Sharp Shooter

by Marianne Delacourt

  Bog, what were you thinking?

  ‘Is that your – Tara, is that –’ Tozzi couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  ‘Someone trashed my car. I . . . err . . . got a cheap . . . paint job. The guy got a bit carried away.’

  Tozzi and Jazz exploded in fits of laughter.

  When they finally stopped, Tozzi wiped his eyes. ‘Jazz, this is Tara Sharp, a work colleague. Don’t go jogging with her.’ His last comment sent him off into fits of laughter again.

  I stuck my hand out to shake Jazz’s, and rolled my eyes. ‘Is he always so rude? Nice to meet you.’

  Jazz nodded. ‘You too.’

  Nick collected himself again, and patted my shoulder. ‘Come inside and have a drink. I insist.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I’ll square it with the manager. The owner and I are good friends.’

  I looked up at him doubtfully. I could do with a drink but I felt embarrassed going in there under Tozzi’s guarantee. And knowing that the person who’d tried to run me down was close by made me want to camp by the blue BMW with a crowbar.

  On the other hand, no one was likely to try to hassle me while I was out with two man mountains. And the truth was, any excuse to be around Nick Tozzi was a good excuse. ‘OK. Just one.’

  One drink turned into two, and a lively discussion at the bar about the impending NBA finals and the latest changes in the AFL rules. Most of the team had joined us, and I was feeling pretty damn good. I mean, it wasn’t often I was the centre of attention with a bunch of guys who were all bigger than me and equally keen to talk trash and sport.

  Nick dragged me away from an argument with Jazz over who’d win MVP for NBA for the season, and ushered me over to a booth.

  ‘What did you want to tell me?’

  My mood sobered instantly. It had been a good hour of fun and distraction, and now it was over.

  ‘I accidentally saw inside Johnny Vogue’s warehouse in Burnside.’

  He scowled at me. ‘What warehouse? What do you mean “accidentally”?’

  ‘When I went to pick up my car from the spray painter.’

  ‘How did you get out there?’

  What was this? Twenty questions? ‘I had a date. He took me.’

  ‘You talked your date into taking you to Bunka?’

  ‘He’s new to Perth and he told me he had a fun time,’ I said, defensively. ‘Anyway, that’s beside the point. The warehouse is full of mining equipment: small plant.’

  He stared at me calmly but I could sense his mind jumping, and his aura began to glow. ‘And you think what?’

  ‘Well it seems like a kinda odd sideline for someone like Vogue. I can’t help but think it might somehow be related to that mining lease of yours.’

  Nick had probably made the same connection but his sceptical side wouldn’t let him agree with me. ‘Hold on a second. There could be a thousand reasons why Viaspa has a shed full of dozers. Maybe he’s going into the building industry.’

  ‘It wasn’t just dozers. There were loaders and excavators too.’

  ‘Still a weak connection.’

  ‘OK.’ I scowled at him and swirled the ice cubes around in my glass, clinking them annoyingly. ‘It was just a thought. No need to be condescending.’

  His hand shot out to stop me, fingers curling around my wrist. ‘Don’t be childish, Tara.’

  ‘Tozzi?’

  Antonia – Toni – stood only spitting distance from us, teetering over the edge of her heels and a fair dose of whatever. Her beautiful eyes were bloodshot.

  Nick slowly released my hand and leaned back against his booth seat. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought you were drinking with the boys tonight. Then I got a phone call that you were entertaining a woman.’

  ‘A phone call?’ He frowned. ‘Who from?’

  ‘Does it really matter?’ said Toni. From the way her lip was quivering, she was working up a storm of emotion.

  I grabbed my handbag and got ready to abandon ship. ‘Well, Nick, I’ll leave it with you.’

  ‘Tara and I were talking about the burglary,’ he explained to Toni.

  ‘Does that require holding her hand?’ Toni’s quivering lip was joined by brimming eyes.

  Waterworks alert.

  I stood up. ‘He wasn’t holding my hand. He was trying to stop me throwing ice cubes at him for being such an arrogant, narrow-minded, ungrateful prat.’ I smiled sweetly. ‘But I guess you only see his best side.’

