by Peter Corris
'Watch your mouth.'
'I'm getting sick of this, Belfrage. I know what a defrocked, discredited, dis-fucking-grace to your profession you are. I've got the money and you can have it if you tell me something useful. Otherwise you can sink those two drinks and fuck off without the money or the brandy.'
He sat very still and lit another cigarette. 'Don't smoke, do you?'
'Not anymore.'
'How did you stop?'
'Stubbornness.'
'Yes, I can believe that. What do you want to know about Karl?'
'Where he and a woman named Pixie Padrone are.'
'Pixie!' He tried to drink and laugh at the same time and was overwhelmed by a coughing fit that shook him from head to toe. The cigarette fell from his fingers and the brandy glass hit the table, slopping out half of its contents. I put the cigarette in the ashtray and pushed the middy towards him as he fought for breath. After he managed to suck in a few wheezy gasps he drank some beer and reached for the cigarette. People were staring at us. I gripped his bony wrist, trying to look solicitous.
'Breathe some air and tell me about it.'
His puny chest heaved as air flowed into his wrecked system. 'You shouldn't make me laugh. You'll kill me.'
'Karl and Pixie, where?'
He wrapped both hands around the middy glass like a drowning man clutching at driftwood. 'Pixie Padrone, I remember when she was that. She could be had for ten dollars, five on a slow night. Now she's Patricia.'
'Okay. Take it slowly, I don't want you dropping dead quite yet. Tell me about them, especially where they are.'
'Brisbane.'
'I couldn't find him in the medical registry. Has he been delisted, like you?'
'You're trying to provoke me. No, he's changed his name. He's Karol Lubitsch now and, as I said, Pixie is Patricia.'
'Where in Brisbane?'
'They have a clinic in New Farm, Glendale Gardens or some such pretentious address.'
I moved around the table and put the bottle of brandy on the seat next to him.
'The money?' he said.
'In a minute. How would you suggest I get to see Lubeck… Lubitsch?'
The cloudy eyes studied me again. 'How many times has that nose been broken?'
'Several.'
'And the scarred eyebrows-boxing, I take it?' 'Right.'
'The nose could be remodelled and scars smoothed out. I'd suggest you get a referral from a doctor. A man in your trade should have a tame medico.'
'I wouldn't call him tame, but it can be done. Good idea.'
He snapped the long, blue-white fingers. 'So?'
'I've got just one problem. What's to stop you contacting Lubitsch and alerting him that I'm coming?'
He lit a cigarette from the butt of the previous one and drew on it with a surprising amount of wind. 'Why would I do that?'
'To bleed money from him, of course.'
He held up his hand. 'Don't make me laugh again. There's no love lost between Karol Lubitsch and me, I assure you. We had a serious falling out long ago. I passed a client to him who gave him a considerable amount of trouble. Legal trouble, which is what everyone in the profession fears most.'
'I can imagine.'
'At a guess, it's the same for you. I wouldn't want Lubitsch to know where I am or what I'm doing. He'd almost certainly take reprisals. And I'm sure you mean him harm, which is fine by me.' He ran out of breath for speaking but not for smoking, as if the nicotine opened some air passages. 'Malice, Mr Hardy,' he wheezed, 'is my middle name.'
I believed him and handed over the money.
11
How did it go?' Lily asked.
I'd dropped in at a post office on the way home and checked the Brisbane telephone directory. Dr Karl Lubitsch's address was listed as suites 12–14, Glendale Gardens, New Farm.
'You were right on all counts,' I said. 'He's an absolute creep, but he came through with the information I wanted. By the way, he said you traduced him.'
'Bullshit, I changed the name. So where are they?'
'Brisbane.'
'Uh oh, off again. Pretty soon we'll be meeting in airports.'
'Or joining the mile high club.'
'You wish. Well, it'll be warmer up there and I'll have the place here to myself to work.'
'There's a storm brewing. Phone the NRMA insurance if the roof blows off. Is it hard to get to see these guys?'
