by Peter Corris
He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday but his shirt looked fairly fresh and he didn’t smell as bad, although it was hard to tell with all the tobacco fallout. Whoever the woman was who’d lent him the money, she wasn’t handy with a needle. His jacket still lacked the button that would enable it to be fastened smartly. The pub was fairly quiet with just a few locals judiciously wetting their whistles. Tuesday was two days short of pension day and the beer money had to be spun out. The Cleveland didn’t go in for counter lunches or happy hours or any of the other attractions. It was a place for drinking and talking.
‘So,’ White said. ‘You put out any feelers yet?’
‘A few.’
‘Frank Parker?’
‘Let’s just talk to Leo first.’
But he couldn’t let it go. He sighed again as he fished out his Drum. ‘He’s a good cop, Parker.’
I was irritated and finished the middy quicker than I’d intended. ‘He thinks the world of you, too.’
‘You’re a bastard, Hardy.’
‘You said that before. Hello, this must be him or his twin brother.’
The man coming towards us could only have been a former cop. He had the walk, a sort of swagger that changes over the years as the belly gets bigger but still says, ‘I can do things to you that you can’t do to me.’ He wasn’t big, under six feet, but he was wide and thick through, especially around the middle. He wore a grey suit that had fitted him when he carried a few less kilos and a tie with some kind of emblem on it. Even in the gloom of the Cleveland, I could see that his nose was a mass of purple veins and a similar tracery spread across his cheeks.
‘Yeah, that’s Leo.’ White signalled and a schooner of old appeared on the bar as Grogan reached us. He took it up and drank a third of it before dropping heavily onto a stool and shaking White’s hand.
‘G’day, Barry. Ta for the drink.’ He pointed to White’s diminished money pile. ‘You’re flush.’
‘Temporarily in funds, Leo. D’you know Cliff Hardy?’
Grogan polished off another six or seven ounces. ‘Heard of him. G’day, Hardy.’
‘Leo.’ I held up three fingers to the barman and took a closer look at Grogan’s tie. The emblem was crossed boxing gloves. He saw me looking.
‘State amateur light-heavy champ in 1966. You look as if you’ve gone a few rounds in your time.’
‘Welter,’ I said, ‘Police Boys’ Club stuff. Lost in the state semis to Clem Carter.’
The beers arrived, I paid and Grogan finished number one and took a surprisingly small sip of number two. The grog might have ruined his career and looks but perhaps he was still capable of shrewdness. ‘I remember Carter. Good fighter but a dumb fucker.’
Clem had been a close mate of mine for a number of years. Grogan’s assessment was harsh. Clem had escaped from gaol, taken me along for the ride at gunpoint to get even with the man who’d framed him and stolen his wife and ended up dead. ‘He was unlucky,’ I said. ‘Like Barry here.
Grogan snorted his amusement and took a solid pull on the schooner. ‘Over to you, Barry. What the fuck’re we all doing here, apart from remembering when we could throw a punch or two?’
White had fiddled with the cigarette he’d rolled while Grogan and I had sparred. Now he lit it, drank some beer and pulled his stool in closer so that we were in a fairly tight ring. The paranoid thought suddenly occurred to me that this whole thing could be a set-up directed at me. I held a good store of secrets of one kind or another, and I knew there were people who could benefit from knowing things I knew. I studied the torsos of the two men closely, but they were both too flabby for me to tell whether there was any electrical equipment under their shirts. I resolved to say as little as possible until I could get a true sense of the meeting.
‘A while back,’ White said, ‘you happened to tell me that you knew a thing or two about the Ramona Beckett case.’
Grogan sipped his beer and looked annoyed, but that might have been because he spilled some down his shirt. ‘Oh, yeah. Did I?’
‘You were . . . talkative. It rang a bell with me and I did a bit of checking. There was a reward out. There still is a reward.’
‘Bullshit. Her father’s dead.’
‘It was in his fucking will, Leo. A quarter of a million bucks.’
Grogan looked at me. I shrugged and had to hope that concealed any surprise on my face. Barry White was the original corkscrew man. Here he was putting a twist on things right at the start. It made me wonder how many twists he’d introduced in his spiel to me.
