by Peter Corris
I parked only three blocks away from the Sportsman Club, almost back into Erskineville, but that’s nearby parking in Alexandria. At 3.30 the club already had a quota of drinkers—some of them afternoon specialists, some for whom the morning session had dragged on a bit, some for whom the evening had started early. I had to wait by a flyblown receptionist booth while my name was sent ‘upstairs’. After I’d spent ten minutes comparing the fly spots on the glass of the booth to the blackheads on the nose of the young woman inside it, Harvey Salmon came down the stairs to escort me into the precinct.
Salmon was tall and heavy with thinning brown hair and an expression that suggested things were bad and getting worse. I’d never met him but his picture had been in the papers at the time of ‘Pilot’ Wrench’s departure; in the flesh he looked heavier, thinner on top and even less sanguine. But gaol changes a man. He stopped a couple of steps from the bottom and studied me carefully. He wore a pale grey suit, white shirt and dark tie, suede shoes; I had on sneakers and jeans, an open-neck shirt and a leather jacket. I wondered which of us was dressed right. Salmon hopped down the last couple of steps with fair agility, gave me a nod and put two dollars between the sliding glass panels of the booth.
‘Thanks, Teresa.’
Teresa didn’t even glance up from TV Week. ‘Kay,’ she said.
I went up the short flight of stairs with Salmon, through a smaller drinking room with fewer poker machines than the one below, and into an office that was dark and musty. The only light was struggling in through some venetian blinds and the only places to sit were on the desk or on a rickety chair behind it. I sat on the desk and Salmon moved towards the chair. He also cleared his throat to speak but I got in first.
‘How about a drink?’
‘What? Oh yeah, sure, sorry.’ He moved back and opened the door; for a minute I thought he was going to yell his order across to the bar but he didn’t. He went out and I had about a minute and a half to study the room before he came back with two schooners. A minute and a half was plenty and I hadn’t drunk schooners of Old for years. It wasn’t such a good start.
When he was settled behind the desk and his glass, Salmon cracked his knuckles—I hoped he wasn’t going to do that too often.
‘I need someone around for two days,’ he said.
‘Try downstairs. If you’re good company you shouldn’t have any trouble.’
‘I need someone who can handle a little trouble, if it comes up. Not that it will.’
‘You never can tell,’ I said. ‘Especially in your game.’
He ignored me as if he had a set speech to deliver and was going to do it, no matter what. ‘I was all set to fly out today, that was the deal.’ He paused, maybe to see if I was shocked. I wasn’t. ‘But there’s been some screw-up over the passport. I’ve got two days to wait, and I’ve got enemies.’
‘Book into the Hilton, watch TV and wait.’
He ruffled the thin hair, making it look even thinner. ‘I don’t want to do that. Am I going to do that for the rest of my life? The cops say they’re keeping an eye on me and also on certain people. But I don’t know. Who can you trust?’
I drank some beer and looked at him; he wasn’t sweating and he didn’t look afraid, but maybe he just lacked imagination the way he, apparently, lacked a sense of irony.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘R … South America. Same thing, see? The cops say they’ve squared it over there but I want to get a feel of what it’s like. I’ll have to get someone over there, but I want to do a few things while I’ve got these couple of days. Jesus, I’ve lived here fifty years, I don’t want to spend the last two days in a hotel room.’
An appeal based on the pleasure of Sydney will get me every time. Salmon could see he had me and he took a confident gulp of his schooner before giving me the details. He had the use of a flat in Erskineville for the next three nights and expected to catch his plane on Saturday morning. He had a few places to visit, a woman to see. He wanted to have a few beers here and there; he wanted to go to the trots and the beach. He wanted me to stay in the flat and tag along with him. He’d give me five hundred now and five hundred on Saturday. I said I’d do it. Truth was, I was getting rather bored with party-minding and money-escorting.
We finished our beers and stood up together—the Sportsman wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to stick around.
‘Got a gun?’ Salmon asked.
‘Yeah. Got the money?’
