Port Vila Blues

by Garry Disher

  ‘I remember he asked if you were a loafer,’ the Goldman woman said, twinkling a little.

  ‘See? Like I said, he called me lazy.’

  ‘Oh, Terry, that’s just his little joke, a play on words. Your name is Baker, right? Bakers bake loaves, hence loafer.’

  Baker wasn’t about to let her mollify him. He felt obscurely ashamed and bitter. ‘What about calling me stupid and useless? Anyhow, what kind of name’s De Lisle? Wog name, not even Australian.’

  The lawyer refused to answer that. She was looking into his face now, all right, so he knew he’d hit a nerve. She held his gaze, cool and blank, and he looked away, trying to make it casual, masking it with a cough, a scratch, a realignment of his limbs in the orange chair.

  Maybe the Goldman woman was relenting, for she said, ‘It was the luck of the draw that we got him today, rotten luck in fact. He does have a reputation.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Baker muttered. He looked into the distance to show that he didn’t give a shit.

  ‘But he’s highly regarded and he does his bit, which is more than you can say about a lot of others.’

  ‘Yeah? How?’ Baker demanded.

  She shrugged. ‘Well, he’s a circuit magistrate in a couple of Pacific countries.’

  Baker grunted. ‘Let’s hope a shark gets him.’

  He added the shark to the fall off a cliff, the shorting light switch igniting built-up gas, the smacking front of a Mack truck, the sort of thing he could set up so it looked like an accident.

  Ms. Goldman laughed, a genuine laugh, as if they were on the same wavelength when it came to De Lisle and what he deserved. Maybe the guy had squeezed her one day without being asked, Baker thought, gazing at her, thinking he’d like a piece of that himself.

  She read it in his eyes and something in her shut down again, her shoulders hunching forward, her forearms on the desk, effectively closing her body off from him. ‘Now, Terry, your defence,’ she said.

  ‘She had it coming,’ he said promptly.

  The Goldman woman took that seriously, jotting something down in her notes. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I mean, she come up behind me flashing her lights, blasting me with her horn. I mean, how was I to know she didn’t have a carload of skinheads on board, like, you know, an ambush or something?’

  ‘But, Terry, you stopped the car. You wouldn’t stop if you feared for your life. I have to ask this—were you high at the time? Had you taken anything, alcohol and drugs together perhaps?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I thought you were my fucking lawyer.’

  ‘I’m not fucking anything,’ Ms. Goldman said, and it was like a slap across the face to Baker.

  He put up his hands. ‘Okay, I apologise. I just want to know how come you’re, like, taking this woman’s side.’

  ‘Terry, I’m simply doing what the prosecution will do to you in the courtroom.’

  Baker considered that for a while. ‘All right, how about we argue self-defence?’

  ‘But you knocked her to the ground. A chipped tooth, lacerations, a mass of bruises. How do you explain that, except as an overreaction? The kind of overreaction one might expect from someone under the influence of drugs or alcohol, I might add.’

  Baker closed his eyes, tightened his fists. A wave of blackness and heat swept through his head, sparks popping behind his eyelids. He fought it down. ‘Fucking lay off about the booze and drugs, will ya? Please? Just lay off?’ His voice was high, pained. ‘Everyone on at me, all the time, I’ve fucking had enough.’

  He’d scared her. He didn’t want that. He waited for his heart to stop thumping, then took a deep breath. ‘Like I said, she come up behind me flashing her lights, tooting her horn, so naturally I thought I had a flat, or maybe the boot was open. Then we both stop and she gets out of her car and comes at me, sounding off about the blasted kid should be restrained, whatever. Like I said, self-defence.’

  ‘It’s you who should have been restrained, Terry.’

  He looked at her and it was full of hate. ‘So that’s how it’s going to be, you’re all gunna have these digs at my expense, turning everything I say around. Yeah, thanks a lot.’

  ‘Terry, did she actually assault you?’

  He shifted in his chair. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘How do you mean? Did she hit you, spit on you, threaten you with anything?’

  ‘If I’d’ve been closer I would’ve felt the spit coming off her. She was good and toey.’

