by Peter Corris
‘Get dressed, Mr Jones,’ Marcia said.
Sammy did, with relief. Marcia stripped off the gloves, washed her hands in a bowl and dried them on a white towel. Sammy sat on a plastic chair. I could see the sweat standing out around his receding hairline. Marcia picked up Sammy’s card and made a few notes. She’d buttoned up the lab coat and assumed a prim, professional expression.
‘Well, doctor?’ Sammy said.
‘You have nothing to worry about, Mr Jones. Your condition is the result of a dietary irregularity-lack of calcium, principally. Do you drink much milk?’
The gratitude and pleasure on Sammy’s face was childlike. ‘Never touch the stuff.’
‘You’ve built up an imbalance in your body chemistry. I recommend milk and goat’s cheese, also green vegetables. As much as you can get down.’ Marcia scribbled on a prescription pad.
‘Sure thing. And…?’ Sammy said.
Marcia tore off the sheet. ‘These pills. Twice a day before meals.’
‘You mean three times a day.’
‘No. Skip lunch. You should eat only a light breakfast and a high calcium dinner. No meat.’
‘Pasta?’
‘Light on the oil.’
Sammy jumped to his feet and thrust his manicured hand at Marcia’s middle. ‘Thank you, doctor. Thank you.’
‘Here’s your prescription. Have you got your Medicare card?’
‘Let’s make it cash,’ Sammy said.
Benjamin and I had agreed that there was no point in lying, no working through go-betweens. We didn’t want Sammy worried out of his mind. I arrived at Benjamin’s office by arrangement late the following day to find the two brothers drinking coffee. Sammy said it was the first decent coffee he’d had in days. Benjamin didn’t say anything. Sammy was expansive and ready to apologise for our misunderstanding of a few nights back.
I cut him off and spread the photographs out on the desk beside his coffee cup. I’m no artist of the lens, but the pictures were eloquent enough. Marcia looked delicious in her unfastened coat, Sammy’s closed eyes could be taken for transports of ecstasy, and so on. Sammy looked at the photos and slowly reddened from his soft chin to his retreating hairline. He looked across the desk at Benjamin and his eyes were moist.
‘You set me up. Your own brother.’
‘It was for your own good, Samuel. Believe me, your own good, and mine and everybody’s.’
Your own brother.’
‘I’m not your brother, Sammy,’ I said, ‘but I am your friend, or I can be if you play ball.’
‘What’s the rules?’ Sammy said softly.
Benjamin got up and took the coffee pot off the warmer. He poured some more into Sammy’s cup and filled a cup for me.
‘First, you lay off Ruby. Leave her rent alone, don’t hassle her in any way. Meet any reasonable requests she has as a good tenant.’
‘And?’
‘You stop pissing around with hoods like Turk. Stop acting the big shot.’
‘Attend to business,’ Benjamin said.
I sipped some of the terrific coffee. ‘Exactly.’
‘Or?’ Sammy said.
‘I take the pictures to Karen along with the doctor’s report on you — that you presented for a suspected venereal disease and so on.’
Sammy snarled, ‘Doctor!’
I said, ‘She is a doctor, Sammy, and she gave you the straight goods. There’s nothing wrong with you. You took a few doses of Spanish fly, which caused you a few temporary problems. That’s all’
The cloud that had been gathering on Sammy’s brow lifted. You mean it? That woman really is a doctor?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I just got your urine tests back. You’re clean.’
Sammy drank his coffee in one gulp. The flush in his face receded and he grinned. Then he exploded into laughter. ‘You guys,’ he said. ‘You fuckin’ guys. You finally get me to go to a doctor. Me, scared shitless of doctors. And I’m OK?’
I nodded. ‘Sound as a bell. Sammy, while you’re laughing, I can’t quite see why you were worried. I mean, you haven’t stepped out of line, have you?’
Sammy looked at his brother. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’
Benjamin nodded. ‘I knew the scheme’d work, Cliff. Sammy worries about toilet seats, mosquitoes, knives and forks in restaurants…’
‘You can catch things,’ Sammy chuckled as he spoke.
