The Washington Club

by Peter Corris

  She shook her head and the frizzy hair seemed to spring out and settle back. ‘We don’t know. They’re not obliged to tell us more than the general outline of his evidence. We have to assume that he’ll confirm it. He’s lying about everything else, why not this?’

  A fat pigeon waddled over, took a peck at one of the cigarette butts and retreated in disgust. I watched it join the other birds and throw its weight around, shoving forward to get a grip on a crust.

  ‘Tell me about Van Kep.’

  ‘I know almost nothing about him. He’s tall and blond. I assume he’s of Dutch extraction, although he speaks standard Australian. I suppose he’s about thirty. I don’t know what he did for Julius. I wouldn’t have exchanged more than a few remarks with him.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  She shrugged. ‘I could say that I suspect him to be capable of doing unpleasant things, but that might be just hindsight.’

  I wanted to believe her but I didn’t know whether I did. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter either way. I’d been hired to do a job and I’d get paid however it turned out, whether it helped Cy’s case or not. Those were the rules. But rules didn’t seem to matter too much at the moment. I felt a kind of sadistic need to crack through her hard shell of composure.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told Cy you loved your husband. If it’s not true it makes him vulnerable every time he asserts it.’

  She’d been staring at the ground in front of her shoes. Now she lifted her head and looked straight at me. Those dark, slanted eyes seemed to weigh and assess me according to a finely graduated and completely accurate system. ‘The broken nose and the careless shave and the cheap haircut don’t inspire confidence, but you’re not stupid, are you?’

  ‘Only sometimes,’ I said, meaning it.

  ‘I didn’t tell Sackville I loved Julius. He assumed it. Does he have a young, handsome wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shrugged. ‘There you go. Transference.’

  ‘Why didn’t you love him?’

  She was staring at the ground again. ‘That sounds like one of your stupid questions. Love, not love, in love, out of love, what does it all mean really? You can love someone one day and not the next; you can love two people at once and then no one at all. It’s a cheap word and it’s been debased.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. She lit another cigarette and smoked even less of it than the previous one before grinding it out.

  ‘Your husband must have had some knowledge of Van Kep when he took him on. References or something such. Where are his business records?’

  ‘I don’t know. I knew almost nothing about his business.’

  ‘Did he have an assistant, a 2IC?’

  She gave me that look again. ‘I thought you’d be poking around in the underworld, using your sleazy contacts to investigate Van Kep.’

  I laughed. ‘I spend as little time in sleazy company as I can. The people have b.o. and bad breath and try to borrow money all the time. The real underworld lives better.’

  ‘You think Julius was a high-class crook?’

  ‘I assume that of all millionaires until I learn different.’

  She smiled. Her head tilted a bit as she did so. The slightly bucked teeth were perfectly shaped and near-white. An ambitious dentist would go mad with indecision. ‘There’s a man named Wilson Katz. He worked for Julius in some very senior capacity. He might be able to help you.’

  We walked back to St Peters Lane. I unlocked the Falcon and she got in without comment or reaction. To a discerning person, the car bears the signs of having had some money spent on it where it matters. To the undiscerning it just looks old. The interior was hot and I started to sweat as soon as I got in. Claudia didn’t sweat, or if she did it didn’t show. The engine started immediately and ran smoothly but there was no air-conditioning and I’d have to rely on a breeze through the window to cool me down.

  ‘Vaucluse?’

  ‘No. I hardly spent any time there and I haven’t been back since Julius died. There’s a flat in Kirribilli. Julius liked to spend some time on the other side of the harbour. He said it made him feel like a true resident of the city.

  I released the brake, engaged first gear and drove quietly towards Forbes Street. ‘Good thinking. If you had a spot at Dover Heights and somewhere on Pittwater and down south you’d have the place covered. What other properties are there?’

  She wound down her window and the breeze wafted through. ‘What you really mean is, did he leave everything to me? Why don’t you ask straight out?’

