by Peter Corris
Which didn’t make me feel better about myself. I also felt bad about losing Glen Withers and the cat, but I felt okay about the twelve hundred dollars.
TV
‘I’ve come to you, Mr Hardy, because I believe you are the only private enquiry agent who lives in Glebe.’
Not the most ringing endorsement, but at least a change from the dreary summons-serving and money-minding I’d been doing recently. The characters who hire you for those jobs are only concerned about your rates and availability, they don’t care if you live in a bus shelter. The person sitting across the desk from me in my office in Darlinghurst was a bit of a change too. She was tall and wide-shouldered but thin. Her face was long, heavily but expertly made up and her hands were large. Her voice was pleasant, a bit over-precise and deep. I had my suspicions.
‘I do live in Glebe, Ms Cato,’ I said. ‘But I don’t advertise the fact.’
‘Oh, word gets around.’ She shifted in the uncomfortable chair. She wore a high-necked white silk blouse with a ruffle down the front, long sleeves. Her black skirt was tight and above the knee. ‘This job requires local knowledge and an … affection for the area. Would you say you qualify?’
‘I would. Do you live in Glebe yourself?’
‘Yes.’ She named the street, not far from mine. Naming streets doesn’t tell you a lot about a Glebe resident. Ms Cato could live in triple-storey sandstone mansion or a weatherboard cottage not much bigger than the room we were sitting in. Until she fished her chequebook out of her shoulder bag and started writing, there was no way to tell her economic status. She crossed her legs. Good legs. Dark-tinted stockings. Medium heels.
‘Perhaps you could tell me about this job for a local boy?’
She smiled. ‘Isn’t it odd how we throw these words around—boy, girl, lady, gentleman. You’re many, many years past being a boy and, as I suspect you’re beginning to realise, I’m not a woman. Would it trouble you, working for a transvestite?’
The smile helped the effect. Great teeth. Working in the Cross I’d known a number of transvestites in my time, also transsexuals at reputedly different stages of transformation above and below. Some were stupid and some were smart; some were brave and some were not, like the rest of us. ‘It wouldn’t trouble me, Ms Cato. I’ll work for anyone who doesn’t want me to break any serious laws and can pay me. I have a few no-go areas.’
She lifted one plucked eyebrow. Did it well. ‘Like?’
‘I steer clear of politics, religion and teetotallers.’
She laughed. Sounded a bit like Bacall. ‘You’re safe with me then. I vote Labor, federal, state and local, and that’s the end of it. I’m an atheist. I like a drink but I have to limit it to preserve my figure.’
‘We all should,’ I said.
She focused her heavily made-up eyes on me. ‘You’re what? Pushing fifty? You don’t look so bad. Pity about the nose and the scars. Nothing a bit of plastic surgery wouldn’t fix. You could look ten years younger.’
‘I wouldn’t feel it. Now …’
‘To the point, yes. I hold weekly gatherings at my house of other cross-dressers. It’s a small group, half a dozen or so. We’re friends. There’s no sex involved. We have a meal and a couple of bottles of wine. We talk about clothes and make-up and some of the problems of our … hobby. There are a few, as you can imagine.’
I nodded. Ms Cato could pass as a woman in the street or in casual social gatherings, especially in a dim light. Not in an office or anywhere the contact with others was close and prolonged. I wondered what she did for a living.
‘I’ve been separated from my wife for a few years, so I don’t have that problem. No children. Some of my friends have wives and families. Terribly difficult. I write and illustrate children’s books, edit them as well. I work at home and my agent handles all the business.’ She gave that good-sounding laugh again. ‘I talk to authors on the phone but I don’t often meet ’em—a little quirk of mine. When I do, I have to decide what to wear and stick to it. I’ve been known to forget. But cross-dressing can be fun. That’s my message.’
Strange waters but I was interested. She was a very composed person and I knew that some authors of children’s books made good money. ‘So you live as a woman all the time?’
