I felt a pang, I won’t deny it, when I yanked out the pin that held the card to the door. I crumpled the card and put it in my pocket, closed the door. CLIFF HARDY-PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS was out of business. As I went down the corridor, past the voice teacher and the horoscope-caster, I tried to remember how much turnover there’d been along that corridor in the twelve years I’d graced it with my office. A lot, and now my turn had come. I didn’t imagine it was any different from the experience of the guitar teacher and the graphic artist and the literary agent-just a matter of the door opening too many times for the occupant and not enough times for clients.
I could have paid the rent for another month; hell, the rent was paid a couple of weeks in advance, but there didn’t seem to be any point in just sitting there listening to my hair grow. Get out, Cliff, I could hear a voice saying. Don’t wait until you can’t pay the rent-retire with the title.
I tried a little Gene Kelly dance on the stairs, telling myself that it would be a relief to go to work for the Roger Wallace Agency-to get a salary cheque and be insured against breakage. A company car maybe. Eight steps down I lost balance and would have fallen if a man coming up hadn’t steadied me. His grip on my arm was firm; I felt embarrassed and more so that he knew me.
‘Mr Hardy? Been watching Flashdance?’
No, just young and foolish. Do I know you?’
‘We’ve never met but you were described to me. I want to hire you; that is, if you’re not all tied up at Arthur Murray’s.’ He was a dark, smooth-featured man, a little shorter and wider than me and he smelled of expensive after-shave when he pushed his smooth face close to my rough one.
‘What’s the idea?’ I jerked my arm free.
‘I wanted to see if you’d been drinking.’
‘I don’t drink before six these days.’ As I said it I was thinking that today might be an exception.
‘So I’ve heard, that’s good. Can we talk business?’
What could I do? He looked, smelt and moved like money, and a flash company car would only get vandalised in my street, anyway. Still, I nearly reverted to my previous decision when I found out that he was in the movie business. He leaned forward and rested his elbows in the dust on my desk, laced his fingers under his chin and talked. It sounds uncomfortable but it’s actually not a bad talking posture; it gave him a forward-thrusting, determined look.
‘My company starts shooting today, this afternoon. That’s Boston Picture, we…’
‘Boston?’
‘Just a name, we’re making
‘Why not Brisbane Pictures, Mr Boston?’
He sighed. ‘I was told you had a sense of humour. I suppose this is it. My name is Fuller, Richard Fuller. I’m the executive producer of a movie called Death Feast.’
‘I haven’t read the book.’
‘It’s not that sort of picture, there hasn’t been a book, there never will be a book-not even a novelisation. Trouble is, there mightn’t be a picture unless I can get this wrinkle ironed out.’
I like a good command of metaphor; I nodded and shut up and let Fuller smoke his cigarettes in a tar-guard-holder and tell it the way he wanted to.
‘ Death Feast is an action picture, sort of cops’n robbers thing set in Sydney, Kurt Butler’s the star. The script is better than average, we’ve got great locations and a terrific crew.’ He drew deeply on his low tar, filtered, tar-guarded cigarette and filled his lungs luxuriously. ‘We’ve also got a TV pre-sale. Big one. You know what that means?’
‘I suppose the picture has a chance of coming out ahead.’
‘Has to. Can’t help it.’ He expelled the smoke and took in some more. ‘If the bloody thing ever gets shot. Some crank’s threatened Kurt’s wife; he wanted to pull out, take her to Acapulco or some damned place. I promised I’d handle it, make him happy. You’re the solution we came up with.’
‘Why not delay the thing? Check on the crank, grab him or wait till he stops?’
He shook his head. ‘We’ve got non-completion clauses, other people are tied up later, weather problems-it’s now or never.’
‘How long’s the shooting last?’
‘Six weeks.’
‘I charge a hundred and twenty-five dollars a day-you’re looking at five thousand bucks.’
‘We’ve got a 2.3 million budget, as a below the line cost it’s a piddle in the bay.’
‘Where’s the wife going to be? There’ll be a big expense sheet if I have to hang around Palm Beach renting speedboats.’
‘She’ll be on the set every day, she always is. Kurt doesn’t comb his hair without asking her first.’
‘Is that why the crank’s working on her-to get at him?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Who’s handling the crank angle-looking into that?’
‘No one, that’s another problem. I’ll pay you a hundred and fifty a day; no, let’s say a hundred and seventy-five.’
