The Empty Beach

by Peter Corris

  He nodded jerkily. I went out onto the street and turned towards the last Bondi place on the list, a snooker room. I was thinking that it wasn’t a promising start when a kid stepped out of a doorway and asked me for a light.

  ‘I don’t …’ He hit me low and hard and I gasped, feeling the fluid rise inside me. Then my arm was grabbed and swung and I had to go with it or break it. I went, spinning out of control off the street into a lane, where my back hit a wall with an impact that shook my teeth. They came at me, two of them, with a third hanging back. I was shaky and just managed to get a knee up into one of them before the other threw a punch that got me on the neck.

  I sagged and would have been a sitting duck for the next punch, but it never came. Someone moved behind my playmates and hooked the legs of one neatly out from under him. He didn’t even watch the effect of that; the other kid swung around and my saviour hit him just above the belt. There were three sounds: a whuump as the punch landed, a grunt from the guy who delivered it and a scream from the recipient. The third guy, the non-participant, ran down the lane and the one who went down first scrambled up and ran after him. The unluckiest of the trio lay on the ground, fighting for breath.

  I straightened up. My deliverer gripped my arm and I felt the immense strength in his hold.

  ‘Easy,’ he said.

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. That was a great punch.’

  He looked down at the figure on the ground; he was young and slight.

  ‘He was overmatched,’ he said. ‘I was the light heavyweight champion of Oregon, amateur.’

  ‘I believe you.’ I peered down at the kid. I’d never seen him before; he was pimply and smelt a bit.

  The light heavyweight champion of Oregon let go of my arm and gave me his hand to shake. I took it carefully.

  ‘Bruce Henneberry.’

  ‘Cliff Hardy. Henneberry? Really?’

  ‘Sure. Why?’

  ‘He was a fighter here, good one. Fred Henneberry.’

  ‘That right? Now, what was this here?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The kid was crawling now, back towards the street, and Henneberry put a leg across his path.

  ‘You show any money out on the street?’

  ‘Yes, a bit.’

  ‘Junkies most likely, then.’ He bent down for a closer look at the kid. ‘Scabs, skin and bone. Hopped up junkie for sure. After your cash.’

  ‘Let him go,’ I said wearily. ‘He’ll be bruised for weeks.’ He lifted his leg and the kid got up and walked off shakily as if his legs were made of tin.

  During the action, Henneberry had looked to be of middle height or under, but now I could see that he was nearly as tall as me. He’d been in a fighter’s crouch, for one thing, and for another he was so solidly built that he didn’t look tall. His shoulders were huge and he had the sort of neck and chest that are built up by weight training. He wouldn’t have made the light heavyweight limit now. His face was wide and open and his brown hair was cut short.

  ‘I need a drink,’ I said.

  ‘How about brandy and coffee? I know a place.’

  ‘Fine. How far?’

  ‘Close. Let’s go.’

  We walked; he was not quite supporting me, but ready to do so. I tried to think of what I knew about Oregon and couldn’t come up with much—capital Portland, industries, timber and fish. Not sparkling openers.

  ‘Ah, Cliff, do you mind me asking what you were doing flashing your roll on Hill Street?’

  ‘I wasn’t exactly flashing it. I’m looking for someone. I was buying information.’

  He stopped in mid-stride. ‘You’re not a cop?’

  ‘Private enquiries. Why?’

  ‘I don’t want to screw up. Helping a cop wouldn’t help me.’

  We got moving again and he steered me into a small court that was flanked by boutiques, a cake shop and a surf shop. It struck me that Bondi was light on for outdoorsy places like surf shops. There was a dark window at the end of the court, dimly lit from inside, with an illuminated sign saying ‘Manny’s’ over the door.

  ‘This is my base,’ Henneberry said. ‘Manny keeps a bottle under the coffee machine.’

  5

  YOU couldn’t have read the Times inside Manny’s, but it wasn’t like the interior of a coal bin either. There were a few people sitting around smoking and drinking coffee and a few were even talking. It was an intellectual sort of place. We sat down and a short, dark character with long, oiled hair bustled over. He wore a Charlie Chan moustache and looked like a walking mixture of the Orient, the Middle East and the decadent West. His white safari suit was spotless and he sported some gold jewellery around his solid neck and on his capable-looking hands.