‘No. About half and half. Of course it’s difficult at times. The neighbours had to adjust. The driver’s licence is a real bother. They won’t let you appear as anything but a male unless you cut the bits off, which I’ve never wanted to do. So I have to front up in a suit and tie for the photo. Then, of course, if I get stopped …’ She waved a hand and smiled, making me suspect she’d be able to get out of most tricky situations with charm and brains.
There’s no getting away from it, people who cross over or stand astride the gender line are interesting. I wondered about her sexual preference and whether she pissed standing up or sitting down, but you can’t ask.
‘These meetings,’ I said. ‘There’s a problem?’
‘Twice now, my visitors have been harassed by an individual who arrives on a motorcycle. He sits there outside the house and passes comments in obscene language. He flicks cigarette ash at their clothes, threatens to spray them with beer. It’s very unpleasant!’
‘It would be. Couldn’t you and your visitors retaliate in some way? You must outnumber this yob.’
She shook her head. Silver earrings danced. Her hair was bleached blonde with dark streaks, short but not cropped. ‘No. You have to understand how vulnerable a transvestite feels, our sort anyway. Basically we’re rejecting the aggressive male role. We’re impersonating women for a time, getting a little relief from the pressure to be male, up-front, thrusting. See how easily the language veers towards the sexual?’
I felt out of my depth. ‘Look, Ms Cato. I sympathise. I read the papers. I know things are changing and … kind of swirling about in these matters. But I’m not sure why you can’t cope, or what you want from me.’
‘I’m glad we’ve got this far. I was afraid you’d throw me straight out. Look, I’m fit and quick. And strong. I go to a gym. I can fight. So can a couple of my friends, but when we’re dressed as women the fighting impulse goes out of us. We don’t want to fight. In a way, we can’t. To fight would be to shatter the illusion, do you see? It’s a very precious illusion to us, weird though it may seem to you.’
I was losing confidence in this fee by the minute. I fidgeted with a pen. ‘I think you should talk to the police, Ms Cato. They have gay liaison officers now …’
‘None of us is gay,’ she said evenly. ‘I’m bisexual myself. Some of my friends are as heterosexual as it’s possible to be. The Glebe police are not equipped to cope with this. We’d get smirks from the men and sneers from the women. Bet on it.’
I thought of the personnel at the St Johns Road station who seemed to get younger every year. There were good men and women among them, but Ms Cato was probably right. This was territory they wouldn’t have covered at the Academy. New to me, too. I must have looked as I felt—uncomfortable, sceptical.
She leaned forward and tapped on my desk with her index finger, the nail of which was longish, shaped, pink-tinted. ‘If that bastard scares my friends away or provokes one of us into throwing a punch, he’s won! Do you understand? He’s proved that we can’t be like this. That there’s no place for us. Have you ever felt that there was no place for you, Mr Hardy? Not that you were in the wrong place or in an uncomfortable place, but that there was no fucking place on earth for you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t felt that.’
‘Right. Now you live in Glebe. You must have seen old Dot, the woman who goes up and down the street haranguing people for money? You’ve seen the winos and the deadbeats and the male and female executives in their suits and those beautiful people from the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre. Glebe’s tolerant, Glebe’s for diversity. I was hoping you might appreciate that.’
‘I do,’ I said. I opened a drawer and took out a contract form. �
��Let’s get a few details down.’
This time I got the smile and the laugh. ‘Right. I bet you want to know whether I piss standing up or sitting down.’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘Sitting down when I’m tired and standing up when I’m not—just like you, mate. Just like you.’
She lived in a terrace that left mine for dead. Two storeys, deep front garden, fresh paint. Encouraging, and her cheque had cleared. I parked in the wide street on the night of the next meeting and watched the guests arrive just as it was getting dark. The moon came up. Ms Cato had told me that she and her friends liked moonlit nights particularly, found it flattering.
