by Robin Storey
‘Some other time, Indya.’
‘That’s what adults always say,’ Indya whined, ‘and some other time never comes.’
‘I’ll take you for a ride very soon,’ Reuben said, knowing he’d regret that promise.
He rode as quickly as he dared into the city. The Sunday afternoon traffic was steady but flowing freely. The Grosvenor was near the City Botanic Gardens, and of course the few on-street parks were full. In desperation, he slid into a loading zone outside a dingy Thai restaurant.
A stiff wind whipped papers and leaves around his feet as he strode the block to The Grosvenor. Despite the stream of people ambling along the streets, the city had a desolate, Sunday afternoon air about it. He entered the public bar with a minute to spare.
Frank was sitting at a corner table talking to a beefy, tattooed man with a rat’s tail. Rat’s Tail gave Reuben the once-over as he approached the table, then heaved himself up and ambled off.
Reuben sat down. Frank downed his schooner and placed the empty glass in front of him. ‘I want you to help me get rid of the bitch.’
Reuben swallowed. ‘What do you mean - get rid of?’
‘Don’t act dumb, Littledick, I’m not sending her on an all-expenses-paid holiday. I’m talking permanently.’
‘Right. So you want me to help you kill her.’
It was even more horrifying now he’d said it out loud. Frank grinned. ‘You got it!’
‘But why?’
‘I’ve already told you why.’
‘I mean, why me?’
What Reuben really wanted to say was, ‘Why don’t you hire one of your thugs, like the one who killed Eddy Teddy?’ But he thought it prudent not to divulge what he knew of Frank’s past.
Frank made a noise of exasperation. ‘Do I have to spell it out? You have to report to her, you can turn on your pretty-boy smile and your charm, and get information from her and find out her movements. You’re the perfect man for the job.’
Reuben took a deep breath. ‘And I’ve already told you I’m not interested.’
Frank reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out an A4-sized envelope and tossed it on the table. ‘Tell me again after you’ve seen these.’
He got up and went to the bar. Reuben opened the envelope and emptied out the contents. Four colour photos, ten by eight. A familiar figure in each. Carlene standing outside the front door of her office building, below the sign announcing ‘Moondream Foundation – Not For Profit Fundraising.’ She was facing the camera, handbag slung over her shoulder, obviously about to go out on an errand or leaving for the day. In the next photo she was in a department store beside a rack of dresses, holding one out on a hanger. Then in their front carport getting out of the car, her skirt rucked halfway up her thigh. And finally, unlocking the front door of the house, a bag of groceries in one hand, her hair escaping from its ponytail.
Reuben laid the photos on the table and stared dumbly at them. Frank returned with two schooners and placed one in front of Reuben.
‘So, what do you think?’
‘Who took these?’
Frank looked at him levelly, his eyes giving away nothing. ‘I have friends everywhere, not just in the police force. Good quality, aren’t they? He usually does weddings and christenings – not much of a thrill factor, though.’
‘So you’ve hired someone to follow my wife and take photos of her. Why?’
Frank leaned forward. Reuben caught a whiff of cologne and stale beer. ‘It’s obvious you need a little persuasion to see the light. So here’s the deal. You help me get rid of the bitch, or you’ll come home one day and find your beautiful wife has disappeared. God knows what will happen to her – there are some really nasty people out there. Such a pity, she’s a hot little number.’
Reuben looked away. He couldn’t bear to look at Frank’s smug expression. For one crazy moment he wanted to call Frank’s bluff – he pictured himself standing up, saying calmly, ‘Sorry, Frank, no go’ and walking out.
But his backside was stuck firmly to the chair. Would Frank really carry out his threat? It was menacingly non-specific, just that Carlene would disappear and something nasty would happen to her. Kidnapped? Tortured? Killed? Or all three? Frank was set on killing Lucy, so what was one more woman in the scheme of things?
