I had an undisturbed breakfast and I hung around the room for a while hoping for a call. Then I had a swim and took a couple of looks at the message board at the reception desk. Nothing. The morning was wearing on and I was getting impatient, certainly not settling into holiday mode, something I’ve never been that good at anyway. ‘Driven,’ Cyn used to say, ‘and it’s driving me crazy.’
I showered and drank some more instant coffee with creamer. I was thinking of going to see Penny when a light tap came at the door. It was the non-speaking Kanak youth again. He handed me a piece of paper and slipped away before I could thank or tip him.
I unfolded the paper and examined the block-capitalled address and then pulled out my tourist map. Nothing wrong with playing the visitor. The address was in the heart of Noumea’s Chinatown. Just to be sure I took the most indirect route I could so that anyone consistently behind me had to be following. Nobody. The address turned out to be a shabby-looking block of flats on a street corner above a cluster of trade stores selling, as far as I could tell, exactly the same things at exactly the same prices.
No security here-just a set of dilapidated steps going up from the street beside one of the stores. My information was that Montefiore was in flat five. Turned out to be on the top level where the smell of neglect was strongest and the light was the least good. It was hot and I was sweating when I found the door. The only light was from a landing window that hadn’t been washed this century and a good bit of the last. Still cautious, I paused at the top of the stairs, looked and listened. Nothing. I stepped over a broken carton spilling beer cans and knocked at the door of flat five.
I heard a faint sound inside, possibly a radio or television, and then it stopped. I knocked again and got no response. If an Australian wheeler-dealer named Jarrod Montefiore, who hung out with types like Master, Penny and Rosito and spoke French, was staying in this dump there could only be one reason. He was hiding. Why not somewhere better? Not hard to guess. I pulled out the wad, detached a ten thousand franc note worth about a hundred and forty Australian dollars, and slipped it under the door. I put my mouth close to the jamb and spoke in a voice I hoped would carry only to where I wanted it to be heard.
‘My name’s Hardy. I’m a private detective from Sydney working for Stewart Master’s wife. I’ve seen Rosito and Rivages and haven’t got along with them all that well. Reg Penny gave me this address. Or rather, I bought it. I’m giving him ten grand to get clear of Noumea. I can do the same for you or maybe more depending on what you can tell me.’
When I’d finished I pushed another note under the door and stepped back. I heard bare feet on the floor and a slight groan, the kind you make bending down if you’re old or injured. I bent and pushed another note through the gap.
Over four hundred bucks. Had to be reasonably serious money for a man living here.
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’ The voice was strained and croaky-too much smoking or maybe some other cause.
‘Ring Penny on his mobile. He’ll tell you.’
‘I haven’t got a phone. How do I know-’
‘Listen, mate, if I wanted to do you harm I’d have kicked in this shitty door by now and done it. Stewie Master’s wife has given me a fair bit of money to spend finding things out. Penny’s got some and he’s getting some more. How about you? Want a plane fare to Sydney or Brisbane or bloody LA and some spending money, or d’you want to stay in this pisshole?’
I heard a sigh as the lock was released and the door swung open. The man who stood there was a wreck, but a recent wreck. He was close to 190 centimetres tall and the singlet and track pants gave evidence of an athletic build. His left arm was in a sling and he had a cast on the lower part of his right leg. There was a heavy slab of tape over his nose and his mouth was swollen and puffy with a dark scab along the lower lip. I’ve had some beatings in my time and delivered some, but this was a beauty.
‘Jesus,’ I said, and I suddenly had a flash of the sort of man who could do a job like this. ‘Sione?’
He nodded and the effort hurt him. ‘You do know a fuckin’ thing or two, don’t you? Come in.’
He hobbled aside. The cast had a metal heel on it so he could walk. Better than a crutch but not much better. I’ve tried both. The flat was as ramshackle, dirty and comfortless on the inside as the building itself looked from the street. We went straight into the living room-cum-kitchen and the area was a sea of beer cans, butt-brimming ashtrays and saucers and take-away food containers. The furniture was threadbare and flies buzzed around the kitchen area and made sorties out to where we stood.