  I drove up Forbes Street, stopped at the lights. ‘Did he leave everything to you?’

  ‘Just about. Solid provision for wife number one and daughter Judith. Enough not to make it worth their while to challenge. Quite a few donations here and there—the fund to build a new synagogue at Bondi, the Fred Hollows Foundation—that sort of thing. The rest to me. Want to know how much?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  The flat in Kirribilli turned out to be the top floor of a three-storey block housing three flats on each of the other two levels. So the Fleischmans had three times the space of anyone else as well as a roof garden and a view that might not have been as good as the Prime Minister’s or Governor-General’s but would do. Directly across from the Opera House with plenty of the Bridge in sight on the right and a good sweep down the harbour to the left. All this was unveiled for me after I refused the offer of a parking place under the building and left the car in the street. Claudia explained that she didn’t drive and didn’t know what had happened to Julius’ Merc.

  ‘Maybe Wilson Katz has it,’ I said.

  She inserted a security card in the device in the high wall that surrounded the apartment block and the gate slid silently open. ‘Maybe. I couldn’t care less.’

  As we climbed the stairs I wondered whether her attitude indicated that she’d always had money or just that she acquired so much of it that it ceased to matter. I had no idea.

  ‘Julius bought this block a few years ago. From a failed bookmaker, I gather. That pleased him. He had good people work on it and it turned out pretty well. He refused to put in a lift. Said the stairs were good for his heart and my legs.’

  She laughed, I laughed and I just managed to stop myself from looking at the limbs in question.

  ‘He amused you then, Julius? You liked him?’

  She didn’t answer. We crossed a broad expanse of carpet to a door where she used the card again. We went into several air-conditioned rooms that contained furniture, paintings, vases and other things that looked like money. I suppose I gawked a bit and when Claudia excused herself I wandered out onto the terrace and up the outside staircase to the roof garden where I experienced the view. Suddenly, among trellises trailing tropical plants and a fountain and oiled teak benches, I felt shabby in my off-the-rack clothes and cheap haircut. And I felt angry for feeling that way. Fuck it, I thought. She probably offed her husband for the dough. It was probably just another dirty bit of business and all the money and the house in Vaucluse and the flat in Kirribilli and the yacht couldn’t make it any cleaner.

  ‘Why are you looking like that?’

  She was standing below me on the terrace looking up. She’d combed her hair, maybe freshened her make-up, and she had a cigarette lit. Every line of her body was graceful, every plane of her face was enticing. Once again I didn’t want to think any of the things I was thinking or believe what I was halfway to believing. I forced a grin that probably came off as pretty ghastly.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’ve got a face like thunder.’

  It was a tired phrase but somehow right on the perfect afternoon.

  ‘Probably caused by envy,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t think you envy anyone. Come down. I can’t climb those steps in heels.’

  I came down to the terrace in time to see her drop the half-smoked Salem into a pot containing a plant with spiky leaves. She saw me not
icing and smiled. ‘Julius hated me smoking. He’d have died if he’d seen me doing this.’

  She realised what she’d said and shook her head. ‘It’s almost impossible not to make faux pas.’

  I nodded. ‘The case against you isn’t tremendously strong, Claudia. I’m surprised they’ve scheduled the committal hearing so early.’

  ‘It’s strong enough for them to have taken away my passport and have me reporting to the police once a week. Sackville says he expects them to come up with some more material between now and then. They’ll have to disclose it of course, but we won’t have long to counter it. Julius was a very important man and I’m nobody. The authorities don’t want his murder listed as unsolved. Very embarrassing for them.’

  Her analysis fitted the facts but her coolness troubled me.

  ‘You seem very calm.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m frightened, but what’s the point in showing it? I’ve got Sackville, who’s said to be one of the best barristers in Sydney, and he recommends you. I’m fighting the only way I can. Here.’

  She handed me a card with a couple of addresses and phone numbers written on it. I was being given my marching orders and I took them.