‘In the flat. Let’s go.’
We left the glasses on the desk and went out of the office and through the bar. A couple of the drinkers looked at us but not with any particular interest that I could detect. Still, it’s never too early to start doing a job well. Teresa had got to Wednesday in the TV Week; we went past her and out to the street. Salmon looked up and down it nervously.
‘Where’s your car?’
‘Here’s where you start living like a free man. It’s about half a mile away.’
We walked down Margaret Street, which was fairly busy with shoppers and strollers, and turned into a quiet side street. Salmon didn’t seem furtive but he wasn’t introducing himself to people either. I noticed that he had a reasonable tan and not a gaol pallor and asked him about it.
‘I did some gardening,’ he said.
‘I’m surprised they’d let you grow anything.’
He slowed down and gave me what passed for an amused look; the downward drooping lines of his face squared up a little. ‘You’d be surprised what grows inside.’ He patted down his wavy hair with a brown hand.
When we got to the car he hesitated.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘What year is it?’ he said.
‘What does it matter? It goes.’
He got in. ‘It goes with the flat anyway,’ he muttered.
He directed me through the streets to one of the less grimy parts of Erskineville and we pulled up outside an ugly block of red-brick flats. I remembered that Harvey Salmon’s address used to be given as ‘of Point Piper’ but he approached the building unconcernedly.
‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘Cops reckon it’s all they can afford. They reckon they’ve got a couple of the flats in the block so it’s safe. What d’you reckon?’
We went down a narrow concrete path to the back of the block and a narrow set of concrete steps that was flanked by a rickety wrought-iron handrail. Salmon got a bright shining key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. The flat was one of three with doors giving on to a skimpy walkway: no balconies here, no window boxes even.
Inside, the decor was nondescript, new but not very new, and bought from a catalogue rather than according to anyone’s taste. I told Salmon to stay by the door while I checked the rooms: the small kitchen and smaller bathroom were empty, so was the bedroom. There was no one in the toilet. Salmon motioned me into the kitchen with a head movement. Out there he opened the fridge and got out a bottle of Reschs. I shook my head; he opened the bottle, poured a glass and drank it straight off. He poured another.
‘The place could be bugged,’ he whispered. ‘What d’you reckon?’
That was twice he’d asked me; it was time I reckoned something.
‘Let’s not talk,’ I said. ‘I’ll look around for bugs. Does the TV work?’
‘Think so.’
‘I’ll watch the tennis. When’re you going out?’
‘Tonight. Sevenish. Think I’ll have a kip.’
I cleared my throat and held out my hand.
‘Oh, sure.’ He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a wallet. He took out five hundred-dollar notes that looked as if they had plenty of company and handed them to me. I put the money in my jeans, peeled off my jacket and draped it over a chair and turned on the television. John Fitzgerald was serving to John Lloyd, 15–40. Salmon didn’t even look at the screen. He scratched under his arm and went into the bedroom. I heard the springs groan as he flopped on the bed. Lloyd was at the net but h
e hadn’t put enough snap into his volley and Fitzgerald lobbed over him: 30–40. I made a couple of cups of instant coffee in the kitchen and slept through a doubles match for an hour. Salmon came out and showered and we were set to go at 6.30. Before we went out the door he handed me twenty dollars.
‘Expenses,’ he said. ‘Petrol, drinks and that.’
‘Thanks.’ I’d been on the job for about three hours and I hadn’t done much that was very different from what I did when I wasn’t working—except collect five hundred and twenty dollars.
The first stop was a pub in the Cross, where Salmon claimed to know a lot of people but they didn’t seem to be around that night. We had a couple of drinks and he scratched up a word or two with a few blokes who didn’t seem especially keen to talk to him.
‘Just killing time,’ he said as we hit the street again. ‘This is the real business of the night: Lulu.’
I nodded politely; we were walking along Darlinghurst Road and there was a car cruising a few yards back and I was sure I’d seen one of the window-shoppers earlier in the night.
