I wasn’t interested in tackling Sione myself, but that was Montefiore’s problem. I agreed to pay him fifteen thousand for his information as well as the photograph. If for some reason we couldn’t get the photo, I’d scale it down to an unspecified level. Had to keep him on his toes because, although I now had a story to tell Lorraine Master, some physical evidence would make it a lot more convincing. I gave some thought to the possibility that this could be a set-up. The Kiwi woman could be holding a photograph of no one in particular who matched the description Montefiore had given me. Easy money. But it seemed unlikely that anyone could’ve anticipated me and my offer.
I went to the bank to draw more money and bought a few things for Montefiore on the way back-a shirt, shampoo, deodorant, shaving tackle and such; a six pack of the local beer, milk, fruit, bread and cheese. When I returned he’d made an effort to clean up the flat. The rubbish was in plastic bags stacked outside and the floor had been swept. If I’d bought fly spray the place would’ve been almost habitable.
The big surprise was that Montefiore had taken the cast off and was massaging his leg, flexing his toes and going through a gentle rehab procedure. He seemed to know what he was doing and I was inclined to believe him about his martial arts prowess. He showered, washed his hair, shaved, put on his clean shirt, white jeans and sneakers and looked pale but capable of fending for himself.
I showed him the money and he nodded. ‘You’re a fucking life-saver.’
‘I was, once.’
We had a beer and ate some of the food and tried to get on level terms. Not easy. We were wary of each other and both suspicious by nature.
‘You didn’t ask for cigarettes,’ I said.
‘I don’t smoke, except the odd joint.’
I sniffed the air.
‘Fay smokes. I can’t stand the bloody things, but what can you do?’
He went out of the room again and I heard a few drawers open and close. When he came back he had a light blue linen jacket over his arm and was carrying a fair-sized overnight bag. ‘Might have to move quick,’ he said.
‘What about the rent?’
‘Fuck it.’
Just to make conversation, I said, ‘You mentioned the plan to drop a small amount of heroin on Master. Turned out to be a couple of kilos and he went for ten minimum.’
Montefiore drained his can. ‘No fridge,’ he said. ‘We either drink ‘em or I put ‘em in cold water in the sink.’
‘I could go another one. It’s pretty light. Keep two in hand. What d’you reckon about the drugs?’
We took cans from the pack and he went out to the kitchen and ran water. ‘How could you trust those bastards?’ he said when he came back. ‘They double-cross everyone on principle.’
I cracked the second can and thought about it. ‘How well did you know Master?’
He opened the can and put it aside. ‘One’s enough for now. I’m still thinking about getting a few head shots on Sione. Stewie? I’d never met him before. Gabe introduced him. I dunno. He’d clearly been around a bit. Couple of tatts that looked like gaol jobs, I noticed. Pretty quiet. Young looking, but I wouldn’t have liked to mess with him. Seemed like he had something on his mind. Why?’
‘Just something you said. I wonder if he was letting himself be set up for the drug bust. Say a minor one, for some reason, and they double-crossed him like you say.’
‘You’ve lost me. Look, I’m going to take a nap. About four we can go to the place where Fay’s working. They’ll be rehearsing and we can talk to her about all this. You’ve got a car?’
‘Yeah. Okay. Suppose this all goes well and I get the photo and you and Fay get the money, how would you get out? I’ve got the feeling Rivages could… intercept you.’
Montefiore stretched and yawned, obviously enjoying being free of the sling and cast. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe on Reg’s yacht.’
‘All the way to Australia?’
‘Nah. Vanuatu maybe. Money talks there, they tell me.’
Jarrod Montefiore was bouncing back, I judged-a player again.
We drove to the Salon de Fun. It was on the ground floor of a building that housed a restaurant on the first level and apartments above that. It wasn’t far from the fie de France and the racetrack. Late afternoon shadows and overgrown bushes all but concealed the pathway to the joint, which looked as if it had once seen better days. The large windows were stained and mottled and a poor attempt had been made to blot out an old insignia and replace it with the new name. The old one still showed through and the replacement was amateurishly done. We stopped before reaching the doorway.
‘Give me some money,’ Montefiore said.
‘How much?’
