Burn and Other Stories ch-16

by Peter Corris

  I followed her back to Macauley Street, noting the quick, nervous way she walked, the mannerisms that suggested insecurity, or something else. My car was parked nearby and had collected a ticket. Another expense for Mr Hathaway. I drove to Petersham, intending to watch Alberto, maybe even front him. As it turned out, there was no need. I parked in a lane behind the liquor store and, as I was locking the car, I became aware of the blue Laser that had drawn up behind me to block the exit to the lane. Alberto got out of the car and wrapped his right fist around a heavy bunch of keys. I had two keys and an NRMA tag on a single ring. I also had a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson on my right hip under my shirt-tail.

  Alberto approached me, waving the loaded fist. ‘I want to talk to you. Why’re you following that woman?’

  I moved away from the car into open space. He was as tall as me, lighter, but much younger and maybe quicker. “What woman?’ I said.

  He had the fist cocked and he was well-balanced. He wore jeans, a T-shirt and Nikes. Good fighting gear. ‘You were on the bus,’ he said. ‘You followed her to the library, then you followed her home.’

  ‘You’ve been doing some following yourself,’ I said.

  He feinted at my head with his left and threw the right low. Good move, like something Fenech might have taught him at the Police Boys’ Club. But he hadn’t done it often or seriously enough to quite bring it off. I stepped back, made the punch miss, and clipped him on the side of the jaw with a short left. He lost balance and I gave him a bit of elbow and shoulder to help him on his way down. He fell, but he bounced up quickly and tried a roundhouse swing at my head. Another feint, but this time his feet were doing the work. He kicked me on the inside of my right thigh and I felt the strength drain from the leg as I buckled. He shuffled like Ali, but couldn’t decide whether to punch or kick. I dropped my head and butted him in the stomach with the last of the leverage I had. We both fell, me on top. I kneed him fairly hard in the crotch, splayed my fingers and exerted pressure on his staring eyeballs.

  ‘Keep very still,’ I gasped, ‘or get badly hurt.’

  He froze. ‘OK, man. OK.’

  I eased away slowly, plucking the keys from his hand and letting him see the gun in mine. ‘I want to talk, too,’ I said.

  He said, ‘It’s not that heavy, man. I’m just trying to save one junkie.’

  I put the gun away, kept the keys and let him sit up. We sat on the kerb in the lane. He lit a cigarette and told me about Fiona and her smack habit and how he wanted to help her kick it.

  ‘I saw you score in the underpass, again in Newtown and maybe again at the Cross last night.’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t score in the Cross. I talked to a couple of the girls about what it’s like, trying to get straight. It’s rough. I’ve been building up a supply. I’m going to take Fiona away…’

  ‘To Maianbar?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, right. You really have been on the job. Are you a nark?’

  ‘No. Go on.’

  ‘I’m going to take her to Maianbar and taper her slowly and get her clean. I’ve got some friends who’ll help.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘I love her.’

  ‘How’d she get hooked?’

  He turned his head to look at me. There was a slight swelling under his jaw where I’d hit him and some bruising around his eyes, but he was ready to take me on again if he had to. ‘The guy responsible is dead,’ he said.

  We struck a deal, Alberto and me. I agreed to obtain some clean heroin, not the street crap he’d been scoring, and to get a doctor in on the cure. He agreed to let me tell Henry Hathaway what was going on.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Hathaway said. ‘Not my daughter.’

  We were in the living room of his house- polished boards, Persian rug, cedar furniture. ‘It happens,’ I said. ‘Think about it-how jumpy she is, the long-sleeved blouses. Track marks. She met the wrong man at the wrong time. Now she’s met the right one.’

  He shook his head. ‘A bloody wog.’

  I leaned closer to him. ‘Let me put you straight. He’s risked more for her already than you ever have. The man who introduced her to heroin isn’t with us any more.’

  Hathaway’s high colour leached away. ‘God,’ he breathed.

  ‘Yeah. And Alberto’s risked being busted and fingered buying the stuff to help her with the cure. D’you think scoring heroin’s fun? It isn’t. And I’ll tell you something else. His family doesn’t want him to have anything to do with her.’

