When someone holding a gun says ‘Don’t move’, what they really mean is don’t pull out a bigger gun or reach for an axe. I continued my turn, but slowly. When I stopped I was facing the shotgun. It was held by a young woman who couldn’t have been much taller than the gun was long; but she held its weight steadily enough. She wore a white overall on top of a dark turtle neck skivvy; her high-heeled boots might have lifted her over five feet, just. The only other remarkable thing about her, apart from the shotgun, was that she was Chinese.
‘How did you get in?’ I said stupidly.
She shifted the gun a little and I thought I might be able to wait her out. Maybe eventually she’d have to put the gun down from sheer fatigue. But she wasn’t tired yet. She shook back some of the short, black hair that hung in a fringe over her eyebrows. She had an oval face with a broad nose and wide mouth; those features went admirably with her slanted eyes. I’d never seen a better-looking shotgun holder.
‘I came through the bloody door. What about you?’
‘Through the back window.’
Our voices and accents were alike; she couldn’t have been born any further east than Bondi. I suppose we could have been excused our tones: mine was nervous and hers was angry.
‘What for? There’s nothing much to steal here.’
‘That’d take a bit of explaining,’ I said. ‘Could you put the gun down?’
She shook her head; the fringe danced.
‘D’you know where Bill Mountain is?’ I didn’t know what to do with my hands so I clasped them in front of me like a clergyman.
‘You know Bill?’ She sounded more concerned than angry now, and her attention slipped away from the gun a little.
‘I’ve had the odd drink with him. I’ve been here to a party once. Put the shotgun down. I’ll explain.’
Like any sane person, she was looking for an excuse to put the gun back on the wall, but she hadn’t found it yet. Her pure Sydney accent got the harsh edge to it we develop when things don’t go our own way.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cliff Hardy.’
‘Never heard of you.’
‘Why should you? I’m a private investigator. I can show you the ID. I’m looking for Bill.’
‘Oh shit! That’s all I need!’ She moved the hand on the stock up to join the other one on the barrel; then she leaned the gun against the wall like a broom. I breathed out fully for the first time in minutes and unclasped my hands. She got a packet of cigarettes and matches out of the back pocket of her overall and lit up in a smooth, unhurried movement. She sat down on the arm of the couch and put the spent match back in the box. From that point, about three feet off the floor, she blew smoke up at me; she squinted against the smoke and her eyes disappeared altogether-very disconcerting.
‘You’re after the alimony then?’ she said.
‘I didn’t know he was married.’
‘Twice.’
‘I’m not interested in any alimony. It’s a bit hard to explain. Could I sit down?’
She waved the hand holding the cigarette and I plonked myself down in one of Mountain’s easy chairs. My legs felt stiff and old. The shotgun leaned against the wall equidistant from us, but she seemed to have lost interest in it. She drew deeply on the cigarette.
‘Hard to explain, you said. Probably bullshit.’
I tried to look like a non-bullshitter. ‘No, but it’s not exactly a public matter. Could I ask who you are?’
‘Erica Fong. I’m Bill’s girlfriend or whatever you call it. Or I was-not sure now. Let’s see this ID you mentioned.’
I took out the wallet that contains the investigator’s ticket, and leaned forward to pass it over to her. I brought the hand back, took hold of the shotgun, and moved it along the wall closer to me. She appeared not to notice. She looked at the licence, shrugged and handed it back.
‘I just might have heard him mention you. Is that likely?’
‘Depends on what you were talking about and how much he’d had to drink.’
‘What does he ever talk about? How he hates the crap he writes and
‘And what?’
‘Why do you want him, Mr Hardy?’
That was the crunch. Here we were in Bill Mountain’s front room, me in my burglar gear and her in what I now realised was a ski suit and getting along so well and I had to tell her that I was after her bloke for stealing a car. Tricky. She threw her cigarette butt into the fireplace and leaned back watchfully.
‘It’s to do with a car,’ I said.
‘A car! No-one has adventures in cars anymore-not since Kerouac’
Adventures, I thought, who said anything about adventures?
‘Have you read Kerouac?’ she said.
‘ On the Road, that’s all. Long time ago.’