‘As many ones as you can dig up.’
I fumbled among the cash in my pockets and couldn’t help patting the money belt around my middle where I kept the serious stuff. I located seven or eight one thousand franc notes and handed them over. ‘Comes off the top,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘Cheap bastard.’ He was enjoying himself more by the minute.
The man standing by the door had a boxer’s nose and a boozer’s build. Montefiore spoke to him in rapid French, handed over a few notes and we were waved in. Inside, the place wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The floor was clean and the tables and chairs looked as if they got a regular wipe. The lighting wasn’t bad and the stage wasn’t the beer and sweat stained mess I’d seen in other strip joints. There were some of the standard props-the crotch pole, the tigerskin rug, the swing, the backboard with the manacles-all in reasonable condition. But no girls.
Montefiore walked across to the bar where a woman in a see-through blouse was wiping glasses. More fast French. She looked at her watch. ‘Un moment,’ she said and I understood that. Montefiore bought two beers and gave her a tip, something that wasn’t usual in Noumea. She said something I couldn’t catch but the name Fay was part of it.
The lights dimmed and the Kiwi Kuties trouped onto the stage. Unusual, I thought. One by one, getting hotter as they come on deck is the standard thing. We were standing well back from the lit-up stage and if the performers could see us they made no sign. Stripper music started blaring out and I saw right off that this was something different. The three women were all tall, leggy blondes with light tans. They wore satin blouses and loose silk trousers with very high heels. Red, white and blue with the odd star and stripe. As the music got going they began to gyrate, all keeping good time with some intricate steps, and to strip each other. They weaved around the stage, well choreographed, undoing buttons, sliding blouses off shoulders, letting silk pants whisper half down and toying with g-string ties and the fastenings of front-opening bras.
Suddenly, with an abrupt change in the rhythm of the music, this all changed and the performers went into their own routines, although they only mimed the actions so far- all that was needed, I supposed, in rehearsal.
‘Good, aren’t they?’ Montefiore said and I fancied he was struggling to hold his heavy breathing in check.
‘They are.’
‘The one on the end’s a bloke.’
‘Which end?’
Montefiore snorted. ‘Yeah, you’d never tell. Fay’s in the middle. She’s the best of them in my book.’
Fay certainly had all the attributes for the job and she seemed to be enjoying it. Montefiore moved forward into a patch of light and she stopped dead in the middle of a slither when she saw him.
‘Jesus Christ, Jay.’
‘Hi, babe.’
‘What is this?’ one of the others complained.
‘I’m taking five.’ Fay jumped down from the stage, landing with perfect balance on her high heels, and ran into Montefiore’s waiting arms.
They hugged and kissed for a minute or two and then Montefiore introduced me. Dropping his voice, he said, ‘He’s got our ticket out of here-twenty-five grand. Right, Cliff?’
What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her until it wouldn’t hurt me. I nodded and she gave me a hard look. ‘For what?’
‘Remember that creep who was hanging around and you got a snap of him?’
A yell came from the stage. ‘Hey, Faysie, are we gonna do this or what?’
‘Keep your gaff on, Rox. I’ll be there in a minute. That much for the photo?’
‘And information. You’ve still got it, haven’t you? I told you it was insurance.’
‘I think so.’
‘Think! Jesus!’
‘Don’t fuckun’ come uht wuth me, Jay.’ Her accent thickened with anger. ‘You got into this mess all on your own.’
‘Twenty-five grand and out of this shithole,’ Montefiore said. ‘Sandy beaches and beer at three bucks a pop. A chance at some real money.’
‘Yeah, with you puhmping me.’
‘C’mon, babe.’
Montefiore was good. He had that quality a lot of women like, the quality that presumably attracted Lorraine to Stewart Master. Glen Withers, who’d shared the taste, told me about it once after we’d watched a video of Chinatown. Nicholson had it, she said, a bad twinkle in the eye.
‘I’m pretty sure I know where it is. Have you seen the colour of his money?’
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’m right here.’
‘Yeah, sorry. You’ve got it.’
‘I hand it over the minute I get the picture and a few details.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Details?’
I looked at Montefiore, who made a gesture of resignation. ‘I know you fucked him, Fay. Things were crook at the time.’
