You’ve got to help me, Mr Hardy’, the woman said. ‘Our Annie’s going to end up in the gutter and I don’t know what to do.’ The voice was adenoidal and Cockney, the bright lipstick was askew on her big, plain face and she was dropping cigarette ash all over my desk, but I liked her. Ma Parker lived in the street behind mine; she washed dishes in the local pub and sat in the sun outside her house. We talked about the weather and horses and London. I think she once thought I was a schoolteacher, but now she knew I was a private investigator and she’d brought me her troubles.
‘You remember Annie, Mr Hardy? A lovely kid she was.’
I remembered Annie although I hadn’t seen her for five years; back then she’d have been about thirteen and she was already tall. I remembered an oval face under straight blonde hair and not much else except the way she moved-she was graceful when she was tomboying in the street with the spotty boys or dragging home Ma’s messages in a string bag.
‘Tell me the trouble, Ma’, I said. ‘I’ll be happy to help if I can.’ I gave her a cigarette from a box of the things I keep for the weak-since I gave the habit up.
She puffed smoke and her false teeth clicked. ‘Annie ran off on the day she turned fourteen. She must’ve been planning it for a long time. I didn’t know a bleedin’ thing about it but she left me a note saying she had some money and not to worry. Worry! I went out of my mind with worry for nearly a year.’
I thought back but I couldn’t recall noticing her distress. ‘I’m sorry, Ma’, I said ‘I don’t remember it.’
‘Well, you were busy I expect. She was only a kid and I’ve got Terry and Eileen to think about. I just kept on, you know.’
I nodded. I knew Ma had buried two husbands; I assumed she had a pension. I’d just let her be a walk-on character in the film of my life, the way you do. With the sensitivity suddenly tuned up like this, I looked at her clothes-they were cheap and clean except where she’d dropped ash. Ma herself seemed to be keeping up appearances okay; we were two of a kind, my clothes were cheap and getting due for a dry cleaning.
‘Nearly a year, you said. How was she after that?’
‘I didn’t know her. She was all grown up to look at her. She got some money and took off again. The next time I saw her she was in Silverwater.’
‘What for?’, I asked, but I’d have bet money on the answer.
‘Drugs. Heroin and that-she was using them and selling them. She was giving them to kids younger than her. She got three years.’
‘Where? Some detention centre?’
‘No, Silverwater.’
‘She’d be too young.’
She stubbed out the cigarette; she looked old and worn but she wouldn’t have been fifty. ‘She made me promise not to tell them her age, she said she was eighteen.’
‘She wanted to do her time at Silverwater?’
‘That’s right, Mr Hardy. I couldn’t believe it but what could I do?’ A couple of tears ran down her rouged and powdered face. It was one of those moments when I was glad I didn’t have any children; she was puzzled, ashamed and guilty, and all because this criminal was her daughter.
‘What’s she doing now?’ I hadn’t meant the words to come out so harshly, so fully of hostility. She sniffed and looked at me uncertainly.
‘Perhaps I oughtn’t to have come. I was going to pay, you know.’
That did the trick. Next I knew I was brewing her tea, stuff I never drink myself, and feeding her more cigarettes and expressing indifference to money. The story was familiar enough: Annie had done eighteen months, came out on parole and went straight back in again on a similar charge. Now she was out again.
‘Something happened to her in there, Cliff,’ Ma said. She was almost jaunty now, smoking away and getting down her third cup of tea. It was getting on to midday and watching her drink the muddy stuff made me think of something cold and wet in a ten-ounce glass.
‘Come on, Ma, I’ll run you home and you can tell me about it.’ We drove to Glebe and I bought her a beer in the pub opposite the trotting track. She said Annie settled down for a while after her second time inside, had a job and seemed steadier. But recently Ma had begun to have her doubts-she didn’t like the look of the men who called for the girl and she had the feeling that she was heading for trouble again. She finished her first beer and I ordered another; she had a wonderful bladder.
‘It’s the drugs I’m worried about. She swore to me that she was finished with them, but I don’t know.’
‘What do you want me to do, Ma? She must be a big girl now.’
‘She’s still a kid really. You know how to investigate people-just watch her for a day or two, see what her friends are like. And tell me if you think she’s back with the bleedin’ drugs.’
‘What will you do if she is?’
Suddenly she lost interest in the beer; there was a rough, flaky patch of skin near her nose, and she scratched it. To a turned-on eighteen-year-old she must have seemed like a survivor from the days of the Tudors. When she spoke her voice was shaky and tired. ‘You know, there was only ever one thing about me that Annie respected. Know what it was?’
I shook my head.
‘That I was born in London. She’s got a real thing about London, even reads about it. Anything on the telly about London she watches. Well, I’ve got a sister whose old man died a while back; and she hasn’t got anyone, and she’d love to see Annie. Been looking at her photos for years and reckons she’s the ant’s pants. She’d pay for Annie to go over and visit her. It’s the one thing that Annie’d toe the line for.’
‘You can’t bribe people to be good’, I said.
‘I know that, but it’s all I’ve got. I have to know what she’s up to so’s I can decide what to do.’
I told her the usual things-that she might not like what turned up or that I might not be able to find out anything at all. But she’d made her mind up that this was how she wanted to handle it. She insisted on giving me fifty dollars and when I protested she turned fierce.
‘I’m not bleedin’ broke, you know. I work for it, and I expect to pay for work done.’
I subsided. We finished our drinks and she left to walk home. I drove back to my place to have some lunch, re-arrange the bills in order of priority and kill the afternoon. Annie worked at a supermarket in Redfern, Ma had told me, and the strategy was to begin the surveillance that evening to determine whether little Annie was or was not treading the path of virtue. I had fruit and wine for lunch and walked it off in the park as the shadows lengthened. It was autumn, and the ground was just beginning to soften from the occasional rain and the afternoon wind had an edge-it was a nice time to walk.
