The Big Score

by Peter Corris

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yeah. You’ve got my number and you know where to find me. Give me your number and we’ll stay in touch. Tell you what, you let me know if and when McCafferty’s able to talk and I’ll tell you what my connection is.’

  ‘You’ve got a fuckin’ nerve.’

  ‘Is it a deal?’

  He cut the call but I had a feeling he’d cooperate. The bashing of a prison guard was a fairly important matter whether the man died or not, and if DS Rule had no leads he’d be smart to play along. Couldn’t be sure, though, particularly about how long his patience would last. I rang Lily from home and found she was keen to go for a feed and whatever might follow. Lily lives in Greenwich.

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Let’s make it over your side and your bedroom.’

  ‘I know what that means. Who’s after you—Philip Ruddock, Alan Jones, Mr Big? Never mind, see you when you get here, if you do.’

  We had a good night as we always do—a North Sydney eatery, a walk, and long, slow lovemaking—all the better for not being every night. I drove to Paddington feeling in harmony with the world, a mood I had to jerk myself out of—not appropriate in my profession.

  Phillip Weiss’s office was in a tiny two-storey terrace in a narrow one-way, closely parked street. I had to circle a few blocks to get the car anywhere near it. The Weiss Literary Consultancy was a small operation with a female secretary who probably doubled as several other things. She was fortyish, bookish-looking and efficient. She said that Phillip had an office upstairs but would be down in a minute and we could have our meeting at her desk while she went upstairs in his place. Meanwhile, would I like coffee?

  A voice preceded its owner down the stairs. ‘He’s a bloody private eye, Claire, and it’s after eleven. The man wants a drink.’

  Weiss was large in every way—tall and thick through. He had a head of wiry grey hair and the facial features of a man who enjoyed life, with laughter lines and a wide, smiling mouth. He had a long-neck bottle of Coopers in one hand and when I shook the other I wasn’t surprised at its strength. For a literary consultant he’d pass muster as a wharfie. He shooed Claire up the stairs in a non-objectionable, affectionate way, sat down at her desk and waved me to a chair. I took the pile of books from it and sat. He produced a bottle opener, flicked the top off and took two glasses from a shelf behind him. He poured with a practised hand and pushed one glass across.

  ‘Claire’s note was almost cryptic,’ Weiss said, ‘but my guess is you’re here about Theodore Baldwin.’

  ‘Theodore,’ I said. ‘I suppose he is, but he’s Theo to me. I guess Theodore would look good on a book cover and spine.’

  ‘Certainly would. I hope you’re here to tell me the manuscript’s on its way. From what Theo told me on the phone I’m not surprised there’s a serious level of security involved.’

  I studied him closely. I haven’t had a lot to do with literary types but I imagine, from all the reading they do, they must know a few tricks about dissembling. But Weiss betrayed no such signs. Maybe it was the residue of my cheerful mood, but I was inclined to trust him. I shook my head.

  ‘No such luck, Mr Weiss. Things have got sticky.’

  I brought him up to speed with everything that had happened. He drank his beer and listened without interrupting. I took a good gulp of my drink when I’d finished.

  He put his glass down as the phone rang. He pressed a button and diverted the call upstairs. ‘You say McCafferty might die?’

  ‘Comas are dodgy. The thing is, it’s all so uncertain. If McCafferty was a regular smuggler-out of stuff from the gaol there could be all sorts of reasons why he’d be attacked—disgruntled former prisoners or pissed-off people on the outside. On the other hand, if Theo’s book is as hot as he says and word leaked out …’

  ‘It could be ashes by now. More hopefully, it could be sitting quietly in McCafferty’s house. The funny—no, the strange thing is, not many books are written on typewriters now. With anything done on a computer you have backup options, as I’m sure you know.’

  I nodded. ‘I have a journalist partner.’

  ‘I don’t want to sound heartless, not with a man on the brink …’

  Perhaps his true colours were showing now. ‘But you will,’ I said.

