Deal Me Out ch-9

by Peter Corris

  ‘Is to me. Why? What’s his sister got to do with it?’

  I showed her the passage in the book about Kerouac drying out with the dried-up sister. It seemed too thin and fanciful to even be called a lead, but if I followed it I could at least get off on my own and do some investigating in my own style. My old mate Grant Evans was currently nudging his way up the police preferment ladder in Melbourne, and I could have a quiet word about stolen hire cars with him without alerting Bernsteins and Woodwards. I’d have preferred a trip to Byron Bay but you can’t have everything.

  ‘What’s the sister’s name, d’you know?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I know where she lives-place called Bentleigh. I remember Bill said there was no-one bent in Bentleigh.’

  ‘Witty. She married, this sister?’

  She shook her head and blew smoke over my shoulder. ‘Don’t think so, no.’

  ‘That’s a help. Can’t be too many Mountains in Bentleigh. Is that witty?’

  ‘Not very.’

  ‘A terrible thought just occurred to me, Erica. His name really is Mountain, isn’t it? It’s not his nom de plume or anything?’

  ‘God, that’d screw it up. No, I’m pretty sure it’s Mountain, but I don’t know why I say so.’

  ‘I’d better go down there and see her.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Why did you go to his house the other night?’

  ‘To work through all his stuff really carefully to see if I could come up with anything. I don’t know what — diary, letters-anything.’

  ‘That’s still well worth doing.’

  ‘Meanwhile you go off doing the interesting stuff.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘You can come with me when I visit Mai. That’s in about twenty minutes; want first shower?’

  We were preoccupied and not cheerful on the drive to Woolloomooloo. The weather didn’t help; the sky was overcast, with only pale, yellow breaks in it, and there was a swirling cold wind. The water had an ugly grey sheen, and the high buildings looked dirty against a dirty sky. I snapped at Erica when she lit her umpteenth cigarette for the morning.

  ‘Can’t you cut down on those bloody things?’

  Her Oriental eyes widened, the frown line in her forehead deepened and the corners of her mouth turned down. I felt like a bully and was sorry I’d spoken, but she looked calmly at me and took a puff.

  ‘I’ll quit when you find Bill,’ she said.

  We walked across the street, with the wind whipping at us, to the entrance to Mai’s block of flats. The building had had a sort of seedy glamour at night, but in the grey light of day it looked faded and tired. We went into the small lobby and I wondered what sort of image Mai would present in the morning. Dressing-gown? He was hardly the track-suit type; that’d be more Geoff’s style.

  I knocked, but there was no response. Another knock brought a slapping of slippers on the stairs behind us.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ Glad stuck her head around the corner of the stair, looked down on us, and began an imperious descent. Her multi-coloured hair was up in curlers; she wore a violet dressing-gown with a pink sash and huge, fluffy green slippers. Splashes of high colour showed in her cheeks and her second chin quivered.

  ‘Go away.’ She looked at me with pale, watery eyes across the top of a pair of half-glasses. ‘And take the little Chink with you.’

  ‘Easy, Glad. We’ve come to have another talk with Mai.’

  ‘Don’t you Glad me. If you want to see him you’d better ring up the bloody hospital.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s got a broken leg and a broken arm, poor devil. He’s in St Vincent’s.’

  ‘What happened?’ Erica said.

  She came to the foot of the stairs and gave us the whole show-hair, dressing-gown, sash and slippers. ‘They came and did him over in the early hours. I thought it mighta been you from the way you was chuckin’ punches last night.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not me. What about Geoff?’

  ‘Him too. In the hospital.’ She nodded her head as she spoke and her glasses fell off. It had happened a thousand times before and she caught them deftly, without looking. Erica took out her cigarettes and went over to the stairs with the packet extended. Glad hesitated, then she took a cigarette and bent her head to the lighter.

  ‘Ta. I’m a bit shaky.’

  ‘Did you talk to Mai? Before he went to hospital.’

