The Washington Club

by Peter Corris

  I’ve always been fascinated by left-handed, two-fisted players. The breed simply did not exist in my younger days. There were elegant left-handers like Mervyn Rose and powerhouse lefties like Laver, but I never saw or heard of a two-handed hitter until Pancho Segura came out here as a professional in the fifties. I read about him but couldn’t afford the price of a ticket to Kramer’s circus. Since then, of course, they hit two-handed off both sides, orthodox and molly-dook. The only thing they don’t do double-fisted is serve. This guy was good. He hit wicked top spin off both wings which was better suited to a hard court than grass, but still gave his opponent trouble. Enough of them sat up, however, to give him a chance. He was a slicer, especially on the backhand, an effective weapon on grass.

  I was watching from a distance and having difficulty tearing myself away. The leftie whipped a shot across court and looked stunned as it missed its mark. He’d broken a string. He slammed the racquet down and trotted towards a sports bag beside the court and closer to me. He jerked the bag open and I could see the words ‘White City Tennis City’ stencilled boldly on the side. He pulled out a racquet, tested its tension by banging his fist on it, and looked briefly in my direction before skipping back onto the court.

  I shielded my face by adjusting the sunglasses, turned away and moved off. I didn’t think he’d seen me but it was possible. I didn’t know him, but everything about him—the thickening waistline, the expensive haircut, the moustache, the Andrew Agassi-style racquet—shrieked cop.

  ‘Three all,’ the older man called.

  ‘Right. Your serve.’

  I hoped the minder was too intent on the game to pay me any attention. If so, it was a break. He was busy. Three games more to play at least.

  On the fence around the courts was a diagram under perspex of the layout of the grounds, complete with a ‘You are here’ arrow. I located the ‘Gardener’s cottage’ and set off briskly. There was no sign of Van Kep at any of the obvious places where work was being done so it was a fair assumption he was bludging close to home.

  The cottage was a very scaled-down version of the main building: single-storey, sandstone, with some creeper on it, iron roof, verandah running along one side and the back, view of the water. Transplanted into Northbridge proper it’d be worth four hundred grand. Not a bad spot for someone with immunity from prosecution and a good story to tell to hole up in. I circled the place, approached to within a few metres of the back door and took cover behind a shrub. I wondered if Van Kep was getting paid for his gardening job. That led to thoughts of his previous employment and what Claudia had told me. A mosquito buzzed near my ear and I almost slapped at it. Sergeant Delaney would have had my balls for that in Malaya. I realised that I was jealous. Ridiculous. I’d been to bed with the woman once and she’d fucked Van Kep as a tactical move. And everything about that made me angry.

  I unshipped the .38, carried it low beside my leg, and moved quickly up to the back of the cottage to a covered, bricked area. A screen door stood open, fastened to the wall. I opened the back door and walked straight into a small, neat kitchen. I had the pistol higher now, but none of that fancy, sweeping, cop stuff you see on television. You’re likely to knock something off a shelf or get caught up in the curtains that way. The kitchen was empty. I went quietly in the direction of soft voices and other sounds and found myself looking into a sitting room—blinds drawn against the mid-afternoon light, the strong, sweet waft of marijuana smoke, the old, friendly, familiar smell of wine.

  A long, pale, lean figure wearing nothing but a black G-string was stretched out on a couch in front of a large TV set. On the screen three figures were caught in a harsh but uncertain light. They were on a bed made up with black sheets and white pillows. A man wearing a black eye mask was kneeling on the bed rubbing his penis over the face of a kneeling female who looked to be about ten years old. He was naked. She wore a blue and white checked school uniform. Behind the man a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen was stroking his penis, inducing an erection. There was tinny music playing and the lighting flickered as if the equipment was defective.

  I found myself watching although I wanted to put a bullet into the TV screen. I knew it wasn’t real, not here and now, but somehow it was more real than the here and now. The girl took the man’s penis into her mouth and began to suck it and stroke his testicles. She brushed her hair back—a gesture I’d seen in pornographic movies before. It demonstrates control, consent, but I’d never seen a child do it. Her eyes were closed. The boy put his hand down out of shot and came up with a tube of lubricant. He squirted it into the man’s anus and onto his own penis. He moved forward and entered the man as he thrust into the girl’s mouth.

