by Peter Corris
‘Wilbur showed me your hate mail,’ I said.
He popped a warm can of Taurina Spa. ‘Yeah?’
‘But that’s not what got you scared. Tell me about it.’
‘Nothing to tell. Phone call. Black bastard, threatening to off me.’
‘How d’you know he was black?’
He grinned and did a good imitation of the slightly guttural, slightly harsh tone that characterises the speech of a lot of Aborigines. ‘You can tell a Koori talking, can’t you, Cliffy?’ He jumped up, spraying sand on me. ‘C’mon, got to get back to work.’
We went back to the house. I had a quick shower in one bathroom, he had a long one in another. That gave me time to prowl in his study and find things I wasn’t surprised to find.
I was getting used to driving the Merc, liking it, even. Maybe Charlie’d give me a job as his permanent minder and I could drive Mercs and body surf and drink at night until my brains turned to mush. In my mind’s eye I could see Cyn nodding her head. Go for it, Cliff. Sleaze is what you love. Admit it. I wouldn’t admit it. As I drove Charlie MacMillan to his late afternoon appointments, I worked on a headstone inscription, while he used the car phone to get the day’s news, gossip and headlines from his researcher. The best I could come up with was: ‘He left the world no dirtier than he found it.’
We got back to the studio about half an hour before Charlie was due on air. A quick skim of his researcher’s material and he was ready. I drifted into Wilbur’s office, ransacked his drawers and played with paper and plastic tape while Charlie MacMillan told a story about his uncle who’d fought in World War II:
‘Uncle Ted said, “The Germans were clean fighters, but the Japs were animals.” I’m quoting a man who fought for this country from 1939 to 1945. That man’s views are worthy of respect. Think about that!’
‘You think about it,’ I said to the speaker on the wall. ‘You lying bastard.’
I was ready to tackle him when he finished his stint, but he gave me no time. He barrelled out through the sound studio door, pulling on his jacket and fumbling for the car keys. ‘Come on, Hardy. We’re not paying you to sit on your arse. Let’s roll!’
I followed him out onto the street to tell him what he could do with himself, and that’s when they arrived. Two of them, and not junked-up punks this time. Pros. One had a sawn-off and the other a baseball bat. MacMillan stopped dead when he saw them, retreated a step and looked around for me. The guy with the shotgun pointed it at Charlie’s head. It was pure reflex on my part—I cannoned into Charlie, knocking him down. I had my .38 in my hand before he hit the ground and I fired at the gunman, going for his legs but hitting him higher. I lost my balance, fell on my elbow and dropped the pistol. The street light caught the varnish on the bat as it whipped through the air and shattered Charlie’s shoulder. He screamed. The bat went back in an arc; the hitter was taking his time, aiming, and the return swing would’ve reduced MacMillan’s right knee to fragments. I scrabbled on the cement for the shotgun, grabbed, raised and triggered it, left-handed. The charge hit a pair of legs in blue jeans, ripping the fabric, shredding the flesh. Another scream. The bat fell free and the man followed it down, hard.
After that, there were cops and ambulances and pressmen. Temporarily, as the relatively uninjured party, I was almost the villain of the piece. MacMillan said I was a hero. That was just before they sedated him. It made me feel dirty. I gave a statement to the police at the Glebe station and Wilbur arrived to back me up. The reporters had followed Charlie and his assailants to hospital. I felt like something washed up on the beach.
A constable bought coffee in plastic cups from an all-night place in Glebe. Good coffee. He also offered cigarettes. I refused. Wilbur accepted. The constable lit him up.
‘What gives?’ I said.
‘The Ds will tell you, Mr Hardy.’
Mister, I thought, must’ve done some something right. I had. A detective sergeant explained that identifications had come through. The two men I’d shot were well-known enforcers, gambling debt collectors and frighteners—contented sadists with long records.
‘Brent Burke’s going to have a plastic stomach and Tommy Mather’ll be on sticks. For life, with luck,’ the cop said. ‘Thanks.’
Wilbur drove me back to where I’d parked the Falcon in a side street near the 2IC studio. On the way I told him how MacMillan had faked the hate calls—verbal and written—and conned his employer into providing him with protection.
