by Andres Kabel
They left him cradling his saxophone case and walked out to pay their tab at the bar. The club was nearly empty.
“I know he’s lying,” Tusk said.
“Do you think he’s a killer, though?”
Tusk shook his head in frustration. “Could be. That’s the trouble, they all could be.”
Only twenty-four hours to go, he was thinking when they emerged into dim light over stone paving. Someone slid from behind and jammed a gun hard into his back.
CHAPTER 35
It happened too quickly for Peter to comprehend. One minute he was following Mick’s blocky frame out of the smoke-filled club. The next, someone slammed into Mick, and then Mick moved in a blur. Peter saw Mick’s arm come down and his foot lash out, the attacker cried out, something clattered on the ground. And then Mick reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun—a gun? Who said Mick could carry a gun?—and pointed it at a moaning figure at his feet. Another gun lay on the cobblestones. Mick’s face shone with fury.
An arm slipped around Peter’s neck and a hard object burrowed into his back. Sibilance streamed into his ear.
“Drop it or your friend’s dead,” the sibilance said.
Bertoli! Terror jolted Peter. He cried out. In response the grip tightened so that he had to stagger to keep his balance. His body shook like a rag.
Mick whirled around to face him, the groaning man slumped between them. Mick’s bleak eyes flicked like a reptile’s between Peter, Bertoli, and the fallen man.
“Let him go.” Mick’s voice was a blade in the cool air. “Or I kill you and your partner.”
Bertoli’s hiss caressed Peter’s ears. “Then he’ll be dead.”
Another voice sounded in the alley. A mild, American-accented voice.
“Relax everybody.”
A stocky man limped from a doorway across the lane. He wore a long blue overcoat over a suit and held his hands out in front of him.
“No closer,” Mick said.
Peter’s breath came in snuffling gasps. He watched the man step into the reach of the overhead streetlight, and what Peter saw set him twitching under Bertoli’s grip. The man’s face was scrunched up, as if someone had taken an unformed face and twisted it to the right. His cheeks, chin, and forehead jutted out, leaving the rest recessed, so that Peter couldn’t see the eyes.
The man’s mouth was twisted, as if he’d be incapable of coherent speech, but he spoke in a light drawl. “Mr. Tusk, if I desired your death, or that of your friend here, do you think I would have bothered with all this? I just want a conversation, and this is the only way I know how.”
Bertoli’s tart aftershave clung to Peter’s nostrils. Another surge of fear set him struggling again. The response was a savage twist of his neck that sent pain shooting through him.
Through blurred eyes, Peter saw Mick swing his gun up two-handed, his feet wide.
“Tell that fuck to let go, Scaffidi, or I’ll kill you.” Mick’s voice rasped.
Scaffidi! Peter felt his world spin.
“As you command,” Scaffidi said.
The crime boss gestured and Bertoli released his grip. Peter stumbled, righting himself with a hand on the ground. His head spun. He slapped with a shaking hand at snot hanging from his nose and lurched toward Mick.
Around them the lane was dark outside the arc of the isolated streetlights. Peter saw Bertoli watching him with a teasing smile on thin, parted lips. The hit man was shorter than Peter’s imagination had supplied, slim and perfectly still in that poised manner he often saw in Mick. He had a razor-sharp face, with a piercing nose and jutting cheekbones. Black gelled hair was swept back over his head. He wore what looked like an Italian designer suit with a thin tie. His slender hand pointed a gun.
“Mr. Gentle.” Scaffidi walked forward, ignoring the gun in Mick’s outstretched arms, and extended his hand to Peter.
Peter scrambled back.
“Go away,” he shouted. He felt urine running down his leg.
Scaffidi lowered his hand. He was close enough now for Peter to see the malformed bumps and ridges on the face. Nestled deep within, Scaffidi’s eyes shone fiercely. Rather, one eye did; in the other socket Peter could only see a dull sheen.
“Put the gun down, Mr. Tusk,” Scaffidi said. “You have me at your advantage now.”
“What do you want, you loony fuck?” Mick’s face glistened as it had in Fitzroy. He looked ready to explode. Don’t, Peter begged mentally.
