‘Anyway, Peregrine,’ said Les, when the Englishman surfaced for air. ‘You’re definitely going to have to lay low now, mate. No going out. And no leaving the room.’
‘Au contraire, old boy,’ insisted Peregrine. ‘After all that sleep and a few tipples, I feel absolutely tip-top. So I’m off into the city and then it’s out on the tiles tonight. Let’s get something straight between us, Les.’ Peregrine fixed Norton with an even look. ‘I appreciate what you’re doing, though I do think it’s a great load of waffle all round. But I am not your prisoner. Okay? So I’m off into town. Because I know that tomorrow you’re dragging me off to some remote part of this godforsaken wilderness for two weeks.’ Peregrine drained his glass. ‘Gad! It’s all too ghastly to even contemplate.’
Norton’s face began to scowl. ‘Listen, Peregrine,’ he said evenly. ‘I think you’d better get something into your head.’ Les was about to continue when the phone rang next to the bath.
Peregrine picked it up. ‘Yes?’ He listened intently for a moment then looked quizzingly at Les. ‘It’s for you. Someone called Saliva?’
Norton smiled and nodded. ‘I know who it is. Tell him to come up.’
‘Very good. Send him to my room,’ answered Peregrine and hung up.
‘You mind if I make myself a cup of coffee?’ asked Les.
‘Help yourself, old boy.’
Norton went to the bar and began fossicking around for a jug and some instant coffee while Peregrine continued to splash around in his bubble bath. After a minute or two there was a knock on the door. Les opened it and got an inquisitive smile from Katherine.
‘G’day, Les. How’s it going?’ said the man next to her.
‘All right Eddie. Come on in.’ Les smiled back at Katherine and closed the door.
Wearing black jeans and a matching leather jacket, Eddie Salita walked into the suite, looked briefly around and stood at the end of the spa-bath.
‘Peregrine,’ said Norton. ‘Here is someone I want you to meet. This is Eddie. Eddie’s going to help look after you too.’
‘Hello, Peregrine,’ said Eddie, his face a solemn mask.
‘Hi.’ Peregrine nodded briefly and indifferently through the soapsuds.
‘I’m just making a cup of coffee,’ said Norton to Eddie. ‘You want one?’
‘Yeah, righto. It’s fuckin’ freezin’ outside now.’
Norton moved back round to the bar and motioned with his head for Eddie to join him. While he was making their coffee, he quietly told Eddie more or less what Peregrine had told him and described his attitude to what was going on around him. Eddie listened and nodded grimly then they took their coffees back to the side of the spa-bath.
‘Got your photo in this morning’s paper, mate?’ said Eddie, taking a sip of coffee.
Peregrine shrugged moodily from under the soapsuds without answering Eddie. It was bad enough Norton being there invading his privacy; now he had another stranger to contend with and he was making sure his feelings were known.
‘Oh well,’ continued Eddie. ‘Doesn’t matter all that much I suppose.’ Then he turned to Norton. ‘You may as well piss off, Les. You gotta pick up the car and pack your gear and that. I can look after things here.’
‘Okay,’ said Les, pleased in a way to be getting out of the place. He put his half finished cup of coffee in the sink. ‘I’ll see you later then, Peregrine. Don’t forget, mate. We’ll be leaving early in the morning. Probably around six-thirty.’ Peregrine nodded but didn’t reply. ‘I’ll see you after, Eddie.’
‘Righto, Les. Give us a ring round six or so.’
‘Okay. See you then.’
The door closed and Les was gone.
Eddie began walking around the Sir Robert Helpmann suite, sipping his coffee while he admired the furnishings. ‘Nice place you picked to stay in,’ he said nodding approvingly. ‘Very nice indeed.’
‘It’s adequate,’ sniffed Peregrine.
‘Yeah, right. Adequate.’
Eddie gave a short laugh and moved towards the balcony. He hit a button and the electric curtains swished back to give a superb view over Sydney. Eddie opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. ‘Nice view you got too,’ he called back pleasantly to Peregrine while he sipped his coffee in the chilly sou’wester whipping across the balcony.
‘I say! Would you mind closing the door?’ Peregrine called back. ‘There’s quite a draught coming in here.’
Eddie smiled over at Peregrine and stepped back inside leaving the door open. Still slowly sipping his coffee he strolled to the end of the spa-bath.
‘Les tells me you’re thinking of going out for a bit of a drink tonight.’
‘I’m not thinking of going out. I am going out. Till late. Very late.’