At a quarter past five I was sitting in my car opposite the supermarket. It was Wednesday and traffic and business were light; the shop window was plastered with signs offering cheap mustard pickles and dish-washing liquid. Some of the signs were torn and flapping, as if idle hands and the wind had not believed their promises.
Ma had told me that I wouldn’t need a photograph to recognise Annie and she was right. When she came out at twenty to six she was recognisable from her walk; she still moved well, but there was something not proud about the way she carried her head. Her hair had darkened to a honey colour and she wore it short. In a lumpy cardigan and old jeans she headed across the pavement to a battered Datsun standing at the kerb; no-one stood aside for her and she had to push her way through. I saw her face as she got into the car; it was pale and clenched, knotted with anger and resentment.
The Datsun butted out into the traffic and I followed in my ancient Falcon like another old pensioner out for a stroll. We went down into Erskineville and the Datsun stopped outside a tattered terrace house mouldering away in the shadow of a sheet metal factory. A couple of blasts on the Datsun’s horn brought a tall, thin character out from the house. He wore denims and sneakers and had to bend himself twice to get into the back of the car. I noted down the number of the house and the street and then the game began again. I don’t do much tailing and I don’t particularly like it, it feels too much like driving in a funeral procession. The Datsun driver had bad manners; he cut in and bluffed out and raised several citizens’ blood pressure dangerously. I stuck close and we went through the Cross and into the roller coaster of Double Bay. The apartment buildings don’t look much from the outside, but the titles go for six figures; Annie and her mates were.. climbing the social ladder. The next stop was outside a newish three-storey job with a lot of white stones to slip on and the sort of trees that have the bark peeling off them. The beanpole got out this time, and went into the building for a few minutes. When he came back he had a woman with him; in high heels she must have stood close to six feet and the purple jumpsuit affair she wore showed the world that here was someone who thought well of her body. She slid into the back seat of the car like a cat going into its basket; as she snaked her spike-shoed foot in I realised that I’d been holding my breath. I let it go and followed the Datsun down the hill into the gathering gloom.
They parked a few blocks back from Oxford Street and walked up in two pairs. The car driver was a nuggety number in jeans and a short leather jacket. The clothes accentuated the width of his shoulders and he had an easy, rolling walk like a fighter before the punches get to him. He kept his distance from Annie who mooched along with her hands stuck in the back pocket of her jeans. The beanpole and the Flamingo pranced on up ahead and a good couple of feet apart. He had a long, narrow head and crisp, curling hair; the woman had a high-tone, up-market conceited strut. She didn’t talk and the first act of communication she made was to take twenty dollars from her shoulder bag and hand it to the shorter man. He went into the bottle shop of a pub on Oxford Street and came out with a couple of bottles. They moved on; Annie drew closer to the leather jacket, and the tall girl tossed back a mane of platinum hair and led them to a restaurant that boasted French cuisine. A menu taped to the window told me that no main dish came in at under fifteen dollars. Through the smoked glass I saw them arrange themselves around a table and take the top off the rose; it didn’t seem likely that they’d duck out the back so I walked up past Taylor Square to a pub that has draft Guinness and honest sandwiches. Forty minutes later I was back outside the restaurant and forty minutes after that they came out. There was no wine left over and the blonde had lost some of her aloofness. The guy in the leather jacket was rock steady but the others were showing some signs. They stood on the footpath and debated something for a few minutes while I watched from across the road. A police car cruised down the strip and the blonde jerked her head at it and said something uncomplimentary. Annie lit a cigarette and the flame in her cupped, shaking hands jerked and danced like a marionette. They settled the point and walked up to the Square to a disco dive with a sign outside that read: ‘Drinks till two and do what you want to do’.
It cost five dollars to go in which meant that this blonde, if she was still paying, was running up a fair bill for the night’s fun. For the five dollars you got strobe lights and dark corners, mirrors to hate yourself in and noise. The beat of the music coming over the amplifiers was regular to the point of monotony and about as loud as the guns at Passchendaele. It was early for the action at this sort of joint; a girl was dancing with another girl and three men were dancing together on the polished floor. A few people sat drinking in plump-cushioned booths and my foursome sat up at a long bar. There were mirrors behind the bar which had the prices of the drinks written on them in white paint-a scotch cost two dollars and fifty cents, a Bloody Mary cost three dollars. I sat at the far end of the bar and ordered a beer. It wasn’t an ideal place for a surveillance; alone and over thirty I stood out like a carthorse at the Melbourne Cup. Also I didn’t know what to make of it: Annie was out with some friends consuming alcohol, the fact that she had a bad case of the shakes and that three of the party looked as if they didn’t have fifty cents while the other was wearing five hundred dollars on her back was interesting, but nothing more.
We all had another drink or two and I was thinking about calling it a night when he came in. His platform soles lifted him up high enough for you to call him short; he had on a dark three-piece suit with a dark shirt and a white tie. His body was plump but his head was abnormally small, it looked as if it was trying to duck out of sight. He had a thin pasty face and stringy blonde hair, wispy on top and worn long. He looked as if he’d been made up out of leftover parts. He walked straight up to my party and the blonde bought him a green drink. They had a few giggles and then got down to what looked like serious talk, argument even. Annie shook her head a couple of times and Shorty downed his drink and made as if he was going to take the high dive off his stool. Then they all calmed down and the head shaking turned to nodding. Shorty got down and walked off towards a door with a sign over it that read ‘Powder your nose till it glows’. Annie and leather jacket followed him, and thirty seconds later I followed them.