  ‘Manfred,’ Henneberry said. ‘Meet Cliff Hardy.’

  I shook my second power-packed hand for the evening. Manny kept his strength in check so that his grip was almost flaccid, but the force was there.

  ‘What’ll you have, Bruce?’

  ‘Coffee with,’ Henneberry said. ‘Cliff just had a dust-up with some junkies on Hill Street.’

  ‘He did the fighting,’ I said.

  Manny nodded. ‘I hope you didn’t break any bones, Bruce.’ From the way he said it, I had the feeling that Manny might have broken a few in his time.

  ‘Nah,’ Henneberry said. ‘I just raised my voice some.’

  Manny grinned and looked as though he’d like to hear more, but he remembered his role and moved smoothly over towards the coffee machine.

  ‘Base for what?’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You said this was your base and I was wondering about your operation.’

  He laughed, showing his expensively cared-for American teeth and the imposing circumference of that built-up neck. I reckoned it at seventeen inches of bone and muscle you could break a hand on.

  ‘Well, I’m a journalist. Freelance, you know? I’ve got a commission to do a series on the drug problem here on the beach. That’s why I was hoping you weren’t a cop. Now it’ll get around that I saved some dude from getting mugged tonight. That’s not very cool, but it’d be worse if you were a cop. Who’re you looking for, Cliff? Maybe I can help. I’ve been working here a couple of weeks now.’

  The coffee came, which gave me time to think about an answer. Bruce seemed extraordinarily physical for a journalist. Most of those I knew could scarcely get the glass to their mouths without help, but Americans are a different race.

  I stalled. ‘Who’re you working for, Bruce?’

  ‘Oh, National News, right here.’

  That would be so easy to check that it looked as if he was telling the truth. Also he had a way with him, a frankness and openness that might have been professional but didn’t come across that way. I sipped some of the brandy-laced coffee with appreciation.

  ‘I’m looking into the alleged disappearance of a guy named John Singer. Seems he went into the water around two years ago and hasn’t come out yet.’

  He drank some coffee. ‘Good guy or bad guy?’

  ‘Bit of both. There’s a whisper that he’s still with us. I’m checking it out.’

  ‘I never heard of him; sorry. But I could ask on the street.’

  ‘What are you doing, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, I … ah … hang around and talk to the kids. Truth is, I feel more like a social worker than a writer. I’ve helped a few of the kids get out of the shit and go home. Not many.’

  ‘Plenty left?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We drained our cups and he raised two fingers to Manny, who obliged quickly. The brandy did me a power of good; I had only a dull ache where the kid had hit. My pride hurt, but a few drinks is good for that, too.

  ‘Do the drugs get sold in the pinball parlours?’

  ‘Yeah, and in the pubs, in cars, on the beach. You name it.’

  ‘How’s it organised?’

  ‘Now, that’s a big question.’ He took a cassette out of his jeans pocket and tapped it on the table. ‘I’m goin
g to rap to this a little. You can listen in if you want.’

  He went across the room, reached under a bench and pulled up a cassette recorder. Back at the table he took a gulp of coffee, put the cassette into the machine and got out a small notebook, which he consulted while he talked softly into the microphone. He was naming names and sums of money and recalling direct speech. He spoke for about fifteen minutes before clicking the recorder off.

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I’m sort of in harness with this sociologist named Ann Winter. She’s working the same route as me, but for her PhD. She’s living right in the middle of the shit. We leave these cassettes for each other. Sort of swap information, you know? She goes more on the female angle. I tell you, it’s mean.’

  I expressed a polite interest, but not much more. My business brings me into contact with a lot of people who do not share in this world’s joys—old whores of one sort or another, washed-up fighters, gaolbirds and drunks. I never heard of a city from Pompeii onwards that didn’t have them in good measure, and they’ll still be with us when disco and skateboards are history. You have to take the long view.