  ‘Just so. The commercial value of this property, given its … provenance, and the possibility of continued criminal involvement, is very considerable. The advances for true crime, non-fiction books can be large, with the film or television potential to be considered. What do you propose to do now, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘It’s probably better you don’t know.’

  ‘Let me guess. You’re going to break into the McCafferty residence. I foresee a stunning introduction or preface if you succeed. I trust my verbal agreement with Theodore Baldwin is still in place. I have taped copies of the phone calls. Can’t be too careful.’

  I left feeling a bit less friendly towards Weiss than I had at first. But he had the experience in this and you have to respect that.

  There are two ways to break in to a house—you have to be either bold, just walk up and do it, or bashful—try to talk your way in. I decided to be bold. I’d taken a good look at the front of McCafferty’s house on my first visit and I didn’t think it’d present any problems. There was a simple Yale lock and no sign of an alarm. The place was rundown and neither the owner nor the tenant seemed inclined to spend money on security.

  I drove to Homebush in time to see Ted Davis, the neighbour, drive away in a battered Cortina. The street was quiet with only a few lights showing. I went through the gate, unshipped my picklocks, held a pencil torch between my teeth and had the door open inside half a minute.

  I closed the door quietly and stood still to allow my sight to adjust to the gloom. A little light was seeping in from the street through broken slats in the front room’s blind. I worked my way down the passage and turned on a low-wattage light towards the back section—it wouldn’t show from the street and the fence on the freestanding side of the house was high.

  I used the torch to probe into the two small bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. The place was dirty and untidy. The kitchen smelled of tobacco smoke and fried food. Two chairs had been overturned in the sitting room and there were a couple of broken bottles and glasses that seemed to have been swept from the table, perhaps by whatever implement had been used on McCafferty. The spattering on the floor and one wall was dried blood.

  Other than that, there was no sign of any particular disturbance, no evidence of a search. That gave me heart. The second bedroom held a wardrobe containing various items of clothing including a wrinkled corrections officer’s uniform. A battered overnight bag, crumpled to about a third of its normal size, was shoved into a strut of the iron bed frame. I pulled it out and found I’d been wrong about the search. The bag was padlocked but had been slit open. It contained a pair of socks and a change of underwear. I inspected it closely in the beam of the torch. There were a couple of very small round pieces of foil, a scrap of plastic cling wrap, more fragments of foil and under the loose cardboard base of the bag a mostly decayed white pill. It was pretty clearly Col McCafferty’s drug-smuggling stash, now in the hands of others. So where was the manuscript?

  There were no bookshelves, no desk, no filing cabinet, nothing to suggest that McCafferty had ever had a book in the house, let alone a typescript. I searched the bedrooms with no result—no creaking floorboards, no sealed-off fireplaces. The kitchen was the least appealing space, with its smells and the film of grease over the surfaces. It was one of those rooms in which you’re reluctant to even breathe. But the laminex table was piled with a stack of tabloid newspapers, and a thick wad of A4 paper, fastened by a bulldog clip inside a manilla folder held together by rubber bands, was sitting near the top of the pile, with only a few newspapers lying haphazardly over it.

  I opened the folder and read in typewritten upper case, ‘MY LIFE OF CRIME & THEIRS’. Another rule of breaking and
entering is—get out quick. I restored the rubber bands to the folder, turned off the light and left the house. Mission accomplished, and all quiet on this western front.

  On the drive back I began to feel that things weren’t as wrapped up as I’d thought on finding the manuscript. My certainty that the assault on McCafferty had to do with his drug dealing would be useful to DS Rule, but I wasn’t prepared to impart that knowledge just yet. On the evidence of the dates on the newspapers, McCafferty had been in possession of the manuscript for some days before he was attacked. Why the delay in passing it on to Weiss when he must have been on a promise of a reward for delivering it? Was he contemplating or in the process of dealing with someone else? And what of Weiss? McCafferty’s name had rolled off his tongue easily after my brief mention of it. Which side was he playing for, apart from his own?

  I stopped in Newtown at a twenty-four hour copying joint and made two copies of the manuscript. I put one copy in a hiding place in the car—a virtually undetectable slit in the upholstery that self-sealed with velcro. Although it was late I phoned Rosemary Kingston, told her I had the manuscript and wanted to bring it to her.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to give it to this agent?’

