by Peter Corris
I went into my office, tidied up some loose ends and checked with my bank. Fonteyn’s money was there washing around, ready to be drawn on. I shifted the amount I’d agreed on to Cameron’s account and considered my options. Fonteyn’s faith in me was almost crippling. I badly wanted to present him with a result he could live with.
People need new identities for all sorts of reasons. Ex-prisoners need a clean sheet, so do sex offenders and bankrupts and those who’ve over-stayed their visas and don’t want to go home. Banned drivers need new licences, failed apprentices need tickets and CEOs need to open accessible offshore accounts.
I’d been very impressed by the last scene in the movie Killing Them Softly. Brad Pitt, a hitman, comes into a bar to meet his paymaster after completing some assignments. The paymaster attempts to short-change him. In the background Barack Obama is delivering a campaign speech. It’s 2008 and Obama’s message has been heard in snippets throughout the film. Now he’s talking about the American community. Pitt, cool and menacing, says to the paymaster, ‘America’s not a community. It’s a business. Fuckin’ pay me!’
Australia’s going the same way. Politics is a business, welfare is a business, health is a business, law has always been a business and identity is big business. The trouble was there are specialists in the identity business and it’d take some deep digging to find who Harris would approach. If he had very good contacts I might not have the time to do it. I was about to make the first of a series of calls when the phone rang.
The voice was familiar but only just. ‘Mr Hardy? This is Foster Fonteyn. I have to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘It … it’s about Juliana.’
I met Foxy in the Double Bay wine bar where we’d met before. It was late in the morning and the red wine he had in front of him wasn’t his first. He looked much older than when I’d first met him. In a way he’d cleaned up his act. He had a neat beard and his clothes showed some sign of having been chosen with care but then neglected. He seemed like someone who’d brushed himself up to apply for a job and hadn’t got it. His fingers, twisting the glass, were heavily nicotine-stained and his eyes were bloodshot. He attempted an ingratiating smile that fell well short of the mark.
‘I’m in big trouble, Mr Hardy.’
‘You’ve been heading that way for a while, Foxy.’
He flared up. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be the son of Dr fucking Perfect. You’re expected to hit all the runs, kick all the goals, scoop the prize pool. I couldn’t do it and I … came unstuck.’
‘I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to talk about Juliana.’
He gave a bitter laugh and half rose in his chair. ‘I’m getting another drink.’
I reached out to his bony shoulder and pushed him down. ‘You’ll sit there and drink coffee. I don’t want you pissed.’
He blinked back tears and sat down. I went to the counter and ordered two long blacks. The place was almost empty and the coffees arrived quickly. I shovelled several spoonsful of raw sugar into his cup and gestured for him to drink. Like a lot of places, this one served its coffee less than piping hot and Foxy was able to swallow a couple of big gulps.
‘I’m sending this back to get a hot one. Pull yourself together. You can tell me your troubles, but get to Juliana pretty bloody quick.’
When I got back with the coffee he’d finished his and was shaking pills from a bottle. I stopped him.
‘No pills. You’re doing this cold turkey.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You’d better. You must’ve been desperate to call me. Shape up or I’m out of here and you’re all on your own.’
He started talking. He said Juliana found life as stultifying as he did but, being better behaved and able to live up to the expectations, which were fewer in her case, she suffered in silence.
‘What sort of expectations? He doesn’t seem an overly ambitious parent to me.’
‘Yeah, right.’ He snorted. ‘Look, I know he comes off as Mr Cool, but when you live with him you can sense the disapproval radiating off him. Nothing got said, but there was this constant aura of disappointment, you know?’
He stared at his empty coffee cup. ‘I don’t know what he expected—that we’d be brilliant at something, I suppose, like him.
‘Anyway, it got to me. I started doing drugs big time, using and dealing when I was at school and even more after. Juliana came to me one day in the holidays and asked me for something to give her a thrill. She was bored shitless but she was a great actress. She wanted the excitement of doing something she shouldn’t. I gave her some E. That was the day she disappeared.
‘I got bombed out of my mind when that happened. Before, when she got a bit low sometimes, she’d talked about swimming right across the harbour and fuck the sharks. I was sure she’d tried it after taking the stuff and drowned.’
‘But you didn’t say anything?’
He slurped the rest of the coffee. ‘How could I? I’d have been in all sorts of shit, not only for causing her death but for the drugs as well, and I was in with some rough people by then. If the cops forced me to give them up …’
‘I get the picture and it fits certain things that’ve happened since. But that’s not what you’re so freaked about now, is it?’
He shook his head and used his tongue to hoik a bit of his beard into his mouth, where he chewed at it with his stained teeth.
‘I took on a consignment of ice to sell on commission and I was hijacked when I was wasted. These people want their money and they’re going to hurt me really badly if they don’t get it.’
‘It’s a familiar story,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see what it has to do with Juliana.’
