Now and Then, Amen

by Jon Cleary

  “Come on, sir, let’s get out of here!” Gawler was breathing heavily, but there was no sign of any emotion. He picked up the mugger’s knife and put it in his pocket. “I’ll get rid of him. Pull yourself together!”

  He grabbed the corpse’s shoulders and dragged it across into a corner at the side of the lift. Tewsday was still leaning against the wall beside the lift door. His bladder had abruptly given way on him; he could feel the piss running down his legs. He gestured weakly as Gawler came back.

  “What about the police?”

  “We don’t want any involvement, sir. Come on, sir!” Now Gawler sounded angry. He grabbed Tewsday by the arm and began to drag him towards the Rolls-Royce. “Come on, for Christ’s sake!”

  Tewsday was a limp wreck, sodden from the crotch down. He was both terrified and embarrassed; he was certain the mugger had intended to kill him. He could not think straight; his mind, too, might have been full of piss. He made no effort to argue with Gawler. He let himself be dragged into the car, heard the door slammed behind him. Then Gawler was in the front seat, starting up the car without fuss or panic and a moment later the Rolls-Royce moved sedately up the ramp and out into the street. Tewsday twisted round and looked back. The garage was still deserted.

  He said nothing all the way home to Pymble, just sat uncomfortably in his sodden trousers. Ever careful of his possessions, he had, however, picked up the floor mat, turned it over to its rubber side and put it between his wet behind and the leather of the car’s seat. He knew that the acid in the urine could stain the leather and he did not want to have to explain it.

  When they drew up in front of the house he got out at once, standing with his legs apart. The cut on his chin had stopped bleeding, but his handkerchief was blood-stained. He had regained some of his composure, but not much. “I think we should have reported it, Gary.”

  “No, sir. You would have been upset by the publicity, once it started.”

  The shocking incident hadn’t entirely dulled Tewsday’s perceptions. “I don’t think you wanted publicity, either. Am I right?”

  “If you say so, sir. This is just between you and me, okay?” He looked down at Tewsday standing with his legs apart, then back up at the big strained face. This was man to man, not servant to master. “Nobody else is to know, not even Lady Tewsday or my wife, okay?”

  Tewsday hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Where did you learn to kill a man like that?”

  “In Vietnam. Good-night sir. I’d get out of those trousers before you see Lady Tewsday.”

  “What will you do with the knife?”

  Gawler took the knife out of his pocket, looked at it as if he had forgotten it. “I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir. Goodnight, sir.”

  Usually, when a servant saves a master’s life, a bond is established; or so some classical tales would have us believe. It usually is a sense of debt on the master’s part. Tewsday, however, was not allowed to feel any such thing; for which he was glad. Gawler made no mention of the incident again, not even the next morning. Tewsday, still embarrassed by his own abject behaviour, still shocked by the coldblooded way Gawler had disposed of the mugger, could find no way of broaching the subject. He had not even thanked Gawler for saving his life, yet he felt it was already too late to do that. The killing of the junkie seemed as inconsequential as the running down of the dog. Gawler was colder and more distant than ever.

  Tewsday managed to hide his stained trousers from Fiona, but she was intrigued by the cut on his chin. “Been duelling with Fingal?”

  “That’s not funny,” he said and gave her no explanation.

  The youth’s body had been discovered later that night by one of the security men. A Sergeant Clements from Homicide came to interview Tewsday, but he could tell the detective nothing—“Yes, I worked late last night, but I saw nothing when I went down into the garage. I gather my driver saw nothing.”

  “I’ve already talked to him,” said Clements. “Nobody seems to have seen anything.”

  Was the big lumbering oaf being sarcastic? “You sound as if you don’t believe us, Sergeant.”

  “Why would I do that?” said Clements and went away. Nothing more was heard from the police. The case, it appeared, was closed. The mugger, a known junkie with a record, was expendable.