  ‘Couldn’t talk, they broke his teeth. He didn’t think I knew he had false teeth but I knew.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Glad.’ I said. ‘We’ll try to look in on him.’

  She nodded, pushed up her glasses and slapped her way up the stairs.

  ‘It’s hotting up,’ I said.

  Erica was getting the idea. She looked both ways before stepping out onto the pavement. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Can you drop me at Bill’s place?’

  We drove through the tight, late morning traffic, and I thought of broken bones and hospitals, of which I’d had a bit of experience, and of Australian Chinese families, of which I knew nothing. We passed a restaurant where Helen Broadway and I had eaten, and I thought about her being physical on the farm or talking wittily on the local radio where she had a part-time job. I wondered if she’d smoked her one Gitane a day yet, or was saving it for after dinner. I wondered if she was thinking about me and thinking, as I was, that six months is a short time to have something you want and a long time to be without it.

  There was a mist still hovering over the park when we reached Mountain’s place. The air was nearly as cold as it had been up at Katoomba, but it had a very different flavour. Erica didn’t have to use her key on the front door: it had been jemmied open and pushed roughly back. It was held half-shut by the splinters.

  I pushed past Erica into the front room. The furniture looked as if it had been attacked with a chainsaw-the couch had been up-ended and disembowelled. Stuffing and fabric lay around everywhere and broken ornaments and torn curtains littered the floor. Erica gave a little gasp and darted to pick something up off the floor. She clasped it in both hands and wandered through to the next room.

  The chaos continued through the house and was worst in Mountain’s study, where books had been dismembered and papers torn and scattered like losing betting tickets. The search hadn’t been professional and the destruction looked to be the result of frustration and failure. Erica skirted around the messes-tumbled-out drawers, shredded clothes and torn photographs.

  ‘What’s missing?’ I said.

  ‘Not much. The shotgun and the car keys. Not kids?’

  I shook my head. ‘The TV and the VCR rule that out.’

  ‘So it’s them?’

  ‘I guess so. Can we make some coffee?’ We rummaged in the kitchen and found two more or less intact cups. I put on the water and spooned in the instant. Erica sat at the table and lit a cigarette. She opened her hand and let a small, gold wristwatch drop onto the pine table. The glass was shattered.

  ‘It was mine. I left it here. Why’re you looking like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Scowling.’

  I poured the water into the cups and added a slug to each from a bottle of Suntory that had been opened and knocked on its side so that only an inch remained. ‘Bloody uninquisitive neighbours,’ I grunted. ‘This must have been noisy.’

  Erica reached for her cup. ‘Never heard them when I was here. Walls must be thick or else they’re out a lot.’ She sipped and made a face. ‘That’s not what’s on your mind, Cliff.’

  I drank some of the laced coffee thinking that it was a while since I’d done any spirits drinking in the morning. ‘You’re right. I just don’t understand this. I can see the car mob wanting to get hold of the Audi. They make an investment, and it has to pay off. But this leg-breaking and house-trashing looks like something else.’

  ‘You mean they might have found out about the man at Blackheath?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem li
kely. No, he must have done something to threaten them. Must’ve played a card of some sort.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘God knows. I’ve got to talk to Mai again.’

  She nodded. She seemed to have lost drive and interest suddenly. She’d been disappointed at the pub, at Mai’s flat and Blackheath, and maybe she didn’t have the mule-like stubbornness it takes to keep going. Maybe it was the first violated house she’d seen; that experience takes some people hard.

  ‘Look, Erica. There’s still a job for you to do here, and I don’t just mean cleaning up. Someone was looking for something and they didn’t find it.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I can read the signs. The destruction goes right through the place-they were angry to start with, they got angrier and they never got happy. That means they didn’t find it. Your Dad can spare you from the exporting business for a while, can’t he?’

  She smiled. ‘Importing. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Then you can look through here inch by inch. See if you can find anything that might help us.’

  ‘Like what?’

