by Tara Moss
Wasting no time, Simon strode to his prized nocturnal ‘party van’, placed the briefcase carefully on the passenger seat and set off for the city. A young man normally unhindered by schedules and commitments, Simon was, for once, mindful of the time. The American had instructed him earlier that afternoon that at six o’clock sharp he was to meet with Mr Hand to give him cash and instructions. It was five-forty now, which allowed him just enough time to get to this important appointment. Some cash was in the briefcase, and a set of instructions was in a sealed envelope in his jacket pocket. When The American had entrusted him with the envelope it was already sealed and the case locked. Simon didn’t dare open either, and he dared not be late delivering them.
Truthfully, he had been severely shaken by the shocking turn of events.
Since the tense meeting in Jack Cavanagh’s office, Simon had not spoken to anyone except The American—not even his mates—and he had not slept. Rather than attending an all-night party with Damien or bedding the latest hot model, visiting socialite or ambitious promotions girl, Simon had spent this last sleepless night at home alone, intensely uneasy about his future. Fear and uncertainty were not feelings he was accustomed to, and the vibe didn’t sit well with him. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, all kinds of ideas had run through Simon’s head—everything from fear of jail to ideas of blackmail and escape. He’d thought about using what evidence he had to dob in Jack and his pushy sidekick to the cops, or teaming up with Warwick to try to bring the Cavanagh empire to its knees through blackmail or scandal. Both the media and the authorities would have a field day with a story like this one, and Simon could deliver the whole sordid tale personally. After The American had met with him that afternoon, he had even briefly imagined breaking open the case, taking all that money and leaving town with it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could get him somewhere—maybe to a comfortable new life in Bali…
But no.
Simon was no model citizen. He had not so much a skeleton in his closet as a whole crypt, so he was hardly going to speak to any police or reporters. And he knew he had nowhere to run to. Even the money in the case would not sustain him.
He had no choice but to try to salvage the situation, even if it meant being pushed around by Damien’s father. Simon needed Damien and his Cavanagh connections for everything he did in his life.
Unlike most of his friends, Simon didn’t have a title or an impressive career. He was little more than a part-time procurer who dealt in the occasional weed or cocaine, hookers or heroin—whatever people were into. As he saw it, he was not exactly a drug-dealer; he was just a guy who got stuff for Damien and their friends when they wanted it. And, while not a full-time job by any description, the money he made from those casual transactions was all the income he had. He had his looks, the designer clothes on his back and his Cavanagh connections, and those three things were literally his only assets. Even his van was on lease.
Without wealthy friends who wanted to party, Simon could kiss his little money-making ventures goodbye. And without Damien he could kiss his living arrangements goodbye, too. The Tamarama house he stayed in belonged to the Cavanagh family. It was one of the standard late-seventies buildings of the area with a great view and bad plumbing, and the family was going to knock it down, rebuild and resell it. Damien had talked his father into letting Simon live there in the meantime. So far, Simon had stayed blissfully rent-free for the past two-and-a-half years.
Being cut off would mean disaster for him on every level. It would mean social and financial suicide, and he knew it.
It is your responsibility to make it right, Jack had said.
Responsibility had nothing to do with it, however; Simon would do what he needed to retain his lifestyle.
At one minute past six, Simon Aston arrived at the Inter-Continental Hotel on Macquarie Street in the city, leaving his van with the valet and telling him he wouldn’t be long. He hoped he wouldn’t be long. He didn’t fully know what this meeting would entail, but he wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.
Simon entered the sliding glass doors with his head down.
‘Simon? Is that you?’ came a voice.
He whirled around, his heart pounding. It was Julie from the Cavanagh offices.
‘Um, hi, Julie,’ he said, completely unprepared to run into anyone he knew.
‘Are you feeling okay?’ she asked, looking at him oddly.
‘Sure,’ he said. A trickle of sweat ran down from his temple.
