The Big Drop

by Peter Corris

  ‘It sold itself, dear. The thing is—can he do the same again?’

  She filled her mouth with pastry and cold liquid; I had to look away, and I had the feeling that Leslie wanted to but he didn’t.

  ‘I don’t know but that’s not really what I’m worried about just now.’

  He leaned forward solicitously. ‘What are you worried about Carla? Can I help?’

  She shook her head and crumbs sprayed on the table. ‘I can’t tell you, Leslie, but it is important to everything I do at the moment. It’s driving me mad . . .’

  ‘You haven’t signed a contract with Thackeray, have you?’

  ‘No, of course not. Don’t hound me, Leslie. It is about Joseph and when I get more reports . . . when it’s settled I’ll let you know about your offer.’

  He smiled, showed beautifully capped teeth, a sagging jawline and an over-used charm that was losing its candle power. There was an air of desperation about him which he was desperately anxious not to show—and it showed. He tilted a thin, brown hand that carried a wide gold ring.

  ‘Just tell me, are you fifty/fifty in favour or . . .’

  She drained her drink with a soft slurp and blotted up some croissant crumbs with a bony finger. ‘Sixty/forty,’ she said. ‘Can you run me home? I’ve got to change to give some ghastly talk.’

  They got up, Cummings paid the bill the way she’d done the previous night, and they went streetwards. I let them go and ordered another coffee as an aid to thinking. There was some to do. Thackeray had more problems than he thought: I didn’t like the sound of reports and a settlement. It smelled too much of what I did myself, and that threw up some interesting possibilities.

  Thackeray’s notes told me that Cummings was addressing the Hunters Hill Women’s Literary Group later that morning. It sounded as missable as my own hanging, so I decided to widen my terms of reference a little and see what Mr Joseph Thackeray was doing.

  Thackeray’s office was in William Street, just a short walk from mine, but I didn’t have to get to his door for things to become interesting. There was a bank across the road from the building Thackeray was in, and as I passed it I saw Rusty Fenton looking out through the smoked glass windows. Now a bank is one of the last places you’d expect to see Rusty. When he has money he gives it to barmen not tellers. Rusty didn’t see me so I went into the bank by a side door and watched him. I’ve never known Rusty not to work in close harness with ‘Bomber’ Stafford and, sure enough, after a minute or so Stafford came hurrying out of Thackeray’s building and across the street. Rusty shot out to meet him, they had a quick confab and ran back across the street, defying the traffic. I watched through the smoked glass: Rusty and Stafford got into a van; Joseph Thackeray came out onto the street and looked up and down expectantly. He had on another silly, spotted bow tie; he still looked narrow and wispy and the smoked glass gave his skin an unhealthy grey sheen. A taxi pulled up, Thackeray got in and Rusty and Stafford followed it on up the hill towards the Cross.

  Out of habit I jotted the numbers of the taxi and the van on the back of a withdrawal slip. I could find out where Thackeray had gone easily enough, but I was more interested in why Rusty and ‘Bomber’ were interested in him. Rusty has a lot of trades—police informer, leg man for a few people in my game, small time fence. ‘Bomber’ Stafford quit the ring after an undistinguished career as a prelim boy and prelim old man. He’d done some standing-over since then and worked for security services and some corner-cutting private enquiry men. He’d do just about anything that didn’t require any brains, he knew his limitations. Working with Rusty topped up their collective IQ, but not by all that much.

  A phone call to Thackeray’s office brought me the information that he was attending the opening of a photography exhibition in Paddington. I drove there and parked down the street. Rusty and ‘Bomber’ were sitting in their van drinking beer and watching the place. Rusty put down his beer can and wrote something in a notebook. I shuddered to think of his spelling but I’d have liked to get a look at the notebook. I could have fronted them but even Rusty knows enough to keep his mouth shut when he’s working and ‘Bomber’ might just get lucky with a punch. Things were coming together in my mind: Cummings mentioned reports on Thackeray and here was Rusty Fenton on surveillance, sucking his pencil and making notes. Rusty could report to someone else who could make some sense of what he said and report in turn to Cummings. Who?

