The voice on the phone was hoarse and not much more than a whisper. ‘Hardy? This is Harvey Salmon.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘and who else?’
‘Huh?’
‘The way I hear it, Harvey, you haven’t had a private phone conversation in years.’
‘Don’t joke, Hardy. This is serious.’
‘Must be. When did you get out?’
‘Today. I need your help.’
‘Mr Salmon, I’d reckon you need prayers and airline tickets in about that order.’
‘Stop pissing around. I want to meet you to talk business. D’you know the Sportsman Club, in Alexandria?’
I did know it although I didn’t particularly want to; it was a dive that went back to six o’clock closing days and beyond as a sly grog joint and SP hangout. In those days the sport most of its associates were familiar with was two-up. I’d heard that it had gained some sort of affiliation with a soccer club, but it had still worn the same dingy, guilty look when I last drove past.
‘It’s one of my favourite places.’ I said. ‘Are you a member there?’
‘Yeah, about the only place I still am a member.’ His voice was bitter. ‘Meet me there in an hour and we’ll talk work and money.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘A thousand bucks, Hardy, for two days’ work.’
‘Okay.’ The phone clicked as soon as I had the second syllable out. I sat there with the instrument in my hand thinking that I was about to associate with a known criminal. But then, as a private investigator, I did that a lot of the time and it was what my mother had predicted I’d end up doing anyway. Besides, we’re associating with criminals all the time-motor mechanics, doctors, real estate agents-it was only the ‘known’ part that made this any different.
I needed the thousand bucks, not because business was especially slow. It wasn’t; I had a few party-mindings and money-escortings to do in the days ahead, and I was on a retainer from a group of wealthy Ultimo squatters who were trying to keep leverage on the smelly company that owned their row of terraces. But things kept getting more expensive, like food and Scotch and sneakers, and it would take a lot of fear to turn me away from a thousand dollars.
The name Harvey Salmon generated a certain amount of fear, mind you. He’d been a key man in a syndicate which the press had dubbed ‘the rainforest ring’ because the marijuana grown in Australia, or some of it, had been cultivated in rainforests. But the ring had operated on a broad field, importing from South-East Asia and exporting to the US, and there had been the usual number of couriers killed and businessmen who’d found it expedient to go off into the bush with just their Mercedes and a shotgun.
The ring had collapsed under two simultaneous blows-the death, from a heart attack at the age of 43 while jogging, of Peter ‘Pilot’ Wrench who’d been the chief organiser. Some said that Wrench had got his nickname from his early days of flying drugs into Australia through the open northern door, others said it was really ‘Pilate’ because he always washed his hands of a bad deal and a bad dealer. The death of Wrench threw the lieutenants into confusion and doubt. One of them gave interviews to certain law enforcement officers which resolved the doubts of some of the others who got long sentences to repent in. The interviewee was Harvey Salmon who’d backed up his allegations with scores of hours of telephone tapes. I’d heard a lot of that on the QT from Harry Tickener and other journalists; for public consumption, Salmon had got fifteen years a mere eighteen months ago.
It was 3 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, traffic in Alexandria was light and that made it a halcyon time of day. Alexandria seems to live on hope; the city and airport bound traffic moves through its broad and narrow streets like a cancer, but the area has been promised a park, a big project park. Acres of industrial land, including a bricking quarry and factory, have been slated for development as a park to rival Centennial. People were hanging on to their slum terraces and the real-estate operators were waiting for the park like a kidney patient waits for a donor. Meanwhile, the place is home to a few different ethnic groups and some restaurants to match-most of the restaurants will survive the park, most of the people won’t.
I parked only three blocks away from the Sportsman Club, almost back into Erskineville, but that’s nearby parking in Alexandria. At 3.30 the club already had a quota of drinkers-some of them afternoon specialists, some for whom the morning session had dragged on a bit, some for whom the evening had started early. I had to wait by a flyblown receptionist booth while my name was sent ‘upstairs’. After I’d spent 10 minutes comparing the fly spots on the glass of the booth to the blackheads on the nose of the girl inside it, Harvey Salmon came down the stairs to escort me into the precincts.
