The Washington Club

by Peter Corris

  26

  I’d arranged to meet Rattray in the car park at the club. I was a few minutes late and he was there right on time, standing beside his gunmetal Mazda. Security consulting must pay better than PEA work. He was talking animatedly on his mobile phone as I rolled up and parked between a Merc and a Jag. He finished the call before acknowledging my presence. We introduced ourselves and shook hands. He was already in his tennis gear with that long bag at his feet. His grip was strong and although he was a bit heavier than he should be, so was I. I was glad I was playing tennis with him rather than wrestling. I gestured at my suit.

  ‘I need to change, Todd. Been to a bloody funeral. Where’s the locker room?’

  ‘You can change at the court, Warwick. Let’s go.’

  Bad news, but nothing I could do about it. I hefted my bag and followed him through the gardens towards the court. He was shorter than me, maybe ten years younger and he walked with a bounce. Worrying. Also troubling was the sudden drop in the light. Some clouds had come across and there was a very distant rumble of thunder. Rattray looked up at the sky through the leaf canopy.

  ‘We’ll get a set in, Warwick, with a bit of luck. But it’s going to piss down later.’

  ‘Wasn’t in the forecast,’ I said.

  ‘Fuckin’ idiots, those blokes. What d’they know? If their jobs were performance-based they’d all be on the dole.’

  Hard to argue with that. We got to the courts and he pointed me towards a structure that was little more than a shell—fine for changing, storing nets and balls and court maintenance equipment, but no shower. My spirits rose. I was bound to work up a sweat against Todd. Just watching him do stretching exercises over by the net post was tiring. He unzipped his bag, took out three racquets and tested them for tension.

  ‘Heavy atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Need the right stringing.’

  Pretentious prick, I thought. I only had the one racquet and if the tension was wrong, tough shit. I wasn’t really here to play tennis. I was here to snoop, professionally, dangerously. But, despite myself, I could feel that I was getting into it—feeling the competitive urge.

  I changed, we tossed for serve. He won. I picked an end and after a brief hit-up we got down to it. I hadn’t played for a while and not on grass for a long time. I was rusty in the hit-up. I’ve got a heavy, fairly accurate first serve; the second I just try to spin in. I hit my forehand flat and slice and chip the backhand. I’m shaky overhead and my backhand volley is suspect; forehand volley’s better. All in all, my game was better suited to the grass than his. Every so often, his heavily top-spun ground strokes tended to sit up and give me time to get set for a good hit. Also he occasionally mishit one. He preferred the back court but he was no slouch at the net.

  His weakness was his mean streak. He liked to embarrass an opponent with a dinky little drop shot every now and then. The first time he tried it he caught me flat-footed and I could see the expression of pleasure on his face. Trouble was, he started that expression when he was thinking about playing the next shot, so that the next time I was ready for it and lobbed over him. That left him running backwards, mistiming his shot and me dropping it dead just over the net. Todd didn’t like that. He liked it even less when it happened twice more.

  Still, he was younger, faster and a better player than me and I had no chance of beating him unless he broke a leg. The disadvantage to two-handed hitting is that you have to be closer to the ball to hit it and you can get jammed by a straight, fast serve. I had him stretching a few times and jammed him every so often. But once he found the range and adapted to my style, he whipped those two handers past me if I tried to come in and found sharp angles if I played from the back court. Ordinarily, I’d have enjoyed the game, even if I was losing. I hit some good shots and aced him a few times. But I was pissed-off that he insisted on coaching me.

  ‘You’re off-balance, Warwick.’

  ‘You’re dropping the racquet head.’

  ‘Hit through it, mate.’

  A light wind got up and the sunlight began to come in shafts through the clouds, so that one minute the court would be brightly lit and the next in shadow. Tricky. The thunder rumbled closer when he had me 3–5 down. He was serving for the set and I chased everything and hit the two best shots I’d played to date. The score got to my advantage which rattled him. I decided I’d had enough. He probably would have won it anyway, but I lost the next point to a deliberate mishit and we were back to deuce. He went ad-up after a kicking serve that might have missed the line, hard to say. Todd tended to call the lines himself and always his way. He won the set with a down-the-line shot that had me running the wrong way. I was dripping with sweat when I jogged up to the net to shake his hand. The first drops of rain fell.