“It’s not you I wish to converse with, Mr. Tusk.” Scaffidi’s diction reminded Peter of one of his university lecturers. “I know how you feel about me. Mr. Gentle, can we talk?”
Peter blinked and glanced wildly from Scaffidi to Bertoli and back. His body trembled with an almost irresistible urge to flee. He looked at Mick’s bulging eyes and despaired; if he tipped the Balt into action, they’d all die. He nodded.
“Good.” Scaffidi began to pace with a slow, limping gait. “Mr. Gentle, I can see you’re a man of intellect. They say you have wonderful analytical capabilities. You bring order to the world through your mind.”
Mad, Peter thought.
Scaffidi’s ghastly mouth continued to twist into words of mild reflection. “I too bring order to the world. A different kind of order, one of flesh and bone, and yes, my methods would not appeal to you. But I too exercise intellect. I have plans, I work long-term. Do you know how much planning and effort it has taken to manufacture—” he pointed at Bertoli—“that machine? So long and yet what a fine outcome.”
Scaffidi’s pacing brought him directly up to Peter. The man’s twisted stare had the force of a punch. Peter shuddered.
“I have worked too long and too hard to come undone at the hands of a neophyte.” For the first time Scaffidi’s voice dripped menace. “Fate cannot be that cruel. So I’m asking you, I am pleading with you, to please find something else to occupy your time.”
“Yes,” Peter said. It came out as a snuffle.
“Yes,” he shouted at Scaffidi, spittle flying. “Yes! Go away!”
Scaffidi took out a cream handkerchief and wiped his face.
“No more prying, Mr. Gentle?” Back to the reasonable-man voice.
“No more,” Peter croaked. “Just leave us alone.”
“Very well then,” said the monstrosity, wheeling around.
Scaffidi kicked the man on the ground, who stood up and staggered off. Without a backward glance, Scaffidi limped up the lane.
Bertoli bowed. Shivers ran down Peter’s spine as Bertoli edged backward with the grace of a panther, gun held casually, eyes glued to Mick’s.
Alone. A breeze swirled down the silent lane. Peter saw their shadows on the opposite wall, one rectangular and straight, the other a question mark. He collapsed to the ground on his knees. The big stones were cool on his hands. His ears filled with the sound of his own sobs.
“You okay?”
He looked up at Mick framed in the light. At Mick’s solid, solid face. He found himself pulled to his feet.
“Let’s get out of here,” Mick said.
Peter could only think of one thing.
“Home,” he mewled.
CHAPTER 36
“Trevor, talk to him.”
Seated at the kitchen table, Peter Gentle half-listened to his mother whispering to his father in the living room. His toast, dripping with butter and smeared with Vegemite, usually the only food he enjoyed at home, today had the consistency of tofu and tasted as bland.
“Go away, woman,” he heard his father respond.
Breakfast in Box Hill on a Sunday morning. The scarred kitchen table, the weak light through the venetian blinds, the chatter of birds outside, the old clock showing 7:30 as its second hand thudded around the circle, the Herald Sun posing its lurid headlines—it should have been reassuringly familiar. Instead, it felt like a prison cell.
Mick had been kind last night, calming Peter as they made their way down to Flinders Street Station, but once in the taxi they had both lapse
d into uneasy silence. Peter’s sleep had been mercifully deep, but he’d woken early with a gasp, and now every time he closed his eyes he saw Bertoli’s razor’s-edge nose and Scaffidi’s mangled face.
He yawned and sipped his over-milky coffee. In the scuffed bathroom mirror after his shower, his face had looked puffy, but otherwise had simply been him, Peter Gentle. But who was he really?
“More toast, dear?” His mother’s perfume rushed past.
“Thanks, Mum.”
There was no escaping it. He was an abject coward. The first time—in the factory parking lot—he could justify by saying that in his entire life he’d never even been in a scrape, had always been able to parlay himself out of physical situations with his mouth and quick thinking. When Mick attacked Marcantonio, he’d been terrified, but somehow managed to act. But last night…
It didn’t matter anymore. He was a complete failure as a private detective. He’d just been playing at it, he saw now. Assembling data, analyzing… while out there, psychopaths like Scaffidi lived crime day in, day out. That was the real world, not Peter’s cozy mental asylum.
