I muttered the information to Spinoza as I got up from the table.
‘Could be a feint,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch the folks. Think you can handle it?’
I nodded. His signal to the restaurant supervisor must have meant ‘Give this man the moon’ because he leaned his ear up to my mouth and looked ready to clear the place if need be.
‘Quick way to the carpark?’ I said.
He didn’t waste time talking; his hand gripped my arm and he steered me past tables and out through the kitchen to a set of heavy perspex doors.
‘You can see it from here, buddy. We got a guy parks the cars.’
The Volvo owner was dark, heavy-set, with thin hair and a green face, but that was just the neon light above the building tinting him. He didn’t want his car parked by anyone. He wanted to leave it where it was. The car parker, a young black man wearing whites with a bow tie and a white cap, didn’t want him to do that but saw reason when Green Face gave him some money. I slipped out of the kitchen and ducked low behind the cars, moving forward to cut him off before he got to the door of the restaurant.
I got a quick look at the Volvo on the way-no one else in it. Green Face moved slowly; he was either furtive, hesitant or careful. He was built wide and strong; his suit was baggy and he wore scuffed suede shoes. He kept one hand in his pocket I took out the. 38, took four long steps and swung a kick in behind his right knee. His hands flew in the air, both empty and clawing at the wall for support. I hooked at his ankle and watched him fall.
He hit on his side and rolled over onto his back. I bent down and put the gun in front of his face where he could see it.
‘Stay there,’ I said, ‘and you won’t get hurt.’
His voice came out in a strangled whine with a lot of Australian vowels. ‘I am hurt!’
All that stuff about Americans ignoring muggings in the street is true; we were only feet away from the main throroughfare; several people stared at me as I bent over a fallen man threatening him with a gun, but no one stopped. You can’t count on it absolutely, though. The carpark attendant came out from behind a car with a gun bigger than mine in his hand.
‘Hold it there,’ he said.
‘You hold it.’ I eased back a little but remained businesslike. ‘This is official. It’s okay.’
‘The hell it’s official,’ the man on the ground said.
‘Have I touched your wallet? Am I trying to take your car keys? And if I wanted you to be dead that’s how you’d be.’ I was reasonably sure he wasn’t armed and not just because he spoke with an Australian accent. His jacket was open and he wore no harness; if he had a gun in his sock it’d be my own fault if I let him get it. I slid the safety to ‘on’ and put my gun away. ‘Would you please,’ I said to the attendant, ‘go inside and get a message to Mr Spinoza that everything’s all right. You can see that it is, can’t you?’
‘I guess so.’ He uncocked the big gun.
‘Don’t go!’ Green Face who was now White Face wriggled on the ground.
‘I’m Peter January’s security man,’ I said.
He groaned. ‘Shit! Okay, it’s okay.’
‘You done made my night, mister,’ the car parker said. ‘Spinoza, was it?’
‘Right.’
He backed away and headed for the kitchen door. The man on the ground tucked his left leg back and levered himself up. I watched him but didn’t help. He propped himself against the wall and we inspected each other.
‘Why the hell did you do that?’ he said.
‘You made me nervous following us the way you did. Who are you?’
‘I’m Don Carver. I’m a reporter.’
‘If you want an interview there’s a procedure.’
Carver brushed dirt from his shirtfront. ‘I don’t want a fucking interview. I wanted to observe the bastard. Do you realise where you are? Cameramen sue tennis players for millions in this country-for busting a camera.’
‘The tennis players sue back,’ I said. ‘Well, you’ve got your story. You can tell them the Minister’s got good security.’
He glowered at me. He had the sort of bulky body that won’t respond well to tailoring. His clothes were expensive but they hung around him awkwardly. His hair was precisely trimmed but it still looked thin and scruffy. He wasn’t a happy man. ‘There’s no news in that. He’s always had thugs around him.’
I moved closer to him and brushed more dirt from his jacket. ‘Something just occurred to me-January has had the odd threat since he got here. Now you turn up skulking around and you clearly don’t like him. I could put two and two together.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘So you say. Maybe I should have a word about you to the security boys here. Would that cramp your style at all, Carver?’