  Gawler continued to trouble Tewsday. He had always prided himself on knowing what made people tick; he told himself that even Fingal Hourigan was no secret to him. Knowing who Gawler really was, what was behind that cool façade, became an obsession with him. He finally phoned a man he had not spoken to in thirty years, someone he had hoped never to see again.

  Jack Paxit came to the offices of Ballyduff. He had long ago given up bouncing at night-clubs and now ran the best-known private detective agency in the city. He was in his early sixties now, as beefy as ever but smoother, someone who would talk a man out of a situation rather than throw him out. He had once had a cauliflower ear, but had had cosmetic surgery done on it and it now looked like a white eggplant. He wore an expensive navy-blue suit, but he somehow looked out of place in it, as if he had only borrowed it for the occasion,

  “Sir Jonathan, long time no see. You’re still the Invisible Man, remember? But I hope it’s not that old case, is it? I’m respectable now.”

  “Who isn’t?” said Tewsday, regretting now that he had sent for Paxit; but it was done and so must be gone through with. “I want you to trace the background of someone who works for me. Do you have access to computer systems?”

  “If the price is right, you can have access to anything you care to name. It’s the Freedom of Information Act.” He was the sort of man who had to grin to tell you he was joking.

  If the price is right: how many times had he heard that? “Overseas systems? The US Army, the FBI, systems like that?”

  “Computer systems don’t know any boundaries.” Paxit screwed up his blunt face. “This guy must be special?”

  “I don’t know,” Tewsday confessed. “My suspicions may add up to nothing. He’s my chauffeur—he and his wife live in at our place. I want to know more about him than he’s prepared to tell me.”

  “If he’s just your driver, why not get rid of him if he worries you?”

  “There’s more to it than that.” Though he would never be able to explain it. “This is strictly between you and me—it’s not a company matter. I’d like the information as soon as possible, but be thorough. Name your own price.”

  “My price is reasonable, Sir Jonathan—you must remember that from the old days. It’s what the others will charge that will cost.”

  “The others? Will others need to know?” He was technically, or anyway technologically, ignorant. He appreciated the worth of computers, but he could not work one. He had grown up in an age when sums were done on scraps of paper; he was a brilliant mental mathematician, faster than the whiz kids with their calculators, but was an idiot in front of a computer. “Can’t you do it?”

  “Sir Jonathan, in computer exercises there’s always someone who has to know. The systems don’t work on their own. It’s the human beings who make it dangerous, not the machines. You still want me to go ahead?”

  “Can it be traced back to me? I mean the line of enquiry?”

  “It’ll be traced back to me. I’m a private enquiry agent, that’s what my licence says. They won’t want to waste their time going past me. Not if the price is right. There’s a certain honesty about computer hackers.”

  “Really?” said Tewsday, who always doubted anyone who claimed to be honest. They were like those who claimed to have a sense of humour, jokers who found it hard to take a joke against themselves.

  Paxit came back with the information on Gawler in two weeks: the price must have been right. He put down the envelope on Tewsday’s desk. “It’s all in there, Sir Jonathan. Everything you need to know. I’d be careful of him.”

  “Is that your comment or the computer’s?”

  “Computers don’t have opinions, only facts.
Would you care to pay me in cash?”

  “I thought you were respectable now?”

  Paxit smiled. “Taxation makes it difficult. There are limits a man can go to. If only cash changes hands between us, who’s to know we’ve done any business? You can be the Invisible Man again. Or was it me?”

  “Twenty-five thousand—I don’t have that much on hand. I’ll send it by courier tomorrow.”

  “No receipt, no pack drill—okay? Good luck, Sir Jonathan.” He looked around the big elegant office. “You’ve come a long way.”

  There’s an even bigger, more elegant office one floor above: I haven’t finished climbing.