‘I haven’t. I haven’t read anything. I just picked that up from Bill. I’ve picked up a lot of stuff like that. If you say Harold Pinter I can name a couple of plays, but I haven’t seen them.’ She reached back for her cigarettes and matches, lit the cigarette and tossed the match into the fireplace. It landed neatly beside the butt. She drew in the smoke and her tough voice started to waver.
‘Bill said he’d take me to all the plays.’ She sniffed. ‘He said I could read all the books too, but he could never find the right ones in all the mess.’ She was crying now, quietly with her cigarette burning down between her fingers and her slim shoulders shaking.
I let her cry, and occupied myself by breaking open the shotgun, removing the shells and replacing the weapon on the mantelpiece. Erica Fong got control of herself, got the cigarette back up to her mouth and took a drag. Her tear-stained face was in profile, firm-chinned and strong. She didn’t wipe her face and I got the feeling that she hadn’t cried very often.
‘I haven’t seen Bill for three days,’ she said. ‘This is the fourth. I was used to seeing him every day and most nights. I’m very worried about him.’
‘How long have you known him, Erica?’
‘’bout a year. I know he’s a drunk and everything, but he’s a lovely man really. We were going to go to China together. He was going to show me things.’ She sniffed and drew on the cigarette. ‘He’s been there before and he speaks Cantonese. Isn’t it funny? I don’t speak a word of Chinese.’
I gave her one of my semi-professional smiles; I was feeling very confused and in need of something to stimulate thought. When you burgle a place you expect creaking boards and cats, not non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese girls with shotguns.
‘Can we make a cup of tea or something, a drink? We’ve got a pretty tricky situation here.’
Socially speaking, it should have been more awkward than it was-the Occidental burglar and the Oriental girlfriend, but a strange sort of harmony grew between us in the kitchen as she made instant coffee, using the spoons and utensils with familiarity.
I fiddled with Mountain’s car keys at the table while the water was boiling. She smoked non-stop, practically lighting one cigarette from another, and the smoke hung heavily with the steam in the still, small kitchen. One part at least of her story checked out: the milk in Mountain’s fridge was a week old and had gone off. When the coffee was ready she sat down opposite me and put three heaped spoonsful of sugar into hers and stirred vigorously. Her lean figure suggested that this was something new. She sipped and puffed.
‘Are you running on coffee and cigarettes, like in the movies?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hasn’t Mountain ever taken off somewhere for a few days before? He’s not Mr Steadfast as I recall him.’
‘No. He hasn’t.’ Puff. Sip.
‘You were going to say something else back there a bit.’ I tried to recall the conversation. ‘Something about other things on his mind apart from his crappy work.’
She looked angry again. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘I was just trying to get the words right.’
‘But you don’t like him?’
I shrugged and drank some more coffee. It wasn’t a good brand and they always taste worse black. ‘It’s not relevant. It’s not a personal matter.’
‘What sort of matter is it then? All I know is that it’s about a car.’
‘I can’t tell you. I’ve got a client and his business is confidential. It’s serious, the part involving Mountain I mean, but it’s not life and death.’
‘You’re going to have to tell me more than that.’
‘How can I? All I know about you is that you can handle a shotgun and you’ve made coffee here before.’
She stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer and almost upset the cup. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! All I know about you is that you sneak around in other people’s houses.’
I grinned at her. ‘If Mountain was here d’you reckon he’d think this was good dialogue?’
She smiled, and it was as if her face had been waiting days to do it. It was a good smile. ‘He might. I don’t know.
Did you ever see him do a send-up of the stuff he writes?’
‘Yes. Hilarious. What did he call the show — Tumourville?’
‘That was one name, there were lots of others. Oh God, I might as well finish the thought I had before. He seemed to be talking a lot more about wanting to write a novel and needing some more experience to do it.’
‘I’ve heard him talk like that.’
‘Mm, well, it seemed to be getting more and more important to him. He took leave from the TV job a while back to work on the novel. I told him he’d had all the experience he needed-two wives, kids, God knows how many women.’
I murmured, ‘Fights,’ and she glanced sharply at me.
‘I suppose so. He wouldn’t listen. On and on about life and experience. First he drops out of sight and now you turn up. I was worried before, but I’m really worried now.’
‘Why? He’s a grown man.’