‘Is Damien around?’ she asked, casting a glance around the lobby.
‘No! No, he’s not here. I’m just, um, meeting a client,’ he stuttered.
‘Oh. Why don’t you guys meet us up in the club lounge for a drink, then?’
‘Okay. Um, I gotta go,’ he said vaguely. She seemed puzzled as he walked away through the lobby towards the elevators.
Minutes later, it was with great apprehension that Simon knocked on the door of room 2908. ‘Excuse me,’ he said through the door, feeling hugely uncomfortable. ‘I’m here for Mr Hand.’
He waited only a few seconds before a deep voice replied from the other side of the door: ‘The time.’
Simon looked at his watch out of instinct.
‘Eleven eleven,’ he said. He’d been told it was a code.
Then the door was unlocked and opened only enough to set it slightly ajar, so that it wouldn’t slide back and lock itself. After a quick pause, Simon pushed it open and stepped inside. The door shut behind him and he was alone, holding the briefcase and the small envelope containing the unknown instructions for Mr Hand. His heart was in his throat.
From what he could see, room 2908 looked to be an average five-star hotel room, complete with double bed, television and small sitting area. The room was dark, except for a floor lamp in the far corner. Simon guessed it would have a nice aspect of Sydney Harbour, but an opaque blind was obscuring the view. Light seeped through the heavy blinds in blurred patches of colour.
A large man in a dark suit sat in a chair in the corner of the sitting area, with his back to the wall. Mr Hand, Simon thought. The floor lamp seemed to cast dim light across everything except the man’s face, and Simon could not yet make out his features. After the overlit hotel corridor, it was taking a while for Simon’s eyes to adjust, and it made him feel even more disadvantaged in this awkward situation.
Great. I can’t see him properly, I don’t know the plan and I don’t know what the fuck I am doing here…
‘You must be Mr Hand,’ Simon said stupidly to the dark figure in the corner.
The man simply said, ‘Simon Ricards Aston.’ Again his voice was low and in a monotone, as it had been through the door.
‘Um, yes.’ Simon didn’t think a lot of people knew his middle name. Where had Mr Hand learned it?
‘Sit. You have something for me?’
‘Um, yeah. Instructions, and money.’ Simon crossed the floor with reluctance, not wanting to be close to the man. He bent at the edge of the coffee table and placed the unopened briefcase carefully on it, and slid the envelope across the glass top towards him. Despite the offer to sit, he continued standing awkwardly for a minute before doing so. He kept trying to think of a line or a gesture he could use to make the best of the situation, but could come up with none.
‘Open it,’ Mr Hand said, gesturing to the briefcase.
Open it? ‘But I was not given the combination number,’ Simon protested, panicking.
Mr Hand fixed him with an imperturbable gaze that Simon felt more than saw. Finally Mr Hand leaned forwards to get the envelope and his face came into the light for a moment, illuminating disharmonious features.
Holy shit…
Mr Hand was a very ugly man. Most obvious was the scarring across his face that left it uneven and pulpy-looking. His face didn’t look right, and Simon also noticed that one of his ears was an odd shape, like the top part of it was missing.
Alarmingly, Mr Hand pulled a small glinting blade out of
his breast pocket to slit the top of the envelope open. Normally such a diminutive knife would not be cause for concern, but the sight of it in this man’s hand sent a shiver through Simon. He wanted to get away from the room as soon as possible.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! You are in over your head.
‘You noticed my ear,’ said the man, shrouded again in darkness.
‘Um…what?’ Simon said, busted. He swallowed hard. ‘What do you mean?’
It’s not polite to stare, dear…
‘A man cut part of it off. The doctors can’t fix it right.’
‘Oh…Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed,’ Simon lied, trying not to shake.