  My hand sweated around the pistol grip. I tried to look away but couldn’t. Then I caught sight of the tattoo on the man’s upper arm as he lunged forward, forcing the girl back, carrying the boy with him. It was red, green and black—a snake, a heart, I couldn’t sort it out, but the same design was only centimetres away from me—on the shoulder of Anton Van Kep.

  He was smoking a joint held in his left hand in a gold clip. He wore black lace gloves and a black satin G-string. He had a pillow under his buttocks and was making rhythmic movements with his right hand, sliding a vibrator deeply into his anus. He was moaning softly as similar moans and muted words came from the television.

  The camera moved from one set of genitalia to another, guaranteeing that the viewer missed nothing and that nothing was faked. Except the emotion. The faces were vacuous and after the director had shown dick and cunt, mouth and cock, dick and balls a few times, he or she seemed to run out of ideas. The scene badly needed cutting but the players eventually moved it along: the two penises were unsheathed and their owners began to pump themselves until they both ejaculated over the face and body of the girl, who writhed, tongued up the semen, lifted her dress, rubbed it on her hairless crotch and tried to look as if this constituted an entry through the gates of paradise.

  Van Kep was dildoing himself furiously but he wasn’t quite able to synchronise with the film. The screen was blank when he came, spurting into the shiny black fabric and letting out a guttural gasp of pleasure. He said something, softly and lovingly, as he slid the vibrator out, but it was in a language I didn’t understand. The vibrator had some shit clinging to its tip. Van Kep wiped it on the G-string and then ran his lips over its surface, kissing it and slipping it inside his mouth.

  I took three steps forward and grabbed his long hair, pulling his head around towards me. I knocked the vibrator aside with the pistol and pressed the barrel against his thickly painted upper lip.

  ‘Want to suck this, too?’

  He looked at me, blinked twice and burst into tears. He dropped the joint in its clip as deep sobs racked him. He knuckled at his eyes with his gloved fists and panted for breath. I eased back and lowered the gun. The joint was smouldering on the carpet and I picked it up and dropped it into the ashtray on the table beside the bottle of red wine and the half-full glass. There were three or four fresh roaches in the ashtray.

  ‘Finish your drink and clean yourself up. We’re going to have a talk.’

  ‘Who . . . who’re you?’

  ‘Just do as I say and be quick. Don’t try anything silly or you’ll get seriously hurt or worse. If you’re sensible you can go back to playing games with yourself; if you’re not, I’ll bury you out there under the fucking roses.’

  He tried to drink some wine but his hand, the left, shook and he spilled it down his flat, hairless belly. I gestured for him to stand. He got up slowly; he was well over six feet. He tottered out of the room and I followed him to the bathroom where he stripped off his G-string and washed his face and hands. He was utterly passive, stunned by surprise and the grass he’d smoked, but I watched him carefully. He was lean and athletic-looking, and there’s no rule that says a sexual deviant can’t fight.

  In the bedroom he pulled on a dark blue tracksuit and bent to reach under the bed.

  ‘E
asy,’ I said.

  Still quiet and compliant, he pulled out a pair of sneakers and held them up.

  ‘You won’t need them. Stay where you are, Anton. This is as good a place as any to talk.’

  He kept his eyes cast down, staring at his long white feet. ‘What about?’

  ‘Claudia Fleischman, Julius Fleischman, why you’re lying—all that.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘As Joe Louis said, you can run but you can’t hide. Now I know she hired you to protect her from her husband and she went to bed with you. Who paid you to lie about it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t shoot me.’

  ‘You’re right. I’ll put this in your mouth and put your finger on the trigger and you can blow your own fucking brains out. Then I’ll arrange all your little playthings around you. What d’you reckon they’ll think?’