'Not for the initial consultation… What're you talking about?'
'I'm going to pretend to be a patient.'
'Client, please.'
*
Ian Sangster has been my doctor through metres of stitches and bandage and kilos of plaster of Paris. He laughed like a drain when I told him what I wanted. 'You know what happened to Harry Grebb?'
I did. Grebb, world light-heavyweight champion in the twenties and the only man ever to beat Gene Tunney, had died under the anaesthetic during an operation to straighten his pugilistic hooter.
'Don't worry, I won't be going under the knife.'
'You could do with a bit.'
'The closest I've ever come to cosmetic surgery is getting circumcised and I didn't have a say.'
I gave him the details and he said I could pick up the referral later in the day. I phoned the Brisbane number. A cool-voiced female receptionist answered. I told her I had a referral to Dr Lubitsch, and asked how soon I could see him.
'Would Friday suit you?'
'Nothing before that?'
'I'm afraid not. Unless there's a cancellation. What kind of medical cover do you have?'
'Top rank Medibank Private.'
She took down my number and said she'd phone if there was a cancellation. She rang back within an hour to say I could have an appointment at 8.30 am on Wednesday. I accepted.
'Please have your referral and your Medibank Private card with you.'
'Am I supposed to fast or bring a urine sample?'
She giggled. 'No, nothing like that. The initial consultation is more of a chat.'
'Wonder what you'll pay for a chat,' Lily said when
I told her I'd booked on a Tuesday afternoon Virgin flight to Brisbane in order to make the early Wednesday slot.
'That's a point. I'm going through Frank's money at a rate of knots.'
'Maybe you can get some more from the winsome widow.'
'All I can tell her is that her kid made a good impression on a bloke in a profession she despises. Not something she's likely to want to hear. Oh, and that her late hubby did hush-hush plastic surgery.'
As soon as I spoke, the thought struck me that Catherine Heysen was on a wild goose chase. If I could prove that her husband hadn't organised his partner's murder, still very problematical, it would most likely involve his work as a dodgy plastic surgeon. That was a revision hardly likely to divert the son onto the straight and narrow path. It felt like something to talk over with Frank. Although I hadn't wanted to give him an update yet, I decided I'd better.
'I'm free,' he said when I rang him.
'How about an overpriced drink out at the airport around one o'clock?'
'You're on.'
'What'll you tell Hilde?'
'Not your problem. See you there.'
I didn't like the sound of that but he was right. I had enough problems, including the major one of what I was going to say or do when I came face to face with Dr Karol Lubitsch, aka Karl Lubeck.
I put the Falcon in the long-term parking area, checked my one bag in the required time ahead of the flight, and passed through the metal detectors without setting off any bells and whistles. I had an old sports bag containing a book, a newspaper folded to the crossword page, a map of Brisbane and environs and a collapsible umbrella. I'd checked the weather and found it was going to be ten degrees warmer in Brisbane than in Sydney, but with storms threatening.
Frank was sitting at a table staring out at the planes on the tarmac and nursing a beer. He looked as though he wished he could get on one of the planes and head o
ff. I bought a drink and took a seat opposite him.
'Why here?' he said.
'My investigation on your behalf is taking me to Brisbane.'
'Half your luck.'
I had no option but to tell him what I'd been doing and the way things were looking at that point. He seemed disappointed that I hadn't put in any time on finding William Heysen.
'That wasn't my brief.'
'Yeah, sorry. My mind has been running on him a bit.'
I made the point I had to make-that, however it came out, young Heysen wasn't going to see his father as a model citizen and change his ways.
He nodded as if he'd come to the same conclusion himself before I even spoke. I was worried about him. Always spare, he'd lost weight and the lines on his face were more deeply etched. He was jumpy, wired. He finished his beer, got up and brought back two more.
'It might all take a different turn, mate,' he said.
'How's that?'
'Hilde knows something's wrong. She reads me like a book. I think I'm going to have to come clean about it all.'
'Could be the best thing.'