After the door there was a short, dark corridor and then a set of narrow, carpeted stairs. I went up the first flight, made a turn and then something like the Queen Mary hit me behind the ear. My face hit the carpet hard and a front end loader scooped me up and threw me down the stairs. I flipped over, hit my head more than once and never reached the bottom. I went down into the blackness and then down some more.
When I came out of it a cat was walking across my face and talking. I told it to be quiet and tried to brush it away but it stayed there and talked louder. At least it wasn’t scratching, but I thought it might, so I opened my eyes. It wasn’t dark at the bottom of the stairs anymore, there was a bright light burning about a hundred miles away and it was getting closer. I closed my eyes again.
‘He’s alive’, a woman’s voice said.
Another woman giggled. ‘How alive?’
I decided to kill the cat so I opened my eyes again. The light was closer this time, but not as bright, and the cat was a fur coat. Its owner also wore a pink leotard and spike heels. ‘What happened to you?’ She had the same voice as the cat.
‘I fell down the stairs.’
The giggler giggled again. ‘Break anything?’
She was small and dark with a big bright smile. She’d have been just the girl to take to an execution.
I located my arms and legs and flapped them. I didn’t fly but I did manage to crawl up the wall and stand there with my head throbbing. Two versions of the big figure in the fur coat stood in front of me, I tried to fuse them into one.
‘I’m okay’, I said.
‘Oh’, said the small one, and I thought I detected a note of disappointment.
‘You need a drink.’ Fur coat, leotard, spike heels and practical, too-my dream girl. I mumbled something and staggered through the door back to the fun parlour. There were more people around, more drinkers and dancers but no sign of the frolicsome four.
I didn’t have the drink; being knocked unconscious disturbs the normal behaviour patterns. I plodded out to the street and walked two blocks before I realised I was going the wrong way. The walk back to my car was like a month on the chain gang. I stumbled and ran into things and people on the streets drew the natural conclusion; each collision sent daggers of pain stabbing into my head and only a strong mixture of pride and stupidity got me to the car. I sat in it for a while looking at the cars-the new fast ones and the old ones and the people who were just the same. When everything had settled down to a steady hum of distress, I drove home. My mirror showed me a right eye that was darkening and a swelling on the side of my head. There was no blood to speak of, and I did what I could with wet cloths and pain killers and went to bed. Just as I drifted into sleep I had one of those half-dreams where you fall off a step or a gutter, except that my step was high and over an endless void; I twitched like an electric shock victim. I didn’t wake up until nearly midday and waking up was no pleasure. My head and body ached and I felt weak as if I’d had a long illness; maybe I had, maybe it was this work I was doing. I dragged myself out to the kitchen for some food, ate it and went back to bed again. I did some more sleeping and it was dark when I came out of it to hear the phone ringing. I stumbled down the stairs.
‘Mr Hardy? Mr Hardy, I’m worried. What’s going on?’ Ma’s voice was urgent with concern and something else, maybe anger.
‘Not sure I follow you Ma’, I said. ‘I got knocked on the head last night by one of Annie’s friends. I was going to tell you about it when I felt better. What’s got you upset?’
‘Annie, of course. She didn’t come home last night and she hasn’t been at work. I don’t know where she is. I thought you might know. What happened? I mean, why’d you get hit?’
‘I’m not sure, but I know your Annie’s in bad company.’
‘The bloody drugs?’
‘I think so. But one day out of sight doesn’t mean anything necessarily.’
‘It’s more than that. She was supposed to see her parole officer today. She didn’t turn up and he went to the shop. Now she’s in real trouble. Mr Hardy, Cliff, can you… ‘
I put my hand to my head, the swelling was large and pulpy and very tender to the touch. ‘Yeah, yeah. I’ll try to find her Ma. If she’s ducking parole she won’t want to see me. I might have to be rough.’
‘You do what you bleedin’ have to.’
I told her I’d work on it and keep her informed. She asked if she could help, but I couldn’t see how she could. Then she said to be careful; that was nice, not many of my clients told me to be careful.
I had a cautious shower and shave and got dressed gingerly. Some food and a little wine and a careful checking of my gun made me feel better.
It was a little after six when I got to the house in Erskineville. There didn’t seem to be any point in subtlety. I banged on the door, and when a hairy man in a dressing gown opened it I put the. 38 to his right cheek.
‘I want the tall, thin guy. Where is he?’
His mouth opened but no sound came out. I jabbed him a little with the gun. ‘Where?’
‘He’s gone. Went this morning.’
‘Show me.’
We went down the dark hallway to a room at the back of the house. It had a bed and some basic furniture and was fairly clean. There were marks on the walls where posters had been torn off and dust mark on the floor showed where a bag or a box had stood. I motioned the man to stand in a corner while I looked in the cheap wardrobe: it was empty and so were the top two drawers beside it. I felt around in the bottom drawer and came out with a plastic syringe, the disposable kind. I held it up.
‘Diabetic, is he?’
‘No, no’, he stammered. There were three roaches in an ashtray by the bed.
I looked at the man who was fiddling with the cord of the dressing gown. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Paul.’
‘Paul what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Don’t know much, do you?’
‘I don’t know nothing. He stayed here a few weeks, paid his rent sometimes, not lately. I’m glad to be rid of him.’
There was no point in pressing it. I put the gun away and left. Things were stirring in Annie’s little circle and it wasn’t too hard to guess what was causing the movement.
