The Washington Club

by Peter Corris

  I scrambled out of the car, pulling the .38 from its holster and straining to see what sort of a weapon he had. He was halfway across the road before I recognised it as a taser, a stun-gun. I raised the pistol.

  ‘Stop right there. Drop the taser or I’ll put a bullet in you.’

  He stopped, flicked long straight black hair out of his eyes and stared at me. ‘Fuck me dead! Cliff fucking Hardy.’

  17

  Rhino Jackson had been in the PEA game about the same length of time as me. Our paths had crossed more than once and the encounters had never been friendly. He was something of a drunk, something of a thug, but reasonably honest. One thing was for sure, he was ruthlessly, professionally, violent, a better man to have on your side than against you, which was why bodyguarding was his main line of work. For him, a stun gun was a mild instrument of control. As I looked at him I remembered hearing that he’d been burnt in a factory fire some time back when he tried to carry a whole filing cabinet out of the blaze by himself. Jackson was good-looking in a craggy sort of way and vain. The long sleeves were probably to cover scars.

  I lowered the .38. ‘Hello, Rhino. I thought I knew the voice on the phone.’

  ‘That was you the other day, too, wasn’t it? What the fuck are you playing at, Hardy?’

  I felt silly standing in the middle of a sunny suburban street with a gun in my hand. I holstered it. ‘Like I say, you tell me and I’ll tell you. Or was it the other way around?’

  ‘You always were a clown. I’m providing security for Miss Daniels.’

  ‘Sure. You’re in Watsons Bay and she’s in Woollahra. Great security.’

  ‘She’s here at my joint some of the time and I’m there some of the time. Shit, I don’t know what fucking business it is of yours.’

  ‘It is, believe me. Let’s go inside. I won’t touch her, I won’t even look at her. I just want to talk to her.’ I grinned at him, sensing that he was as relieved as me that there was no real trouble here. ‘Got anything to drink in there?’

  ‘Every fucking drink you can think of. The lady’s a lush. How about you put the gun in the car as a sign of good faith?’

  ‘Okay.’ Jackson wasn’t a killer and although, like all of us, he sometimes walked a narrow line, he wasn’t a crook’s hireling either. I opened the Nissan and put the .38 under the driver’s seat. We walked across the street; he opened the gate and went up the steps into the house. I followed him. He was bigger than me and stronger but he seemed to have lost something of his old bounce. He rubbed at his right forearm with his left hand. The burns.

  We went into the house and into a strong smell of cigarette smoke, which is getting to be a rare thing. There was a short passage and Judith Daniels stood in the opening to a door on the left. She wore black slacks and a red silk blouse, high heels. She was smoking and she held a glass in her other hand—one of those two-fisted drinking smokers, right, left, right, left. Jackson was right; she was good-looking, arresting even, but the booze was beginning to soften her features and move her towards her first facelift.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Her voice was Eastern Suburbs polished and clipped, with only the slight suggestion of a slur. She was a biggish woman, five foot eight or nine, solidly built. She could probably hold quite a few of whatever she was drinking before it showed.

  ‘Name’s Hardy. He’s a private detective, Judith. Says he has to talk to you.’

  Judith? Well, well. But who was I to comment?

  She disappeared into the room. I looked at Jackson; he shrugged and rubbed his forearm. We followed her into a small room that seemed to be set up for watching TV, drinking and, just possibly, fucking on the big couch. Judith Daniels was behind a portable bar pouring orange juice into a big tumbler. When she had the bottom well and truly covered she added champagne until the glass was almost full. She took a sip and added some more champagne until it was absolutely full. She raised it to her lips without spilling a drop. A good trick after three or four of them. She picked her cigarette up from the edge of the bar and took a drag.

  ‘You’d better give the man a drink, Reg,’ she said.

  Reg. You learn something new every day.

  Jackson looked embarrassed. ‘What’ll you have, Hardy?’

  It was just past eleven o’clock. ‘Beer,’ I said. ‘Light, if you’ve got it.’

