by Peter Corris
I decided I was sober, stopped walking and vaulted the fence, clearing it easily. Life in the old dog yet. I scooped up a Coke can and threw it angrily into a rubbish bin, not sure of the source of the anger. The calm and peace had evaporated. I felt edgy and emotionally undernourished. I strode towards the car, feeling the phone bump against my back and angry about that as well. Stupid modern gadgets. A sign of the breakdown of public amenities.
I was about fifty metres from the car when I saw the two of them. One man was standing, looking in the direction of the oval and seeming to strain his eyes. The other was sitting on the driver’s seat with his feet on the ground and the door open. Of my car! I shouted, dropped my coat and broke into a run. Bad move. The one keeping a lookout saw me and shouted something himself and started to run. The other man jumped up and took off, sprinting but looking awkward. Anger fuelled me and over the first few metres I gained steadily on them. We were running on the grass, heading towards the tangle of small streets that made up this part of Rozelle. One of the men fell and the other stopped to help him.
I caught up with them and was alarmed at the size of the one still on his feet. He was big and he was quick. He came at me with his shaved head lowered and looked ready to butt, kick or punch. I took a swing at his right ear and he swayed away from it easily. I wasn’t as fit as I should have been and my wind was short after the run. His was sound. He slammed a punch into my left shoulder and brought his knee up as I sagged. I managed to twist aside and hit him with a wild, glancing back-hander that tore skin from my knuckles and ripped open his right cheek. He bellowed, wasting breath, and I drove hard at his nose. It caught him but he’d pulled back from it and it didn’t hurt him nearly enough. I was gasping and the shoulder hurt.
I didn’t even see the other man. He must have scrambled up and slid behind me. He kicked the back my of right knee and the leg buckled. The big man came in and slammed me twice, right hand, left hand, as I was on my knees with my head up. Just the way Dempsey finished off Firpo. It finished me, too.
The woman holding my head smelled of roses, then of mint. Her face yellow, then green. All my senses seemed to be jumbled and I was feeling pain in my stomach, feet and arms instead of my shoulder and head.
‘His eyes look funny,’ someone said.
The woman said, ‘Probably a concussion. Can you talk? Do you know your name?’
‘Dempsey,’ I mumbled. ‘Jack Dempsey.’
‘Better call an ambulance. He needs to go to hospital.’
I hate hospitals. The sound of the word helped to unscramble my brain. ‘I think I’m all right,’ I said. I felt my jaw, sore but not broken and I could see out of both eyes. My shoulder was numb but I could flex my knee. The woman let go of me and I managed to stay sitting, almost upright. Three or four people had gathered round but interest was waning now that I clearly wasn’t seriously hurt. I smiled my thanks to the woman who was still saying something about concussion and got slowly to my feet. I swayed but I could stand.
‘Don’t give him that!’
It was the woman again and she’d exceeded her brief because someone had gone to the pub and come back with a glass of beer. I took it and drank some. ‘Thanks, mate. Thanks all of you. I’ll be okay.’
‘At least you stopped them stealing your car,’ the beer-provider said. ‘Fucking bastards.’
The woman turned and walked away. ‘See a doctor,’ she said over her shoulder.
I took a few shaky steps, propped myself against a tree and finished the beer. I handed back the glass and someone gave me my coat. I wasn’t functioning well but I was functioning. I said some more thankyous and moved towards my car—a long, long way off. It would have been closer if I’d been able to walk in a straight line, but I got there and slumped down in the driver’s seat. Not surprisingly, the door lock seemed to be undamaged. Car door locks are for stopping ten-year-olds, not anyone who seriously wants to open them. The mobile phone was still in the pocket of my coat along with the car keys. My wallet was on my hip. It seemed I’d lost nothing at all but some skin off my knuckles and some pride.