Mr Hand ignored him. He pulled the sheets of paper out of the envelope and held the instructions under the light to read them. The combination to the briefcase lock must have been there, because he pulled the case over, set the combination and opened it. Simon stared out of the corner of his eye at the incredible stack of cash. This was supposedly only a small slice of the deal—playmoney in local currency. The advance had been paid into a bank account before Mr Hand had even left for Sydney, and the rest of it was to be paid upon completion. This man would be paid millions for whatever he was to do.
Mr Hand closed and relocked the case and went back to reading the instructions. Simon took the opportunity to familiarise himself with the room and try to covertly study this man whose odd features were now becoming more clear as Simon’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Who was this guy? Where and how had they found him? And what would happen next? What exactly did The American mean when he said this man was going to ‘take care of the situation’? And what precisely would Mr Hand do for his hefty fee?
Simon noticed there was another briefcase directly next to the man on the floor beside his chair. He wondered what was in it.
After yesterday’s crisis meeting, Simon had thought Jack Cavanagh and his military-like security adviser formidable, but Mr Hand looked to be an altogether more overt menace. Where The American was quiet and precise, Mr Hand had a discomfiting, brute physicality that Simon did not see in his own privileged social circles. Even seated, it was clear that Mr Hand was built like a gladiator, with wide shoulders and a muscular neck visible atop his business shirt and slick dark suit, and those battle scars across his face and hands would give anyone pause. If someone could give him those scars, Simon shuddered to think what grief they had been dealt by Mr Hand in return. And, even apart from the scars, Simon suspected that there really was something else wrong with Mr Hand’s face. He’d spent a lot of time around those for whom plastic surgery was a form of maintenance, like getting a manicure or doing sit-ups, and he thought he recognised in Mr Hand a botched face job of some kind. Perhaps he had gone under the knife to correct a broken nose or jaw; it was hard to tell, but whatever it was, the end result was not pretty. His face was meaty and shapeless, his eyes small.
Simon found himself frightened to be sitting in the same room with Mr Hand. He even found himself wishing that The American was there to walk him through it.
Oh…get this over with and get out of here…
Mr Hand finished with the instructions and slid all but one of the pages back into the envelope, folded the envelope twice and lit the corner with a shiny silver lighter, watching the paper dispassionately as it smouldered in the coffee table ashtray. Simon still didn’t know what the instructions had said.
Mr Hand addressed him now. ‘Tell me everything you know about Warwick O’Connor.’
Simon shifted uncomfortably. ‘Um…He hasn’t called me back. He’s done some work for me before. Never like this, of course—’
Mr Hand cut him off. ‘Alias. Address. Photographs.’
‘Oh, of course.’ Simon thought about his answers. ‘I don’t think he has an alias. I only know him as Warwick, actually. I don’t have any photographs either.’ He felt pathetic.
Mr Hand passed the remaining piece of paper across. ‘Is this him?’
Simon was surprised to see that it was a photocopy of Warwick’s driver’s licence. ‘Um, yeah. That’s him.’ It had his address on it too. There was another driver’s licence copied below it, this time for Lee Lin Tan. ‘And that is the guy I get Damien’s girls through,’ Simon said, pointing at the second photo. ‘He was there when the chick freaked out and died. He was probably on the video.’
Lee was a pimp for Asian sex workers. Simon frequently contacted him to bring girls over for Damien’s special parties, and he always had a fresh batch of pretty faces. Damien liked Lee’s Asian girls because they were petite and pretty, and they didn’t speak English or question anything. There was none of the ‘I’ll do this, but I don’t do that’ or the ‘You can touch me here, but not there’ that they would get with the Australian girls. They never complained, even when Damien left them with burns, bruises or whip marks. And Lee could get them young.
Simon had called Lee straight over and complained when there had been a problem with the girl at the party.
Now that Simon had confirmed the identities of the two men on the photocopy, Mr Hand tucked the piece of paper away.
Simon swallowed hard. In the presence of this man, and in light of the recent turn of events with Warwick, he was finding it difficult to maintain his composure. It was clear that in the situation he found himself in, he was the bottom of the food chain and should be grateful that he wasn’t just being eaten alive.