‘It’s this word experience. D’you know what kind of stories he wrote? What that novel of his was about?’
I shook my head.
‘Weird stuff. Crime. Horror.’
‘I thought it got a good review in Meanjin?’
‘Oh, it had “art” in it as well, but it was about what I say.’
‘And it still didn’t sell?’
She shook her head. ‘Bill wouldn’t let me read it. He didn’t keep a copy himself.’
‘Maybe it needed more crime and horror.’
I looked down at her and wondered how old she was. Under thirty, I judged but it was hard to tell. I realised that one of the interesting things about her was that I had no idea what she was going to say next. This time she looked away from me, spoke slowly and suddenly made me wonder how old I was.
‘That’s not a very bright thing to say,’ she said.
After that there didn’t seem to be much point in being coy about my enquiry. I told her about the hire car racket and the photograph of Mountain signing out the Audi. She smoked, listened and drank her cold coffee. She didn’t know that Mountain had cut his beard. I showed her the clippings in the bathroom.
I stood outside the bathroom and watched her look at herself in the mirror and swish at her fringe. She couldn’t see much more than that of her head in the mirror.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Unless he’s got a twin brother who’s knocked himself about in the same way.’
She shook her head. ‘The silly bastard.’
‘That’s right, he’s going the right way to get experience. He’ll get some courtroom experience and be able to write some good, graphic stuff about life in Long Bay.’
She pushed past me and got back to the kitchen and her cigarettes. ‘You’ve got no idea where he’d take the car?’ she said gloomily. ‘He didn’t have to say?’
‘No. Did he talk to you about this book? I mean, did he give you any idea of what it was about? Where it’s… set? Would he have made a plan?’
She jumped up from the table. ‘He might have. He made plans for some things.’ I followed her out of the kitchen into the workroom. She leafed through and shuffled the papers that were on the desk, those that were lying on top of a drawer that had been pulled out like a tray and all the ones that had fallen on the floor. After a while she looked up at me through the fringe.
‘All TV stuff.’
I nodded and poked around the room. The bookcases lining the walls were crammed full, with the spaces above the upright books occupied by others lying flat. The desk was set to face a wall rather than a window and books stood upright with their spines facing outward along the whole of its length. I glanced idly along the row, noting a few familiar titles, a thesaurus, dictionaries, a dictionary of quotations, histories and biographies. My eye stopped at a clutch of six paperbacks. Unlike the other books on the desk which were thumbed and battered, these were brand new. I pulled them out.
‘What does he read mostly-fiction?’
She was sitting on a swivel chair that was mounted on runners. She stretched out her leg and pushed off from the desk so that the chair ran back a few feet. The white ski overall was the perfect garment for her; she looked small and tough and smart and ready to be a lot of fun if the right opportunity presented. She’d run out of cigarettes so she stuck her hands inside the bib of the overall, presumably to keep from chewing the nails or doing something worse.
‘Fiction? No, not that much. Sometimes, but more biographies, plays
I held out the paperbacks and let her read the authors’ names and the titles. She shook her head. ‘What?’
‘Mysteries,’ I said, ‘detectives. Look-Michael Lewin, Sjowall and Wahloo, Maigret, for Chrissake.’
‘So what?’
‘It’s bad enough if he decides to get some first hand experience of crime but this stuff makes it look as if he’s interested in solving the bloody crimes. Justice and all that.’
I put the books down on the desk; their shiny newness was marred by rough turning down of the corners of a couple of pages at a time. Each book had three or four of these corner folds which suggested that Mountain had consumed the books in a couple of gulps. Twenty-five dollars’ worth of dangerous dreams.
‘Undercover?’ Erica Fong said.
‘He couldn’t be that dumb.’
She nodded her head vigorously and withdrew her hands from the bib. Her fists were clenched tight. ‘He could be. Yes he could! God, I need a cigarette.’
The idea that Mountain might have gone out playing Lone Ranger was the first bright thought I’d had since meeting Erica Fong, and it didn’t do either of us any good. I’d told her enough about the car racket, the false papers and disguises and so on, to give her the tip that it was an organised business. You don’t have to live very long in Sydney to become aware that organised criminality is something to stay away from. The Harbour is too conveniently close.