Salmon was tall and heavy with thinning brown hair and an expression that suggested things were bad and getting worse. I’d never met him but his picture had been in the papers at the time of ‘Pilot’ Wrench’s departure; in the flesh he looked heavier, thinner on top and even less sanguine. But gaol changes a man. He stopped a couple of steps from the bottom and studied me carefully. He wore a pale grey suit, white shirt and dark tie, suede shoes; I had on sneakers and jeans, an open-neck shirt and a leather jacket. I wondered which of us was dressed right. Salmon hopped down the last couple of steps with fair agility, gave me a nod and put two dollars between the sliding glass panels of the booth.
‘Thanks, Teresa.’
Teresa didn’t even glance up from TV Week. ‘’kay,’ she said.
I went up the short flight of stairs with Salmon, through a smaller drinking room with fewer poker machines than the one below, and into an office that was dark and musty. The only light was struggling in through some Venetian blinds and the only places to sit were on the desk or on a rickety chair behind it. I sat on the desk and Salmon moved towards the chair. He also cleared his throat to speak but I got in first.
‘How about a drink?’
‘What? Oh yeah, sure, sorry.’ He moved back and opened the door; for a minute I thought he was going to yell his order across to the bar but he didn’t. He went out and I had about a minute and a half to study the room before he came back with two schooners. A minute and a half was plenty and I hadn’t drunk schooners of old for years. It wasn’t such a good start.
When he was settled behind the desk and his glass, Salmon cracked his knuckles-I hoped he wasn’t going to do that too often.
‘I need someone around for two days.’ he said.
‘Try downstairs. If you’re good company you shouldn’t have any trouble.’
‘I need someone who can handle a little trouble, if it comes up. Not that it will.’
‘You never can tell,’ I said. ‘Especially in your game.’
He ignored me as if he had a set speech to deliver and was going to do it, no matter what. ‘I was all set to fly out today, that was the deal.’ He paused, maybe to see if I was shocked. I wasn’t. ‘But there’s been some screw-up over the passport. I’ve got two days to wait, and I’ve got enemies.’
‘Book into the Hilton, watch TV and wait.’
He ruffled the thin hair which made it look even thinner. ‘I don’t want to do that. Am I going to do that for the rest of my life? The cops say they’re keeping an eye on me and also on certain people. But I don’t know. Who can you trust?’
I drank some beer and looked at him; he wasn’t sweating and he didn’t look afraid, but maybe he just lacked imagination the way he, apparently, lacked a sense of irony.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘R… South America. Same thing, see? The cops say they’ve squared it over there but I want to get a feel of what it’s like. I’ll have to get someone over there, but I want to do a few things while I’ve got those couple of days. Jesus, I’ve lived here fifty years, I don’t want to spend the last two days in a hotel room.’
An appeal based on the pleasure of Sydney will get me every time. Salmon could see he had me and he took a confident gulp of his schooner before giving me the details. He had the use of a flat in Erskineville for the next three nights and expected to catch his plane on Saturday afternoon. He had a few places to visit, a woman to see. He wanted to have a few beers here and there; he wanted to go to the trots and the beach. He wanted me to stay in the flat and tag along with him. He’d give me five hundred now and five hundred on Saturday. I said I’d do it. Truth was, I was getting rather bored with party-minding and money-escorting.
We finished our beers and stood up together-the Sportsman wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to stick around.
‘Got a gun?’ Salmon asked.
‘Yeah. Got the money?’
‘In the flat. Let’s go.’
We left the glasses on the desk and went out of the office and through the bar. A couple of the drinkers looked at us but not with any particular interest that I could detect. Still, it’s never too early to start doing a job well. Teresa had got to Wednesday in the TV Week; we went past her and out to the street. Salmon looked up and down it nervously.
‘Where’s your car?’
‘Here’s where you start living like a free man. It’s about half a mile away.’
We walked down Margaret Street which was fairly busy with shoppers and strollers and turned into a quiet side street. Salmon didn’t seem furtive but he wasn’t introducing himself to people either. I noticed that he had a reasonable tan and not a gaol pallor and I asked him about it.
