Deal Me Out ch-9

by Peter Corris

  I gave her one of my semi-professional smiles; I was feeling very confused and in need of something to stimulate thought. When you burgle a place you expect creaking boards and cats, not non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese girls with shotguns.

  ‘Can we make a cup of tea or something, a drink? We’ve got a pretty tricky situation here.’

  Socially speaking, it should have been more awkward than it was-the Occidental burglar and the Oriental girlfriend, but a strange sort of harmony grew between us in the kitchen as she made instant coffee, using the spoons and utensils with familiarity.

  I fiddled with Mountain’s car keys at the table while the water was boiling. She smoked non-stop, practically lighting one cigarette from another, and the smoke hung heavily with the steam in the still, small kitchen. One part at least of her story checked out: the milk in Mountain’s fridge was a week old and had gone off. When the coffee was ready she sat down opposite me and put three heaped spoonsful of sugar into hers and stirred vigorously. Her lean figure suggested that this was something new. She sipped and puffed.

  ‘Are you running on coffee and cigarettes, like in the movies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hasn’t Mountain ever taken off somewhere for a few days before? He’s not Mr Steadfast as I recall him.’

  ‘No. He hasn’t.’ Puff. Sip.

  ‘You were going to say something else back there a bit.’ I tried to recall the conversation. ‘Something about other things on his mind apart from his crappy work.’

  She looked angry again. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘I was just trying to get the words right.’

  ‘But you don’t like him?’

  I shrugged and drank some more coffee. It wasn’t a good brand and they always taste worse black. ‘It’s not relevant. It’s not a personal matter.’

  ‘What sort of matter is it then? All I know is that it’s about a car.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I’ve got a client and his business is confidential. It’s serious, the part involving Mountain I mean, but it’s not life and death.’

  ‘You’re going to have to tell me more than that.’

  ‘How can I? All I know about you is that you can handle a shotgun and you’ve made coffee here before.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer and almost upset the cup. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! All I know about you is that you sneak around in other people’s houses.’

  I grinned at her. ‘If Mountain was here d’you reckon he’d think this was good dialogue?’

  She smiled, and it was as if her face had been waiting days to do it. It was a good smile. ‘He might. I don’t know.

  Did you ever see him do a send-up of the stuff he writes?’

  ‘Yes. Hilarious. What did he call the show — Tumourville?’

  ‘That was one name, there were lots of others. Oh God, I might as well finish the thought I had before. He seemed to be talking a lot more about wanting to write a novel and needing some more experience to do it.’

  ‘I’ve heard him talk like that.’

  ‘Mm, well, it seemed to be getting more and more important to him. He took leave from the TV job a while back to work on the novel. I told him he’d had all the experience he needed-two wives, kids, God knows how many women.’

  I murmured, ‘Fights,’ and she glanced sharply at me.

  ‘I suppose so. He wouldn’t listen. On and on about life and experience. First he drops out of sight and now you turn up. I was worried before, but I’m really worried now.’

  ‘Why? He’s a grown man.’

  ‘It’s this word experience. D’you know what kind of stories he wrote? What that novel of his was about?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Weird stuff. Crime. Horror.’

  ‘I thought it got a good review in Meanjin?’

  ‘Oh, it had “art” in it as well, but it was about what I say.’

  ‘And it still didn’t sell?’

  She shook her head. ‘Bill wouldn’t let me read it. He didn’t keep a copy himself.’

  ‘Maybe it needed more crime and horror.’

  I looked down at her and wondered how old she was. Under thirty, I judged but it was hard to tell. I realised that one of the interesting things about her was that I had no idea what she was going to say next. This time she looked away from me, spoke slowly and suddenly made me wonder how old I was.

  ‘That’s not a very bright thing to say,’ she said.

  After that there didn’t seem to be much point in being coy about my enquiry. I told her about the hire car racket and the photograph of Mountain signing out the Audi. She smoked, listened and drank her cold coffee. She didn’t know that Mountain had cut his beard. I showed her the clippings in the bathroom.

  I stood outside the bathroom and watched her look at herself in the mirror and swish at her fringe. She couldn’t see much more than that of her head in the mirror.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Unless he’s got a twin brother who’s knocked himself about in the same way.’

  She shook her head. ‘The silly bastard.’

  ‘That’s right, he’s going the right way to get experience. He’ll get some courtroom experience and be able to write some good, graphic stuff about life in Long Bay.’

  She pushed past me and got back to the kitchen and her cigarettes. ‘You’ve got no idea where he’d take the car?’ she said gloomily. ‘He didn’t have to say?’

  ‘No. Did he talk to you about this book? I mean, did he give you any idea of what it was about? Where it’s… set? Would he have made a plan?’

  She jumped up from the table. ‘He might have. He made plans for some things.’ I followed her out of the kitchen into the workroom. She leafed through and shuffled the papers that were on the desk, those that were lying on top of a drawer that had been pulled out like a tray and all the ones that had fallen on the floor. After a while she looked up at me through the fringe.

  ‘All TV stuff.’