  ‘Did she threaten you verbally?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did she say she’d do something to hurt you if you didn’t restrain the child—what’s his name? Troy?’

  ‘Troy, yeah, little brat. Well, she reckoned I was careless, kind of thing, letting the kid ride around without a belt on.’ He showed her his palms apologetically. ‘I know, I know, I should’ve strapped him in, but you know how kids are, all over the place, can’t keep still.’

  ‘Terry, I’m trying to work out if you were provoked in any way, and, if so, whether or not you were justified in striking out at Mrs. Sullivan. Mitigating circumstances, in other words.’

  ‘Talk English, can’t ya?’

  She leaned forward. ‘We may be able to obtain a fine and a suspended sentence if we can show that your striking the woman—though to be deplored—was understandable given the nature and degree of her provocation.’

  Baker muttered, ‘We should get the bitch to back down.’

  ‘I didn’t hear that, Mr. Baker.’

  Baker put his head on one side. ‘But you’d have her address, right?’

  ‘Terry, I’m warning you.’

  But Baker was lost in staging another revenge and his mind drifted. Wait till the Sullivan woman was in a multi-storey carpark somewhere, shove a spud up her exhaust pipe so she can’t get the car started, then jump her, get her to withdraw all charges, maybe put her out of action somehow.

  That’s if he could find her. Christ, the Sydney phone book was probably chocka with Sullivans.

  He became aware of a snarling exhaust note outside the building. When it didn’t let up after half a minute, Baker went to the window.

  He liked it, oh he liked it very much. Some bloke was parked across the street in a hotted-up panelvan, brrrapping the motor, letting the vehicle hunt and rock a little as if he were slipping the clutch, ready to take off. But it wasn’t the panelvan that interested Baker, it was what it stood for. Clearly the poor bastard had been given a bum’s rush in court and he was shouting his grievances to the world through a megaphone: ‘Men and women are not equal … Justice for women, injustice for men … Modern justice, keeping a father away from his kids.’

  ‘Go for it,’ Baker muttered.

  The lawyer joined him at the window. ‘Oh, God, not him again.’

  Baker laughed. ‘Got lumbered with De Lisle, did he?’

  ‘If anything, De Lisle would be on his side. No, he’s been hassling us for months.’

  She had her mouth open for more but just at that moment the traffic cleared and the panelvan screamed and leapt smoking and snaking away from the kerb, across the street and through the main glass doors of the courthouse.

  They heard the crash. The screaming started a couple of seconds later. ‘He’s hurt someone,’ Ms. Goldman said, and she hurried out.

  Baker left, too, but he paused for a moment at her desk first. He spun the file around. There it was, Diana Sullivan, an address in St. Leonards.

  They were all moaning and wringing their hands at the front of the building. The panelvan had come right into the foyer and buried itself against the front desk. Baker saw blood and glass, a lot of it. If he’d been a different kind of a person he could have lifted the occasional wallet and handbag in all the confusion. As it was, he saw Ms. Goldman helping a woman into the Ladies’. She saw him. ‘I’m sorry, Terry,’ she said, harried, pale-looking. ‘Ring me tomorrow?’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘Great.’

 
Baker slipped away through a side door. Carol’s Kingswood was in a K-Mart five blocks away. It took him a while to find the street directory under the UDL cans and toys and other crap on the back floor. St. Leonards.

  But when he got to the address, no one answered his knock, and when he went around the side of the house, a woman from next door poked her head over the fence, demanding to know who he was and what he wanted.

  He waved the classifieds section of a newspaper in her face. ‘I’ve come about the VW.’

  ‘I think you must have the wrong address. Diana doesn’t own a VW.’

  Baker was perplexed.

  ‘Besides,’ the woman went on, ‘someone assaulted her and she’s gone to stay with her mother till the trial.’

  Then, conscious that she’d said too much, the woman frowned and reached a fleshy arm over the fence. ‘Let me see that ad.’

  Baker backed away. He said, ‘It’s okay, no worries, my mistake,’ and other unconvincing things as he backed out of there.

  In the Kingswood again he planted his foot. If the nosy cow was calling the cops right now he’d better track down some mates who’d swear he’d been on the piss with them all afternoon.

