THURSDAY'S ORCHID

by Mitchell, Robert

  But we always operated through a middle-man, a go-between. We were never in direct contact with the operation. If something went wrong, which was very rarely, we would be in the clear. We made certain there was nothing in writing to link us with the actual participants. Once or twice we found ourselves very close to the law, but there was always a loophole, and we made use of it. A lack of willing witnesses was of considerable assistance, that and the absence of documentary evidence kept us far removed from the action.

  Western systems of justice are built on documentary proof. If it’s not written down in plain language, with a simple meaning incapable of being twisted, then it can’t be relied upon as evidence. Perhaps that’s a simplification, but not too far off the mark.

  Those ten years were full ones. I met a lot of people and saw a lot of places, not just the tourist scenes but the real side of life in many exotic latitudes. Life was good. We both had plenty of money; money that we invested wisely but quietly – mostly under assumed names, never putting all of our eggs into the one basket.

  We fitted together, the three of us, George, Peggy and me. We were each different from the other and there was no competition, no jealousy. We each had what we wanted, more than enough.

  Whilst George and I would be away on some deal, Peggy would be keeping the home fires burning, so to speak. She didn’t seem to mind. She must have suspected that we got up to a bit of mischief with the ladies now and then, but as long as George came home to her, she was content.

  Peggy died three years ago. The cancer that had been nibbling away at her body started taking huge chunks. It was a terrible thing to watch. She just wasted away before our eyes. It must have been agony for George. I know it was agony for Peggy. The pain in her eyes was the worst of it, for she covered up the rest; but she couldn’t conceal what had happened to those once sparkling eyes.

  She lasted three months from the date the diagnosis was confirmed.

  Yes, she died on a Thursday.

  With the passing of Peggy I lost the only female friend I had. I had plenty of female companions; any amount to take to bed and kid around with. But Peggy had been the only one I could sit with and talk to about problems, frustrations and the like.

  But I wasn’t the only one to lose her.

  After she died, George wasn’t the same person. He became moody, morose. He would mope around the apartment, half-reading books, watching a bit of television now and then, and gradually withdrawing into himself. I gave up my unit and moved in with him, hoping that the company and my constant presence would bring him out of it. But he sank deeper and deeper.

  And then one night he hit the bottle. He hadn’t had a drink for quite a while, trying to hold himself in; but this particular night he just let go and gave the whisky bottle a punishment it had never seen from him.

  He sat huddled in his favourite chair: an old leather-covered, brass-studded monster of a thing. Peggy had threatened to have it recovered a number of times, but been forbidden to do so on pain of death. One minute he was mumbling to himself and the next he was sobbing and crying, tears sliding down his cheeks, his whole body shuddering like a child awakening from a nightmare.

  He broke down, his face somehow grown old, and began to unburden his shame; not shame of our business and the way we had dealt with society, but shame at the way he had treated Peggy: how he had fornicated, wined and dined attractive women, travelled the world – without giving poor Peggy even a thought; about poor Peggy who had stuck by him: taking the little love and affection he saw fit to mete out; about poor Peggy: shriveling before his eyes, gurgling and gasping as the end drew near, and yet still uncomplaining. He cried with his head in his hands, his hair matted and twisted from clawing fingers.

  “What good is all the damn money?” he moaned, looking up at me through red eyes. “It couldn’t do a damn thing to stop the cancer. What good is it to anybody?” He looked down at his slippered feet and then back up to me. “We’ll all be going one day, Jeff,” he said softly.

  I did my best to calm him, explaining that Peggy knew what he was like, what his needs were; and that his happiness was what she had wanted most. I told him that she would have left him if she had been unhappy, but she had stayed – content with him and his boisterous ways.

  I believe I convinced him of Peggy’s love, assured him that if he hadn’t been the man he was then she would have missed out on many things, things that had made the last years of her life rich and full.

  For the next couple of weeks or so he seemed calmer. We went to the races in Brisbane and to the dog track once or twice, and even took in a nightclub. It was probably the nightclub that did it, for after the nightclub he became even more lethargic than before, shuffling around the apartment, hunched over like some old man. He began to close himself off in his study, the study in which we had spent so many hours planning and scheming our way to the money we now had locked away safe and sound in Switzerland, and other places. Each time I entered – on some pretext or other – he would simply raise his head from his papers, covering them with his hands, and stare at me until I left.

  The windows were kept closed, the air mouldy. His once massive frame was dwindling, the shirts sloping away off his shoulders.

  Time. It was only a matter of time and he would come right, or so I kept telling myself. But I knew it wasn’t true. He was becoming worse as each day went by.

  About a couple of weeks after he had started spending those solitary days – and sometime entire nights – immersed in his papers, I went looking for a copy of a magazine I had left in the study. Gorge was asleep in his bedroom, exhausted after an unusually long confinement at his desk.

  I noticed that he had been using the tape recorder. And more out of curiosity than with any intention of eavesdropping, I wound the tape back and switched it to play. George was sleeping like the dead with his bedroom door firmly closed. There was no way the noise would wake him.