I wasn’t ready to drive just yet and I wondered what the last beer had done to my blood alcohol. So many things to worry about these days. Like having lost a metre or two as a runner and not being able to hit as hard as I once could. I swung my legs inside and tested my shoulder by putting both hands on the wheel. Painful, but possible. For the first time in my life I wished my car was an automatic. I leaned back against the seat and took some deep breaths. My knee, jaw and shoulder hurt. Not vital spots. I put the phone on the passenger seat and that’s when I remembered the files and Baldy’s mate’s awkward running style. He’d looked that way because he was carrying the two folders in his right hand.
I swore, thumped the steering wheel and felt the pain travel along my shoulder and down my arm. I still wasn’t thinking straight and it occurred to me that being beaten up was a punishment for being careless.
‘Cliff, what in hell’s happened to you?’
Vita Drewe was standing by the car door. She was wearing shorts and sneakers and a T-shirt with Chinese characters printed across it. A largish dog on a leash was sniffing at the upholstery.
‘Stay, Dylan!’ She let go of the leash; the dog backed and sat with its tongue lolling out. She leaned closer to look at me. ‘Kee-rist, you’ve got a bruise there. Anything broken?’
I shook my head dopily and wished I hadn’t. ‘Don’t think so. They took the files. Two men. What’re you doing here?’
‘This is where I walk Dylan. Run some. I’m just here, that’s all. You smell of beer.’
‘Good Samaritan came by. People are decent. They helped me. But I really needed the help a bit earlier on. Not the man I used to be.’
‘Okay. Let’s get you outa there and round the other side. I’ll drive. You mind Dylan getting in the back? He’ll behave, likes riding in cars.’
‘Can you drive? You hate cars. This is a manual.’
She helped me out, flicked up the knob on the back door and reached across to open the passenger door while I leaned against the car and looked at Dylan who looked back. Sceptically, I thought. I folded myself into the seat and she closed the door. A click of the tongue and Dylan was in the back.
She settled behind the wheel. ‘Can I drive a manual? I drove a Land Rover from Cape Town to Cairo.’
‘Bullshit.’
She laughed. ‘You’re right. I lie a little. But I can get this heap from here to my place.’
7
She handled the Falcon well, not crunching the gears and quickly getting used to the brakes and steering. Dylan growled contentedly in the back and only briefly pawed at the vinyl. He could have clawed it all up for mine, I was hurting too much to care. I’d have bet on a terrace house, but Vita told me that her place was a basement flat under a pathology laboratory on Victoria Road. She followed a complex pattern of lanes to get to the barred back gate. The light was failing but I could see a grassy area with shrubs and a few tall trees.
‘I’m sorta the watchperson,’ she said. ‘But Dylan does the work. It’s cheap rent and the traffic roar from the road up front only drives me half nuts half the time. I guess the car’ll be fifty per cent safe here in the alley.’
‘There’s a steering lock.’
‘I know a guy can get through them with a ballpein hammer in three seconds flat. But okay. Out you get, boy.’
She was talking to the dog. He sprang from the car and lifted his leg against a wheel. I should be so mobile. I climbed out stiffly, trying not to crouch and hobble like Olivier playing Richard III. She took some keys on a ring from a pocket in her shorts and unlocked the gate. Dylan bounded through and immediately began what looked like a search and destroy patrol. He was a German shepherd, mostly black and tan, with a bit of something else in him that reduced his bulk. A nice dog to be nice to. He came running back as Vita and I went up the path to the back of the red brick building. The dog was frisky.
�
�You cost him his run.’
‘Tell him I’m sorry. He got a ride in the car to compensate.’
‘True. I’ll try to explain that to him.’
Another key unlocked a security grille on the back door and the door itself. We went through into a cool, dark space that smelled vaguely of something I identified with Fiji. I was aware that my thought processes were still jangled.
‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said.
‘Say what?’
‘I was testing to see if I had concussion. I remember my name and you’re Vita Drewe.’
‘Right.’
‘Curry. I can smell curry. I think I’ve got some circuits crossed.’
She steered me through to another dim room and helped me to lower myself onto a couch. She dropped her bag and my jacket beside me. ‘Fear not,’ she said. ‘I’m cooking a curry. I’m a curry freak. I like to come back all sweaty from a run and eat curry and sweat some more. Kooky, huh?’
