The Reward

by Peter Corris

  He froze just long enough as it landed and took just long enough turning for me to get around the hood of the car and slam the barrel of the .38 onto the bridge of his nose. He screamed. The bone gave and the front sight dug into his cheek just below his eye. Blood flowed from the nose and the cheek and he threw his hands up to his face. The chewing gum flew from his mouth. I backed off a step, hoping there’d be some fight in him. After all, he wasn’t to know that what I’d hit him with was a gun. He recovered quickly and came at me, but his eyes were full of tears and he had no judgment of distance. I let him get within punching reach before I stepped aside and hit him again, this time catching him along the side of the jaw. The skin split along the bone. I kicked his left knee inwards and he went down, banging his battered head against the side of the car.

  I took the plastic from the gun, crouched down next to him and put the barrel in the hollow just below his prominent Adam’s apple. His face was a mask of blood. He’d bitten his tongue and blood was seeping from his mouth along with the scent of Juicy Fruit.

  ‘Where is she?’ I said.

  ‘You’ve taken my fucking eye out.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. A couple of stitches and you’ll be good as new. Same as me with my ear. Where is she?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t be brave, mate. Don’t be brave.’

  ‘You wouldn’t shoot me.’

  ‘Right. I wouldn’t, seeing as how I’ve got you down like this. I’m not licensed to carry the gun at the moment and I wouldn’t want to get in that sort of trouble. But I’d be happy to break your arm.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  It’s easier to do than you’d think, especially if you’re quick. I was crouched and balanced, he was sprawled and had no leverage. I dropped the gun so that it landed heavily in his crotch. He yelped. I picked up his limp left arm and snapped it across my knee midway between the wrist and elbow. He opened his mouth to yell and I filled it with the blood-streaked plastic carry bag. I held it there until he was gasping for breath.

  ‘Now I’ll do the other one if you like, which’d be worse because it’s your right. But I don’t want to, so where is she?’

  I retrieved the gun and took the bag away. He gulped in air and babbled. ‘I don’t know. Swear I don’t know. Swear I don’t know I phone her. Just phone. I just phone . . .’

  ‘Okay. On the mobile?’

  He nodded and blood ran freely from his nose. He sniffed it up and started to gag. I found a couple of crumpled tissues in my pocket and gave them to him. ‘Stay here,’ I said.

  I got the mobile and the cigarettes from the car, picked up the lighter and crouched down again. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bruce, Bruce

  ‘Bruce’ll do. Have you called her recently, Bruce?’

  ‘Just now.’

  ‘Good.’ I put the cigarettes and lighter down within reach of his good arm and hit the redial button on the phone. It rang briefly and she answered.

  ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘This is Cliff, Claudia. I’ve just had a meeting with Bruce and he’s not feeling too well. If you were planning to bring him along tonight I think you’d better get someone else.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Not necessary.’

  ‘Well, you know where he is. I’d suggest you phone for an ambulance. I don’t think he’s up to driving just now.’

  I hung up. It was good to do it myself for a change.

  There was blood on my clothes and shoes. I put the gun back in the cupboard, stripped off and showered. The bruises on my ribs were fading and the sutures in my ear were on the way to dissolving. I could wash my hair without having to be too gentle about the side of my head. I’d hurt men worse than I’d hurt Bruce in my time and been hurt worse myself. I didn’t feel anything in particular about it. He’d go on doing what he did and I’d do the same, there was nothing more to it.

  I rang Max’s office. He was out but Penny was in. I told her about the conversations with Cavendish and Mrs Horsfield.

  ‘So we’re set?’ Penny said.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘It’s all a bit weird, isn’t it? Perhaps we should have some back-up.’

  I told her about the meeting with Bruce, omitting some of the details, and Claudia’s assurance that she wouldn’t have any support troops.

  ‘You believe her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘God knows, I just do. Where’s Max?’

  ‘Do you mean, how’re things between us or where is he?’

  I laughed. ‘Both.’