The next stop was Primo Tomasetti’s tattooing parlour which is just down the way from my office. For a consideration Primo lets me park my car in the yard behind his establishment. I pushed the door open and entered Primo’s surrealistic cavern: the parlour consists of a one big room which is decorated over every inch with designs, large and small, which Primo promises to transfer to the skin. His creations range from the heterosexual-nautical to the most vivid, eastern philosophy-inspired fantasies. I usually gape a bit on entering Primo’s because he is capable of changing the motif of a wall overnight: I once saw disgusting imaginings involving mermaids changed into inter-galactic, time-capsule obscenities over ten hours. Primo paints on the walls and sticks needles into the skin. There was a cowbell hanging from the ceiling and I rang it. Primo leapt into the room from somewhere dark and gloomy behind: that’s how he moves, in jumps, except when he’s wielding his tool of trade.
‘Primo, caro, bonno sierra!’
He winced and adjusted the bow tie, spotted, red on white, he wears with the business shirt, the white coat and the dark slacks.
‘Cliff, you are the least talented linguist I have ever had inflicted on me.’ He reeled off some liquid sounds with gestures, and I watched admiringly.
‘Mondo cane’, I said, ‘L’adventura, Hiroshima mon amoure. Primo, old friend, I need your help.’
‘At last!’ He clasped his hands together and looked skywards like a bishop. ‘I see a Walther PPK, gun metal, under the left nipple.’
‘I see a little plastic bag, a sealed sachet maybe, colourless, with some white powder within.’
‘Stick to the wine and the Scotch, Cliff; it takes longer and you can still be interested in girls and food.’
‘Primo, I wouldn’t touch it unless I had something terminal, you know that. Just now, for a reason, I need a little leverage. Come on, amigo, I’ll pay you now and you keep ten per cent if I return it.’
He looked at me like a parachutist inspecting his pack, looking for wrinkles, folds, imperfections that shouldn’t be there. Then he shrugged and ducked back into the darkness. I examined the murals some more while I waited; Primo does not celebrate the drug culture, his preoccupations are carnal and his mission is the cure. He gives junk away, sells it, cuts it, feeds people, pays their hospital bills. The junkies respect him and very seldom stand over him, the cops leave him alone-he has a plan, a design, which no one else has ever understood but which most people take on trust. He came back with a flat, plastic square the size of a single serve of instant coffee. There was a teaspoon of white powder inside.
‘First quality shit’, he said, sounding like a dealer except that he waved my money aside.
I patted his arm, put the stuff in my pocket and went back to the car. My head was aching again as I pulled up in front of the flats in Double Bay. They must have been expensive to buy or rent, because the residents were proud enough of their occupancy to put their names over the letterboxes.
There was a Major Cahill, a Robert Something, a Henry Something-else and a Mr and Mrs and a Solomon Isaacs. The sixth flat was occupied by Samantha Coleman and her name plate was a fetching shade of pink.
I went up two flights of stairs and knocked on her door. I could hear disco music playing inside, it was loud and I had to knock again, hard. The door opened to the length of its chain, about eight inches. She was barefoot and wearing a Chinese dressing-gown; her eyes were hollow and the dark roots of her hair were showing. She looked at me, taking in the well-worn clothes and face, including the black eye.
‘Yes?’ Her voice was husky, accented. I caught a glimpse of suitcases on the floor behind her.
‘Annie Parker’, I said. ‘Paul, you and a little guy with lifts in his shoes and a white tie.’
Her eyes opened injudiciously; a network of tiny wrinkles sprang into life around them. ‘So’, she said.
‘I want to talk to Annie, I wanted to talk to her last night.’ I lifted my hand to touch the damaged eye.
‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Nosey. Go away before you get hurt.’
I brought out Primo’s sachet and held it up for her to see. I looked around the deserted landing before I spoke.
‘First quality shit’, I said. ‘Guaranteed.’
‘You’re selling?’
‘Bargain basement, while stocks last. But I only deal with little orphan Annie.’
‘I’ll have to make a phone call.’
I waved my hand airily and the door closed. It was the sort of wait the weak-willed fill in with a cigarette. I filled it with doubt and fear. I waited longer than a phone call should have taken, unless she was discussing the pricing of oil. When the door opened she’d arranged her hair, put on her make-up and slipped into jeans and sweater. She kept the chain on while she wriggled her feet into a pair of high-heeled sneakers.
‘Have you got a car?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll take you to Annie, but I should tell you something first.’ She put her hand on the chain and jiggled it a little. ‘We’ll be seeing a man who knows every narc in Australia, every one. Still want to go?’
I nodded; she slipped the chain and came out pulling the door shut behind her. She went down the steps wriggling her shoulders and swinging her bum as if she was trying to get herself in the mood for something exciting. I followed, watching the show with a mixture of feelings- arousal, amusement and pity.
In the car she wrinkled her nose at the smell of age and neglect. I scrabbled in the glove box and came up with a cigarette packet containing three stand-by joints. I lit one and passed it to her.
‘Thanks.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Wait and see.’ She sucked the smoke deep and held it before offering me the joint.
‘No. I mean what general direction; I’ve got to drive it haven’t I?’
‘We going north, man.’ The accent again, South African, Rhodesian?
‘North coast or north inland?’
‘Coast, what d’you think. Palm Beach…oops, well, there it is, boy.’ She was enjoying the grass and she gave me a smile as she waved a hand signalling me to start the car. I started it and drove north.
‘You don’t smoke?’ she said as she stubbed the joint out. ‘Sometimes, not when I’m working. Where are you from, Samantha, South Africa?’
She giggled. ‘Close. Salisbury, Salisbury Sam that’s me. Greatest country in the world till the blacks took over.’
‘Good times, eh?’
‘The best man, the best. The best of everything. Can I have some more of that grass?’
