by Peter Corris
I sipped my long black, wished passionately for a cigarette, fought it down and pulled out my notebook. ‘Who was that?’
She was a serious smoker. The Kent was half gone in a few drags and she pulled it all down into her lungs before letting some of it go. She tapped off a long ash and stared at the travel posters on the wall as if seeking inspiration in scenes of Tuscany. She shook her head. ‘Forget the name, if he gave it. Sorry. Not the boss. There were two of them. Sergeant something-biggish, about your size and build but with darker hair, less grey. The one who talked to me was much younger, fair and slim, well-combed, smelled good, no doubt suppressing his femininity like mad.’
I scribbled that down. ‘Much younger’ and the reference to the grey hair was a bitter pill to swallow, but she hadn’t meant it maliciously. I felt very much on my mettle, keen not to make my questions as dumb as the coppers’ had been. “What did you think about Scott taking the job at the casino?’
She drank some coffee, snuffed out the cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘Hey, you’ve surprised me. Congratulations. I’m thinking, like, he’s just another walking prick with slightly better manners than most, and you come up with a real question.’
I was careful not to preen. ‘So, what’s the answer, Ms Drewe?’
‘Vita, OK? I thought it was right for him. A one-year contract, what’s the harm? I’m all for change and variety-in everything. Like, you might think I’m just this typewriter dyke, two hundred words a minute, right? But I’ve white-watered the Colorado River and been a mountain guide in New Zealand and culled deer in Tasmania.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Impressed? Good. People underestimate people all the time. It’s one of the world’s biggest problems. I don’t think I can help you very much. The police were schmucks, not interested. Scott was real pleased about the casino job. He was getting a little pissed at working out of that office and making peanuts, well, mostly.’
‘Did he confide in you?’
‘Sure. Faithful-to-his-wife kinda guy, he felt safe with me. Couple of times he had trouble paying me on time. He was embarrassed, you know? A power situation that was running against him. Scott loosened up some when I explained to him what was happening.’
‘OK, Vita. Good. Did the police take anything away from Scott’s office?’
‘Not unless they’re sleight of hand experts. I watched real close. They just searched through the stuff, kinda uninterestedly. You know the difference between uninterested and disinterested?’
‘I… I think so.’
‘Shoot, then. Say, you’re on expenses, right?’
I nodded, rehearsing my answer to the question.
‘Make sure you get a receipt for the coffees. I’ll have a cappuccino now.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Let’s hear it.’
I went to the counter and ordered. Her mannerisms and attitude were beginning to annoy me. I sat down and fanned her smoke out of my face. ‘Disinterested means you haven’t got a personal investment in the outcome, uninterested means you don’t give a shit. Do you know where Scott kept his notebook?’
She squashed out her cigarette, pushed the ashtray away and dropped the packet and lighter into her bag. Then she gave me the face-transforming smile again. ‘That’s enough of that for now. Don’t want you to think I’m an addict. I really think we could get along, you know? But you’d have to show a whole lot more confidence in me.’
I was off-balance again. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re nice, but slow. I want to help you. I feel guilty, too. I advised him to take the job, for Chrissakes. I fucking sold it to him. I like casinos, did I mention that? No? Well, I have more going on in here than I can get out. I like to dress up in the sequins and silk and throw money away. It’s a buzz. I told him to go for it, and now he’s dead. Dead at thirty-one’s the pits. I’m thirty, how old’re you, Cliff?’
‘Older, where’s this going?’
‘I’m not sure. Where do you want it to go?’
‘Towards finding out why Scott died. I wouldn’t expect to get much further with it than that.’
‘A pragmatist. OK. I can buy that. I don’t know where his notebook is. Hey, have you got a card?’
I decided then that she was seriously unstable, someone to be humoured. I took out a card and put it on the table. She flicked it up with her long, slender fingers and replaced it with one of her own. I hadn’t seen where her card had come from.
‘Thanks. Surprised, huh? Conjuring’s another one of my talents. Take the card.’
I picked it up and put it in my shirt pocket. Despite the fans cooling the heated air in the cafe and keeping it moving, the shirt was sticking to me. I was suddenly aware of a nervous sweating and an urgent need for some alcohol. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Thank you, and I think that’s all I need for now.’