‘What for?’
He looked nervous for the first time, maybe for the first time in his life. ‘You won’t like it. Kurt plays a private eye in the film. He thinks it will help his performance if he can sort of assist you in your investigation of the crank calls.’
‘I’m investigating them, am I? Not just guarding the wife?’
‘Hell, the set’ll be bristling with security men, she’ll be as safe as houses.’
I squinted against a ball of light that came in the window and bounced off the metal filing cabinet behind Fuller.
‘You didn’t exactly play that very straight, did you?’
He grinned. ‘Sort of sideways.’
‘I expected a better metaphor.’ He looked puzzled and I slammed down the front legs of the chair I’d been leaning back in. ‘Skip it. Write me a below-the-line cheque, show me how generous you are.’
It was generous enough to make me forget about guitar teachers and rent and Roger Wallace.
I followed Fuller’s new Commodore in my old Falcon to Leichhardt where the interior scenes of the movie were to be shot. He stopped in front of a terrace house in one of the narrower streets and a plane roared overhead as we stood outside the place. He spoke but the jet noise drowned him out and I leaned my head towards him.
‘Hear that?’ he said. ‘That’s what we wanted-great dramatic effect.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’ll cut down on the dialogue.’
‘Always a plus. Come and meet the mad house.’
I followed him into the house which looked as if a giant metal arm had ripped out all the walls and half the ceiling. The rooms seemed to have been dismembered, and the floor crawled with black power leads. There were forests of light stands and boom microphones and clusters of cameras that looked to be talking to each other. There wasn’t a canvas-backed chair in sight, but a group of people were squatting on a few uncluttered square inches of floor and one had a rolled up manuscript in his hand and was thumping the boards with it. If he wasn’t the director the film was in trouble already.
‘Scene conference,’ Fuller whispered. ‘Better not disturb them. Coffee?’
I shook my head; drinking coffee in the morning makes me want to drink wine in the afternoon. ‘Fill me in on the people.’
‘Okay. Kurt you’ll know; the guy with the script is Iain McLeish, he’s directing it; the little man with the hair is Bob Space, the writer; the other guy is Josh Wild, he’s an actor, and the blonde is Jardie, Kurt’s wife.’
‘I bet her Mum never called her Jardie.’
‘Her Mum would’ve called her Boss, like everyone else. Look at her now!’
The small blonde woman with the tight curls and the tight pants was laying down the law to McLeish. Butler watched her indulgently: I’d seen him on television in one of his tough guy roles in which he’d spent a lot of time naked or nearly so; if you needed an actor with shoulders you couldn’t go past him. Space, who couldn’t have stood much above five foot but had another four inches of woolly hair on top of that, was nodding at Jardie Butler’s every word. He wore sloppy old trousers and a faded army shirt and his feet were bare; as he nodded he scribbled notes in a reporter’s pad. Wild just looked straight ahead of him and McLeish looked down at the floor, perhaps at Space’s feet. Butler clapped his hands and his actor’s voice boomed out across the technology-crammed room.
‘Let’s do it that way, sounds good. Let’s get going!’
McLeish unsquatted and wandered off towards the back of the house. I heard his voice lift in a quick, angry Scots-accented shout.
Fuller and I picked our way across the snake pit.
‘Kurt, this is Hardy, the guy we talked about.’
Butler shook my hand in a powerful grip that must’ve started in the shoulders.
‘You agreeable?’ he rumbled.
‘We’ll give it a try.’
‘Good. C’mon Josh, let’s get fixed up. Should have some time to talk to you this afternoon. Is that right, love?’
Mrs Butler looked up a foot or so; she had a small, pointed face that looked even sharper when inclined.
‘Should be if that Scots twit is half as good as he thinks he is. I’ll give Mr Hardy the details.’
Butler nodded and he and Wild disappeared behind some cameras. Fuller was looking relieved that Jardie Butler hadn’t said I was too tall or the wrong colour. He slapped Bob Space on the shoulder and laughed.
‘Know what this guy said, Bob, when I told him about the picture? He’d said he hadn’t read the book! Good?’
Space blinked two or three times quickly and clenched his fists; for a moment he was sixty inches of pure aggression. Then he relaxed and let go a grin that showed his stained teeth.
‘Hah, hah,’ he said. ‘The laconic Aussie wit we’re famous for. D’you think you can get Kurt to be a bit warmer, Jardie, love-touch less craggy? We’re supposed to like him.’