  ‘I’m not sure I trust him.’

  ‘In that case, come on over. I was watching a late movie anyway.’

  ‘Your bill’s not going to be that high,’ she said as she let me in. ‘What—petrol money, a few phone calls?’

  ‘I had to grease some palms, but you’re right. It wouldn’t be much if it was really all over.’

  She ushered me into the flat and poured me a scotch.

  ‘It isn’t over? You wouldn’t be trying to inflate the account, would you? Sorry, I don’t really think that.’

  ‘Think what you like. I’ve barely earned the retainer as things stand, but there’s something off about it all.’

  ‘What do you mean, Cliff?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a kind of instinct. Anyway, thanks for the drink and here’s the book.’

  She took the package and opened it. ‘Hey, it’s supposed to be written on a typewriter. This is a photocopy.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone, including myself,’ I said.

  I went home and although it was late I made myself something to eat, poured a drink and turned over the pages of the original manuscript. The prose was racy, the structure was artful and, superficially, the tone had a nice blend of contrition and defiance. Some of the names of officials, politicians and media types mentioned were familiar, but without doing a close reading I couldn’t see the book as a crime Krakatoa—more of a fizzing catherine-wheel with bits of mud spinning off it. There was a bit too much self-aggrandisement, a touch of religion, an obeisance to the conservative law and order agenda. I went to bed.

  I slept on it but didn’t come up with anything new. I told myself I’d done my job. I took the original manuscript to Phillip Weiss, who practically slavered over it. I kept the third copy for no good reason. I submitted my invoice to Rosemary Kingston and received prompt payment. Case closed.

  But of course it wasn’t. Theo got out not long after and he rang me with his thanks and the news that he’d got a high five-figure advance from a publisher.

  ‘Good one,’ I said. ‘You’ll be on TV soon.’

  He laughed long and loud and I found out why when Rosemary Kingston stormed into my office with the sort of anger that only a deceived and jilted woman can muster.

  ‘I want my money back!’

  ‘I don’t think so. We had a contract. Why?’

  ‘That bastard,’ she said. ‘The book’s a fake. After they’d paid over the advance, someone more cluey took a look at it and found out that it’s a total pinch from an English true crime story, with just the names and the local details changed.’

  ‘Well, he’ll have to return the money.’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘No chance. He flew out for God knows where the other day. Left me a note.’

  Theo had struck again.

  Blackmail

  The note was word-processed, the ultimate in anonymity and much less messy and time-consuming than cutting out letters from a newspaper or magazine. It read: ‘We have your wife. If she’s worth half a million to you call now!’ A mobile number followed.

  ‘I was shocked,’ Bruce Haxton said. ‘I rang the number without hesitating. What else could I do?’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing, or almost nothing. A voice just said to wait. Shit!’ His mobile rang and he turned away to take the call.

  Haxton was an Australian film director, a successful one, with a batch of Hollywood movies to his credit, and a couple of Oscar nominations. He was back home scouting locations for a film to be shot in Sydney, although, from what I’d read of it in the papers, it was actually set a thousand years in the future on another planet. I’d met him when I was doing a bodyguarding job for an actor in one of his earlier pictures. The actor, Lance Hartley, was a paranoid, coke-addicted nightmare, more in danger from himself than anyone else, but the job paid well. Haxton and I had got along under difficult circumstances then, and we’d stayed vaguely in touch—had a few drinks, went to a Kostya Tszyu fight together on his complimentary tickets— like that. He’d called me in his hour of need.

  ‘No chance,’ he said to his caller and hit the end button. He let out a long sigh and it was impossible to tell whether it was for his kidnapped wife or some other matter.

  Haxton was forty plus, tall and lean with a prematurely grey head of hair and beard. He wore a sloppy outfit that probably cost more than my entire wardrobe, and the laces on one of his Nikes was undone. Possibly an affectation, but more likely a sign of stress. Stress was his middle name, but after a few beers he relaxed and could be good company.

