“The actor?”
“Yes.”
Wetting her finger, she drew it along the top of the glass. She gave me a curious look, as if calculating something.
“You asked me here,” I said. “Suppose you tell me why.”
She stopped with the finger.
“Last week, one of Clive Sexton’s Holt associates took the commuter flight from Auckland to Wellington with Adrian. I suspect he intends to contact a professor at Victoria University named Cattley Middleditch.”
“The author of Farewell to Elysium?”
She nodded. “Have you read it?”
“No, but I’ve heard of him. The book ignited a debate with another Cook scholar, didn’t it?”
“That’s an understatement. Middleditch believed that when Cook stumbled on the Hawaiian beach he was immediately worshipped as a god. A Yale professor named Uley Oyestebek found that view to be ethnocentric, even racist. Anthropology is a discipline filled with endless argument, and this was a big one: a real pissing contest even in a field notorious for clashes rather than conclusions.”
“No doubt both would love to read what Gibson had to say,” I said. “Particularly if it confirms their thesis. Is Middleditch aware that our journals were stolen?”
“I’m certain of it. Holt’s people have appraised books for Victoria University for a long time. They would have alerted the professor to be on the lookout for anyone trying to unload them. I’ve arranged for us to see him tomorrow.”
“Good. Now, tell me more about your relationship with Hart. Who’s using who?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I put my glass on the table and leaned back in the chair. “Pillow, you seem to know a lot about me, but I know very little about you.”
She answered by untying the scarf. “How’s this for starters?”
The scar spread over the entire right side of her neck before disappearing below her blouse. Bright pink ridges rippled across a flat gray surface resembling in texture and color the skin of a shark.
“I’ll show you the rest if you wish,” she added, in a voice as cold as a dead penguin.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
She studied me sardonically, relishing my discomfort. “What’s the problem, Michael? Disfigurement not your cup of tea?”
“That’s unfair. Give me a little credit for admiring your beauty.”
“You mean you like my face, my waist, my thighs. You’ll take those and shut your eyes to the rest.”
She stared at me contemptuously before adding: “You think you know all about women, don’t you?”
“Certain women, maybe.”
“But just the ones who find you attractive.”
“It certainly helps to know if a girl I fancy has good taste.”
“Ugh!”
“And what about you, Pillow? How long has it been since anyone had control over you?”
I thought she would ignore the question and storm out the door. Instead, her tone softened.
“Only one,” she replied bleakly, “and no one ever will again.”
She got to her feet. “Come on. You’ve followed me this far.”
I left money for the waiter. Then I followed Pillow into the hallway and up a broad staircase to her room.
Before opening the door, she hesitated. “We can keep the lights off if it bothers you.”
“You still don’t understand.”
“Yes, I do, Michael. More than you’ll ever know.”
Chapter Eleven
The high-ceilinged room was old-fashioned comfortable, with William Morris wallpaper and a leather club chair parked next to an oak-framed window. Half-opened venetian blinds allowed a peek of the harbor. An overhead light encased in a copper-tinted dome emitted a warm glow. A rumpled quilt covered the otherwise unmade bed.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she said, going into the bathroom.
I should have left her a note saying I’d meet her the next morning and slipped away.
But I didn’t.
For all my intentions to remain faithful to Josie, I felt compelled to understand this perplexing person who could be so abrupt, so cold. If the only way to break through that frigid exterior was to make love with her, then so be it.
That’s how I justified it, anyway. I knew I was going to feel empty, disgusted with myself five minutes afterward, but…Oh, hell. It was raining torrents outside and I’d lost my umbrella.
I waited by the window, watching seagulls dive-bomb a ferry coming alongside a wharf. When that got old I studied the electric heater on the floor. Across its concave aluminum back ran a thin metal band glowing orange with the heat. It warmed my ankles, but that’s the most I can say for it. A few minutes later I heard the toilet flush, then the running of water in a sink. Another minute passed before the door opened. It was worth the wait.
Pillow stood naked beneath the transom, her feet spread slightly apart. The turtleneck, skirt, and jacket were folded neatly over her left arm. Her right arm hung by her side. She said nothing, hid nothing, just stared straight ahead at a spot somewhere behind me, showing no sign of embarrassment.
Had I been a younger man, I might have found the performance intimidating.
Her left breast was firm and perfectly shaped, but a six-inch-wide corrugated sheath of damaged flesh extended from her neck to the belt line on the right side.
I tried to focus on her face, but it was impossible.
“You might at least pretend not to be shocked,” she said, still looking past me.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re a liar.”
I walked up to her, took the clothes from her arm, and dropped them to the floor. “Remember in Kansas City when you said I was the only one you could depend upon?”
“Vaguely.”
“Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here to help, Pillow, but you’ve got to trust me.”
“I trust you.”
“Then you can start by telling me the truth.”
“Not yet,” she said.
I drew her into my arms.
She shuddered, but only for an instant before her moist lips opened and a nimble tongue flickered against mine.
We danced that way for a few heartbeats until she said, “I think you’d better get undressed.”