‘How craggy should a private eye be, Mr Hardy?’ She turned on me a pair of grey eyes that shone hard and cold, like a slate roof in the rain.
‘It depends how smart he is,’ I said. ‘If you need some extra cragginess you can always hire it.’
She nodded. ‘After Richard shows you the set-up I’ll tell you about our problem.’ She swung back to Space and moved him away with body language. ‘Changes, sure,’ she said. ‘But not just for the sake of change, Bob. Constructive
I broke down and accepted a cup of coffee while Fuller gave me the tour. The company had taken over three adjoining houses and gutted the middle one. There were generators, refrigerators and fans all over the place. I counted fifteen telephones in the three houses. There were caravans in the biggest of the backyards and another couple in the laneway behind the houses.
‘They’re for the cast and some of the crew. I’ve got an office in one. Bob Space has a writing room in one.’
‘Hasn’t he finished the script?’
‘There’re always changes, sometimes it’s handy to have the writer on deck. Space says he sees his script as fluid.’
‘Piss!’ McLeish was suddenly standing beside us. He seemed to have a higher colour than when I’d first seen him and he was sucking some kind of sweet. ‘Script started off just fine, just fine, but between them the Butlers and Space are re-writing it by the hour. It’s getting worse.’
‘Shoot it your way, Iain, that’s your job.’
‘Aye,’ McLeish said vaguely.
Butler and Wild were deep in conversation over a table covered with bottles and the crew was all packed around them, each man and woman performing some small, essential task. When Jardie
Butler was satisfied with the look of things she beckoned me to go out back with her. She cocked one leg in skin-tight red satin pants over a low brick wall, took a deep breath of the Leichhardt air and gave me one of her Boss looks. She was strongly built, with wide shoulders and a flattish chest; her sex appeal was in her strength and she seemed to know it. ‘You’re no oil painting,’ she said. ‘How old are you?’
‘Around forty.’
‘You look it. Kurt’s twenty-five and looks thirty, I wonder what he’ll look like at forty.’
‘It’ll depend on the lighting. Tell me about these crank calls.’
‘They started about two weeks ago, no, three. Really weird stuff-like he said he’d throw acid in my face, or cut me. Said how would I look after I’d gone through a windscreen-stuff like that.’
‘Anything actually happen?’
‘No, but I’ve had a creepy feeling-like I’m being watched. It really got to Kurt.’
‘Was that the idea d’you think? I mean, I suppose you could have enemies…’
She laughed. ‘You mean I’m a domineering bitch. You’re right, I am. I haven’t got any talent you see, and a girl’s got to make her way somehow.’
‘I guess so. Well, I’ll hang around. I suppose I can go for a drive with Kurt, talk to a few people where you live, check a few things out. I don’t really think I can give him the flavour of the work though.’
‘Humour him. It’s just another macho fantasy.’
‘I can’t work out what you really think of him.’
She grinned and a little warmth showed in the slate eyes. ‘Neither can I.’
They got through working, if that’s what you’d call it, by 7 o’clock. I heard McLeish say they might get two minutes out of it and that that wasn’t too bad. Butler was too tired to do any sleuthing and I wound up my day by talking to the three security guards who’d be on duty all night. They weren’t bright but they seemed to be able to grasp that they should pay special attention to the Butler caravan. The happy young couple lived at Whale Beach, so they were in temporary residence on the set.
There was a small drinking party in progress when I left. In one of the undeveloped kitchens Space, McLeish, two actresses and a crewman were working their way through some wine and whisky. They didn’t invite me to join them so I went to where I keep my modest supplies of the same items.
The next day was one of the most boring I recall; I hung around the set while they ground out another two minutes. A copy of the script was lying around and I picked it up as a keepsake-from what I could see it was unlikely that I’d ever want to read it. I talked to Butler after he finished shooting and told him I’d check on whether there’d been any attempts to learn his unlisted number and invited him to go with me to do some snooping in Whale Beach.
‘No way, man, I’d like to but I just can’t make it. Bob’s done these new scenes and I’ve got to look ‘em over tonight. Tell you what, I’m going for a run tomorrow, early. What say you come with me-6 o’clock say. You can tell me how it went.’