‘Jesus,’ Wilbur said. ‘Gambling?’
‘Yeah. He’s got books on gambling systems—cards and horses. He’s got three typewriters and he practises writing left-handed. Does a pretty good Charlie Perkins imitation, too. He might do it on air one day, if you’re lucky.’
‘You’re pissed off,’ Wilbur said. ‘I’m sorry.’
I patted his shoulder which hurt my jarred elbow. ‘Not at you, mate. Not at you.’
Charlie MacMillan was back on air, with his shoulder in plaster, more popular and racist than ever, within a fortnight. He sent me a note explaining that by having me around he was just buying time until he settled his gambling debts. He hadn’t been expecting anything heavy. He claimed to have been so broke that he couldn’t afford to hire anyone good. Anyone like me. But he was in the clear now and he enclosed a bonus cheque for five hundred dollars. I signed the cheque over to the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service in Redfern and mailed it to them. Maybe they banked it, maybe they burned it. I don’t know.
A month after he returned to the airwaves, MacMillan was gambling in a Dixon Street club. He went to the toilet and a man, described by witnesses as ‘of Asian appearance’, followed him. MacMillan was found ten minutes later, lying on the tiled floor, with his large and small intestines overflowing the blocked toilet bowl.
Cadigal Country
Henry Hathaway lowered his well-padded buttocks onto my unpadded clients’ chair and said, ‘How long have you lived in Sydney, Mr Hardy?’
‘All my life,’ I said, ‘bar a few periods overseas.’
‘And how long have you … practised as a private enquiry agent, if I may ask?’
‘Sometimes that seems like all my life, too, but I guess it’d be about twenty years.’
‘You must have seen some changes in that time?’
That didn’t seem worth a reply. I grunted and waited for him to get to the point.
‘When I first came here in the mid-’50s, Australia was still essentially British. Anglo-Celt, as they say. You know what I mean?’
His accent was English with an Australian overlay. I’m mostly Irish myself, with some English and French thrown in. Or so my sister, who’s interested in such things, once told me. I said, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hathaway?’
Maybe my tone was rougher than I’d intended, or perhaps he liked to meander on. Anyway, he took some offence, got red in the face and glanced at the door. I didn’t like him but I couldn’t afford to lose him. He looked prosperous. I gave him one of my I’m-the-soul-of-discretion-and-reliability looks and watched him smooth his own feathers. He patted his abundant silver hair and stroked his fleshy chin. He liked himself enough for the two of us.
‘I have a daughter, Fiona. She’s nineteen. I discovered that she has been keeping company with an entirely unsuitable person.’
I wrote ‘Fiona Hathaway, 19’ on my notepad. ‘What’s his name, this person.’
He sniffed and got the words out with difficulty. ‘Alberto de Sousa. I imagine you know the foreign enclaves of Sydney pretty well, Mr Hardy?’
I put my pen down and shrugged. ‘Not really. Vietnamese in Cabramatta, Lebanese in Newtown, Italians in Leichhardt.’
‘Portuguese?’
‘You got me.’
‘In Marrickville, specifically Petersham. A section of New Canterbury Road has nothing but Portuguese shops—butchers, real estate agents, fruiterers, videos. Everything!’
I had a vague idea of where he meant and an impression that he was exaggerating. I looked
at him across my scarred desk and said nothing. A lot was going to depend on what he said next.
Mr Hathaway leaned forward and lines of concern furrowed his face. ‘I’m a widower, Mr Hardy, and Fiona is my only child. I love her very much. I don’t want her ruining her life over a worthless criminal.’
That hooked me. The man had problems. I told him my rates and he barely listened. I opened a file on him. He was fifty-nine years old, a retired electrical engineer with investments. ‘I have a heart disorder,’ he said. ‘Irregular rhythms. It’s an electrical problem, the doctors tell me.’
I thought he might smile at the irony of that but he didn’t. Mr Hathaway was heavy going. He went on to tell me that his daughter had met Alberto de Sousa when he had delivered a load of party liquor to the legal firm where Fiona worked as a secretary.
‘His family has a bottle shop in Petersham. A restaurant too, I believe.’
‘Both good earners,’ I said. ‘In the right locations and properly run.’