  With that, and the quickest of waves to the Western Thunder boys who were watching proceedings with sly grins, I left.

  Who the hell had phoned Toni Tozzi?

  Chapter 36

  DEEP IN INDIGNATION, IT took me a few moments of standing in the car park to realise that the BMW had gone. I stood staring at the empty car space.

  Well, I guess there was one thing I could achieve today.

  I hopped into Mona, and drove the three blocks to the Euccy Grove police station, stuffing two mints in my mouth before I went inside.

  The copper on desk duty looked like a newbie.

  I asked for Fiona Bligh.

  ‘Gone home, love,’ he said.

  ‘Can I leave a message for her?’

  He handed me a notepad and a pen. ‘Go for it.’

  I copied down the licence plate number and told her it belonged to the blue BMW that had been following me. I finished with my mobile number.

  I gave the young constable a firm look. ‘Make sure she gets it, won’t you?’

  He raised an eyebrow and turned back to his computer.

  I called Bok from outside the station. ‘You still at work?’

  ‘Where else?’ he said.

  ‘Feel like pizza?’

  He gave a sigh. ‘Why not? Meet you outside Kimmy Koo’s in fifteen minutes.’

  I was only five minutes away, so I killed time by wandering up to Club Eighteen to see if Edouardo was working.

  ‘He phoned in sick,’ said one of the other barmen. ‘Said he ate something crook at an Indian restaurant.’

  I nodded sympathetically. ‘If you think of it, can you tell him Tara called in?’

  ‘Wait on,’ he said, and added my name to a list with half a dozen other names on it. ‘There. Now I won’t forget.’

  ‘His fan club, huh?’ I said.

  ‘The rest of us should be so lucky,’ he sighed.

  I walked back to Mona and drove sedately to Kimmy Koo’s. The streets were pretty quiet. Traffic hadn’t really caught up with Perth. And long may it stay that way. I wound down my window to let the balmy night air in. Early autumn was my favourite time of year. Short sleeves and brilliant days; long sleeves and brilliant nights.

  But even the luminous night couldn’t negate Nick Tozzi’s casual dismissal of my theory.

  By the time Bok and I sat down to eat a family-size cheese and pepperoni at the tables in Kimmy Koo’s courtyard, I was fit to burst about it.

  Bok sat patiently through the whole tirade, eating, and playing with bits of mozzarella. ‘Aaah, it’s good to hear about someone else’s problems,’ he sighed when I’d finished.

  ‘He thinks I’m a space cadet,’ I pronounced, crunching a piece of extra-thin crust angrily.

  ‘Well, let’s face it, T. You do act kooky. Only those of us who know and love you understand that you see through entirely different eyes from the rest of the world.’

  Bok never judged me on the aura stuff. Sometimes it’s like that when you’ve known a person as a kid. You accept things about them that you’d never allow if you met them as an adult. ‘I’m not sure about that anymore.’

  ‘’Bout what?’ he asked, scraping the fallen mushroom from the base of the carton.

  ‘There’s got to be other people out there in the world like me. Look at Mr Hara.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s kooky too.’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped you conning food from his wife,’ I retorted.

  ‘Aahhh, meatballs.’ He licked his lips.
‘Shame they had to go on holidays.’ He brightened. ‘They must be back soon?’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Don’t give me that look. She loves cooking. Besides, I was just keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘That the real reason?’

  He sighed. ‘Do you know how often I get a home-cooked meal, T? At least you can raid your parents’ fridge.’

  Bok’s dad had died a few years ago when Bok was still living in Sydney. After the funeral his mum had gone back to the Philippines to live. There was a bunch of both guys and gals out there who would gladly move in and play cook for him, but Bok hadn’t decided which side of the fence to take up residence, so he was flying solo at the moment.

  ‘Maybe we should live together?’ I offered.

  ‘What, so you could open the tin of baked beans and eat it before me? Maybe not!’

  I shrugged. ‘What am I going to do, Bok? About Nick Tozzi and Johnny Vogue.’