He stopped glowering and looked uncomfortable. ‘I was just doing my job.’
‘Me, too. You want to take a look at him before you go on your way?’
‘I suppose so.’
He eased himself painfully away from the wall and limped along after me. I took him into the carpark, nodded to the attendant, and we looked in through the window.
Peter January had his arm around Trudi’s shoulders. He was telling a story and Trudi and Spinoza were laughing. Light danced on the glasses on the table and on the bottle as the waiter poured January some wine. He smiled at Trudi and she touched his shoulder to draw his attention to something. I felt Carver stiffen beside me.
He sniffed noisily. ‘Who’s she?’
‘Assistant,’ I said.
‘There’s always someone. Nothing’s changed. Well, I’ve seen all I need to see. What’s your name?’
‘Smith,’ I said. ‘I suggest you get in your Volvo and go home so you can work for your Pulitzer prize.’
He sniffed again and limped off towards his car. I watched the tail-light blend into the traffic and I headed back to the kitchen. The attendant touched his cap as I passed. I settled down at the table and drank my beer which had gone flat. January and Trudi were eating; Spinoza looked at me.
‘Trouble?’
‘Not much.’ I poured some wine and drank it. Spinoza was right, a litre of it would have been bad trouble. ‘I have to stop doing this. It’s no way for a man to earn a living.’
January stopped chewing. ‘Doing what?’
‘Beating up journalists. I just had a run-in with Don Carver.’
January dropped his fork onto his plate. Some sauce splashed over his shirt. ‘Shit! What did you say? You beat up Don Carver?’
‘He’ll have a sore leg, that’s all.’
‘What other journalist have your beaten up lately?’ Trudi said.
‘Sammy Weiss.’
‘That slug.’ She drank some wine and shuddered.
‘I’m not following this,’ Spinoza said.
I reached for bread in the hope that it would improve the wine. ‘It’s all to do with the Minister’s reputation,’ I said. ‘He has to keep up this front of being a womaniser so no one’ll suspect he’s gay.’
‘Hardy, watch it!’ January said.
Trudi laughed. I suddenly realised that I was jealous. ‘Don’t worry, Peter,’ I said. ‘When Carver looked in Trudi was nibbling your ear. He got the right message.’
The party went sort of flat after that. We finished the meal; I didn’t eat anything and drank a bit too much of the wine. Spinoza didn’t drink anything. At one point he slipped out and I gather he spoke to the carpark attendant because when he came back he nodded to me approvingly.
‘Neat,’ he said.
We took January and Trudi to their next meeting which was in a condominium apartment near the Watergate hotel. I stayed in the car with Spinoza and we drank some very good and very strong coffee from a take-away joint.
‘You don’t look much like a citizen of the lucky country right now,’ Spinoza said.
I swilled the last inch of coffee. ‘We were the lucky country for about 24 hours in 1972.’
‘How’s that?’
‘We got a new government that did good things. 24 hours, maybe 48. It was all downhill after that.’
Spinoza looked out over the lights strung up high over the bank of the Georgetown Channel. ‘Luck sure is spread thin. But your man’s doing all right. He’s got past a bombing, I hear, and then there was that little freeway incident. Mind you, he’s going to be exposed tomorrow.’
‘They haven’t told me.’
‘He’s going to this big function in Georgetown-sort of liberal affair-anti-nuclear, pro-Third World, free range eggs thing. Lots of people and very hard to screen ‘em.’
‘Great. I still haven’t looked at your mug shots.’
‘We’ll do it tomorrow-after this thing is over. He does the Senate after that, right?’
‘Yeah. Tell me, Billy, do any of your people ever go over to the other side? I mean to the mob, terrorists or whatever?’
‘Sure. Some of the best and smoothest. The work’s much the same, the money’s better and the life expectancy isn’t much worse, if any.’
‘Thanks. I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.’