1971 Mazda isn’t worth much.’

  ‘No. But I need to locate it anyway. The reasons are personal.’

  ‘And you think something in the wallet might tell you where it is.’

  She gave a shrug. ‘It’s worth a try.’

  Robert lit a cigarette.

  ‘The reward is still on offer,’ she said.

  ‘How much of a reward?’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends.’

  ‘You’re being very evasive, Michelle. Is there a reward or not?’

  ‘Yes, yes. But I can’t tell you how much.’

  ‘Until you locate the car.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  Robert put out his cigarette. ‘Wait here, Michelle,’ he said, and went into the bedroom.

  It could still be a trap. All this talk about a reward for an empty wallet – what was going on? Maybe it was all about revenge: Michelle could be Danny’s girlfriend, or his sister, whoever, fronting with that pretty blue-eyed face for some nasties hanging around outside. Danny could have a tribe of unsavoury friends and relatives who were just itching to get their hands on someone to square off. When you’ve been run through by the likes of Larry Wolper, Warwick Thompson and Richie Lambert, you tended to be a bit more cautious about who you opened the front door to. Maybe she was straight, and maybe she was bent.

  He looked under the bed, then pulled the sheets and blankets off: nothing except the flick knife, which he put in his pocket. A search among the clothes on the floor proved similarly fruitless. Where was it? She must have put it in her bag. She must still have it. But why keep something that’s not worth a cracker and which can only bring you grief? One answer was that Florence wasn’t overly bright. When she came back to get her things, she might have put it in her bag without thinking, or perhaps planning to get rid of it somewhere. That made sense: she may not have wanted to risk leaving it in the flat in case it fell into the wrong hands. He did a quick search through his wardrobe, then had one last thought: they were lying on the bed, counting and playing with the money. Florence emptied the wallet, he remembered seeing her do that, all those waxy new hundreds and fifties cascading over them. Next thing, they’re sliding and squirming around on all this nice money while she’s sucking him off. What did she do with the wallet?

  She tossed it. Over her shoulder.

  Robert pushed his hand down between the mattress and the wall. There was a gap just wide enough for his fingers. He felt something, couldn’t quite grab it at first, then he did, and brought it up: a black leather wallet. It was soft, fine leather, like kid. On the corners it had gold edging, and inside, a gold clip to hold the banknotes. Stamped in gold lettering, the word Balenciaga. It was an expensive little item. This Danny must have been a good gambler.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, he went through the wallet: plastic cards, licence, family snap, receipts for this and that, credit card slips, business cards, the usual run of stuff. There was also a white ticket, the kind spat out by an automated system, with a date and time printed on it. The ticket said: MELBOURNE AIRPORT LONG TERM CAR PARK.

  He closed his hand around the ticket.

  Michelle, standing at the door, said: ‘What have you found?’

  He looked at her: one hand on the doorknob, the other in the pocket of her jacket, which was partly unzipped. It hadn’t been before. Underneath it she was wearing a black rollneck skivvy. The stance was relaxed, almost precocious, like that of a model on a magazine cover. She was quite at ease in the company of a strange man, in his domain. Then he saw what it was that had struck him about her. She was young and beautiful, with a face you couldn’t tear your eyes from. She wore minimum make-up, she was cool, smart and tough. Everything about her said: I am in charge here. Plainly, you didn’t fuck around with Michelle. If you did, you were under-estimating her.

  ‘I did find something,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that.’

  He still had his hand closed over the ticket. ‘So what happens now, Michelle? Must be your call.’

  ‘You know where the car is.’

  ‘That is affirmative.’

  She came further into the room and sat lightly on the end of the bed with both hands in the jacket pockets. The sunlight from the window was on her face and her pale, unblemished throat, which was pulsing softly, like the heartbeat of a small, vulnerable animal. But there was nothing vulnerable about Michelle. The scent of her perfume wafted across to him. The hairs on the back of Robert’s neck came to attention as those aquamarine eyes fixed on him again.