He ignored me. ‘They aren’t even Europeans.’
Back onto that. It was hard not to be testy. ‘Portugal’s in Europe. Last I heard.’
‘The de Sousas are from Madeira. D’you know where that is?’
‘I’d be guessing,’ I said. ‘Off the coast of Spain?’
‘Off the coast of Africa!’ he hissed. ‘They’re no better than niggers.’
He took his chequebook out of his pocket as he spoke. I thought of the rent on this office, the mortgage in Glebe, the Bankcard. ‘You said something about Mr de Sousa being a criminal.’
You don’t become a private investigator to inflate your ego or get a rosy view of human nature. Hathaway told me that he’d hired Richard Maxwell two weeks before to do the job he was now offering me. The reason? Maxwell was English. I knew him. In the Private Enquiry Agent fraternity he was known as ‘that poofter Pommy pisspot’. Prejudice, it’s everywhere.
‘Mr Maxwell became ill,’ Hathaway said. ‘He’s hospitalised, in fact, and he had to give up the case. But he did tell me that Alberto de Sousa has a criminal record and that he is involved in criminal activities.’
‘What else did he tell you?’
Mr Hathaway had a knack of saying the right thing just often enough. ‘Nothing relevant,’ he said. ‘He’s a very sick man, I gather. But he did recommend you.’
Hathaway wanted me to accumulate evidence on Alberto de Sousa’s criminality which he could either present to the police or put before his daughter, depending on the seriousness. A psychologist would probably have told him his plan wouldn’t work. Nothing stimulates the young as much as persecution by the old. But I was a detective, not a psychologist. I had the skills for the job and I needed the work.
I got a few more details, deposited Hathaway’s cheque and set out to find Richard Maxwell. He had a flat in Surrey Street, Darlinghurst, but he operated mostly out of a pub on the corner of Liverpool and Palmer Streets. This put him just a few doors from a gay brothel and a church. Maxwell was known to frequent both. At the pub I got the information I expected: Dick was in a Potts Point detox clinic. It was early December, too hot and sticky for walking but that was still better than driving through the heavy traffic, breathing carbon monoxide and pushing up the blood pressure. I crossed William Street, made my way through Woolloomooloo and walked beside the water to the McElhone steps which I went up very slowly, keeping in the shade. As I climbed, I tried to recall everything I knew about Portugal. I ran out long before I reached the top—sweet wine, Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama—that was about it.
The clinic was in a three-storey brick building which had once been a block of flats. Two streets back from Woolloomooloo Bay, the clinic’s upper floor would afford a view of the water on two sides—maybe that was where you got to when you’d been clean for a month. If so, Dick Maxwell had a way to go. I found him watching TV in a ground-floor room. Despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing pyjamas, a dressing gown and slippers, and he looked about seventy, although he was only a few years older than me.
‘Stay away from the gin, dear boy,’ he said after I’d sat down next to him and used the remote control to mute the TV. There were two other men in the room but they didn’t object to the loss of sound. They were gazing at the moving images, smoking and trying to think of reasons for staying alive without alcohol.
‘Is that right, Dick?’ I said. ‘I’m safe then. A gin-and-tonic once in a while. That’s my limit.’
Maxwell nodded seriously. ‘Harmless, that. I drink it like water. Brush my teeth with it. That’s why I’m here in this far-from-stimulating company.’
He was a ruin—all broken veins, sagging skin and bloated features. He was alcoholic, homosexual and English. I wondered how Henry Hathaway had reacted to the combination. I brought the name up and stated my business.
‘Ah, yes,’ Maxwell said. ‘A professional referral.’
I gave him a twenty-dollar note and showed him that I had several others to hand.
He pocketed it. ‘Shoot,’ he said, ‘metaphorically.’
‘You told Hathaway this de Sousa had a criminal record. Expand on that.’
‘Juvenile stuff,’ Maxwell said. ‘Graffiti, joy-riding—fines, bonds, a community work-order.’
I gave him another twenty. ‘You also said he was still involved in criminal activity.’
Maxwell nodded. ‘I watched the young chap for a few days. Rather a pleasure, if you follow me. He’s up to something—clandestine meetings with other young blades, phone calls from public boxes, you know the form, Clifford.’
