The Marvellous Boy ch-3

by Peter Corris

  ‘They’re not very good of him.’

  My heart bumped. ‘But you do know him?’

  She leaned back, vamping: ‘Many times, many times.’

  I was too tense for it. ‘Where is he now?’ I rasped.

  ‘Haven’t a clue, ‘ she said cheerfully. ‘Haven’t seen him for ages.’

  ‘Jesus! You don’t know where he lived?’

  ‘No dear, he never took me home to meet his Mum.’

  18

  I wasn’t really let down; I hadn’t expected him to be boarding there, but I’d hoped Honey would still be in touch with him. Still, a year isn’t a long time, I thought. The trail was still warm compared to some I’ve followed and it was time to consolidate, get all I could on him, and look for the next doorway.

  I made a cigarette while she fiddled with the pictures. Her face was hard and vain but there was humour in it and in the set of her lean body. She looked as if a shrug might always be her next movement. I blew smoke and put the match in a seashell ashtray.

  ‘You must have liked this one, Honey?’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’ She went on fiddling nervously.

  ‘Do you let all your clients use you as a mail drop?’

  She looked up shrewdly. ‘Know about that eh? Let me tell you, I was furious. It broke all my rules.’

  ‘Like not knowing their names?’

  ‘Well, that gets broken from time to time. No, I mean about getting involved, families and all that.’

  ‘I get it. Something came from Canberra?’

  ‘Canberra, yes.’

  ‘Was that the last you saw of him, when he picked that up?’

  ‘The very last. I wasn’t sorry, he was no good.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In every way — mean, selfish, rough…’

  ‘He was violent?’

  ‘I’ll say. I thought he was going to eat me the first time. Look, this isn’t embarrassing you?’

  ‘No, I’m older than I look. Go on.’

  ‘He really liked the old stuff, you know? Kinky for it.’

  ‘Kinky in what way?’

  ‘Just… very keen, very appreciative of me and I’m no picture. I’ve been through the mill and I’ve got the marks to prove it. He lapped it up.’

  ‘Did he have much money?’ I butted the cigarette in the seashell; the old tart fanned the smoke away from her face irritably and reached under her gown to scratch. I decided she was closer to sixty than forty.

  ‘He didn’t have much money,’ she said slowly, ‘but enough. Most of what he had must have gone on booze.’

  ‘What did he drink?’

  ‘Everything, but he never got really pissed. He was big, see? I mean really big,’ she tapped the pictures. ‘These don’t show it. He must have been close to fifteen stone and getting heavier. I suppose he could carry a lot of grog.’

  ‘All right, now let’s try to pin it down a bit. When did this letter from Canberra come?’

  ‘About a year ago, October or November last year. Look, what is all this…?’

  ‘Tell you in a minute. Did he say what was in the letter or give you any idea of what he was doing?’

  ‘Not a bloody clue. He came here two or three times a week for six months or so, we had a few drinks and we…’ she waved at the bed. ‘Sometimes he stayed the night, not often He paid up and we didn’t talk hardly at all. As often as not he was drunk when he lobbed in and he stayed drunk; he always brought grog with him.’

  ‘What did he wear?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Might give me an idea of what he was doing or where he lived.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose it could. Let me see now.’ She resumed the hand in chin position and seemed to be enjoying herself. Somehow she gave out a lot of warmth and I would have been enjoying her company if I hadn’t been so tense about the information. ‘I never saw him in a suit, that means he wasn’t a professional man, right?’

  I smiled. ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘He wore jeans and T shirts I think, jumper sometimes… boots I think.’

  ‘Anything distinctive — tattoo, scar, jewellery?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Oh, he was very brown.’

  ‘Suntanned?’

  ‘Yeah, sort of.’

  ‘But not really like a tan?’

  ‘No, it was a yellowish colour and very even all over. He must have been a nudist.’

  Something was beginning to come through, a faint buzz, a distant hum that promised a connection, a link. I closed my eyes and let the synapses tick before I asked the next question. She looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Tell me, Honey, was this fifteen stone all fat?’