‘Help yourself.’ She lit up and settled back to smoke. I drove and thought. We took the turn at Pymble and headed for Mona Vale. I pulled the car up at a small mixed-business shop set back a bit from the road. Samantha looked sleepily at me and I told her I wanted chewing gum. In the shop I bought a packet of corn flour, some bananas in a plastic bag, the evening paper and the gum. I put about a quarter pound of the flour in the plastic bag and wrapped it up in some sheets of newspaper. On the way to the car I stuffed the package down in the bottom of a little bin outside the shop. I got back in the car and handed Samantha a banana.
‘Drek’, she said, so I gave her some chewing gum instead.
We rolled on up through the northern beaches playspots until we hit the biggest playspot of them all. It was nearly ten, and everything along the strip was going full blast-it was all chicken fat and pinballs and the popping of cold, cold cans. Samantha directed me off the main road and down a few side streets which were discreetly bordered by ti-tree and money. After the last turn, the ocean stretched away in front of us like a vast velvet cloud.
The house was one of those structures that have been pinned to a hill like a butterfly to a board. The steps down to it were steep and the house touched land only along its rear wall; the rest was supported by pillars which must have been fifty feet high at the front. Before I left the car I made a show of putting the big Colt into the clip under the dashboard. Sam watched, looking bored, but I had the short barrel. 38 tucked in safe under my waistband at the back.
They were all there in the bright living room watching TV and drinking Bacardi rum-Annie, beanpole Paul, the guy in the leather jacket and the near midget. Shorty was wearing a lime-green safari suit tonight, and highly polished boots with Cuban heels. Sam headed straight for the bottle and poured herself a big slug over ice. She offered it to me and I shook my head.
‘Hello, all,’ I said. ‘Hello, Annie.’
She glanced up from her drink and shrugged. Leather jacket stood up and walked over to me; he had acne scars and a gold front tooth and he looked tough. I tried to look tough back.
‘Name?’ he said.
‘No.’
He flashed the tooth and spoke to Shorty. ‘You know him, Doc?’
Doc pushed back a strand of the stringy hair and looked at me with his pale eyes. The flesh around his face and neck was like soft, white dough.
‘No’, he said. ‘He’s not a narc. Don’t like the look of him, but.’
I shrugged and took out the heroin. ‘I know Sammy and Annie and Paul and I’m pleased to meet Doc; who’re you?’
‘Sylvester Stallone’, he said. ‘Let’s have a look at the shit.’ He reached for it, but I moved it out of reach.
‘You look, I talk to Annie.’
‘How much have you got?’ Doc asked. His voice was deep and resonant, belying his appearance.
‘One kilo, pure.’
‘Dean, you’d better have a look at that shit’, Doc said. ‘Annie, talk to the man.’
I tossed the sachet to Dean and motioned to Annie to come out on to the front balcony with me. She got up and moved sluggishly through the French windows. The others gathered around Dean ignoring the television and their drinks- they were communing with their God. The balcony ran the width of the house; it was about eight feet deep and glassed in for half of its length. Where we stood was open-out in front of us there was just the dark night and the sea. Annie stood with her back to the rail, the cigarette in her hand glowed like an angry red eye. I moved up close to her, took her hand and moved it around to the small of my back so she could feel the gun.
‘Feel that? It’s a. 38, does nasty things. I’m going to use it on some of your friends if I have to.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘My name’s Hardy. You wouldn’t remember me, but I live near your Mum in Glebe. She’s hired me to find you and help you if I can.’
‘What are you doing peddling shit, then?’ Her breath was heavy with tobacco and alcohol; there was a rank smell from her clothes as if they’d been slept in. She was also trembling violently.
‘That was a blind to get me here. You’re in a bad way, Annie, you must know that.’
‘Sure. What do you reckon you can do about it?’
‘I can take you out of here. I know some people who’ve worked the cure. Your mother wants to talk to you, your parole officer’s not too happy. The way you’re going your life’s rotting away in front of you.’
She sagged against me into what I thought at first was a fit, then I realised she was laughing. The spasms shook and twisted her; she was leaf thin and impossibly light; I put my arm around her and could feel the sharp bones poking through the tight skin. I got hold of a morsel of flesh on her upper arm and pinched hard.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Everything.’ She cut the laugh off with a deep breath which she expelled slowly. She looked over my shoulder into the room. ‘We’ve only got a minute. Look, Hardy, I’m working for the narcs. I don’t want to, but they’ve got me by the tits. Understand?’
I nodded.
‘There’s a guy coming here tonight with some smack, a lot of it. It’s a set-up. When Doc pays him, he’s going to bust them all. It’s arranged.’
‘What do you get out of it?’
Her tired features worked their way up into a sort of smile. ‘Freedom’, she said. ‘That’s what they’ve promised me. They say they’ll wipe my slate.’
‘Any money?’
‘Some, enough to get out of this bloody place. It’s my one chance, Hardy. If you butt in now you’ll screw it for me, and they’ll come down hard on me. You know what they’re like.’
I did. I knew what they could do to people who got caught in their dirty world, a world in which the narcotics agents themselves were not the least dirty part. I squinted at her in the soft light, trying to gauge her levels of truth and reality, but you can’t assess junkies on the normal scale-their habit over-rides everything else, straightens out their curves and throws in new ones. Anything was possible, but there was a note in her voice that could be taken for sincerity and she was Ma Parker’s daughter.
‘I’ll buy it.’ I said. ‘When’s he due?’
‘Soon, any minute. I’m trying to come off it, I’m badly strung out. It has to be soon, has to be. Shit, I really didn’t need you in the scene.’
‘We’ll see. Look on me as your insurance. Why did they agree to let me come along if they’ve got this big score lined up?’
