I had two fast Scotches in a pub in Kensington and bought a half bottle for company, so I was feeling better when I parked in the lane beside the Capitol theatre. The Capitol is a grimy old matron on the outside; it hasn’t had a face-lift for a good many years and the layers of old posters splattered over its walls seemed to mark its age like the rings in tree trunks. The posters for Saul James’ musical were up now covering over last year’s spectacular and greatest shows on earth long forgotten.
A chink of light showed through the door at the side of the building. I pushed the door open and went up a flight of stairs that ascended nearly as steeply as a ladder. I moved slowly, smelling unfamiliar odours, not the usual urine and garbage smells you get on dimly lit stairwells, but something richer, more exotic. The stairs ended at a corridor that had rooms going off it on both sides. One of the rooms was showing a light and I could hear soft voices. I paused outside and placed the odour, a combination of perfume and the sweet herbal smell of marijuana smoke. The door at the end of the passage opened out onto a backstage area behind a massive green velvet curtain. A few props, a coffee table, some chairs, a bookcase and a wheelchair, were scattered around. Against the wall, on the floor, was a big tape deck flanked by two king-size speakers and connected by a heavy cable to a power point that bristled with double adaptors. I could hear voices through the curtain and I stepped forward to where its two sections met.
“It has to go in there,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “If you move it it’ll be out of place and you’ll cut it later. I know you bastards.”
“We won’t Liz.” a high voice, wheedling. “I swear to you darling that the song stays in, whatever happens.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice rose to a near-shriek and I took a peek through the curtains. She was wearing body paint and a spangled G-string; her nipples, showing through the paint and tinsel, looked linked and obscene. She was lean and sinewy like a stockwhip and she was stalking up and down in nervous, gliding strides. Saul James, wearing jeans and a striped, matelot-style T-shirt, was sitting on a turned-around chair. Another man squatted on the stage. His fat thighs bulged in brown corduroy and his body was heavy and gross inside a flowered Hawaiian shirt.
“It’s an essential song Liz,” James said quietly. “It won’t be cut, it can’t be. You do it superbly.”
The woman stopped prancing. James’ mild tone seemed to calm her down and I was interested to see that he had some authority when operating professionally. She moved smoothly up to the actor and stood in front of him, her breasts almost touching his chest.
“Alright Saul,” she purred. “I’ll take your word for it, and if the song doesn’t stay in I’ll hold him responsible.” She pointed to fatty who got creakingly to his feet. The stage lights were dim but I could see the flesh shaking on his red face.
“Now that’s not fair sweetie, I…”
“Don’t call me sweetie, you slob,” she snapped. “Half of those fancy boys of yours can’t sing for shit and you know it.”
She turned and marched off the stage to the right as if she’d just delivered the last line in the first act. The fat man pulled out a flowered handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Nerves,” he said. “Jitters, highly strung. It’ll be alright.”
James nodded. He seemed to have lost interest in the scene and its implications very quickly. I opened the curtain and walked forward. The fat man stared at me.
“More trouble,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Your face, your eyes. You want money. You’re going to threaten me.”
“You need to watch your guilty conscience, sport. I don’t care if you’re the Woolloomooloo flasher and keep an unlicensed dog. I want to talk to Mr James here.”
James looked at me. His face was pale and more Leslie Howard-like than ever; he looked as if Scarlet O’Hara had just given him the latest piece of bad news.
“Have you found her?”
“No. But I’ve been close. We have to talk some more. Here?”
James glanced across at the fat man who was looking on with interest. He seemed to be enjoying James’ distress.
“Lost her again have you Jamie?” he said maliciously. “I do hope you find her. This gentleman looks… capable.”
“Just shut up Clyde or I might sic him on to you.”
“Charmed I’m sure.”
I didn’t like being their verbal plaything and said more roughly than I needed: “The talk, James. Where?”
He swung off the chair and walked through the curtains without giving Clyde a glance. I followed him down the passage and into one of the rooms on the right. He turned on the light which showed the room to be pretty bare apart from a cupboard, a make-up table in front of a mirror and coffee-making things on a card table. There was a chair in front of the make-up table and I hooked it out and sat down. James looked at me, then went out of the room and came back with another chair. I rolled a cigarette and lit it. James tried to let go one of his boyish smiles but it came out thin and strained as if only half the required voltage was available. He got up and shook the jug, it responded and he plugged it in.
“Coffee?”
I shook my head. I was wondering how to play him. I needed more information on the girl. Maybe he had it, maybe he didn’t. I didn’t want to tell him too much, possibly out of sheer habit, but I must have looked worse than I felt.
