Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘The police think it might be someone from the old days who killed him.’

  His interest was barely polite. ‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘They think it was Marvin.’

  ‘Why would Marvin do anything to Charlie?’

  ‘Why would anyone? Charlie was harmless.’

  ‘Someone didn’t think so.’

  I stared at him, not knowing what I wanted from this. My head was still spinning. What did it mean, Lindsay being in town? And if the police thought Marvin and Charlie had reasons to hate each other, what about Lindsay and Charlie? Of all of us it was Lindsay who Charlie had reason to hate. And whereas it was impossible to imagine Marvin doing anything like that, Lindsay . . . Lindsay was something else. If Charlie had come out of the past, full of anger and blame, nipping around Lindsay’s heels, what would Lindsay do?

  Don’t you worry about Lindsay . . .

  I said, ‘The police told me they know it wasn’t you. How do they know that?’

  ‘They know where I was that night. And it was nowhere near Charlie.’

  ‘You’ve talked to the police?’

  ‘Course I have.’

  ‘They told me to come here, you know.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Detective Lewis.’

  Lindsay considered this for a moment. ‘He’s an arsehole.’

  I looked around the office again, at the filing cabinets, the boxes of alcohol, the rosters and pay-sheets piled up on the desk, and it was all as familiar as yesterday. ‘They don’t mind that you’re back in the trade?’

  ‘This is all legal, George, it’s not like the old days.’

  ‘Where are the bedrooms? Upstairs?’

  He was scornful. ‘You don’t get it. Brothels are illegal. For the moment anyway. Next year they got new legislation coming through and they reckon maybe then we can set something up. But right now, this is it.’

  I was scornful myself. ‘So no one is running women any more?’

  He smiled. ‘It’s supposed to be single girl operations only, no collectives, no management. It’s trickier than it used to be. That’s why these places do so well now.’

  ‘I never thought you’d end up running strip clubs.’

  ‘It’s not that bad. It’s all more upmarket. It’s corporate. You can’t hold a business lunch in a brothel, but a business lunch with lap-dancing and a steak, everyone thinks that’s fine. We have a kitchen upstairs, that’s all, no bedrooms. But if it’s sex you’re after, well, things can be arranged. Why? You after a woman for the night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve changed then, from what I remember.’

  ‘So have you.’

  He nodded. ‘Things were crazy back then, it was always gonna fall apart.’

  But there was a certain bitter satisfaction in his tone. As if he’d triumphed in some way that I didn’t understand. And maybe he had. Almost everyone else, from our syndicate and from all the other syndicates, had gone broke or gone to prison, and yet Lindsay had survived—reduced admittedly, older and smaller, but still in business. Though I couldn’t see that it had brought him any joy. Ten years had not treated him well. Nor could I see how he’d arranged it. The authorities had wanted him more than anyone.

  ‘Did you ever see Charlie after the inquiry?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘From what I heard about him, I don’t think he would have got past the front door of any of my places.’ He looked me over. ‘I’m a little surprised you got in.’

  ‘What about Marvin?’

  ‘That’s right, you said you were looking for him.’

  ‘So are the police.’

  His didn’t answer. His eyes were following the curls of smoke above his head.

  ‘He’s been officially reported missing.’

  That caught his attention. ‘Missing?’

  ‘His housekeeper reported him missing yesterday.’

  Lindsay blinked. ‘The fucking idiot.’

  ‘Who—the housekeeper?’

  He gave me a disgusted look. ‘No, not the fucking housekeeper.’

  It sunk in. ‘You know where he is, don’t you?’

  He was stubbing his cigarette out angrily. ‘Why do you want to see him anyway?’

  ‘Because of Charlie, of course.’

  ‘Marvin didn’t have anything to do with it. Electrocution, for Christ’s sake. That’s hardly Marvin’s style.’

  ‘Do you know that for sure?’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any sense, I know that for sure.’

  ‘Marvin and Charlie met up in St Amand’s detox ward just before Charlie died. And since then, Marvin’s disappeared. There must be some connection.’