  Judith Daniels sneered. ‘Another pleb. A pleb and a wimp.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Jackson said. ‘The man’s working.’

  The look she shot him showed that she liked it. Rhino had a reputation of being rough with the women, nothing far-out, just a bit physical as required. He took a can of Toohey’s Light and one of draught from the bar fridge. Handed me mine, popped his own and leaned back against the wall. She moved slightly closer to him, blowing smoke well away from him.

  ‘So, he’s sussed us out, has he?’ she said to me.

  Puzzling. Not what I expected. To conceal the reaction, I opened the can, drank and felt the welcome bite of the alcohol. The sexual lines between them were open and I felt like a voyeur, also deprived. ‘You’ll have to explain that to me, Ms Daniels,’ I said. ‘Who would he be?’

  She had a deep drink of the pale orange mixture and took smoke into her lungs. She looked relieved at my response and expelled the smoke towards the ceiling in a thin, expert stream. ‘I don’t have to explain a bloody thing to you. You wanted to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to you. Still don’t.’

  She looked hard and composed, almost amused, ready to send me on my way. Jackson was curious but he wouldn’t do anything to influence her. The only tack I could think of was the one I’d tried before.

  ‘I think you should. I’m working for Claudia Fleischman.’

  The high colour left her face and she looked urgently, pleadingly, at Jackson. The hand carrying the drink shook and drops splashed onto the carpet. I’d seen her type before. Her chief prop was alcohol; when she didn’t have enough of that on board her fall-back position was anger. She sucked in smoke and it came out in spurts as she spat words at Jackson. ‘Don’t you know anything. How could you let him come in here? My life’s in danger from that woman. Get him out! I want him out!’

  Rhino may have wanted to know what was going on but the customer was always right with him. He moved forward obediently and fished in his pocket for the taser. What the woman had said was too important for me to back away from. I’d barely tasted the beer; the can was heavy in my hand I threw it at Jackson and it hit him squarely on the nose. Judith Daniels screamed, Jackson swore. I moved in close and punched at his Adam’s apple with a loosely closed fist. He gasped as the breath left him and I kicked his feet out from under him. He fell heavily on his left forearm and let out a deep grunt of pain. I reached into his jacket pocket and removed the stun gun.

  ‘Get yourself to a chair, Rhino, and sit down,’ I said, waving the device at them. ‘I’m not going to hurt anyone who stays sensible. You too, Ms Daniels. Sit down!’

  They did what I told them. The room reeked of spilt beer now and there were dark, damp patches on two of the cream walls. It was more the kind of fighting environment Jackson was used to but there was no fight in him now. He sat in an armchair rubbing at himself and looking as if he needed something stronger than beer. I kicked the door closed. Judith Daniels jumped. Her cigarette was down to a stump but she drew on it just the same. I crossed to the bar, poured a big Scotch for Jackson and a smaller one for myself.

  I gave Jackson his drink, took a pull on mine and looked at Judith Daniels. ‘Are you telling me that all this hide-and-go-seek shit is because you’re scared of Claudia Fleischman?’

  She had good recovery, I’ll say that for her. She tossed her butt into the empty fire grate and lifted her slightly soft chin, stretching the skin, defining the bones and making her look almost as beautiful as she must have been a few thousand drinks ago. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  For someone who didn’t want to talk, she made a good job of it. I got her settled with her fags, pitcher o
f orange juice and a fresh bottle of Yellowglen and she didn’t stop for fifteen minutes except to light cigarettes and drink. She swore that she had seen Claudia and Van Kep together at a motel in Chatswood and that her father had declared himself afraid of Claudia. She gave plausible details of times and places. She also claimed that she’d received a phone call a day after Claudia was charged, warning her not to give evidence. The caller threatened to scar and cripple her for life. She said this quickly and her fear was genuine. The statement was worth half a glass of her medicine.

  ‘So when you said he’d sussed you out, you meant this caller? You thought I was him?’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘I’m not. You think the caller was acting for Claudia?’

  ‘Who else could it be? The only evidence I have to give is against her.’

