The Greenwich Apartments

by Peter Corris

  He lifted his head and looked at me with shocked eyes. ‘You hit me.’

  ‘Just barely. Manipulative ideas—what does that mean?’

  His smile was loose and foolish. ‘We … she sent some samples.’

  ‘You bloody idiot. Pull yourself together! Who did you send them to?’

  He gulped and wiped his eyes. Another gulp and he was steadier. ‘I don’t know. Carmel kept the records. Brilliant …’ he drank and spilled some of the whisky out of the corner of his mouth,’ … brilliant.’

  ‘What’re you saying?’

  ‘Know what she did? You’ll love this. She dropped the footage of the targets, the meetings and all, into commercial videos and tapes from the TV. Off-line edits. Same with the records—dates, names. All on tape. All in the middle of movies.’ He laughed. ‘Crazy chick.’

  ‘These samples. What were they?’

  ‘Just bits of film—highlights.’

  ‘That was your idea, to send this stuff to the people. Why?’

  ‘Push the bastards! Push ‘em!’ The drink was giving him a spurt of aggression. ‘Worked too. Ran around like crazy things. Carmel got this shot of … well, I won’t say who it was … with this hit man. Got ’em, right there. On film.’

  ‘You maniac! One of them killed her, you know that?’

  He nodded. ‘Nearly killed me too. Why d’you think I’m here?’ He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle. He was slow and sluggish and I beat him to it. I had the bottle by the neck and would’ve liked to brain him with it.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Drink.’

  ‘After. What happened? You weren’t at the Greenwich?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was at the car. Guy took a shot at me. I ran.’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  A floorboard creaked and there was a sudden draught smelling of cement and the sea. ‘You saw me, didn’t you, de Vries?’ A man came through the door. Two things about him frightened me. One was the gun in his hand, the other was that he was tall and thin with dark, unruly hair and a broken nose—just like me.

  21

  THE resemblance didn’t seem to strike de Vries or the man with the gun as forcibly as it did me. But then, they didn’t know what I looked like without the eye-pad. The gun was a real show-stopper—smallish calibre and with a silencer fitted. That meant the user was a good shot who was prepared to come up close to his work.

  ‘Move a bit, Hardy,’ he said. ‘He goes first.’

  ‘No!’ de Vries shrieked. ‘No, no!’ He held the glass in front of his face and put his free hand up with the fingers spread.

  ‘Yes,’ the man said. He moved forward quickly, brought the gun up and fired twice. The glass exploded with a sound louder than the two pops from the gun. Fragments bounced against the wall and the TV set. De Vries’ head dropped forward and his dark hair was suddenly made darker by the welling, spurting blood. The gun swung towards me. I had no chance to reach for the .38 under my jacket. There was just no point. He tensed his arm and then suddenly relaxed it a fraction.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It’s like shooting my fuckin’ self.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ I moved a millimetre; if he’d let me move maybe I could fall off the chair and move some more. If he’d let me live that long.

  ‘Picked you up at the Lane Cove house, Hardy. Been following you from there.’

  ‘Not you, someone else.’

  ‘Right.’ He seemed transfixed by the resemblance between us. He stared at me. If I’d had a watch on a chain I could’ve mesmerised him. ‘He’s gone to pass on the news about the videos.’

  ‘You were listening?’

  ‘Yeah, Jesus, this is uncanny.’ He had a thick New Zealand accent which muffled the vowels.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I had a mad desire to know the name of the man who was going to kill me.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, mate. You’re dead.’ The words seemed to release him from the trance. He tensed again.

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘Forget it, Hardy. Time to go. You want to turn around?’

  Time to move, I thought. Move! Go! I hurled myself sideways and heard a shattering sound of metal on glass. I was on the floor. My eye felt as if it had been torn out of the socket. I heard the sound again, louder. The silenced gun popped twice and the TV set exploded above me as I rolled for non-existent cover. I had the .38 in my hand and I fired wildly, missing the gunman by ten feet. The window was broken and a big metal garbage tin was rolling on the floor.