  I lost my bearings when I left the building. I’d hardly noticed the garden on the way in but now it seemed to be much bigger than I’d thought, a maze of paths with some pretty tall trees blotting out the skyline and robbing me of any sense of direction. Two paths led back to the building, another ended in a paved courtyard. When I finally made it to the gate it wasn’t the gate I’d come in through. I didn’t care. An electric button opened it and I was out into the sort of air I could afford to breathe.

  I was in a small lane beside the apartment block and with the water now in view I knew my way back to the car. I turned into the right street about seventy metres from the car. Bushes grew thickly in the front gardens and overhung the pavement so that I had to bend low to avoid them. At one point I stepped out onto the road to miss the heavy branches. There were a few cars parked along the street and one of them suddenly roared into life. The driver gunned the engine and went into a tight three-point turn for which there really wasn’t room. The noise and the violence of the manoeuvre took my attention. The car, a green Honda Accord, jumped the kerb and almost rammed a brick wall. It lurched back, tyres screaming, clipped a parked 4WD and roared off down the street.

  I stood stock still, trying to get the number, but the light was wrong, acrid tyre smoke was hanging in the air and my eyes aren’t what they once were. I reached my car and turned to reconstruct what had happened. It wasn’t hard to do. The green car had been positioned so as to watch the main gate of the apartment block. The driver hadn’t seen me until I’d stepped off the pavement and then he’d got going fast. I tried to visualise the numberplate but couldn’t do it. MRA, maybe. I hadn’t seen it long enough. Then I realised that I had seen the driver’s face. Only a glimpse, not much more than an impression. I couldn’t put a name to it, but I knew I’d seen that face before. Somehow, in some context or other, it was on file in my memory

  3

  It had been a little over a year since Glen Withers left me to marry a policeman. I’d heard they’d both been promoted and posted to Newcastle, which was nice for them. Glen was a Newcastle girl. I missed a lot of things about the relationship—the sex of course, the companionship, the laughs. On the material level I missed having Glen’s house at Dudley to go to when the only place to be was at the beach and, for a Maroubra boy, that’s just about all the time. I was still in Glebe with the mortgage almost paid off but I’d need a big loan to get the house back into decent condition. Years of neglect had taken their toll. It was worth doing, the place was an asset, but talk about the economic advantages of borrowing money has always confused me, so I just sit pat.

  I drove home to Glebe, glad as always to be getting onto what I considered the right side of the harbour and trying not to think of the face I’d glimpsed in that brief blur of action. The only way to trigger memories like those is to think of something else and let it happen. I tried, but the only other thing I could think of was the face and body of Claudia Fleischman, her poise and control. It seemed unlikely that a bell would ring in my head while I was thinking along those lines. I turned on the radio, listened to Mike Carlton being nicer to a politician than I would have been, and ended up not thinking about anything.

  My street has changed over the years. Harry Soames, with whom I had an amiable antagonism over music, car parking, drainage and almost everything else, moved out—or, as he put it, ‘up’, to Gladesville. I hope he enjoys the flight path. A few big houses that were divided up into flats occupied by students and dope-dealers have become family residences once again. Fewer motorbikes, more parking space, lots more Illawarra flame trees. My house has just about become the shabbiest in the street, with gaps in its fence, rust in the balcony iron and sagging guttering. A coat of paint would do wonders, they tell me. But if I painted the house the cracked path and lifting tiles in front would look even more daggy and the overgrown garden would lose what I think of as its charm. So I sit pat.

  I eased the Falcon into a space between a Celica and a Commodore and cut Mike off in mid-sentence. The mail jutted from the letterbox and I grabbed it as I went past, stepping instinctively clear of the loosest of the tiles. Inside, the familiar smells and sounds told me who and what I was, as they always did. This was why I stayed. The bedroom held memories of my ex-wife Cyn, and Helen Broadway and Glen Withers; Annie Parker had slept in the spare room and the thought of her death from a hot-shot still gave me a pang. I’d killed Soldier Szabo by accident in the living room and O’Fear had played his last card out in the backyard. How could I sell all that to a business consultant?