  It was becoming ridiculous; the only course I could think of was to follow Rusty—I felt I was getting a long way from my brief but hell, anything was better than the Hunters Hill affair. The photography exhibition must have included eats because Thackeray stayed a few hours, and was wiping his mouth with a spotted handkerchief when he left. Rusty had sent ‘Bomber’ for pies; I had no one to send so I missed lunch. Thackeray walked off the canapes with a stroll through some of the pricier streets of Paddo to a tall, well-appointed terrace in the priciest street of them all. Rusty’s van crawled along after him and I crawled along too. It was a wonder the Shark Patrol didn’t spot us and report us for suspicious conduct. It was mid-afternoon and pretty warm; Rusty and ‘Bomber’ seemed happy to park outside the house but then, Rusty could send ‘Bomber’ for beer. I wasn’t prepared to wait.

  After Paddington, the back streets of the Cross felt like Bangkok. I parked the Falcon on the concrete patch Primo Tomasetti, the best tattooist in the country, rents to me and went to see the artist himself. My recollection was that ‘Bomber’ had been a client of Primo’s not so long back.

  ‘Hi, Cliff.’ Primo was bent over a hairy forearm, trying to shave it without drawing blood. The young man being operated on was gritting his teeth and looking away. He didn’t seem to be quite the type for what he was doing. Primo wiped the suds off.

  ‘Go have a look at the designs my son,’ he said. ‘I gotta talk white slavery with my friend here.’

  The tattooee-to-be walked shakily across to a wall poster covered with signs erotic, nautical and extra terrestrial.

  ‘You sure he can take it?’ I whispered.

  ‘We’ll see. Some people, it turns them on. Gets messy here sometimes. Did you know that? Do you care?’

  ‘I learn something new from you every time we meet, Primo. Remember when you did a little job on ‘Bomber’ Stafford?’

  ‘Sure. Last month.’

  ‘He have much to say?’

  ‘“Bomber”? Talking’s not his thing. Just said he needed the tattoo for his come back.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His come back, in the ring. He reckoned tattoos were all the go—all the fighters got ’em. I told him to forget the come back; stick to stealing I said.’

  ‘What’d he say?’

  The gilded youth was stroking his smooth forearm and looking impatient. Primo caught the look and moved away from me. ‘He reckoned he was serious and that Rusty was helping him, training with him. Gotta work, Cliff.’

  ‘Thanks, Primo. Training where and when?’

  ‘Trueman’s he said, most nights. He was serious about getting himself punchy.’

  Trueman’s gym is not a place a fighter goes to when he’s on the way up. It sits in a back street in Newtown behind a faded sign that hasn’t been really bright since Vic Patrick retired. It was after seven when I got there, getting dark and cool. Rusty’s van was parked outside Trueman’s. The street smelled of old air and the air in Sammy’s gym smelled of old bodies and old hopes and dreams.

  I stood on the dusty boards and looked at the sweat-stained ring and the cracked leather of the heavy bag and speed ball. The only new things in the place were the cigarette butts in the smokers’ bins. ‘Bomber’ Stafford was lumbering through a skipping routine in one corner of the gym and Rusty was working on an exercise bicycle. A thin Aborigine wandered over to the speed ball and began setting up a pretty good rhythm on it. He was better to watch than ‘Bomber’ but I was disappointed to see so few people in the place. My chances of getting a sneaky look through Rusty’s
locker looked slim.

  ‘Hey, Cliff; Cliff Hardy!’ ‘Bomber’ concentrated hard to skip and talk at the same time.

  ‘“Bomber”.’

  ‘Come to work out?’

  I had a bag of bits and pieces in my hand, more for show than anything but as I looked ‘Bomber’s’ flabby torso over I had an idea.

  ‘Yeah. You want to go a round or two?’

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Rusty shaking his head but ‘Bomber’ ignored him. He dropped the rope, went over to an equipment locker and pulled out two pairs of battered gloves. He tossed one set to me.

  ‘Let’s have a go.’

  I caught the gloves and went back to the locker room at the end of the gym. It smelt of sweat and was poorly lit; only two of the lockers were closed. There were a few clothes and magazines sticking out of others but Rusty and ‘Bomber’ were security conscious. I reckoned the locks would take me about thirty seconds apiece. I stripped, put on running shoes, shorts and singlet and went out pulling on the gloves. ‘Bomber’ was in the ring already, and Rusty was in his corner bending his ear. The Aborigine and another pug who’d appeared from somewhere were standing expectantly by the ropes. I slipped under and jogged a bit to get the feel of the canvas.