‘Greed. Look, we can’t stay out here, and I need a drink bad. I’m going back.’
She moved away and I let her go. Inside new drinks were being poured and cigarettes lit. The television was still on; tennis players in coloured uniforms moved around on a red court under a blue Texas sky. Dean had slit open the sachet with a razor blade and his face was showing a little awe as he looked at me.
‘You say you’ve got a lot of this stuff?’
‘I may have exaggerated a little.’ I looked him up and down and let my eyes drift off over Doc and Paul. ‘I’ve got as much as you can handle anyway.’
Doc spoke quickly. ‘We’d need to see more of it, Dean. Anyone can get hold of this amount of good shit. There’s something about this that worries me… this packet.’
Paul and Sam were working on a big joint, rolling it with a number of papers and giggling. Paul was singing a song about Rio. Dean sneered at them and went over to where Annie was standing; she had a cigarette burning and her face was drawn tight and stiff.
‘What do you know about this guy, Annie?’ Dean said.
‘I had a girlfriend in Silverwater’, I improvised. ‘She…’
‘I was asking her!’ The scars on Dean’s skin showed out white and malignant-looking as anger pumped colour into his face. Doc was staring at the square of plastic in his hand and it was an altogether nasty situation when a soft knock sounded on the back door.
‘That’ll be him’, Annie whispered. ‘This is it.’
‘Two big scores in one night,’ Sam said putting a match to the cigar-sized joint. ‘Let’s celebrate.’
‘Shut up’, Dean hissed. ‘Paul, open the door; Doc, stand back so you can get a good look at him.’ Dean reached inside his jacket and took out a. 45 Colt automatic; he slid the hammer back to full cock and stood where he could get a clear shot at the door. He obviously knew what he was doing, and I felt even more under-equipped and unready with the. 38 tucked down behind.
Paul opened the door, and the man who came through it conjured up pictures of the veldt and sjamboks: he was about six feet tall with wide, beefy shoulders; his face was reddish and broad, topped with thin, sandy hair. He had that blue-eyed, mass-produced in Holland look, which repels most people not of the same stamp.
Doc wasn’t repelled; a smile spread over his pasty face; stretched tight, his lips were like a pair of peeled almonds.
‘Hendrick, dear friend,’ he cooed. ‘Hendrick, is it really you?’
The newcomer didn’t smile back; his pale eyes flicked around the room, rested on me for an uncomfortable time, and then settled into a neutral, business-like glare.
‘I thought it’d be you, Doc’, he said. ‘It had the smell, you know.’ His accent was three shades thicker than Sam’s but it was formed under the same African skies. He moved forward like a man about to take control. His grey suit would have been conservative except for the over-bold red check in it. There was a gun bulge under the left lapel and a bulge of another kind in a side pocket.
‘Don’t be like that, Henk’, Doc said soothingly. ‘We’re all friends here. Let’s get down to business.’
I took a side long look at Annie; her cigarette was burning away unheeded and extra strain seemed to have stripped the flesh from the bones of her face. I didn’t know what sort of act she’d expected from her contact, but it clearly didn’t include pleasant greetings from Doc. A double-cross was in the air and she could sense it. Dean acted as if comprehension was no concern of his; he held the. 45 at the ready and waited.
Hendrick ignored Doc’s patter and looked again at me. ‘Who’s he?’
‘Dealer’, Doc said, ‘small time, nothing to interest you Henk.’
I took a chance. ‘Not so small’, I said. ‘Fair sized consignment, first grade stuff.’ The heroin was lying on a chair arm and I pointed to it. ‘Sample.’
The pale eyes seared me like acid. ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Interesting.’ He walked over to Annie, took the cigarette from between her fingers and dropped it into her glass.
‘Dirty habit, Annie’, he said. His big white hand came up and he took a grip on her left breast Annie looked down.
‘I’m glad it’s you we’re dealing with Henk’, Doc said rubbing his hands briskly. ‘Annie had some story about a Vietnamese. You don’t look like a Viet.’
Hendrick laughed. ‘Well, Annie wasn’t completely in the picture.’ He squeezed her breast harder. ‘It’s my job to get in touch with all these desperados. But Doc here is a gentleman compared to some. I do the community a service by keeping him in business.’
Sam was looking at him with her mouth slightly open-another one not repelled. Paul was well away with the grass; he’d smoked most of the joint and he was lying out on a sofa as if he was ready to levitate. Dean was still at his post.
Doc spread and waved his hands like the Pope bestowing a benediction. ‘There’s no better smack that copper smack, let’s see it, Hendrick.’
He moved away from Annie and unbuttoned his jacket; the black butt of the gun curved out near his shirt pocket. He nodded at Dean. ‘You, put the popgun over there near the telly and then go back near the door.’ Dean did as he was told after a nod from Doc. Hendrick pulled out a package from his pocket and tossed it to Doc. It was wrapped in plastic, and when Doc had unwound it a couple of dozen small, linked plastic pockets rippled out like a snake.
‘Hip belt’, Doc said. ‘Good one. Annie said thirty grand, that right?’
Hendrick nodded and Doc went out of the room. When he came back he was carrying a manila envelope which he handed to Hendrick. Annie watched fascinated; maybe she was still hoping that her deal would go through, but it must have been a faint hope. Hendrick wasn’t acting; he counted the money carefully and put it away in an inside pocket. He had no particular expression for thirty grand just as he had no particular expression for tit-grabbing; I wondered what he did for fun.
‘This is a nice place, Doc. Had it long?’
Doc shrugged; he was looking uneasy and Dean was shifting his feet like a boxer about to start punching.
