I was sagging with fatigue when I got to Glebe. My back hurt when I straightened up after getting the letters from the box. Nothing from Helen and nothing else that mattered. Trudi hadn’t arrived and the place had a smell of stale air and drying out rising damp. I opened a tin of food and a window for the cat who looked a bit thin from hunting and gathering while I’d been gone, and got under a long hot and cold shower. After that I put everything I’d been wearing that was washable in the machine and dumped the rest by the door to be dry cleaned. I felt I was back on my pitch with a lead to follow and I needed a fresh start. I certainly needed fresh socks.
I phoned January’s office and got Trudi who was still trying to locate a voice expert. She told me that January had gone off to meet his political cohorts.
‘You’re not there alone, are you?’
‘No. Peter sent Julian over from the pub.’
‘Who’s Julian?’
‘I don’t know. He plays Rugby Union, he tells me.’
‘Rugby Union. Where’s he from?’
There was a pause while she interrogated Julian. ‘He’s from Wanganui. He’s a Maori.’
‘He’ll do. How’s Peter?’
‘Confused,’ she said. ‘I think he really cares for Karen, I know he really cares for himself. He says you’re a professional and the kidnapper is an amateur. He has high hopes of you.’
‘That’s nice. Anything else?’
‘Not much. Gary’ll be back tomorrow which could be a help. I’ve heard that bloody voice on the tape so many times I think I know it.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I think I’ve heard it for real. I might be imagining it. I’m tired.’
‘Come here and sleep on it. Something might occur to you in your sleep.’
‘Okay. Can I bring Gunther?’
‘Is he afraid of cats?’
‘Gunther’s afraid of nothing.’
‘He hasn’t met my cat. Sure, bring him. But don’t go to your place. This freak might try to make it a pair.’
‘Will you be there?’
‘No, I have to talk to Sammy Weiss. Wouldn’t happen to know where he lives, would you?’
‘I do. Well, I heard some of the journos talk about it at that office conference. They said he lived at the Beta House-I don’t know what it means.’
‘I do. Get some rest, Trude. I’ll see you soon.’
‘What about you? You must be bushed.’
‘I’m going to drink a gallon of coffee, take some caffeine tablets and brush my teeth. I’ll be okay.’
‘How is Weiss involved?’
I told her quickly what I’d learned and instructed her what to tell and what not to tell January. She told me to be careful. I hung up and put the coffee on; while it perked I got dressed in jeans and a jacket and sneakers; the only thing I wore that I’d had on before was the gun. I drank the coffee scalding hot and took the tablets. The cat ate the whole tin of food and looked at me reproachfully as if it knew that I’d invited a dog into the house.
‘Go for his nose,’ I said to it. ‘You could win on a knock-out.’ The cat wiped its whiskers and jumped out the window. A wind had sprung up and the open window rattled in its warped frame. I shut it and the cat looked at me through the glass.
I was in the Falcon, turning into Glebe Point Road, when it occurred to me that Helen might ring again and get Trudi, again. I’m very good at thinking up things to worry about.
The Beta House is a large building in Newtown which is something in between a squat and low rent accommodation. It’s for people who are on the way down or just possibly taking a breather before making a comeback. I’d had dealings with its residents before. They tended to be defensive, eccentric or downright aggressive. There’s no way into the place unless someone inside lets you in or throws you a key. All the windows are two floors up and the fire escape rusted and rotted into disuse long ago.
I parked in King Street outside an all-night video shop and walked down the narrow street to the Beta. It hadn’t changed in the couple of years since I’d been there. It was still a dark green five storey pile with broken windows boarded up, water dripping from broken pipes down the outside walls and roof iron lifting and thumping down as the night wind caught it. There’s always someone at home in the Beta. I could hear rock music coming from the fourth floor; a toilet flushed at the back, gurgled and flushed again and again.
I picked my way between the abandoned cars and refrigerators and, in the lane on the west side, found the window I wanted on the third floor and in the centre of the building. I collected some small stones and pelted it until a light came on.
‘What the fuck you want?’ The shape in the window was squat and wide with a belly that kept it back from the opening.
‘It’s Hardy, Sammy. Let me in.’
‘Got the key money, you cunt?’
I held up a $10 note. Sammy Trueman spat out into the night but missed me by a long way. Trueman had run a gymnasium in Newtown until he’d run out of fighters he could throw to the lions. As the boxing business sagged Trueman went down for the count. He’d had one good fighter in recent times, an Aborigine named Jacko Moody, who’d won national titles and then given the game away for football. Trueman thought I’d had a hand in that and I liked to think he was right. He hated me but he couldn’t afford to hate $10.
A string came snaking down the side of the building with a key tied to the end of it. I untied the key, replaced it with the $10. The string floated up and I went to the front of the building. The key turned easily in the lock; I opened the door and held it open with a piece of wood I found among the litter just inside. I figured that $10 should buy me a convenient exit as well as entry.
The stairwell stank of beer, piss and shit, some of it human, some animal. I went up three flights, feeling my way more than seeing because most of the light bulbs had blown. Trueman’s room was along a corridor past a dozen doors to rooms like his. It reminded me of prison cell block without the bars. I had to step over boxes of bottles and ruptured garbage bags. My foot skidded on something soft and ripe smelling that had slipped from a bag.
Trueman’s feet shuffled and he opened the door outwards on rickety hinges. He collapsed in a fit of coughing when he stretched out his hand for the key. I held it back. ‘I’m here to see Sammy Weiss.’