  My lookalike stepped clear of the bin and skidded on broken glass as he tried to draw a bead on me.

  ‘Look out!’ I screamed at nothing and nobody. The shot I’d fired had hurt my eye; it sounds crazy but that’s how it felt. The sound had hurt. I was ready to hurt it again, but I wasn’t going to get the chance. He’d steadied like a professional and had the gun level and just slightly tracking me as I rolled. I bumped into the wall and things went loose inside my head. Then his gun jammed. He scrabbled at it, tore at the silencer. I fired at him and missed. I fired again and the bullet hit somewhere and staggered him. He spun around and ran for the door.

  It seemed to take me an age to get to my feet. De Vries’ blood had soaked and spread through the sea-grass matting and I slipped on a patch of it on the way to the door. I had to grab the door to steady myself before I could attempt the steps. I could hear panting and scuffling below me and the sound of feet slapping on the wooden steps.

  ‘Cliff … you all right?’ It was Galvani, yelling from below but also doing something else.

  ‘Yes.’ I started down the steps, hugging the wall.

  ‘He’s getting away,’ Galvani yelled. ‘Hurry.’

  I hurried as much as my bad vision and thundering head would let me. At the bottom of the steps Galvani had a man pinned to the ground, his face slammed into a pile of garbage that had been emptied out of a tin.

  ‘He went that way!’ Galvani pointed towards the waterfront units at the end of the street. ‘Fuck you!’ Galvani hammered the squirming man’s head down into the garbage.

  ‘Can you hold him?’ I said. I was panting for breath, squinting and trying to get clearer vision.

  ‘I can dislocate his arms.’

  ‘No!’ The man screamed. ‘Kelly, help me, you bastard.’

  ‘Hold him,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the other one.’

  I ran towards the street with pain splitting my head apart. Lights were coming on in the houses and people were shouting out of their windows. I saw Kelly ahead, running in a staggering, weaving motion towards the units. I lumbered after him with the gun in my hand and no chance at all of hitting anything smaller than a semi-trailer.

  Kelly looked back, stopped and made another attempt to free the mechanism of his gun. He failed and threw the thing away. I gained on him although it was painful, uphill work. By the time he reached the low brick fence surrounding the units, my good eye had cleared and I thought I might get a shot at him against the backdrop of the white painted apartment block. I stopped and raised the gun.

  ‘Stop!’ I shouted.

  He lunged forward and vaulted the fence. I sighted, expecting to see his dark shape, but there was nothing but a short, piercing scream, a thud like a collision on a football field and a loud splash. I stood in the middle of the steep, narrow road and lowered my gun. I became aware of the sounds around me: voices, dogs howling, doors slamming and, far off but getting closer, the wail of a police siren.

  The uniformed men happily responded when I told them to call Mercer or Drew. They didn’t want any part of it and contented themselves with calming the residents and putting calls through to the meat wagon and the forensic people. They put Scott Galvani’s prisoner, a plump man with a brave moustache and frightened eyes, in their car, and stood around sceptically waiting for the detectives.

  I had time for a few words with Scott Galvani before they came.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’d be dead if you hadn’t
chucked that tin in. What happened?’

  Galvani had a cigarette going and his hands were shaking. We were standing at the point where Kelly had vaulted over the fence. Below, a long way down, he was wedged into the narrow, rocky cleft of the drainage ditch that ran down towards the water. From the position of the body it looked as if he’d gone in head first and it was too long a fall to survive. If he’d made his jump six feet to the left he’d have landed on the grassy bank in front of the units. Galvani drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘It was so confusing. I can hardly remember. I did a bit of a prowl around the place. I didn’t see them arrive. Must’ve been around the back then. Anyway, this guy,’ he indicated the man in the police car, ‘he goes to the phone just around the corner. I saw the other one, he’d been listening up there, outside the door, he pulls out a gun and goes in. I went and threw the garbage bin. Thought that might give you a chance with your gun.’