I thought it’d give me a chance to see how the security boys were shaping up at first light and maybe Butler would have a few more ideas in his head at that time. I agreed to meet him on the street at six. There were three messages waiting for me at home-all prospective clients. I rang two of them and made appointments. I couldn’t see myself spinning out the Death Feast job for six weeks and it seemed smart to take advantage of the sudden easing of my personal recession.
We had the run, and Butler couldn’t resist keeping ahead of me and being more agile over the gutters. Leichhardt woke up around us; dogs yapped, and trucks delivered to shops and the cooking smells in the street suggested better breakfasts than tea and toast. I did a fair bit of panting as Butler showcased: we didn’t talk much. The action started at around eleven when Jardie Butler knocked over a camera and punched a cameraman who swore at her. I moved in fast to break it up, and eased her away from the broken glass and the fuming technician.
‘Easy, easy,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I got another one of those bloody calls! Right here, on the set!’
‘Where’s Kurt?’
‘In the other house, getting made up. I didn’t want him to hear about it until I’d seen you. Then I knocked over the stupid camera.’
‘Same voice?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Describe it while it’s fresh-what did he say?’
She shook slightly and I helped her to sit down on the steps of one of the caravans. ‘He said, he said “… I’ll wash your face for you, I’ll wash it right off.” Ugh. it’s a sort of thin, reedy voice, high…’
I got some brandy for her, and then she showed me the phone in the end house where she’d taken the call. One of the daytime security men had called Jardie to the phone but he couldn’t recall anything special about the voice. He scratched his ear under his aggressively cropped hair.
‘Funny thing though, that’s a closed line.’
‘What d’you mean?’ I snapped.
‘You can only get that to ring by using one of the other phones on the set. Why, what’s up?’
Jardie Butler’s hands flew to her face and she covered it like a little girl playing hidey. ‘Jesus!’
‘Who else’d know about the closed line?’
‘I dunno. Other security blokes; the bloke that installed them, and… ah, a couple of the… what d’you call them? Assistants.’
‘Okay, could you do a job for me? Just keep a watch and make a note of anyone who leaves this morning. Don’t stop them-just get the name and the time. Right?’
Like me, he looked glad to be relieved of the boredom and he hurried off. I helped Jardie up and made her finish the brandy.
‘We’ve got to do a quick tour, get to know everyone here. You know most of the names?’
‘Most, not all.’
‘Descriptions or jobs for the rest. Let’s go.’ We prowled the three houses looking in doors and checking in toilets; when we finished we had a list of twenty-two names and eight physical and eleven job descriptions. All the principals were there: Butler, McLeish, Space, Wild and a gaggle of supporting players-there were technicians of various sorts, and other functionaries down to a kid who controlled car movement in the street and a cook. Jardie and I went through the list crossing out names of people who couldn’t have made the call because they were definitely otherwise engaged at the time or because she could see them at the time of the call. Butler, McLeish and a big swag of the technicians went out; I removed myself from the list and the security man who’d told us about the phone. I was about to cross out the wardrobe woman when Jardie stopped me. ‘What’re you doing? Where was she?’ ‘She’s a she-you said it was a man’s voice.’
‘I’m not sure now, it could have been disguised.’
‘Christ, that opens it up.’
‘What d’we do now? I’m impressed so far, by the way.’
‘Thanks.’
She was wearing her tight pants in white today, with a singlet cut low under the arms. She had very nice slim arms with long muscles; it looked as if she exercised as much as Kurt. She moved with a dancer-like graceful confidence and she wouldn’t normally have knocked over a camera. I was convinced that the phone call had been truly unpleasant.
‘The person who made the call wouldn’t have known that it was an internal-calls-only phone. He or she wouldn’t be worried about anything and there’s no reason to think they’d act any different from normal. I guess I’ll just have to check on all the obvious people-the ones who might have a reason to sabotage the film.’
‘That’s no one,’ Jardie muttered. ‘Haven’t you heard how things are in this business? Work’s work.’
‘Someone’s got a reason, unless…’
‘Unless what?’
‘Someone who’s not here who does have a reason hired someone who is here who doesn’t.’
‘Oh, great.’
From the other house Butler’s voice rose in a shout that lifted the dust.
‘I cannot work with that crazy bastard! What is the matter with him?’