‘You’re full of it,’ she said. She reached out a long, thin, lightly tanned arm and rapped her knuckles on the file folders I’d put on the table. ‘Tell me about these.’
For all the irritation I felt, for some reason I didn’t want to part company with her. I pushed the files across. ‘Preliminary stuff. Do you happen to remember the clients?’
She flipped through the files. ‘Nope. I very rarely saw any. Mostly I just typed up his reports.’
‘I saw them. Terrific typing, better expression than I’d have expected from Scott, too.’
She smiled. ‘Yeah, well, I finessed them a little. Sometimes. He was no John Updike. You read Updike?’
‘I’m not up to date.’
‘The Rabbit books are the great American novel, I’m telling you. Fun name isn’t it-Updike? Hah! Weird you can’t find his notebook. It wasn’t on him when he got shot?’
‘I haven’t checked but I don’t think so. He was in a different job, after all.’
‘Not necessarily. He came in to the office a few times after he got the casino job, and it wasn’t just to pick up mail. He had that redirected I think. Hey, I remember now. He came in one night as I was quitting. I tried to get him to buy me a drink but he wouldn’t.’ She banged the side of her head, quite hard. ‘How could you forget that, dummy?’
‘Was he alone? What did he do?’
She held up a hand and the bracelets slid back over her bony wrist onto her forearm. ‘Hold on. I’m like trying to recall it scene by scene. I was coming out of the building and he was going in. Hurrying. He was carrying something. Papers, no, a folio, something like that.’
‘You didn’t tell the police about this?’
‘I didn’t tell myself. I was tired, plus it was my fasting day. You move into some strange spaces at times like that. It’s only just coming back now.’
‘How did he seem?’
‘I smelled his sweat. He was a clean guy. He was definitely upset. I was flirting with him a bit, the way we did, but he didn’t put anything out. Real cold. I remember thinking that his wife might be around so I glanced at the car… Shit!’
‘Yes?’
She kept her eyes focused on a point somewhere above my head and moved like an automaton, dipping into her bag and coming up with the packet of Kent and the lighter. She lit a cigarette. I moved my head slightly so that the cloud of smoke wouldn’t envelope me. Her head was rigid and she blew the smoke straight at that focus point. ‘I can see him,’ she said. ‘He was sitting in the car. Real still.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Some guy. Small, dark, maybe. There wasn’t much light’
It was like talking to a medium, trying to get in contact with the dead. Quite unconsciously I spoke in a hushed, sepulchral tone, aware that some of the other patrons were beginning to stare at us. ‘Would you recognise him again?’
‘I sure would!’
The emphatic words seemed to jerk her from the trance. She laughed nervously, drew on the cigarette and missed the ashtray as she tried to flick off the inch of ash. ‘How about that? Vita the woman of mystery-I actually hypnotised myself. First time. You’re
a restful man, Cliff, in your uptight way.’
‘When was this, Vita?’
‘It was just two nights before he died.’
6
It was too much to expect that Vita Drewe would be able to give me a description of the man she saw in Scott Galvani’s car. Nothing about her could be that uncomplicated.
‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘I’d know him if I saw him again, but like tell you his height and weight- hey, why aren’t they pronounced the same? Never mind. I mean, a clinical type description? No way. My memory doesn’t work like that.’
I hoped it was her memory that was at issue, not her imagination. We left it there. I paid for the coffee and we walked together back to the office, not saying much. I pointed to my car and she said automobiles were the curse of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We shook hands.
‘My address and number are on the card,’ she said. ‘Don’t be a stranger. So what’s your next move?’
‘Talk to the cops.’
She shrugged and swung her bag on its long strap. I realised how fluidly she moved and how completely unselfconscious she was-probably necessary for white-water rafting and deer-shooting. ‘You’ll be wasting your time.’ There’s a lot of that in this business.’ ‘I noticed.’ She walked away, waving her fingers back at me like Liza Minelli in Cabaret. Very like.
I used my recently acquired, low-budget mobile phone to call the police centre, and was put through to Peter Carboni. From Vita’s account he didn’t sound like one of the ‘best people’ Frank Parker had referred to. It was a good chance to check out the reliability of Vita’s impressions.
‘Carboni.’
‘My name’s Hardy, Sergeant. I’m…’
‘Frank Parker told me about your interest, Mr Hardy. What can I do for you?’