  ‘Oh shit no, didn’t I say? He’s a muscle man, or he was. He was getting a bit flabby from the drink but he had muscles like this.’ She lifted her arm and flexed it in the strongman-admiring-his-bicep pose.

  I smiled at her and she smiled back and rotated her wrist; I could imagine the ounce of muscle sliding along under the skin.

  ‘Where did you meet him Honey?’ I said quietly.

  ‘I picked him up outside the Spartacus Health Studio. Know it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pitt Street, bottom end, it used to be a good spot in the old days. I was just going past this night, not really looking. Well, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, not any more. He was coming out and he was really something, Hercules you know? I must have looked at him right because he said something and there we were.’

  I believed it, every word. It all hung together, the athletics, the adulation, the muscle-building, maybe the dissipation, too. And other things made sense. I was itching to get back to my notes, to tie things together with arrows and signs for a equals b. I was staring straight at Honey while doing this thinking and she became agitated, her blue-veined hands started fluttering and plucking at the frill on her cushion.

  ‘Ah, you said you’d tell me about this,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It’s not political is it? I don’t want to know if it’s political.’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Oh, Canberra and that.’

  ‘No, it’s not political. It’s about old ladies looking for lost boys and rotten apples in barrels and people not getting what they deserve.’

  She yawned, she was used to babblers. ‘You said something about paying me,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know anything more about this guy, Honey? Anything at all? Did he have a car?’ I was clutching, reaching for little confirmatory details that would bolster up the theory I was building.

  ‘No, I never saw a car. Hey where’re you going? What about the money?’

  I got up and pulled out my wallet, released a twenty and five and let them flutter down onto the bed. She looked at them with disappointment shaping her eyebrows and pouting lips.

  ‘I thought there’d be more.’

  I reached down and patted the purple hair, partly out of curiosity. ‘You’ve been a great help, Honey. Tell you what, if it all works out I’ll buy you a present. What d’you need?’

  ‘A facelift.’

  I thought of other faces, faces changed by time and booze and distress. My most recent picture of Warwick Baudin was more than eight years old. I wondered if I’d know him.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said. ‘Talking of faces, is Warwick recognisable from the pictures?’ I bent and gently retrieved the prints.

  She shrugged. ‘I dunno. Warwick is it? It just said W on the letter. I recognised him but I’m good with faces — depends how good you are with faces.’

  Fair enough. I patted the hair again, it was stiff with spray and dye and chemicals. ‘I hope it all works out Honey, I’ll be in touch.’

  She muttered something I didn’t catch and I left the room and went down the stairs and out of the house. The sun had broken through again and the day was bright and glaring but Inge wasn’t on her chair any more. Honey Gully didn’t come out on her balcony to wave me goodbye — all the good whores were indoors w
aiting for the day to end.

  19

  My theory was built on hints and mortared up with guesses and intuitive leaps. I worked on it as I plodded through the steamy heat towards my car. Richard Selby looked to be at the bottom of it; I assumed he was Henry Brain’s benefactor, the one who had set the works in motion and had followed up by talking to young Booth, the lawyer. He had a stake in it, his wife and kids were in line for the Chatterton money or threatened with the cold shoulder. He had a lot to lose but the question was — how had he got into the game? The obvious answer was in response to something dropped from Henry Brain’s wagging, alcoholic tongue.

  The car was a sweat-box; I wound the windows down and drove along with the other perspiring prisoners down past the park to lower Pitt Street. I parked a few blocks from the station, stuck the. 38 in my pants and hit the street. The place was listed in the book and I reached it in a couple of minutes. There were two windows above an army disposals store; one said Spartacus and the other said Health Studio in big, freshly painted letters. I went up a narrow staircase and met the same words again, this time on two plate glass doors. Smaller letters said that the manager of the establishment was Leonidas Green. I went into a small room formed by six-foot-high movable partitions. A girl was sitting at a desk reading a magazine, smoking and drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup. Her yellow hair fell down from a centre part that ran like a white scar along her skull. She looked up and gave me a fifty carat smile with capped teeth, red lips and eyes like jewelled spiders.