  He was taken aback. ‘A detox ward? Marvin?’

  ‘A detox ward. With Charlie.’

  ‘Marvin didn’t say anything about any detox ward. Or about Charlie.’

  ‘You’ve talked to him?’

  Lindsay pondered his ashtray for a moment, made a decision. ‘He came to see me a couple of weeks ago. He just said he needed to lay low for a while and did I have somewhere he could stay. I said sure. I guess he forgot to tell his housekeeper he’d be away.’

  ‘But what’s he hiding from?’

  ‘Who knows? None of my business. None of yours either.’

  ‘But Marvin must have said something.’

  ‘He didn’t, and I didn’t ask. I was just doing him a favour, for old times’ sake.’

  ‘But you must have some idea.’

  ‘You don’t get it. Marvin and I aren’t in business any more. I hardly ever see him. He calls me up sometimes if he wants some girls for a party or something, but that’s about it. So this time he calls up and needs a place to stay, and I got a house I’m not using right now, so what’s the harm?’

  ‘But haven’t the police asked you where he is? They asked me.’

  ‘To hell with them, I’m not their fucking errand boy.’

  ‘You lied to the police?’

  ‘I withheld information.’

  ‘That’s a big favour, just for old times’ sake.’

  ‘Believe me, it’s as far as I plan to go. To hell with Marvin too. I’m not his fairy godmother.’

  I realised he was furious. It was something to do with Marvin. What was their relationship now? In the old days Marvin had been in charge. Lindsay managed the money, certainly, but it was Marvin who decided what clubs we opened and when, Marvin who brought in the special friends and guests and entertained them, Marvin who would call Lindsay out of the office and let him know that this friend was to get everything for free, and that friend wasn’t.

  But Marvin went to jail and lost it all, and here was Lindsay. Prospering, it seemed, all on his own. What need would he have to help Marvin?

  I said, ‘Can I get a phone number, or an address?’

  ‘He doesn’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘Well, could you call him at least, and let him know. He can ring me if he wants. I’ll give you my number.’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, but it was mostly a refusal.

  ‘C’mon . . . you don’t think it’s me he’s trying to avoid?’

  ‘No offence, George, but why the fuck would anyone hide from you?’

  ‘Tell him I just want to talk about Charlie. That’s all. And I won’t say anything to the police. About you or him.’

  His eyes blazed, and suddenly Lindsay didn’t look old or tired at all. ‘Not if you have a brain, you won’t.’ Immediately he cooled, leaned back again in his chair. ‘Why do you wanna get involved in Marvin’s mess anyway? Wasn’t once enough?’

  ‘You know what Charlie was doing up in Highwood, don’t you?’

  ‘Getting himself killed?’

  ‘He was looking for me.’

  He nodded, but his gaze still held, undecided. ‘What do you do these days, George?’

  ‘I work on the paper, up at Highwood.’

  ‘Nice town, is it?’

  ‘Very nice. A little too quiet for
you, though, I’d think.’

  He didn’t smile. ‘You wanna know why those two guys were so heavy when you came in?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Marvin did say a few things. He said the police might be looking for him, and he didn’t want them to know. No problem there. But he said someone else might be looking for him too. Someone he really didn’t want to meet.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A friend. An old friend.’

  ‘Like I said, he doesn’t mean me.’

  ‘I know. He told me who it was.’

  ‘Who?’

  But Lindsay appeared not to have heard. ‘So I’m sitting here,’ he said, ‘and I get a call that some guy is in the bar looking for Marvin . . .’

  My eyes strayed to a security television screen in the corner. The picture flicked between an overhead shot of the foyer, and a long shot of the bar. It didn’t show any of the booths. I watched as a man handed over money to the bartender. Lindsay would have been able to see me there, but the definition and the lighting weren’t good. I could have been anyone. The man at the bar could have been anyone. The television made him seem ominous, a dark shadow in black and white.