‘You’ve got your tail,’ I said. Salmon shrugged. A street girl wearing an open-weave top through which her nipples protruded and a mini-skirt that showed her meaty thighs, ambled out across the pavement and gave us the word. Salmon shook his head; I examined her closely but I was pretty sure she was the real thing and not policewoman-somebody.
‘Tarts,’ Salmon said. ‘Wait’ll you see Lulu.’
We went into a strip club opposite the fifty-flavours-of-icecream shop. Salmon showed a card and twenty dollars to the man inside the door and he took us through the smoke to a table down near the stage. I looked around to check for danger spots but I hardly needed to because the place was exactly like a dozen others I’d been in. Maybe I had been in there, it’s hard to tell. There was a bar along one wall, maybe twenty or thirty tables, with just enough room for the drink waiters to squeeze between, grouped in front of a wide stage. The stage was covered by a black curtain that had trapped smoke and dust and dreams for too many years. Salmon ordered a double Scotch and beer chaser for himself and I settled for a single Scotch. It was cash on the barrelhead, of course, and he paid from that big roll that made me more nervous than anything else I’d seen.
After a while the show started and there’s nothing to say about it except that it was slow and third- or possibly fourth-rate. The girls had dead eyes and their bodies seemed to come to life only spasmodically. Lulu was marginally more interesting than the rest if only because her enormous breasts looked real and when she glimpsed the wildly enthusiastic Salmon across the footlights she smiled with genuine invitation.
‘Wasn’t she great?’ Salmon said. He waved for another drink; a few more and all he could hope to use those great tits for was a pillow.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She seemed to like you, too.’
‘That’s a hell of a woman, Hardy.’ His voice had got slow and grave. Oh God, I thought, a slow, grave drunk. They’re possibly worse than the fighting ones. At least you can tap the fighters on the nose, mop up the blood and put them to bed. He leaned forward across the table and whispered through the smoke haze and din of people talking loudly and drunkenly. ‘Rang ’er up this morning. She’s got a place behind here. I’m goin’ back there in an hour, want you to keep an eye out.’
‘Okay, but you’d better lay off the booze or you’ll be wasting your money.’
‘No money!’ His voice went up suddenly. ‘No money!’
‘Okay, okay. Take it easy.’ Slow and grave and fighting—the very worst kind.
At the appointed time a waiter beckoned to us and we got up and went through a small door at the end of the room beside the stage. The passageway was dark and there were a couple of rooms off it, one of which was framed in bright light. Salmon gave the waiter some money and he went away. Salmon steadied himself against the wall.
‘Been a long time,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’ I was trying to see the end of the passage in the dark. ‘Need any help?’
‘Funny. You just squat down there somewhere and wait for me.’ He waved at the blackness ahead and knocked on the door. It opened and Lulu put her sequined breasts out into the passage, where they would have prevented overtaking. Up close her skin looked coarse and heavily powdered but she still had the genuine smile.
‘Come in, Harvey,’ she said. Salmon went in and I felt my way to the end of the passage. It did a right-angle bend, went down some steps and ended in a door that led on to a lane. I had a wide choice: the passage, the street or the stairs. Anyone who stands around in the street in the Cross after dark is asking for trouble; the passage was dark and smelled of cheap perfume and sweat. I chose the stairs.
I sat there in the gloom feeling sorry for myself and thinking that this job hadn’t turned out to be much more exciting than party-minding. Some very recognisable sounds came from the room a few metres away; at least Harvey was having a good time. I sat there remembering good times and feeling the five hundred and five dollars in my pocket—I’d rather have had five dollars and someone to have a good time with. Then I got to thinking about whether you could have a good time with five dollars. It was boring on the stairs.
Whatever Harvey and Lulu did took about an hour and left Harvey looking as if he’d been dragged from the surf. He came lurching out with his shirt undone and his fly open. He smelled like an overused sauna.
‘Never had annathin’ like it,’ he said. ‘In-credible.’
‘I got the impression you were regulars.’
