by Peter Corris
“Give me a free swing at him with the blackjack.”
Coluzzi laughed gutturally and rapped out some more Italian. The other two men smiled, the tall one didn’t smile. His face lost a few shades of colour and his mouth twitched as Coluzzi dipped into his mate’s pocket and lifted out the blackjack. I gathered that the tall man’s name was Carlo. Carlo stood stock still and ground his teeth together. He seemed to be setting his bones and gristle and tensing his flesh against the cruel bite of the cosh.
I tossed it in my hand; a short, palm-sized hard rubber grip with about six inches of whippy, lead-loaded rubber attached. Carlo screwed up his eyes and swayed just a little. I pulled back my arm and stretched out my other hand to touch him on the left ear. He flinched a fraction. I swung hard at his head and let the blackjack go just before my hand got in range; it sailed over his shoulder and crashed against the tin wall. Carlo sagged slightly at the knees. His face was dead white and his eyes were hard with hate. I slapped him lightly on the face and let out a harsh laugh that didn’t sound as nervous as I felt.
Coluzzi echoed the laugh with more feeling. Some of the tension evaporated and I asked him for a cigarette. He snapped his fingers and a packet of king size Chesterfields was produced. I took one and Carlo’s off-sider lit it. I sucked the smoke deep and expelled it in a long stream, it floated up and hung like ectoplasm in the harsh light. A few more vigorous bursts of Italian between Coluzzi and Adio settled it. Coluzzi came forward and looked hard into my face; he was a few inches shorter than me and had to tilt his head up to do it. The skin stretched over his jaw and pulled taut around his neck. I saw for the first time that he was old, wrinkled by age but without a spare ounce of flesh on him. He looked like a Corsican bandit, hardened by years of sun and rain, good for a fight until the day he died.
“Alright Mr Hardy,” he said, “you’re on. I want to know what you find out. Everything.”
“How do I reach you?”
He reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a card; Adio produced a gold pen and he scribbled a number on the back of it. He handed the card to me. On it was printed “Aldo Coluzzi, Merchant,” and an address in the city. He hadn’t mentioned the marijuana. I wondered why but wasn’t about to raise the question now. The less said about that the better. Coluzzi looked pleased with himself and rubbed his hands together.
“So, Mr Hardy, she’s arranged. We understand each other. Now you show a little trust and take another ride in the truck.”
I was expecting tricks, double-crosses, anything, but this looked a little too obvious.
“Why?”
“You don’t know where you are. I want it that way.”
He sealed it by handing me my gun. Then he turned away and he and Adio got into the Fiat. There was no question of argument. Carlo and the other hood had an unsatisfied look about them that I wasn’t anxious to test. I climbed up into the back of the truck. Its doors closed. I heard a heavy sliding door being opened and then we were bumping over a rough surface for a while before getting onto a road. I checked the pistol — empty breech, empty clip. We drove fast for what felt like an hour and then cruised to a stop. The doors swung open and the lights of the night flickered outside.
“Out,” said Carlo.
I got down and stood uselessly in the middle of a small lane running between two high factory walls. The Italians didn’t speak. They shepherded me over to the left-hand wall and motioned me to press my face into it. I did and waited for the sap or the kidney punch. Nothing happened. They got back into the truck and drove off. I didn’t even get the licence number. I turned around and stood with my back against the wall and waited until the sweat running down my chest reached body temperature. I started walking and found that I was in Annandale, quite handy to home. I hailed a taxi and was there in a few minutes.
I used a key I kept hidden under a half brick behind a pot plant to get inside the house and smelled the familiar odours, even if a bit stale. From habit I’d picked up the newspaper and taken it with me. A glance at the date reminded me that I had no idea of the time. It was two a.m. This whole thing had started a bare forty hours ago and I’d already covered a lot of territory for Tarelton’s money. But there are no prizes for that. As of now the trail was cold. It was time for some brain work. For that I needed help. I found some stale tobacco in the house and rolled a couple of cigarettes. I got a flagon of wine and a soda syphon out of the refrigerator and sat down with an ashtray and a glass. After finishing the cigarettes and lowering the level of the wine considerably the pattern of things still eluded me. I seemed to have two different problems on my hands.