  ‘But I gave my name.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . .’ And then I did. ‘This person’s name—it’s George?’

  Lindsay nodded, waiting.

  ‘But George who? I don’t know any friends of Marvin’s called George. Except me.’

  He stared at me, wondering. ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Fuck, what were you doing back then?’ He sat up abruptly, all business again. ‘Well it isn’t my job to tell you.’

  ‘But . . . is this anything to do with Charlie? Is this the man who—’

  ‘No idea. Marvin didn’t say.’

  ‘But he was worried?’

  ‘He was shit scared.’

  We sat there. On the closed-circuit TV screen, the man walked away from the bar and vanished into darkness.

  Lindsay was watching me. ‘I’ve never met this guy myself, you understand, but I’ve heard some stuff about him. And like you saw, I wasn’t taking any chances. The thing is, if someone comes round, I can always look after myself. You, George . . . you sure you don’t just want to go back to your little town?’

  And suddenly I wasn’t sure. I was disturbed. It was Lindsay himself, partly. Even balding and old, he was harder than I remembered, and colder. Maybe everything about the old days had been harder and colder than I’d realised, if I’d ever been sober enough to notice. I was sober now, and I thought of other men like Lindsay, even harder men. I thought about a man who had taken the time to string Charlie up and apply electrodes to his back, to pour mouthful after mouthful of vodka down his throat. Did I really want to know who that was?

  Later I heard he’d run off into the hills . . .

  I leaned across the desk and took up a pen, wrote down my motel’s name and my room number on a blank pay-sheet.

  Lindsay sighed. ‘I’ll call him tomorrow. From there, it’s up to Marvin.’

  And despite the heat I felt a chill inside, committed to something I knew could only be bad.

  Lindsay noticed perhaps. ‘You want me to get you a drink?’

  ‘I don’t drink any more.’

  ‘No women, no drink. You given up living, George?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I rose from my chair, as if everything had been said.

  Lindsay didn’t stop me. He took up another cigarette.

  ‘I’m assuming you won’t come back here. If you’re not buying anything I’m selling, then why bother? And there’s no ‘‘old times’ sake’’ between you and me.’

  ‘I won’t be back. I still can’t believe you’re even here. Why didn’t you just stay away? What’s so special about Brisbane?’

  He paused, lighter in hand. ‘Money, George. What else? This is still one of the biggest sucker states in the world. It always will be. But if you can’t see that already, even after all these years, then I can’t explain it to you.’

  I didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t care.

  I put my hand on the doorknob. I said, ‘What if I had been this other George. What would you and your two boys have done with me?’

  Lindsay smiled, and I saw in that smile a pit opening, both to the past and the future, where nothing I’d believed was true or had ever been true. It was a smile that welcomed me into the world of the way things really were, if I wanted to enter it.

  I was gone before he had a chance to answer.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was Maybellene who blinded me.

  To the way things really were.

  It was a criminal world, a cheap and banal world, full of exploitation and even violence, and I should always have known. But May was part of it, and I was in love with her, and that’s all I really remembered. Maybellene, and the drinking.

  I wasn’t the only one. In a way, with the exception of Lindsay, we all fell for her. In theory she was the least important person in the syndicate, she had the smallest amount of money invested, had no direct connection to any of the operations. But in other ways, she was the centre around which we all revolved. Jeremy doted on her like a grandfather, Marvin was smart enough to exploit her intelligence for his own ends, Charlie simply worshipped her, and I . . . I held her darkly in my heart, waiting.

  None of us could have said exactly why. Perhaps it had something to do with the way she’d come to the syndicate. So reluctant and distrustful. The rest of us had never given a thought to the ethics of what we were doing, but May had started out differently. In the austerity of her Catholic school, the teenage May had developed an earnest and burning sense of morality. Not Catholic morality, morality of a deeper sense. One that involved fairness. She could see even then it didn’t operate in Queensland. Part of her wanted to escape. To Sydney, or Melbourne, or somewhere overseas. Anywhere. But Jeremy was right. She may never have joined a convent, perhaps, but her sensibilities were of the missionary kind. The young May couldn’t bring herself to walk away from a crusade. And so she couldn’t abandon Queensland. What place in the world, after all, needed her help more? Staying in Brisbane was her first act of self-sacrifice.