I closed my eyes. I didn’t have the energy to reply, but I was glad curry smelled like curry.
‘Take it easy. I’ll just get your shoes off here and get a cushion under your head. Let’s see your eyes.’
I opened up and found myself looking at a slightly wrinkled, narrow brow, a beaky nose and intense, dark eyes. I blinked. ‘You win the staring contest.’
‘Big deal. Any bleeding from your ears? No? Not a skull fracture. I don’t think you have concussion. A bit of shock, maybe. Rest up. I’ll feed Dylan and be back pronto.’
Shock? I thought. From a couple of taps like that? In my book, if I wasn’t concussed I was okay. I struggled up into a sitting position and looked around the room—minimal furniture, books galore, lots of music on vinyl and cassette. A piece of cloth-covered pasteboard with a massive montage of photographs, paper clippings, postcards and stickers occupied most of one wall. I guessed I could get a pretty good reading of Vita Drewe’s life from it if I had the strength to get up and take a look. I made it to my feet and shuffled across the room. I leaned against the wall and looked at the mass of images. Somehow, I’d expected Vita herself to appear in many of them but she was in very few. About some things she hadn’t been lying—there were river scenes and desert scenes and other rugged outdoor stuff. The whole kaleidoscope was difficult to take in quickly but, at a guess, there were as many pictures of men as of women. It looked as if I was wrong about the significance of the portrait of V. Woolf.
‘What are you doing?’
She came into the room silently, having taken off her squeaky sneakers. She’d let her hair out and it fell thick and slightly crinkly to her shoulders. She had a can of mineral water in one hand and a packet of Panadol in the other—a modern Flo Nightingale.
‘Snooping.’
‘Hey, that’s cool. I wouldn’t have it all up there like that if I didn’t want people to look, right? But you shouldn’t be moving around till we’re sure you’re okay.’
I liked that ‘we’. I liked this strange woman with her skinny limbs and crinkly hair and face-transforming smile. My head had stopped aching, but that might have been in anticipation of the pain-killers. My face felt tight and puffy but my knee felt all right; only the shoulder bothered me—not a bad outcome.
‘The Panadol’s a great idea,’ I said. ‘But have you got anything else to wash ’em down with?’
‘I’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniels left over from my thirtieth birthday party. Somebody must’ve thought I drank that stuff.’
‘You don’t?’
She grinned. ‘I do. Sometimes.’
I staggered back to the couch and faked a collapse, hurting my shoulder. ‘I reckon that’s what I need.’
She threw the packet to me and I fumbled the catch but held it. She spun around and went out, the dark hair swishing around her shoulders. I tapped out three tablets and let them sit in the palm of my left hand. I noticed then that I’d grazed the hand at some time in the proceedings. Both hands bloodied. Two-fisted Hardy. All the more reason for the pain-killers.
‘I don’t run to serving trays. This is the bread board.’
She had a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels on the board along with two glasses, a bowl of ice and the mineral water. There was also a plate with a couple of slices of some kind of pie on it. She put the board on the floor and selected a cassette. Soft rock with a touch of soul. Unobjectionable. She sat next to me on the couch.
‘If you could see yourself, Cliff, you’d understand why the food. You look like an old grey wolf, starving to death. When did you last eat?’
‘I had lunch. I forget what.’
She shoved the plate at me. ‘Eat. Then you get to drink.’
‘I need the pills.’
She poured out a measure of mineral water and I swallowed the tablets. The spinach pie was good and I managed to get down a few mouthfuls before my throat seized up and I fell back into my picking and crumbling routine. I realised then that I’d been doing this for days. I forced some more of the food down and then pushed the plate away.
‘A drink,’ I said. ‘Please.’
She made a solid one for me and a weaker one for herself. I took a swig and watched her eat a piece of pie with obvious enjoyment. I felt sour and old and damaged in the presence of someone sounder and younger and healthier. Not a good feeling. I felt a little better after some more of the whisky went down.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Somebody stole your files?’
‘Yes, Roberts and ...’