Eddie gave another little chuckle and sipped some more coffee. ‘Yeah, well, why wouldn’t you?’ he smiled. ‘You’re young. You’re rich. You’re not a bad looking bloke. If I was in your shoes I’d probably be doing the same thing.’
‘Exactly,’ said Peregrine bluntly. ‘Now would you mind closing that blessed door.’
Eddie smiled benevolently at Peregrine then finished his coffee and put the empty cup to the side of the bath. ‘The door?’ he said ‘Oh yeah. I forgot the door.’
Like a snake striking, Eddie reached across the spa-bath and with his left hand, took Peregrine by the hair and yanked him out of the water making him yelp with shock and pain. With water dripping everywhere off his naked body, Eddie frog-marched Peregrine out onto the balcony and with a grip of iron forced him up over the edge. With his right hand, Eddie whipped a .38 revolver from a holster beneath his jacket and rammed the muzzle into Peregrine’s date. It was bitterly cold out on the balcony. There was nothing under the Englishman’s face but ten floors of thin air, he had the cold barrel of a Smith and Wesson wedged in his bum and a not too happy Eddie Salita holding him by the scruff of the neck like a dog with a rat. Sir Peregrine Normanhurst III was absolutely terrified and about twenty seconds away from shitting all over the barrel of Eddie’s gun.
‘Now you listen to me, you fuckin’ pommy prick,’ Eddie hissed right into Peregrine’s ear. ‘There’s a lot of people going to a lot of trouble to look after your skinny fuckin’ neck while you’re out here. Me, I don’t give a fuck about you one way or the other. I’d just as soon throw you over the edge and make it look like suicide, and save us all a lot of fucking about all round. You listening?’ Peregrine gasped a reply and tried not to look at the pavement ten floors below. ‘Now I don’t know what sort of pricks you run around with in England. But out here, we ain’t got time to be fucked around. So what d’you want to do, shithead? Behave yourself and have a nice two-week holiday in Australia? Or go hang-gliding au naturale, with your bowels blown up through the top of your head?’ Eddie nudged the barrel of the .38 a little further into Peregrine’s quoit. ‘Make up your fuckin’ mind, knackers. I ain’t got all day and it’s freezin’ out here.’
‘All right. All right. Whatever you say,’ gasped Peregrine, choking back a tear.
‘Good.’
Eddie pulled Peregrine back from the edge of the balcony and pushed him inside, sliding the door closed with his heel at the same time. He marched him back across to the spabath and lowered him into the water. ‘Now,’ smiled Eddie, putting the .38 back in its holster. He picked up a towel and began wiping the water from his leather jacket and jeans. ‘Isn’t it nice to know we’ve both got a perfect understanding?’
Peregrine’s eyes were still bulging with fear. His face was flushed and a small tear trickled down his cheek. He flinched suddenly as Eddie reached for the ice-bucket behind his head.
‘Well, well, well, what have we got here?’ smiled Eddie, picking up the almost empty bottle. ‘Cristal. My, you have got good taste, Peregrine, This is Elton’s favourite, you know.’ Eddie finished what was left and dropped the empty bottle back in the ice-bucket. ‘I’ll tell you what, old bean. Why don’t we have another one?’ He pick
ed up the phone at the side of the bath. ‘Hello. Room service? Yes. Could we have a bottle of ’68 Cristal to room 1012 please.’ The little hit man picked up a piece of smoked salmon from the tray and popped it in his mouth. ‘And some smoked salmon too. And while you’re there…’
ABOUT AN HOUR or so after leaving Eddie with Peregrine at the Sebel, Les had left his car at home and was in a taxi heading along the Princes Highway to Tempe. He had the slip of paper Price had given him and was trying to recollect who the car dealer was. Bill Kileen? Yeah, I know him now, not a bad style of a bloke. Loves a drink. He comes up the game every now and again; punts about fifty dollars and drinks about another five hundred’s worth of bourbon. He must either owe Price a favour or Price is getting him back for all the free piss he’s gone through. Oh well, Norton chuckled to himself. He’s got a car yard and I’ve got the pick of the cars. There’s got to be a Mercedes there, or, seeing as we’re going up the bush, a nice new four-wheel-drive.
His train of thought was interrupted by the taxi driver. ‘Hey, mate. Did you say this place was opposite the Tempe bus depot?’
‘Yeah,’ replied Norton, looking up from the slip of paper.
‘Well, there’s the bus depot,’ said the cab driver, nodding out his window. ‘That must be it on the corner.’