“What happened to you?” He spooned instant coffee into a mug and added boiling water. He held up the other mug. “Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He shrugged elaborately and anger flared in me.
“Listen, I’ve been bashed and seen a man dead on the seashore while you’ve been poncing about on the stage. I’m not in the mood for games.”
His eyes looked moist and he spoke softly. “Sorry.”
He was a deal too sensitive and raw in the nerve endings for my comfort. He wasn’t a kid. Late twenties probably. I remembered how well he’d handled the scene on the stage and wondered whether his per sonality was completely professional. His private role looked to be a bit beyond him and he seemed to need to set up a particular emotional atmosphere in order to operate. I didn’t want to play along and he wasn’t employing me, but somehow I’d begun to feel responsible for him and the feeling irritated me.
He sipped his coffee and tried again. “You said you’d come close to Noni. What did you mean?”
I gave him a version of the events of the past couple of hours. He looked concerned when I mentioned the strip off my scalp and he flinched when I gave him a watered-down account of Penny’s remarks about his girlfriend. He looked concerned again when I told him that Id turned up at a murder scene and couldn’t avoid telling the cops exactly why sooner or later. I’d protect Ted Tarelton’s private affairs for long as I could but the pressure was on me now to find the girl quickly. I needed to know everything about her, particularly where she might have gone.
He caressed his coffee mug and took a long time in answering.
“Well, one thing. Noni has a drug habit.”
“Hard drugs?”
“Yes. She handles it pretty well most of the time, not always.”
“That’s great.” I suddenly felt old and weary, running up again against that problem which symbolised the generation gap for me. He misinterpreted my action.
“You aren’t going to give up are you?”
“No, I’m not going to give up but it’s not going to be easy. I must know where she’s likely to run when she’s in trouble. That fat queen out there implied she’d taken off before. Where to?”
James was shaking his head and opening his mouth to speak when the door flew open.
“I resent that,” Clyde squeaked. “I belong to a noble brotherhood which roughnecks like you wouldn’t begin to understand.” His plump face creased into a plummy smile. “But I understand all about little Noni. Jamie here barely knows her name.”
“Shut up Clyde,” said James. “You don’t know a thing about her.”
“Oh yes I do.” Clyde sang the words in a near falsetto. “Are you a policeman?”
I told him who I was and what I was doing. James protested but Clyde hushed him and I didn’t back him. Clyde rested his chin in the palm of his left hand and sat that elbow in the other hand.
“Little Noni now, she’s a naughty girl. You wouldn’t believe the things she does and the people she does them with.”
“Maybe I would,” I growled. “I’m just back from her hang-out in La Perouse.”
“Ooh yes, loves the noiros does our Noni, the blacker the better.”
I shot a look at James. He was nursing his empty coffee mug, just taking it. Clyde was enjoying himself immensely.
“Why do you take it Jamie? What do you want now?”
“I want her back with me.”
Clyde cackled. James sounded defeated, beaten hollow by something he couldn’t understand. I understood it in part. My ex-wife Cyn had affected me the same way. I kept crawling back, signing cheques, waiting up till dawn and hoping everything would come right. It never did and I felt sure it wouldn’t for James. But no-one else can tell you that and you can only see the end when you get there on your own. Still, I didn’t want any part of Clyde’s baiting game. I stood up with my coat open and let him see the gun.
“Cut out the crap. Tell me something useful or piss off.”
He recoiled and his jowls shook. The plummy malicious smile dropped away.
“Newcastle,” he muttered. “She lived in Newcastle and she knows the heroin scene there.”
“This true?” I asked James.
He shrugged.
“It is, it is!” Clyde squealed, “and she has an uncle there named
… Ted or something.”
“Bert,” said James wearily. “Bert, and he’s in Macleay not Newcastle. I remember now, she lived up there when she was young.”
Clyde looked deflated at James’ knowledge. He changed posture and waved his hands about as if he was trying to think of an exit line. He didn’t find one and I jerked my chin at him. He went out and left the door open. I closed it and noticed for the first time a photograph pinned to the back of the door. It was a glossy postcard-size print with the Capitol theatre showing behind a woman. She was wearing denim skirts that looked like cut-down jeans with enough material whittled away to show the beginnings of the cheeks of her buttocks. She had on a blouse rucked up and tied under her breasts, striped socks pulled up calf-high and high-heeled sandals. In the black and white picture her hair looked as fair as a wheatfield and the set of her body dared you to touch her. Anyone with the juices still running would want to.
I put my hand on the door knob and pulled the door open. James started in his chair.
“Where are you going?”
“Newcastle, first off.”
“Now?”
I had no one waiting up for me and the paper boy stayed his arm if he saw one uncollected on my doorstep.
“Why not?” I said.