  I nodded and poked around the room. The bookcases lining the walls were crammed full, with the spaces above the upright books occupied by others lying flat. The desk was set to face a wall rather than a window and books stood upright with their spines facing outward along the whole of its length. I glanced idly along the row, noting a few familiar titles, a thesaurus, dictionaries, a dictionary of quotations, histories and biographies. My eye stopped at a clutch of six paperbacks. Unlike the other books on the desk which were thumbed and battered, these were brand new. I pulled them out.

  ‘What does he read mostly-fiction?’

  She was sitting on a swivel chair that was mounted on runners. She stretched out her leg and pushed off from the desk so that the chair ran back a few feet. The white ski overall was the perfect garment for her; she looked small and tough and smart and ready to be a lot of fun if the right opportunity presented. She’d run out of cigarettes so she stuck her hands inside the bib of the overall, presumably to keep from chewing the nails or doing something worse.

  ‘Fiction? No, not that much. Sometimes, but more biographies, plays

  I held out the paperbacks and let her read the authors’ names and the titles. She shook her head. ‘What?’

  ‘Mysteries,’ I said, ‘detectives. Look-Michael Lewin, Sjowall and Wahloo, Maigret, for Chrissake.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It’s bad enough if he decides to get some first hand experience of crime but this stuff makes it look as if he’s interested in solving the bloody crimes. Justice and all that.’

  I put the books down on the desk; their shiny newness was marred by rough turning down of the corners of a couple of pages at a time. Each book had three or four of these corner folds which suggested that Mountain had consumed the books in a couple of gulps. Twenty-five dollars’ worth of dangerous dreams.

  ‘Undercover?’ Erica Fong said.

  ‘He couldn’t be that dumb.’

  She nodded her head vigorously and withdrew her hands
from the bib. Her fists were clenched tight. ‘He could be. Yes he could! God, I need a cigarette.’

  The idea that Mountain might have gone out playing Lone Ranger was the first bright thought I’d had since meeting Erica Fong, and it didn’t do either of us any good. I’d told her enough about the car racket, the false papers and disguises and so on, to give her the tip that it was an organised business. You don’t have to live very long in Sydney to become aware that organised criminality is something to stay away from. The Harbour is too conveniently close.

  Erica rooted through Mountain’s papers again and found a half packet of his Gitanes. While she was coughing her way into the first cigarette and I was wishing there was something else to drink in the place besides black instant and Suntory whisky, I had my second bright idea. Mountain must have got on to the strength of the car-stealing team through someone else, perhaps one of the people in my picture gallery. I described a couple of the faces to Erica from memory, but I didn’t do it very well.

  ‘I’d have to see them,’ she said, ‘and even then I don’t know. He knows a lot of people I don’t. He met a lot in pubs, people like you.’

  I took that as a sign that she’d had enough of my company for the night.

  ‘I’ve got the pictures in my office. Would you come in tomorrow morning and take a look?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We left it there. She let me out through the front door and I handed her the shotgun shells and one of my cards as I left.

  She rolled up to the office at around ten the next morning. She was wearing designer jeans and a scoop-neck black knitted top that had cost money. So had the bag she dropped carelessly on the floor as she sat in my client chair. Out came the cigarettes and her impassive look gave way to one of impatience.

  I hadn’t liked the job much at first and it wasn’t getting any better. I wasn’t in the mood for impatient young women. I took the envelope out of my desk slowly, tapped it on the scarred surface and looked owlishly over at her.

  ‘Do you mind telling me what you do for a living, Miss Fong?’

  She sighed and puffed irritably. Then she smiled. ‘At least you got the name right. On second meeting people usually call me Wong.’

  ‘Can’t understand it.’

  ‘I don’t do anything much. My Dad’s got an import business, Hong Kong and China. I go on the odd trip for him and do a bit of decorating in the shops.’

  I nodded and slid the photos out onto the desk. She butted her cigarette and pulled her chair up close.

  ‘I’d like to see Bill first, please.’

  I spread the pictures out with Mountain in the middle and moved away to give her a bit more of the dim light my dirty windows afford.

  I watched her face as she picked up the photo of Mountain. She studied it closely and nodded. She gave a tight smile, brushed back her fringe and tapped the picture with the fingers of her right hand. Her fingernails were cut short and unpainted and her touch was light. I felt a twinge of envy for Bill Mountain.

  ‘He looks good with the beard cut, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah. Take a look at the others.’

  She put Mountain’s picture down and turned her attention to the others.

  ‘Take your time.’

  She lit a cigarette and I lifted the window a discreet inch. She held up the picture of Henry Majors. I said to take your time.’

  Her puff of smoke drifted across the surface of the photograph. ‘I don’t need to take my time. I know this guy and Bill knows him too. He didn’t always have the moustache but I couldn’t mistake those eyes.’

  Majors’ eyes were small and close-set, giving him a slightly lizardy look. His moustache was unconvincing to a sceptical eye, but probably no more than real moustaches. Erica had selected a photo in which Majors was caught looking up from the registration form on which he had been writing. A pair of tinted spectacles was sitting on the desk beside his writing hand. In the other photograph he had the glasses firmly in place and the lizardy look was gone.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘I’m trying to think.’ For that she seemed to need a new cigarette, and since her Dad owned an import business she could afford to butt out one scarcely smoked and light a new one. She blew smoke at my water-stained wall.

