The Falcon sometimes won’t start unless you jiggle the key in a certain way, and I sometimes forget to jiggle the key if I’m not concentrating on starting the car. The starter motor was whining and the engine wasn’t firing as I tried to remember the phrase Lambert had used of Morgan Shaw. ‘New interest’, that was it. That resolved, I jiggled the key and the car started.
The I’ll Be Bound boutique was one floor up above a doctor’s surgery in Bayswater Road. It was elegantly appointed, all deep-carpet and muted-light chic. The goods were on display in discreetly under-lit glass cases with heavy un-chic locks. The staff consisted of two people, rail-thin with deathly pale faces, wearing black tights and jumpers and dark make-up, who could have been of either sex or neither. I blinked in the gloom and one of them approached me and asked if he or she could be of any help.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I pulled out the pamphlet and put it down on a glass case, covering a red and black silk nightie and knicker set that would be no use at all on a cold winter night. ‘Can anyone get hold of one of these or are they for special customers only?’
The person swivelled on a medium heel and pointed at the counter which I could scarcely see through the gloom. ‘They are over there. Anyone can come in and take one.’
‘I see.’ I peered at the counter and saw something above it that looked like a cross-bow before I realised it was a double dildo with ribbons. There was a stack of the pamphlets beside a silk top hat. ‘Yes, I see.’
A man wearing a yellow jump suit came into the shop and the attendant’s black-rimmed eyes flicked across to him. ‘Is there anything else, sir?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Look around. You might see something you like.’
I felt my way across to the counter; a woman came out from behind a curtain wearing a leather vest with holes in it that allowed her breasts to poke out. She looked at me.
‘What d’you think?’ she said.
‘Great,’ I said.
The other attendant sniffed; I grabbed another copy of the pamphlet and groped my way back to the stairs.
I stopped in Glebe to buy the sort of shampoo and aftershave that would go with a swinging party in Pymble. Driving home, I tried to remember the last party I’d been to. I recalled a couple Helen and I had dropped in on for an hour or less, and one good one that had celebrated the birthday of an FM disc jockey neighbour. We’d all got drunk and sung the songs of the sixties. I doubted there’d be much Buddy Holly sung in Pymble.
I cleaned myself up, ate and drank something and tried to feel professional. It was hard without a client. I re-read the Mountain synopsis, or bits of it, but there was no indication of what Morgan Shaw’s ‘new interest’ might be-it could have been sado-masochism, it could’ve been stamp collecting. The cat followed me around the house. Every time I turned around it was there, looking at me. I fed it and it still followed me. I put it outside and it jumped up to the window and looked in at me.
‘I didn’t cut your balls off,’ I said. ‘It happened long before we met.’ The cat seemed satisfied with that; it stretched out to sleep in what was left of the afternoon sun.
At 3pm Dr Holmes telephoned me. ‘Mr Hardy,’ he said. ‘Something rather strange has happened.’
‘You’ve seen Mountain?’
‘No, no. A cheque has arrived covering the cost of all his sessions to date, including the last one which he missed.’
‘No letter?’
‘No-a cheque in an envelope. There’s a strange air of finality to it. I thought I’d give you a call to see if you’d learned anything further.’
A strange air of finality, I thought. It sounded like something to take to the ESP consultant in my corridor.
‘Hardy, are you there?’
‘Yes, sorry, Doctor. I’ve got some news of him, none of it good.’ I gave him a run-down on the progress of William Mountain as I’d followed it to that point. He clicked his tongue at the references to self-destruction; the sound came across the wire and hurt my ear.
‘That’s very disturbing. Could you find a typical phrase on that sort of point in the manuscript?’
I had the synopsis in front of me along with my notebook and my two I’ll Be Bound catalogues. I flicked through the typescript. ‘Here’s a good bit: quote: “I would like to consume myself, cannibalise myself, starting with the brain”, unquote. How’s that?’
‘I hope you are taking this seriously.’
‘I am. Believe me. I’m expecting to meet up with him sooner or later, and I’m not looking forward to it.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that meeting. He’d be capable of swift self-destruction if the schizophrenia is as extreme as it appears from your account.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Do you have any other observations, other signs of distress?’
‘You name it-heroin, cocaine, abstinence from alcohol’ I fidgeted with the things on the table and my hand touched the pamphlet. ‘Oh, yes, it could be that he’s into SM-bondage, discipline, whips and chains, that sort of stuff.’
‘That’s dangerous, very dangerous. In his heightened emotional state he could do terrible damage to himself and others.’
‘What about this book he’s writing? How do you see that in the scheme of things?’
‘That’s worrying too. There are so many associations-book as child, book as life force, book as legacy. Are you following me?’
‘I think so. He could equate finishing the book with finishing his life.’
‘It’s possible. It’s urgent that he be found.’
‘If I find him and he seems to be crazy, can I bring him to you first?’
‘It would depend on what he’d done.’
‘What if he’d done the worst things that you and I can think of?’
He paused and I could imagine his burly body tense with concentration while his workman’s hands were busy with pencil and pad. ‘Of course you must bring him to me. I’ll give you my private number.’ He did, and I wrote it down. ‘Do you expect to catch up with him soon?’
‘Soon or never, from what you say, Doctor. Will this number get you anytime over the next couple of days?’
He said it would, and I rang off feeling that, somehow, the stakes had mounted, the pot had got bigger and my hand had stayed the same. That feeling intensified when I finally got through to Grant Evans in Melbourne. I could sense Grant’s reluctance to talk on an open line in the police building, and our conversation became cryptic, but we were both used to that.
‘It’s tip of the iceberg stuff, Cliff.’
‘I thought it might be. The cars are a sideline to… what?’
‘Insurance fraud, among other things. Look, I can’t talk on this line.’
I knew what was coming: the old, old story of organisations closing ranks to protect members no matter how undeserving. Grant interpreted my silence correctly. ‘Look, Cliff,’ he said angrily. ‘It’s not just that. I remember one of your rules, what was it? Never knowingly work for I completed the phrase for myself- politicians and unions. Again, Grant knew what I was thinking.
‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘Keep out of it, Cliff.’
For the rest of the afternoon I divided my time between looking through Mountain’s manuscript, re-reading some letters Helen had sent me and staring at the sleeping cat. Phrases from Mountain’s writing began to etch themselves on my mind: Most people only get half-fucked, half-drunk and half-drugged. It’s hard work going all the way.
It struck me that perhaps Lambert was wrong- Mountain’s synopsis had energy and violence and sex, but, as I read and re-read, I detected a lack of humour. Death, drugs and sex can be as funny as anything else, properly handled, and I thought I could recall a few good laughs in The Godfather. It would be the final irony if Bill Mountain’s possibly posthumous book was a flop.
I tried to imagine myself in his place. It wasn’t easy. Somewhere, he was sitting writing the thing, stone cold sober or drugged to the hairline. He had plans, maybe a major, double-edged strategy with fall-back positions. He’d covered a lot of ground in a very short time, and there was something single-minded and purposeful in his actions. He’d left clues and was aware of being pursued. In the book, Morgan Shaw saw his pursuers as the car thieves and drug dealers whom he’d offended by moving in on their areas of operation. He harried the one and eluded the other; shut himself up and worked on his film script. No jokes. I shut up the folder and shoved it under a telephone directory. That dislodged an ashtray which spilled Erica’s butts and ash on the floor. The tobacco and ash smelled stale and old-that wasn’t funny either. Another Shaw/Mountain gem came back to me: I was ready to kill myself, and I felt so good about taking this control over my own life that I was only sorry that I hadn’t had anything to do with being born.