‘I did some gardening.’ he said.
‘I’m surprised they’d let you grow anything.’
He slowed down and gave me what passed for an amused look; the downward drooping lines of his face squared up a little. ‘You’d be surprised what grows inside.’ He patted down his wavy hair with a brown hand.
When we got to the car he hesitated.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘What year is it?’ he said.
‘What does it matter? It goes.’
He got in. ‘It goes with the flat anyway.’ he muttered.
He directed me through the streets to one of the less grimy parts of Erskineville and we pulled up outside an ugly block of red-brick flats. I remembered that Harvey Salmon’s address used to be given as ‘of Point Piper’ but he approached the building unconcernedly.
‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘Cops reckon it’s all they can afford. They reckon they’ve got a couple of the flats in the block so it’s safe. What d’you reckon?’
We went down a narrow concrete path to the back of the block and a narrow set of concrete steps that was flanked by a rickety wrought-iron hand rail. Salmon got a bright shining key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. The flat was one of three with doors giving on to a skimpy walkway: no balconies here, no window boxes even.
Inside, the decor was nondescript, new but not very new, and bought from a catalogue rather than according to anyone’s taste. I told Salmon to stay by the door while I checked the rooms: the small kitchen and smaller bathroom were empty, so was the bedroom. There was no one in the toilet. Salmon motioned me into the kitchen with a head movement. Out there he opened the fridge and got out a bottle of Reschs. I shook my head; he opened the bottle, poured a glass and drank it straight off. He poured another.
‘The place could be bugged.’ he whispered. ‘What d’you reckon?’
That was twice he’d asked me, it was time I reckoned something.
‘Let’s not talk,’ I said. ‘I’ll look around for bugs. Does the TV work?’
‘Think so.’
‘I’ll watch the tennis. When’re you going out?’
‘Tonight. Sevenish. Think I’ll have a kip.’
I cleared my throat and held out my hand.
‘Oh, sure.’ He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a wallet. He took out five hundred-dollar notes that looked as if they had plenty of company and handed them to me. I put the money in my jeans, peeled off my jacket and draped it over a chair and turned on the television. John Fitzgerald was serving to John Lloyd, 15–40. Salmon didn’t even look at the picture. He scratched under his arm and went into the bedroom. I heard the springs groan as he flopped on the bed. Lloyd was at the net but he hadn’t put enough snap into his volley and Fitzgerald lobbed over him: 30–40. I made a couple of cups of instant coffee in the kitchen and slept through a doubles match for an hour. Salmon came out and showered and we were set to go at 6.30. Before we went out the door he handed me twenty dollars.
‘Expenses,’ he said. ‘Petrol, drinks and that.’
‘Thanks.’ I’d been on the job for about three hours and I hadn’t done much that was very different from what I did when I wasn’t working-except collect five hundred and twenty dollars.
The first stop was a pub in the Cross where Salmon claimed to know a lot of people but they didn’t seem to be around that night. We had a couple of drinks and he scratched up a word or two with a few blokes who didn’t seem especially keen to talk to him.
‘Just killing time,’ he said as we hit the street again. ‘This is the real business of the night: Lulu.’
I nodded politely; we were walking along Darlinghurst Road and there was a car cruising a few yards back and I was sure I’d seen one of the window-shoppers earlier in the night.
‘You’ve got your tail.’ I said, Salmon shrugged. A street girl wearing an open-weave top through which her nipples protruded and a mini-skirt that showed her meaty thighs, ambled out across the pavement and gave us the word. Salmon shook his head; I examined her closely but I was pretty sure she was the real thing and not policewoman somebody.
‘Tarts,’ Salmon said. ‘Wait’ll you see Lulu.’