‘If you don’t need me for anything else…’ Simon began, eager to make his exit.
‘Get a towel from the bathroom and bring it here.’
Simon froze. What?
‘Do it.’
Mechanically Simon rose, walked to the bathroom and took one of the fresh white towels off the rack. He returned and held it out to Mr Hand.
‘Now kneel.’
‘What?’ Simon’s veins stood out, panic coursing through him. He flinched to one side, but Mr Hand had already pounced. He pinned Simon to the floor, head against the soft white hotel towel. Mr Hand’s crushing body weight bore down, and in his panic Simon peed himself. He lost control, his jeans feeling wet and warm. He felt humiliated and scared, but that was not the worst of it. In one quick motion Mr Hand pushed Simon’s head down and whipped his small razor-sharp blade against Simon’s neck, cutting a painful but superficial wound down the length of it and right across his chin.
‘Ahhhhhh!’
Simon cried out with the white-hot pain, and balled himself up, crying.
Body in a foetal position, utterly humiliated and agonised, Simon felt Mr Hand move to get something. It was a bottle from the minibar. He opened it and poured something straight onto the wound, the alcohol splashing and dripping down his face and neck. The pain was agony, the like of which Simon had never before experienced.
Mr Hand had disfigured that pretty face.
He came right up to Simon’s ear and whispered words to him that Simon would never forget, and when he finished uttering his chilling warnings he pulled away, Simon’s face dripping with bourbon and blood.
Even once Simon was relieved of his crushing weight, he did not move a muscle. He was too shocked.
‘Go.’
CHAPTER 24
Mak looked up through the taxi window at a five-storey Gothic building. The evening sun washed the old stone in an orange glow, illuminating the arched windows. Menacing gargoyles perched on its corners, facing east and west, to fend off evil spirits. Across the front was carved the numerals ‘1902’. Even from within the taxi, the lively din of music and conversation floated down from the top floor of the building, where a glow of light illuminated a small balcony.
Mak looked down again at the note she had scribbled with Loulou’s garbled instructions.
This is it.
‘I’ll get out here,’ Mak said. ‘Thank you.’ She paid the driver and got out. The street was cold. She buttoned her coat and scanned the area.
The address Loulou had directed her to was one of the taller buildings in Elwood, a beachside suburb of Me
lbourne just beyond the area of St Kilda, where Mak was staying. Here the buildings were huddled together, each seeming to lean on the next. Few were modern. There were a number of sixties- and seventies-style apartment blocks and some terrace homes. The shops in the area looked to be eclectic, much like the locals: a number of cafés, a corner store and a laundromat, a couple of bottle shops, a comic book shop, designer boutique and a cobbler. Mak was surprised to see geriatrics with walkers and punks with mohawks occupying the same footpaths in the evening.
Mak stepped up to the building. She pressed the bottom buzzer, MCGILL, and after a few seconds was met with a booming static which she assumed was the doorbell being answered. She responded to the static with ‘Hi, it’s Mak’.
There was a loud squeal on the other end, which she also heard from above. It couldn’t be anyone but Loulou—it seemed Mak had the right place. She was buzzed in, and made her way inside to discover that there was no elevator, just like her hotel. Step by step she hauled herself up five floors of creaky stairs, grimacing as the muscles in her quads and calves burned. When she’d been working in Manhattan as a fashion model she had lived in a five-floor walk-up like this, but she had obviously been younger and fitter then, because this felt like harder work than she had remembered.
By the third flight of stairs light moisture beaded her brow. She would have to sign up for some more kickboxing classes, she decided. And since she’d started working strange hours for Marian, she had not stuck to her usual routine of running 50 kilometres a week, either. She would need to retain her fitness for her odd jobs as an investigator. Who knew when she might need to outrun someone? She’d heard plenty of war stories about investigators being confronted and even chased by tipped-off—and ticked-off—subjects.