  He lifted his head and I could see blood flowing back into his pale, frightened face. His shoulders straightened as he summoned up courage. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  I was ready for that. I grabbed his hair, pulled hard and twisted until his scalp was strained. His mouth flew open and I rammed the pistol in, bearing down on his tongue. I kneeled on the bed, pinioning his right arm. I grabbed his left hand, bent it far back and brought it up near his mouth. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘You’re left-handed. It’ll look right. No bruises, no cuts. You’re just one beat away from it.’

  He went slack and I gradually eased back on all the pressure points. ‘It’s simple,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth and you’ll be okay.’

  ‘You’re wearing a wire,’ he gasped. ‘It’s them. They’ll do me for perjury.’

  ‘No wire.’ I lifted the polo shirt. He saw the long white scar running across the left side of my chest, courtesy of an irate wife-beater and a barbed wire fence a few years back. I guess the scar and the taste of the gun oil convinced him.

  ‘What you say’s true,’ he whispered. ‘I lied. I had to.’

  20

  Anton Van Kep wasn’t very bright. He’d worked for Fleischman as a driver, gofer and a standover man as business problems required. He disliked his employer, who he described as a shit, and when Claudia asked him to protect her from Fleischman and offered money and herself, he accepted.

  ‘Despite what you might think, I mostly like women in bed,’ he said. ‘When it’s one-on-one, you know.’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t want to know. Make it quick, your minder’ll finish his tennis soon. Where did the cock-and-bull story about helping to kill Fleischman come from?’

  ‘Blackmail, sort of. Yeah, blackmail.’

  ‘Of you? Who by?’

  ‘I don’t know. After Fleischman got shot a guy came to see me. He showed me some pictures, stills from a couple of the movies I’ve been in. Well, you know what they’d be. Me with another bloke and some kids. No mask. I don’t know how he got them. He reckoned Mrs Fleischman would be charged with the murder and I’d be charged with . . . something . . .’

  ‘Conspiracy.’

  ‘Yeah. He told me what I had to say about Mrs Fleischman. I did it.’

  ‘Come on, you put yourself in for ten years gaol? I find that hard to believe.’

  He lifted his head and looked at me with red-rimmed, moist eyes. ‘I’ve got a rep as a tough guy. That’d be fucked if the pictures got around. And how long d’you reckon I’d last inside if I went up for . . . you know. But that’s not the real reason. This guy said the pictures would go first to my mother. She’s old. Seeing stuff like that would kill her. She’s had enough shit in her life from me without that.’

  Very strange territory. My mum had died fairly young when I was in my twenties. She was a good-time girl who refused to believe that port, cakes and pies and staying up all night and sleeping all day was bad news for diabetics. Her kidneys collapsed. She had loved my sister and me in her way, but she wasn’t around much. She was warm and funny and I loved her too, but I wouldn’t have gone to gaol for her. Still, it was possible. Van Kep had never served time, didn’t know what it was like. Besides, he was dumb.

  He must have sensed my scepticism or maybe it was just the pistol. ‘I got a phone call the day before the cops arrested me. Same bastard. He said there wouldn’t ever be a trial. He said I’d never have to lie in court and I’d get the negatives as soon as it was all over. It’s true. You have to believe me!’

  With all the craziness that was going on in this case, I almost did. The implications were worrying, though. Never come to trial—why? There were only three ways that could happen—the charges could be dropped or the accused could die or jump bail. The first was unlikely and I didn’t care for the other two. Van Kep must have calculated he had time to clean up after his fun and games, but I sensed that time was running short unless the tennis players were engaged in a best of three with no tie-breaks in the third.

  ‘I’d like to see some evidence of all this,’ I said. ‘Like the photos.’

  ‘No! You want to blackmail me as well . . .’

  ‘Listen, Anton, you disgust me. I don’t ever want to see or hear you again, but I need some proof. I’m betting that someone like you would be just a bit turned on by photos like that and you’d keep them. Show me.’

  He sniffed and looked at his gold watch that sat on a low chest of drawers beside the bed. ‘Todd’ll be back soon.’