  I was thinking that, as so often happened, I was off to a bad start. I’d hardly made a dent in the enquiry if all I’d achieved was to leave a freelance journo on the trail while I went off to bed with an ache in the midsection. Then Henneberry sat up straight and pulled in his slight stomach bulge.

  ‘Here’s Ann,’ he said.

  Even in the half light, even in her dirty jeans and nondescript shirt, she was something special. She was tall, close to six feet in her medium-heeled boots. She had a bandanna around her wild, straggly black hair, and with her dark eyes and the big denim bag she carried she looked like a gypsy. Winter, I thought, a good outdoors country name. Maybe she is a gypsy. She thumped down heavily into the chair next to Henneberry and flopped a tobacco pouch and matches up onto the table.

  ‘I’m buggered,’ she said.

  I tried to keep my eyes uninterested and my jaw firm, but Henneberry was beyond help. ‘Hey, hey, Annie,’ he stammered, ‘you’ll want a drink. Manny!’

  ‘Just the coffee, Bruce,’ she said. ‘If he puts that bloody grappa in it, I’ll fall asleep right here.’ She made a cigarette the right way, keeping more tobacco at the ends than in the middle and evening it up in the rolling. She stuck it in her mouth, lit it and inhaled and threw her head back to expel the smoke. She had a nice neck with dark, straggling hairs growing low on it.

  She noticed me noticing. ‘Ann Winter,’ she said. ‘Hello.’

  Bruce turned back from trying to catch Manny’s attention.

  ‘This is Cliff Hardy, Annie.’

  I nodded and she pushed the tobacco at me. I pushed it back.

  ‘I thought you might want it, from the way you were watching.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I used to roll them. Gave it up. I just liked the way you did it. Good.’

  She blew smoke over my head. ‘For a woman, you mean. Shit, there’s girls around here who can roll them one-handed in the dark.’

  ‘What do they do with the other hand?’

  ‘Almost anything.’ She laughed, the coffee arrived and she shovelled sugar into it. Henneberry watched her like a gambler watching the deal.

  ‘I need it,’ she said. ‘Must’ve walked fifteen miles today.’

  ‘How come?’ I asked.

  She glanced at Henneberry, who gave her a lightning sketch of the encounter in the alley, as he called it. He made us sound like allies in a great and noble cause. She nodded and looked at me directly as she spoke.

  ‘One of the girls is going cold turkey and she’s on a weight-losing kick with it. She weighs twenty stone, near enough, and she’s walking it off. She said she’d tell me all about how she got that way. She’s serious. We went ten miles, I reckon.’

  ‘How did she get so fat?’ Henneberry said. ‘What’s that, three hundred pounds?’

  ‘Nearly,’ Ann said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. She worked in a place that specialised in fat girls. The manager force fed them. She just blew up. Want to hear it?’ She got a cassette out of the bag. Bruce took it and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off, but she didn’t nuzzle into it with her cheek either. I showed her the picture of Singer and she looked at it carefully, slanting it to get more light.

  ‘Don’t know him,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t mind, though.’

  Henneberry glanced sharply at her and I could sense the short circuits and sparks in their connection. I was surprised to find myself pleased by it. Henneberry kept talking, but she was bored by him; she smoked and her dark eyes drifted around the room registering and recording. They came to rest on me.

  ‘I never heard that Singer was connected with drugs and girls,’ I said. ‘But you never know with the smart ones. I’d be glad if you’d ask around, Ann.’

  She nodded. ‘There’s a guy named McLeary who runs a lot of the massage places closer to the city. Most of the girls I know are streeties, but they drift in and out of the houses. One of the older ones might know something about your bloke, but you never know.’ She gave me another one of her direct looks. ‘He might have fancied the younger ones.’

  ‘It’s a wicked world,’ I said.

  I thanked Henneberry and told him he threw a good punch, just like Fred. He’d forgotten my earlier remark and looked puzzled, then camouflaged his puzzlement in talk.

  ‘Say, Cliff, why don’t you check back with me? I might turn up something on your man.’ He dug into Ann’s bag for a pen and scribbled on a paper napkin. ‘Give me a call.’

  I got out some money, but he waved it away. ‘Next time,’ he said.

