by Peter Corris
Freddy opened a window and threw his butt out. ‘We’ll put that to the test. Just be quiet for a while and enjoy the ride.’
Broadway, George Street, Hay Street and into the heart of Chinatown. At street level a garage door in a large building opened electronically and we slid into a parking space big enough for half a dozen cars. It was already occupied by a sleek Alfa Romeo and a couple of working vehicles, a ute and a panel van.
We got out and Freddy ushered us towards an elevator. The driver came along as well—three of them and two of us. May Ling’s hands were held together in front of her by plastic restraints. She wore the skirt of her suit and a blouse and looked cold.
I could feel, rather than see, Lester’s knife close to my back. We went up three levels and came out in a short passage that led to what looked like a laboratory. Freddy guided May Ling into a chair by a bench and Lester shoved me towards a stool in a corner. The driver stood with his back to a wall.
‘We used to knock up a bit of speed here,’ Freddy said. ‘It was good business for a time but the bikies made it tough after a while, especially the Lebos. A Lebo bikie is a mean bastard.’
‘You’d know one,’ I said.
Lester stepped forward and whacked me with a backhander. I saw it coming and eased back to reduce some of the force. It hurt, but delivering a solid backhander can throw you a bit off-balance and leave you open. It did, and I came at him with a heavy right to his ribs that sent him skittering. He raised the knife and the driver moved forward with his hands in a martial arts position.
‘That’s enough!’ Freddy snapped. ‘Settle down, Hardy. There’s no need for this. We’re talking and dealing here, I hope.’
He opened a cabinet over the bench and took out a couple of bottles and a beaker. He unscrewed the tops from the bottles and poured a little from one and a little from the other into the beaker. The mixture fizzed and gave off a wisp of smoke with an acrid smell.
‘Now, this won’t kill her. It won’t even cause her to faint if I know May Ling, but it’ll eat away at her skin and tissue beyond repair by any plastic surgeon.’
May Ling screamed. The sound went through me like a dentist’s drill hitting a nerve. I jerked up and Lester flicked the knife across inches from my face.
‘Good reactions,’ Freddy said, ‘very satisfactory. Now, I want to know everything, down to the last detail.’
There was nothing else to do. I told Freddy absolutely everything I knew about Richard Malouf and his involvement and Houli’s. My phone call from Malouf was news to May Ling but she didn’t react. Her eyes were focused on the beaker of acid. I left out where Rosemary and Gretchen were but nothing else. He listened carefully, stopping me only a couple of times with questions. Freddy was a very intelligent man, and one with long experience of applying pressure and assessing the results.
When I’d finished he spoke in Chinese to Lester and the driver and then turned his attention back to me. He moved the beaker away on the bench. ‘One phone call only?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did he say when he’d call again?’
‘No.’
‘It seems we’ll have to keep you alive.’
‘For now,’ Lester said.
Freddy smiled. ‘It depends on how it all works out. D’you know what Chou En-Lai said when he was asked what he thought were the results of the French Revolution?’
I shook my head. I moved on the stool to get more comfortable and winced as my shirt came away from where it had been stuck by congealed blood to the cut.
‘He said it was too soon to tell. That’s how things stand now. It’s too soon to tell, but you have certain things in your favour.’
‘You’ll let May Ling go?’
He laughed. ‘That’s another thing it’s too soon to tell about. Now, what did you plan to do next, after you’d finished your cheap little dinner?’
I hadn’t told him any more than that Malouf wanted to do a deal with the police, nothing about Sabatini. ‘I was thinking about it when Lester stuck his knife into me,’ I said. ‘I was going to get in touch with Inspector Chang and try to set something up, act as a go-between, I guess.’
‘You’d be happy to see Malouf get clear in return for destroying me and Selim Houli?’
I shrugged. ‘I doubt it’d work out quite like that, but it’s too soon to tell.’