  This is where my pragmatic friend dragged me back into reality, and metaphorically smacked me around the face. ‘Trust your instinct,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I wasn’t expecting that. Maybe, Get a grip, Tara. But . . . trust yourself?

  He grinned at me. ‘Maybe I’ve been spending too much time with oily magazine execs, but I’m sick of other people’s agendas running my life. Don’t let that happen to you. Next thing you know you’re just a whipping boy.’

  I reached across the table and gave him the last glob of mozzarella. ‘Hang in there,’ I said. ‘Things’ll get better.’

  We talked about the magazine then until Kimmy Koo kicked us out of the courtyard about midnight.

  I hugged Bok in the car park and drove home.

  As I fell asleep, anchored to my bed by a kilo of cheese, an idea had well and truly planted itself.

  Chapter 37

  ‘CAN I HELP YOU?’ asked the guy behind the desk at SUP Assayers Inc.

  ‘I want to enquire about getting a mineral sample analysed,’ I said. I was dressed in my best anonymous clothes, wearing my hair in a pony tail. Olga Ordinary, I hoped.

  SUP was the only assay company in town; it had to be the place where Nick had his mineral samples analysed. Maybe if I snooped around I could find a connection between the lease and Vogue’s new mining hobby. Then Mr Snooty Tozzi would have to listen to me.

  ‘Sure. Fill out these forms about what you want. There’ll be a charge of thirty dollars per two hundred grams.’ His aura looked thin and miserable like an animal that needed to be stroked. Its colour was almost indistinguishable from the bone-coloured walls and toning carpet. Unhealthy.

  I took the paperwork. ‘Kinda breathtaking decor, isn’t it?’

  He stared at me for a moment, wondering if he’d heard right. Then suddenly he burst out laughing, and his aura flickered alive and became distinguishable from the surroundings. It turned a lovely soft green colour like spring grass.

  I grinned madly at him.

  ‘Here, I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘Some of the questions can be ambiguous.’

  After I gave a fake name and address, I found out that James-of-the-soft-green-aura was just doing sick relief for a woman who’d had a breakdown, and that he normally worked in the company’s other office.

  ‘So what happens to my little sample bag now?’ I asked, bringing out some of JoBob’s best garden soil from my Mandarina Duck and dropping it on the counter.

  ‘We courier it out to the lab and they do their thing. Takes about two weeks to get the result.’

  ‘That long?’ I got all wide-eyed. ‘Does it have to go to Neverland and back?’

  He chuckled. ‘No, Burnside.’

  ‘Burnside?’ My psychic sensitivities began to smoulder. ‘I thought Burnside was just spray painters and refrigeration storage places.’

  ‘There’s a slab of government land out there too. We’ve got a lab right near it.’

  ‘Bit like Euccy Grove.’

  James rolled his eyes. ‘Major difference in the council rates though, I bet.’

  We exchanged understanding looks, the way people do when they know a city, and all the nuances of wealth and poverty that exist there.

  Then the door opened and another customer entered the office.

  I smiled warmly at him. ‘You’ve been wonderful, James. I hope you get back to your other office soon.’

  He smiled back and, if nothing else, I was pleased to see that his aura stayed bright.

  ‘Say, you wanna get a coffee later?’ he said.

  Crap. ‘Sure thing. Got a few things happening at the moment. Maybe when I come back in to collect the report.’

  His face fell a little. ‘OK.’

  I caught the lift to the dimly lit basement car park and wandered around looking for my car. When I found it (that’s right, I parked in one of the ‘Reserved for SUP Employees Only’ bays), I threw the receipt and SUP pamphlet on the passenger seat and slumped in behind the driving wheel, resting my head on the sheepskin cover. Form 1a – f had severely taxed my Thursday morning brain.

  Thursday morning!

  I banged my head on the steering wheel. That meant two days until my meeting with Peter Delgado. I had to run in the triathlon before that. I wondered which was more likely to kill me – the triathlon or Delgado?

  Stop being hysterical, I told myself severely. And get moving.

  I sat up and put the key in the ignition. ‘Aaaagh!’