  ‘They know? About Fiona’s… problem?’

  ‘Of course not. She’s Australian. She’s not a Catholic. They don’t think she’s good enough for him.’

  Fiona took her annual leave and went to Maianbar with Alberto and his friends. Dr Ian Sangster, the medico who helps keep me together, supervised the tapering and the cut-off. He tells me that Fiona’s chances are good because she has love from outside and self-esteem from within. I got a big cheque from Henry Hathaway and an invitation to Fiona and Alberto’s wedding which was a great bash. They went to Portugal for the honeymoon. A happy ending, so far.

  ‹‹Contents››

  Kill Me Someone

  ‘I’m at my wits’ end, Mr Hardy. I know he’s serious about it. He’s tried twice with pills.’

  Gabrielle Walker dropped her head so that I couldn’t see her red-rimmed, frantic eyes. Her thin shoulders heaved and she sighed. She was too tired to weep. I went past her, out of my office and down the hall to what the agent for the building refers to as a ‘kitchenette’. In fact it’s a couple of square metres of dead space beside the toilet fitted out with a sink and a power point. I’ve tried leaving a Birko and instant coffee and long-life milk in there to give the place a homey look, but the stuff always gets stolen. I ran the water until it cleared and took a glass back to Ms Walker. From the way she looked, anything stronger would have laid her out.

  She thanked me and sipped the water. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  I said, ‘It’s OK. You’ve obviously had a rough time and you have a big problem. I’m not sure I can help you with it though. It sounds like something for counselling.’

  She’d told me almost nothing. Just that her boyfriend was trying to kill himself. I didn’t even have his name. She was a thin, intense type, with a pale face and a mop of curly dark hair. The hair danced around her face now as she shook her head vigorously. ‘No. We’ve been through all that. This is different. I heard about you from Renee Kippax.’

  Renee ran a sandwich bar and coffee shop in Palmer Street. I’d had a lot of breakfasts and lunches there, eaten on the run or taken away in paper bags, over the years. When she had a problem with some characters who were trying to persuade her that she needed plate glass, coffee machine and upholstery insurance, I helped her out by persuading them that she didn’t. She was a smart, tough, independent woman whose protective instincts would be brought to a high pitch by this helpless young woman. But she wouldn’t mention me without good reason.

  ‘Maybe you should tell me what you told her,’ I said.

  ‘Andrew McPherson’s his name. He’s a couple of years younger than me. I’m twenty-seven. He had a terrible life as a child. His father was a drunk who came back from time to time to bash him and his mother. She went mad. But Andrew battled on. He went to tech and he’s got a good job.’

  I was scribbling to get this down. I interrupted her to give me time to catch up. ‘Tell me what you do first, Ms Walker. I gather you work around here?’

  She nodded. ‘At the ABC. I’m a researcher and production assistant.’

  I was back on the pace by this. ‘And what does Mr McPherson do?’

  ‘He’s an art designer for magazines. He works at…’

  She stopped and looked at me. It’s something you get used to in this business. You’re a problem-solver and people want your help, but their first instinct is to mistrust you.

  I said, ‘Ms Walker, if I went around telling people’s employers what I’ve been told in
confidence, I’d be out of a job in a month.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Renee said you were very trustworthy.’

  Not quite the point but what the hell. She told me that McPherson was the art director for Bigtime Publications, an outfit that published sporting and technical magazines. ‘It’s a smallish firm, really,’ she said, ‘despite the name. And it struggles sometimes when people don’t pay their bills. But it’s surviving and Andy has a future there. Except that…’

  She didn’t have to complete the sentence. I’ve encountered a few suicides in my time, some successful and some near-misses. A version of the old Samuel Goldwyn line applies: if people don’t want to live you can’t stop them.

  Desperation or the look on my face or maybe both caused her to blurt the next words out: ‘He’s hired a hit man to kill him!’