Montefiore-it had to be him-leaned against a wall and then slid down into a fragile-looking Chinese saucer chair that held his weight, just. His mane of dark hair was slightly streaked with grey-could’ve been distinguished if it hadn’t been greasy and matted. He smiled and I saw a gap where a couple of front teeth should have been. ‘Pretty shitty, eh?’
I eased down into a plastic chair after flicking away an empty Winfield packet. I nodded. ‘It’ll do.’
He snorted. ‘Haven’t got any dope on you by any chance?’
‘No.’
He shrugged. Despite the broken arm the musculature was intact, but it wouldn’t be unless he got into some physiotherapy pretty soon. ‘How’s Reg doing?’
‘On his uppers. Reckon he sold you out?’
‘No, we’re mates in this fuckin’ mess. You must be the genuine article. How much money are we talking? Sorry I can’t offer you anything.’
‘Don’t worry about it. The money part doesn’t work like that. That’d be like telling the reserve price at an auction. Penny gave me a taste before I bought. You’re going to have to do the same.’
‘Give me a clue.’
‘Rory McCloud.’
‘Disappeared. Suspicious circumstances.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re on “go”.’
Montefiore excused himself and left the room. I heard water running and when he returned he’d made an attempt at combing his hair, had washed his face and had shrugged into a creased but clean blue sports shirt. He had beach scuffs on his feet and I could smell toothpaste over the competing smells in the flat, mostly dirt, take-away food and stale tobacco.
He sat where he’d sat before. ‘Sorry I can’t offer you a drink or anything.’
‘Don’t worry’
‘So you’re paying Reg ten grand.’
‘Nine or ten.’
‘Must think all his birthdays have come at once. Just for putting you on to me. I reckon what I can tell you must be worth twenty, twenty-five.’
‘Could be. I’ll have to be the judge.’
He scratched at his stubble. ‘Problem would be living to spend it and getting Fay out with me.’
‘Fay?’
‘Girlfriend. Fay Lewis. One of the Kiwi Kuties.’ He found a leaflet among the mess beside his chair and passed it over to me. It advertised the Kiwi Kuties, performing nightly at the Salon de Fun-’lap’s dancing and stripe tease’ among the attractions. The leaflet showed three blondes in minuscule outfits top and bottom plus white Stetsons and high-heeled knee-high boots. Lots of stars and spangles, a suggestion, of the American flag. Good war-against-terrorism stuff. The three women looked identical.
‘Fay’s the one on the end,’ Montefiore said.
I shrugged. ‘Left or right and how can you tell?’
‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Anyway, she’s more a part of this than you think. She’s got a photograph you’d be very interested in.’
‘You’d better get me interested, then,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to spend any more time here than I have to. Might catch something.’
Montefiore wasn’t a gifted storyteller. He backtracked, repeated himself and fumbled for the right expression. Also, he threw in some French words here and there and I had to ask for a translation. What he had to say boiled down to this: after the property deal fell through the five Australians decided to hang around Noumea for a while looking for other opportunities. McCloud, Penny and Montefiore were approached by a man with a proposition-help to set up Stewart Master as a drug smuggler taking a small amount of heroin into Australia and they’d be in for a big reward. Not only cash in hand, but the green light from the federal and state police to handle a big marijuana consignment going into Australia. The stuff was coming down from South-East Asia and Pascal Rivages was handling the Pacific trans-shipment.
McCloud’s reaction was to threaten to go straight to the police and to tell Master, who was away elsewhere on the island. ‘They’ll fish him and his car out of deep water somewhere one of these days,’ Montefiore said.
Penny said he wasn’t interested one way or the other, which disappointed the man because he’d thought of Penny’s yacht as the delivery vehicle. The idea was to land the waterproofed bales on a reef off the coast and then move it to the mainland. Penny was warned anonymously to keep his mouth shut and certain things began to go wrong with his boat. He was burgled and lost most of his available cash. Montefiore reckoned that Mr X and Rivages wanted him to stick right there in Noumea where they could keep an eye on him.
‘I played along for a while to see if I could make a dollar out of it. I never had any intention of going through with it and when that became obvious, Rivages had Sione work me over. But good.’
‘Rosito?’
Montefiore shook his head. ‘Gabe’s got plenty of money. More than the rest of us put together. All he’s interested in is cunt. They knew they couldn’t get to him.’
