by Peter Corris
‘The guys who make up the story lines are even worse than the poor hacks like me who fill them in,’ Mountain had said. A hair popped out leaving an angry spot behind. ‘Bigger drunks than me, most of ‘em. They get paid more so they can afford it. Some go this route,’ he’d lifted his glass, ‘booze and gambling; some go the other way- religion. I know one outline man who gives it all away to some nutty church.’
Mountain had started to scowl when he could see that I intended to get at least a couple of words in with Harry. Harry played the conciliator.
‘How would you handle a straight thousand a week, Cliff?’
‘I’d invest it in Bill’s next novel. I’d stake him for six months while he wrote it.’
Mountain was hard to gauge, it depended partly on the Suntory level. Right then I’d half expected him to throw the bottle but he tipped it over his glass instead.
‘Might as well put it on a bloody horse,’ he growled. ‘Least you’d get a show. I can’t write a novel, haven’t had an experience in eight years.’
That was one way to handle Mountain, to plunge him into self-pity and steer him away from aggression. Then, of course, you didn’t get his funny stories about the TV industry, his malicious gossip and his very good singing voice-the things people liked him for. With me, it was usually a choice between the self-pity and skinned knuckles and I took the former every time.
I parked the car behind Primo Tomasetti’s tattoo parlour and tried to remember how that meeting with Mountain had ended or what had been said. I couldn’t, not without effort. It occurred to me that I could probably recall a lot more of Bill Mountain’s conversation if I tried, but I didn’t think it had ever included anything to suggest he’d take up car theft. The needle was buzzing in Primo’s place and my respect for art prompted me to sneak past and go up the stairs to my office without interrupting him. But he heard me and switched off.
‘Cliff.’
I poked my head around the corner; the young client looked alarmed and pointed at his shoulder. ‘She’s only got one eye,’ he yelped.
‘Momento,’ Primo said. ‘Cliff, I got an idea. I’ll do you your Keycard number anywhere you like for fifty cents.’ Primo has been trying to tattoo me for years.
‘I haven’t got a Keycard,’ I said.
‘No class.’ He switched on the needle. I went up one flight and along the passage to my office which also has no class, unless it’s fourth class. The city is over-supplied with office space although they’re building more all the time. Some of the over-supply is right here in my building as well as much of the turnover. In the years I’ve been here a lot of people have moved out but never because their expanding business needed room to grow. I noticed that we’d been joined by an ESP consultant, whatever that was. It was all right with me; it sounded like a nice quiet pursuit.
Two days’ absence from the office had generated some junk mail and the registration renewal papers for the Falcon. I wrote out the cheque thinking that there should be a prize for keeping old cars on the road or at least a sliding scale of registration fees. Instead I had a registration inspection to pass. I stuck a thirty-three cent stamp on the envelope and wondered if I’d live to see the dollar stamp, standard mail. Probably.
Then I spread the photos out on the desk with the ones of Mountain in the middle. I’d intended to commune with them, searching for a pattern, but I found myself thinking exclusively of Mountain again. The haircut and beard trim made him look less bulky but he was one of those men whom drinking fined down rather than made fat. If he was actually thinner it could be due to the Suntory. He looked harder though; the grooves were the size of my little finger and the line of beard hair followed the sharp ridge of his jawbone.
Action. I rang the TV production company he worked for and asked for him. A syrupy-voiced woman told me that Mr Mountain was on a month’s leave which still had two weeks to run. I’ll say this for Mountain, he doesn’t go in for this pretentious silent number business. He was listed as ‘Mountain, Bill’ in Bondi Junction. I dialled the number and it rang and rang until I fancied I could see the emptiness of the room all around the instrument.
A few more calls brought the expected results: ‘Bruce Worthington’s credentials were worthless. He’d given ‘film and TV producer’ as his occupation and the Polyglot Film Company as his place of business. Like all the phone numbers on the defaulters’ list this one had been circled and ticked, indicating that it had been checked. But it’s not too hard to arrange for someone to answer a phone and say what the caller wants to hear. Takes organisation though.
I was getting sick of looking at these uninspired photographs already; they reminded me of the videos of bank robberies where the sets look phoney and the actors can’t act… but they caught crooks. Mountain looked to be sober in the pictures, in control of himself. He didn’t look relaxed, but then he never did and wasn’t. He also didn’t look as if someone had a gun trained on him from across the street or had his old mum tied up to the kitchen table.
I had another job in the offing just then, a piece of body-guarding nonsense for a man who thought he might be mentioned soon in a crime report. He probably wouldn’t be. I off-loaded the late nights and sore feet on a man who was glad of the work. Terry Reeves’ missing cars and Bill Mountain’s new life of crime held a lot more interest.
I drove home to Glebe in the late afternoon and had to stop for groceries because I was living alone again. My lodger for the past three years-Hilde Stoner-had moved in with Frank Parker who held the rank of Detective Sergeant in the New South Wales police. She was pregnant and they were happy. Frank’s career was progressing again. I occasionally went over to Harbord where they lived and Frank beat me on the tennis court. He couldn’t beat Hilde though.