‘What do you reckon, Hardy?’ Grogan said.
‘It’s one of the things I’m going to look into,’ I said.
White puffed smoke away from our faces. ‘You’re our starting point, Leo. We can’t make a move without your information. That’s why you’re in for twenty-five per cent.’
Grogan laughed. ‘Jesus, I don’t believe this. Well, at least I’ve got a drink out of it from youse. And I reckon I’ll have another.’ He drained the schooner and held it up without looking at the barman. For all his dismissiveness, he was watching Barry White closely. I was having trouble reading the signs in their behaviour towards one another. Animosity certainly, but also something else.
White didn’t change expression. ‘I didn’t expect you to understand right off the bat. I know you’ve got no time for me, but this is serious. I’ve paid Hardy a five hundred dollar retainer and he’s on two hundred a day and expenses—that’s how serious it is.’
Grogan raised an eyebrow at me and I nodded. ‘I didn’t think you had a pot to piss in, Barry,’ he said harshly. ‘Didn’t your missus take you for every fucking cent?’
‘She did, the bitch. But I’ve got a backer.’ White nodded as the barman looked inquiringly at the money pile. More drinks appeared and the pile shrunk to almost nothing. ‘That’s why I say your end is twenty-five per cent.’
Grogan started on his next drink. ‘I wouldn’t back you if you were the only horse in the race. When the pressure came on, you were ready to put every other bastard in to save your skin. Probably did just that.’
White shook his head. ‘Ancient history, Leo. I’ve had my troubles just like you. Hardy did a short stretch for frigging around with evidence. We’re none of us cleanskins, but this is a chance to get our hands on some real money.’ He smiled and the old, booze-eroded charm was in his face. ‘And to bring a criminal or criminals to justice.’
‘Christ, you’re a wanker,’ Grogan said.
‘Hardy doesn’t think so. He’s got the contacts, Leo. Frank Parker’s a mate of his; he knows journos and lawyers. He can front the family. He knew the woman.’
‘He’s hardly said a fucking thing,’ Grogan said.
‘I bought you a drink.’
Grogan laughed. ‘So you did. So you did. Fuck it, I’ll play along. But I’ll tell you something, Barry boy. If this comes to anything and you don’t play straight with me, I’ll see you get hurt.’
White butted his cigarette and reached for his fresh glass which he hadn’t touched. ‘Understood.’
‘Okay. This’s what I know. Johnno Hawkins headed up the team that looked into the disappearance. I was in on it, but I was just a shit-kicker—driving, picking up the beer and pies and that. The case got a hell of a lot of publicity so Johnno was told to get busy and to come up with something quick. Well, he got busy all right, interviewed every bastard in sight and came up with sweet fuck-all.
‘Things died down, the case went on the back burner. One night I was out on the piss with this sheila I had then and Johnno and his wife, Peg. Did you ever meet her, Peggy Hawkins?’
White shook his head and drank. He was looking decidedly unhappy.
‘Fucking good-looker,’ Grogan said. ‘Sharp features, skinny, but with tits out to here. They reckon she could . . . never mind. Anyway, Johnno and Peg got into a fight, a real screaming match. This is back at their flat in Rose Bay. They were both pissed and I’d gone off with my tart for a root in one of the b
edrooms. I reckon they’d forgotten about us. I heard Peg say to Johnno something like, “You wouldn’t be able to afford her if you hadn’t got all that money for keeping quiet about that ransom note.” Johnno told her to shut up and he hit her. He resigned from the force soon after that and went up to the Gold Coast.’
White looked increasingly unhappy as Grogan’s story unfolded. When it was finished he loosened his tie and slid the knot down. ‘Johnno Hawkins is dead,’ White said. ‘Had a heart attack out fishing a year or so ago.’
Grogan took up his glass and raised it like a toast. ‘That’s right. But Peggy’s still alive and fucking, last I heard.’
‘Where?’ I said. ‘Still on the Gold Coast?’
‘Yeah. She’ll either be doing it for money or getting the money off the girls who’re doing it for her.’
White smiled again and looked first at Grogan, then at me. ‘We’re away,’ he said, as if he knew everything would come right in the end.
