Black Tide

by Peter Temple

  Dave sighed. ‘Not appealing to your sense of civic duty here, Jack,’ he said. ‘Your instinct for survival. I’m relying on that. Your mark’s on the slate, these people like a clean slate. Weeks, months maybe. Could be a year. But they’ll wipe you, believe me.’

  He turned his shoulders towards me, rested big fingers on my arm. ‘Jack, this isn’t some minor racket, rebirthing BMWs, that kind of thing. This is huge. The money’s everywhere. Billions every year. Take you around this town, all the cities, take you around the bush, pick a town, show you buildings, businesses, whole law firms, real estate agents, travel agents, stockbrokers, hotels, resorts, greengrocers, restaurants. Name it, I’ll show you. Drug money underneath, drug money in the cash flow.’

  ‘Is that what Black Tide was about? Drug money?’

  He paused. ‘We were getting close, Jack. Going in the right direction, then we touched a nerve and a boot came out and kicked us up the arse. Big boot. Big kick. Now you’ve touched the same nerve. You can’t untouch it.’

  I didn’t know what was going on but I was getting the idea. Not the point, perhaps, but the drift. Slowly. He was talking about TransQuik, about Steven Levesque.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do for you,’ I said.

  Dave smiled. It was a small smile, but it improved the hard face no end. ‘You want Gary,’ he said. ‘We want Gary. In the beginning, we kissed him goodbye. Dead. Now we think he’s alive. We think so because they think so. If he was dead, they’d know. Being the ones who made that arrangement.’

  ‘They? I’m sick of they, Dave.’

  ‘People who want Black Tide stopped. Powerful people outside, their friends inside.’

  ‘What about Gary’s car?’

  ‘Gary drives off a cliff? Forget. It’s a good sign.’

  ‘I’ve been told Gary was definitely in the car when it went over the cliff.’

  ‘Been told? Visitors the other day give you another call? I’d treat that information with caution.’

  How did he know about my visitors? I said, ‘Jellicoe, Gary’s mate from the bottle shop. What about him?’

  ‘Where’d you get that from?’

  My turn to ignore questions. ‘Koch and Bryce and Novikov. What’s that mean?’

  ‘You heard that where?’ A hint of disquiet in the dry voice.

  ‘Detail,’ I said. ‘You don’t need the detail.’

  Dave coughed, shook his head. ‘Well, reinforces my confidence in you. The visitors the other day, what was the message?’

  ‘This is tiring. I repeat, I don’t want to be in this.’

  ‘Mention Gary?’ he said.

  ‘No. Just Canetti.’

  ‘What about Canetti?’

  ‘Said he was engaged in important government business and his wife was not taking pills, imagining things. Like being told he was missing, possibly dead. Probably.’

  ‘What’d you tell them?’

  ‘I told them my only interest in Canetti was that he was following Gary on April 3.’

  Dave’s mouth opened slightly under the thatch. I could see the tip of his tongue. ‘Established that, have you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Following him where?’

  ‘At a bottle shop in Prahran.’

  ‘What else do you know about them? Gary and Canetti?’

  ‘Nothing after that. That’s it.’

  ‘Give you a number, your visitors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Call it. Tonight. Tell them that since Gary’s dead, you have absolutely no further interest in Dean Canetti.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then turn the mind to Gary.’

  ‘You’re taking it for granted that I trust you. Why is that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you trust me? We both want to find Gary. Your visitors want you as far from Gary as possible. It’s not Canetti they’re warning you off with that bullshit about Meryl. It’s Gary.’

  I thought about this. Then I said, ‘Dave, I don’t know where to go on Gary. I’ve done the things that usually turn up traces. He’s not using plastic, he’s not buying tickets or hiring in his own name. I presume you know this. What’s left to do, I don’t know.’

  ‘His old man. Talk to him.’

  ‘He knows less than I do about Gary. Much less.’

  ‘No. That’s now, the recent past. Gary can’t hide anywhere that’s to do with the recent past. Nowhere’s safe. If we find him, it’ll be because he’s somewhere he feels safe. That’s going to come from way back. Talk to his father.’

  I said, ‘Is this the psychology of flight or what?’

  ‘What it is,’ he said, ‘is the psychology of clutching at fucking straws.’