Helen Broadway and I had an arrangement. She spent half a year in the country with her husband and child and half a year in the city with me. I thought it was mighty decent of Michael Broadway to oblige in this way, but Helen said he hardly noticed the difference between her periods of residence and absence. The deal suited everybody except perhaps the kid who didn’t get a say.
Helen had left two weeks before to begin her wife-in-residence segment. We’d had an exhaustive and exhausting sexual session and in the morning she was gone. So now I had an empty house that still bore traces of a woman’s recent presence. I was enjoying the solitude and would for about a week more; but already I was regretting that Helen wouldn’t be there for the summer.
I threw together something to eat and allowed myself two glasses of wine. When it got dark I put on jeans, sneakers and a black T shirt, collected a leather pouch of pick locks and keys and went off to do a little discreet burglary.
Bill Mountain lived in a part of the Eastern Suburbs that was called Bondi Junction by some and Centennial Park by others. In fact the park was right opposite the row of small houses. I’d been there to a party a couple of years back and recalled the laneway behind the house and the brick wall with some sort of creeper over it. From recollection it was the sort of wall a man in reasonable health could get over without a ladder. We burglars weren’t carrying ladders that year.
I drove carefully around the district in the despised Falcon to get the feel of the place. I parked a couple of blocks away on the principle that quick getaways were easier on foot than by car, especially with the open acres just across the way. As I walked through the streets I pondered on how much easier burglary was when the burglar had had social entry to the house beforehand. Nothing new; Raffles had proved that.
The traffic was light, but it was a fine night and there were a few people in the streets so I had to lurk at the entrance to the laneway for a bit before I could slink down it to tackle the wall. Mountain’s place was three from the end. I slunk quickly, took a quick look left and right and swung up onto the wall. The creeper helped. The backyard was small and mostly bricked over; some light from the house next door fell on the bricks and helped me to miss the potplants and little herb garden as I
came down.
I stood still by the back of the house listening for sounds of humans or other animals. It was quiet. The bush with leaves like a tomato plant growing by the back door surprised me; most people as alcohol-pickled as Mountain don’t get anything out of the stuff.
I rattled the back door and let the sound soak into the silence inside. Still nothing. I ran a thin torch beam around the edges of the doors and windows looking for wires and electric cells, but Mountain had opted for a simpler security. The lock was tricky, new and dead-locked, but the picks were new and tricky too. The lock yielded after a while; the door had a sliding bolt in place but there’s a tool for that too. All in all, it was one of my quieter and smoother entries.
It’s a mistake to creep around in strange houses trying to avoid the furniture and glassware by torch light. You bump into things, it looks suspicious from the outside and you can’t really see anything useful anyway. Put on a few lights and the telly, bung on a kettle and no-one looks or listens twice.
I did all that, and prowled through the house. The small sitting room in front had a few ornaments and pictures and a shotgun hanging over the fireplace. Otherwise the house was dominated by books, manuscripts, magazines and newspapers. They overflowed in all rooms including the bathroom and toilet. There was enough paper in the house to re-constitute a small forest. I stood at a bookcase and flicked through magazines, galley proofs and scrap-books stacked in with expensive hardback novels. I had no idea what I was looking for-just impressions-but nothing was revealed unto me.
Mountain’s workroom was a study in chaos: there was a big desk with an electric typewriter sitting on it, but paper had flowed over the machine like lava over a hill. The surface was covered by words ranging from a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to a tiny three line death notice clipped from a newspaper. The desk drawers were full of notepaper, lined and unlined pads, pens, filing cards, paper clips and bits of string. I remembered looking into the room some time back at the party Mountain had got up on the spot at the pub the way he liked to do. The room looked the same now as then.
In the bedroom the bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets and the clothes in the wardrobe looked disorganised but intact. There was food and wine in the fridge and half a case of Suntory whisky in a kitchen cupboard.
Following the policy of acting natural, I went into the bathroom for a piss. There were two toothbrushes and the usual accessories. Washing my hands, I found the first independent confirmation that Mountain was ‘Worthington’. In the hand basin, only partly washed away, was a scattering of beard clippings. There were more on the floor. I didn’t sweep them up and put them in an envelope but the find jogged memories of Mountain moving around in his house, pouring drinks and… hanging his car keys on a nail in the kitchen.
I went through to the back, found the keys and put them on the table. They rattled, and a clinking sound came from the front of the house like an answer. I went cautiously down the passage towards the sitting room. There was a chair standing in front of the fireplace and the shotgun was missing from above it. I gaped at the space and started to turn towards the door. Before I completed the turn I heard the hammers click back and a voice cut in through the sound: ‘Stand right there and don’t move or I’ll shoot you.’
3
When someone holding a gun says ‘Don’t move’, what they really mean is don’t pull out a bigger gun or reach for an axe. I continued my turn, but slowly. When I stopped I was facing the shotgun. It was held by a young woman who couldn’t have been much taller than the gun was long; but she held its weight steadily enough. She wore a white overall on top of a dark turtle neck skivvy; her high-heeled boots might have lifted her over five feet, just. The only other remarkable thing about her, apart from the shotgun, was that she was Chinese.