'Yeah, except she's in this funny state and there's a complication. We haven't heard from Peter in a while and there're reports of trouble in the part of South America he's in. She's very worried about him and I am, too. Not exactly the best time to spring a problem love child on her.'
'How serious are the reports? How credible?'
Frank shrugged. 'I don't know. I'm trying to find out more but the place isn't exactly well-ordered. He's looking into logging near the border of Brazil and Colombia. Hard to know what to believe.'
'What did you mean about things taking a different turn?'
Frank blinked, as though he was looking into the future and couldn't hold his gaze steady. 'God knows how Hilde'll react when I spell it out for her. Then there's Catherine. She's likely to want a DNA test to confirm I'm her son's father. She says she's got hair samples. If I am the father…'
'What?'
'I'd have to do something about straightening him out myself.'
I started on the second drink, hardly realising that I'd downed the first. 'Jesus, Frank, that'd be getting into deep water.'
His smile was humourless. 'With undertow.'
'Maybe we should just chuck the whole thing about Heysen. He was bent in one way or another. What's the difference?'
'No. Something went wrong in that investigation. I'd at least like to see that straightened out, even if everything else goes to hell in a hand cart.'
I wondered about his thinking. Was he still so attracted to Catherine Heysen that he'd consider trading one woman and one son for another woman and another son? Unlikely, but men in chaos think chaotically and do chaotic things.
Frank watched me as I chewed over what he'd said. Out of habit I felt for the boarding pass in my jacket pocket and he misinterpreted the movement. Before I could stop him he'd pulled out a cheque book and was writing.
'No, Frank.'
He ripped the cheque out, tearing a corner. 'What the hell. I'm going to see this through whatever it takes. You've paid Wain and Belfrage, right?'
'Yes, a bit, but-'
He shoved the cheque into my shirt pocket. 'Plane fare, accommodation, car hire, it all costs. I can afford it, Cliff.'
'What about Hilde and the cheque account?'
He sank his beer and got up. 'I'm going to tell her the whole story when I get home. Good luck, mate. Take care of yourself.'
Budget flying is okay for short trips but I prefer business class with the majors when a well-heeled client is paying. I wasn't going to load the expense account for Frank, but I found he'd given me a cheque for five thousand, which was over the top. He'd been jumpy, thirsty, distracted, nothing like the Frank I knew. I hoped he wasn't headed for a crisis of some kind. He'd handled plenty of professional crises in his time, but personal ones involving family are a different matter.
The plane battled against headwinds all the way and ran into heavy turbulence over the Gold Coast. The sideways lurches and stomach-dropping free-falls matched my pessimistic mood. I was by the window and had given up on Anna Funder's Stasiland, fascinating though it was, because I couldn't keep the book steady enough to read. When I saw lightning flashes not too far away I began to get that this-could-be-it feeling. I've had it before. I wouldn't say your life flashes before your eyes but, in my case, I do tend to conduct a bit of a life review along 'I did it my way' lines. It stops the instant of touchdown.
As predicted, the air was steamy in Brisbane, as if the whole city was waiting for the storm cell to reach it and break. Despite the heat, everyone was hurrying to go about their business, and I could feel the tension around the carousel as we waited for our bags. Seemed like a hundred mobile phones were glued to a hundred ears. My bag came off early, and I beat some competitors to the Avis desk where I hired a Pulsar.
I drove out of the airport, which they've had the sense to locate at a distance from the city, under a sky the colour of bruised blood plums. I'd booked into the closest motel I could find to Glendale Gardens, in Brunswick Street, New Farm-a good spot near some shops and cheap in the off season. I was on the second level looking down towards the river. I'd unpacked my bag and cracked a Fourex from the mini-bar when the storm hit. Had I wound up the window on the Pulsar? I hoped so, but I certainly wasn't going down to check in this. The hail came first, golfball-sized, pelting the roof and the small balcony but melting immediately on the warm surfaces. The rain followed. It lashed down, driven by a stiff wind that bent the trees, shredding the ones with leaves.