It all boiled down to a choice – who would Reuben rather see dead? Lucy or Carlene? Any normal person would choose his wife over his parole officer. But if that normal person had a parole officer like Lucy ... Why couldn’t it be Merle who’d cancelled Frank’s parole?
Reuben stared at the untouched schooner Frank had bought him. He was damned if he was going to accept a drink from a low-life who was coercing him to take part in a murder. He had principles.
Frank drummed his fingers on the table.
‘You haven’t left me much choice,’ Reuben said.
‘Excellent, Littledick, I admire your decisiveness.’
He grinned, revealing stained teeth with a glaring gap at the bottom. Nothing shouted ‘criminal’ more than bad teeth. With all the money he was supposedly earning from property deals, the least he could do was shout himself a new set of choppers.
‘This is what I want you to do. Follow her for a week – find out where she lives, when she leaves for work and when she gets home. I want to know what sort of car she drives and where she goes after work and on weekends.’
‘How can I do that without her seeing me?’
‘That’s your problem. You’re a smart bloke, you can work it out! And I want photos. Her house, her car, everywhere she goes.’ He nodded towards the photos. ‘Like those.’
‘That’s a pretty tall order. What if she catches me taking photos of her?’
Frank shrugged. ‘That’s easy. Don’t get caught. Because if you do, you’re on your own. I’ll deny any contact with you. It’s one crim’s word against another’s.’
He tapped his watch, a clunky, busy-faced Rolex.
‘You’re wasting valuable time sitting here when you could be out there right now, perving on her.’
For a start I don’t know her address. But Reuben thought it better not to argue the finer details.
Frank took out his wallet, pulled out a card and threw it across the table at him. ‘Phone me when you’re done, Wednesday week at the latest. And when you call, no names. Just Operation Luce End.’
He grinned again. ‘Neat name, eh?’
Reuben didn’t answer. Frank pushed his chair back and stood up.
‘Just a minute,’ Reuben said, ‘have you thought of looking up her address on the electoral roll?’
Frank gave him a look that would have felled a death adder about to strike. ‘Do you think I’m a complete idiot?’
There was no satisfactory answer to that question.
‘She’s not in the phone directory or the electoral roll.’
That figured. She wouldn’t want unsavoury types tracking her down.
‘I’ll look forward to your call, Littledick.’
He strode out, Rat’s Tail joining him at the door. Reuben picked up the shiny, gold-embossed business card. ‘Frank Cornell, Mercantile Imports. Property developer and business consultant.’ A mobile number but no business address.
Reuben sat for a few moments, replaying the conversation in his head. He looked down at the table. The photos were still there. So was the schooner. He touched the glass; it was still cold. He picked it up and took a large gulp. Fuck his principles. He finished the drink, but it did nothing to ease the overwhelming feeling of having fallen into a dark, murky hole, trapped like a wild animal, from which there was no escape.
And when he got back to his parking spot, a council officer was standing next to the Barbiemobile scribbling out a ticket.
CHAPTER 12
Talk about your life changing in an instant. It was a cliché; something from a book cover blurb or movie trailer. When he woke up this morning, he was a trying-to-go-straight conman whose greatest challenge was finding a job. N
ow he was a would-be killer, about to stalk and take photos of his victim; an innocent woman who was trying to help him.
Carlene was hunched into a ball under the covers, snoring. He rolled over on his stomach and buried his head in his pillow, but one question pinged around his mind like a ball in a pinball machine.
He’d told Frank that he’d given him no choice, but was that true? Any sensible law-abiding person would go straight to the police. But he couldn’t trust the police not to stuff things up, and he couldn’t expect them to protect him and Carlene from Frank. There was no way he wanted to call Frank’s bluff when it came to Carlene’s life, let alone his own safety – even the thought of being beaten up filled him with terror. He was taking the coward’s way out.
Then it occurred to him. There was another option. Go along with Frank’s plan, but somehow make sure it didn’t succeed. How, he had no idea. But it would buy him some time to figure out what to do – how to save Lucy’s life and his own as well. It was risky. Foolhardy. Full of holes. But it was all he had.