  A dead bird lay squashed under my windscreen wiper; neck broken, beak wide. And not just any bird: a pink and grey galah. For one shocking moment I thought it was Brains or Hoo.

  Get out of the car, Tara. Go and look. Identify the body, ordered a bossy voice in my head.

  Operating under its command, I got out and examined the corpse. The bird was neither Brains nor Hoo and had been dead a while. It was stiff and crawling with ants.

  I reached into the car and grabbed the SUP pamphlet. Then I pulled back the wiper blade, wrapped the bird up in the paper and took it to the nearest rubbish bin.

  ‘Uuugh.’

  I ran back to the car, slammed the door and squealed out of the basement. When I was back in the sunshine, and a reasonable distance from the city centre, I let out a scream.

  I did that intermittently down Stirling Highway, stopping only when I got to the corner of Lilac Street.

  I parked and ran down the driveway straight to the bird’s cage. They were busy shagging and looked quite annoyed at the interruption.

  The pain in my chest eased enough for me to catch my breath – then I saw a photograph pegged to the food gate. It had been taken with an instant Polaroid; a picture of the dead bird under my windscreen wiper.

  A sweet little message from some sweet little psycho.

  I snatched the photo and jammed it in my pocket, then I grabbed hold of the cage and began to wheel it up the back of the driveway towards my flat.

  The birds started screeching and flapping.

  Dad came out to see what the commotion was all about. ‘Tara?’ He peered down from the pool verandah.

  ‘Hi Dad. Just moving the birds outside the flat. You’re away a lot. I thought they might like the company.’

  ‘Ohh.’ Dad looked nonplussed. ‘Have you checked with your mother?’

  ‘Uh,’ I grunted with the weight of the cage up the incline. Water sloshed onto my feet from their drinking bowl. ‘No – but – I – will.’

  Joanna appeared on the verandah beside him. ‘Will what?’

  I repeated myself.

  My mother frowned while I pushed the birds over a hump in the pavers and into a nice shady spot under the eaves near my door. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Well, if you’re suddenly feeling so responsible, Tara, you can feed and change their water every day as well, cover them at night, exercise them regularly and give them treats. Otherwise you can Put them back where they were.’

  Joanna wore her most formidable expression.

  What could I say? Someone was threatening to ki
ll the birds because of something illegal I’d got mixed up in and now I had to protect them? ‘OK,’ seemed so much easier.

  We chatted for a few minutes about other things and then I excused myself. As I did, their voices floated down to me. ‘Will she ever grow up, Bob? She’s so . . . careless and impulsive.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jo. She’s a good kid. She’ll get there in the end.’

  ‘You’re too soft on her, Bob. I’ve been telling you that for years.’

  ‘Yes, dear. You have.’ Their voices trailed off as they moved back inside.

  Good kid? I sighed. I was neither of those things. When would they ever realise?

  I sat and pondered my miseries over a back issue of Marie Claire. After re-reading the story about women having their labia removed at puberty in some remote village, somewhere, I felt much better about my own life; enough to go outside and collect my street directory from my car.

  I slumped onto the couch and began to leaf through the Burnside maps.

  Much to my annoyance, I needed information from Garth. He didn’t answer his mobile when I rang it, so I tried his work number.

  ‘Wilmot & Associates,’ he answered.

  Garth had never had a full-time PA. He was too tight.

  ‘Where’s your mobile?’ I asked.

  ‘Right next to me,’ he answered, surprised into the truth.

  ‘So you’re ignoring me?’

  ‘Tara?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Yes, I am avoiding you. When you’re not being abusive, you’re asking me crazy questions. Why wouldn’t I avoid you?’

  ‘Because your life is so boring that my presence in it actually livens it up. And you owe me for the Whitey thing.’

  ‘I told you it was a joke. I never thought he’d ring you. I was mad at you because you laughed at me about the break-in.’

  I didn’t let him distract me. ‘You also blabbed to the cops.’

  ‘I kept it as general as I could, but I had to tell them something about you. So I chose things anyone would say.’ He sighed. ‘Come on then, what is it?’

  ‘Where’s the government land in Burnside?’