‘How did you get in?’ I said stupidly.
She shifted the gun a little and I thought I might be able to wait her out. Maybe eventually she’d have to put the gun down from sheer fatigue. But she wasn’t tired yet. She shook back some of the short, black hair that hung in a fringe over her eyebrows. She had an oval face with a broad nose and wide mouth; those features went admirably with her slanted eyes. I’d never seen a better-looking shotgun holder.
‘I came through the bloody door. What about you?’
‘Through the back window.’
Our voices and accents were alike; she couldn’t have been born any further east than Bondi. I suppose we could have been excused our tones: mine was nervous and hers was angry.
‘What for? There’s nothing much to steal here.’
‘That’d take a bit of explaining,’ I said. ‘Could you put the gun down?’
She shook her head; the fringe danced.
‘D’you know where Bill Mountain is?’ I didn’t know what to do with my hands so I clasped them in front of me like a clergyman.
‘You know Bill?’ She sounded more concerned than angry now, and her attention slipped away from the gun a little.
‘I’ve had the odd drink with him. I’ve been here to a party once. Put the shotgun down. I’ll explain.’
Like any sane person, she was looking for an excuse to put the gun back on the wall, but she hadn’t found it yet. Her pure Sydney accent got the harsh edge to it we develop when things don’t go our own way.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cliff Hardy.’
‘Never heard of you.’
‘Why should you? I’m a private investigator. I can show you the ID. I’m looking for Bill.’
‘Oh shit! That’s all I need!’ She moved the hand on the stock up to join the other one on the barrel; then she leaned the gun against the wall like a broom. I breathed out fully for the first time in minutes and unclasped my hands. She got a packet of cigarettes and matches out of the back pocket of her overall and lit up in a smooth, unhurried movement. She sat down on the arm of the couch and put the spent match back in the box. From that point, about three feet off the floor, she blew smoke up at me; she squinted against the smoke and her eyes disappeared altogether-very disconcerting.
‘You’re after the alimony then?’ she said.
‘I didn’t know he was married.’
‘Twice.’
‘I’m not interested in any alimony. It’s a bit hard to explain. Could I sit down?’
She waved the hand holding the cigarette and I plonked myself down in one of Mountain’s easy chairs. My legs felt stiff and old. The shotgun leaned against the wall equidistant from us, but she seemed to have lost interest in it. She drew deeply on the cigarette.
‘Hard to explain, you said. Probably bullshit.’
I tried to look like a non-bullshitter. ‘No, but it’s not exactly a public matter. Could I ask who you are?’
‘Erica Fong. I’m Bill’s girlfriend or whatever you call it. Or I was-not sure now. Let’s see this ID you mentioned.’
I took out the wallet that contains the investigator’s ticket, and leaned forward to pass it over to her. I brought the hand back, took hold of the shotgun, and moved it along the wall closer to me. She appeared not to notice. She looked at the licence, shrugged and handed it back.
‘I just might have heard him mention you. Is that likely?’
‘Depends on what you were talking about and how much he’d had to drink.’
‘What does he ever talk about? How he hates the crap he writes and
‘And what?’
‘Why do you want him, Mr Hardy?’
That was the crunch. Here we were in Bill Mountain’s front room, me in my burglar gear and her in what I now realised was a ski suit and getting along so well and I had to tell her that I was after her bloke for stealing a car. Tricky. She threw her cigarette butt into the fireplace and leaned back watchfully.
‘It’s to do with a car,’ I said.
‘A car! No-one has adventures in cars anymore-not since Kerouac’
Adventures, I thought, who said anything about adventures?
‘Have yo
u read Kerouac?’ she said.
‘ On the Road, that’s all. Long time ago.’
‘I haven’t. I haven’t read anything. I just picked that up from Bill. I’ve picked up a lot of stuff like that. If you say Harold Pinter I can name a couple of plays, but I haven’t seen them.’ She reached back for her cigarettes and matches, lit the cigarette and tossed the match into the fireplace. It landed neatly beside the butt. She drew in the smoke and her tough voice started to waver.
‘Bill said he’d take me to all the plays.’ She sniffed. ‘He said I could read all the books too, but he could never find the right ones in all the mess.’ She was crying now, quietly with her cigarette burning down between her fingers and her slim shoulders shaking.
I let her cry, and occupied myself by breaking open the shotgun, removing the shells and replacing the weapon on the mantelpiece. Erica Fong got control of herself, got the cigarette back up to her mouth and took a drag. Her tear-stained face was in profile, firm-chinned and strong. She didn’t wipe her face and I got the feeling that she hadn’t cried very often.
‘I haven’t seen Bill for three days,’ she said. ‘This is the fourth. I was used to seeing him every day and most nights. I’m very worried about him.’
‘How long have you known him, Erica?’
‘’bout a year. I know he’s a drunk and everything, but he’s a lovely man really. We were going to go to China together. He was going to show me things.’ She sniffed and drew on the cigarette. ‘He’s been there before and he speaks Cantonese. Isn’t it funny? I don’t speak a word of Chinese.’