  After that, we got to the guts of it. McPherson had last tried to kill himself two months ago. After he was released from hospital, he saw a counsellor, took some anti-depressants and seemed steadier. Ten days ago, Gabrielle Walker had heard him talking on the phone, using what she called ‘frightening language’.

  ‘I tackled him and he admitted what he’d done.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘He said he’d made an arrangement with this man to kill him some time within the next three years.’

  I stared at her. This was a new one. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s terrible. He’s been wonderful ever since- cheerful, funny, happy. He’s done some great layouts and he did a freelance thing, a book cover, that was just brilliant. I’ve never seen him more… alive.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘He won’t talk about it. He wants to make love all the time, but he won’t talk. All he’ll say is that he can’t face the idea of living for five or ten or twenty years, but he can face three years. And the knowledge that he might only have to face a week, or less, makes him feel good.’

  ‘He’s a very disturbed man,’ I said.

  ‘I know. But I’ve never seen him happier. He’s never been more… passionate. I’m sorry, this is embarrassing.’

  It was, a bit. She was a rather proper young woman essentially-restrained, even conventional. As I talked to her, I sensed that she had found McPherson’s suicidal impulses understandable, almost acceptable. She was a little low on self-esteem herself. Maybe that was what had drawn them together initially. But this twist, this variation on the theme, really threw her. She would have coped better with a suicide pact, perhaps. These were very deep and murky waters for a simple boy from Maroubra. I resorted to the oldest gambit of all. “What do you want me to do, Ms Walker?’ I said.

  Her head came up defiantly. ‘I want you to find this man and tell him not to kill Andrew. Tell him that you know all about it and if anything happens to Andrew you’ll tell the police. That should stop him.’

  I nodded. ‘It would, you’d reckon. But this is a big city and there are a lot of dodgy people in it. Even if Mr McPherson’s not just romancing…’

  ‘He’s not. I’m sure.’

  ‘OK. But you can see why I’m doubtful. Maybe the idea of being killed makes him feel better. It doesn’t mean there’s reality behind it.’

  ‘I know the man’s name,’ she said.

  That, of course, put a different complexion on it. She said McPherson talked in his sleep and that she’d heard him say, ‘Do it, Clark. Please do it, Clark,’ over and over.

  ‘Just Clark? Not Clark somebody or somebody Clark?’

  ‘Just Clark’

  Ms Walker seemed to think that was enough for a halfway decent detective to go on, especially one who’d been recommended by Renee Kippax. I thought it was one notch above nothing at all, but, at least partly, we PEAs are in the reassurance business. I got her address and phone numbers, took a very small amount of her money and promised I’d look into it.

  You could say I went through the motions. I talked to a few people — a cop, two other private eyes, a journalist and several drinkers in several places where some of the dodgy people I’d referred to hang out. The recession was biting down there too, otherwise I doubt whether I’d have got the nibble I did in the public bar of the Finger Wharf Hotel, Woolloomooloo.

  ‘Clark,’ Mick ‘the Dingo’ Logan said. ‘Seems to me I did hear of a guy who called himself Clark sometimes. What’s it about, Hardy?’

  ‘As far as you’re concerned, Dingo, it’s about thirty bucks-if your information’s any good.’

  ‘Heavy stuff?’

  ‘It could be.’

  ‘Clark, Clark.’ Logan lit a cigarette, puffed on it a few times and then limped off in the direction of the telephone. The Dingo had had some bad luck a while back and got both his legs broken. Then he served a stretch inside and the legs didn’t mend too well. His armed robbery days were over but he still knew what went on and was prepared to sell a titbit or too as long as it didn’t put him in any danger to do so. That was what the phone call was about. I sipped my middy of old and waited.

  Logan came back, grinning and snapping his fingers. He stubbed out his cigarette and took a long pull on the beer I’d bought him. ‘It all comes back to me,’ he said.

  I put a twenty and a ten under my glass and looked at him.

  ‘Hey,’ Logan protested, ‘you’re getting it wet.’

  ‘Dingo, you’ll just turn it into beer anyway. ‘What’s the difference? Let’s hear it.’