One was Coluzzi and the fight game. Well that was nasty with the knives and all, but there was nothing much in it for me. I’d have to discuss aspects of that with Harry Tickener. And I still worried about the marijuana farm. Maybe there was some connection between Coluzzi and the mess Noni Rouble was in. That had two sides to it — a black and a white — and I was sure they were connected. There was something up there in Macleay, some time back and involving money, only money. A pale, flabby, violent man had been told to forget about it. I didn’t think he would. I was beginning to get a feeling for what that money trouble might be, and I didn’t think it concerned a map to Lasseter’s lost reef.
That was as close as I got to clarity. I thought about the list of great black fighters who’d come out of the game with nothing to show for their scarred eyes and broken hands and slurred speech. I thought of Jimmy Sunday and Penny Sharkey, and I thought about Harry Tickener again.
I finished the drink and went upstairs. I got out of my pants and shoes and sweater and sprawled on the bed pulling a blanket over me. The light was on but it didn’t bother me a bit.
12
The telephone woke me. I caught sight of the clock as I rolled over to grab the receiver — six-thirty a.m. I put my head back on the pillow and tried to unscramble reality and dreams. I grunted into the mouthpiece and it sputtered back at me like a firecracker. I sat up.
“Easy, easy. James?”
More sputtering and incoherence on the other side of the wire.
“Stop it,” I yelled. “Shut up, take a breath and give it to me clearly.”
A pause, a long one, then the actor’s voice came through, still with a note of panic but under control.
“Noni’s been kidnapped. I’ve just got a note.”
“At six-thirty?”
“I couldn’t sleep, I was up early and found the note taped to the door.”
“What does it say?”
I heard a rustle over the line and then James’ voice, shaky, reading.
“We have got the girl. Five thousand dollars gets her back.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
It didn’t figure. Ted Tarelton could raise twenty times that. Why hit James? My silence made him panicky again and he almost stammered, asking if I was still there. I said I was.
“What should I do?”
“Can you raise it?”
“The money? Yes, just.”
“Will you?”
“Yes of course, of course.”
“Stay put. I’ll be right over.”
I hung up on him, jumped up and took a quick shower. I was pulling on some clothes when the phone rang again. I made a bet with myself and won. Madeline Tarelton.
“Mr Hardy? Just a minute. My husband wants to speak to you.”
I heard a click, waited and then Ted’s rich voice came in.
“Hardy? My girl’s been snatched.”
“I know. You got a note?”
“Yes, how . . .?”
I told him how and asked him to read out the note. It was the same as James’ except that it asked for a hundred thousand dollars and said a contact would be made at five p.m. the following day. Ted’s voice vibrated a bit and the idea occurred to me that he’d be on the Courvoisier a bit earlier today. I promised him I’d be over as soon as I’d seen James. He wasn’t too happy about that, cl
aiming an employer’s rights but I soothed him. He seemed impressed that James had said he’d raise the five thousand, as if it was a bride price. I suppose it was, in a way. My cool competence was dented a bit by having to ask Ted for James’ address. I’d forgotten that I didn’t have it, but he gave it to me without seeming to take it amiss.
My perfectly good car was sitting in the Newcastle airport parking lot and it was raining again. I got a taxi to James’ place in Darlinghurst. It was a terrace house with a door that let straight out onto the street. It was painted white and had some new iron on the roof but it hadn’t been made over into anybody’s dream. A yellow Mini with a cracked rear window, taped up, was parked outside. I knocked at the door and James opened it with a buzzing electric shaver in his hand. Half his face was shaven and half not. He looked terrible. He ushered me in and started to gabble. I reached out and clicked off the shaver. That shut him up.