I heard an angry grunt from Lester and got ready for another blow but Freddy laughed and raised his hand placatingly. ‘Touché. Well, we’ll just have to play along with you and Malouf, but I think we’ll keep the police out of it. That’s not to say you won’t tell Malouf that you’ve contacted them. You’re going to have to do a bit of acting.’
‘You’ll have to let me tap Malouf for some information as to what it’s all about. He’d expect I’d need something more to get Chang interested.’
‘You’re right. I almost like you, Hardy; you’re not completely dumb. You still want to understand things. I respect that. I’ll have to try to make sure you don’t learn so much that we have to kill you.’
‘Try to make sure Lester understands that.’
An angry burst of Chinese from Lester made May Ling raise her head and shoot him a look of loathing.
Freddy lit a cigarette. ‘Lester and I don’t quite see eye to eye on this. I try not to kill people. It’s bad for business.’
For the first time, May Ling spoke. ‘You’re killing Sunny, you creep.’
‘Business,’ Freddy said.
I said, ‘What about Houli?’
‘What about him?’
‘Whatever this is, you’re in it together.’
Freddy reached out for an empty beaker on the bench and drew it towards him. He dropped ash into it. ‘So far,’ he said, ‘so far.’
I’d left Freddy with the impression that Malouf was on his boat which I didn’t think was necessarily the case. He barked instructions to the driver who left in a hurry. At a guess he was going to try to find the boat, and as no one had had any luck at that so far, it didn’t seem likely he would. Freddy picked his butt out of the beaker and dropped it in the acid. At the smoke and smell May Ling shrank back in her chair.
‘Little reminder,’ Freddy said. ‘Lester, get his phone.’
I know less than nothing about satellites and electronic tracking, but I could see what was in Freddy’s mind. He’d have someone try to track the source of Malouf’s call when it came and be able to take the initiative. May Ling and I would be expendable. I thought Malouf would have found a way to prevent a trace but Freddy didn’t know that. Maybe Freddy was reluctant to kill but Lester wasn’t. Just at that moment, the phone was an asset. I took it from my pocket and juggled it as Lester moved towards me with his knife.
‘No phone, no trace,’ I said. I tossed it up and caught it.
Lester glanced at Freddy and that was my chance. I kicked Lester as hard as I could in the crotch. He yelled, dropped the knife and both his hands went down protectively. I head-butted him; he went down and I kept moving. Freddy had the brains but not the moves. He was frozen for just a little too long. I pinned him back against the bench and grabbed the beaker of acid. Blood was streaming from Lester’s forehead, but he recovered and crawled towards the knife.
‘No!’ I held the beaker at Freddy’s shoulder.
Lester stopped. ‘You wouldn’t.’
I jiggled the beaker. The acid hissed. ‘Try me.’
The blood was running into his eyes, blinding him. He rubbed at his face with his sleeve and swore in English and then in Chinese.
‘May Ling,’ I said, ‘get the knife.’
She didn’t move.
‘Get the fucking knife!’
She pushed up from the chair and strode across the floor. She bent in one fluid motion for the knife and glided close to where I still had Freddy gasping for breath and watching the acid. She shoved the knife hard into his soft belly and had to use an upward ripping motion to pull it out. Freddy screamed and sagged towards her.
She fended him off with the hand holding the knife and the blade went in again. I let him go and he fell to the floor with blood gushing over May Ling’s high heel shoes. I took the knife from her hand.
It was a big knife, like the one in the movie Jagged Edge, and I knew how sharp it was. May Ling had dug it in deep, and it must have done drastic internal damage to Freddy because he was dead within a minute. Lester, still dripping blood himself, cradled his brother’s head in his lap and wept.
May Ling and I left the room, took the lift to the ground floor and walked out of the building into the crowded street. As soon as the cold air hit her she began to tremble. I pulled her closer to the building line and put my arms around her.
‘I murdered him.’
‘He was a vicious bastard. He would have scarred you and Gretchen too if things hadn’t pleased him. He had it coming.’