Was Mick so wrong to use mindless violence against people like Scaffidi? Which was better, maniacal force or pissing oneself?
“There you are, dear.”
He buttered the two fresh slices of toast. At least Mum and Dad will be happy, he thought, when I tell them it’s all over.
The phone rang in the hallway.
“For you, Peter.” His father’s brow was knotted. “Mick Tusk.”
He could hear Mick’s deep voice over traffic roar. “I’m in a phone booth in Ringwood. Couldn’t ring from home, Dana’s mad at me. I’ll be around in five.”
The big lug has recovered completely, Peter thought. How often has Mick been in situations like last night? Come to think of it, how often has Dad?
“Look, what’s the point?” he said.
A pause. Then, as if Peter had never spoken, Mick said, “I remembered the guy I saw with Willy last night.”
Despite himself, Peter’s pulse quickened.
“Strasser, Imogen’s brother,” Mick said. “I rang Strasser. Know what he said?”
Peter looked at his mother, rubbing her hands together, and his father, still in his bathrobe, watching him.
“You know what he said?”
“No, I don’t know what he said,” Peter spat out.
“Strasser often goes to the Mingus Club, a real jazz freak apparently. And get this—two weeks ago Willy told him that Bella was screwing Kantor. Sounds like Willy was making mischief. And Strasser apparently, like a good brother, rang Imogen.”
Peter felt momentarily giddy. “Imogen didn’t tell us this.”
He couldn’t believe it. Their client had a motive to murder her husband. He couldn’t see Imogen having the strength to smash Kantor, let alone the energy, but his head buzzed.
“Mick, I can’t. Last night—”
“Crap. Forget last night.”
“No, it’s not on. I’m finished.”
“You owe me, Gentle.” Mick’s voice was harsh. “You signed me up at Draconi’s, if you’re going to pull out, you owe me to do it there.”
Peter had to admit that Mick could use logic sometimes. He rubbed his eyes and exhaled. “Okay.”
“Great. A detour to Toorak on the way.”
Peter trudged down to his room and slipped on jeans and a black jumper. He didn’t bother with his teeth or hair. As he walked out the front door, he heard his mother.
“Peter. Your toast…”
***
Peter glared at the white cat on Imogen Keppel’s lap.
“All I see is useless delving into my husband’s affairs, Mr. Gentle.” Imogen spoke at Peter, even though Mick had been the one to summarize, in a measured voice, their recent discoveries.
Just typical, Peter thought, not a gesture of appreciation since we took on your bloody case.
Imogen wore a floral housecoat over a nightgown. Her auburn hair looked greasy. Her face was sallow and pinched, and he’d caught alcohol on her breath when she reluctantly shook his hand.
The three of them sat in Imogen’s living room. No cakes or coffee this time, no flowers in the vases. The room smelled stale, of cats and dust and neglect. A fat gray cat—was it the same one?—was sprawled asleep across the bay windowsill. Other cats prowled in and out of the room.
Mick looked like a docile giant, straight-backed on the edge of his seat. “We’re one step ahead of the police.”
Imogen opened her mouth, no doubt to deliver another salvo, but the white cat lifted its head as if electrified, and Peter turned to see Straw padding into the room. She also wore a housecoat, but a raven-black one that barely came to her knees, revealing a thin red nightgown underneath. She wallowed past Peter and slumped next to her mother. Her toenails were crimson, and red lipstick was smudged down her chin. Her saucer eyes stared at Peter.
“There’s one question we need to ask you,” Mick said.
“What a waste of time and money.” Imogen stood, sending the cat flying.
“Mrs. Keppel.” Mick’s voice lost its soft cadence and grew insistent. “Your brother told you about Kantor’s affair with Bella, didn’t he?”
Imogen’s neck turned red, and for the first time she turned to Mick. Peter quailed at the fury he saw on her face, but Mick sat like a statue.
Peter took a glance at the other statue. What did Straw think of this revelation?