  ‘This is bloody crazy,’ Rusty said. ‘“Bomber” outweighs you by a stone, Hardy. There’s no bloody resin, the ropes’re slack . . .’

  ‘Just a spar, isn’t it “Bomber”? Three rounds do you? One of you blokes keep time?’

  The Aborigine glanced up at the wall clock and grinned.

  ‘Time,’ he said harshly.

  I’d never fought professionally and was only average as an amateur, but I knew what to do against an overweight slob like ‘Bomber’ Stafford. You handle a guy like that in one of two ways, or both ways if you can do it: you wear him down or you get him off balance. I didn’t have time to wear him down. ‘Bomber’ came out swinging, and I ducked and weaved and let him miss. I went in and under a couple of times and dug hard punches into his gut. I left his head alone, heads are easy to miss. At the end of three minutes he was blowing hard and Rusty was muttering about stopping it. But ‘Bomber’ came out for more; this time I baulked and changed pace on him and worked him first this way, then that. He landed one punch—a looping left that I saw a bit late. It hurt but Stafford was off balance with surprise when it landed. I moved up, feinted, moved the wrong way and hit him with a left hook as good as any I’d ever thrown. Then I hit him on the point with an unorthodox short right; his eyes rolled back and he hit the deck.

  I was out of the ring and heading for the lockers almost before he landed. I heard Rusty cursing and calling for water. I was breathing hard but I pulled the gloves off and got my fingers working in overdrive. The first locker I teased open was obviously ‘Bomber’s’ and I flipped it shut. Rusty’s jacket was hanging in the other locker and I had the notebook out of the breast pocket and open with the pages flicking over in record time. Rusty’s notes were semi-literate, like: ‘We seen Thacaray go ina sort of picture show place and we wait car’. Folded into the book was a carbon copy sheet, neatly typed, which elaborated on Rusty’s scrawl and looked like a professional surveillance report. Items like ‘Subject entered restaurant at 20.00 hours and met three individuals male and one female (see below for descriptions)’. The bits I read amounted to nothing, but looked good, being only loosely based on Rusty’s data—a lot of poetic licence in it. The only indication of who the poet might be was a phone number carefully printed on the pages before Rusty’s notes began. I committed it to memory and put the book back and closed the locker.

  ‘No shower, Cliff boy?’ Fat Sammy Trueman waddled into the locker room as I was pulling my shirt on. His shirt ballooned out in front of him and his chins almost met the swell. Sammy had been a good lightweight a long time ago. I kept dressing.

  ‘In a rush.’

  ‘Great bit of work, didn’t know you could handle yourself . . .’ He broke off to wheeze and cough—the sorts of terminal sounds he’s been making for twenty years. ‘. . . like that.’

  ‘He was a sitting duck. Hope you’re not encouraging this comeback bullshit.’

  Trueman shrugged the shrug he’d given over a hundred prelim boys and a dozen punchdrunk main eventers. It was a ten per cent of something is something shrug. I stuffed my togs in my bag, pushed past him and went out of the gym fast.

  As soon as I got to the car I scribbled down the telephone number hoping it wasn’t just the number for Rusty’s bookie. At home, I poured a big glass of wine and sat down by the phone. The recorded message was in a voice I knew better than I cared to: ‘You have called Holland Investigations. Thank you for calling. The office is unattended but if you leave your name and number Mr Holland or one of his associates will contact you in business hours. Speak after the beep please.’

  I put Cleo Laine on the stereo and thought about it. Reg ‘Woolfie’ Holland was one of the shonkiest operators in my shonky trade. He’d had a couple of convictions way back, but had kept his nose clean long enough to get a licence. I had never heard anything complimentary about his competence or honesty, and there’re not many people you can say that about. He’d used Rusty and Stafford as leg men before I knew, and now I could smell one of the oldest scams in the book—they’d probably been doing it in Pompeii.

  It was getting late and the four or five minutes dancing with ‘Bomber’, plus the tension had tired me; on the other hand the wine had relaxed me. A hundred and twenty-five bucks gets you a twenty-four-hour-day if need be. I finished the wine, resisted another glass, and went upstairs to get my burglar’s suit on.