  He put his right hand into his jacket and took out a small mobile phone. ‘This thing’s secure. Sounds a bit like I’m underwater, that’s cause you’re hearing me off a satellite talking through electronic condoms. Switch it on, press one-two for me. Keep it switched off except for five minutes around the hour. That’s when I’ll call you. Your cab’s waiting. It’s on me.’

  I looked at him, heavy in the heart. ‘That’s a nice gesture,’ I said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘More where that came from,’ he said. Another smile. The second one.

  30

  In the morning the rain had stopped, sunlight fell across the kitchen, fell into my lap where I sat at the table reading the form for Geelong, eating anchovy toast, drinking tea out of a bone-china cup. The cup and saucer were the survivors of twelve my wife Isabel and I had bought at an auction. Cup rising to the mouth, it occurred to me that this was the first time I’d used it since Linda became a feature in my life. After the bomb wrecked my floor of the old boot factory in North Fitzroy, I’d salvaged what I could, including the china cup and saucer, and moved to the stables. I’ll go back when the place is rebuilt, I kept telling myself.

  But when the time came, Linda found good reasons why I should postpone moving back.

  One morning, while considering the limitations of my wardrobe, I said, ‘It’s my home. It’s fixed. I want to go home.’

  Linda was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth. I heard her rinse, swill the mouthwash. She came to the door, no makeup, handsome. ‘For me, Jack,’ she said, ‘it’s Isabel’s home.’

  I compromised. An agent found a tenant on a six-month lease.

  Was that why I hadn’t used the china cup? What did using it today signal?

  Questions too deep. Questions too meaningless was more like it.

  I thought about the big man in the car. Dave. The cocooning comfort of the car, the sounds of the city night around us, muted, the leaves blowing across the streetlight, falling onto the bonnet. Secret operations betrayed, all-powerful drug money, his knowingness. Convincing. This morning, sunlight in my lap as comforting as a warm cat, it had an unreal quality. What made him think I could find Gary? What more could Des tell me?

  The phone rang. A tremor of trepidation.

  ‘Jack?’

  Rosa. Relief.

  ‘About time you answered your phone,’ she said. ‘I’m here to tell you, just when I thought it was all over for me, this hunk, this absolute babe, has come into my life.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘Bit early for this kind of conversation. How can a man be a babe?’

  Long, languid sigh. ‘Where are you, Jack? Marooned in the seventies. You should mix with younger people.’

  ‘Tried that. Hasn’t done me much good. How old is this babe?’

  ‘Ah. The ear-kissing. I saw her on Rod Pringle’s television show the other night. Radiant. Very striking.’

  ‘How old is this babe?’

  ‘Jack, what does it matter? Two people resonate, that’s all that counts.’

  ‘Resonate? The point about resonance is lack of contact. How old?’

  ‘Hmm. Thirtyish. Going on.’

  ‘Little more precision, please. How old?’

  ‘God, you’re a bore. Twenty-four. Thereabouts. Very mature.’

 
‘At least one mature person in a relationship is a good idea. What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a sommelier. At Maquis in South Yarra. He’s so knowledgable about wine, he’s a wine authority, he…’

  ‘A wine waiter. Three-week TAFE course. You’re having it off with a wine waiter and you’re giving him about sixteen years claim. How do you manage to get these things so absolutely right?’

  ‘Fourteen. No soul. Not an ounce of poetry in your body. Many, many relationships of this kind are wildly successful.’ Pause. ‘Wildly. Wildly.’

  ‘Wildly? Who said that? Elizabeth Taylor? Zsa Zsa Gabor? Catherine the Great?’

  ‘Jack, why would Lucy feel guilty about Dad’s death?’

  Changes of subject by Rosa were standard but this one caught me flatfooted.

  ‘What? How do you know she felt guilty?’

  ‘She says so. In her diary. I’ve got all her diaries and letters in a big box and sometimes when I’m in a good mood I read bits. I’ve just been reading the new diary she started after I was born.’

  ‘Diaries?’ I looked at the digital clock on the microwave. ‘Eight-twenty a.m. I thought you didn’t wake up before noon? Medication problem, is it? You can tell me.’