We stood until she stopped trembling and signalled that she was ready to move. I kept my arm around her shoulders and gasped once when her elbow nudged the cut in my side.
‘What?’
‘Lester cut me. Just a scratch.’
‘You got more than you bargained for when you came to see Miles that day, Cliff. Didn’t you?’
‘So did you.’
Wrong thing to say: it set her off again and she almost stumbled and started to sob quietly. I steered her slowly up Hay Street through a thick press of people out to shop, eat, have a good time. Her shoes and feet were covered in blood. I hailed a taxi in George Street and sat beside her in the back.
‘Glebe,’ I said to the driver.
‘Where?’ she said.
‘You’re coming to my place.’
She nodded and slumped back in the seat. Would the driver see blood on the floor when he cleaned the cab? Maybe. Would he do anything about it? Again, maybe. I stopped the cab in Glebe Point Road. No point in leaving a clear trail to the house.
I got her there. She was calm. She took off her shoes and stockings and I gave her a damp towel to clean her feet. The head butt had set up a ringing in my damaged ear. I stripped off my clothes, cleaned the cut with alcohol swabs and applied a dressing. I put on fresh clothes and joined her. Her usually immaculate hair was untidy and there were strain lines beside her eyes and mouth. She was still beautiful, but she’d never quite wear that imperturbable expression again.
I made coffee and we drank it laced with Black Douglas scotch rather than Courvoisier. She sat quietly for a while, nursing her cup. She looked around the room, taking in the books, CDs, photos and general air of careless maintenance. There were magazines and newspapers lying around and a glass and a coffee mug on a bookshelf. The carpet was new but hadn’t seen a vacuum cleaner for a while.
When she seemed to be more or less composed, I said, ‘Where did they pick you up?’
‘At my place. Freddy . . . he helped me find it and lent me some of the money. I didn’t know he had a key. I suppose I should have. What’s going to happen now? Were you going to tell Miles about Malouf contacting you?’
I liked that about her, not having the first thought immediately for herself. I said I wasn’t sure and that I’d have to think things through again now that Freddy was out of the picture.
‘What about Lester?’
‘I don’t think he amounts to much without Freddy, do you?’
She shook her head. Mention of Freddy raised the inevitable question. ‘Are you going to tell the police what happened?’
‘I don’t see why. Lester’s going to cover it up in some way, and as far as I’m concerned it was a kind of self-defence.’
‘Thank you. Oh God, what about the knife?’
‘It’s in the pocket of my jacket. Tomorrow it’ll be in the sludge at the bottom of Blackwattle Bay.’
I showed her the spare room and found her a clean T-shirt. She kissed me on the cheek. When beautiful young women kiss you on the cheek you know you’re over the hill, but I didn’t really feel like that. As Wesley said, I still had some moves.
I took some pills. The pain in my side eased and the ringing in my ear dulled down. I thought about May Ling’s knife work as I drifted off to sleep. She didn’t owe him money anymore.
Standish collected May Ling in the morning. I brought him up to date on the recent events and told him that Freddy Wong had been killed by accident, with no likely repercussions for May Ling or me. She had regained complete control of herself by then, had showered, used my comb and didn’t look any the worse for not having any makeup. She’d washed and rinsed her stockings and cleaned her shoes. Looked just about ready to go to work. Standish was all protective solicitude. He was relieved to hear that one of the people threatening him was out of the picture. I wondered what he’d think about his lover if he’d seen the way she’d stuck it to Freddy.
‘Thanks again, Hardy. What now?’
‘I have to think. As I said, the Wongs were all set to double-cross Houli. I’m going to try to find a way to make use of that.’
‘Surely you just go to the police now and tell them Malouf’s alive and leave it to them to catch him?’
‘Don’t you want to know what it’s all about?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘I do,’ May Ling said.