She was back doing it. ‘So he wants to know how big his cock is?’
‘I want a name and a close-up description of everything about him you can remember. Any paper you might have seen, phone call you might have heard. Anything.’
‘Fay!’
‘Coming. Right, we’ll shoot over after the rehearsal. Three-quarters of an hour tops. Stay and watch the show.’ She pecked Montefiore quickly on the cheek and danced back and up onto the stage, giving us a good look at her moving assets. We’d hardly touched our drinks and we both now took deep swigs.
‘You think I’m nuts, don’t you?’
‘Mate,’ I said, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ll just do my business with you both and then you can do as you please. You’re not getting twenty-five though.’
He shrugged. ‘Sweetening the pot. It’s a habit. There’s a public phone out front. Think I’ll give the old Reg a call and see if I can set something up.’
‘I’ll take a walk on the beach.’
‘It’ll cost you to get back in.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not my money, and it’s not yours yet either.’
You don’t leave Australia for beaches. The Ansa Vata beach was stony and gritty and the sand, what there was of it, was mud-coloured. The water looked good and the evening breeze had got up so that it wasn’t such a bad place to be if only I hadn’t been anxious about a number of things. Was Montefiore on the level? Would he have trouble dealing with Fay if he was? Could I stay out of their travel plans and how would I arrange my own? I sucked in the clean Pacific air and tried to tell myself that I’d done well and that everything was going to be all right. It never is.
Fay wore Montefiore’s jacket over her stripper’s outfit and she glided into the back seat of the car, pulling him in after her. She told me where to go and then they started whispering. I was surprised to hear her speaking French. There was more to Fay than I’d thought. Half a kilometre short of where we were heading she told me to pull up.
‘Right here,’ she said.
I stopped. You don’t argue with a blonde stripper who speaks French. ‘Why?’
‘Old Jay here’s a bullshitter from way back. You’re not going to pay him twenty-five grand, are you?’
‘Not quite.’
‘How much? Really’
‘Like I said, depending on your information and the photo, maybe twenty.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Detective-’
‘Fay!’
‘Shut up, Jay. It’s twenty down and twenty when we get to Australia.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘You want the name of the guy?’
‘Sure.’
‘I know it and a good bit more. Twenty in Sydney town and you get the lot.’
I swivelled around to look at her and she stared me straight in the eyes with her baby blues. Maybe contacts, but it made no difference. She was serious and she knew what she was doing. I couldn’t help wondering if she knew more about the Master business than she was letting on. I told myself it could be useful to have her in Sydney, but maybe that was rationalisation. She had me over a barrel and she knew it.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But Jarrod said you might be pissing off as soon as you got back to Australia.’
‘Uh-uh. We’ll stick around. I can smell the money in this.’
Clearly, she’d be calling the shots. I started the engine. ‘Can we get this moving now?’
I heard her kiss Montefiore somewhere; at a guess, on the cheek. She was a card player. ‘We’re almost there, boys.’
Fay lived in a flat above a couple of up-market shops a kilometre or two back from the beach on one of the main arteries that wound its way towards the centre of town. She pointed to a spot on the street where I could park.
‘Nothing off-street?’ I said. ‘Where’s your spot?’
‘Up you,’ she said as she slid out. ‘If I had enough money for a car d’you reckon I’d be tit-swinging here? We share this place. Roxy’s screwing Carmel, sort of
‘Jesus,’ Montefiore said.
‘Get over it, Jay. We all have to get along as best we can. What did kicking and belting people ever get you?’
He surprised me then by spinning slowly and slapping her quite hard. ‘Respect,’ he said.
She took it. She liked it. ‘One more thing,’ she said as she caressed the contact spot. ‘Jay’s talked to Reg Penny. He’s waiting for the rest of your fuckin’ money and now he’s waiting for us. I’m packing a bag and we’re off. Right?’
I had to admire her, but I had one more question. ‘Who owns the Salon de Fun?’
‘Who d’you reckon?’ Montefiore said.
And the answer became obvious as we walked down the path towards the steps leading up to Fay’s flat. A figure loomed up out of the shadows that was solid, not shadowy. Sione.