  That was harder, but I kept myself from shrugging and looking hopeless. ‘I don’t know. A diary, letters, maybe some numbers written down somewhere. A phone number-anything unusual that looks contrived or done for a purpose. The only thing that worries me is that they might come back. Is there anyone you can get to come and stay here with you?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I can bring Max.’

  ‘Who’s Max?’

  ‘He’s my German Shepherd. He stands so high and he weighs about a hundred pounds.’

  ‘Get him on the phone,’ I said. ‘He sounds like just the bloke you need.’

  Erica said she could walk across the park to get Max. That sounded all right to me; I’d have preferred park walking to hospital visiting myself, but it seemed unlikely that the ducks and joggers would be able to tell me anything useful. I drove to the hospital and parked as near to the place as the able-bodied and non-medically-qualified could get. Then I negotiated the barriers they put between the sick and the well. They wouldn’t let me see Mai, registered as Malcolm Fitzwilliam, who was recovering from a severe concussion as well as his other injuries, but Geoffrey Stafford was visitable.

  They wheeled Geoff into the waiting room with the tiny, dust-shrouded windows where I’d spent nearly an hour waiting. Geoff didn’t look pleased to see me; he had one leg in a cast, half an arm was in plaster and held crooked by a metal strut and both his eyes were bruised the colour of eggplant.

  ‘What do you want, Hardy?’

  ‘For openers, how do you know my name?’

  ‘I did a bit of ringing around after you split the other night. With the gun and all I reckoned you’d be a private licence.’ Talking was difficult for him; all facial movement would be for a while to come.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Three blokes-very quick and good, better than you.’

  ‘That makes them a hell of a lot better than you, son. Any talking?’

  ‘Not much, Mai didn’t have anything to tell them except…’ He broke off and looked at me through slits in the bruised flesh. I didn’t feel particularly chipper, but I must have looked in the pink to him. He gave a malicious giggle. ‘Except your name.’

  ‘He told them that?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And they still worked you over?’

  He nodded and instantly regretted it. ‘Yeah. This bloody job turned out to be tougher than it looked.’

  ‘They often do. Did Mai say anything about the girl?’

  ‘The slappy? No, he’s a gentleman that way. He liked her, he told me.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Didn’t get a chance to say anything. I had a go, but they fixed me up fast. I was nearly out of it, but I could just hear what was going on. What the fuck is it all about? Mai said it was a small-time gambling debt. Needed time to pay, he said. Shit!’

  ‘Take too long to tell you. Ask Mai.’ I stood up. ‘What did they look like?’

  He screwed up his eyes in an effort at recall and the effort hurt him. ‘Three, like I said. Nothing special. Average-sized blokes, one was a bit bigger.’

  ‘Fair or dark?’

  ‘Two dark, one redhead.’

  ‘Australian?’

  ‘Didn’t talk much, couldn’t tell. One of the dark ones could’ve been a dago.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Smell.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘Not young. Thirtyish.’

  I let that pass. ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Ordinary-jeans and jackets. The redhead had some gold chains around his neck. Ponce.’

  ‘You should’ve grabbed them and throttled him.’

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, Geoff. You’ll mend. Sorry I didn’t bring any grapes.’

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  He pressed a button and a white-coated male nurse came in and wheeled him away. I paced up and down in the gloomy little room trying to assess how much worse things had got. In general, the fewer trios of efficient heavies that know your name the better. It sounded like high time for me to get myself a dog like Max or go to Melbourne.

  Back home I phoned Terry Reeves and gave him an edited version of what I had. My best card was the news that one of the phoney car renters was in the hospital.

  ‘Good,’ Terry said. ‘You put him there?’

  ‘No, but. he won’t be driving cars for a bit.’

  ‘Where’s the one he took?’

  ‘Sorry, mate, it’s gone through the system.’

  ‘It figures. Well, at least I haven’t lost any more since I saw you. Any point in bringing a charge?’

  ‘Not if you want to crack the system and maybe recover the cars.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve said system-how d’you see it?’