  He popped a Nicorette and chewed without enthusiasm. ‘The thing is, she’s not worth half a million. She’s not worth a buck and a half, to quote Sinatra. God, Cliff, I’m losing my mind. I need a drink. You?’

  ‘Sure. Beer. Thanks.’

  It was mid-afternoon. He’d told me he found the note pushed under the door of the house he was renting in Rose Bay when he’d got up in the morning after a very late night. He’d made his immediate response, stewed for a while and then called me. We were in the back, where the sitting room, kitchen, sunroom and deck flowed into each other. He built himself a solid vodka and tonic, opened a Budweiser and poured.

  The house was a million dollar dream, so quiet, comfortable and well appointed it was boring. The traffic noise was a distant, soothing hum and if planes passed over they were well aloft and infrequent. We sat around a table, just above a courtyard with every brick and plant in place. Haxton worked on his drink while still chewing. He looked around and his shake of the head spoke volumes.

  ‘I grew up in Blacktown. How about you?’

  ‘Maroubra.’

  ‘Beachside. Brilliant, but you know what I’m talking about. Fibro, dunny out the back.’

  I nodded and drank expensive, imported beer.

  ‘I married Cassie after my first movie won a couple of AFI awards and got me offers from LA. Guess what her job was on the picture?’

  ‘I’m betting she wasn’t the writer.’

  He snorted and took another pull on his drink. ‘I always liked your one-liners. You know how things were back then. What was it, ten years ago?’

  ‘Pre-Howard, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah. Everyone was screwing each other. Cassie was the props girl. She was on with the DOP who said he was training her. In advanced fellatio, it seemed to me. I wasn’t complaining, mind you. We got it on and got married. I can’t remember why. It was never good enough to commit to or bad enough to quit. We sort of came and went. She didn’t really want to leave LA for this trip but she did, out of boredom probably.’

  He finished his drink and got up to make another. He told me that they’d only been back for ten days and that Cassie had spent most of the time catching up with old friends
and shopping. They’d spent four of the ten nights apart with no questions asked. He had no idea who she’d been with. They were together the night before last. She went out the next day and didn’t return. That didn’t worry him because he had what he called a ‘dinner meeting’. He came back to the house late and found the note in the mid-morning.

  ‘You’re getting around to saying that you’re not going to pay. That right, Bruce?’

  ‘Jesus. It’s like a scene out of one of my crappy movies. Moral dilemmas and all that ethical shit mixed with sex and money. In this case it’s straightforward. I can’t pay even if I wanted to—which I don’t—because I’m broke.’

  I swung my head from side to side, taking in the glass, the chrome, the cedar decking, the hot tub.

  ‘It’s all on the budget,’ he said. ‘And don’t worry, your fee’ll be covered in the same way. I took this shitty job on because I need the fucking money. Only reason.’

  ‘How come you’re broke?’

  ‘You haven’t kept up. The last two pictures were flops. Went straight to DVD and didn’t do any business even then. It costs to live in LA. The mortgage and car leases you wouldn’t believe, and you have to keep up appearances in this game. Look like you’re down and you’ll be there.’

  ‘I’m flattered that you called me, but really it’s a job for the police.’

  He shook his head. ‘No way. There’re still a few holes to fill in the picture’s budget and if word got out that I’m under this sort of pressure the whole thing could fold. I can’t afford bad publicity and I certainly can’t afford to let it get out that I’m broke. You see the bind I’m in.’

  ‘Plus you don’t care about her, one way or the other.’

  ‘Hey, I don’t want to get her ears in the mail or anything like that. Shit—movie talk again. What do you think I should do?’

  ‘I guess, when they get in touch, negotiate. Buy time.’

  ‘I suppose I could sell something, raise a hundred grand at a pinch.’

  That’s the thing about the rich. When they say they’re broke they don’t quite mean it the way most people do. I was willing to take the job on even though I knew the people involved were flaky and the outcome was very uncertain. Just sitting tight waiting for a kidnapper to make contact didn’t appeal to me though. There had to be more I could do.