  ‘It did. Sort of.’

  ‘The other one came back and I clobbered him. After that, you know, you saw it all.’

  ‘Yeah. You say he made a phone call?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Bugger it. There goes the evidence.’ I walked over to the car and looked at the bulky man. I made window-winding gestures and he put the window down.

  ‘Who d’you work for, son?’

  He clenched his soft jaw and thought about it. When he’d worked it out he said, ‘I work for Kev … Kev Kelly.’

  ‘You’re unemployed. Who’d you ring?’

  The jaw clenched again and this time he didn’t speak. ‘Give him a cigarette, Scott. You don’t object, officer?’

  The cop shook his head. ‘Where’s that fuckin’ Mercer?’

  ‘He’ll be along.’

  The man took the cigarette and jutted his head out the window for Galvani to light it. He puffed and still didn’t say anything.

  ‘It could be your ace in the hole,’ I said. ‘Or it could be your death warrant. You know Kelly killed two people? One tonight and a girl a couple of weeks ago?’

  ‘I wasn’t there for that.’

  ‘No? Well, it’ll be interesting to see how you go. Good luck.’ The cop wound the window up and the man’s face looked even rounder and more pale through the glass.

  A car pulled up and Drew got out. He slouched across towards me with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Well?’

  I pointed to the wall. ‘Over there you’ve got the man who killed Carmel Wise.’

  He walked to the wall and looked down. ‘Who says so?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘Sort of.’ I was thinking of Judy Syme and Michael Press. They could testify to Kelly’s earlier visit to the Randwick flat. Maybe Ellen Barton from the flats near the Greenwich Apartments could identify him. Maybe. It was thin.

  An ambulance and another car arrived. The uniformed men spoke briefly to Drew and began to direct some of the troops towards the house, and others to the drainage ditch.

  ‘Who’ve we got inside?’ Drew said. We walked along the street which was ablaze with light. Windows and doors were open; radios were playing. ‘And who’s this?’ Drew jerked his thumb at Galvani.

  I told him about de Vries and his connection with Carmel Wise. I described Scott as my ‘assistant’ which brought a laugh from Drew. He seemed careless and uninterested but in fact he was looking keenly at everything. It was him who spotted the gun with the silencer in the gutter. He bent and examined it.

  ‘Kelly’s,’ I said. ‘He used it on de Vries. Then it jammed before he could do me.’

  ‘Pity,’ Drew said. ‘You got a gun?’

  I took it from the holster and gave it to him. ‘There’ll be one bullet in Kelly somewhere. One or two others in the room upstairs.’

  ‘One or two?’ Drew said.

  ‘I’m not in the best condition for shooting.’ I touched the eye pad. The pain had subsided to a dull ache. I had the drops in my pocket and the painkillers but I wouldn’t give Drew the satisfaction.

  ‘You did all right,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll take a look upstairs.’

  Scott and I leaned against a car parked outside number 3. He smoked and I used the eyedrops. There were no lights on in the ground level of the house. Glass from the broken window littered the lawn. Gradually, lights went out in the houses. The ambulance and police lights stopped blinking and the street became quieter, except at the top where a team was working to raise Kelly’s body.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a drink,’ Scott said.

  ‘Me too. We’ll probably get some coffee from the coppers.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I thought you watched TV. Statements, mate. Waiting around for the police to fill in forms. That’s what this job is all about.’

  ‘You told me it was about visiting people and look what happened.’

  ‘Busy night,’ I said. De Vries’ body was carried on a stretcher by two bearers who struggled on the steep stairs. Drew came after them. Galvani stared at the covered shape on the stretcher. Blood had already soaked through the blanket where the head would be. He turned away while they loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. Then he lit another cigarette and yawned.

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘The night is young. Isn’t it, Drew?’

  22

  GALVANI and I travelled to the city in the taxi. I told him to turn the meter on but he wouldn’t. His driving was just as good as it had been before. Mercer showed up at Headquarters to grab some of the action. Drew organised some coffee for Galvani and me and some more cigarettes. Everyone did nothing for a while, then we gave our statements to a stenographer. I read mine over and signed it. Scott did the same.