Dry and warm with a drink in hand, a storm is a bit of pleasant drama to watch. Not so much fun if you're out in it as I have been plenty of times. The gutters ran, filled, overflowed and water washed across the roads. The few cars still moving threw up skeins of water, bonnet and roof high. Thunderclaps shook the building, or seemed to, and the lightning flashes flickered and darted across the sky like artillery.
A knock came at the door and I tore myself away from the show to answer it. The very gay young man who'd checked me in was standing damply with his umbrella halfopen.
'Oh, Mr Hardy, just checking. Did any water come in through the balcony door?'
'Not a drop.'
'Good, good. Luckily, you're on the right side of the building, but just making sure. One of the other rooms is awash.'
'Pretty dramatic, isn't it?'
'I suppose so. Your satellite TV reception could be out for a while. Hope you weren't watching the cricket.'
'Never do.'
'Really? You look like a sportsman.'
'Boxing.'
'Oh, well, glad everything's all right.'
I went back to the window, and as quickly as it had arrived, the storm passed. The clouds rolled back and the sun shone through, producing a rainbow and causing steam to rise from the wet roads. All in all, it was one of the best receptions I'd ever had on arriving anywhere. I drained the can and scored a hit in the wpb. Good start.
When the sky was totally clear I grabbed the umbrella and went for a walk down Brunswick Street, past the shops and on to the park that ran alongside the river. It was a nice park-big, not fussy and with plenty of Moreton Bay figs, the way a Brisbane park should be. There was a wide cycle and walking path around the perimeter that probably ran for close on two kilometres and the walkers and joggers and cyclists and rollerbladers were out already, splashing through the patchy shallow puddles and squelching through the thick layer of leaves blown down by the storm. A woman in running gear pushing a pram was moving along at a fast clip, passing the slowcoaches.
I'd more or less memorised the map and found my way to Glendale Gardens easily enough. The street was upmarket-apartment blocks interspersed with big houses and a couple of high-rent commercial buildings. The Lubitsch place was in one these-a pale blue structure, three storeys, set at the highest point of the street. The front suites on the second and third levels would have a nice view out over the pa
rk and the river. Lubitsch was in suites 12 to 14 and it was a fair bet that he'd be up there in front. When you're at a prestige address you want the best position.
I walked back to the motel, stopping to buy a bottle of wine and check out the eateries. Plenty to choose from. I'd been hoping the walk would give me some idea of how to tackle Lubitsch, but nothing came. Except this: he was obviously doing well, had acquired a lot, and while that can be a plus it can also be a minus because what you've got you don't want to lose.
12
I'd given Frank the phone number of the motel and he rang me when I got back from dinner.
'Got you,' he said. 'I've been trying for a while.'
'What's up?'
'Have you got any grog to hand? As if I need to ask.'
I had a third of the bottle of white wine left from my meal at a Spanish joint. 'Yes,' I said.
'Pour it.'
I did. 'Hate to say it, Frank, but you sound a bit pissed.'
'I am, Hilde is as well. We're well into our second bottle of champagne and thinking about a third. Peter's been in touch.'
I had a drink. 'That's good.'
'He's in love.'
'That's better.'
'Yeah, and his girlfriend's pregnant with twins. Hilde's over the moon. They're coming back soon. Shit, I'm rhyming. I am pissed.'
'That's great news. When did this happen?'
'Hilde told me when I got back from meeting you. Then Peter phoned again.'
'I see. And have you…?'
'Of course I have. Hilde was afraid I was hiding cancer from her or something. She's relieved and she's fine about it. I mean about the boy possibly being mine. She says I should find out for sure.'
Yeah, I thought, and what about your attraction to Catherine Heysen? But I said: 'What effect does all this have on the investigation?'
'I haven't thought it through yet, but I want you to go on. If Heysen was railroaded I was partly responsible and I'd like that cleared up. I owe it to the kid whoever's son he is.'
'And if he's yours you'll want to help him get out of the shitty business he says he's in.'
'That's right, and the same goes if he isn't. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'