  Light laugh. ‘Up for hours, walking on the beach, reading. Listen, I’ve got it here, she says, “Sunny afternoon. Dad drove me to the cemetery. I was quite composed while I was at Bill’s grave, but on the way back it was suddenly too much for me. Dad pretended not to notice the tears. What haunts me night and day is that I could have saved my darling. I will carry that to my grave.’’’

  ‘Just emotional,’ I said. ‘People get like that. Blame themselves for anything. He was in a fight.’

  ‘A fight? I thought he was attacked. She always talked as if he was attacked.’

  ‘He was in a fight outside a pub. Grandpa told me that. Many times.’

  Sitting alone, sun on my legs, teacup in my hand, my father lost, unknown to me, no memory of a touch, my mother always keeping me at a distance, my first wife just packing up and leaving, my second wife murdered by one of my clients, none of that obscured the memory of my grandfather’s quiet voice, grating voice, each word a rake of gravel. I could see his eyes moving over my face, an examination, a search for evidence of something, brief rest on my hair, my forehead, a look into my eyes, examination of my nose, my mouth. Sitting in a captain’s chair in the sun, all the years gone, I could see that mouth, my grandfather’s mouth, mean, bloodless, disapproving mouth.

  And I could hear him. He never called me Jack.

  Irresponsibility. It can be in the blood, John. Your father’s blood. In you. You always need to guard against it. Bar fighter your father, labourer and bar fighter. That’s how he died. Fighting outside a hotel.

  Rosa said, ‘Why would she blame herself…?’

  I didn’t want to talk about it. ‘No idea. Lovely chat, apres wine appreciation, apres brief sleep, beach walk, diary reading, whatever. Unfortunately you find me at the beginning of a working day. I’ll have to say goodbye.’

  Silence. ‘You resent happiness in others, don’t you, Jack?’ said Rosa. ‘Well, that’s perfectly understandable.’

  I felt a coldness in my heart and I said, flippant voice, ‘It’s always nice to have one’s frailties understood and forgiven.’

  She felt the coldness, it passed to her across the wire.

  ‘Jack, I didn’t mean that, Jack, listen, I meant…’

  I said, ‘I’ve got to go. Miles to go. Promises to keep. Woods lovely dark and deep. Don’t accept any en primeur offers.’

  ‘En what?’

  ‘You pay now and get the wine later.’

  ‘I’m not sure brothers are worth the trouble,’ she said, a tremble in her voice. ‘They don’t seem to have any utility value.’

  ‘Except to tell you that they love you,’ I said.

  I had never said that to her before. It had never crossed my mind to say it. Any more than it had occurred to me to be the one to offer the kiss on meeting or parting.

  A long silence. ‘Is that so?’ she said, stronger voice now. ‘Well, perhaps they have some limited use.’

  31

  Taub’s. I had to let myself in. Not unusual. Charlie often failed to take the door off the latch.

  Cold. That was unusual.

  In winter, which was most of the year in Melbourne, Charlie’s first act was to light the big potbelly. The building took at least an hour to warm up.

  No Charlie. I felt a pulse of anxiety in my throat, phoned.

  It rang. Rang. Rang.

  ‘Ja, Taub,’ he said. It sounded like a command.

  I breathed out. ‘So,’ I said. ‘The work. Who needs the work? How many lives you got? The work, the work can wait. Lie in bed, think about how the pishers gave you a good thrashing.’

  Charlie laughed, the full laugh, leading to wheezing and sniffing. You didn’t hear the full laugh too often. The Charlie minimalist smile was enough to make you think you’d said something acute.

  ‘On my foot,’ he said. ‘The toes. Can’t walk. Like a cripple.’

  ‘On your foot what?’

  ‘What? What you think? The ball. The bowl.’

  I said, ‘Oh. Sorry to hear that. Didn’t realise it was a contact sport. I’ll just struggle on here on my own then.’

  Charlie said, ‘Ten to eleven in the morning. Two hours before you see I’m not there?’

  ‘I thought you were at the back, being very quiet.’

  The snort. ‘Tomorrow, I make up the time.’

  I said goodbye, put down the phone. Boss of Taub’s today. I went over to my glue-up of the evening before, admired my efforts, set to work taking off the clamps, all a little less tight now. A very pleasant task, spiced with anxiety about the perfection of the joints, the squareness of the frame.