Good strong voice, no bullshit. Vita wasn’t scoring so well. I told him I’d searched Scott’s office and couldn’t locate his working notebook and wondered if it had been found on him or turned up anywhere.
‘Don’t think so. Hang on while I check the file. You’re right, that could be important.’
I was still to get the hang of talking on the phone while driving in solid traffic. I turned off Lilyfield Road and headed towards the pub across the road from Eastern Park for the drink I’d needed for an hour or more. Carboni came back on line just as I got the pub in sight.
‘No sign of the notebook. Any ideas? I think we should have a meeting. We’re getting nowhere fast with this one.’
Nothing in his voice or manner seemed to tally with Vita’s description. I grunted something noncommittal and asked him if he’d been present at the search of Galvani’s office.
‘Not me. That was… well, another officer. He’s been taken off the case. I understand you’re working for the wife? Has she given you anything to go on?’
Different guy. Vita vindicated. ‘I’ve got a few things to check. Nothing much. If I come up with anything solid I’ll be in touch. What do you know about the casino operation?’
‘Not on your life, Hardy. That’s asking too much. Play it your way for a while if you want, but the offer to talk’s open.’
The world is changing fast. Ten, even five years ago, a cop in Carboni’s position would have pulled me in for a chat on threat of giving me trouble with my licence or the roadworthiness of my car. Now there was a civilised request for cooperation. I wasn’t yet completely comfortable with the new style, but I managed to say something polite to him before he hung up. I’d pulled up in Burt Street by this time and parked under one of the old plane trees that would give good shade as well as sappy, duco-damaging leaves and bird shit. From years of this sort of treatment the Falcon has a weathered, stippled look that I rather like.
I shoved the phone in my jacket pocket and got out of the car. A slight breeze was blowing, stirring the leaves and moving the discarded soft drink cans, empty chip packets and other rubbish around on the ground. Some kind of school sports meeting must have been held there earlier and the patrons had left their mark in the usual way.
I stared out across the grass towards a part of Sydney that was changing already and will be totally changed in a few years.
The oval was well-grassed and the fence was more or less intact. It was possible to imagine cricket matches of an earlier era-when the working-class teams played off for the sub-district championship, and living east or west of Victoria Road really meant something. There was still a whiff of that spirit in sporting competitions in Sydney when I was young, but it was swept away, so I’ve read, by the affordable family car and the larger requirements of television. It had gone the way of local beers and suburban picture theatres.
I went across to the pub and bought a middy of the mass-produced beer which still tasted pretty good. I took it outside and sat on a bench overlooking the sportsground. A couple of joggers had decided the sun was low enough and were circling the ground slowly, moving in and out of the shadows cast by the trees. A man and a woman-sharing something good. A dog ran around behind, through and ahead of them, darting off to chase birds and bits of paper. It was a nice, restful picture and helped me to relax and order my thoughts on the day’s work. Not a lot to assemble-the Cornwall and Roberts files still active when Scott had taken up the job with the casino; unusual behaviour and an unknown companion a couple of nights before he was killed. A missing notebook. And no necessary connection between any of the above.
I finished the beer and reluctantly decided against another. The lunch had been light and a fair while ago, and two middies could put me over the limit for driving. I sauntered back towards the car, decided I wanted the drink anyway and went back and had it. The joggers and their four-legged companion had gone and I took their place, walking briskly around the oval several times with my jacket slung over my shoulder, breathing deeply and telling myself that this was bound to metabolise the alcohol. It was pleasant, too, as the sun dipped down and the shadows spread out across the grass. I drew a few curious looks from strollers and dog-walkers but I didn’t care. Suddenly, I realised that I was thinking of Vita Drewe, of the way her hair was arranged, wondering how long it was and how it would look on her shoulders instead of strained back and tied up. I remembered her long legs and slender, graceful body and I was aroused. I had her address in my pocket and her half-invitation, half-challenge: ‘Don’t be a stranger.’ Bloody Yanks. What did that really mean? Glen was hundreds of kilometres away and hadn’t phoned for two nights. Our last words had been close to angry. There’d never really been any commitment between us, and in my experience commitment was living death anyway. Why not? Why the hell not?
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 ru
n. 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 backhander 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.