He woke up with a dull headache and the doona twisted and knotted around his legs. Carlene was already up, dressed for work and brushing her hair in front of the mirror. She glanced over at him.
‘You had a restless night, tossing and turning. And you were moaning again.’
Her tone was accusing, as if he’d deliberately had a bad night just to annoy her.
‘Sorry, honey. I had a nightmare about being in prison again.’
It was a cheap trick to get some sympathy, but it worked. She came and sat on the edge of the bed, and stroked his forehead.
‘You poor thing,’ she said softly. Her perfume was delicious and her hand was soothing. ‘You haven’t been yourself lately.’
‘Haven’t I? Who have I been?’
She gave him a playful slap. ‘You know what I mean. You’ve been distracted these last few days as if your mind is on another planet.’
She bent over and pressed her cheek against his. ‘You know what I think, baby? I think you’re suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, from coming out of prison. I’ve been reading about it and you have the symptoms – being detached from others, easily distracted, lack of ambition.’
‘So that makes it a diagnosis? There were guys inside who had PTSD and compared to them, I’m as together as the Pope. Anyway, I don’t lack ambition, I just haven’t found anything I want to be ambitious for.’
‘There’s no need to be defensive, it’s quite normal under the circumstances. I think you need to see a psychologist.’
‘I don’t need a psychologist. Even my parole officer says so.’
She took her hand off his forehead and stood up. ‘All right, but just listen to yourself and you’ll realise what I’m talking about.’
She stomped out. Even her ponytail was stiff.
***
How the hell could he follow Lucy for a whole week on a pink motor scooter without her noticing? It was impossible – even following her for a day would be stretching it. Could he hire a private detective to do it for him? It would be the ideal solution, but they didn’t come cheap and he didn’t have that sort of money to splash around.
He was on the homeward part of his morning jog, digging deep for a burst of last-minute speed, when the germ of an idea appeared in his mind. By the time he stumbled in through the front door it had grown into a fully-fledged plan. He showered and dressed, made coffee and toast, and sat down at the dining table with pen and paper.
• Follow Lucy home one afternoon after work to find out where she lives.
• Take photos of her and her home.
• Invent a weekly schedule for her.
• Take photos of the places she supposedly frequents.
• Superimpose images of her arriving at and leaving these places.
Thank God for Photoshop. With a bit of knowledge and experience, it was easy to manipulate photos to your exact requirements; and with such a smooth, professional result that the average person would never guess they weren’t authentic.
It was a stroke of good fortune that Reuben happened to be experienced in the art of photoshopping due to a travel scam he’d operated some years ago – an online travel company that sold bogus guided tours. He’d obtained photos of a number of popular holiday destinations and superimposed images of tour members beside the company tour coach: smiling and waving, sipping cocktails on a palm-fringed beach, feasting on a seafood banquet and relaxing on a yacht on a dazzling blue ocean. Of necessity, it was a short-lived scam – once the customers turned up on day one to meet the tour coach and found it didn’t exist, the game was up. By then the travel company had, overnight, ceased to exist, and Reuben decamped with a handsome profit.
As he mulled over the finer details of his plan, a bolt of energy surged through him. It was a familiar feeling from what seemed forever ago – the excitement of knowing you were breaking the rules, tinged with apprehension or even dread, knowing you could be caught. But that only added to the challenge and the thrill of it. Only this time, if Frank found out he was being scammed, there was a lot more at stake than a stint in prison.
***
Reuben entered Joe’s Café with helmet in hand and backpack slung over his shoulder. A man was behind the counter wiping the coffee machine – short and paunchy, with grey wispy hair arranged untidily over his shiny head.
‘Yes, mate?’
‘A double-strength espresso, please.’