  So, forget the Sullivan woman.

  Fix De Lisle instead.

  22

  ‘Just coffee,’ Wyatt told the kid waiting on them at the corner table, near a door, next to a window.

  Liz Redding looked at him across the table, a faintly amused expression on her face. What he read there said that she thought him abstemious, and not only because he hadn’t ordered anything to eat, so he said, ‘And an apple danish,’ seeing her mouth stretch into a grin.

  ‘Now I don’t feel so bad about ordering scones and cream,’ she said. ‘It’s been a while since breakfast, and it’s a long drive up here.’

  This was small talk. Wyatt didn’t try to look interested. Liz Redding wasn’t someone who’d indulge in it for long, anyway.

  He nodded pleasantly, looked around. He was sitting where he could see the room, each door, part of the strip of asphalt outside. Liz Redding had her back unconcernedly to the room. That was a good sign, it said she wasn’t expecting trouble. Then he realised that she could see all she needed to see reflected in the mirror behind him. He decided that that was a good sign, too.

  There were no other customers. The cafe was the kind of place that did plenty of business on weekend afternoons, a little on weekday afternoons, virtually none before lunch. All that glass on three sides admitted plenty of warming sunlight into the room. Wyatt could detect coffee in the air. The waitress had passed their order through a serving hatch behind the cash register and was perched on a stool now, chin down, frowning over the split ends in her hair. A radio murmured on a shelf behind her, too low for him to isolate one word from another. No music, so he guessed it was a talk show. Crockery clattered in the distant reaches of the kitchen.

  The tables, chairs and benches gleamed with a honeyed, piney light. It was a restful place for a transaction outside of the law. Wyatt scratched one fingernail across the tucks in the check-patterned gingham tablecloth and saw Liz Redding’s hand there, long-fingered, elastic, appealingly knuckly. They were good hands to look at and he imagined the rest of her.

  One hand seemed to twitch in reaction to him, lift, fall to the cloth and pick at the material. She said, ‘They want me to check the stones.’

  He’d expected that. He passed her the Tiffany but then their orders arrived. Liz Redding’s eyes were avid, full of appetite. ‘Just in time. I could feel crankiness coming on.’

  Wyatt watched her spoon the chocolatey froth of her coffee into her mouth, take the first sip, lick away the residue from her upper lip. She leaned toward him across the table and he thought for a moment that she wanted to kiss him, but she propped her chin in her cupped palm and said, ‘What’s the waitress doing?’

  Wyatt looked past her to the cash register. ‘She’s gone out the back.’

  ‘Good.’

  Liz sat back, fastened her jeweller’s glass to her eye, examined each of the stones intently. Wyatt watched her hands, the clean, healthy pores like pinpricks speckling the brown skin. She looked up. ‘So far so good. You haven’t substituted pieces of cut glass for the stones. Now to see that you haven’t substituted cheap diamonds for expensive ones.’

  She was twinkling, enjoying herself. She handled the Tiffany again, peering for telltale scratches around the settings. Satisfied, she rummaged in her bag and brought out a tiny set of scales. Wyatt watched carefully, but her hands were quick and covert this time and he glimpsed nothing of what else she might have in the bag.

  ‘Still all clear?’

  He nodded.

  She placed the scales on the table, effectively concealing them among the cups, plates, sugar bowl and a tall, matched pair of salt and pepper shakers.

  ‘She’s back.’

  Liz froze. Her hands crept around the scales.

  ‘It’s okay. She’s staring off into space.’

  Liz used a small tool to prise out a couple of representative stones. She picked them up with tweezers, weighed one and then the other in the tiny bowl of the scales.

  ‘Women’s Weekly seal of approval,’ she said. ‘Each stone weighs in as the real thing. Sorry,’ she said, meaning the rigmarole.

  Wyatt was unconcerned. ‘It’s business,’ he said.

  He had no appetite, for the transaction was not complete, but picked up the danish anyway and bit into it. The pastry was thick, binding, and it dried the inside of his mouth. The apple was too chunky. He drained part of his coffee, ate more of the danish.