  ‘Are you going to call Helen?’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘She’s at a friend’s place. I’ll tell her all about it tomorrow.’

  ‘It is tomorrow.’

  We were in a bare room with a couple of chairs and a table, a blackboard on an easel and harsh fluorescent light. The diagram on the blackboard looked like a stakeout but it could have been the plans for the Commissioner’s new office. Mercer wandered in with the statements in his hand. He perched on the table and looked at me. I took two more pain-killers with the dregs of my coffee.

  ‘Big names, Hardy,’ he said. ‘And big guesses. If all this is right how’d the … what d’you call them, targets, know it was Wise who sent the stuff?’

  ‘She was so good that she might just as well have signed her name on it. Do you reckon people like Porter and Gabriani can’t find out who the hot filmmakers around town are?’

  He grunted. ‘But no proof.’

  ‘That’s right. What does the other guy say?’

  ‘Nothing, except to ask me to get his lawyer—Richard Riddell.’

  The name had been in the papers. ‘That’s Carmody’s lawyer.’

  He nodded. ‘And Monty Porter’s. That doesn’t get us anywhere.’

  ‘Will you contact Riddell?’

  ‘In the morning. I’m working on a charge. It’s a little tricky.’

  ‘What’ve you got on the late Kelly?’

  ‘A bit. Enzedder, a pro. They tell me he looked a lot like you. Some relation?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Well, I suppose you and your mate …’

  He broke off as the door opened abruptly and a uniformed constable stuck his head in. ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘What?’

  The Constable beckoned Mercer over and whispered to him. Mercer nodded and closed the door. ‘More fun and games’ he said.

  ‘Let me guess. Somebody called at the Greenwich Apartments tonight and took away all the movies.’

  Mercer smiled. ‘Wrong. Somebody torched the whole place. Want to take a look?’

  I thanked Galvani again, told him to go home and that I’d see him again soon. ‘If you’re serious about the security business I’ll write you a reference,’ I said.

 
‘Sure, Well, it was interesting.’

  ‘We’ll have a drink. I owe you money too.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I’ll bill the client, so I’ll have to pay you.’

  We shook hands and he left.

  Drew drove and Mercer and I sat in the car and didn’t say anything. There were still a few optimistic and strong-legged girls on the beat up William Street, but the traffic was light and the city noise had settled into its 24-hour, 365-day-a-year hum. I ran the whole business over in my mind for missed opportunities and bad luck. I should have checked carefully to see whether I was being followed—not driving and only having one eye were no excuse. If I could’ve had a clear go at de Vries, things would have been different. I thought back to the Greenwich Apartment flat where I’d played a bit of The Running Man. I closed my eyes and saw the action—the figures on the boat, heads together. I don’t have great recall of movies but I’d suffered this one twice and knew it pretty well. The scene I’d played didn’t belong in the movie. I’d seen some of Carmel Wise’s work without knowing it.

  ‘How long had de Vries been screwing the video girl?’ Mercer said.

  ‘That’s a stupid name for her.’

  ‘Fits doesn’t it? One way or another. How long?’

  ‘I don’t know. A couple of months. Why?’

  ‘His wife took it bad.’

  The fire was still burning when we got there. The upper floors had been scorched more than set ablaze but the ground floor was a blackened, shattered ruin. Tongues of flame still licked at the ivy, ran along a dry branch and then flickered out. The firemen were playing water on the walls and keeping an eye on the adjacent buildings.

  We walked up as close to the entrance as we could but the heat kept us back twenty feet or more. Smoke billowed out of flat one—dense, stinking clouds of it and there were popping noises and sharp cracks as if fireworks were going off.

  Mercer stepped across to talk to the fireman who seemed to be doing the most shouting and the least work. I went with him.

  ‘Police,’ Mercer said.

  ‘Yes?’