A stiff Bourbon would be preferable, but hopefully the extra caffeine would give him the jump-start he needed, as his adrenalin had deserted him. He sat at a corner table and ran over the plan in his mind. He’d phoned Lucy before he left home on the pretext of checking his next appointment time, to make sure she was at work, then parked the Barbiemobile in the small car park behind the café. It presented a clear view of the parole office car park next door. For the hundredth time, he mentally listed the contents in his backpack – had he remembered the lipstick? He unzipped the side pocket of his backpack and stuck his hand in. His fingers curled around a cylindrical shape. Thank God.
His coffee appeared in front of him. ‘Double-strength, knock your shoes off,’ the man said, nodding and smiling.
Didn’t he mean socks? He had a heavy Mediterranean lilt, so maybe it was a foreign saying. He was right anyway, it was strong enough to knock your shoes off. Reuben put in four sugars to counteract the bitter taste.
Nina appeared at the counter from the rear of the shop.
He waved. ‘Hi, Nina!’
‘Hullo.’ She stopped then came out from behind the counter.
‘Were you having an afternoon tea break?’ he asked.
‘No, I was cleaning the kitchen.’
‘Oh. Doesn’t sound like much fun.’
Dumb thing to say. His normal conversational brilliance had deserted him.
‘No,’ Nina said. She hesitated. ‘Are you still looking for a job?’
‘I sure am.’
‘There’s one going here as a kitchen hand. Ours walked off the job yesterday.’
Reuben had tried a stint as a kitchen hand in prison, but after he cut his finger, bled into the mashed potato and had to be rushed to hospital for stitches, he’d been taken off kitchen duty. On the outside, it would be different though. Being paid, for a start.
‘Great. When do I start?’
‘Not so fast. I need to ask you a couple of questions.’
‘Ask away.’ He pulled out a chair for her and she sat down, clasping her hands on the table. She had a serious intensity about her, as if she were weighing up everybody and everything around her. He wondered what it would take to make her laugh.
‘Have you done kitchen work before?’
‘No. But I’m a fast learner.’
‘The work isn’t difficult, but Uncle Joe’s very particular that everything is done just right.’
She nodded towards the counter. ‘That’s him. He owns the place.’
The short man w
as in voluble conversation with a customer at the counter while preparing the coffee.
‘And I have to warn you, he’s got a bit of a temper.’
Reuben smiled at her. ‘Are you trying to put me off?’
‘No, just giving you fair warning. There’s something else I need to know.’
She studied her hands then looked up. ‘I’ve seen you go into the building next door.’
Her face gave nothing away but her eyes were watchful.
‘So you’ve been spying on me? I don’t know whether to be flattered or not.’
She shrugged. ‘I just happened to notice, that’s all.’
‘And you assumed I wasn’t visiting the accountant?’
‘I didn’t assume anything. I’m asking you because a lot of those people come in here and some of them are off their faces. If you’re doing drugs, I’m not interested.’
‘Tell me, Nina, do I look like I do drugs?’
She hesitated. Reuben glimpsed the thick, satiny plait that snaked down her back. Undoubtedly it was part of the job regulations to have her hair tied back, but it didn’t flatter her – it made every feature of her face appear larger and sharper, from her heavy eyebrows down to her elfin chin. He imagined her hair let loose, thick and lustrous, tumbling over her bare shoulders...
‘No,’ Nina said. ‘But appearances can be deceptive.’
‘In this case, they’re not.’ He could think up a convincing lie, but he lacked the will to do it. ‘I’m on parole for fraud. I’m not allowed to have a job where I’m handling money. But apart from that, I’m a fine, upstanding citizen.’
He was gratified to see the hint of a smile. Aim for a smile first, then a laugh.
‘Save your breath for Uncle Joe. He’s the one you have to convince.’
She got up, went to the counter and said a few words to her uncle. He nodded, finished serving the customer and approached Reuben. He held out his hand. ‘Joe Scarparo.’
Reuben stood up and shook his hand. ‘Reuben Littlejohn.’