Montefiore said he didn’t know how it was done but the plan went through. Master was nabbed and convicted. He presumed that Rivages got his shipment through and that everything was hunky-dory.
‘Question one,’ I said. ‘Who was this mastermind?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Tell me everything about him you can think of.’
‘Jeez, I wish I had a drink.’
‘Later. You’re doing well. You’ll be able to afford a few.’
‘Okay. Australian, mid-thirties, medium-sized, maybe a bit bigger. Not that fit. Ordinary looking, mousy hair, nothing unusual except… I’d swear blind he was a cop. He had the manner, you know? Sort of special in his own fuckin’ head.’
I nodded. ‘Scars, mannerisms, habits? Come on.’
Montefiore scraped at his stubble as if the rasping sound would trigger a memory. ‘Didn’t smoke. Drank mineral water in the pub. Jesus, yes, he had BO. He was scrubbed clean, shaved close, short back and sides, fresh shirt and daks, but he still had this whiff of BO.’
‘Good. Question two. Why’re you still around and in this dump?’
Montefiore had taken a bad beating and was down on his luck, but he wasn’t a man without self-esteem. From the look on his face I could tell he’d have hit me if he’d been able and he wanted to tell me to go to hell because he couldn’t. ‘I ran out of money and this is the best I can do. At least Rivages doesn’t know where I am.’
‘Why does that matter?’
‘I reckon he’s still making up his mind what to do with Reg and me. He doesn’t like us knowing what we know. He’s got fingers in lots of pies-property, gambling, politics. We could damage him if we talked. Equally, if we went missing like Rory it wouldn’t look good.’
‘Can’t he buy the cops?’
Montefiore shook his head and looked tired all of a sudden. ‘No. Not here. He’s obviously in with that Australian cop so I don’t know if we’d even be safe back at home. If I get out of this I’ll take off for somewhere else as quick as I can. New Zealand maybe, Fiji, Bali
‘Okay. You’ve earned some money, but I’ve thought of something else. If Rosito’s not in on it, why did he get in touch with Rivages so quickly?’
‘Just playing safe. Silly fucker reckons Pascal can help him with the widow. Like I told you, he-’
‘Yeah. What about you and this Kiwi? Let’s get back to her, and you and her.’
‘I’m crazy about her. She’s amazing. She’ll go with me if I’ve got money.’
I grinned. ‘That doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven.’
‘Get stuffed. See this?’ He grabbed at his hair. ‘I’m not a kid any more. I’ve led a weird, rough life and I don’t expect to make old bones. I want to grab what I can while I can.’
‘Fair enough. So, this photograph?’
‘She’s got a Polaroid of the cop. Not good, but good enough.’
I sat quietly and thought it over. Montefiore went out of the room and he seemed to be moving more easily all of a sudden. Hope’ll do that to you, I guess. But it could’ve been something else. He came back with two mugs.
‘Instant coffee. No milk. Best I can do. What’re you thinking about, Hardy?’
‘One of the things I’m thinking is about how everyone I meet in this bloody thing seems to be lying to me. My client told me none of Master’s associates spoke French. You do. Rosito told me Rivages didn’t speak English; he does. He also told me Penny was trying to sell his boat. He says he won’t. See what I mean?’
‘About the languages, everyone does that here-pretends not to speak or understand. It can give you an edge. Hey, there’s a guy on the local TV, speaks good English. He asked the station to pay for some language training. They wouldn’t. So now he won’t talk a word of English. Uses an interpreter on the program, costs the station dough, and everyone knows he understands just about every word that’s said to him in English. See?’
I sipped some of the coffee. For black instant it wasn’t bad. French Nescafe? ‘What about you, Montefiore? You’re lying about something. I know you are but I just can’t put my finger on it.’
It was his turn to drink coffee and ponder. He shook the hair out of his eyes, put the mug down on the floor and let his arm slip out of the sling. He extended the arm and flexed his fingers. He thumped the heel of his cast on the floor a few times while keeping his eyes locked on mine.
‘I’m coming good, Hardy. I was the light-heavy kick-boxing champion of Queensland. Two men held me while Sione went to work. I’m hoping to get a shot at him, man to man.’