She lay on top of the quilt while I did my best not to imitate Jacques Clouseau in the shedding of clothes.
“My, my,” she said, when I crawled in next to her.
“Okay?”
“Hmmmm. You forgot to turn off the light.”
“I like to see what I’m getting into.”
“Charming,” she said. “Can we get on with it now?”
* * *
I’m not exactly an amateur when it comes to the mattress Olympics, but Pillow surprised me with her wild abandon, as awkward as it was insatiable. She was obviously no stranger to lovemaking, but she set about the work as if it was all new to her. When it was over I didn’t feel disgusted. More like abashed, as if I’d deflowered an abbess.
I awoke around three. Even in sleep she had covered her neck with her hand. I kissed her gently. She opened her eyes, blinking as if surprised to find me still there.
“We need our rest,” she purred drowsily, stretching her arms to the top of the bedpost. “Big day tomorrow.”
“Where are we meeting the professor?”
“At his rugby club. He’s refereeing a junior-side match in the morning and will see us afterward.”
“I’m an old-boy rugger myself.”
“Do tell.”
I started to recount my exploits with the Eagles, but before I could describe the torpedo pass that set up my first try for the team, she climbed on top of me. There aren’t many ways to shut me up once I get going on rugby, but she managed to find one.
* * *
“Are you all right?” she asked with a wicked smile, once she’d crawled off my shattered corpse.
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“Let’s just say I know how a stallion feels when it gets broken in.”
“An apt analogy,” she said, reaching for a final touch. “Am I a good lover?”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Yes, Pillow, and tomorrow I’ll have the scars to prove it.”
Her smile faded.
“That was stupid,” I said.
“You meant nothing by it.”
I sat up and brushed the hair back from her forehead.
“Still, I’m sorry.”
She looked out to the harbor, then muttered something unintelligible before disappearing into the bathroom.
I got into my clothes and waited for her to come out.
“Pillow?”
I heard the hissing noise of the shower being turned on. I opened the door, listened for a moment. Then I quietly shut it without going in.
* * *
The rain had stopped by the time I left the Wellesley Club. It was just before sunrise and the night sky was clear and fresh. I gazed at the Southern Cross and the other unfamiliar stars as I walked along the brick path bordering the harbor. At one point I stopped to read a plaque, one of many along the way that the city council had sponsored. It was by a Wellington poet named James Baxter, who wrote in 1919:
I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees.
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelt of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.
I continued along the wharf, passing the museum and the city hall, and made it to the Duxton without encountering the Maori Jesus, the Mongrel Mob, or the youth who had cradled the broken-winged tern.
When I finally fell asleep, my dreams were haunted by the memory of Pillow’s muffled sobbing behind the shower curtain. I felt dirty as hell.
Chapter Twelve
At noon the next day, Pillow, all business again, drove me down the Hutt Road between steep forested hills and the bay into the town of Lower Hutt.
After parking in the tree-lined lot of the Petone Recreation Grounds, she led me toward a two-story concrete grandstand. To get to it we had to skirt around the sidelines of a pitch on which a junior Petone team and a visiting side were well into the last half of a match. Most of the players on both squads had Maori features. I couldn’t help contrasting these fit, wholesome kids with the loathsome brutes I’d encountered the day before in downtown Wellington.
I followed Pillow to the top of the stands to a door that declared “Members Only,” and we entered a broad open room similar to traditional rugby pubs I’d seen from Wexford to Johannesburg in my touring days.
Cheaply framed photographs of past heroes and championship teams filled two pine-paneled walls. Middle-aged men clustered around tall Formica tables sharing war stories and pitchers of beer. In a corner close to a packed trophy case, two elderly gents wearing threadbare sweaters and striped club ties hovered over a backgammon board. A tennis match being shown on a fifty-inch flat television screen above them went unnoticed. Anchoring the north end was a long, marble-topped bar where an immense man pulled pints of lager for three women, two Maori and one pakeha*1. They were dressed in identical windbreakers emblazoned with “Petone RFC.”
Five gray-haired men of varying girth sat in metal folding chairs in front of three large windows, observing the action on the field below. The badges pinned on their blazers indicated they were selectors, scouts whose decisions could lead to a coveted All Blacks jersey for an exceptionally talented young player.
When we approached the bar the bearded giant behind it beamed upon us, recognizing Pillow.
“Kia ora koe punua ngeru.”*2
“Ka pai.”*3
I stared bewilderedly as the two leaned over the bar to press their noses together, followed by an animated discussion in the Maori language. It wasn’t until then that I realized Pillow’s dusky coloring, striking profile, and statuesque body weren’t of the Mediterranean variety. When she lapsed back into English for my benefit, she’d even traded her Scottish accent for the Kiwi version.
“Mike Bevan,” she said, “meet my old mate, Kia Parker.”
Shaking the giant’s hand was like surrendering my fingers to an ice crusher.
“What you down here for?” he asked, turning his massive head back to Pillow.
“To see Professor Middleditch. You think we came for your hui burgers?”