We went into a strip club opposite the 50-flavours-of-ice-cream shop. Salmon showed a card and twenty dollars to the man inside the door and he took us through the smoke to a table down near the stage. I looked around to check for danger spots but I hardly needed to because the place was exactly like a dozen others I’d been in. Maybe I had been in there, it’s hard to tell. There was a bar along one wall, maybe twenty or thirty tables, with just enough room for the drink waiters to squeeze between, grouped in front of a wide stage. The stage was covered by a black curtain that had trapped smoke and dust and dreams for too many years. Salmon ordered a double Scotch and beer chaser for himself and I settled for a single Scotch. It was cash on the barrelhead, of course, and he paid from that big roll that made me more nervous than anything else I’d seen.
After a while the show started and there’s nothing to say about it except that it was slow and third or possibly fourth rate. The girls had dead eyes and their bodies seemed to come to life only spasmodically. Lulu was marginally more interesting than the rest if only because her enormous breasts looked real and when she glimpsed the wildly enthusiastic Salmon across the footlights she smiled with genuine invitation.
‘Wasn’t she great?’ Salmon said. He waved for another drink; a few more and all he could hope to use those great tits for was a pillow.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She seemed to like you too.’
‘That’s a hell of a woman, Hardy.’ His voice had got slow and grave. Oh God, I thought, a slow, grave drunk. They’re possibly worse than the lighting ones. At least you can tap the fighters on the nose, mop up the blood and put them to bed. He leaned forward across the table and whispered through the smoke haze and din of people talking loudly and drunkenly. ‘Rang ‘er up this morning. She’s got a place behind here. I’m goin’ back there in an hour, want you to keep an eye out.’
‘Okay, but you’d better lay off the booze or you’ll be wasting your money.’
‘No money!’ His voice went up suddenly. ‘No money!’
‘Okay, okay. Take it easy.’ Slow and grave and fighting-the very worst kind.
At the appointed time a waiter beckoned to us and we got up and went through a small door at the end of the room beside the stage. The passageway was dark and there were a couple of rooms off it, one of which was framed in bright light. Salmon gave the waiter some money and he went away. Salmon steadied himself against the wall.
‘Been a long time,’ he said.
‘Mmm?’ I was trying to see the end of the passage in the dark. ‘Need any help?’
‘Funny. You just squat down there somewhere and wait for me.’ He waved at the blackness ahead and knocked on the door. It opened and Lulu put her sequined breasts out into the passage where they would have prevented over-taking. Up close her skin looked coarse and heavily powdered but she still had the genuine smile.
‘Come in, Harvey,’ she said. Salmon went in and I felt my way to the end of the passage. It did a right angle bend, went down some steps and ended in a door that led on to a lane. I had a wide choice: the passage, the street or the stairs. Anyone who stands around in the street in the Cross after dark is asking for trouble; the passage was dark and smelled of cheap perfume and sweat. I chose the stairs.
I sat there in the gloom feeling sorry for myself and thinking that this job hadn’t turned out to be much more exciting than party-minding. Some very recognisable sounds came from the room a few metres away; at least Harvey was having a good time. I sat there remembering good times and feeling the $505 in my pocket-I’d rather have had five dollars and someone to have a good time with. Then I got to thinking about whether you could have a good time with five dollars. It was boring on the stairs.
Whatever Harvey and Lulu did took about an hour and left Harvey looking as if he’d been dragged from the surf. He came lurching out with his shirt undone and his fly open. He smelled like an overused sauna.
‘Never had anna thin’ like it,’ he said. ‘In-credible.’
‘I got the impression you were regulars.’
‘Huh? Oh, sort of. Coast clear? Less go, I need a drink.’
We went out into the lane and that’s where they were waiting. Two big men which made four big men, except that one of the big men was drunk and he was my responsibility. One of them stepped forward, looked closely at Salmon and ignored me.
‘Salmon, we’re going for a trip.’
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ I said.
‘Shut up, you, You can go back inside and look at the tits, we don’t want you.’
I guessed that the bloke who hadn’t spoken was the real muscle so I moved a little closer to him which also took me back towards the door. I gave him a short, hard right well below the belt and brought my knee up as his crotch came down. He groaned and gripped himself there; the other one was reaching inside his coat for something but I had a gun in my waist holster at the back and it came out smoothly as I turned around. I jabbed it hard into the talker’s neck and then pulled it back and held it a few centimetres from his nose.