  ‘Good afternoon sir,’ she breathed, ‘are you interested in building your body?’

  ‘Not really, I need a new one.’

  She smiled at lower voltage. She was wearing a sleeveless dress the colour of her hair and an even, sun-lamp tan; she drew on her cigarette and showed me her profile when she blew the smoke away. Her voice was phoney-American.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Is Mr Green around?’

  ‘He’s very busy. If you could tell me your business.’

  I cave her a card. ‘A few questions, no trouble.’

  ‘I’ll see.’ She got up and came sashaying around the desk on three-inch heels.

  ‘I’ll see, too,’ I said and went through the gap in the partitions with her.

  We went into a gleaming room about sixty feet long by thirty wide. The polished boards gleamed, chrome barbells and other equipment gleamed, but the gleamingest things of ill were the mirrors that ran around all four walls. There was even a mirror on the back of the partition that formed the reception room. They ran from floor level up to the height of a tall man and after taking a few steps into the room I felt as though I was surrounded. The girl swayed over to where three men were throwing a medicine ball around. They stood about ten feet apart at the points of a triangle and they were heaving the big ball hard, mixing up low and high throws. We stood back and watched for a minute and when one of the players missed his catch the girl stepped forward.

  ‘Mr Green, there’s a gentleman to see you.’

  The shortest man in the group, a chunky guy with crisp curling grey hair, jerked his head around impatiently.

  ‘Not now Ronnie, tell him to come back later.’

  I moved around Ronnie and stepped up to him. He was about five ten and four feet across the shoulders; muscles bulged everywhere under his black singlet. He was middle-aged but the skin on his face was tight and smooth. The other two were carbon copies — six-footers with waved hair and vacant expressions. Their muscles looked to be trying to burst out of their singlets and shorts and run away to start life on their own.

  ‘Let’s make it now,’ I said. ‘It won’t take a minute and then you can go back to playing ball.’

  The Adonis on the left suddenly flicked the medicine ball at me, I moved aside and it hit Ronnie in the stomach. She collapsed and coffee from her cup flew everywhere and her cigarette dropped onto a canvas mat. Green swooped on the butt and snarled at the ball-thrower.

  ‘You fuck-wit Kurt, go and get a mop.’

  The other man helped Ronnie up; her spider eyes blazed and she shook off his hand. Green was holding the smoking butt between two fingers as if it were a dead mouse.

  ‘I’ve told you not to smoke in here Ronnie,’ he said. ‘Go away, I’ll talk to you later.’ He passed the cigarette to her and bent down again to pick up my card which the girl had dropped. He read the card and clapped his hand to his forehead theatrically.

  ‘Oh my God, what do you want?’ He eyed me professionally and noticed the bulge. ‘Keep the gun where it is will you? I’ve got some sensitive people here, they’re likely to faint at the sight of a gun.’

  Kurt was back with a mop soaking up the spilt coffee. The other he-man had wandered off towards a wall. He picked up a small bar-bell and began moving it one-handed from waist level to shoulder; he turned sideways and looked lovingly at the overblown muscles in his upper arm. I pulled out the photographs and gave them to Green.

  ‘I’m looking for this man. Do you know him?’

  He gave them a bored glance. ‘Hard to tell, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Look again, it’s important.’

  ‘Just who do you think you are? I’ve said I don’t recognise him.’

  Raised voices and a flurry of movement took our attention to the end of the room.

  Green groaned, ‘Not again,’ and hurried off towards the commotion. Kurt shouldered his mop and followed; his mate moved in front of the mirror like an entranced Narcissus. At the far end of the room, away from the windows, four men were gathered around two who were lying on a canvas mat. A big, fat character who was polishing one of the mirrors stopped work and turned to watch the others. The men on the floor were stripped to their athletic supports and they lay in a line with the soles of their feet touching.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Green.