4
White pleaded with Grogan not to mention the matter to another living soul. Grogan sneered and agreed. He gave me his address and a telephone number where he could sometimes be reached, sank another schooner, and went off, not visibly excited.
‘He’s not a lot of laughs, is he?’ I said to White.
‘He’s a shit. He wouldn’t look pleased if his prick grew longer, but he’ll play ball. Unlike me, he’s got a pension, but he drinks most of it. Speaking of which . . .’
White’s little stash had almost gone. I didn’t want another drink but I ordered a round because we needed to talk some more.
‘You started lying to Grogan right from the jump,’ I said.
‘I’ve played straight with you, that’s all you need to worry about.’
‘Maybe. He was threatening to kneecap you if you scammed him.’
‘He’s all piss and wind, always was. Sixty grand’ll keep him sweet.’
I thought that was probably true, and it seemed only fair that I should come out well ahead of Grogan for all the work I seemed likely to have to do. Suddenly, I realised that I was taking the thing seriously. I tried to pull back from that, but I couldn’t help having the sort of feeling I had when I occasionally bought a lottery ticket—anticipation of a win is part of the pleasure and, most times, all of the pleasure. Still, I had to keep in mind that I was running a business.
‘If I have to fly to the Gold Coast it’ll cost a bit. How flush is this backer of yours?’
White looked doubtful. ‘Haven’t you got enough confidence in me yet to finance it yourself for a bit?’
‘Perhaps. If Grogan’s story is right, the question is, who was willing to shell out to suppress the note?’
White was fairly drunk, and it required an effort for him to assume a serious, investigative expression. ‘That’s right. A family member for sure. Didn’t want her found. Bigger cut of the cake for him.’
‘Or her. Do you know anything about Ramona’s family set-up?’
‘Shit, let me think. Like I say, I wasn’t doing very much in there. A sister, maybe two sisters, and a brother. Might have been some half-brothers and sisters as well. Old Beckett had been married before.’
‘Big help. What’s in the will?’
‘How the fuck would I know?’
‘You know about the interest on the reward. Or is all that bullshit, too? I’m not getting any happier about paying my own way to the Gold Coast.’
‘No, no, that’s kosher about the reward. I got that from this accountant.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he’s bent, you know. I got in touch with him over my fucking divorce settlement. Tried to get him to cook the books a bit in my favour. He would’ve, too, but Brenda’s bloke was smarter. Anyway, he started talking about accountancy which I always reckoned must be the most boring fucking subject of the lot. Worse than . . . what was that crap I did at Uni? Torts, yeah, torts. Shit, that was dull.’
‘Stick to the point, Barry, if you can.’
He pulled himself together again and I speculated on how many times he was capable of it in a day. ‘This bloke had worked for the firm that handled the Beckett family finances. He told me the reward money was on the books. A million plus and counting. This was just a couple of days before I ran into Leo. Seren-fuckin’-dipity.’
The word brought me up short. It had been one of Glen Withers’ favourites. It was partly the beer, partly keeping company with ex-policemen, partly who-knows-what, but I suddenly missed her terribly and the easy, comfortable time we had had together. Like some of the other women I’d loved and lost, she’d told me what was wrong with me when it came to the crunch—too changeable, too moody, too easily bored. I wasn’t convinced. I always thought I was too soft on people, too ready to give the benefit of the doubt. I took another hard look at Barry White and saw the devious slackness under the charm, the mental sloppiness under the educated veneer. Fuck him, I thought. If I can cut myself a bigger slice of this I will. But Barry White’s not getting the benefit of any of my many doubts.
I arranged to meet White again in two days’ time. I stipulated that as a kind of a test and he passed it. He wanted to ask me what I’d be doing and probably suggest other things, but he managed to prevent himself.
‘By then I should know whether I’m up to flying to the Gold Coast or whether I’ll just go to Bondi instead and forget the whole thing.’
‘That sense of humour again. Okay, Hardy. Spend my time well. I’ll sniff around a bit myself, but don’t worry, we won’t cross wires.’