‘Get back against the wall, Salmon,’ I said. ‘What’s the other one doing?’ I was staring into my man’s eyes trying to convince him that I’d pull the trigger if I had to. I seemed to succeed; he dropped his hand from his coat and stood very still.
‘He’s holding his balls,’ Salmon said.
‘You sober enough to kick them if he looks frisky?’
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s those fuckin cops?’
‘We could find some,’ I said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘Now, what’s the point?’
‘Okay,’ I moved the. 38 a little closer to the nose. ‘You see how things are. Mr Salmon’s not vindictive. You and your mate can walk down there and turn the corner and go home or I can shoot you somewhere. What’s it to be?’
‘We’ll walk,’ he said.
I heard a shuffling step and then the dull sound of a hard kick being delivered and then another. A man groaned and whimpered. I held the gun steady.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothin’,’ Salmon said. ‘This one can crawl. Let’s go.’
I moved back to the wall and we watched the guy who’d been kicked lift himself up off the ground and steady himself. Neither of them looked at us. They walked and hobbled down the lane and around the corner. Salmon and I went the other way out to the neon-lit street.
‘You were good, Hardy.’
I grunted. ‘Why’d you kick him?’
‘I was feelin’ good. He spoiled my night.’
The next day Salmon spent the morning in bed. He made a few phone calls in the afternoon, watched some TV. I went out and got some Chinese food and a paperback of Dutch Shea Jnr by John Gregory Dunne. We ate, I read; Salmon watched commercial television and went to bed early. I slept on the couch but not well; I spent most of the night reading and drinking instant coffee so that I’d finished the book by morning. Good book.
On Friday morning I told Salmon I needed some fresh clothes and wanted to go to the bank, so I had to get back to Glebe. That was all right with him because he wanted to go to Harold Park that night anyway. We had our discreet police escort over to Glebe, and I did my business with Salmon hanging around looking bored. Putting a couple of hundred in the bank to cover a mortgage payment probably wasn’t a very big deal to him.
In the afternoon I watched some more of the tennis while Salmon yawned over some back-issue magazines he found in the living room.
‘You miss these inside.’ He flipped over the pages of a mid-year National Times.
‘How did you find it? Prison, I mean.’
‘Hot and hard. You ever been in, Hardy?’
‘Not really, short remand at the Bay.’
He snorted derisively and seemed to be about to say something. Then he yawned and turned another page. John Alexander was giving ten years away to Peter Doohan and the games were going with service.
About half an hour earlier than I’d have thought necessary, Salmon announced it was time to go.
‘It’s too early,’ I said. ‘It’s just down the road.’
‘I want to get a good park.’
‘I thought we’d walk. Do you good.’
‘No, we drive.’
He was paying. We drove. I like Harold Park; somehow, even though they put in new bars and generally ponced the place up a few years ago, they managed not to kill the atmosphere. With the lights and the insects swarming in the beams and the Gormenghast houses up above The Crescent, the track feels like a special place-just right for what happens there. The race call and announcements over the PA system boom and bounce around in the hollow so that everybody knows what’s going on. You get a cheerful type of person at Harold Park-it’s almost a pleasure to lose money there.
Some sort of change had come over Salmon. He was decisive about where he wanted us to park-out on The Crescent, well down from the Lew Hoad Reserve-and for the first time he showed a real interest in our police escort.
‘Give ‘em plenty of time to pick us up,’ he said as I locked the car.
‘If they’re any good, they won’t need help.’
‘Just do as I say.’
We walked around to the main entrance in Wigram Road and I looked across to the pub.
‘That’s it,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The Harold Park-the pub over there. Didn’t you say it was one of the places you wanted to visit before you took your trip?’
Salmon glanced at the pub which was doing its usual brisk race-night business.
‘Skip it,’ he said nervously. ‘The rozzers with us?’
They were, two guys in casual clothes looking like family men on a matey night out. They went through the turnstiles a few bodies behind us. I could feel the tension in Salmon as we stepped out of the light into an area of shadow in front of the stand.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now we lose ‘em. Right now. We make for the exit over near the car.’ He moved quickly, pushing through clutches of people heading for the bars and the tote; the mob swirled around us with no pattern yet, no fixed positions taken, and the gaps closed up behind us. I sneaked a look back after a while and caught a glimpse of the cops anxiously inspecting a toilet entrance.