Erica rooted through Mountain’s papers again and found a half packet of his Gitanes. While she was coughing her way into the first cigarette and I was wishing there was something else to drink in the place besides black instant and Suntory whisky, I had my second bright idea. Mountain must have got on to the strength of the car-stealing team through someone else, perhaps one of the people in my picture gallery. I described a couple of the faces to Erica from memory, but I didn’t do it very well.
‘I’d have to see them,’ she said, ‘and even then I don’t know. He knows a lot of people I don’t. He met a lot in pubs, people like you.’
I took that as a sign that she’d had enough of my company for the night.
‘I’ve got the pictures in my office. Would you come in tomorrow morning and take a look?’
‘Sure.’
We left it there. She let me out through the front door and I handed her the shotgun shells and one of my cards as I left.
She rolled up to the office at around ten the next morning. She was wearing designer jeans and a scoop-neck black knitted top that had cost money. So had the bag she dropped carelessly on the floor as she sat in my client chair. Out came the cigarettes and her impassive look gave way to one of impatience.
I hadn’t liked the job much at first and it wasn’t getting any better. I wasn’t in the mood for impatient young women. I took the envelope out of my desk slowly, tapped it on the scarred surface and looked owlishly over at her.
‘Do you mind telling me what you do for a living, Miss Fong?’
She sighed and puffed irritably. Then she smiled. ‘At least you got the name right. On second meeting people usually call me Wong.’
‘Can’t understand it.’
‘I don’t do anything much. My Dad’s got an import business, Hong Kong and China. I go on the odd trip for him and do a bit of decorating in the shops.’
I nodded and slid the photos out onto the desk. She butted her cigarette and pulled her chair up close.
‘I’d like to see Bill first, please.’
I spread the pictures out with Mountain in the middle and moved away to give her a bit more of the dim light my dirty windows afford.
I watched her face as she picked up the photo of Mountain. She studied it closely and nodded. She gave a tight smile, brushed back her fringe and tapped the picture with the fingers of her right hand. Her fingernails were cut short and unpainted and her touch was light. I felt a twinge of envy for Bill Mountain.
‘He looks good with the beard cut, doesn’t he?’
‘Yeah. Take a look at the others.’
She put Mountain’s picture down and turned her attention to the others.
‘Take your time.’
She lit a cigarette and I lifted the window a discreet inch. She held up the picture of Henry Majors. I said to take your time.’
Her puff of smoke drifted across the surface of the photograph. ‘I don’t need to take my time. I know this guy and Bill knows him too. He didn’t always have the moustache but I couldn’t mistake those eyes.’
Majors’ eyes were small and close-set, giving him a slightly lizardy look. His moustache was unconvincing to a sceptical eye, but probably no more than real moustaches. Erica had selected a photo in which Majors was caught looking up from the registration form on which he had been writing. A pair of tinted spectacles was sitting on the desk beside his writing hand. In the other photograph he had the glasses firmly in place and the lizardy look was gone.
‘What’s his name?’
‘I’m trying to think.’ For that she seemed to need a new cigarette, and since her Dad owned an import business she could afford to butt out one scarcely smoked and light a new one. She blew smoke at my water-stained wall.
‘You don’t know any of the others? They’re…’
‘Shh!’
When half of the cigarette was gone she snapped her fingers. ‘Got it. Mai!’
‘Mai? Mai who?’
‘I don’t know; but Bill brought him home from the pub one night. I didn’t like him, but he and Bill seemed to hit it off. I don’t know what time Bill came to bed, but it was late and he was very drunk.’
‘That’s the only time you saw him?’
‘Yes. But I know that Bill saw him again at least once-for a drink, of course.’
‘When was this?’
‘’bout a month ago, bit less maybe.’
‘Well, that makes him look like the contact, but, God, it’s not much to go on. Mai-that all?’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay-big question, what pub?’
She stubbed out the cigarette and looked seriously at me. Her creamy skin was unlined except for a small frown mark between her eyes which was visible through a gap in the fringe. That mark deepened now.
‘I can’t remember the name, but I can take you there.’
I shook my head. ‘Come on, Erica, this is my line of work. You know the name of the place.’
The frown line deepened further. ‘I clean forget,’ she said.
I laughed. ‘Lucky you’re not a client; who’d employ a detective that easily caught?’