‘That’s it.’ He leaned forward so that I could catch the mingled stink of his breath, his body odour and the fear coming off him. ‘I sort of cleaned myself up a bit and moved around here and there seeing if I could scare up some action that would make me some money. Enough to … you know.’
‘Buy time.’
‘Yeah, right. Well, one night this chick approached me and said she’d heard I was looking to do business and she could put me in the way of something big. Some stuff coming in that needed storing and cutting and distributing to people who weren’t the usual users. Moneyed people.’
‘And you weren’t looking as crap then as you do now?’
‘Right. But it was more than that. She said she knew about me and mentioned one of my mates. She was different, like bigger and darker, lots of makeup, short hair, tatts.’ He touched his nose and lower lip. ‘Piercings, and a different voice, but I’ll swear she was Juliana.’
20
Foxy said he was gobsmacked and wondered if all the drugs he’d used had messed his brain. He didn’t feel able to tell her who he thought she was but he believed it, foggy brain or not.
‘She called herself Trudi.’
It was an extraordinary story and I felt I needed to get a better handle on it.
‘What did you feel when you decided you knew her?’
‘Feel?’
‘Come on, it’s your sister who’s thought to be dead. You must have felt something.’
He reached into his pocket for his pills and this time I let him take some. He had the shakes.
‘You ever been addicted?’ he asked.
‘No. Pretty heavily dependent on alcohol, I suppose, but that’s it.’
‘Addiction doesn’t leave much room for feelings, Mr Hardy. Wants and needs take their place. A useless counsellor I once spoke to told me that.’
I waited while the pills brought his shakes under control. With his last remark I had to credit him with an intelligence that hadn’t been very obvious before. The name was the key, even if his behaviour hadn’t convinced me that he was telling the truth as far as he was able to recognise it.
When he was composed he said, ‘You’d expect me to feel guilt about giving her the E and lying to my father and the police, or maybe relieved that she wasn’t
dead after all, but I didn’t feel those things. When I got over the surprise I just worried about what trouble there was for me if it all came out.’
‘Okay, I understand. So she had a drug scheme that could get you out of the shit. What did you say to that?’
‘I said I was interested, which was true.’
‘And?’
‘She said it was all being set up and would start smallish but get bigger and that I should meet her again in a week to get rolling.’
‘When was this?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I started thinking and I started back on the pills and other stuff. I was very confused. I thought about steering her to these other people I’m in hock to as a way of getting clear but I decided I couldn’t do that.’
‘Because she’s your sister?’
He laughed. ‘Still looking for my better side? You won’t fucking find it. No, I got word that the people who ripped me off were the same as the ones who’d supplied me and that they were just double-dipping, so I figured they might do the same to Trudi … Juliana, and I’d be no better off.’
I hadn’t ever dealt with anyone quite like him before. Most criminals lack empathy, like Foxy, but unlike him they have limited imaginations and a reduced capacity to anticipate the consequences of their actions. Just as well, or they’d be suffering the horrors this boy was suffering. Being intelligent, he knew the dangers but also hadn’t quite run out of strategies. At this point, no doubt with the aid of the drugs, he’d pulled himself together.
‘I came up with a plan,’ he said.
‘I’d be interested to hear it.’
‘My father once offered a reward of a quarter of a million to find Juliana. Then he hired detectives and you and your kind don’t come cheap. That means there’s money available for Juliana’s … safe return. Right?’
I nodded.
‘You advance enough of that money for me to get clear of the heavies and I’ll arrange for you to meet Trudi and you can carry her home to doting Daddy and Stepmummy, who hates her and is out of her fucking mind on occult shit anyway.’
‘How much?’
‘Eight grand, give or take.’
‘I can do that.’
‘I thought so. There’s one more thing.’
‘There always is.’
‘You have to provide the protection when I make the payoff to my people.’
Foxy thought he had me where he wanted me and to a degree he did, but I wasn’t going to allow him to be too complacent.
I pointed a finger at him. ‘You don’t know enough about what Juliana’s been doing. The man she’s teamed up with is a long time law-breaker of one kind or another and more than likely a murderer. I have to wonder how he’d feel about your part in turning Juliana in for money. He seems to be obsessed with her. He’s resourceful and very protective.’
He looked concerned but quickly recovered. ‘Well, you’d just have to protect me from him as well.’
‘Why would I do that? With Juliana back home I’m finished. You’d be on your own.’
‘Yeah, it’s something to think about. Maybe I should get Dad to … but I need the immediate problem resolved. I need some money now and a safe place to stay. You get my buyout money and see me right through that fucking nightmare and then you’ll get to meet up with Juliana and cash in with Gerard, and I’ll … make travel plans.’
‘If I agree, and it works out that way, you’re going to have to keep your nerve. You need to clean up.’
He nodded. ‘I’m trying. Just using the pills, nothing harder, and trying to cut down.’
I studied him and decided he wasn’t a completely lost cause. There were good genes in play potentially but genes are unreliable when it comes to a test of character. I realised suddenly that I was more deeply involved in the affairs of the Fonteyn family than I’d anticipated. A concerned but emotionally ill-equipped father, a damaged son, a wayward daughter and a crazy wife and stepmother. It all made my other missing persons cases seem simple.