  ‘You don’t know any of the others? They’re…’

  ‘Shh!’

  When half of the cigarette was gone she snapped her fingers. ‘Got it. Mai!’

  ‘Mai? Mai who?’

  ‘I don’t know; but Bill brought him home from the pub one night. I didn’t like him, but he and Bill seemed to hit it off. I don’t know what time Bill came to bed, but it was late and he was very drunk.’

  ‘That’s the only time you saw him?’

  ‘Yes. But I know that Bill saw him again at least once-for a drink, of course.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘’bout a month ago, bit less maybe.’

  ‘Well, that makes him look like the contact, but, God, it’s not much to go on. Mai-that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay-big question, what pub?’

  She stubbed out the cigarette and looked seriously at me. Her creamy skin was unlined except for a small frown mark between her eyes which was visible through a gap in the fringe. That mark deepened now.

  ‘I can’t remember the name, but I can take you there.’

  I shook my head. ‘Come on, Erica, this is my line of work. You know the name of the place.’

  The frown line deepened further. ‘I clean forget,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘Lucky you’re not a client; who’d employ a detective that easily caught?’

  ‘I might.’

  I shook my head. ‘Conflict of interest. You’ve got me, Erica. You can come along but you’ll have to stay in the car.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘If Mai sees you and he’s been up to some tricks with Mountain he could get nasty or he could run.’ I sat down behind the desk again. Like all the best-looking women, she was impressively stylish in the simple clothes: ‘You sort of stand out in a crowd.’

  ‘I’ll wear shades and a hat, five inch heels. I’m going too. I’m afraid I hold the whip, Mr Hardy. I’m inviting you along, not asking permission to go.’

  I groaned. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-eight. Why?’

  ‘How’d you get to be so tough?’

  She smiled. ‘A four foot eleven Chinese girl with four big brothers is tough or she’s a door mat. I’m just like everyone else-I like getting my own way. But I’m used to pushing for it.’

  ‘Okay, I’m pushed. Get ready to be bored.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You expect to roll up to the pub about nine tonight and spot him drinking scotch on his own in the saloon bar, don’t you? Then we take him aside for a little chat and he tells us all he knows about Bill. That it?’

  She didn’t say anything but I guessed I’d described her fantasy about right.

  ‘It won’t be like that, I can tell you. He won’t be there tonight and probably not for several nights, if he shows up at all. He won’t want to talk to us and even if he does he won’t know much. He’ll lie to us. That’s the way these things work.’

  She pursed her lips and looked determined. ‘I was bored for years and years before I met Bill, and I haven’t been bored since. I can take a bit of boredom now to get him back. Where will I meet you?’

  ‘How about nine o’clock at the pub?’

  She grinned. ‘No way-I’m taking you, remember?’

  ‘I feel sorry for your brothers.’

  She snorted, picked up her bag and went to the door. She leaned on the handle and looked back enquiringly. I was reluctant to see her go.

  ‘What about having some Chinese food together before we go?’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. How about eight at Li’s in Randwick.’

  ‘Is that
near the pub?’

  ‘Give up, Hardy. See you at Li’s.’

  She went out and I heard her heels clicking all the way down the quiet, no-business-as-usual corridor.

  Li’s was too dark to be memorable. I felt my way through the bamboo curtains and the gloom to where Erica sat in a pool of candlelight and cigarette smoke. She’d already ordered; we ate the things that came and we talked- mostly about Mountain, although a little about her. She did every thing decisively: smoked, ate and drank her tea that way, and I began to feel that she was a good ally in the search for Mountain. The only trouble was that she could be a formidable enemy when and if we found him.

  One of the nice touches at Li’s was that they turned on a small, concealed table light when they presented the bill. Erica insisted on paying half, and we went out into the Randwick night more or less evens, with her information giving her a slight edge.

  The pub was in Kensington and had been adopted by the university students, which meant that the management had gone for maximum drinking space and minimum comfort. It had a large, outdoor terrace crammed with chairs, benches and tables in various stages of decay. The two main bars seemed to have been designed to promote deafness; the noise of the juke boxes, TV sets and pinball machines blended in with the raucous blast of Friday night student revelry. Erica had put on shades and high heels as she’d promised, and she looked exotic and mysterious as she peered through the glasses into the loudest bar.

  I shook my head. ‘Be like drinking in a room with a taxiing 707. Let’s go out on the terrace.’

  I got a white wine for myself and a gin and tonic for Erica, and we sat on the terrace which was filling up with kids who either didn’t like noise or were taking a break from it. There were just enough over-twenty-fives around for us not to look conspicuous.

  ‘Maybe it’s not a good night,’ I said. ‘End of week fun night.’

  ‘It was a Friday that Bill met him. He liked to get into all this on Friday; said it made him feel young.’

  ‘Christ, I can’t even remember what young felt like. He’s not going to be here, love. You know that.’

  ‘What’s this, Hardy’s first law of surveillance?’

  ‘Something like that.’ I drank a big gulp of wine and waited for it to make me feel young.