That wrong-footed Standish and he buckled straight off. ‘Do what you have to do,’ he said. He must have thought that sounded limp so he added, ‘Do you need any more money?’
I said I didn’t. May Ling wanted to visit Gretchen to make sure she was all right. Standish seemed to think that was an excellent idea. I told them to be careful, to keep close to other people and lock the doors.
‘I think we might take a short holiday,’ Standish said. ‘But you have the mobile number in case you need any help.’
‘Maybe a harbour cruise,’ I said, ‘or a houseboat on the Hawkesbury. Keep a lookout for Malouf.’
May Ling laughed.
‘You’ve got a sick sense of humour, Hardy,’ Standish said.
They left. I thought May Ling might give me another peck on the cheek but she didn’t.
Sabatini rang. ‘Airport. Want to pick me up?’
‘In the bar,’ I said.
He was nursing a beer when I arrived. No sign of jet lag. I got a Hahn Lite and we went to a quiet corner. I started to speak but he stopped me, reached into his bag and pulled out a tape recorder.
‘Okay?’
I thought about it and decided it wouldn’t hurt to have a record of events—things said and speculations made. I gave him chapter and verse while he finished his drink. He stopped the recording while I got two more. As I crossed to the bar I couldn’t help thinking about Richard Malouf and his apparent awareness of the movements of some of the players—Standish, May Ling and me. I looked around, but there was no one answering his description, unless he was a master of disguise.
Resuming, I got to where the Wongs had picked up May Ling and me and there I did a bit of editing, much as I had for Standish. But Sabatini was a journalist.
‘So who killed him?’
‘It was a kind of accident.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘I was there, you weren’t.’
‘You don’t trust me.’
‘Look, the situation is fluid. At some point we’re going to have to deal with the police. We’ll be trying to hold the best hand we can, exert the most leverage. We don’t need to give anyone ammunition, anything they can use to apply . . . opposite pressure. Shit, I’m talking like a physicist.’
‘This tape is my professional property. I’m a working journal- ist. I don’t have to make its contents available to anyone.’
I shook my head. ‘That’s what the book says, but you know and I know that the right judge in the right court can put you in gaol and the police can paint any picture of you they like with the cooperation of your press colleagues. Ever been busted for pot? Pros? Ever up on a DUI? Go through your accountant’s work on your tax with a fine- tooth comb, do you? Make sure every claim is kosher? You know how it works
.’
Sabatini turned off the recorder. ‘Tell me off the record.’
I finished my beer: two lights in an hour. Probably all right to drive, but best to wait a while.
I said, ‘When it’s over. Maybe. But don’t worry, you’ll get your story.’
He had to be content with that and we got down to planning how to draw Richard Malouf out into the open and what to do after that.
‘Why not tell the police that he’s still alive, wait for his call and get them to trace it?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘from what I’ve been told about him and from what he said himself, he’d take very good precautions against that.’
‘Then do as he says, broker a deal with the police.’
‘They wouldn’t be in it. That’s one of things worrying me. He’s not playing the game he says he is. He can’t really imagine the police would let him go, even if the business he’s involved in is huge and he’s in the clear on the two deaths.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too hard to cover up. Too many favours to call in at too high a level. No, we need to get hold of him ourselves and dictate the terms.’
‘How?’
‘How d’you squeeze information out of people who don’t want to give it?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but one technique is to put pressure on someone else, some- one the subject cares about. Who does Malouf care about?’
‘On the face of it, only himself, but I’m wondering. Houli told Rosemary that Malouf wasn’t his real name, remember? If we could find out what his real name is, who he is, we might get somewhere.’
‘Jesus, that’s a big ask, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘I remember when I was researching him, when I thought he was dead, I came across some anomaly, something that didn’t quite fit. I dismissed it and I can’t remember now what it was, but there was something. I’d have to go through my files.’
‘Where are they?’
He reached into his pocket and took out a memory stick attached to his keys. I pointed to the overnight bag at his feet.