  ‘But there’s no direct connection?’

  ‘Listen, whatever your name is, I know that evil bitch. My father was afraid of her and he’s dead. I’m not a brave person. I’m afraid, too.’

  I finished off the Scotch that I’d made last a long time. ‘Did you report the call to the police?’

  ‘Hah! He warned me against that as well.’

  ‘What kind of a voice was it?’

  ‘Hard, like yours.’

  ‘Accent?’

  ‘Australian.’

  I asked a few more questions and got answers in the same vein. She drank steadily and it began to reach her. Her diction started to slip and the ash from her cigarettes got sprinkled around the ashtray on the arm of the chair.

  ‘Won’t be safe till that bitch is in gaol. Maybe not then.’ The anger had gone. She gazed at the wet patches on the wall. ‘Men’re no bloody use.’

  I mumbled some kind of thanks and stood up. She ignored me and emptied the last of her second bottle into the glass and didn’t bother with the orange juice. Jackson got to his feet and I gestured for him to go outside, where I handed him the taser.

  ‘You’ve slowed up a bit, Rhino.’

  ‘So’ve you. It’s just that I’ve slowed up more.’

  Probably true, and that wasn’t the only similarity between us. ‘I don’t think she’s got anything to worry about,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to do you out of a job.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve just about had enough of it anyway. She’s impossible. But she’s fair dinkum. I heard that Sackville got shot. Any connection?’

  ‘I think so.’ I contemplated asking him if he knew anything about Haitch Henderson and decided against it. No links.

  Jackson rubbed his arm. ‘Fuck I hope she doesn’t hear about it. She’ll be off the planet. As it is I’m going to have to hide the car keys now and try to get her to eat something. Christ knows what she’ll do next. You know the funny thing about all this?’

  ‘I haven’t struck one thing yet that’s funny.’

  ‘All the poor bitch wants in the world is to get back together with her husband. The last one. The Yank.’

  18

  On the way back to Glebe I tried Gatellari again, with the same result. What I’d learned from Judith Daniels didn’t disturb me too much. Her view of things was skewed by her hatred of Claudia, jealousy, reaction to failed marriages, incipient alcoholism and who knows what else. Whether her father told her he was afraid of Claudia or not, there was no need to believe him. Still, I was aware of how slanted my own thinking was getting and I urgently wanted to talk to Claudia and get her reaction to some of these things. I was pretty sure that Haitch Henderson was Judith Daniels’ threatening caller, but how he knew about her spending time at Rhino’s place was anybody’s guess.

  But Van Kep was my next target and that required a change of clothes. At home I wolfed down a cheese sandwich and climbed into drill trousers and a blue polo shirt. I swapped the white denim jacket for a zippered khaki job, still loose enough to hide the gun. From Daphne I picked up three business cards that identified me as Henry Pitt, BArch (Sydney), BA (Nebraska State) Landscaping Consultant, and a coloured brochure setting out the claims of Pitt & Partners to beautify any patch of ground on earth. We’d fixed up golf courses, changed grass tennis courts to Rebound Ace and vice versa and turned rubbish dumps into Japanese water gardens. We were specialists in American horticulture, Australian native gardens and matching natural to man-made visual landscapes. I was also a contributing editor to a magazine named Classic Gardens. The mock-up of a cover featured my article on ‘The Political Economy of Symbolic Gardens’. The telephone number on the card was Daphne’s private number in her office and she agreed to put an appropriate message on the answering machine for the next few hours.

  ‘You look okay,’ Daphne said. ‘Might scuff up the shoes a bit.’

  The dog she always had with her, even in the pub, came over and investigated the brown leather.

  ‘Maybe she could piss on them for me?’

  ‘Never. Have fun, Cliff. I’ll send you a bill.’

  I drove to Northbridge, thinking that I was spending more of my time on the wrong side of the harbour lately and wondering what this meant. The .38 felt heavy in its holster and rubbed me under the arm disconcertingly. I reminded myself that, one way or another, Van Kep was involved in Fleischman’s killing, and that almost certainly linked to Cy’s death, so what was a little discomfort?