Salmon moved fast on the way back to the car. He hugged the wall and people got out of his way.
‘They’re likely to leave someone watching the car?’
I considered it. We hadn’t been evasive at any time, rather the reverse; anyone who knew my habits would wonder why I’d drive such a short distance, but not too many cops knew my habits.
‘Doubt it, but there’s no time for a recce. That pair’ll be on our hammer pretty soon.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘North.’
I took Victoria Road to the Gladesville Bridge and ran up through the back of Pymble to pick up the turn-off to French’s Forest. RBT seemed to have quietened Friday night down: the traffic moved smoothly and after Salmon got finished checking behind us for pursuit, he settled down and enjoyed the drive.
‘Nice night.’ he said.
‘Yeah, where’re we going?’
‘Whale Beach.’
‘Jesus, why?’
He gave a short laugh, one of the very few I’d heard from him. ‘Not for a swim.’
The traffic stayed light on Barrenjoey, all the way past Newport to the Whale Beach turnoff. The Falcon handled the drive well, but Salmon only grunted when I commented on it.
‘Fords are junk.’ he said.
It was true that Fords weren’t in abundance in the drives and on the road in front of the big houses. I saw Mercs and Jags, Celicas and the like, all looking good in the moonlight like the houses themselves. Salmon was concentrating on the terrain and when we reached a sign that said ‘Public Pathway to Beach’, he told me to stop.
‘What’s here?’
‘Me cabin. Not too many know about it.’
We started down a steep and long flight of steps. I could see the water gleaming out ahead and heard the big surf crashing on the beach. About half of the houses were in darkness and the whole area was quiet and still apart from the sound of the sea and a few night birds calling. Halfway down the steps Salmon stepped over the rail and took a look into the blackness.
‘Shoulda brought a torch,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t you know the way?’
He glanced at me sharply. ‘Sure, but it’s been a while.’
We pushed through the bushes following a rabbit track until a squat shape loomed up in front of us. Salmon had taken his jacket off because the path ran slightly up and it was sweaty work on a mild night. He fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. He handed me the jacket.
‘Wait here, Hardy.’
I stood in the shadows holding the jacket and feeling like a five hundred dollar-flunky; then I remembered that it was a thousand dollar-flunky and felt better. Salmon went up some wooden steps and took a long time selecting a key and getting it into the lock. Then he opened the door and took a long time turning on a light. The jacket felt heavy because there was a. 45 automatic in one of its pockets. It was a long time since my army days when we practised stripping guns in the dark but I found I could still do it. I kept an eye on the light in the cabin while I ejected the bullet from the chamber, turned the top bullet in the spring-loaded magazine around and effectively jammed the thing as tight as a seized piston.
When Salmon came out of the cabin he was carrying a small canvas bag and wearing a look of satisfaction. I handed him the jacket.
‘Want me to carry the bag?’
‘Sure.’ He gave me the bag and we pushed our way back to the path. The bag felt full of something but light; maybe it was toilet tissue for his trip.
Back at the car, Salmon shrugged his jacket on and took the bag from me. I looked up at the starry sky out to sea.
‘Nice place,’ I said.
‘Yeah.’ He was waiting impatiently for me to open the car.
‘Changed a bit in the last year or so though.’
‘Yeah.’
We drove back to Erskineville in virtual silence; it was an easy drive which gave me plenty of time to think. As far as I knew, nothing had changed much in Whale Beach for years-the affluent and trendy locals wouldn’t permit it.
Salmon stowed the bag away in the bedroom and we had a Scotch before going to our respective beds.
‘What time’s your flight?’ I was contemplating another Scotch, mindful of the hardness of the sofa.
‘Eleven in the morning.’
‘All fixed up?’