  ‘Hope you have better luck against the bloke you’re playing. You lack a bit of speed.’

  ‘I’ve got guile,’ I panted. ‘Thanks, Todd. Shit, I need a shower. Okay to use the clubhouse?’

  ‘Sure.’ He went to his bag and took out a plastic tag like the one Mrs Kent had given me. ‘This’ll get you in. I’ll just tidy up here a bit.’

  I couldn’t believe the luck. I made a feeble offer to help him but he waved me away. I collected my clothes and walked quickly back to the Nissan. I dumped the suit, the racquet and tennis bag and took out the bag with the casual gear. It also happened to have my .38 inside it. A study of the brochure had shown that there was a side entrance to the club leading directly to the squash court, swimming pool, gym, sauna and locker room. Less chance of meeting Mrs Kent, but I kept the peak of my cap drawn down over my face as much as possible anyway.

  There were a few lap swimmers trawling up and down and I could hear grunts from the weights room. A tough game of squash was in progress. It made me think of Cy. They’d be finished at Rookwood now and the long sit-in at the house would have begun. I pushed open the door to the locker room thinking that Cy would have choked about the WASP pretentiousness of this place. ‘Stained woodwork to convey an air of spurious antiquity,’ he would have said, or something such. I was missing him and I was angry about everything.

  The locker room was empty. I inhaled the familiar smell of sweat and liniment, strode to the bank of lockers and dumped my bag down in front of C20. A name tag slipped into the space provided read ‘W. KATZ’. The key was in a zip pocket of the bag. I took it out and tried it. The door, nearly as tall as me, swung smoothly open. The locker was deep and divided into two compartments. On the top shelf was a pair of sneakers, some tennis balls and an unsealed padded jiffy bag. I opened it and a thick quarto sized notebook slid out. I caught it before it hit the tiles and flipped through a few pages. It was a kind of diary-cum-journal. The language looked like German but I was willing to bet it was Yiddish and that the writer was Klaus Rosen. I put the notebook on top of my bag.

  In the lower part of the locker were an empty sports bag, two tennis racquets and something wrapped in heavy plastic. I pulled it out and was surprised at its lightness, but not by its size or shape. What I had in my hands was an assault rifle—folded-down, moulded plastic stock, handgrip, trigger guard. Taped to it were two other items also plastic-wrapped—at a guess, a magazine and a telescopic sight.

  The door whispered open and I spun around. My gun was only inches away, but tucked deep inside my bag. Wilson Katz had a pistol in his hand, pointed at my chest and all ready to fire. So did Todd Rattray.

  27

  Katz said, ‘You killed Henderson. My compliments. That makes you a very dangerous man.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Noel must’ve told you. You’re in tight with him as well as Van Kep.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Rattray locked the door and moved to Katz’s left, blocking the way to the showers and toilets. The room was about five metres by five with benches along two of the walls and another in front of the bank of lockers. There were wall-mounted mirrors, two hand basins, hair dryers, sockets for electric razors, no windows. The lighting was overhead and concea
led—perfect for shooting. Katz was standing about three metres away from me, looking composed and prepared. His gun hand wasn’t all that steady, but it would have been hard for him to miss at the range. I sat down on the bench, still holding the useless rifle.

  ‘Put it on the floor,’ Katz said.

  I did. ‘That’s the gun that killed Fleischman and Cy Sackville,’ I said. ‘Henderson was the shooter. You did the hiring.’

  ‘Right again. It’s a bit late for you to work all this out, Hardy.’

  ‘Oh, I worked some of it out a while ago. I just didn’t think Noel would be tied in to you and I hadn’t quite figured a hook-up between Todd here and you and Van Kep. I didn’t think you’d have any hooks into the witness protection program either. Should have. Dumb of me.’

  I was lying. I’d intuited Katz’s involvement but hadn’t counted on him being hands-on.