  After Glen left I went a few rounds with Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam until we decided to call it square. Nowadays I didn’t drink hard liquor until after six and I had a flexible limit—three to five drinks. I also didn’t rush it as in the old days, when the next thing my hand would touch after the front door was the cap on a bottle. I flicked through the mail which held no interest and checked the answering machine. The only calls were about a late video and a client explaining why his cheque was a little bit short of a full settlement.

  The cat left not long after Glen and I could hardly blame it. It had to be able to do better than Vegemite toast and Weetbix. With the cat gone the mice asserted themselves. I kept hoping that another cat would adopt me the way the last one did. It had wandered in one day and treated the place as its own within minutes, pawing at the window it wanted left open and indicating where it would like the food put down. But so far no takers. The strays didn’t know what they were missing—I’d resolved to treat the lucky cat better, feed it regularly and give it a name.

  I took the video out of the machine and restored it to its case. I put the borrowing card on top of the case and picked up a newspaper and a couple of books around the sitting room. I opened the back door and let some air in, also some leaves. Delaying tactics, feints, duckings and weavings. Effective. It was fully 6.30 when I made the drink—a Scotch and ice with a little water. I sat down in the kitchen, reached out to turn on the radio and the name of the driver flashed into my mind. The arrival of the information was so sudden and clear I almost dropped my glass—Harvey Henderson, better known to the police and his few friends as ‘Haitch’ Henderson because of the alliteration and because he spent some formative years in Pentridge Gaol’s notorious H Division.

  Henderson didn’t look like a tough guy. He was short and stocky with a moon face and long soft brown hair. But the hair hid a half-bitten-off ear and other scars and I’d heard it said he didn’t have an original tooth in his head. He’d lost many of them in fights and bashings and ‘Corky’ Ryan had removed the rest with a pair of pliers when he was trying to get Haitch to tell him something Haitch didn’t know. Corky wasn’t around anymore.

  Henderson had served time for extortion, armed robbery and attempted murder in Victoria,
Queensland and New South Wales. I’d run up against him years before when I’d been hired by a man who operated a dealership specialising in high-price imported cars and who’d been receiving extortion demands and threats to damage his stock. Henderson was behind it and I’d sent one of his minions to hospital. As it happened, Henderson was put away for something else and my client was satisfied. It was a few years back now and I couldn’t believe Haitch had a personal vendetta against me. That matter had been just one of his many sidelines that didn’t pan out. I thought hard, drank some whisky and couldn’t come up with any other connections between me and Henderson. He did anything and everything, from bodyguarding to body-damaging and body-disposal, standover, blackmail, you name it. His presence had to have something to do with the Fleischman case.

  I grabbed the phone, called Cy at home and got his fifteen-year-old daughter. Dad and Mum were at a Law Society dinner. Yes, she’d leave a message for Dad to ring me as soon as he got in, whatever the time. I made another drink, located Claudia’s card in the stuff I’d emptied from my pockets, and called her.

  ‘Claudia, it’s Cliff Hardy. I have to ask you a question. Does the name Harvey Henderson mean anything to you?’

  It would have been better done in person, but I’d got the lead-in about right. Time for her to tense up if that’s what was to happen. I tried to imagine her standing against the big picture window with a couple of million dollars worth of harbour and city view behind her. I had her in the same clothes. All crazy—she could be in the kitchen in an apron cooking spaghetti. I held the receiver close, listened hard. Was there a pause, an intake of breath? I thought so, then I wasn’t sure. The voice, was it a tone or two higher, or was it the phone connection or my imagination?

  ‘No. I don’t believe I know the name. Who is he?’

  I thought fast. She wasn’t the kind of woman you thought about protecting. She’d stood up to a lot so far and could probably stand some more.

  ‘He’s a criminal. A hard case. He was watching your flat this afternoon. He drove off when he saw me.’