‘Yeah. Goodnight, Hardy, and thanks,’
I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking about it and trying to figure what was going on. I felt sure things weren’t what they seemed but that didn’t take me far. I dozed and jerked awake with the same doubts and confusions crowding my mind. I didn’t care about Harvey Salmon one way or another; as far as I knew he hadn’t ever killed anybody, and in the world of organised crime his speciality was more in the organisation than the criminality. Still, I didn’t like being so much in the dark. Around 7 a.m. I called Harry Tickener, who writes on crime and politics for The News. He was grumpy about being woken up so early and I had to keep my voice low which made him even grumpier.
‘What can you tell me about Harvey Salmon, Harry?’
‘At 7 a.m. nothing.’
‘Come on, I need something. I know what he looks like, six foot two, fourteen stone; what about habits and so on?’
‘Shit, Cliff, I don’t know. Wait’ll I get a cigarette. Okay… Well, fourteen stone’s a bit heavy. I can’t think of much, except that he’s a tennis nut.
‘What?’
‘Tennis, played it all the time, had his own court and that.’
‘Thanks, Harry.’
‘Any other time, Cliff. Not 7 a.m.’
He rang off and I put the phone down carefully. I was trying to digest the information when my flatmate came through the door wearing striped pyjamas and pointing the. 45 at me.
‘Heard you on the extension.’ he said. ‘Careless.’
‘You’re not Harvey Salmon.’
‘No, but I’ve got this and you’re still going to do what I say.’
He didn’t tell me his name but he told me about the deal over the next few hours as he packed his bags and we waited to go to Mascot. As he understood it, an elaborate arrangement had been arrived at between Salmon and the State and Federal police. Salmon wanted two things-a new identity and a new life in South America (that was one) and a chance to pick up a bag of money from Whale Beach. The Federal police wanted information; the State cops wanted convictions. Harvey Salmon was released on licence in return for certain information; he didn’t trust the police and he knew about a look-alike who was doing time in Grafton jail for fraud. The deal was that the look-alike would move around Sydney for a few days under police protection so that the real Salmon could get an idea of how effective that might be.
‘What about the bag of money?’
‘Salmon was dead keen to get hold of that. The State cops okayed it; the Federals don’t know about it.’
‘Why would the cops make a deal like that? Salmon’d sung already.’
‘Not the whole song.’ Harvey Salmon said. ‘He keeps the last few notes until he gets his tickets and the bag at the airport.’
‘What d’you get?’
‘Some money and my freedom.’ He grinned. ‘And Lulu. Christ!’
‘You can go back for more.’
He shook his head. ‘Deal is, I leave Sydney for good.’
‘Tough.’
‘Yeah, now give me that gun you flashed outside the club.’
I gave him the gun, he took the bullets out and put them in his pocket before returning it. That made two inoperative guns and quite a relaxed atmosphere as far as I was concerned.
‘What do you know about the cops who were tailing us?’ I said, just to pass the time.
He grinned again; he was getting more relaxed by the minute and if he kept on grinning he might turn from a sad spaniel to a happy kelpie. ‘I’d guess they were State boys the other night.’ he said. ‘Didn’t care too much if Salmon got roughed up. They would’ve been the Federals last night; they’re not supposed to know about the money, but they couldn’t follow Neville Wran down Macquarie Street, anyway.’
‘Probably right. Whose idea was it to bring me in?’
‘Mine. I heard about you from Clive Patrick.’
‘Is he in Grafton?’
‘Yeah, copping it sweet. Be out pretty soon.’
I nodded and thought it over. I could take over now; the. 45 was a liability and I was sure I had more moves than whatever-his-name-was. But I thought I might as well see it through.
‘What about the other five hundred dollars?’ I said.
‘At the airport-after the swap.’
I drove to the airport. He checked a suitcase through to Rio having collected his ticket and an envelope at the desk. He had a smaller bag as cabin luggage which was about the same size as the bag he’d collected at Whale Beach.
Pan Am flight 304 to Rio de Janeiro was on time and would be boarding in an hour. He got his seat allocated and was heading for the baggage security check when things started to happen. First, a tall man stepped in front of us and showed us his face. He had a long, droopy sort of face, baggy eyes and was built on leaner lines than my companion.