It was time to cut through the hilarity. ‘Okay, Sammy,’ I said. ‘I’m glad you’re happy. We did you a favour, fine. But the terms still apply. Get ahold of yourself, or Karen makes your life a living hell. I don’t need to spell it out, do I?’
Sammy shook his head; suddenly glumness enveloped him. ‘It’s not that easy.’
‘How so?’ Benjamin said.
Sammy waved his hand and it was almost as if he was saying goodbye to buffed nails and shaped cuticles. ‘It’s Turk,’ he said. ‘He’s kinda… pressing me. You know?’
‘Don’t worry about Turk,’ I said.
A little checking turned up something odd and interesting about Turk. He didn’t have a permanent place of residence; instead, he moved around a circuit of city hotels, staying two weeks or three weeks at a time in one place after another. Not five-star hotels, but not fleapits either. The sorts of places I like to stay in myself, and where I stick out-of-town clients. Spending some money on the street and using the phone, I located his current hostelry, the Sullivan in Elizabeth Street, where I happened to know the security man.
Bert Loomis is an ex-cop, ex-bank security man, ex quite a few things. He’s fifty-five and looks every minute of it, especially around the eyes, which have seen most of the dirty things there are to see. I judged that $50 would be about right, and it was.
‘Fifteen minutes, Hardy,’ Loomis said. I noticed that he didn’t touch the knob, just slipped the card in the slot and edged the door open with his knee.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Where’ll you be?’
‘Nowhere.’
He jerked his head; I went into the suite and heard the door close behind me. I had to work fast, and Turk made it easy. He lived light-basic toilet articles in the bathroom, clothes in the closet and drawers. Condoms, a vibrator and pornographic material in a bedside cabinet. Beer and wine in the bar fridge, hard liquor on top. Two suitcases, empty. Dirty clothes in a heap in the corner of the little balcony room that overlooked the park. The drawer in the solid writing desk was locked and the Sullivan didn’t run to a security safe for guests. I picked the lock and emptied the drawer out on the bed. Personal papers, money matters-bank books, chequebooks, statements, bills from a firm of accountants, three passports.
I checked my watch. Twelve minutes. Time was up. I turned on the radio and dumped a drawer full of underwear onto the floor, where it could be seen from the doorway. Then I moved across to the door, opened it and left it propped open with the toe of one of Turk’s high-heeled boots. According to the passports, Konstanides/Lycos/ Mahoud measured 183 centimetres-he’d looked taller in the Skin Cellar and the boots explained why. I stood inside the bathroom, two metres from the doorway, with my. 38 Smith amp; Wesson at the ready. I was there because I knew Bert Loomis couldn’t resist a doublecross or a dollar.
Turk was quiet, but I could sense and smell him. He edged through the door, and I could imagine him standing in the short hallway, hearing the radio, looking at the mess on the floor. I could feel his tension. I stepped out with the. 38 levelled at 150 centimetres. Turk was fast: he saw me, ducked, pulled out his own gun and came on. But the round hole staring at him had held his attention for just long enough, and I had the advantages of height and readiness; I moved aside, reached forward and clubbed his bald head with my metal-loaded fist. The barrel and trigger guard tore his skin, and the blow almost stunned him. His knees gave and I chopped at his right wrist, bringing my left hand down hard and bunched. He dropped his gun. I hit him between the eyes with my left and felt the knuckles protest. He fell forward and I kneed him in the chest as h
e came down.
After that, there was no fight in him. I pulled him into the bedroom and bound his ankles and wrists with four striped silk neckties from his closet. Bert Loomis put his head through the door, and I pointed my gun at him and he went away. Then I called the Immigration Department’s investigations branch and told them I had an illegal immigrant in custody — an individual with multiple passports, multiple bank accounts, several driver’s licences and a concealed weapon.
I had a beer from Turk’s fridge while I waited for the Immigration boys. Turk and I didn’t speak. I showed them the documents and Turk’s gun, and there wasn’t a whole lot more to say. Turk’s eyes blazed at me as they read him his rights and put the cuffs on.