‘I might.’
I shook my head. ‘Conflict of interest. You’ve got me, Erica. You can come along but you’ll have to stay in the car.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘If Mai sees you and he’s been up to some tricks with Mountain he could get nasty or he could run.’ I sat down behind the desk again. Like all the best-looking women, she was impressively stylish in the simple clothes: ‘You sort of stand out in a crowd.’
‘I’ll wear shades and a hat, five inch heels. I’m going too. I’m afraid I hold the whip, Mr Hardy. I’m inviting you along, not asking permission to go.’
I groaned. ‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-eight. Why?’
‘How’d you get to be so tough?’
She smiled. ‘A four foot eleven Chinese girl with four big brothers is tough or she’s a door mat. I’m just like everyone else-I like getting my own way. But I’m used to pushing for it.’
‘Okay, I’m pushed. Get ready to be bored.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You expect to roll up to the pub about nine tonight and spot him drinking scotch on his own in the saloon bar, don’t you? Then we take him aside for a little chat and he tells us all he knows about Bill. That it?’
She didn’t say anything but I guessed I’d described her fantasy about right.
‘It won’t be like that, I can tell you. He won’t be there tonight and probably not for several nights, if he shows up at all. He won’t want to talk to us and even if he does he won’t know much. He’ll lie to us. That’s the way these things work.’
She pursed her lips and looked determined. ‘I was bored for years and years before I met Bill, and I haven’t been bored since. I can take a bit of boredom now to get him back. Where will I meet you?’
‘How about nine o’clock at the pub?’
She grinned. ‘No way-I’m taking you, remember?’
‘I feel sorry for your brothers.’
She snorted, picked up her bag and went to the door. She leaned on the handle and looked back enquiringly. I was reluctant to see her go.
‘What about having some Chinese food together before we go?’
‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’
‘No.’
‘All right. How about eight at Li’s in Randwick.’
‘Is that near the pub?’
‘Give up, Hardy. See you at Li’s.’
She went out and I heard her heels clicking all the way down the quiet, no-business-as-usual corridor.
Li’s was too dark to be memorable. I felt my way through the bamboo curtains and the gloom to where Erica sat in a pool of candlelight and cigarette smoke. She’d already ordered; we ate the things that came and we talked- mostly about Mountain, although a little about her. She did every thing decisively: smoked, ate and drank her tea that way, and I began to feel that she was a good ally in the search for Mountain. The only trouble was that she could be a formidable enemy when and if we found him.
One of the nice touches at Li’s was that they turned on a small, concealed table light when they presented the bill. Erica insisted on paying half, and we went out into the Randwick night more or less evens, with her information giving her a slight edge.
The pub was in Kensington and had been adopted by the university students, which meant that the management had gone for maximum drinking space and minimum comfort. It had a large, outdoor terrace crammed with chairs, benches and tables in various stages of decay. The two main bars seemed to have been designed to promote deafness; the noise of the juke boxes, TV sets and pinball machines blended in with the raucous blast of Friday night student revelry. Erica had put on shades and high heels as she’d promised, and she looked exotic and mysterious as she peered through the glasses into the loudest bar.
I shook my head. ‘Be like drinking in a room with a taxiing 707. Let’s go out on the terrace.’
I got a white wine for myself and a gin and tonic for Erica, and we sat on the terrace which was filling up with kids who either didn’t like noise or were taking a break from it. There were just enough over-twenty-fives around for us not to look conspicuous.
‘Maybe it’s not a good night,’ I said. ‘End of week fun night.’
‘It was a Friday that Bill met him. He liked to get into all this on Friday; said it made him feel young.’
‘Christ, I can’t even remember what young felt like. He’s not going to be here, love. You know that.’
‘What’s this, Hardy’s first law of surveillance?’
‘Something like that.’ I drank a big gulp of wine and waited for it to make me feel young.
‘I’m going to take a look around.’
She knocked off her gin and tonic and wandered down through the sprawling bodies, all wearing jeans, all talking and laughing, all young. Blasts of music came from the bar and I held myself tense for a while until I realised what was wrong and relaxed: this wasn’t the sort of pub I was used to and I’d been waiting for the sound of breaking glass.
‘He’s here!’ Her voice was a hiss with tobacco and gin.