  ‘Things are fine. He’s out checking up on Sean Beckett. Apparently he hasn’t been seen around his usual haunts for the past few days. Max wants to keep tabs on him.’

  ‘Good idea. Well, you’ve got the address in Wollstonecraft. I guess we meet there at eight fifty-five or thereabouts and go on in.’

  ‘Do you remember the layout? I’m thinking of the wheelchair.’

  I considered. ‘A few steps. Nothing we can’t handle.’

  ‘My heroes. I’ll see you there, Cliff.’

  Which left me with most of a day to fill in. I drove to the office and dealt with the matters that had accumulated over the time I’d been concentrating on the Beckett case. It was clear from the answering machine messages and faxes that I’d missed out on some business in that time. I chased up some of the people who’d faxed and called and made some appointments—with a dentist who wanted some overdue accounts pursued, with a widow who claimed her late husband had been sighted in Vanuatu and with a gambler who wanted an escort to and from the Sydney Casino in the next week.

  Bob Lowenstein had faxed his account, minutely itemised and ludicrously small. Appropriate really, considering that I’d been working for free for the past few days. He attached a note asking to be brought up to date and declaring his willingness to have ‘professional intercourse’ with Peggy Hawkins if such was needed. As a ‘complimentary service’ he’d run the name Claudia Vardon through every relevant database he could think of and had come up with nothing. I wasn’t surprised. I wrote him a cheque and promised to stay in touch.

  I dug out the contract I’d signed with Barry White and read through its provisions with growing amusement. With all its handwritten and initialled amendments and corrections, it wasn’t worth the match it’d take to bum it. Something for the files. I leaned back in my chair and allowed my mind to play on the question of the reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the death of Ramona Beckett. A million dollars or so. Somehow I didn’t feel that the things I’d been doing had brought me any closer to it. Maybe I was even further away.

  I drove home keeping an eye out for 4WDs and blondes and brunettes in dark glasses. I showered again and shaved again but I didn’t go for the suit. I put on jeans and my old Italian slip-ons, strapped the shoulder holster on over a blue cotton shirt and laid out a light cotton jacket. With the way this case had been going I could be sitting all night in the parlour with my legs crossed or thrashing around in the bushes of Mrs Beckett’s mansion. I put the .38 on the kitchen sink and used the jaffle-maker my sister had given me to build a giant construction crammed with all the leftovers in the fridge. I permitted myself one glass of wine and then extended the permit to two.

  That got me through to a bit before seven with still a long time to wait. I deliberated about the gun but decided to take it. I considered ringing Frank Parker and decided not to. The front doorbell rang and I swore, then got cautious. I picked up the gun and held it behind my back as I opened the door after first switching on the outside light.

  The woman who stood there was tall and straight. Her black hair fell to her shoulders and her make-up accentuated the size of her dark eyes, the sharp planes of her face and the wide slash of her mouth. She wore high heels, a short black leather skirt, a white blouse with a leather jerkin over it and a jacket to match.

  ‘Hi, Cliff. Going to invite me in again?’

 
The voice was Claudia Vardon’s, but the face and body were those of Ramona Beckett.

  24

  I stood aside and let her in. I forgot about the gun and she saw it as I closed the door.

  ‘You won’t need that,’ she said.

  ‘With you, there’s no knowing.’

  She walked ahead of me down the hall. Her legs were perfect and her carriage was beautiful. I recalled that Ramona Beckett had been a gymnast and I remembered how this woman had flicked herself up and off the bed in her apartment. I was well on the way to believing her and I forced myself to pull back. Dyed hair or a wig, make-up and clothes can work miracles, they can even change a man into a simulacrum of a woman. She looked around the living room and turned towards me, smiling. Nothing about her was familiar except the black leather shoulder bag. She threw it at the chair with the same result as before.

  ‘A dump, but a nice dump. Could I have a drink, Cliff? I haven’t had one for days. I’ve lost a few pounds, wouldn’t you say?’