  ‘A bet,’ he said grudgingly. He addressed one of the men on the mat. ‘What is it this time Carl, five hundred?’

  Carl put his hands out behind his head and took a grip on a medicine ball. ‘Seven fifty,’ he grunted. Green shrugged. ‘Fifty against,’ he said.

  ‘You’re on Leo,’ said one of the watchers, a tall, heavily muscled citizen with a widow’s peak of slick black hair. Kurt and one of the other body-builders got their bets down and Carl’s companion flipped himself up into a squatting position, still keeping his feet braced against Carl’s.

  ‘Carl’s betting he can get the medicine ball up to where Saul can touch it and back above his head seven hundred and fifty times. It’s murder on the laterals, want to bet?’

  ‘No,’ I said but despite myself I was interested. Carl looked to have the equipment for the job; his stomach was quilted with muscle and his neck and arms were grotesque storehouses of power.

  The mirror cleaner had let the fluid dribble down the surface and there were bubbles of spittle beside his mouth which was slack and open; fat clustered around his neck and sat in a great roll around his waist under a stained T shirt. Apart from me he was the only man in the room without perfect muscle tone.

  Carl came up in an easy, oiled movement with the medicine ball outstretched, Saul patted it and down he went and up, and down and up like a machine set to stamp out a thousand identical parts. After a hundred, great ropes of veins stood out in his neck and forehead and sweat ran in the clefts around his perfectly defined muscles. At two fifty his breath was coming in short gusts and I was betting mentally against him; everyone in the room was riveted except the mirror-gazer who kept on pumping and admiring the result. I glanced across and saw Ronnie, on tip-toe looking over the partition. A man came past her and up to Green but I was too interested in the contest to notice him: Carl had passed five hundred now and the spectators were counting, softly, rhythmically, five sixty-one, five sixty-two, sixty-three..

  I saw a movement in the mirror and moved but I was too late to miss the punch altogether; Leonidas Green’s fist took me under the ear and toppled me sideways. I fell sprawli
ng over Carl and Saul and the rhythm was broken and the men started to swear. Green came at me again and I ducked and rolled over and was on my feet. I moved into him and hooked him in the stomach and it was like punching a tree. He came on and I kicked him in the knee. He buckled and I hit him flush on the nose. Carl and Saul were on their feet shoving at each other and yelling and one of the muscle men came at me with a short, chromium bar in his hand; I let him swing it and put the heel of my hand hard into his face when he was off balance — blood spattered from his nose over the mirror. For a measureless instant I saw it all in reflection — Carl and Saul wrestling, and another man on the floor with blood welling through his fingers and Green on his knees yelling for someone to take me out. Then I was spinning around, backing up to the glass and pulling one of the muscle men with me when something sailed over my shoulder and shattered the mirror. The glass showered us and big sections of the mirror split and felt like guillotine blades. The noise stopped the action and I got my gun out and pointed it at Green’s gut.

  ‘Tell them to give us room Green,’ I panted, ‘or I’ll blow a hole in you. Tell them!’

  Green waved his arms like a man signalling a plane in. ‘Go away,’ he moaned, ‘go away. Oh Christ look at the place, what a mess.’

  The fat man had melted away somewhere leaving his mirror clouded and streaky, another six-foot stretch of glass was blood spattered and broken pieces littered the floor. There was a deep gouge in the polished boards where the thrown bar-bell had landed after it hit the mirror. I wasn’t feeling so good myself.

  Green got up off his knees and I signalled him with the gun to move to a corner where there was a chair and a low bench. He moved and did some more arm waving.

  ‘Leave us alone. Kurt, Carl, get this mess cleaned up and piss off. We’re closed.’

  He seemed to have the authority he needed and some to spare. Two of them picked up the man whose face I’d smashed and carried him like a baby. A section of the mirror swung out and led to a locker-room and storeroom evidently, because they came back with brooms and wet towels and got to work on the devastation.