‘You shouldn’t have spat at me, Turk,’ I said as they packed up his belongings. ‘I really didn’t like it at all.’
Sammy Weiss was as relieved to get Turk off his back as he was to learn that he didn’t have the pox or anything else. All he had to worry about was the photos, and I set his mind at rest about them.
‘All you have to do, Sammy,’ I said, ‘is leave Ruby alone and behave yourself. Listen to Benjamin, do what he says. In six months, if you toe the line, I’ll give you the pictures.’
We were in the Bar Calabria, drinking coffee. Sammy was wearing a quiet suit and tie and looking hurt. ‘You don’t trust me.’
‘How do you spell it?’ I said. ‘Deal?’
‘Deal. Really a doctor, huh?’
Benjamin was pleased and insisted on paying me over and above the two hundred retainer. He offered to do any accounting I needed free of charge. Ruby paid me as well-a couple of days work, and expenses, such as my payment to Marcia, and for film and developing. It was a nice piece of business. After I’d collected the cheque and a drink and an enthusiastic kiss from Ruby, I stopped at the table by the door. Marcia was painting her nails and reading the Independent Monthly.
‘You were great,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
She looked up and blew on a wet nail. ‘My pleasure. Anything else I can do for you?’
‹‹Contents››
Almost Wedded Bliss
Reasons to remember 1967-the release of Sergeant Pepper, the Six Day War, the hanging of Ronald Ryan, the drowning of Harold Holt. I remember it because that was the year Astrid and I nearly got married.
My life had been going along in two and three-year zigs and zags — two years in the army, two years at university, three as an insurance claims investigator. I had a flat in North Sydney and I was doing all right-people were always burning things down and cheating in various ways that needed to be uncovered to protect the other people who played the game straight. That was how I looked at it. I had energy to burn and I straightened out certain problems for friends. I also did an occasional bit of bodyguarding on the side, like for the 1966 Bob Dylan tour, although I never got closer than twenty feet to the man himself.
I met Astrid in early ‘67 at an anti-Vietnam rally. I was along for the ride, to see if any of the speakers and rallyers knew what they were talking about. Some did. Astrid was tall and thin and blonde and she stood out in a fairly unwashed crowd like a swan among ducks. Like most people, she was surprised to learn that the war I’d fought in, the Malayan Emergency, had ended only seven years before. I had scars, cynicism and experience. She had enthusiasm, idealism and a thirst for knowledge. She was from Wahroonga- selective high school, Fine Arts degree from Sydney; I was from Maroubra, suburb and school, University of New South Wales drop-out. She worked for a publisher. I read the odd book. A perfect match.
She moved into my flat and we had a big party because Astrid was saying goodbye to her North Shore origins. Her widowed mother and my sister got along fine. Our friends, hers from the university and the publishing game, mine from the army, two cops and Clem Carter who went to gaol soon after although he was innocent, did likewise. A good party. We even went off to the Blue Mountains for a sort of non-honeymoon and then it was back to work. Busy lives, dynamite sex on the pill, boozy Italian dinners. A kind of trial marriage. A magic time.
The first non-routine job that came along after I took up with Astrid was weird from the jump. A man named Lawrence Bean, who’d been referred to me by a man I’d saved from going to prison by proving he hadn’t torched his factory, arrived at the flat with a proposition. He operated a nightclub off Darlinghurst Road. ‘It’s going to be the top R ‘n’ R spot in the Cross,’ he said.
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll?’
He laughed and shook his head. He was a small man, about fifty, with hair that waved tightly back across his bat-eared skull. He had a Jimmy Durante nose in danger of becoming a W.C. Fields. He was a constant, nervy smoker. I was a smoker myself in those days, rolling them, using them to relax and as an aid to thought. Lawrie, as he insisted on being called, used them to fuel some inner fire.
‘No, mate. Haven’t you heard? The Yanks are coming! Rest and Recreation. The town’s going to be full of GIs with greenbacks to burn.’