  It was then that Wyatt’s mouth seemed to fill with grit. He grimaced, tongued the stuff to his lips, removed it with his fingers.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Wyatt placed the offending sludge onto his plate and separated pastry and apple from a jagged chip of tooth and new amalgam. His tongue automatically ran along his upper teeth, registering a rough hole and a loose fragment, all that remained of the tooth that had been making his life hell for two months.

  ‘I’ve lost a filling.’

  Fascinated, Liz Redding stared at the chip on his plate. ‘More than that. Your tooth’s split. Is it the tooth that’s been bothering you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘A new filling on top of old ones?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It split open,’ she said. ‘They’ll do that. Which one is it?’

  ‘Top. Back,’ he said, his tongue busy.

  ‘That’s not so bad. It won’t affect your chewing and you won’t need a false one in its place.’

  ‘You seem to know all about it.’

  She was still leaning across the table, her upper body straining toward him. Unconsciously he leaned toward her. They seemed to be joined by this humble human catastrophe.

  That’s why they failed to notice the junkie with the gun. He came in through the main door and a moment later Liz blinked and murmured, ‘Behind me.’

  Wyatt looked past her shimmering black hair to the doorway. The man who stood there, a little rocky on his feet, wore scuffed boots, a torn T-shirt, greasy jeans and denim jacket. He needed a shave and a haircut. Wyatt expected to catch a whiff of him, a smell compounded of unwashed skin and clothing, oil and petrol, and something else, a rotten intestinal system leaking cheap alcohol and costly, impure chemicals bought in alleys and brewed in backyard amphetamine factories.

  The man hadn’t seen them. He wiped the back of his hand across his nose, tried to focus, jerked the gun as if waving crowds of people aside. Wyatt watched carefully, following the gun. The size told him it was a .357 and it seemed to have the weight of a genuine .357, not a disposal-store replica. Then he saw the man stop wavering and focus on the waitress. She was rooted to her stool, uselessly opening and closing her mouth. The man giggled insanely and shuffled toward her. ‘Gimme,’ he was muttering, ‘gimme,’ showing a mouthful of healthy teeth, and that wasn’t right.

  Liz Reddi
ng had her bag in her lap, bent over it protectively. She had the Tiffany in there, and Wyatt’s reward money. ‘We should do something before he hurts her,’ she said, beginning to turn her head.

  Wyatt stopped her, his voice low and even, not wasting itself on unnecessary words or useless inflections: ‘Don’t move. Don’t attract his attention.’

  They waited there, frozen, watching the junkie. Wyatt saw him push the waitress off the stool. ‘Gimme. Gimme.’

  The shove seemed to wake her. She stumbled to the register, opened it, shrank back against the serving hatch. No one in the kitchen had noticed her. Wyatt heard dishes rattling, a cheerful whistle, water rushing into a sink.

  The junkie crammed a few notes from the till into his back pocket. He was sniggering, maybe imagining the next fix. Wyatt saw him swing away again toward the door, then stop, greed showing on his face.

  Liz breathed, ‘Oh God, he’s seen us.’

  Wyatt watched as the junkie approached them slowly, keeping behind Liz Redding but beginning to circle so that he would soon be coming in on their flank.

  Wyatt’s left flank. It seemed to be deliberate. Wyatt had the little .32 in his lap but the angle was bad. He’d have to shoot across himself, across the table, and, unless the man widened the circle, he’d have to place his shot close to Liz Redding’s shoulder.

  So far the junkie was mostly bleary and unpredictable, as if he’d targeted them as a soft touch who’d hand over their wristwatches and spare cash and not kick up a fuss about it. But then the muzzle of the .357 came up, the man spread his legs and crouched, and he began to raise a steadying hand to the gun. He was clean and cool and focused suddenly, snapping out of his chemical trance more quickly than any junkie Wyatt had ever known.

  All these things registered with Wyatt and he swung the .32 into view, catching his knuckles under the lip of the table, wasting a precious fragment of time.

  He would have been too slow. It was Liz who shot the man. She didn’t do what amateurs do, turn her head first to find the problem then bring her gun to bear on it, but swung everything around—trunk, arms, eyes and gun—cutting the delay time, tracking the target, firing the instant she had him placed.