‘Cornwall. Does that make any sense?’
I shrugged and felt the dull pain in the shoulder. Not as bad, but still there. ‘Not to me. I’ll have to follow up on it though. It might mean something.’
I finished my drink and let her make me another. Then I described my two assailants.
She said, ‘Eat some more pie while I think. Otherwise you’re going to get drunk and you won’t be any good in bed.’
‘I’m not sure that’s going to happen.’ But I was interested.
‘We’ll see.’ She stared at the montage while I ate. The pills were starting to work and nothing was hurting as much. What with the whisky and the music I was feeling relaxed.
‘Not the bald one,’ she said. ‘The other guy maybe, but like I said, I’d have to see him to be sure.’
I’d almost forgotten what she was supposed to be thinking about—whether either of the men who’d broken into my car resembled the man she’d seen with Scott. I hadn’t expected a match-up, I was just going through the motions. I sipped my drink and tried to sort things out in a professional way. How had I been targeted? Presumably by someone watching Scott’s office. The who and the why that went with that would just have to hang in the air.
She peeled off her socks and wriggled her toes. ‘So what are you thinking about now?’
‘Somebody must be keeping an eye on Scott’s office. My going there set off some kind of signal. Did we have your door closed when we were talking?’
She squinted, remembering. ‘I think it was sorta ajar. That’s the way it hangs. Anyhow, the walls in that place are so thin you could hear from the next room, either side.’
‘I’d better ring Gina. Make sure she’s all right. You could be drawn into this, too, Vita, whatever the hell it is.’
She pointed. ‘The phone’s in the bedroom, through there. Don’t worry about Vita, she can take care of herself.’ She reached into her bag and came up with a snub-nosed pistol. ‘Beretta Puma, and I know how to use it.’
The way she handled it suggested she did. ‘You’re full of surprises.’
‘It’s licensed. I told you, I’m the caretaker here. Those poor fucked-up junkies think a pathology lab’s a place to keep drugs. Go use the phone. Check on your client, Mr Detective.’
Her tone was hard to interpret but my concern about Gina overrode that. I took the rest of my second drink with me and went into the bedroom. It was dim and large with a low double bed jammed against the wall making space for an exercise bike, more bookshelves and a desk with a c
omputer. The phone was on the floor beside the bed. I sat down gingerly and was pleased to realise that I could remember Scott’s home number. My left arm was giving me trouble and I had to juggle the phone awkwardly.
A man answered the phone and I asked to speak to Gina.
‘Who’s calling?’ Fair enough question, under the circumstances, but I didn’t see the need for the hostile tone.
‘My name’s Hardy. I was a friend of Scott’s and a colleague. Gina’s asked me to tidy up some business matters. Who am I speaking to? Is Gina all right?’
‘This is Ken Galvani, Scott’s brother. I know who you are. You’re the one who got him that fuckin’ job. You stayed for about two minutes after the funeral. Gina wouldn’t ask you to do anything.’
‘We won’t argue about it. Can I speak to her, please.’
‘She’s not here. She’s gone to my mother’s place for a while.’
He hung up in my ear. Scott had two brothers. I couldn’t have recalled their names, but it didn’t surprise me that one was Ken. Scott had told me that his parents had wanted to give their sons Australian-sounding names to speed their integration. His own name was a little wide of the mark, but Ken was spot-on. It didn’t sound like a good deal for Gina, staying with the in-laws, but it was none of my business and at least it was safe. I replaced the receiver and massaged my fast-stiffening shoulder.
‘Let me do that for you.’
Vita was in the room, again silently. She motioned for me to unbutton my shirt and when I had trouble using the left arm she helped. After that it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take off my pants and shoes. I lay on the bed in my jockettes while she examined me, squatting beside me in her silky shorts and loose T-shirt.
‘Bit of flab, not too much for a guy your age. That’s one hell of a bruise, though. Gonna be sore awhile. Better let it be.’ She traced a few scars on other parts of my body with a fingernail. ‘You’ve knocked yourself about some, haven’t you?’