He stopped the taxi next to a car yard near a set of lights where a number of coloured plastic flags fluttered in the chilly sou’wester. Above the Australian flags was a white on black sign: Kileen’s Prestige Kars.
‘Yeah, this is it all right,’ nodded Les. ‘What do I owe you?’ He paid the cabbie and got out.
If Norton was expecting Kileen’s Prestige Kars to be the BMW or Bentley dealership at Tempe he was in for a bit of a surprise. The car yard, like its owner, had definitely seen better days. A black, wrought-iron fence, part of which was missing, housed about fifteen or so clean, but fairly nondescript cars. For some reason a sign saying Free Firewood was wired where the length of fence was missing. The cars — Holdens, Fords, Mazdas, Toyotas etc — all had the usual spiel pasted across the windscreens. Make Me An Offer. Save $$$. Ready For Work. Four On The Floor. This Week’s Special. The piece de resistance appeared to be a yellow, Daihatsu Hi-Jet mounted on blocks at the front of the yard. There were no new, fourwheel drives and definitely no Mercedes. As Norton stood there surveying a very uninspiring scene, a slightly-built figure with straight brown hair and a wispy blonde moustache, shuffled from a white office at the rear to a small white caravan in a corner of the yard. Yeah, that’s him all right. Killer Kileen. Hope he’s sober. It’s well after lunch. Norton waited till the figure in jeans and blue V-neck sweater shuffled from the caravan back to the office and went in after him. He gave the door a bit of a tap and before he had a chance to speak, Kileen jumped up from what he was doing and greeted Les like he was a long lost friend.
‘Les! G’day mate. How are you goin’? How’s things?’ He had bright, inquisitive brown eyes and a cheerful but gruff voice that spoke of cigarettes, late nights and booze.
‘Not too bad, Bill,’ replied Les, with a brief handshake.
‘You’re out here to pick up that car, right?’ Les nodded. ‘Righto.’ Kileen gestured to the yard. ‘Help yourself. They’re all the grouse, too, I might add.’
‘Okay, thanks.’
As Les said that a phone rang in another room. ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ said Kileen and went to answer it.
Norton nodded a reply. He was about to go out into the yard when something near the table Kileen had been sitting at caught his eye. He moved over for a closer look. In a plastic kitchen-tidy were a dozen empty bottles of Jim Beam. Next to these in another kitchen-tidy was a solitary empty bottle of Diet Pepsi. Christ, thought Norton, this bloke does like a drink. If ever he dies they’d better not get him cremated — it’ll take them six weeks to put the fire out. He shook his head and walked out to the yard.
It took Les five minutes of indifferent looking to narrow the field down to three cars: a red Holden sedan, a hottedup green Torana or a white T-bar automatic Ford station wagon. He was checking to make sure the Ford had a stereo when Kileen appeared.
‘That was my missus on the phone,’ he said. ‘She’d talk the leg off an iron-pot.’ Norton tried to ignore him as he checked out the Ford station wagon. ‘You picked one out yet?’
‘Yeah,’ nodded Les. ‘I’ll take the station wagon.’
‘Good idea,’ smiled Kileen, running a hand along the roof. ‘Top car this. Eight months rego. New tyres. Motor’s just been done up. A woman traded it. Had to sell it because she was pregnant. Her husband was a doctor. The car’s never …’
Kileen was about to go into his full on, car dealer’s spiel when Norton cut him off. ‘Hey mate. I’m only borrowing it, remember. I don’t want to buy it.’
‘Yeah, right. Sure.’ Kileen smiled and made a gesture with his hands. ‘You know I am only lending this to Price for a couple of weeks ’cause I owe him a favour. So you won’t… you know, flog the guts out of it will you, Les? I mean, I got to sell it when you bring it back. So look after it a bit, will you, mate?’
‘Sure,’ replied Les, in all honesty. ‘I’ll look after it. It’s only to get me and another bloke up to this property and it’ll be sitting there doing nothing. Apart from the drive up and back, I’ll hardly be using it at all.’
‘Sweet. Terrific. Good on you, Les. Just hold on a sec and I’ll get you the keys and rego papers.’
Norton removed a sign from the windscreen saying T-Bar Automatic as Kileen came back and handed him the keys and rego papers. Kileen shook hands with him and wished him a good trip; Les thanked him and backed out into the yard. Kileen motioned him to a driveway at the side of the yard, Norton drove down it, gave the horn a toot then drove through the lights to make a U-turn and head back in the direction of Bondi.