  It was early afternoon on a chilly, windy day. The kind of day that turns the streets of the ‘Loo into cold wind tunnels. There were very few people in the bar and they were all minding their own business. Logan leaned closer to me, whispering out of long habit. ‘Word is, this guy Clark’s either a bit of a joke or an undercover cop.’

  I lifted his glass, put the twenty under it. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Yeah, like he claims to have form in the west or South Africa or some fucking place. But no-one knows him over here. There’s a whisper he did a bank in Rockdale. Cowboy job. Could’ve been a come-on.’

  There’s no body of men more paranoid than crims when they’re sober or more trusting when they’re drunk. Without the lubrication of alcohol, the clear-up rate of the NSW police force would only be half what it is. I put the ten on the bar between us.

  ‘And?’ I said.

  ‘It’s a joke for sure.’

  ‘If it’s funny, I’ll laugh.’

  He took the money. ‘He’ll do a hit for five grand.’

  I produced another twenty. ‘Tell me where to find him.’

  Logan, being the man he is, gave me three addresses and two names. Never in his life had he been known to deliver up information straight. In the old days, I’d have had to make a decision- would it be better to give him more money or lean hard and persuade him to be more precise? But everyone’s become more devious since those times, and more hungry lately. Besides, Logan was almost a cripple. I bought him another beer, thanked him and left the pub. I’m more devious nowadays as well-I positioned myself where I could spot the Dingo and follow him, whether he limped, drove himself or rode.

  He came out of the pub and hopped into a taxi which he’d apparently called from inside. I was right behind him, up Bourke to Oxford Street and through to Paddington. Like I said, alcohol is the fuel of criminality. Logan paid off his cab outside the Five Ways Hotel and took himself, and my fifty bucks, inside. Trendy place, for the Dingo-restored to its former glory, painted in colonial colours and with as many vines growing out of pots as could be crammed into the available space. It wasn’t one of the addresses he had given me. I parked a few doors from the pub and walked back, fishing sunglasses out of my pocket and getting ready to do my imitation of a private detective on the job. In fact I knew that if Logan had another couple of beers it would be possible to belly up to the same bar and not be recognised.

  The poet who said something about standing and waiting should be the official laureate of this trade. I watched men and women enter and leave the Five Ways for the next fifteen minutes. About hal
f of the males could have been hit men or cops and a certain percentage of the females could have been males. When I judged that Logan would have absorbed two schooners, I went into the public bar. Logan was drinking at the far end, near the dartboard. He looked anxiously at his watch and lifted his glass with an unsteady hand. I got behind a pot-plant that seemed to have wandered in from outside and did some more watching. A big, beefy guy in a blue suit came in and spotted the Dingo. He had sparse blonde hair cut short, and a red face with a deep cleft in the chin. I didn’t know him and from the way he moved, as if he expected everyone to get out of his way, I didn’t want to.

  He ordered a scotch and ice and appeared to be ready to give Logan about one minute of his time. The Dingo said something quickly in his ear and cleft-chin scowled. He grabbed a handful of Logan’s jacket and polo-neck sweater and hustled him straight towards the toilet door. The action was so quick and neat that I was the only person in the bar who noticed. I went after them. Steep steps dropped away immediately inside the door. I heard scuffling sounds and went down the steps fast and quiet. Cleft-chin had Logan bent forward over a hand basin. He was so big it was hard to see the Dingo’s body at all, but I could tell that his feet were scrabbling for a purchase on the slippery tiles and his head was getting wet. The big man was running water with his right hand and holding Logan’s head down with his left.

  I came up behind him and jabbed my. 38 Smith amp; Wesson hard into the base of his spine. His head lifted and he saw me in the wall mirror behind the basins. I ran the muzzle of the gun up a few vertebrae and then moved it away.

  ‘Let him go,’ I said, ‘or I’ll make you a worse cripple than he is.’

  Logan spluttered, pulled free and headed for the door. The big man let him go and I could feel him ready to turn his aggression on me. I backed away and kept the gun steadied on his wide mid-section.