  Sitting down at the desk I began to flick through the magazine, wondering at the properties displayed by certain of the sensuous forms, with only half my mind on the tape. George’s voice droned on, difficult to hear and to understand; but slowly my unconscious mind began to grasp the fact that he was discussing the finer details of the last illegal transaction we had worked on. I put down the magazine, turning my whole attention to the tape. In between his mumbling and his murmuring he had set out the whole deal: the people involved; the money earned, and where it had gone.

  I locked the study door; not actually locked it, as there was no key; but I propped one of the chairs under the door handle and wedged it in tight. I needed privacy. I tried the drawer to the desk. It was locked. But I knew the key would still be where it had always been kept: under the large porcelain ashtray.

  I took out the papers I had seen him working on over the last few days, and the rest of the tapes. It took me nearly three hours to go through the lot. The entire collection was a petition, a confession of his evil life. He was begging for punishment for everything he had done throughout his life. It went back to the days before we met, covering every shady deal up to the time of Peggy’s death. His memory was fantastic. Maybe it was all he had left in life. It was an atonement for his attitude to Peggy and his treatment of her.

  If it ever reached the authorities – the police – then we were both in trouble. Everything would be confiscated: the bank accounts, the safety deposit boxes, the properties – they were all listed on the tape. Another few days and it would be complete. He had even typed a letter ready to send the whole lot to the Attorney-General.

  George needed help and it was up to me to find that help for him, for he had given me so much. He had taken me in and shown me the ways of the world, shown me how to succeed. Without George I would probably have finished up as some sort of beach-bum, without a cent to my name and no future of any kind to look forward to. Maybe it would have been better for both of us if he had left me alone.

  But then I would never have met Mee Ling, never
have known what life really was,

  I lay awake for hours that night, trying to figure out how I could help him over this crisis. Reasoning with him was not enough. I had tried that. It had worked for a while, but he would always slip back, and it might happen when I was not on hand to talk him round again. He needed counselling, professional help. But how could I get that for him and still keep our secrets. I could find no answer.

  I awoke exhausted the next day, trying to be cheerful, trying to cheer him up. It was Thursday, Peggy’s day.

  We left the apartment just after ten o’clock on our weekly pilgrimage to Peggy’s grave, the only time he seemed to show any sign of an interest outside the apartment, the only day of the week he would bother to shower and shave. I locked the front door and, as I turned and jerked the key from the lock, my elbow caught George in the back. He stumbled forward towards the stair rail, hands caught deep in his trouser pockets. His waist hit the rail and, as if in slow motion, he tilted over the painted steel bar, shoes starting to slide up off the concrete.

  I watched as he rocked forward, his face staring towards the hard concrete basement lying four stories below, balancing on the top of the rail, arching his back as his hands started to fight their way out of his pockets, his head turning, giving one questioning glance as I stood unmoving, undecided, and yet knowing that if I stepped forward and reached out and grabbed him by the jacket I could probably pull him back. But in that one split second my subconscious mind had made its decision.

  He never made a sound the whole way down. I listened, counting the seconds as he fell, and waiting for the cry that never came.

  I don’t think he felt any pain as he hit the bottom. A four-storey drop to solid concrete is sudden. The brain has no time to register the nerve end’s piercing scream.

  There was no inquest. I told the police how I had seen him go out the door with tears in his eyes, and how I had heard his scream of Peggy! as he went over the rail.

  The neighbours had noticed his deterioration and how withdrawn he had become. They were all very sorry. He had been popular, they said, always friendly. He had even told one of them that he was getting his affairs in order, preparing to square things for Peggy.

  The tapes were easy to erase, but even so I still burnt them along with his papers and notes. They had made interesting reading. He had got up to some odd stunts in the old days.

  The authorities were convinced he had taken the so-called easy way out. Or, to put it another way, they didn’t really care and were probably only too pleased to close the file they must have had on him.

  George had made a will, mainly in favour of Peggy, with a proviso for me to take if she should predecease him. There weren’t many assets actually in his name, but it still took the lawyers over a year to sort the whole thing out and to have those assets transferred to me.

  The rest of it was in assumed names, in accounts for which we could both sign. There were deposits of cash, diamonds, and a small amount of bullion – all in various safety-deposit boxes spread around the world. And our Swiss account was still in a healthy position.

  There was no need to get embroiled in the sorts of deals we had been accustomed to. I intended to indulge myself for a while. I remembered what George had said about all that money not being sufficient to buy Peggy’s health. The time to spend was whilst I was still young enough to enjoy it.

  I lived the carefree life of a playboy for the next two years, with plenty of fast cars and even faster women. There were chartered yachts, deluxe suites, fine wines, and jewellery for my ladies – the best of everything. I went skiing in Switzerland during the season, and cruising on the Mediterranean. The casinos in Monte Carlo and Macau received more than they gave, but what the hell.

  It’s amazing how much money you can burn trying to keep up with the jet-set. I don’t know how much I spent. I didn’t really want to know, for I knew it would frighten me. But none of it was wasted – an investment in the good life. At the end of those two years I was no longer rich. I wasn’t exactly broke; there was still about three hundred thousand locked away in various accounts, together with the bullion. But the bullion was my escape money, untraceable and convertible in any country in the world. I didn’t want to have to dip into that.