  Paxit went back to his agency, to his flexible respectability, and Tewsday looked at the record of Gawler’s life. He had indeed been born in Chicago, as he had said, but his name had not been Gary Gawler. It was Alphonse Brown and he was the son of a petty crook with a long list of convictions. He had served in Vietnam, but with a counter-terrorist unit run by the CIA; he had been credited (credited? Tewsday wondered) with no fewer than seventeen killings and probably more. After the end of the Vietnam war he had stayed on in South-east Asia, moving to Bangkok, where he had worked freelance for the CIA; the report had nothing specific on what he had done for the agency. His contract had been abruptly terminated, no reason given, and he had moved on to Hong Kong. He had worked there for a year; again there were no details. He had gone back to the United States, had various jobs, no specific details, and had served three years in Joliet Prison, Illinois, for manslaughter: he had killed a man in a barroom brawl. When he had been released he had changed his name to Ray Karr and had disappeared, at least from the computer records, for three years. When he surfaced again he was back in Bangkok, working for an American drug smuggler (here, a reference code was given). He was suspected of three more killings, but they were expendable victims, other drug smugglers, and the Thai police had not bothered following up the murders. It was in Bangkok in early 1986 that Ray Karr had met Sally Heston, spinster, on holiday on an organized tour. He had followed her to Hong Kong and they had been married there; he had signed the register as Gary Gawler, business consultant. The information ended there, except for the Australian immigration records that the Gawlers, man and wife, had arrived back in Australia in June 1986. If there was any further information in the Australian system it had not been accessible or the price had not been right. No matter: Tewsday knew all he wanted to know. Possibly more: he felt a deepening sense of fear.

  He said nothing to Gawler of what he had learned. As he was driven to the office each morning he studied the chauffeur from the back: I’m employing a professional killer, he told himself with horror and wonder. Yet he made no attempt to dismiss Gawler; it was a week or two before he admitted to himself that he was afraid to. Gawler, for his part, seemed unaware of the deeper scrutiny to which he was being subjected. He was as coolly self-contained as ever; the killing of the junkie might never have taken place. He drove Tewsday home each evening and only then did his composure show the slightest crack. His face would light up at the sight of Sally waiting for him. Tewsday, angry with himself, would envy him; there was none of that feeling left between him and Fiona. He wondered how much Sally knew about her husband’s past life, but he knew he would never again attempt to question her. He was afraid of what Gawler might do to him.

  So the odd situation continued and after a while Tewsday grew to live with it. The Rolls-Royce became a merry-go-round, though he felt no merriment: he rode behind Gawler on a carousel from which he couldn’t alight.

  III

  Brigid Hourigan came back to Australia in the spring of 1986, bringing with her a young handsome Italian who, quite obviously, was her houseman in more ways than one. Though not an alcoholic, she had become a regular drinker, another characteristic which set her apart from her father, the teetotaller. She bought a waterfront house on Pittwater, twenty-five miles north of Sydney, set up a studio but painted only spasmodically. With her salaried lover, her daughter the nun now in Nicaragua, her father and brother more estranged from her than ever, she had become bitterly aware of the gaping holes in her life. She blamed no one, but that didn’t help: she might have done better to have had a focus for her bitterness.

  Fingal was glad to have his daughter at least within driving distance; but he could not bring himself to tell her so. He had never feared loneliness before; he had always found a certain safety in it. Now, however, safe at last beyond all danger and worry, he had begun to hanker for company and (yes, though he found it hard to believe) love. Kerry loved him, or so he made himself believe; but Kerry now spent all his time in Rome. Fingal went there every northern summer, but as soon as the cold winds came down the spine of the Apennines he would leave and return to Sydney. There the loneliness would creep in on him again, another kind of winter.

  Sometimes he even thought of calling up Tilly Mosman and asking her to visit him. He had not seen her in twelve years, not since he had had the property division buy up the whole street in Surry Hills and then told Tilly to take up a long lease on the two big terrace houses. He had given her the money to pay the first three years of the lease, then bade her goodbye. To his chagrin and embarrassment, the lead had started to slip out of his pencil; too often Tilly, for all her tricks, failed to arouse his erection. To his further embarrassment, because he had always prided himself on his appearance, his body, if not his face, had become an old man’s, stringy and wrinkled. He had never been one for making love in the dark: Sheila had liked it best in broad daylight. Now he had turned out the light for ever on love-making and Tilly had become only a memory, occasionally revived.