It was a red alert to Jardie; she took off, scooting through the gap in the fence like a startled rabbit. I followed sedately and stepped into a madhouse: Butler, McLeish and Space were all shouting at each other simultaneously. Butler looked to be ready to use his fists on someone and McLeish had a bad, high colour with veins throbbing in his forehead. Space had more control and looked to be more excited than angry. Jardie pushed Space aside and he shut up and watched her go to work on Butler. Her technique was a combination of stick and carrot. She whacked him in the ribs to cut his breath and then stroked his arm like a vet with a frightened animal. Her touch seemed to calm him and he touched her in return. Maybe they’d done an advanced course in feelie therapy, because the touching seemed to do them both a lot of good.
McLeish ran out of steam and signalled to one of the young women whose function had never been clear to me. She ducked back and came up with a glass and a bottle of Haig, and that particular doubt was answered. McLeish took a stiff belt as his way of cutting his breath, poured another and sipped.
‘Okay, okay,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ve got a wee problem.’ He nodded to the whisky bearer. ‘Get his agent on the phone, lass, we’ll work it out.’
Space turned over script sheets rapidly. ‘Guess I could change the lines, even write him out if need be.’
McLeish drained his glass in a one jerky swallow. ‘Christ man, you’ll be giving us a new bloody film the way you’re going. You’ve got first feature jitters-relax. The sensible people’ll work it out, I tell you. Take a break, everybody.’
‘We know what that means for you,’ Jardie snarled.
‘Don’t push me, girlie. You’ll get your cans full of the sort of shit you want, don’t you worry.’
He wandered off after the Haig bottle and I watched Butler pull on a sweatshirt over the T-shirt he’d been wearing for the scene. He seemed to approach his acting like an athletic event.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Wildy blew up.’ Butler said. ‘He’s been acting crazy for days, from rehearsals on. I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with him. Now he’s pissed off somewhere and this scene is shot to bits.’
‘Take it easy,’ Jardie said. ‘Have some coffee, have a rest; Hardy and I’ll go and get him.’
‘I don’t want you going around unprotected,’ Butler said. ‘Not after the threats.’
‘What threats?’ Space asked.
‘Never mind, Bob. I am protected, you dummy.’ Jardie stroked her husband’s arm and gripped the bicep. ‘I’ve got the guy we hired.’
‘I thought you were some kind of technical consultant,’ Space said. ‘That’s what Richard told me.’
‘That’s Richard’s job. Go back to cutting scenes, Bob. Have a rest, hon. Let’s go, Hardy.’
We went through the house and out to the street; the security man I’d assigned to plot the comings and goings rushed up.
‘One of the actors took off,’ he said excitedly. ‘Burning rubber.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Stay with it.’
Jardie Butler turned out to be an expert driver of her Stag. We were whipping down Norton Street before I had the seat belt buckled.
‘I know where he lives-Balmain.’
‘That right?’
‘Yes. You might as well know, Josh and I had a bit of a thing before I met Kurt. Josh’s not over it properly.’
‘You think he could be the phone caller?’
‘I suppose it’s possible. See, he was all set to become the muscular hero of the 1980s before Kurt came along. Kurt got a couple of roles Josh thought he should’ve had. He’s taken it bad-this is the first time he’s agreed to work with Kurt.’
‘Missed out on you too did he?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Could Wild have been the voice on the phone?’
She was heading along the railway to the intersection with the Crescent, too fast I thought, but she braked and made the turn neatly. ‘He’s an actor-who knows what actors can do… and can’t do.’
I chewed on that for the rest of the drive down into east Balmain. Wild lived close to the wharf and the water but, he couldn’t have seen either from the small windows of the nondescript block of 1950s flats-he might as well have been in Haberfield. Jardie U-turned and rolled the car to the kerb just short of the drive with the practised ease of someone who’d done it before.
We walked up the drive and she pointed to a Moke parked skew-whiff beside the flats.
‘He’s here-at the back.’
The narrow concrete porch at the back would barely have kept the rain off the peeling door of flat three. For an almost star, Josh Wild didn’t appear to be doing too well. Jardie knocked and the door opened slowly. Wild’s face began to move into a smile at the sight of her until he saw me. Then it changed and blurred like a double exposed photograph. The flat door opened inwards but the screen door opened out and Wild used it to knock Jardie Butler out of his path. He growled like an animal, reached out for me and pulled on the front of my shirt. I went with the pull; he had a punch ready but he’d advertised it much too early. I went under the punch and bullocked him back into the hallway. He swung again but he was badly off-balance and I hooked his feet out, and down he went.