  ‘Big operation, well-financed, good procedures, and there’s something else in it-something above and beyond the cars, but I don’t know what.’

  ‘Just stick to the cars, will you, Cliff? Keep your imagination in check.’

  ‘What about my initiative?’

  ‘What’s it going to cost?’

  ‘I’ve got to go to Melbourne.’

  He groaned. ‘Maybe I’ll take a holiday when it’s all over. I need one I can tell you. Well, thanks for all the information, Cliff.’

  ‘You know how it is-little by little.’

  ‘Yeah, well, soldier on, Cliff, and listen, take care, all right?’

  I rang off, and reflected on how much hung on this case-Bill Mountain’s life maybe, Erica Fong’s lungs and Terry Reeves’ long overdue holiday. TAA offerred me two flights-one I could catch easily and one I’d have to rush more. I accepted the challenge, packed a bag in record time and threw in West’s The World is Made of Glass and The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People. My white jeans and shirt made me feel like a bowls player, so I put on a navy shirt and a leather jacket. I left my one funeral tie behind; I didn’t expect to be visiting the Melbourne Club.

  9

  On the plane I skipped through Intimate Sex Lives, jumping from the ones who’d had a hell of a good time, like Picasso and Josephine Baker, to those whom sex had made thoroughly miserable, like D.H. Lawrence and Paganini. I decided that I was somewhere in the middle. The flight took about an hour; after five minutes the woman sitting next to me clicked her tongue disapprovingly when she saw what I was reading, and stared fixedly out the window for the rest of the hour. She seemed to disapprove of what she saw out there too.

  My knowledge of Melbourne is sketchy. A flight attendant told me that she thought Bentleigh was a southern suburb; I knew the airport lay to the west of the city so I took the airport bus into town. The Tullamarine freeway must be one of the most boring stretches of road on the planet; either they picked a boring landscape to run it through or they made it that way in the process. Anyway, there was nothing on the run to occupy my thoughts or delight
my eye until we reached the city, which looked pretty good in the afternoon sun, if you like broad, tree-lined streets and a flat landscape.

  At the city terminal I hired one of Reeves’ Bargain Renta Cars, thinking that I shouldn’t have any trouble with this item on the expense account.

  ‘I’m sorry about all the red tape,’ the woman who processed the hiring said. ‘It used to be simpler.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said. I looked for the hidden camera behind the desk, but couldn’t spot it. ‘Do you have a Gregory’s in the car?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  I rapped the counter. ‘My fault-Sydney born and bred. I mean a street directory.’

  ‘There’s a directory in the glove box. Where are you going, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘Bentleigh.’

  ‘Just look in the glove box.’ Her manner became slightly distant; I was beginning to get bad feelings about Bentleigh.

  The detective’s friend turned up trumps with just one Mountain, initial C, listed for Bentleigh. I located the address, Brewers Road, in the street directory and headed off. The Laser was responsive and toey in ways that were just a memory to my Falcon; for the first mile I felt like a rodeo rider getting a frisky mount under control. After that, the drive out to Bentleigh was a lesson in the differences between two cities. The Melburnians seemed to have flattened large sections of the city I remembered from my last visit, more than ten years ago, and swept freeways through the clearances. That sort of thing had met more resistance in Sydney, which was just as well for me or else my living room would have been a traffic island. Also, the traffic lights were advertised as carrying concealed cameras to catch sneakers-through-on-the-red, an Inquisitional touch Sydney lacks. The camera business reminded me of the time when Melburnians would turn pale at the ‘tow-away zone’ signs in Sydney and our stories about retrieving cars from great distances at monstrous expense.

  It was after three when I reached Brewers Road. Kids were straggling home from school, battling a wind that whipped at the tails of their raincoats and shook the trees and shrubs in the well-tended gardens. Bentleigh was one of those flat Melbourne suburbs, with the odd suggestion of a rise and fall in the landscape, which made it just possible to imagine it as a pleasant place before 1835. Now it had a solid, comfortable post-war look of brick veneer and mortgages paid on time.