I’d heard about it, in a vague sort of a way, but it hadn’t meant much to me. It had happened before, in the Second World War, and the country had survived, although there’d been some casualties-the women strangled in the Melbourne ‘brown out’ murders, a few soldiers killed in brawls, the good-time girls who were the victims of botched abortions. We were all more sophisticated now. What was the problem?
Lawrie mashed out his Rothmans and lit another immediately. ‘My place is called the Rocky Mountain Bar.’
‘Cosmopolitan,’ I said.
He ignored that. ‘I’ve got American beers-Pabst Blue Label, Budweiser, Schlitz-you name it.’
‘Lone Star,’ I said.
‘Huh? Never mind. You see my point. When those thirsty fighting boys, so far from home, get here they’re going to find familiar bottles and, if you’ll excuse the joke, familiar women. Hah hah.’
‘Hah,’ I said. ‘Rough guessing your mark-up, Lawrie, but I’d say you’re about to become a very rich man.’
He sucked gloomily on the Rothmans. ‘I thought so, too. Until I started getting trouble from someone who should be doing the same thing himself. Shit, there’s enough in this for everyone. Do you know how much those poor bastards… those brave boys, get paid?’
I shook my head. Everything was more casual in those days, remember. You wrote fewer things down, took what money you could in cash, worried less about rules and regulations. Astrid was proving expensive and my salary was being stretched. ‘Get to the point, Lawrie.’
‘There’s a pub opposite my place called the Macquarie, maybe you know it?’
‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Bloke who’s taken it over is doing it up-new carpet, paint job, lights. That’d be OK, improve the tone, ‘cept this bloke’s an army nut. He’s going to fit one of the bars out like an army mess — flags all over the fuckin’ place, ANZAC shit. Aussie servicemen’ll get drinks half-price on Friday and Saturday night. Now d’you see the point?’
I did. Australian and American troops have never mixed well-something to do with different national images, the sociologists say. An American private saluting a colonel feels honoured, an Australian private doesn’t. He’ll look the other way if he can. That’s part of it, but there’re simpler things. Australians resent the Yanks’ equipment, diet and pay. The extra pay means extra alcohol and sex-put all those things together and you see the problem at the operational level. Two bars in close proximity, catering to similar needs on unequal terms, spelled trouble.
‘Could get lively,’ I said.
‘Could get fuckin’ murderous,’ Bean said. ‘I was in Brisbane in ‘44 when we took them on. Jesus, it was nearly as bad as the real war, I’m telling you.’
I nodded. I’d heard stories of the Brisbane street battles between Australian and American soldiers from one of my uncles. ‘I can see the problem, Lawrie. But what do you want me to do? I’m not the captain of a team of bouncers.’
Lawrie’s next Rothmans was a stub between his dark-brown
fingers. ‘I want you to talk to the guy at the Macquarie,’ he said. ‘I’m told he’s a mate of yours-Ken Barraclough.’
Captain Ken Barraclough. Just hearing his name took me out of the flat straight back to Malaya where the light in the jungle played tricks so that shadows moved, and the only thing hotter and wetter than the air was your skin. Barraclough was first our instructor in camp, then our CO in the field. He drummed his motto-’Kill and Survive’-into us with his fists, boots and shouts. That first week of training was torture-inching slowly through swamps, sprinting across clearings, climbing, crawling, scrambling-with booby traps showering stinking mud and stinging stones. He woke us up at 2.00 a.m. for refinements like flamethrower attacks, and browbeat and punished us until every man in the company could hold his breath under water for two minutes and climb a forty-foot rope with a full pack.
We hated him worse than the enemy, feared him more, and so became death and survival machines like himself. His training saved my life a dozen times and won me a field commission. Then the politicians declared it was all over and we were going home. I got drunk and attempted to thank him. It was unthinkable to try it sober. He was drunk, too, we all were. He looked at me and his black moustache twitched and he said, ‘I never picked you for a poofter, Hardy.’