By the time Les had passed Centennial Park, he’d put the two-year-old station wagon through its paces, without flogging it too much, and was pleased to see it went well. He was also pleased to see the stereo-radio worked okay and guessed the cassette did as well. Yeah, not a bad car at all, he thought happily. The trip up north is going to be a breeze. In fact when Norton had almost reached Bondi he liked the car that much he made a mental note to make Kileen an offer when he got back and update his old Ford sedan. Cruising along, he decided to go down the back of Bronte past Tamarama and have a look at the sea, which was always clear and blue and smooth during the offshore winds in winter.
He was rounding the bend at Tamarama slowly heading towards the surf club, when a familiar figure standing against the railing checking out the ocean caught his eye. The figure turned just as Les drew near and waved. It was Tony Nathan, the surf photographer. What the hell thought Norton, being in an extra good mood, I’ll stop and have a mag. See what he’s got to say for himself.
Tony was a medium-built fellow in his thirties with a mop of bushy black hair and a face that seemed to register a permanent, impassive patience. He was always broke and always had a story about some bastard who had just ripped him off. So to make ends meet, and to compensate for everyone dudding him with his photographs, he worked part time as a disc jockey in a bar at Randwick, where, because of his hair, someone nicknamed him ‘Steelo’ as in steel wool. Because of the music this got mishmashed into Steely Dan and somehow his nickname alternated between the two. Les got to know him when he occasionally left North Bondi for Tamarama where Tony lived, and often borrowed Tony’s boogie board and flippers at the beach. But Tony was a popular, likeable bloke and was arguably, probably because of his endless patience, the best surfing photographer in Australia. Steelo’s only fault, if there was one, was that nobody in Australia swore as much as him, not even Norton.
Les stopped the car, got out and crossed the road. ‘Hello there, the Dan,’ he said, leaning against the railing next to him. ‘What are you up to, mate?’
‘Not much,’ answered Tony tightly. ‘Just standing here freezing my fuckin’ nuts off.’
<
br /> Norton shifted his gaze to what Tony was looking at; about half a dozen surfers were getting stuck into a red-hot left breaking near the reef down from the surf club. A squat figure in a red and white steamer with corn blonde hair caught his eye. ‘Hey, isn’t that Cheyne Horan out there?’
‘Yeah,’ nodded Tony. ‘I was thinking of getting a few photos of him, but it’s starting to fill up.’ They both watched as Cheyne took off and tore apart another left. ‘No, fuck it,’ said Tony. ‘I’ll save my film for Newcastle tomorrow.’
‘Newcastle?’ Norton registered his surprise. ‘You going to Newcastle tomorrow?’
‘Yeah,’ grunted Tony. ‘Got to take some photos of Mark Richards.’ Then he went into one of his tirades. ‘But I gotta catch the fuckin’ train. I got no fuckin’ car. Got no fuckin’ money. And I hate catching fuckin’ trains, the cunts of fuckin’ things never run on time. Fuck it. It’d give you the fuckin’ shits.’
‘Hey, hang on a sec, Steelo,’ smiled Les, remembering he owed Tony a few favours. ‘I’m going up the North Coast first thing tomorrow. I can drop you off at Newcastle. What time you got to be there?’
‘About nine-thirty.’
‘Well, come up with us. We’re leaving at six-thirty.’
‘Fair dinkum?’ Tony’s eyes lit up. ‘Unfuckin’real.’
‘I got to pick a bloke up at the Cross at six-thirty, so I’ll pick you up at six-fifteen. Where do you live?’
Tony pointed to a block of units just up the hill from the beach. ‘Those units there. Flat four.’
‘Okay. Be out the front at six-fifteen tomorrow.’
They stood there for a few more minutes watching the surfers but it started to get too cold for Les. Tony said he’d stay a while longer and he’d see Les in the morning. Norton said goodbye and emphasised to Tony not to be late.
Well, that’s all right thought Les, as he cruised towards Bondi. At least I’ll have someone to talk to for a while on the way up besides Lord Shitbags the Third. He’ll probably be hungover and whingeing all the way up. Norton hadn’t been given enough notice about the trip to get some tapes made up, but he called in to see his mate at Peach Music and bought a few new ones to listen to anyway. After perusing what was available, Les settled for some Divynls, Hunters and Collectors, Best of Richard Clapton, James Reyne and a few others. The cassette player in the car worked like a charm, and it was loud. Richard Clapton was thumping the daylights out of ‘Getting To The Heart Of It’ and the speakers were almost breaking loose from the interior when Norton pulled up outside his Bondi semi, groceries in the back and tank full of petrol, at around four-thirty.
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