‘Are you sure?’
‘See for yourself, he’s in the… what d’they call it? The Scotch Thistle Room or something.’
She meant the slightly lower decibel bar, which had apparently aspired to a Caledonian decor before the student take-over. It had a tartan carpet much eroded by beer and cigarette ash, and framed, glass-covered pictures of Highland scenes, which were mostly obliterated by graffiti scrawled over the glass.
Erica pointed with her chin at the bar and sat down on a spare chair near the door, while I went over for a professional look. Trade was brisk along the length of the bar with the patrons two deep in some places. ‘Mai’ or ‘Majors’, call him Mai, got served with two drinks and took them across to a table near the middle of the room where another man and a woman were sitting. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses tonight and his hair looked a few shades lighter than in the photo, but the reptilian eyes were unmistakable.
The woman at Mai’s table was about his age, mid-thirties. She was getting fat and trying to hide the fact in clothes too young for her. She didn’t worry me; I thought I could handle her.
The man was another story. He kept his eye on Mai as he delivered the drinks, and he didn’t seem too interested in his. The arms draped back over his chair would have been too well-developed to hold comfortably close to his torso.
I used the bar toilet and came back to Erica’s chair, which she’d turned slightly away from Mai’s field of vision.
‘No drink?’ she said.
‘No. We’ve got a problem.’
‘No problem. That’s him. We just bowl up and lay it on him.’
‘We don’t. Did you notice the guy with him?’
She shook her head.
‘Not a trained observer, see. He’s what we’ve learned from the television to call a minder.’
‘Are you scared of him?’
‘I don’t know enough about him to know whether to be scared. He’s big enough for the work, and he looks like he wouldn’t trip over the furniture when he moved. But that’s not the real worry. If Mai’s got a minder, it means he expects trouble. He doesn’t know we’re onto him so the trouble must be coming from another direction. Chances are that trouble for him means trouble for us. Logic?’
‘Bugger logic!’
She jumped up, skipped around me and headed towards the threesome’s table. I was so surprised that I stood still for a few seconds and wasted more time opening my mouth to yell at her. I didn’t yell, but by the time I got moving she had woven through the drinkers and had fronted up to Mai.
Mai shook his head and Erica said something loud and uncomplimentary. Mai pushed his chair back, the woman moved her body closer to him and the other guy got smoothly to his feet. He was well over a foot taller than Erica, but she stood her ground. I could feel the adrenalin starting to flow as I pushed towards the table. The minder had his hand on Erica’s upper arm in an ungentlemanly grip. I came up on the side and chopped at his big biceps to break the grip. He let go and half-turned, and I swung him further off-balance by pulling on his forearm. He stumbled, and I hacked his right foot out from under him so that he fell down hard and awkwardly into his chair. He looked up, and for the first time I saw that he was very young, not much over twenty. He jumped up and threw a punch, but he wasn’t set and I blocked it pretty easily.
‘Real rough on women are you, son?’
Mai yelped: ‘Fix him, Geoff.’ Geoff tried his best, but I didn’t let him get set. I gave him a short hard punch well below the belt and rasped my shoe heel down his shin bone. With the wind knocked out and a shin giving hell, most people have the good sense to sit down.
Erica flashed a smile at a man who showed some interest in joining in the action. She shook her head at him and pulled a chair up close to Mai. I leaned down hard on Geoff’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.
‘Don’t worry, son. I’m not part of his big problem and I won’t hurt him. I just want a little talk.’
He wriggled, and I put my foot down hard on his left suede shoe. Mai’s face was white and I was sure I could hear his knees knocking under the table. He was looking at me with fascination and I saw that the butt of the gun under my shoulder was just visible where my jacket was open. Geoff saw it too. I closed the jacket and smiled at him.
‘Just stay where you are and no-one gets hurt. You might learn something.’ He nodded and I took my foot away.
Erica had pulled her chair up so close that she was almost sitting in Mai’s lap. The woman with the weight problem was sitting bolt upright and trying to draw herself away from Erica as if she smelled bad. I stood up beside Geoff’s chair and nodded down at Erica who was lighting a cigarette. She puffed the smoke over Mai’s shoulder.
‘Where’s Bill Mountain?’ she said.