  I put the gun away in the closet and took off the holster. Guns weren’t relevant here. ‘You’re a bit thinner,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Gabriella notices such things. She puts store in them. I’m nine kilos heavier than when she last saw me, but every little bit helps.’

  I poured two glasses which emptied the bottle. We’d have to go on to Scotch if there was to be any more drinking. The experience was very peculiar. I didn’t know whether I was dealing with the woman I’d made love to seventeen years ago in a Potts Point flat, or another woman who’d slept with me right here just a few days before. She wanted me to believe it was both, but she’d have to prove it. She was sitting down now, showing flawless knees, calves and ankles under the short skirt. I handed her the glass, put a blank tape in the stereo set-up and switched it to pick up what was said in the room.

  ‘Okay?’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  I hit Record and backed away to stand by the window.

  ‘I’m Ramona Beckett,’ she said.

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘You doubt it?’

  I took a drink, put the glass down, made a frame with my fingers and looked through it. ‘Start with the head,’ I said brutally. ‘The features are a bit different. Not as sharp. You seem to have perfect teeth. Ramona’s weren’t her best feature.’

  She frowned. ‘You’re a bastard. You’re talking about seventeen years and a car accident. That wasn’t true what I told you. They had to remodel my nose, mouth and jaw. I always thought they did a good job.’ She tapped her glass against her white teeth. ‘I gave up smoking twelve years ago. My teeth were yellow by then. Anyway, these have been capped and veneered at great expense.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not convinced.’

  ‘I should be able to remember the name of that fancy Italian restaurant you took me to when you were pretending to be Peter McIntyre, who could pick the Liberal candidate for the seat of Bligh, but I can’t. We went back to my place in Potts Point and fucked our brains out. I remember that, kind of. Then you got busy and really screwed me, with that videotape switch and all.’

  ‘I told that, more or less, to Barry White. You could’ve got it from him. Or . . .’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘From Ramona Beckett, if you were involved in her kidnapping.’

  Rather than crossing her legs or playing those kinds of games, she leaned forward earnestly in the chair towards me. ‘There was no kidnapping, Cliff. I faked the whole damn thing.’

  She told me that she had lost interest in getting into politics after I’d turned the tables on her. She’d accumulated a fair bit of money but she’d also acquired a cocaine habit and wanted more. She went to Manly and allowed herself to be seen, arranged things just so in her flat, sent a note to her parents’ house and went to ground.

  ‘Where?’ I asked.

  ‘Melbourne, where else? No one in Melbourne cares about what’s happening in Sydney and vice versa. I changed my appearance, cut the hair, ditched the leather. I’d opened a bank account in a false name and I waited for the money to come

  in.’

  ‘The note was a newspaper cut-out job, right?’

  ‘No. It was typed by me on an IBM Selectric that’s now at the bottom of the harbour around from Mrs Macquarie’s Chair.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it when the money wasn’t paid. I mean I hated them and I knew they hated me, but. . .’

  ‘Hold on, do you mean your father and mother or just Sean and Estelle?’

  ‘The whole lot of them! My father was a pig! He raped Estelle, that’s why his first wife left him. But he had the money to make it too hard for her to do anything about it. He tried it with me but Gabrielle stopped him. Don’t think she was protecting me—she was just jealous.’

  ‘This is all hard to believe. Joshua Beckett put up a big reward.’

  ‘Sure. That made him look good, didn’t it? And don’t tell me investing it made it any more serious. He was probably just so busy making money in other directions that he forgot to pull the reward money out before he died.’

  ‘Proof,’ I said. ‘Some proof.’

  She stood, took off her jacket and draped it over the back of the chair. The sleeves of her silk blouse were loose and caught at the wrists, a style Ramona Beckett had favoured. She took two steps towards me and put out her right hand. ‘I haven’t got any moles or birthmarks as you very well know, but take hold of my hand.’

  Against my better judgment I did.