  Hence university and the political studies and the activism. But it all went wrong. The crusade went nowhere. The people of Queensland didn’t want to be saved, her fellow missionaries all betrayed the cause, and she ended up alone in a prison cell. All that concern and outrage and desire to improve things, thrown back in her face. The world wanted to be the way it was. No wonder it turned to bitterness. No wonder that when Jeremy came sliding in, arch manipulator of the young that he already was, he found her so easy to turn.

  But there was a price, and from that moment on there would be a fatal division in May. While betraying all the beliefs of her youth, she could never embrace the opposite philosophy either, Marvin’s philosophy, or Jeremy’s. She did what they wanted of her, but for all that they might whisper in her ear that theirs was the only way, the right way, she was never completely convinced, could never quite forgive herself. So she was left with no beliefs at all, only an anchorless cynicism. One of us but eternally an outsider, holding as much disgust for her new life as she was disillusioned about her old. And that was what gave her power. She wasn’t there for the money or the greed or the indulgence. She shared none of our laziness or self-congratulation. She was alone in her vacuum, cold and clear, and so formed a single, bright point in the muddy haze that was our world.

  But the doubts remained, deep within.

  Which is why, possibly, she resorted to alcohol. It silenced her conscience, stifled all the questions that ate away at her, cast the golden glow, just as it did for me. But she knew, too, that it was an illusion. From that first bottle of champagne I saw her struggling to open, the dilemma was never resolved. Whether to sink into the safety of oblivion, or face herself in sobriety. She would battle with those first few drinks, terribly at o
dds with the temptation, because once she’d had the one or the two, she knew it wouldn’t stop. It was in those moments—when some higher sense of purpose in her strove with a blacker passion—that I fell in love with her. She went through it every time before she drank, and I watched it every time with a sort of breathless expectation. Nor did I ever encourage her one way or the other. Any other friend, I would have paid for the drinks and poured the first one down their throat . . . but not with May. She appeared so naked, so exposed, poised on the verge of that choice. In the end she almost always chose the alcohol, but it was never a settled thing, even after years. She would look at that first bottle with something like dread and something like longing, and the struggle for her soul would go on.

  Charlie watched her too.

  While May’s agony aroused a fascination in me, it aroused only sympathy in him. It was a marginal thing, for of course none of us would ever have encouraged someone not to drink. But whereas I would welcome May’s first glass with a toast of my own, Charlie mourned it with a momentary sadness. Maybe he saw, as I didn’t in those early days, how different May was from the rest of us, that she could have done so much better than sink into our world. I didn’t agree. I thought May fitted our world exactly, expanded it, fulfilled it. For when the alcohol was singing in her, she was free from any constraint or doubt at all. And free, she was far wilder and more dangerous than any of us. That’s when her contempt for Queensland, for its hypocrisy and stupidity and suffocating small mindedness, was all set loose. In those moods it was May who drove us out into the streets, to the clubs and the casinos. May who called for champagne or cocktails instead of just wine and beer. May who never wanted the night to stumble to an end. May who would parade through the brothels as if she owned them, then drag Charlie off to a room to play whore for the evening.

  And what a figure she cut. In a world of false brilliance and thin glamour, her very plainness was striking. The simplest of clothes and hair, a body that was lean and straight—surrounded by the rest of us, men and women alike, soft and overweight and overdressed. Everyone was aware of her, confused by her, unsettled by her. She didn’t fit any of the patterns, never sank into any of the usual complacencies. No matter how much she drank, her face never lost its intensity and severity, its anger. To me she was a glowing streak through the night, leaving all the other women, as fiery and beautiful as they supposedly were, tumbling behind in her wake.