  ‘I’m your big worry at the moment, not Todd.’

  ‘I have to get rid of the roaches.’

  ‘So hurry up.’

  He opened a drawer, took out a plastic wallet stuffed full of photographs, riffled through, selected two and held them out. I’m an old hand at diversion and distraction. If I’d been him, this would be the moment to make a move. I gestured with the .38.

  ‘Drop them on the floor and lie back on the bed.’

  There was no fight in him. He did it. The photographs only needed a glance—much the same stuff as on the video.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I believe you. Last thing—tell me about this bloke who heavied you. What did he look like, sound like, how old—all that.’

  He collected the photos and put them back in the wallet. He looked tired and drained and I was feeling much the same. He needed some prompting; accurate observation and character analysis weren’t his thing, but the description I ended up with was Harvey ‘Haitch’ Henderson to the life.

  Anton Van Kep was as glad to see me go as I was to leave. There was a shadow of despair across his pale, narrow face and the few traces of make-up left behind made him look like a clown who’d strayed out of the circus and couldn’t find his way back. I walked back through the handsome gardens clutching my papers, hiding behind my sunglasses, feeling like shit. The tennis game had finished and the two players were brooming the lines and rolling up the net like good boys. Van Kep’s minder looked chipper; he’d probably won the match, but he’d scored zero out of ten for the job he was supposed to be doing. I could’ve disposed of his client without any troubles at all. That made me wonder how serious the protection was intended to be and what that might imply. I pushed the thought aside as too complicated. I needed to see Claudia.

  There were many more cars when I got back to the parking area—a couple of Mercs, a Holden Statesman or two, Saabs and Audis. The Nissan Patrol looked like a rough country cousin beside all that citified polished duco. I started the engine and prepared to back out carefully so as to avoid the Saab parked perilously close on my right side. A white Celica soft top skidded to a halt in the middle of the car park. The driver pivoted expertly and slid the car into a narrow space not far from me. I almost scraped the Saab as I ducked my head and tried to turn away. The driver of the Celica was Wilson Katz.

  I pulled out slowly and reversed away into a deep shadow cast by some tall Norfolk Island pines. Katz alighted and paid no attention to me or anything else. He was wearing a business suit but carrying a Nike sports bag. He might have been going to Mrs Kent’s conference, but it looked as if he had a gym workout afterwards in mind. I
studied him closely as he went up the steps into the clubhouse. His shoulders drooped and his face was knotted with concern. He was a big, fit, sophisticated man in early middle-age; he had money and still had most of his hair. His lubricous ex-wife wanted him back, so he must be adequate in the sack. The Fleischman corporate structure might be in trouble but Katz was only an employee, albeit a highly paid one, so he wasn’t liable if the thing came crashing down. Why, then, for a second time, was he acting so terribly worried?

  Third time lucky. Gatellari answered.

  ‘Mr Hardy, good. I’ve been trying to reach you but I think this phone’s on the blink. I’d better talk fast. The house belongs to someone named Angela Tawney. No one around seems to know what she does. She’s almost never there. Here’s the bad news—no phone.’

  A true retreat. I groaned. ‘Are you sure Mrs Fleischman’s still there?’

  ‘Ninety per cent sure at least. I haven’t been able to keep every ferry and water taxi under scrutiny because I’ve been ducking in here and there checking on things. There’s a chance she slipped by but I don’t think so. Pete said to take my instructions from you. What d’you want me to do next?’

  I considered. I could ask Gatellari to deliver a message, ask Claudia to ring me. But there was no guarantee she’d do it and a phone call wasn’t the answer anyway. Besides that, she could react very badly to a strange man walking up the garden path to her hideaway. No help for it.

  ‘I’ll have to come up,’ I said. ‘I’m in Northbridge. It’ll take a good hour or more to Palm Beach. Are these water taxis available all the time?’

  ‘Pretty much. I can book one for, say, seven. An hour and a half from now.’

  ‘Thanks. Do that, would you? I’ll see you on the wharf. And I’ll tell Pete you’re doing a great job.’