  I gave him a card instead, and passed one across to Ann. She fiddled with the tobacco and I took the pouch and made a cigarette, about the hundred and fifty thousandth I’d made. She opened her lips and let me put it in.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  I looked back as I left the place. Henneberry had his face close to Ann’s and he was talking again. Manny loomed up massively behind them with a hand outstretched for Bruce’s cup. He saw me looking at him and winked like an Irishman. It looked obscene on that sallow, culturally complex face. I walked back to my car, thinking about gypsies, Levantines and Americans. Then I wondered what nationality the twenty-stone whore was.

  6

  I HAD some aspirin and a touch more brandy for the stomach when I got home so I slept late. Hilde had gone when I got up. The News was neatly folded on the kitchen table and there was a manilla envelope on top of it. I opened the flap and slid out the photograph. John Singer looked up at me through crinkled, squinting eyes; he had several days’ growth of beard and his hair was fluffed out untidily. He looked much less like Caine than he had in the other picture.

  The photograph seemed to reproach me. Singer had a challenging, macho look: I could interpret it as catch-me-if-you-can or would-you-have-the-guts-to-do-what-I’ve-done or, instead, I could stare right back at him and think he wasn’t so tough after all. It was a funny case. I could spend a few days on the streets getting negative responses, and that could be construed as a positive result. It wasn’t the way I liked to work.

  I shaved, showered, and made and ate a breakfast that was also lunch. The News contained no news; at home we had problems between the states and the Federal government, not over principles but over money. Overseas, oil was going up and gold was going down; what that meant was anybody’s guess. The people who had the oil probably had all the gold they wanted, anyway.

  After eating, I felt more resourceful. I had Bruce Henneberry to follow up on, I could contact Singer’s doctor to find out if he could have had anything nasty on his mind and there was always the Punk Palace of Fun. The creepy manager and my friends in the laneway could have been connected and could relate to my enquiries.

  I opened the previous day’s mail, but it was just as boring as it had looked the day before. Mrs Singer’s envelope had been hand delivered. I phoned her.

 
‘Did you get the picture?’ she asked. ‘I had someone run it over.’

  Who said it’s hard to get help these days? ‘Yeah, I got it. Thanks. Can you give me the name of your husband’s doctor, please?’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘People tell doctors things they don’t tell wives. Have you seen much of him lately?’

  ‘No, I’m never ill. I’m sure …’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘I was going to say I’m sure the police would have checked on that, but now I come to think of it the police hardly checked on anything.’

  ‘They’re busy,’ I said. ‘The name, please.’

  She gave it to me—a Dr Burgess in a clinic at Randwick that sounded like money.

  ‘Any progress?’

  ‘Not yet. Did anyone ever tell your husband that he looked like Michael Caine?’

  ‘Yes, often. Why?’

  ‘It makes it harder. Not as hard as if he looked like Robert Redford, but people get confused.’

  ‘Do you need more money?’ she asked quickly.

  I was surprised. Offering more money is a serious step, the most serious step. She seemed to sense from my silence that she’d made a wrong move, and she covered up quickly. ‘I thought you might need extra people or something.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll manage. Thanks, Mrs Singer. I’ll be in touch.’

  I got out the wine and ice and soda and made myself the first drink of the day while I thought things over. I had my second drink and thought some more. It felt wrong; the hand delivered envelope, the offer of money. I felt pushed and I didn’t like it.

  I felt the tobacco craving creeping up on me, as it always did when I tried to think my way around corners. It was lucky I didn’t play chess because I’d have cracked. But I told myself it was the wine, the long-associated habits of drinking and smoking, and I had some more wine.

  I rang Dr Burgess at the Money Inc Clinic and was told that he’d gone on holiday for a fortnight. That was nice; there’s nothing like a holiday to tone a doctor up. I then rang the number Henneberry had given me, but it didn’t answer. That left only the Punk Palace, and it was a good few hours too early for that. I killed the time the way a civilised man should; I did some exercises very carefully on account of my bruised stomach and read several chapters of The World According to Garp. The thought of my tennis shoes getting dusty in the cupboard reproved me and I resolved to get back to it when the Singer case was over.