“How dare you,” Imogen said to Mick. “How dare you even intimate that my husband would consort with that whore.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Mick said. “But Albert did, didn’t he?”
Imogen stared at Mick, her face a mask of rage. Peter held his breath. Then Imogen collapsed back into her chair and covered her face with her hands.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Jesus, Peter thought.
“Mrs. Keppel,” Mick said, ever so gently. “If we can stumble across this allegation, the police will. What will you say?”
When Imogen lifted her face, tears glistened in her eyes. “I never believed a word of what Albert said. Not one word. Albert was always such a malicious boy. And it all came from that drug addict Willy.”
“Mrs. Keppel, can you be more precise on your exact movements that night? It’s important, for your sake.”
Peter had glanced at the case file in the Peugeot. Imogen had been home that night and had referred to long telephone conversations with Albert, but Telstra records showed only one short call at 9:05.
Imogen looked at Mick, then Peter, then Straw.
“How anyone…” she cried and bolted from the room. Cats scattered.
Peter was stunned. A door slammed upstairs. All the cats except one had disappeared as if by magic; only the hairless one remained, prowling back and forth in front of Straw.
Straw sat unmoved. Peter strained to see reaction in her eyes, but could see nothing at all.
“Straw?” he said.
“Mr. Mistoffelees,” she droned.
Peter saw Mick’s eyes widen with astonishment.
“Straw, tell us more about the quarrel,” Peter said. “You know, the quarrel your dad had with Uncle Rollo.”
She sat motionless.
“Straw, please,” he said, urgency seizing him. “Mistoffelees, yes. But the quarrel…”
It was no use. The green orbs fixed on him blinked steadily. The hairless cat leapt into Straw’s lap and purred, its eyes trained on her face.
Another useless trail, Peter thought. Useless, bloody useless.
He stomped down the hall and across the creaking veranda and waited by the fountain for Mick to catch up. In the gloom of the courtyard, he saw a cat—the bloody Siamese?—slink away down the side of the house. They stood on a carpet of decomposing autumn leaves, listening to voices in the garden next door.
There were two messages on his mobile. Rollo’s message was brief: “So what’s it to be? The strength or the muscle?”
/> “Yes, I do need to speak to you.” Peter recognized Marcia Brindle’s voice, the words spilling on top of each other. Mick leaned over to listen in. “Need to speak. Shit! Call me.”
He hunted through his pockets. Mick flipped open his notebook to Marcia’s neatly printed phone number. Peter dialed and they listened to the other end ringing.
“Poor bastard,” Mick said.
And Peter’s mind also flipped to Kantor, lying on that steel pallet. From the outside the economist’s life had seemed blessed. Peter looked back at the bay window. The huge gray cat had woken and its yellow eyes stared balefully at him. He shuddered.
***
Peter rubbed his hair hard. “Look, it should be obvious. I’m just not cut out for this kind of work, Mick. It’s not… it’s not me, it’s nothing like I thought it would be.”
Sunday morning was one of Peter’s favorite times at Draconi’s, although since moving back home he rarely made the trip. The restaurant was only a quarter full. Customers, and even the waiters, moved languidly. The crinkle of newspapers, the clunk of coffee cups on the bar, the ebbing murmur, Hector’s stentorian voice… the sounds should have filled him with joy.
“You did okay last night, Gentle,” Mick said. He’d just rung Marcia Brindle again and left a message. “Those were scary fuckers. You reacted the way anybody would.”
Once, Mick had been an aberration here. Now either he or Draconi’s had altered. To Peter, there was something natural about his concrete bulk sitting erect on a stool at the bar, sipping tea. Mick wore faded jeans and a stiff white shirt with a button-down collar.
“I wet myself!” Peter saw Hector’s head lift from a distant table.
“If I counted the number of times I’ve pissed myself, I’d run out of fingers,” Mick said. “And you are bloody well cut out for this work. We agreed from the start, you apply your brain, I do any rough stuff. Last night was my fault, not yours.”
“That Scaffidi terrifies me. Look.” Peter held up a hand and watched it shake. “I told him I’d quit, and if I keep going, he’ll… I just can’t stand it.”