  And then I met Nick again.

  Nick.

  I hadn’t given him a conscious thought for two or three years, and he had no bearing on my leaving Europe. Maybe fate had a hand, maybe not. I have never been certain whether there is a preordained destiny for us all.

  It was just that it was time to return to Australia and get the feel of a regular life once more, time to seek out old friends and acquaintances, time to find out what was happening, what deals were being set up. It was time to get amongst the action again, time to stir up the brain cells. I had grown fat and lazy, and bored.

  Given time I might have thought of Nick, but he happened anyway.

  For some obscure reason I chose to make Adelaide my point of entry into Australia. I could keep a low profile in South Australia, and quietly settle myself back into the routine of things. It would give me a chance to keep away from the rich living I would fall into if I went back to Queensland.

  I had always been one for the races, at least ever since George introduced me to the horses, so what more natural thing for me to do on my first day in the city of gardens, a city nestled between the hills and the sea, than to attend a race meeting.

  Adelaide’s Victoria Park track is nowhere near as famous as Melbourne’s Flemington, or Sydney’s Randwick; but on a crisp sunny Saturday afternoon – with the bunting flying, the ladies decked out in their finery and the crowds straining on their toes as the horses surge to the post – fame is of little consequence. The excitement at Victoria Park is just the same, the roar of the crowd just as loud, and the smiles of the bookies probably even wider.

  An Australian race-track has no comparison anywhere. It’s friendly. There’s not the sophistication that exists at the English courses. But there’s more greenery and more fashionable women than you will find on any track in America. And as for the Continent, well I’ll say no more.

  I was enjoying myself. It was good to be back.

  The meeting was all but concluded, with only one more race to be run. I had backed one winner and several losers, which was about my usual pattern. Professional punters study the horses, jockeys, form and courses. Me, I just pick whatever takes my fancy. I always felt that studying the whole thing makes it far too serious and takes all the fun out of winning; even though it might cut down on some of the losses. But it’s the feeling of not being sure, the surge of hope and excitement as the horses burst out of the starting gate and head for the first turn that is the thrill of racing; not the balance sheet at the end of the day.

  I had been standing by the rail at the mounting paddock for no more than two minutes, waiting for the horses to prance in, heads tossing as each tried to drag the reins from the handler’s grip, when suddenly I had the feeling that someone was looking at me. It’s that sensation you get between the shoulder blades, high up in the small of your back. They say that’s it’s something we inherited from our prehistoric ancestors. Maybe it is, and then again, maybe not. But it always worries me.

  I searched for those staring eyes for twenty long seconds. And then I found them high up in the Member’s stand. Nick.

  Tony Nikolides – known to his friends as Nick – a second-generation Greek. Nick ran a number of restaurants, some specialty boutiques, and a couple of fruit and vegetable shops, originally started by his father – one of the early market gardeners in South Australia.

  As far as the public was concerned it was the various businesses that made Nick’s money. Very few people knew that he was one of the more accomplished drug-dealers in South Australia, if not the whole country. The businesses were now only a front, an explanation for his wealth. The proceeds of some of his drug deals were laundered through the businesses, but only as much as was needed to support his wa
y of life. I didn’t know where the rest of it went, maybe the Bahamas, or Austria. I wasn’t really interested.

  But he wasn’t into the heavy drugs, such as heroin, or crack; his dealings were mainly with cannabis, or marijuana as it’s commonly called. Those in the trade refer to it as grass.

  Nick was cautious – maybe too cautious. He kept a small, tight operation; making enough money to keep himself and his family in the manner that he considered a man of his breeding should enjoy; and proud of his Greek heritage. Being satisfied to just make enough, he let others handle the heavier side of the industry, letting them take the risks, and the condemnation.

  But that’s not to say he was soft. Far from it. I had heard more than enough to know that I should treat Nick with respect.

  And there he stood, decked out in a three-piece suit, club tie, binoculars strung around his neck and what I took to be one of his daughters clutching his left arm. She had to be his daughter, for he wasn’t the sort to be caught in public with someone other than his wife.

  I hadn’t seen him for perhaps four years, but he hadn’t changed much: maybe a bit thicker about the cheeks, and with some grey creeping into his sideburns. The smile built up across his face when he saw I had picked him out, and then he beckoned me up; giving the nod to the gate-attendant as I approached. The greeting was effusive and genuine, his handshake firm.

  I complimented him on his daughter and how it was lucky she took after his wife, and not the other side of the family. She was a pretty girl: long black hair, now piled atop her head: dark eyelashes and blazing eyes. Nick was going to have trouble with that one – but not from me. I knew the power behind that deceptive face, the protection he gave to his own.

  Four years had put a little weight about his middle, but some tailor had worked wonders. I put his age in the mid to late fifties, a few years younger than George had been. But a different person to George; friendly, but not effusive; and fonder of quiet dinners than cocktail parties.