Jardie’s breathing was harsh in my ear as I stood over her crumpled ex-lover. There was a trickle of blood from his mouth but he hadn’t hit the wall or floor very hard and had no reason to be as relaxed as he was. I looked from him to her and couldn’t decide which sight I disliked more.
‘Wow!’ she breathed. ‘Is that how it’s done?’
‘It shouldn’t be that easy, big bloke like him. Take a look-you know him-reckon he’s okay?’
She brushed past me and leaned over Wild. All hunched up on the floor like that isn’t a man’s best posture, but with the thinning hair I could see now and the slack jaw muscles, it didn’t look as if he could have been a film idol for long. His gut looked a bit slack too, but even so he shouldn’t have been such a pushover.
Jardie straightened up. ‘He’s coked,’ she said.
‘You sure?’
‘Seen it a hundred times, him and others, He’d be calm and relaxed in a hurricane, that’s how it takes him. He couldn’t fight coked to defend his mother-Kurt’d be like a chainsaw.’
I got Wild up in a sort of fireman’s lift, carried him the few feet it took and dumped him on a battered narrow couch in the small, dark living room. I went out to the kitchen, wet a dirty dish-towel and slopped it over his face. He started to clean himself carefully with his eyes closed, like a cat. We ignored him.
‘How come he lives so low on the pig? Don’t actors make a good living?’
‘I didn’t realise he’d slid this far. I hate to think how much this stuff costs.’ She was standing by a low coffee table which had a mirror on it and a plastic packet and a short straw with the end scoop-shaped.
‘So he rushed off to make his connection here.’ There was a dribble of saliva on the mirror, and some of the powder was smeared in it. ‘I thought half the people in the acting game were on this stuff, does it turn them all into maniacs?’
‘No, different people handle it different ways. Josh must’ve been really strung out. Maybe he’s on something else too.’
‘Would it make him screw up his part?’
‘Christ, yes, it could. With Bob Space on the set though, it’s a wonder he didn’t write it in-make Josh a smack head.’
Wild’s eyes were open and he was finished washing his face. I took the cloth away and he smiled at me. ‘Everyone says that about Space, about him changing things. Isn’t that standard?’
‘Not quite. Look, Hardy, now I think about it I really don’t think Josh could be the caller. I mean, he’s a nut, and he probably still fancies me and maybe he hates Kurt. But he wouldn’t wreck the film-especially not needing money that bad.’
‘I suppose. Well, you talk to him and I’ll poke around-look for clues.’
‘To what?’
I shrugged. ‘Who knows, I’m a snoop. You’re a smart girl, you talk to him; if you decide he wouldn’t threaten to throw acid in your face, I’ll believe you.’
I could hear them murmuring as I searched Wild’s bedroom and the other small room he used to store things-mostly rubbish. He wasn’t a neat man or a clean one-he wasn’t very interesting either. Like alcoholics I’d known, his life seemed to be given over to drugs: he had smoking and sniffing and injecting devices, old containers marked with the residue of one dream-maker or another. The few books around had a drugs bias too. I could imagine him, like the dipsos, mapping out the geography of his days in terms of his hits-the only difference being that his hits were illegal and much more expensive. When I went back into the living room Wild was sitting up on the couch and Jardie was holding his hand.
‘You’d only be doing it for Kurt,’ Wild was saying.
‘What does it matter?’ she said. She looked across at me. ‘Not him-no chance.’
‘Okay.’
‘You take the Moke back to the set, the keys’re over there. I’ll bring him along in a while. Tell them everything is okay.’
I collected the keys and had all the fun of jarring my spine with my hair in my eyes as I drove the Moke back to Leichhardt.
A kind of defeated calm had settled on the three houses. I strolled past the car control kid and tossed him the keys.
‘He’ll be along in a bit.’
The kid’s jaw dropped and he looked at me as if I was Michael Jackson. Cheap trick, Hardy, I thought; but then, few jaws drop for me. I located Fuller and gave him the good news; he sent someone off to find someone to tell McLeish that he could go back to work
‘If he’s not too drunk,’ Fuller said. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I’m not making floppy discs or something-too many crazies in this business.’
‘We still haven’t found our chief crazy. How important is this picture to you? Financially, I mean.’
‘Bloody important. Why?’
‘That lets you out as a candidate for the phone caller; that is, if you’re not lying.’
‘Jesus, Hardy, don’t joke about it.’
‘There has to be someone who comes out better if the picture gets stopped, or delayed-who?’