Kia grimaced. “You hurt my feelings with that talk. Maybe you want some sea-anemone soup. Good for the bowels. I caught a couple of flounders yesterday. Keepin’ ’em fresh in a water safe. Get some celery, crushed pineapples, and throw in a couple baked potatoes. Make you a real dinner. You got time?”
“I wish.”
“Pah! Let me know when you do. The flounders won’t keep forever.”
“Maybe later. Where can we find Cattley?”
“Refereeing the match below.” Kia pointed at the pitch. “He’ll be up soon for his pink gin.”
I peered down at the field. A high-shouldered, slender man with a thatch of thinning gray hair stood over a pile of burly youngsters. He blew his whistle, pointed at the two front rows who had caused the scrum to collapse, then motioned for the sides to form up and commence shoving again.
Kia took out a couple of frosted pint glasses and poured us drafts of Moa stout. He pulled one for himself and raised a toast.
“Kia ora koe.”*4
While we clinked glasses, three teenage boys wearing rugby gear sauntered into the club, rolling their heads in rhythm to whatever music was playing through their iPod earphones. They took a table farthest from the window and casually dropped their scruffy kit bags on the floor, much to the annoyance of the older regulars.
“From Otago,” Kia said, nodding in their direction. “They got the next match with our under-nineteens. Surly bunch of hori—trailer trash—if you ask me. That big one with the kuru spiral pendant, he’s right bad. Used to be with the Bees. Mebbe still.”
“Bees?” I asked, confused.
“Youth gang. Wannabes for the Mongrel Mob who do the running for the older blokes.”
“Ahh, come on, Kia,” Pillow said. “Odds are he’s no better or worse than you were at that age.”
“You been gone too long, Kitten. Nowadays they think getting these kids into tikanga programs will fix bad habits. It takes more than some old fella trying to teach traditional values at a Disneyfied excuse for a marae.”
“I saw some of that action yesterday at the Centre City Plaza,” I said. “A hundred gangbangers going after each other with chains and axes in broad daylight.”
“Not uncommon these days,” Kia said. “The ‘Dogs’ around Wellington never used to stray outside Porirua; kept to themselves, even in Cannons Creek. No more. And it ain’t just the Mongrel Mob and Black Power. Them Samoan King Cobras from Auckland set up shop in Hutt Valley and Miramar last year. The Head Hunters are down here, too.”
“Some folks excuse them,” Pillow said to me. “They say they aren’t as bad as they seem; that they live by a code of honor.”
“Yeah,” Kia said and snorted. “That’s if you believe gang rape, killings, and drugs fit the code. There’s loyalty to each other, but no respect for anything or anyone who don’t wear their patch. Any one of ’em will stomp your ass if you cross them, accidentally or otherwise. Now they got P—crystal meth—to add to their Ecstasy. No values, no respect. And they blame their miserable existence on the system.”
“But no guns,” I pointed out.
The big man shrugged. “They got them, too. Sawed-off shotguns, mostly. Just not as much firepower as in the States. Give ’em time.”
“How do you two know each other?” I asked, eager to change the depressing subject.
“I met Kia at Arrowtown Primary,” Pillow answered. “He was more like a bodyguard, actually. My big mouth used to get me in trouble.”
“That an
d your looks. All the boys wanted to mess with you.”
Pillow stared at her friend affectionately, but accusingly as well.
“Why you move away, leave me alone like that?”
“You know why,” Kia said, looking contrite for not having done more. “My papa took a job in Welly.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. No stopping the Craddocks when their blood was up. They still in Rimutaka?”
“Naw. They been out four years. For good behavior, if you can believe that.”
I looked out of the corner of my eye at Pillow. Her face flushed a little and her tongue played with the inside of her left cheek.
She nodded toward the door. “Ah, here’s our man,” she said.
A tall figure stood silhouetted against the mid-morning sunlight.
* * *
*1 Non-Maori New Zealander.
*2 “How are you, Kitten?”
*3 “Great.”
*4 “Good health to you.”
Chapter Thirteen
Kia moved to the far end of the bar, where the three women looked like they needed another pint.
Professor Cattley Middleditch wore an expectant look as he scanned the room. His thick tortoiseshell glasses were perched on a long nose streaked with the broken capillaries of a quart-a-day drinker. Below it was a pencil-thin mustache of the type David Niven once favored.
Pillow waved to get his attention.
Seeing us, he stepped forward, gave her a brief peck on the cheek, and gingerly shook my hand. Although he was tall, Middleditch’s fingers were short and thick, with the yellowed nails of a smoker.
He sat down, motioned for his pink gin, and leveled his watery eyes at me. “My niece tells me you’re here to help locate the Gibson journals.”
“Recover the journals, Uncle Cattley.”
“Of course, dear. But I rather think they belong to more than just an individual or two. Don’t you, Mr. Bevan?”
I stared blankly between the two of them, trying to adjust to what I had just heard about their relationship.
“Pillow didn’t tell me that you were related.”
“I’m not surprised. She loves to harbor secrets. Her mother, Esme, is my sister.”
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