‘Huh? Oh, sort of. Coast clear? Less go, I need a drink.’
We went out into the lane and that’s where they were waiting. Two big men, which made four big men, except that one of the big men was drunk and he was my responsibility. One of them stepped forward, looked closely at Salmon and ignored me.
‘Salmon, we’re going for a trip.’
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ I said.
‘Shut up, you. You can go back inside and look at the tits. We don’t want you.’
I guessed that the bloke who hadn’t spoken was the real muscle so I moved a little closer to him, taking me back towards the door. I gave him a short, hard right well below the belt and brought my knee up as his crotch came down. He groaned and gripped himself there; the other one was reaching inside his coat for something but I had a gun in my waist holster at the back and it came out smoothly as I turned around. I jabbed it hard into the talker’s neck and then pulled it back and held it a few centimetres from his nose.
‘Get back against the wall, Salmon,’ I said. ‘What’s the other one doing?’ I was staring into my man’s eyes, trying to convince him that I’d pull the trigger if I had to. I seemed to succeed; he dropped his hand from his coat and stood very still.
‘He’s holding his balls,’ Salmon said.
‘You sober enough to kick them if he looks frisky?’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s those fuckin’ cops?’
‘We could find some,’ I said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘No, what’s the point?’
‘Okay.’ I moved the .38 a little closer to the nose. ‘You see how things are. Mr Salmon’s not vindictive. You and your mate can walk down there and turn the corner and go home or I can shoot you somewhere. What’s it to be?’
‘We’ll walk,’ he said.
I heard a shuffling step and then the dull sound of a hard kick being delivered and then another. A man groaned and whimpered. I held the gun steady.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothin’,’ Salmon said. ‘This one can crawl. Let’s go.’
I moved back to the wall and we watched the guy who’d been kicked lift himself up off the ground and steady himself. Neither of them looked at us. They walked and hobbled down the lane and around the corner. Salmon and I went the other way out to the neon-lit street.
‘You were good, Hardy.’
I grunted. ‘Why’d you kick him?’
‘I was
feelin’ good. He spoiled my night.’
The next day Salmon spent the morning in bed. He made a few phone calls in the afternoon, watched some TV. I went out and got some Chinese food and a paperback of Dutch Shea Jnr by John Gregory Dunne. We ate, I read; Salmon watched commercial television and went to bed early. I slept on the couch but not well; I spent most of the night reading and drinking instant coffee so that I’d finished the book by morning. Good book.
On Friday morning I told Salmon I needed some fresh clothes and wanted to go to the bank, so I had to get back to Glebe. That was all right with him because he wanted to go to Harold Park that night anyway. We had our discreet police escort over to Glebe, and I did my business with Salmon hanging around looking bored. Putting a couple of hundred in the bank to cover a mortgage payment probably wasn’t a very big deal to him.
In the afternoon I watched some more of the tennis while Salmon yawned over some back-issue magazines he found in the living room.
‘You miss these inside.’ He flipped over the pages of a midyear National Times.
‘How did you find it? Prison, I mean.’
‘Hot and hard. You ever been in, Hardy?’
‘Not really, short remand at the Bay.’
He snorted derisively and seemed to be about to say something. Then he yawned and turned another page. John Alexander was giving ten years away to Peter Doohan and the games were going with service.
About half an hour earlier than I’d have thought necessary, Salmon announced it was time to go.
‘It’s too early,’ I said. ‘It’s just down the road.’
‘I want to get a good park.’
‘I thought we’d walk. Do you good.’
‘No. We drive.’
He was paying. We drove. I like Harold Park; somehow, even though they put in new bars and generally ponced the place up a few years ago, they managed not to kill the atmosphere. With the lights and the insects swarming in the beams and the Gormenghast houses up above the Crescent, the track feels like a special place—just right for what happens there. The race call and announcements over the PA system boom and bounce around in the hollow so that everybody knows what’s going on. You get a cheerful type of person at Harold Park—it’s almost a pleasure to lose money there.