Twenty again. ‘Any idea what it’s all about?’
Maxwell shrugged ‘No. I’m afraid I started to turn Hathaway’s retainer into clear liquid rather early in the piece. He might steal the whole of his father’s stock—and that’s a great deal of booze, let me tell you. Or they could be planning to knock over the Petersham RSL club one fine Saturday night. That’d be a nice score.’
‘Did you put in any work on the daughter?’
Maxwell rolled his eyes. ‘Scarcely. An insipid-looking little blonde piece. Possibly quite tough underneath. But not a patch on Alberto.’
I gave him another twenty and wished him a speedy recovery.
‘Don’t mock, dear boy. The only cure is sobriety and as Oscar said, that’s not a cure, it’s a calamity.’
I walked back to St Peter’s Lane, collected my Falcon and drove to Petersham. The block-and-a-half of shops along New Canterbury Road did feature a fair number of Portuguese establishments, but not a majority. There were a few more around the corner in Regent Street, along with a Chinese laundry and a Commonwealth Bank. Interesting, but it didn’t exactly amount to Little Lisbon. The de Sousa liquor store was a big barn of a place with a laneway on one side and a restaurant on the other. I found a semi-legal parking place near the post office and walked back. It was late afternoon on a Friday and the grog shop was busy. The stock was impressive and there were pallet-loads of wine and spirits on special. I grabbed a couple of bottles of Jacobs Creek riesling at a lower price than I’d seen for years.
‘Alberto!’
A heavy-set, middle-aged, dark man shouted from the rear of the shop. A young man at the counter who was dealing with customers while clacking keys on a computer, looked up. A quick exchange in what I took to be Portuguese followed and the older man scowled and looked very unhappy. The younger one hit the cash register key viciously but smiled as he took my money and made change quickly. He was tall and lean, in his early twenties, and no darker than I am myself after a week or so at the beach.
Hathaway had told me that young de Sousa worked in the liquor store by day and did a stint in the restaurant at night. I wandered around for a couple of hours familiarising myself with the area. I sat for a while on a bench in Petersham Park. Nice place—well-tended oval, small grandstand, Moreton Bay figs and a swimming pool tucked into one corner. The big, hand-operated scoreboard still held the proceedings of Saturday’s second-grade cr
icket match. The board was partly in shadow, but from where I sat I could read one of the entries: Kazantsakis 58. The Petersham RSL club was a big, garish joint with wide steps, glass doors and a look that said ‘Forget your cares and spend your money’.
I had whitebait and salad and two glasses of wine in the de Sousa restaurant. The place was moderately busy with a clientele of southern Europeans, Asians and Anglos. Alberto waited table as if he didn’t like doing it very much but wasn’t going to screw up in any particular. Later, I sat in my car in a side street and watched the back exit of the restaurant. At 10.30 Alberto came out, got into a blue Laser and drove off. I followed him. So far, I hadn’t seen anything to criticise in the kid. He worked hard. He even drove a Ford.
First stop for Alberto was the underpass west of Petersham station. A few small fluorescent tubes didn’t do much to dispel the darkness. The tunnel was a gloomy, graffiti-daubed slimepit smelling of piss. Alberto conferred briefly with a man in biker gear. Small objects changed hands. Next point of call was a pub in Newtown. He ordered a light beer and sipped at it without interest. I knew the pub by reputation. I went past him and down the steps to the toilet where I took a leak. One of the two cubicles was closed with no sounds coming from within. I went back up to the bar in time to see Alberto check his watch. He went into the toilet and wasn’t there long enough to unzip his fly. He walked straight through the bar, ignoring his barely touched middy.
I followed the Laser to the Cross and left Alberto in Darlinghurst Road, talking to a young blonde with four-inch heels and a three-inch skirt. I drove home to Glebe, stowed the Jacobs Creek in the fridge and went to bed.
The next day was Saturday. Alberto worked in the shop until noon, emerged eating a sandwich and swigging a can of coke, and headed south. He turned off the Princes Highway into the national park, crossed the Audley weir, took the turnoff to Maianbar and drove to a small timber house on the edge of the settlement.