‘I’m Salmon,’ he said. ‘Let’s have the bag and the ticket.’
The false Harvey Salmon was looking nervous; he fumbled in his jacket for the ticket and seemed to be playing for time. Two men detached themselves from a knot of people looking at a flights monitor and strode over to us. They were big, wore expensive suits and had short haircuts. One of them gripped the real Salmon by the arm. ‘Would you come with us, sir?’
Salmon gave the man a tired smile. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got it here.’ He tapped his breast pocket.
‘Just come along, sir, and you too, please.’ He looked sternly at the impostor and me and fell in behind us like a sheep dog. I thought he’d be a pretty good heel snapper from the smooth confidence of his movements.
‘Along here.’ The man holding on to Salmon steered us across the floor and behind some shrubbery to a room marked ‘Security’.
‘What is this?’ Salmon said. He got shoved firmly inside for an answer.
The room contained a desk with a chair drawn up to it and a row of chairs over by a big, bright window. The sun was shining in and throwing long shadows from the divisions in the window across the pale carpet.
‘We’re police,’ the arm-holder said. ‘If you and Mr Salmon would just go over there and sit down, please.’ He struggled to frame the polite words and to keep his diction smooth. Under the barbering and suiting there was a very rough customer. Salmon looked alarmed and angry; he moved his hand towards his pocket again.
‘I’ve got it here.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ the cop said. ‘Sit down.’
We sat, not side by side but a few seats apart. Salmon had broken out in sweat. The second cop put the bag on the desk and opened it. He nodded and turned to the impostor.
‘Good. Got your ticket?’
The look-alike nodded and the cop carefully extracted a bundle of notes from the bag and passed them to him. ‘Harvey Salmon’ counted them, separated some and walked over to me. He held out the money; I sat still and he dropped the notes in my lap.
‘Thanks, Hardy. I’ve got a plane to catch.’ He didn’t look at Salmon; he turned and walked out of the room. Salmon stood up and rushed across to where the policeman was zipping up the bag.
‘That’s mine,’ he yelped. ‘We had a deal. I get the money and you get the names.’
The policeman shook his head slowly and his smile was as cold and cheerless as a Baptist chaplain. The second cop moved in behind Salmon to do some shepherding.
‘You’ve got it wrong, Harvey,’ the bag man said. ‘We wanted the money and no one wanted the names. No one wants you either.’
The other cop nudged Salmon. ‘Come on.’
‘No!’ Salmon spun around desperately and looked across the room at me. ‘Help me!’
The cop swung the bag in his hand and smiled again. ‘He’s done all he can. Harvey Salmon’s flown to Rio. Come on.’
Salmon sagged and one of them grabbed him and held on hard. I sat there with an empty gun in my pocket and five hundred dollars in my crotch and watched them leave the room.
Three days later I sat in the home of my friend, Detective Sergeant Frank Parker, and told him about it. The telling took a bottle of wine and set up a strong craving for one of Frank’s cigarillos. I fought the craving; no sense losing all the battles. Frank listened and nodded several times while he smoked and poured the wine.
‘It’s pretty neat.’ he said when I finished. ‘Must’ve been a lot of money in that bag?’
‘Where would that have come from d’you reckon?’
Frank leaned back and blew smoke up over my head. ‘Let’s see, I’d say it would have been grateful contributions from people Salmon had kept quiet about. Mind you,’ he gave me the sort of smile you give when you read a politician’s obituary, ‘that’s not to say that some of their names wouldn’t have been on the final list he was going to hand over.’
‘Jesus. I still don’t feel good about watching him being carted away to be cancelled.’
‘Nothing you could do. Describe the man in charge, Cliff.’
‘Big,’ I said. ‘Six one or two; heavy but with a lot of muscle; smart suit; fresh everything-shave, haircut, the lot. Looked like he’d still be good at breaking heads and that he learned not to say “youse” and “seen” for “saw” not so long ago.’
Frank nodded and drew in smoke. ‘He’s an Armed Robbery “D”. Henry “Targets” Skinner. His turn’ll come.’
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