“Let’s see the note,” I said.
He went out to the kitchen and I followed him. The house wore the same look all the way through, pleasant enough but as if no-one cared. He pointed to a piece of paper on the table and I picked it up. The words he’d read out were printed across a cheap piece of notepaper in capitals. A black ballpoint pen had done the writing and there were no idiosyncrasies in it that I could see. Across the back of the paper, which had been folded in three, was a strip of cellulose tape. James resumed his shaving, wandering about the little room stroking his jaw. He was wearing drill slacks and an orange-coloured thing I think is called a shaving coat. He would. I waited until he’d finished shaving and turned the motor off, then I told him about Tarelton’s note. He ran his hand over his smooth face and frowned where he found a missed spot. I pushed the shaver out of reach and leaned on him.
“How soon can you get the money?”
“Today. I’d have to see my family’s lawyer, but I’m sure it can be arranged.”
“Good. Do it. Don’t tell anyone else.” I started for the passage but he came after me and caught me by the arm.
“God, don’t just walk out. What do you think of it? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” I growled. “I’ll talk to some people, then we’ll play it the best way we can.”
“It all seems so strange — I mean for this to happen so long after she disappeared. It seems — I don’t know — oddly managed.”
“You’re the theatre man,” I said.
I brushed him off and left the house saying I’d call him at the theatre when things had been decided. I caught a taxi to Armstrong Street and wondered why I’d replied the way I had to his last remark. I didn’t know. Maybe just to be rude.
Madeline Tarelton opened the door again. She was wearing a lime green trouser suit today and nothing about her had deteriorated since I’d seen her last. She seemed to be bearing up under the strain and her voice was edged with contempt when she spoke.
“Ted’s still in bed. He’ll see you there.”
“Where’s the room?”
“Upstairs, in front.”
I went up. The room was big with two glass-panelled doors letting out onto a balcony. The water was visible through them, shining dull and grey under the thick white sky. In bed Ted was not nearly as impressive as he was when up and around and properly togged up. The skin around his jaw sagged, his rumpled hair looked thin and his body under the bedclothes was lumpy and powerless. The room had pale candy striped wallpaper and a deep pile carpet; it was too fussy and frilled, with fringed lampshades and a brocade bedcover, for my taste and Ted looked uncomfortable in it. I sat on a bent wood chair cushioned with satin while Ted folded up the newspaper and pulled himself straighter in the bed.
“Bad business this, Hardy,” he said. “Fair knocked me. I took a bit of a turn. Crook heart.” He placed his hand over his chest. I nodded.
“Got the note?”
He produced it from the breast pocket of his puce pajamas and handed it over. Identical to James’ except for the extra information.
“I was up early. Meeting on today at Randwick. I went for the papers and there it was, stuck to the door. Madeline had to bloody nearly carry me back here.”
The experience had swept away his usual bluster; I couldn’t tell whether he was most upset by the kidnapping of his daughter or the reminder of his own mortality, but it was obviously the right time to pressure him a bit.
“You can raise the money?” I asked.
“Easy. Reckon I should?”
“Yes. But there’s something weird about this. It doesn’t smell right.”
“How do you mean?” he said listlessly.
“Could the girl be shaking you down?”
Colour flooded his face and he looked about to sound off at me which he undoubtedly would have done if he’d been feeling his usual, successful self. Now he flopped back against the pillows and fidgeted with the quilt.
“Possible, I suppose,” he said lamely. “Is that your theory?”
“I haven’t got a theory, just a feeling. It’s a strange one. I never heard of two ransoms being asked before. Complicates things. Not that they’re not messy enough already.”
“Madeline told me you’d rung the other night. By complicated you mean about the Abo? What’s happened since then?”