  ‘I suggest,’ she said, ‘that we go and get it together. Then I can give you the reward money, you can fuck off and that’s the end of it. We never see each other again.’

  He stared at the ticket, and was on the verge of just giving it to her and telling her to forget about the reward, when he thought: Soon I’ll have nowhere to live. It’s going to cost me to dry out. I need bucks to survive. I’ve got something coming from Victor, but that’s it. I can’t afford to take the high moral ground here. And she’s dodgy anyway.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Right now. Unless you have urgent business.’ To which, from her dead tone, she might have added: As if.

  ‘On the bike?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I haven’t got a helmet.’

  ‘Shit, I’ll pay the fine,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about a fine. I was thinking about getting my skull split open.’

  ‘You won’t get your skull split open. I can ride all right. All you have to do is hold on. But first you will need to tell me where we’re going. And I’ll take that wallet, thanks.’

  He had never ridden on a motorbike before. Perhaps sensing this, Michelle travelled at sensible speeds along Bridge Road, Hoddle Street, a series of lefts and rights to Brunswick Road, then onto the Tullamarine Freeway. That was when she opened up, getting to 120 at times, glancing at him in the side mirror as she moved out to pass a fuel tanker and then slipping through a gap between a minibus and a family station wagon. Another bike surged by, a huge, glossy hog with a middle-aged, bearded man astride it, bare, tattooed arms draped lazily over the apehanger bars and his long hair flowing out under his helmet. Robert thought: the genuine article. He didn’t even acknowledge their existence. Soon afterwards another bike, a dust-covered Ducati, the model with the full body shell, zoomed up and overtook them. Robert saw the words SEA EAGLES on the back of the biker’s jacket. Under his helmet he had long, black, curly hair and he wore large sunglasses. There were other bikes too, all makes and sizes. Robert was thinking: This is a fun way to get around. Not hard to see how people become addicted to it. When you were on one you were much more aware of bikes on the road: it was such a weird thing – a sub-culture you only really noticed when you were part of it.

  Inside the long-term car park, the immediate impression Robert had was that there were many more cars than he had anticipated. It was a vast sea of cars, like the casino parking lot. How would they
ever locate this fucking Mazda, assuming it was here? Michelle had stopped the bike, evidently dealing with the same problem, checking the bill of sale for the colour and registration number, then she took off again and began a systematic grid search along the rows at low speed. Robert wasn’t sure what a Mazda Capella looked like, but he had memorised the number and basically kept his eyes peeled for an old green heap of scrap metal. He was looking on the wrong side when Michelle stopped abruptly, making the tyres squeal and jerking him forward, into her back. She double-checked, switched off the motor and they dismounted, then Michelle parked the bike and removed her helmet. Neither of them had spoken a word to each other since leaving Robert’s flat.

  She walked around the car, peering into its windows before unlocking the driver’s door and climbing in. It was a clean but moth-eaten interior, with frayed seat covers and cracked plastic on the dash. Robert watched her while she searched the console and the glovebox, finding nothing significant, then just sitting in it for a while, staring ahead, maybe taking time out to think about Danny. How he had sat in this seat when he had parked the car, how pleased he must have been with himself, how he had held her in his arms and told her the night before he died that he had a huge surprise coming up. How he had been worried about Lewis Kenny. They had made love the next morning, then he had gone in his Golf to the casino: ‘to the office’, as he called it. She could remember fucking him for the last time, then hugging him in the hallway as he left. She had been naked and horny, trying to get him to come back to bed for a few more minutes, but he had resisted, kissing her and then promising they would be fucking their brains out somewhere special very soon. And those were the last words she ever heard from him.

  She got out, went to the back of the car and opened the boot. In it was a blue heavy-duty Samsonite suitcase sitting on an old picnic rug. She ran her fingers around it, trying to find how it opened, then she saw it had a combination lock.