  ‘Do you remember the first thing you said to me when we met in that restaurant?’

  I shook my head. I was still holding her hand.

  ‘You said, “Your hand’s so cold, Ramona”. You remarked on it afterwards, too, when I grabbed your cock.’

  Impossible to forget. I remembered that her touch was icy. But this woman’s was many degrees warmer.

  ‘Your hand’s not cold.’

  ‘It was the drugs. I was on so many things.’

  She broke the contact and sat down. ‘Still not convinced?’

  ‘Go on with the story,’ I said. I glanced at my watch. ‘We’ve got a bit of time. That’s if you’re really planning to come to Wollstonecraft.’

  ‘Of course I’m corning! This is harder than I thought it’d be. I get the feeling you’ve never changed in your whole life. That you’ve always been this hard, cynical type with just enough of a sense of humour to make you human.’

  I finished my wine and thought about the Scotch. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I changed, Cliff. I really did. Holed-up in that dump in St Kilda, I really hit rock bottom. First thing was I got hold of some really bad coke. I’d been used to the very best stuff up here and this was dreadful. God knows what it was cut with but it nearly sent me nuts. So, of course, I decided to get off it. Have you ever used coke, Cliff?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Wise man. Don’t. And don’t let anyone tell you it’s not addictive. In a pig’s eye it isn’t. I had the worst time and it wasn’t helped by my knowing that no one in my family thought I was worth . . .’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred grand. Not a hell of a lot. I had that much and more already. God, I suppose I was testing them in the only way I knew how. Hey, I’m not asking for sympathy here. I’m just trying to be accurate, all right?’

  ‘The amount checks out,’ I said quietly. ‘But you could still have got that from Ramona herself.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. Well, I guess you won’t be convinced until Gabriella gives me the nod.’

  ‘You use her first name.’

  ‘Always did. You’ll see. Are you going to tell me who intercepted the note and thought it was okay for me to go down where I put the typewriter?’

  I’d felt tension building up in my body from the moment she’d arrived. It was partly sexual, of course, she was putting out the kinds of signals Ramona had, but now I was confused because Claudia’s flags had spell
ed out pretty much the same message. But it could still all have been a carefully constructed act.

  ‘Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘What else? That’s why I came back. That’s why you and I are here like this. I know you’ve been to see Leo Grogan so you’ve got an idea of how I started out. I knew from painful experience that you were good at what you did, Cliff. I knew you’d be able to dig up the truth if you had a little help.’

  ‘You hated me,’ I said. As soon as I spoke I realised that the statement was an implicit acceptance of her story. I couldn’t take it back, but I could watch her reaction closely.

  ‘I don’t hate you any more,’ she said. ‘We’d better go, hadn’t we?’

  I didn’t learn anything from that. She put her empty glass on the nearest flat surface, stood and shrugged back into her jacket. She did it matter-of-factly enough, but that only made the erotic touches—the rise of her breasts and the athletic flex of her shoulders—all the more emphatic. At that moment I didn’t care who she was, Ramona, Claudia, Madonna. I just wanted her physically the way an adolescent wants the first girl who’ll let him touch her inside her clothes. But I was a long way past adolescence. I hooked my own jacket from the stair post.

  ‘I’ll tell you what you want to know when I’m convinced,’ I said.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And when Max and Penny are convinced.’

  ‘No fair.’

  ‘You’ve spent too long in America.’

  ‘You’re right. Your car or mine?’

  I stopped the tape and removed the cassette. ‘Both,’ I said.

  She was driving a Falcon about twenty years younger than mine and I only saw her for the first few minutes. She drove fast, quickly leaving me behind and I was happy to tootle along trying to make sense of what she’d told me. It held together reasonably well if you accepted certain of her propositions—the dysfunctional nature of the family, her drug habit and its aftermath—but it certainly needed more glue. Why had she gone to the States and why had she stayed? More importantly, why had she come back and taken this tortuous route to enlightenment?