‘No one.’ Fuller lit a cigarette to help him think. ‘I lose my shirt; Kurt misses out on a good role and they’re not so easy to come by; McLeish needs a commercial success for obvious reasons; Space wants the credit and he’s got points if we go into the black. Also I haven’t paid him for the property yet; if we don’t make the picture he’ll have to join the list of creditors and that’ll be long, believe me. The assistant cameraman wants to be cameraman, the wardrobe girl wants to be in casting-everybody wants to move up. Everybody needs Death Feast’
McLeish stepped through the fence looking spruce, too spruce. ‘Hey ho,’ he sang. ‘I hear the errant son returns, let’s be having you all.’
‘He’s drunk,’ I said.
‘He’s a good director when he’s paralytic, he used to be a great director when he was just pissed. He’ll do.’
‘What about all these women around? Could one of them have the hots for Kurt and be cutting up rough?’
Fuller smiled. ‘No way, Kurt’s not like that’
‘He’s not?’
‘Don’t get me wrong.’ He leaned towards me with male conspiratoriality. ‘He’s not gay or anything. He’s just not very… active. Knew a girl who knew him-she reckoned he had all the sex drive of an old sofa.’
‘Amazing.’
People started emerging from all points around the houses like ants coming out of holes. A sharp squeal of brakes outside announced Jardie and Wild’s return, and within minutes they were all making up like mad and things started to hum. Fuller charged around for a while and then settled down to talk on the phone. I broke resolution again and had a beer from one of the fridges. The security man told me only two other people had left since Wild, and neither was a candidate for star billing. I watched them shoot a scene and saw the sweat dribbling off Butler after the eighth take. Wild was slow and had to be hurried through his lines; Space looked edgy, and spoiled one take by making a noise flapping the script. Jardie squatted just out of camera range and offered Butler massive support with her eyes and hands. He lapped it up. I decided I’d rather make the tea than act, write or direct.
Fuller put down the phone and beckoned me over; he was smiling.
‘Good news from the distributors,’ he said.
‘Does that mean my cheque won’t bounce?’
‘You don’t know how true you speak. No, everything should be all right now.’
‘How many people are actually sleeping here, say tonight?’
‘Let’s see. McLeish, Kurt and Jardie; Roxie and Heathcliff
‘Heathcliff?’
‘Heathcliff Hathaway, one of the support actors.’
‘Will he ever get to be star with a name like
Heathcliff?’
‘With his talent, any thing’s possible.’
‘He’s got talent?’
‘None. Bob Space tells me he’s moved his things in for a bit… if you’re planning something boring like gathering everyone together for a rap session it won’t work, not tonight anyway.’
‘I wasn’t, but why wouldn’t it work?’
‘There’s a dinner on tonight at EJs, everyone’s going. What are you planning?’
‘Something sneaky,’ I said.
It’s my belief that when you find out someone’s secrets, you find out what they are. Someone with no secrets may be what they seem-few are. I went back to Glebe the way homeowners do, to make sure it hadn’t burned down or had the doors stolen; but, by 9 o’clock I was back in Leichhardt, wording up the security men to let me poke around for a while.
I did McLeish’s caravan first; it bore all the signs of being occupied by a sort of filmic hit man. He was here to do a job and he’d brought enough clothes and enough money and the booze he could get on the spot. He might have a full life back in the old Dart, complete with photos of the wife and dog, but here he was just passing through. There were some uncomplimentary remarks scrawled on a copy of the script, a bit of correspondence with his agent about fees and a cupboard full of hangover remedies. His passport photograph was of a younger, more hopeful man.
Jardie Butler had trouble sleeping; she kept her Mogadon close to hand; there was a pile of books by the bed of the kind that poor sleepers flip through-short stories, pop biographies and Woody Allen scripts. There was also an eye mask and a vibrator. The Butlers had a lot of casual clothes and a lot of casual money; two passbook accounts were healthy, as were a keycard account and a building society deposit. They’d also left carelessly lying around the kind of money I usually count, fold and put carefully in my wallet.
Kurt Butler’s effects included weights, running gear, a chest expander, various liniments and more jockstraps than socks. His only reading matter was a carefully kept scrapbook about his very favourite film actor. He had a copy of Space’s script with his lines heavily underscored; there had been some editing done in Jardie’s hand-all to make the speeches shorter.