  Jonathan Tewsday revived the memory on one occasion when they were alone after a board meeting. “Did you know we own the lease on the Quality Couch?” Fingal looked at him feigning puzzlement and Tewsday explained. “The top brothel in town.”

  “Are you visiting brothels now?”

  “Don’t be sanctimonious, Fingal. Yes, I’ve been there a couple of times. Fiona and I are not the best of friends, well, not that way.”

  Fingal was embarrassed; he did not like people to confess their bedroom problems. “You’re taking a risk, aren’t you? You’d be recognized.”

  “I went twice, that was all. Some of our Japanese clients had heard of it and when—” he named a top Japanese industrialist “—came out here, our PR man put on a party there. I went along.”

  “That was once. Why twice?”

  “I enjoyed myself, if you want the truth. I don’t think being recognized would cause any harm—you’d be surprised who I saw there, girls as well as clients. Even two of our best-known girls-about-town work there.”

  He waited as if he expected Fingal to show interest; but the latter had never been interested in gossip, not even when Tilly had been coming to his bed in the flat in Macquarie Street. “Is it a good house?”

  “The best. Five star.”

  “They ever troubled by the police?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  Good: it seemed that Tilly had taken care of herself. He felt pleased for her: she had made him happy at one time. “So long as they pay the lease, leave „em alone. We’d only get bad publicity if we closed them down.”

  “Are you thinking of your son the Archbishop?” said Tewsday shrewdly.

  “No. He’s never been a customer there,” said Fingal. “I was thinking of you.”

  Tewsday left him then, angry that he had raised the subject of the Quality Couch. The old bastard could never resist scoring points.

  He went downstairs and into Bob Borsolino’s office. The other managing director looked up in annoyance; he was a workaholic, a man who hated wasting a minute of office time. Tewsday sat down uninvited and Borsolino sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “Bob, you ran the properties division ten or twelve years ago, right? Who recommended we buy up the whole of Sandhill Street, Surry Hills?”

  Borsolino frowned. He had a narrow bony face that seem
ed to be continually frowning, as if he were deep in some financial problem, an accountant squeezed thin by heavy ledgers. “Hell, I don’t know, Jonathan—no, wait a minute. Is that the street where they have that brothel, what’s it called?” He was a highly moral man, except when it came to creative accounting.

  “The Quality Couch.”

  “What a name!” He shook his head, his lank hair falling down over his brow. He had none of Tewsday’s smoothness, tailored or otherwise, but then he had never aspired to appearances. He had other aspirations, though he had never confessed them to anyone, not even his wife. “It was the boss who told me to buy up that street. I can’t remember if he said anyone had recommended it to him. We looked it up and thought it was a good buy for the future, in case it was re-zoned. It’s still residential and I guess we’ve just hung on to it.”

  “Did Fingal recommend the lease to the brothel owner, Tilly Mosman?”

  Borsolino frowned again, then laughed. “Jonathan, d’you think the old man’s been making money on the side out of a brothel? I don’t know who recommended the owner, or if anyone did. When she took out the lease, she certainly wouldn’t have said she wanted it for a brothel. All I can remember is that she wanted a long lease, renewable every five years, and the old man okayed it. Those were the days, you remember them, when he poked his finger in every pie.”

  “An unfortunate phrase, but thanks, Bob.” And Tewsday went back to his own office satisfied that, even if not now, there had once been a connection between Fingal and Tilly Mosman.

  Then he heard that Fingal’s granddaughter, the nun Sister Mary Magdalene, had come to Sydney from Nicaragua. He discovered the fact by accident when he rang Fingal at home one Sunday and Mrs. Kelly, the housekeeper, said she didn’t want to interrupt Himself because he was entertaining his granddaughter—“A lovely young nun, she’s just come home from one of them South American places, Mick or Nick something-or-other.”

  Tewsday hung up, then called Brigid. “Your daughter’s home, I hear. Congratulations.”