I gave him an outline leaving Coluzzi out and not going into details about Noni’s reputation in Newcastle. He couldn’t help on that score; he’d practically lost all touch with the girl from the time his wife had left to when Noni turned up motherless. Ted’s instincts, bred in the SP game and sly grogging, were to avoid the police, so he fell in with my suggestion that we keep the police out of it for the time. I had a feeling, which I was backing, that the girl wasn’t in danger. But the cops wanted to talk to her in connection with Simmonds’ death and if they started poking around and stirring things up it could all turn sour and Noni might suddenly become dispensable. I gave Ted the gist of this and he agreed to raise the money and wait for the contact.
“I think that’s just plain stupid,” Madeline Tarelton said from the doorway. She came in carrying a glass of water and some pills on a tray. She set them down on the bed and gestured at her husband to take them. He did. I pocketed the note and got up from my chair.
“Just a minute,” Madeline said quickly. “This is insane, you must go to the police.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “And your husband agrees with me.”
She snorted. “You’re playing games. I have my doubts about you Mr Hardy. This is a mistake.”
“Keep out of it Madeline,” Ted said sharply. Maybe the pills had done him some good. Madeline swung round on him, surprised, but he cut her off.
“You don’t give a damn about the girl, she’s nothing to you. Alright, fair enough, but she’s my daughter and I want her back safe. We’ll do it Hardy’s way.”
“That’s not fair!” Her composure was disturbed which looked like a rare event. “That girl is a menace, the dregs, she . . .”
“Shut up!” Ted roared. His face turned purple.
“Don’t shout, you’ll have another attack.”
I left them to it and went down the stairs and out of the house.
I pulled up the hood of the light, plastic parka I was wearing and walked through the drizzle to Oxford Street where I caught a bus to the city. On the bus I read yesterday’s paper. Simmonds’ death got a small notice on page four in between an item on rail fares going up and the birth of an elephant at the zoo. The police appealed to the blonde woman who’d found the body to come forward. The Chev Biscayne was described. The woman and the car were the police’s only lines of investigation. I couldn’t imagine the La Perouse blacks identifying Noni to the police, however much they disliked her, but some back-tracking by the cops could turn her name up soon and then the heat would be on me.
I got off the bus outside The News building and bought the morning paper. There was nothing more on Simmonds but the discovery of an injured woman on her farm near Macleay got a me
ntion. The woman was in a critical condition in Macleay hospital and police were anxious to interview a tall dark man wearing light-coloured clothes and carrying a dark coat. If they were any good it wasn’t going to take the local police long to trace that man from his taxi to his breakfast to his shave. I’d used the name Colin Hocking for the plane ticket but a quick scout about at Newcastle would turn my car up and then I could expect visitors. On the sporting page there was a preview of the fight coming up between Jacko Moody and Tony Rosso. It would be the first main event for them both. They had good, rather similar records, but Moody had KO’d two men whom Rosso had only decisioned and he was favoured to win. It reminded me that I had to get tickets from Harry Tickener for Ted Williams.
The News building is a standard glass, concrete and plastic tower which creates a canyon without and neuroses within. The lobby was hung about with glossy blow-ups of press photographs that showed politicians with beer bellies and worn-out smiles, football players spattered with mud and fashion models of unbearable thinness. I went up to the fourth floor where Harry shares some cramped office space with thirty other reporters. They steal each other’s cigarettes and listen to each other’s phone conversations. I wound through the desks and wastepaper bins. Harry’s typewriter was blasting.
“Hallo Cliff — hang on a second.” He pushed a lock of his thin yellow hair back and stabbed at his keyboard with long, tobacco-stained fingers; three of them.
“Carry on exposing,” I said. I sat down in the hard chair drawn up in front of the desk and rolled a cigarette. The old tobacco had tasted bad enough last night; this morning it was disgusting. Tickener stopped pounding and stretched both hands up in the air. Nothing creaked, he was still young.
“What can I do for you Cliff?”
“Two things; tickets to the Moody fight — a pair. OK?”
“Yeah, no trouble. You coming with me?”