Space’s part of the caravan he shared with one of the technicians was a crazy jumble of books, papers, credit cards and clothes. He seemed to have no ability to keep things in separate compartments: He had pipe tobacco in a cup, ball point pens in a shoe, and razor blades in with a packet of tea bags. Under his bunk though was a locked metal box. I eased it open with a piece of wire and found a book inside which had been carefully wrapped in tissue paper, like a Shakespeare first folio.
The book was a paperback, published twelve years before by MacRobertson amp; MacRobertson. It was the first in a mystery and adventure series, and I vaguely remembered the fanfare of announcement at the time. Entitled Death Games it was written by Deryck Hyclef and told the story of a private detective who had three clients in succession murdered. It seemed like a faster way to go out of business than the slow grind of the recession. I had my souvenired copy of Bob Space’s script in my pocket and I sat down on his bunk and compared the two pieces of writing. Even with name changed (and he hadn’t bothered to change them that much-Dirk Balfour becoming Dick Balmain for example), it was easy to see that Death Feast was a direct pinch.
There was no mention of Hyclef on the script, in fact it was called ‘an original screenplay’. Space had tried a few minor plot changes but, without knowing anything about film editing, it seemed to me that if the cutter of the film wanted a backbone he’d end up with a plot very like that of Hyclef’s book. In any case, the book was underlined and annotated in Space’s writing. I rummaged in the mess and found an earlier draft of the script which included passages virtually transcribed from Death Games. If the Scriptwriter’s Guild, of which he was a fully paid-up member, had any teeth, Mr Robert Space would have a very bloody neck.
I telephoned EJs to ensure that Fuller would come to the set rather than slope off to his penthouse; then I got a bottle from McLeish’s caravan and the security boys and I had a few belts and swapped stories. I told them the one about the amusement park that had a ferris wheel stolen and they told me the one about the drunk who went to sleep on wet cement.
Fuller and Space turned up around midnight; the writer was drunk and unsteady, and his face seemed to dissolve when I laid the book in front of him. We were in the kitchen of one of the houses, and I got him a glass of water. I put the script down beside the book and didn’t say anything. Space gulped the water and looked miserable.
‘What’s going on?’ Fuller said.
‘Bob pinched the story from this book. He pinched the characters, atmosphere, the lot.’
‘Jesus,’ Fuller breathed. ‘Anything to drink besides water?’
We got McLeish’s bottle and I poured two drinks, leaving Space with more water.
‘Let’s hear it, Bob,’ I said.
Space sipped water and a little dribbled down his chin; he’d been running his hands through his high-rise hair, flattening it and making him look more normal, younger and afraid. ‘I didn’t think the thing’d get to production. I was just after the development dough, thought I might get a first draft fee from some producer, you know.’
Fuller nodded.
‘Well, it all took off. It moved too fast for me-suddenly it was final draft and then we were in pre-production. I didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t really have hurt Jardie, you know that.’
I nodded this time.
‘I just wanted to stop the bloody thing. I tried to make a lot of changes but Jardie and McLeish blocked a lot of them. If we make it like this,’ he lapped the script, ‘someone’ll spot it for sure. It’ll be the finish of me.’ He mustered a little spirit and looked at Fuller. ‘You too, probably,’ he said.
I drank some of McLeish’s good whisky and thought about it. Space was flicking through the book. There was a picture of the author on the back cover-he looked youngish, thin and thoughtful.
‘Why didn’t you get on to this Hyclef bloke? Do some sort of deal with him?’
‘I thought of that,’ Space said. ‘I gave it a try; but the firm went out of business. I asked around but no one’d ever heard of Hyclef. It could’ve been a pseudonym. I don’t know.’
Fuller was sinking whisky and looking desperate; he could see his investment slipping away. I let it slip a little, and then cleared my throat noisily.
‘Missing persons is one of my specialties.’
Fuller took the biggest punt of his life, and they went on with the shoot while I looked for Hyclef. I found him teaching at a school out from Broken Hill. He’d never had another word published-the collapse of MacRobertsons had hit him for six. He was a nice, naive man, disappointed in his thirties. He was thrilled with the deal Fuller and Space worked out with him for the film ‘based on’ his novel. There was talk of a re-issue of the book by another house with Kurt Butler’s craggy features on the cover.
The film finished on schedule, and just over budget. It did good business and they even found a small part for me-I’m the one who shouts ‘Look out!’ when Dick Balmain misses death by inches up in the Centrepoint tower.
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