‘Don’ know ‘im.’ His singlet was grey and the room behind him was filled with smoke and the stench of sweaty, unwashed clothes.
‘Don’t give me that, Trueman. Now you know I can come in there and take back the 10 bucks and break whatever bottle you’ve got. So be nice. Weiss, where?’
‘One up and towards the front. Red door. You’re a bastard, Hardy. You took away the best boy I ever had.’
‘You had some good ones and they all ended up the same way. Except Moody.’
‘You cost me 50 grand, maybe more.’
‘Think of it in terms of brain cells. Moody saved himself a couple of million of them when he quit you.’
‘What’s a fuckin’ Abo need with brains?’
I dropped the key at his feet and headed for the stairs. It was even gloomier on the next level; I passed a half open door from which the marijuana smoke was softly eddying along with sitar music. A bit further on a door stood wide open and I saw a group of people on their knees in front of an altar draped in black cloth. The signs and figures painted on the cloth were repeated in chalk on the floor. The worshippers were murmuring and swaying gently as incense smoke billowed up from behind the altar.
The red door was closed, No exotic smells or sounds, just the rhythmic grunting and wheezing of a heavy snorer deeply asleep. I knocked but the snoring didn’t miss a beat. It was my night for easy doors; this one would have been a pushover with a nail file. I unzipped my jacket so I could get at the gun but I wasn’t really expecting to need it except perhaps to shoot rats.
It was a small room, narrow and low-ceilinged, with a window set up too high to look out of. Depression was the keynote and it continued with the gas ring, the hand basin in the corner and the rickety card table on which there were a few books and a portable typewriter. Sammy Weiss lay on his back on the narrow bed. He was wearing baggy cotton underpants and a pyjama coat with no buttons. His fish-white chest and belly rose and fell as he snored. He had a three-day stubble and the smell reminded me of when a flagon of wine had broken in the boot of my car and stayed there a few days. Lying beside the bed were an empty bottle of rum, two wine bottles ditto and a flagon of sherry with enough left in it to make a trifle. Crumpled sheets of paper overflowed a box that had held half a dozen cans of beer; the empty cans were in the wastepaper basket along with more paper.
I filled a can at the hand basin and trickled the water onto Weiss’s face. He grumbled, turned his head and twitched. I kept pouring and he came awake spluttering and moaning.
‘What this? Shit, what’re you doing. Ooh, I’m gonna be sick.’
‘Keep it down, Sammy, unless you’ve got a bucket handy.’
He forced his eyes to stay open and he tried to sit up but he couldn’t make it. ‘God, I’m gonna die.’
‘Not yet. We have to talk, then you can die. When you come off the wagon you really come off, don’t you? What happened, Sammy?’
His eyes were red and dry-looking. He knuckled them violently and moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Is there anything left?’
‘Bit of sherry.’
‘Gimme.’ He twitched violently and attempted to locate the flagon beside the bed. I moved it away with my foot.
‘Talk first. Clam up and I pour it down the sink a drop at a time.’
‘Christ, Hardy, have a heart.’
‘Sammy, I haven’t got the time for games. You were watching Karen Weiner’s flat. That I know. What happened next?’
‘N-nothing. I found out who she was. Pretty smart, eh?’ He forced himself up onto his elbows and looked at me with his chins up. ‘I haven’t lost the touch.’ He looked around at the room and let himself slide back. ‘Yes I have,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve lost the fuckin’ touch.’
‘Cut out the self pity. What did you see?’
‘I saw where she lived. Saw her husband come by before he went off to the Philippines or wherever. Saw her up at her window.’
‘And you saw someone march her out, didn’t you?’
‘I dunno. Come on, I need that drink.’
I picked up the flagon and swilled the few inches in the bottom around. ‘It’s not good for you, Sammy.’
‘Okay, okay, she left with this weird-looking guy. I dunno who he was or anything. He could’ve been her pusher. You know what they’re like. Some of them go for the rough stuff.’
I gave him the flagon and he drained it in a long gulp. He shuddered. ‘God, that’s rough.’
‘Chivas Regal’d taste rough to you now. We’ll get back to the bloke when your mind’s cleared. What’s all this? What put you back on the piss?’
Weiss dropped the flagon to the floor. ‘I had it. The big story. January and Weiner’s wife. January was making all that noise in the States. He’d come back a hero and I could pull the plug on him. I could do it slow or fast.’ His voice trailed off and I had to move closer to the smell to hear him.’ I could milk it a bit. Get a few statements from the colleagues. Test the water…’
‘So what happened?’
He belched and I moved back again. ‘ I had a few to celebrate,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Then I came back here to write. And I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get into it. Couldn’t find a hook. Just couldn’t…’
‘So you went out for more help?’
‘Yeah. No bloody good. I tried. See the paper? I tried, but it’s all shit. I can’t do it.’
‘Did you make any phone calls? Talk to anyone?’
He shook his head and groaned.
‘That’s tough, Sammy. I’m bleeding for you. But this is more important. The Weiner woman’s been kidnapped and January’s the one getting the pressure. Tell me about the man who took her away.’
I was watching Weiss’s face, looking for signs that would help me to assess what he said. Suddenly I was aware of someone watching me. I turned towards the open door but the gap was filled with the big, wide body of Inspector Lloyd Tobin. The man named Ken with whom I hadn’t hit it off at lunch stood behind him. Tobin took a slow, heavy step into the room.
‘This is all very interesting, Hardy. Why don’t we have a nice quiet talk about it?’