I levered myself stiffly up from the table where I’d been sitting for too long.
‘Okay, Foxy,’ I said. ‘You’re on. Let’s go.’
‘I have to ask something else,’ he said. ‘Please don’t call me Foxy.’
Over the years, working for lawyers, I’ve had to stash witnesses away safely. I used the University Motel and the Rooftop Motel, both in Glebe, until the first closed down and the other came under new management unhappy with the arrangement. Lately I’d worked out a system with the manager of a set of serviced apartments in Forest Lodge that was flexible about names and ID. As long as the lawyers paid the bill promptly and the guests behaved themselves there was no trouble.
Foster had been staying with a friend in Darlinghurst. I drove him to collect his belongings and then to the apartments, where I checked him in as Charles Foster. I drew seven hundred and fifty dollars for him from the ATM at my bank and had him wait while I made arrangements to withdraw the larger amount when I required it to bail him out of his difficulty. Then I walked with him back down Wigram Road to Forest Lodge. We both needed the exercise.
‘This is going to be tough for you,’ I said, ‘just waiting and thinking.’
‘I know.’
‘So go to the movies at the Broadway Centre, watch Foxtel, play games on your phone and laptop and keep your head down while you make the deal. When, d’you think?’
‘You can get the money tomorrow?’
‘Right.’
‘The following night.’
‘Where and when?’
‘Up to them.’
‘Roughly speaking.’
‘Bondi maybe, or Clovelly or Coogee. Around there, and late.’
‘Let me know as soon as you can and give me an idea of who and how many.’
He swallowed nervously. ‘You’ve done this sort of thing before?’
‘Similar, a few times.’
‘How’d they work out?’
‘Some good, some bad.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘I told you you’d have to keep your nerve.’
‘I will.’
I left him standing in the Crescent across from the apartment block that was part of the development that had sprung up where the Harold Park Paceway used to be. He looked small and frightened but was aiming for big and brave. Marks for trying.
21
I rang Hank and said I was going to need some backup.
‘Bit of a non-event last time,’ he said. ‘Any chance of seeing some action?’
‘I hope there won’t be any,’ I said.
‘You know what I mean. Just being out and about gets the juices running.’
I told him I’d fill him in when I had the details. I wasn’t too concerned. Eight thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money in the drug world and I doubted the people Foster was dealing with would be seriously heavy. Since there wouldn’t be any drugs changing hands it wouldn’t be too risky a meeting to be at. But with drug people you never know and it depended on how truthful Foster had been.
I spent the rest of that day tidying things up. I paid the slightly overdue mortgage payment on the house and some credit card bills—all online, all painless. When you had to reach into your pocket, or even when you had to write a cheque, there was more reality to your financial circumstances, more connection between what you had and what you owed. In the digital age that connection had broken down a bit—good if you were flush, dangerous if you weren’t.
With a few drinks inside me I played some early Elvis—‘That’s All Right’, ‘Mystery Train’, ‘Blue Suede Shoes’—to put me in touch with my youth and its simpler realities.
At least, I thought, the upcoming Foster Fonteyn transaction involved cold, hard cash.
The call came halfway through the next morning.
‘Barden Park in Coogee,’ Foster said. ‘The Green Street gate. D’you know it?’
‘No.’
‘Neither do I. Hang on.’ He used his mobile in the expert way they all can and said he’d found a photo. ‘I suppose it’s as good as anywhere. It’s 11.30 tomorrow night.’
‘How many bodies?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say and I was too nervous to ask.’
‘You know him, the person you spoke to?’
‘Not really. We’ve only dealt by phone and text and courier. He calls himself Jake. I admit I’m scared, Hardy.’
‘That’s good. Jake’ll like that and you should be scared.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Get there early. I’ll pick you up at ten. Are you straight?’
‘Straight enough.’
‘You better be. Get some exercise today, tire yourself out and have a good night’s sleep. Do you have any health problems other than the drugs—asthma, night blindness …?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Just asking. Call me tomorrow if you run into any trouble.’
‘What kind of trouble?’
‘Any kind.’
I ended the call. I wanted to keep him on edge, not so much as to push him back into his drug refuge but enough to keep him dependent, despite the bargaining chip he was holding, and convinced that his best interests lay in being straight with me, now and from now on.
I rang Hank and gave him the drum. I rang the bank and arranged to draw the cash that afternoon. Then I took my own advice—I did a long, serious workout at the gym and subjected myself to one of Wesley Scott’s more vigorous rub-downs.
‘Bit of tension here and there, my man,’ Wes said.
‘It’s worldwide.’
‘You know what I mean. For a man your age, with your history, your weight’s good and the muscle tone is fine. Heart rhythm sounds right.’
He dug his fingers into the strip of muscle running up to the neck from the shoulders I’d built up with the machine over the years. ‘Tightness there.’