  ‘Woolfie’s’ office was a hole-in-the-wall in Surry Hills, as far as you can get from the fashionable coffee bars and still be in the locality. I remembered a heated discussion I’d had there with ‘Woolfie’ a few years back when he’d attempted to barge in on a case of mine. Blows hadn’t quite been struck but voices had been raised. Out of habit I’d noticed ‘Woolfie’s’ set-up and hadn’t been impressed. It had looked like an easy nut to crack, and it was; there was a lane at the back, a brick fence and a window that was child’s play. ‘Woolfie’ shared the space with Terry Collins, Hair Restoration and Scalp Revitalisation—Satisfaction Guaranteed and Chloe Smith, Literary Agent.

  The office was a two-room affair both smelling of ‘Woolfie’s’ sixty-a-day cigarette habit. The answering machine was the only concession to style. The filing cabinets were an insult to a man who can open boxing gym lockers and back windows. I was thumbing through the files within seconds while holding a pencil torch in my teeth. Holland’s files were a mess, but like all of us self-employed types he had to keep some sort of record so that the taxation office wouldn’t immure him. The Carla Cummings file was a model of its kind. It opened with notes on a meeting between Cummings and ‘Woolfie’ and his engagement to investigate an accusation against Joseph Thackeray which was made in an anonymous letter to the author. A photocopy of the letter was enclosed, several copies in fact. The letter was undated, but the first Cummings-Holland meeting was six weeks back. Carbon copies of ‘Woolfie’s’ reports were enclosed; they were all like the sheet I’d seen in Rusty’s notebook. One thing was sure, ‘Woolfie’ hadn’t written them unless he’d been going to night classes since I’d last seen him. I’d have bet anything though that he had written the original anonymous letter to set up the classic blackmail situation—get yourself hired and charge top dollar to investigate a threat that comes from yourself. Depending on how you play it you can spin it out as long as you like and, with a bit of finesse, wind it up so that everybody’s happy. ‘Woolfie’ had milked it for three thousand already. It’s an oldie but goodie; some people in the game used to regard it as almost legal.

  I checked by pecking a character or two on the office Olivetti, but even ‘Woolfie’ wasn’t dumb enough to type the letter in the office. It was done on an upright electric, not the sort of thing he’d be likely to have at home. Proof, that’s the problem with exposi
ng this sort of deal. I took one of the photocopies, leaving three, and went out the way I’d come. I went down the lane the other way and walked along the street onto which Holland’s office fronted to where I’d left the Falcon outside an instant printing shop.

  I slept on it and sat down with coffee and strong light the next morning to look at the letter:

  DEAR CARLA CUMMINGS

  Your agent Mr Thackeray is a crook. He is robbing you blind. Have you made a will? He is conspiring with other parties to rob you even after you are dead. And that may not be long.

  A friend.

  Some friend. I stared at the lines on the photocopy paper until they blurred. I made coffee and drank it and poured wine and drank that too. The Singing Gulls was sitting, unopened, on the table and I looked idly at the beginning:

  Kelly’s hopes soared as the cloud of dust on the horizon took firmer shape. She knew it would be Mark and that soon she would feel him holding her and her white silk dress would be grimy from his dust and sweat and that she wouldn’t care . . .

  I almost gagged and slammed the book down on top of the note. Its straight edge defined something I hadn’t seen before—the original letter had been trimmed by a paper guillotine, possibly to remove a watermark. The guillotine blade must have had a nick out of it or a wobble because there was an irregularity in the trimmed edge. ‘Woolfie’s’ photocopy was A4 size, but had originally been on a sheet twice that size which had been halved by a guillotine stroke. Same nick or wobble.

  I sat back and drank some more wine. Dumb ‘Woolfie’. Two pairs of scissors and he’d have had no problems. That set me thinking about paper guillotines and that train of thought led directly to the instant printing place across the road from Holland’s office. Dumb, but that dumb?

  One blade stroke through a sheet of quarto in the print shop showed me that ‘Woolfie’ had fouled up. No point in wasting time. I went across the street and went up to the office of Reginald Holland, Private Enquiries, to make my private accusations. ‘Woolfie’ was in his shirt sleeves, which were dirty as the whole surface of him and many surfaces round about are dirty from his cigarette ash. His face was prune-like from trying to function through the fug and his dark hair was thin and defeated-looking. But ‘Woolfie’ is big and bulky, and he uses the bulk to intimidate when he can. I hadn’t knocked and he looked annoyed.