Five of the guests drove themselves in middle-of-the-range cars and two arrived by taxi. A green Honda Accord carried two people who were obviously more confident than the rest. Ms Cato’s guests were taller than a random selection of seven women would be and, with the exception of the pair in the Honda, they moved with a kind of caution that visibly slackened as they opened the gate and went up the path. Definitely some hip sway then. There was nothing remarkable about them apart from an excessive smartness. Their suits and dresses and shoes almost had a shine, as if they were kept in layers of tissue. No motorcyclist appeared.
‘It was a comfort knowing you were there,’ my client told me later when I phoned to report. ‘We had a good meeting and a lovely time.’
‘If you had any idea who this character is I could perhaps do something to make sure he doesn’t show up again.’
‘You’re talking yourself out of a job. I want you there again next week. Sorry, I really don’t have a clue.’
I wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not so I pressed. ‘No one got the licence number of the bike I suppose?’
‘No.’
‘No angry authors? No rejected boyfriends?’
‘No. I haven’t an enemy in the world that I’m aware of.’
I could have told her that it’s not always enemies you have to watch out for, it’s friends. But that would have got me nowhere. I agreed to be on watch the next week and I turned up on time and parked in the same spot. Daylight saving had come in that week but the time of the meeting hadn’t changed, so it was much lighter when the guests were due. A person wearing a blue silk dress with white spots arrived in a red Commodore. She looked jaunty as she locked the car, dropped the keys into her handbag and hefted the bottle of champagne. It was a fair bet not to be a six dollar special. Just before she opened the gate she looked across at me and winked.
The motorcycle rounded the corner at low revs and pulled up behind the Commodore. The rider dismounted and stood in the gutter near the gate to Ms Cato’s house. Short and stocky. Helmet, leather jackets, jeans, boots. I checked my watch. The others would be arriving in a cluster soon. Sure enough, the green Honda came into view. The biker pulled off his helmet. He wore a black balaclava. He reached into his pocket and took out a cylindrical object I recognised as a paint spray can. Any private enquiry agent knows that there is a fine line between assault and legitimate defence. The spray can and the balaclava were triggers. I jumped out of my car as the Honda stopped and the two guests alighted. I caught a glimpse of them as I moved forward—loose sleeves, long skirts, spike heels, silk scarves.
The biker pointed the can and began to shout. I caught the shrill tones, the hysterical high pitch.
‘Fucking perverts! Fucking poofters! Dirty, bum-fucking …’
The guests stopped, bottles in hand, skirts swirling, suddenly unbalanced and vulnerable on their high heels. I jumped at him as he thrust the can forward. He saw me at the last minute but shot a spray out at the nearest target—a beige silk blouse. I chopped down on the arm and the can went flying into the road. The biker was floundering and I was set, steady. I threw a short left into his ribs that drove the breath from him and clipped him with a right as his head came up, exposing his chin. I connected, not quite solidly, but he went down in a heap as if I had a punch like Mike Tyson. The guest who’d been sprayed let go with a full-bodied masculine yell.
‘Shut up,’ I snarled. Shouldn’t have gone down like that, I was thinking. Something’s wrong here.
Ms Cato and the first arrival came running down the path, heels clattering on the cement. They and the others bent over me as I unzipped the leather jacket and removed the balaclava from the stunned biker. Long, grey-streaked hair fell free and her breasts rose under the T-shirt as she sucked in air. Flesh bulged at her waist and a trickle of blood ran down from her mouth to the soft folds of her double chin.
‘My god,’ Ms Cato said. ‘It’s Brenda. My wife!’
I’d never hit a woman before and I felt sick to my stomach. ‘You told me …’
‘I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t know!’
Treasure Trove
‘What you need is a lawyer, Bert,’ I said, ‘not a detective.’
Bert Russell shook his big bald head and grinned. ‘No fear, I read up on this sort of thing a bit. I need an investigation to see how the land lies. Then, and only then, I make an anonymous phone call or I hire a lawyer. Shit, if it all works out well I might need a couple of bloody lawyers.’
His enthusiasm and good humour were infectious.
‘And an accountant.’
‘Too right.’