  Boss of Taub’s. A person could come in wanting something made. From time to time, a person did. Hi, they said. This is really old-fashioned. Terrific. Like Europe. More machines though. We stayed in this villa in Italy. In Umbria? Yes? Part of Italy. And there was this table. Really unusual. Long, I don’t know, from here to that wall. And narrow, that’s the difference. I’ve looked everywhere, they’re all too wide. But amazing, it had three sets of legs? Six legs? The outside ones sort of go outwards. I’ll draw it for you. Dark wood. Think you can make that? In pine. I’ll stain it myself. Not too many knots. I’ll need a price. I have to tell you, I’ve been ripped off by some so-called carpenters.

  Listen politely. Show the person the door.

  A person didn’t come in.

  I passed the day in solitude, absorbed by the effort of bringing into being something people would admire and which would outlive them. I pushed away thoughts about Gary Connors, about the morass into which I had ventured so blithely.

  A good day.

  Charlie once said, elevation of chin, narrowing of eyes revealing that he was about to deliver a message, ‘Jack, make something, you look at it, you’re happy. The work it took, that’s not work.’

  At home, cleansed by the day’s honest efforts, I was struck by the disgusting condition of the place. A frenzy came over me. As I vacuumed and scrubbed and dusted, my mind turned over the questions I should have asked Dave. The first one was why on earth I should believe him. I was on the downstairs de-cobwebbing when the phone rang.

  ‘Jack, Lyall Cronin.’ Voice deeper than I remembered.

  ‘You find me with a featherduster in my hand.’

  Measured interval.

  ‘If I’m interrupting something…’

  ‘Between me and this featherduster you can come,’ I said. ‘A welcome interposition.’

  She laughed. ‘Interposition. Good word. Bandied about a lot in suburban legal practices, I imagine.’

  ‘Endlessly bandied.’

  ‘Jack, I remembered something, I don’t know if it’s of any use.’ Pause. ‘You might want to drop by some time?’

  ‘I want to. When’s a good time?’
>
  Pause.

  ‘Well, when’s a good time? Thursday? Friday? Actually, now’s a good time. No, God, Tuesday night, it wouldn’t be a good time for you…’

  Sight, identify, fire. Not a millisecond of hesitation. ‘Tuesday night’s a very acceptable time. I could holster the featherduster, shower, be around shortly.’

  ‘Good. Yes. Well. You know how to find it.’

  ‘Yes. Well, see you.’

  I stood for a moment, thought about my motives, decided not to think about them, went upstairs to shower, get the glue off my fingertips. Then I considered driving, phoning for a cab, instead walked down to Brunswick Street, fended off two pushers, got a cab, Ukrainian driver. I was in safe hands. He was a qualified surgeon and an Olympic skier, shockingly unappreciated in his adopted land and seriously thinking about going back.

  32

  Lyall Cronin’s hair was damp, black, back from her forehead. Cotton sweater, jeans. Barefoot. Taller than I recalled. Even barefoot.

  ‘Mr Irish.’ The crooked smile. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Like to see the ID?’ I asked.

  ‘I think I remember you. Come in.’

  She led the way down the passage into the room on the right, a room I hadn’t seen, a comfortable sitting room, long and narrow, assortment of armchairs, two big sofas facing each other, paintings and photographs on the walls, books and newspapers on the coffee table. On the CD player, something classical, piano. A near-full bottle of red wine and a glass stood on the ornate wooden mantelpiece above a badly made and dying fire.

  We stood.

  ‘More wood,’ she said. ‘We need wood. Not much left. Bradley did the wood. There was always a huge pile in the garage. I have no idea how to buy wood.’ She turned, shrugged. ‘First winter alone in this house. It’s much too big for one person but I can’t bear the idea of sharing with strangers. That part of life is over. If I didn’t love it so much, I’d find something smaller.’

  ‘Let’s see what’s left.’

  She put on shoes. I followed her down the passage, through the kitchen, across the courtyard into the garage. Half a dozen logs were in the corner just in front of Stuart Wardle’s BMW. I squeezed in, just managed to get them all into my arms.