We skipped the handshake. I left the pub and stationed myself out of sight in a laneway. My car was a hundred metres away in a two-hour zone and the clock was ticking. About five minutes later, White emerged, brushing cigarette ash from his clothes. He cleared his throat and spat into the gutter. Then he took a comb out the top pocket of the blazer and ran it through his hair. Next came one of those pressurised gadgets that squirt breath-freshener into your mouth. He used it and spat again. He reached into his pants pocket and took out a slip of paper that could have been anything—a cheque, a dry cleaning receipt, a newspaper cutting. He looked at it and tucked it away with the comb. Then he prowled up and down the pavement impatiently, looking at his watch and staring at the nearest intersection. I headed for my car. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to tell when a man with a Cabcharge docket is waiting for a taxi.
I felt like a true professional jotting down the number of the cab as I waited behind it, two cars back, at the Abercrombie Street lights. Cabcharge dockets carry the name of the account on them and are carefully computer-processed. With a bit of luck, I should be able to find out who was paying for Barry’s ride. We went up Cleveland Street and swung left beside the railway line. The taxi driver was fast and good, exploiting every gap he found, and it was tricky staying with him unobtrusively. Up Elizabeth Street past the golf shop, where at night the neon golfer hits neon balls into a neon hole, and a turn to the right up Wentworth Avenue. The taxi stopped beside the Connaught building and I caused irritation behind me by pulling in and waiting while Barry did his paperwork. He left the cab and I kerb-crawled after him. He was trying to fasten his jacket, forgetting that he was lacking the crucial button, as he went up the ramp, punched in a number on a keypad and entered the building. Interesting.
Harry Tickener runs his independent newspaper, The Challenger, out of an office in Surry Hills. The place smells of nothing but the very best coffee since Harry gave up chain-smoking Camels and drinking bourbon. Concerned about his figure, Harry replaced his other habits with a devotion to coffee that might ream out his stomach lining in the end but will leave him a thin corpse. I hope it’s a long time coming.
After the beer in the Cleveland it was good to sit over one of his massive flat whites and do exactly what Barry White had begged Leo Grogan not to do—talk openly to someone about the matter in hand. Harry’s discretion is legendary; I’ve never known him to betray a confidence or to back away from naming the guilty me
n if he could possibly do it and stay out of gaol. We’ve given each other a hand in many ways over the years since he was a young, go-getting reporter and I was new in the private detective business. Once, not long after he took a golden handshake from the News Corporation and started up The Challenger, he asked me if I wanted a tag like ‘with the assistance of Cliff Hardy’ to appear with the journalist’s by-line on a story I’d helped with. I used an obscenity and told him I’d sue if it happened.
‘Ramona Beckett,’ Harry said, propping his Nikes on the desk in front of him and wrapping his pale, freckled hands around a coffee mug. ‘Sure, I remember. I was still at The News then, protecting incompetent arses. Didn’t work on it myself.’
‘Were there any whispers?’
‘Like what?’
‘Barry White has suggested that perhaps not all the cops were playing with straight bats.’
‘You shock me. Dealing with Barry White. No, not that I remember. Wasn’t she some kind of blackmailer?’
‘Allegedly. Yes, she was.’
Harry shrugged. ‘How hard would anyone try to find her then?’
‘Don’t forget the reward. I’d like to know what was in her dad’s will.’
‘Would you now? Well, it would’ve been filed for probate. You’d have your ways of getting a squiz at that, wouldn’t you, son?’
‘Yeah, I’ll take a look, but I’d also like to talk to the lawyer, get the flavour of the thing as it were. That’s why I’m here taking up your time. I thought that if you were to ask nicely, that librarian in at The News who used to fancy you would probably look up the cuttings and get the lawyer’s name.’
‘Seventeen years. Chances are he’s dead.’
‘You’re not, I’m not.’
‘True, surprisingly.’ Harry punched buttons on a phone. I drank some more coffee and got, or thought I got, a lift from it. I wandered around the suite of small offices. The Challenger does well and is always threatening to grow. When this happens, Harry does what he calls a ‘pruning’. He wants it to stay on a scale he can control. Also he hates sacking people, so he keeps the staff at the same size. Their loyalty is fierce. I knew all of them slightly and exchanged a few words as I made my tour. Maddy Allbright, Harry’s chief assistant, was chuckling over a piece of copy.