‘What about a drink?’ Hendrick moved towards the bottles and then suddenly darted right and picked up Dean’s gun. He had the safety off and the thing on full cock in one smooth movement, the way they train them to do where he came from. Our host looked worried for a minute, but his expression changed when Hendrick pointed the gun at me.
‘You know, Doc’, he said, ‘you shouldn’t deal with fly-by-nighters like this. Could get you into trouble. Is his stuff good?’
‘The best’, Doc said.
‘Is it now? Well, I just might take him and it into custody and do myself some good.’ He lifted the. 45 a fraction. ‘You wouldn’t object, Doc?’
Doc licked his lips; there was reluctance in his face, greed as well, but they both had fear to contend with. He let the plastic belt slide in his hands. ‘No, Henk’, he said. ‘Be my guest. Nothing rough here though.’
‘Of course not.’ He moved up to me and put the muzzle of the. 45 under the point of my chin.
‘Where is it?’ This was what he did for kicks; he pronounced the ‘where’ like ‘vair’ and there was a big, blue vein standing out under the pink skin of his temple.
‘No rough stuff here, Henk’, I said.
He brought his knee up accurately and I went down with that feeling of pain and violation rolling through my body. As I hit the floor I felt the gun bite into my back and I had the consoling thought that I might get a chance to shoot him where he’d placed his knee. I lay there blinking as the spasms shot through me. My wallet was in the top pocket of the denim jacket I was wearing and he bent down and lifted it out. He looked through the contents letting them drop to the floor one by one. There was only money, driver’s licence and stray papers. I contemplated an attack from below but the gun in his hand was nicely directed and rock steady.
‘Clifford somebody; nobody.’ He dropped the last paper disdainfully like an ice cream wrapper.
I sat up, controlling the pain and gathered the things from the wallet. I was about to put them back when Hendrick stood on my left hand. He bore down on it with all sixteen stone, and I screamed.
‘Where?’
I shook my head. He swung his other foot at my head; I rolled away from it a bit but he connected near my ear. I felt skin tear and bones click, and there was a roaring sound getting closer. The warmth on the side of my face and neck was my blood.
‘Now, Henk’, Doc said.
‘Shut up! How’d he get here?’
‘Sam brought him’, Dean said. ‘He said he knew Annie.’
Hendrick looked at Sam with interest, she returned the look.
‘He showed me the sample’, she purred.
‘Did he say he had it with him?’ Hendrick was still looking at her, but as if he’d like to hurt her.
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Did he stop anywhere?’
‘No, oh yeah, he did stop. He bought chewing gum.’ She giggled. ‘And bananas.’
‘What else did he do? It’s important.’
Sam was pretty stoned but she gave it a good try. ‘Well, he gave me some gum and he had some good grass in the car. He didn’t smoke and he’s got this sort of springy step.’ She giggled again.
‘What?’ Hendrick snapped.
‘Well, I was thinking how he was Mr Clean, you know, not smoking and that. And outside the shop he shoved his hand into this rubbish bin, like a derro. It looked funny but I guess he was throwing something away.’
He glanced down at me with the look he probably used when he was kicking the kaffirs about. ‘Amateur!’ he sneered. I groaned and let him have his fun.
‘Well, I think that winds it up here’, Hendrick said. ‘Get on your feet you.’ He helped me with a kick on the leg and I promised him something for that too. ‘Annie, you’re coming with us, and you too.’ He waved the gun at Samantha. ‘You can show us the spot.’
‘I don’t know…’ Sam mumbled.
‘Yes, you do. Let’s go.’
‘Hey’, Dean rasped, ‘what about my gun?’
Hendrick looked at the. 45 and slowly swung it around to point at the bridge of Dean’s nose. ‘It’s a good piece’, he said. ‘I like it.’
I got up slowly trying to look more wonky than I felt. I was glad he liked the gun, a man with two guns isn’t looking around for a third; stands to reason. He herded us out of the house and up the steps to his car, a yellow Cortina. Annie moved listlessly and Sam tried to regain some of her oomph, but it was a losing battle, she was stoned and scared. Hendrick gave the keys to Annie.
‘You drive and the blonde can keep you company. I’ll cuddle up in the back here with Clifford.’
Annie drove slowly and steadily and Sam sat rigidly beside her. I slumped back in the seat away from Hendrick and groaned from time to time. The blood had stopped flowing and the pain in my head wasn’t worse than an impacted wisdom tooth. I concentrated on blaming the man beside me for the pain and the ills of the world generally.
After a while Hendrick asked Sam a few questions, and encouraged her replies with a few prods of the. 45. He’d uncocked it, but I remembered the speed he’d displayed before- not yet. We slowed down and after a few false alarms Sam found the right shop. It was closed; there was forest on one side of the road and the houses on the other side were set well back from the road and behind high hedges and shrubberies. There was light from a street lamp a little way off but not much of it. There were two rubbish bins outside the shop.
He got Annie to U-turn and we pulled up twenty feet or so back from the first bin. Hendrick stuck the gun in my ribs.
‘How’re you feeling, man?’
‘Lousy.’
‘Good. Now I want you to get out, go up to the right bin and retrieve something. Then bring it back here to me. If you do anything silly I’ll shoot you and there’ll be all the evidence I need to make it okay. Understand?’
I nodded wearily and got out of the car. There was a light breeze and it hurt the torn flesh by my ear. I limped up to the first bin, paused a minute and then went to the second. I put my hand on its rim and then collapsed, rolling onto my side where I could see back to the car. Nothing happened for several long seconds, and then Hendrick got out. He still held the. 45 and he was very wary. I played dead and let him put his boot toe into my ribs. He seemed satisfied and burrowed down into the bin, still keeping the gun on target. He pulled his hand up with the package and proved he was human-for a split second he forgot me and looked at his prize. Adrenalin was flooding me-I grabbed the gun hand and pulled it down while I swung one foot at the back of his knee. He grunted and came down and I ground the fingers into the cement; I felt his little finger break and his grip relax, and I slammed the hand down again. He let the gun go and whimpered a bit. I got up fast and reached back for the. 38. His eyes were wide with pain and surprise as I put the muzzle between his eyebrows.