  Northbridge is hilly, affording views of the harbour from different points. The grounds of the Washington Club must have covered more than a hectare and the council rates would be colossal. I cruised in through an impressive set of gates down a wide gravel drive that curved gracefully up to a large sandstone building occupying the high point of the block. Three storeys, grey slate roof, wide verandah all around, creeper climbing halfway up the walls. There were deep garden beds all along the length of the drive and through the foliage I caught a glimpse of the tennis courts. I couldn’t see the bowling green and concluded it was behind the clubhouse. Several very tall palm trees rose into the sky to different heights back there and I had the impression that the sloping land was terraced in some way, if that was the word. Henry Pitt would know.

  Five vehicles were parked in bays, two fancy 4WDs, a couple of Mercs and a white Cadillac stretch limousine. I assembled my materials, climbed down and tried to give an impression of a very knowledgeable man assessing what he saw in an expert way. I scarcely know one plant from another, but I nodded and clucked and advanced purposefully towards the wide steps leading up to an ornate porch. The double doors were open and I wiped gravel off my feet on the large mat with ‘Washington Club’ etched into the coir. The interior was darkish, cool and smelled of money. There were large earthenware bowls filled with flowers, mounted on pedestals, and I could see boards on the walls with names on them in gold leaf.

  A booth with a sliding glass panel was on the left side just before a set of stairs that led to the inner recesses of the club. I pressed the button on the counter and waited for a full minute before the panel slid open. A woman with white hair and a young face looked at me in a friendly but cautious way.

  ‘Yes? Can I help you?’ The accent was American, Southern possibly, appealing.

  I gave her a card and launched into my spiel, saying I’d like to talk to the manager about possibly doing an article on the club’s garden for Classic Gardens or offering my services as a consultant should the club have any plans for changes to the grounds. I slipped in at least three compliments before I stopped.

  She was handsome and perfectly groomed. Impossible to guess her age. ‘I’m Mrs Kent, Mr Pitt. I’m the club manager and secretary. I guess it’s me you should talk to.’

  Please don’t let her ask me anything about Nebraska, I thought. She didn’t. I said I was glad to meet her, that I’d heard a lot about the club’s gardens and would be very glad if I could look around.

  ‘That’d be fine. We’re very proud of our gardens. I’m a little busy right now or I’d give you the tour. We’ve got a conference on later this afternoon. But you’re welcome to look and when you come back I’m sure I c
an find some time to talk with you. Could you wait just one minute, please? You might care to look at one of our brochures.’

  She wore reading glasses on a silver chain and she put them on to look at the card more closely before backing away. Odds on she’d ring the number on it to check. No worries. I picked up a couple of the glossy brochures on the counter, added them to my papers and waited. She came back after a couple of minutes, gave me a warm smile and handed me a plastic pin-on tag with ‘Visitor’ printed on it in the space between the Australian and American flags. I pinned it to my jacket and strode back out into the sunlight and down the steps. The gravel crunched under my feet.

  19

  A man wearing an overall and heavy boots challenged me before I got off the gravel. I showed him my pass and brochure and he gave way like a lamb. My main worry was running into whoever the police had put on the strength to give Van Kep added protection. There was an outside chance that he might recognise me. That would screw things up nicely. A pair of wraparound sunglasses wasn’t much of a disguise. One garden looks much the same as another to me, but I had to admit this was a nice set-up. Everything that was supposed to be green was, and there were no weeds in the beds that had a good covering of bark and chip mulch.

  The lawns were neatly manicured; the bowling green was like velvet with just a few brownish patches that a man was working on with a light spray. He was short and stocky, not Van Kep. Tennis courts, I do know something about. The club had two grass courts and three artificial surfaces, all in top condition. One net was up on a grass court and a middle-aged man and one somewhat younger were playing a strenuous, skilful game. I found myself watching and wishing I could play. The younger man hit a strong, double-handed volley and raised his right fist in triumph.