Bert was the manager and part-owner of a liquor store in Glebe Point Road and over the years I had put a certain amount of business his way. He’d tried to get me to invest in good wine and, failing that, to drink it. No go. I was a weekly specials buyer at best, and not averse to the better brands in a cask. We’d struck up a kind of bantering friendship and when, after getting a good cheque, I occasionally did buy an expensive bottle his recommendation was always sound. Now we were in my place of business, the very pre-loved office I have in Darlinghurst, and he’d told me about what he’d found buried on his land at Dugong Beach on the Central Coast, where he had a weekender—a metal strongbox, wrapped in oilskin, containing 60 kilos of gold bars.
‘That’s well over a million bucks’ worth, Cliff,’ Bert had said. ‘Give or take.’
‘Read up on that too, did you?’
‘I didn’t need to. They give you the price of gold on the radio every day. Haven’t you ever heard it?’
I shook my head. ‘Most days I’d have to say it doesn’t concern me. Come to think of it, it’s never concerned me.’
Bert had gone on to explain how it concerned me now. Along with the gold, the strongbox contained a pistol, a Colt .45 automatic, and a photograph of a woman. He wanted me to establish, one way or the other, whether he’d be in any trouble if he claimed the money.
‘I don’t know how old it is, or the bloody gun or the picture. If it’s some drug thing, real recent like, I don’t want to know about it. If it’s old, say twenty-five years or more, I’m going to claim it. I’ll pay you your normal rates to look into it, and if I strike it lucky you’re on a percentage.’
‘How much of a percentage?’
‘I’d lose a certain amount to the government and I’ve got Tom and my two girls to think of. How about 5 per cent of what I clear?’
I did the calculation in my head. Geometry, algebra and trigonometry were all a mystery to me at school, but I was sharp enough at arithmetic and this was dead easy. If he kept half himself and came out with 500,000 dollars, I was looking at twenty-five grand. I reached into the top drawer, took out a contract form and filled it in. It was the first contingency fee I’d negotiated and made me feel as if I was moving towards the twenty-first century. Twenty-five thousand dollars would help me nicely along the way. Bert signed and I pointed out to him that he was up for a five hundred dollar retainer fee there and then.
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I’m in the wrong game.’ He wrote a cheque and handed it over.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a sample with you, or the gun or the snap?’
‘No chance. I put it all right back where I found it. If I go to look for it and it’s gone, stiff shit. My question’s an
swered.’
‘So only you and I know about it?’
‘Right. I told my boy Tom I was thinking of diving off the point, salvage and that. Do you dive, Cliff?’
‘Snorkel only. When do I come up to take a look?’
‘What about tomorrow, Saturday?’ He looked out of the window and would have seen a clear blue late-afternoon sky if the pane hadn’t been coated with grime on the outside and dusty inside. ‘Bring your togs anyway. Be right for a swim. Do you play golf?’
I was thinking about what I had on hand, nothing that couldn’t be delayed in favour of a trip to the Central Coast on a fine February day. ‘Golf? No, why?’
‘I’m just across the way from the course. Good layout. Never mind. I’ll give you the address. I’m going up later tonight. Come as early as you like. I’m always up at sparrow fart.’
‘How long have you had the place?’
He blinked. ‘It was my wife Jessie’s place. It’d been in her family for a while. Dunno how long.’
Jessie Russell, a plump warm-hearted woman, had died of cancer three years ago. Bert had never recovered from the loss and I had to go quietly at that point.
‘I see. Have you got any papers on it?’
‘Nah. Wasn’t worth anything in those days. No mortgage or that. Jessie’s old mum left it to her and her brother and he died a good while back. We just paid the bloody rates. I suppose it’s worth a bit now, but I couldn’t sell it, like. You know …’
I didn’t know but I made the noises that suggested I did. He left and I poked around the office cleaning things up to allow for a couple of days absence. My mind was already working on the job. Local council records to trace previous owners of the property, neighbours, real estate agents, maybe. The items in the strongbox were another matter, but it looked as if I could count on a couple of days in the sun. I left the office and drove to the central branch of the Leichhardt library to do some reading up myself—on guns and gold and women’s fashions.