  Katz laughed, then shook his head. ‘Right. I’ve got hooks into all sorts of things. You’d be surprised. You did pretty well to get this far. I assume you found the locker key at Henderson’s. How did you connect it with this place?’

  ‘Just luck.’

  Rattray sniggered. ‘You’re not much fucking better at all this shit than you are at tennis.’

  ‘I tanked the last game.’

  ‘Bullshit, you . . .’

  ‘Shut up!’ Katz said. ‘The question is, have you told anyone else about how far your figuring took you? My guess is you’ve only told Claudia and that hardly matters.’

  I didn’t like the sound of that one bit. ‘You can’t be sure of that. But what d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean she’ll either leave the country soon or she’ll disappear. No trial, either way. I thought I had her pretty well spooked and ready to run but you queered that.’

  My mind was racing. How many laps would those blokes swim? How long could that pair bash a little black ball at the wall? No way to tell. Katz didn’t look too worried about a time factor. He sat on the bench opposite me and gave his gun hand a rest. Rattray kept his at the ready.

  ‘In case you’re thinking we might get interrupted, forget it. The club runs to a few shower rooms and we made sure this one would stay free.’

  He meant it and the words were like knuckles in the eyes and a knee to the balls, but I couldn’t let him see that. ‘You’ve got my respect, Wilson. Tell me what it’s all about then. Maybe I still know a few things you don’t know. We can talk.’

  Katz shrugged. ‘Not much to talk about or to tell, way I look at it. I know you’re playing for time but I’ll humour you. Julius couldn’t see the potential of his operation. He was only half-smart, if that. I started to diversify and steal everything out from under him. I fixed it so when he died the whole thing would go into bankruptcy because all the honey was in another hive. This is a great place for creative bankruptcy, let me tell you. The legal system in this country’s fucked.’

  Katz laughed, genuinely amused.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So he died.’

  ‘Why did you have to frame Claudia?’

  ‘Why not? Good smokescreen. High-hatting bitch. I thought she’d keep Julius distracted for longer than she did but he was such an asshole he found a way to screw it up with her. When she asked Van Kep to protect her she played right into my hands, so to speak.’

  I was sitting with my back to the open locker with the bag beside me, the Rosen journal on top of it. My back hurt from where I had reached up for a smash and I reached back to rub it. I jolted the bag and the journal in its package fell to the floor. I bent forward to pick it up.

  ‘Leave it! You wouldn’t read Yiddish, would you? Why’re you scratching yourself?’

  I shook my head and kept rubbing my back. My hand could feel something at the foot of the locker. ‘No,’ I said, rubbing some more. ‘I can’t read anything but English and I’m rubbing, not scratching. I’ve got a crook back, another reason why Todd beat me.’

  Katz cleared his throat. ‘I don’t quite know what to think about you, Hardy. You’ve made things harder in some ways, easier in others. I told Henderson to fire a few shots at Claudia to scare her, instead he goes feral and tries to kill you and he shoots Sackville. Mind you, I’m glad you took him out. So’s Noel, for that matter.’

  My fingers were identifying the object behind me. It was a pistol. Was it loaded? Was it real? I had to keep Katz talking and Rattray angry.

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you about Henderson, but what does it matter?’ I glanced across at Rattray. ‘You have to be careful who you use in this kind of work. Most of the available bodies aren’t very bright or reliable. What’s this notebook got to do with anything?’

  Katz smirked. ‘Oh, that’s my card in the hole. That’s what’ll send little Claudia into a tailspin if I have to play it. Want to know what Julius found out about Klaus and Julia, Claudia’s Mom and Pop?’

  ‘You’re going to tell me.’

  ‘Bet your ass I am. They were brother and sister, that’s what. Kind of a mix-up getting the little kids out of Germany. False names and all that. It all sorted out okay in the end and Klaus and Julia suited each other just fine.’

  ‘Did they know?’

  Katz laughed. ‘They did when Julius told them. He really put it to them.’

  ‘He told you this?’

  ‘Sure. He wanted the daughter. Fuck knows why. She looks frigid to me. You might know better.’