‘Henk’, I croaked, ‘you should pick your enemies better.’ I kicked the. 45 away into the shadows and put the. 38 into the rubbish bin. ‘Get up.’
He was good; he came up fast and threw the package at me but I was ready for that, and he missed anyway. I put a straight left on his nose and felt it give. He roared and swung wildly; I let him miss twice and then I stepped up and hooked a hard right into his mouth. The flesh split and a couple of his big, beautiful white teeth collapsed and I hit him there again. His hands went up to his face and he stepped back, then he lowered his head and charged; I stepped away and he went hard into the post which held the bin. I ripped him twice under the heart and he went down and lay still.
I was breathing hard and both hands were hurting, but it was my turn to gather guns and money. I collected the lot and picked up the plastic packet of corn flour from the roadway. Annie got out of the car and walked over to Hendrick couchant.
‘You should’ve killed him’, she said.
‘No, he should have killed me.’
The whole thing only took a couple of minutes and if any cars had passed during the action their drivers must have decided it wasn’t their scene. A car cruised up now with a genuine citizen aboard; he wound down the window and put his big, bald head out.
‘Trouble?’ he said.
I’d taken Hendrick’s ID card out of his wallet: it carried the name Hendrick Hasselt and photograph. I put my thumb over the photo and flashed the card.
‘No trouble. Making an arrest. Good of you to stop.’ I tried to look as if I always went about with three guns and thirty grand mad money on me. He didn’t like the effect but he wasn’t a fool; he nodded and drove on.
Hasselt was wearing a rather nice line in paisley ties; it looked better around his wrists and he looked better on the back seat of the car, bleeding gently over his upholstery. Sam sat in the back with him and Annie drove us to Palm Beach. We had a quiet talk on the way; as she told it, she was right in the middle between Doc and Hasselt and his colleagues. It all rang true and when I asked her how she felt about a loan and a little trip abroad she gave me the first real smile I’d seen her use.
‘Can you do that?’
‘I think so. I’ll do it for Ma mostly. You, I’m not sure about. It depends how you feel about the junk.’
‘Never again’, she said. ‘Believe me.’
I didn’t say anything-what can you say? They opened the door to Annie and we all trooped in. I used the. 45 to impress Doc and Dean, but after dumping Hasselt in a chair they didn’t need much impressing. Paul was stretched out asleep on the sofa and the little packet of heroin was nowhere to be seen.
Dean looked at Hasselt and breathed out slowly. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He got careless and he wasn’t quite as good as he thought he was. Now you just be quiet and you’ll get your gun back.’ I walked over to Doc and pushed him down into a chair, then I tickled his knee cap with the gun. ‘Tell Sam where the shit is, or you’ll never walk again.’ He told her and she brought it out.
Hasselt looked bad but he was taking an interest; one side of his face was darkening fast and he was working at a loose tooth with his tongue, maybe several teeth. I took out the plastic bag and showed it to him.
‘Can you cook?’
He shook his head.
‘Pity’, I said and dumped the cornflour in his lap, the dust flew up and he sneezed, and that caused him pain and he swore. I poured myself a small splash of Bacardi and sipped it, I could see why they drowned it with Coke.
‘Now’, I said, ‘let’s all go to the bathroom.’ I finished my drink and we all trooped into a bathroom that had white and red tiles and good-looking plumbing. I tossed the plastic belt to Doc.
‘Open it up, Doc, and pour it all into the toilet bowl.’
‘No’, he screamed. ‘That’s a hundred thousand…’
I smiled at him. ‘As Henk said to me a little while ago, there’s enough evidence here to arrange things anyway I like. If you’re found dead, Doc, clutching a hundred grand worth of heroin, no one’s going to ask too many questions. Start pouring!’
He did, and the action seemed to cause him physical pain. When the water in the bowl was clouded up with the white powder I took the belt from him and held it under a running tap.
‘Now, flush the toilet like a nice clean boy.’ He did, and a hundred thousand dollars headed for the sewer.
Back in the living room I put my. 38 handy and unloaded the. 45. I tossed the gun at Dean and told him to put it all down to experience. I took out the manila envelope and tapped it on the coffee table. Doc and Hasselt looked at it like cats eyeing a bird.
‘I was hired to look out for Annie’, I said, ‘and it turned out she needed it. Now you and you have got problems.’ I tapped the envelope again. ‘Do you know what this can buy me in Sydney in the way of people to take care of you two?’
They didn’t say anything, but they knew what I meant.
‘Right, now Annie’s going away. She might be back soon or she might not, either way it’s no concern of yours. Do you get me?’
Doc nodded, Hasselt didn’t move, it would have hurt him to nod.
‘The same goes for me. I’ll put a little of this around, and you won’t even piss without me knowing about it. If I hear that you have used my name or Annie’s in vain, someone will get a chunk of this and you’ll be missing.’
I took Annie home, and twelve days later she was off; after we worked things out with her parole officer and did an express job on her passport. I made her a small loan and paid Primo for the heroin and gave him a bit extra too. That left twenty odd thousand which I split into four lots and posted to deserving organisations. A month later I got a postcard from Annie; it had a picture of a naval gentleman on top of a high pillar; so I gathered she was in London-I couldn’t read the writing.