  I thought about Claudia and her parents and the things they’d been through together and the hidden things. I couldn’t even imagine what a couple like the Rosens would have experienced when a truth like that was laid out for them. Horror? Shame? I didn’t know, and I didn’t know how Claudia would react. Suddenly, it became important to me, more important than anything else, that she shouldn’t ever find out. That gave me resolve—I wouldn’t call it courage. I sneered and looked Katz in the eye.

  ‘I might know a few things about your wife, too.’

  His fingers tightened on the pistol. ‘What’re you talking about?’

  I had my hand firmly on the gun now—a revolver, no safety. I hawked and spat on the floor near Katz’s feet. Both men reacted. I lifted the revolver a fraction. It felt real and loaded.

  ‘You’re not in such a strong position as you think, Wilson. There’s Van Kep and Noel to think about, and Todd here.’

  ‘The fuck I’m not. A faggot and a junkie pimp, how long can they last?’

  He was talking, enjoying the sound of his voice, but also expanding time. I knew why—not many people can kill with ease. I let my eyes wander around the room and my voice shake a little. ‘What about Todd?’

  ‘Todd’s solid. You’re right to look around. This is the last fucking room you’re going to see.’

  ‘You won’t shoot me here.’

  ‘No?’

  I looked to my left and saw Rattray fitting a silencer to his pistol. He fumbled. It was the only chance I was ever going to get. I leaned away, brought the revolver around my body and fired three times at Rattray. I got him in the stomach with the first shot and in the chest with the second. The third might have missed but I didn’t care. He got off one popping round before he went down but it went nowhere near me. I jumped forward and to the right as Katz shouted and fired. The bullet pinged off the metal locker and shattered tiles. I fired wildly. The shots and ricochets echoed and shrieked in the confined space. Tile fragments hit both of us in the face and Katz fell, dropping his gun.

  I was breathing heavily, crouched, only two metres from him as he writhed on the floor, scrabbling for his gun. Blood was dripping from his cheek but it was running from his forehead into his eyes and he was effectively blind. He couldn’t locate the gun and he crawled away towards the wall, holding up his hands like a beggar. He wore a blue blazer and cream silk shirt. The pockets of the shirt had his initials on them, white-embossed. His Washington Club tie was loosened at the neck and askew. I seemed to relive the whole thing as he crawled away and reached the wall, propped hi
mself up against it, tried to wipe the blood from his eyes.

  Fleischman, the Rosens, Claudia, murderous Haitch Henderson, nasty Noel, perverted Van Kep, macho Rattray. And Cy, my dear, dear friend.

  He wiped blood away, saw me. ‘Hardy, like you said, we can talk. I’ve got more money than you ever heard of.’

  He was three metres away now. I straightened up and moved a little closer. Not too close.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done anything to Claudia, I promise you. Nothing! Nothing, Hardy! Please, please.’

  I didn’t hear what he was saying, not really. I heard the earlier words. The legal system in this country’s fucked. And the laugh.

  I was exhausted, physically, mentally and morally spent. I raised the gun, sighted carefully, and shot him just below the pocket, on the left side, through the heart.

  28

  The noise of the shots was still bouncing off the tiled walls as I shoved Klaus Rosen’s journal inside my tennis racquet cover and zipped it shut. As the reverberations died I heard shouts in the corridor, then fists banging on the door. I pulled it open and stood there with blood dripping from my face and a pistol in my hand. A swimmer, a squash player and Mrs Kent stood gaping at me.

  ‘Anyone got a mobile phone?’ I said.

  The shit that hit the fan that day dripped for months and is still dripping. The uniformed cops arrived, then the ambulances and then the detectives. I told them as much as I needed to and they took me away to have some stitches put in my cheek and then to Darlinghurst to tell them a whole lot more. I gave it almost all to them—Fleischman, Katz, Rattray, Van Kep. And I told them how and why I’d killed Haitch Henderson. I kept Frank Parker out of it and I didn’t say anything about the Rosen journal. Nobody bothered to look inside my tennis racquet cover. Why should they? They had the revolver, two other pistols and a rifle, plus ammunition—who needed a notebook written in Yiddish?