The Big Drop Read online

  Being driven to Camp Cove by that pair was no fun. Ugly I did the driving while Ugly II held his pistol so that if it went off I’d have a big hole in an inconvenient place. The Fairlane cruised slowly past the high front wall, sidled around the side of the house and went through a magic-eye-opened gate into a courtyard big enough to hold it and a couple more. Ugly II prodded me with the pistol and we went up some steps and through some glass and walked across some carpet. It was like wading knee deep through money. My escort tapped on a door and we waited. Inside a telephone was put down and a match was struck, then a deep voice said ‘Come in’ and we did.

  He was sitting behind a big desk smoking a small cigar, but there was nothing corny about him. He was very dark with a heavy beard and his teeth shone whitely in all that swarthiness. He was around forty and looked to be about medium sized but with a lot of power in his shoulders and jaw. The shirt and vest he wore went with the house and his haircut and his manicure and everything about him. Even the cigar smelled good.

  ‘I’m Ben Angel.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll hire you when I need a comedian. You come here, you go to see my ex-wife, why?’

  ‘Say please and I might tell you.’

  I heard Ugly II make ugly noises behind me but I didn’t turn round. The body’s one big vulnerable place if you know your business, and he did.

  ‘I’ll humour you—please.’

  He smiled when he said it and I rather wished he hadn’t; Ben Angel didn’t have to work too hard at being scary, it was all there in the soft voice and the way he kept his hands still.

  ‘Your wife hired me to get you to pay her the two hundred and fifty thousand you owe her.’ I thought I might as well up the ante a little. He smiled again.

  ‘Thought it might be that. I thought Joel here could persuade you to leave it be. Didn’t work, huh?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why? You don’t look dumb.’

  ‘Reasons,’ I said.’

  He leaned back in his chair, and seemed to notice for the first time that I was standing up.

  ‘Take a seat, Hardy. Joel, be a nice guy and get us both a drink and stop looming like that. We’ve got us a reasonable man here, right, Hardy?’

  I pulled a stylish metal and fabric chair closer to the desk and sat down, but I didn’t admit to being reasonable. Joel handed me a glass and put one just the same on Angel’s desk.

  ‘Go check the teleprinter, Joel, Hardy and me are going to have a chat.’

  Joel went out quietly and I took a quiet sip of the drink, which was good Scotch with not too much water. Angel had a drink and leaned forward on his desk so that our faces were only six feet apart.

  ‘Here’s the thing, Hardy. Pauline thought I was an architect, but I’m not; leastways I was, but . . .’

  ‘Not for long.’

  ‘You’ve got it—not much and not for long. I’ve got other interests, a bit of this and a bit of that. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘The front gate and Joel’s .45 help to make the point.’ I said.

  ‘Right, now I had a bit of trouble getting into the country with my assets intact and all that. It took a lot of oil in the right places. It’s okay but it’s delicate. I have to watch my ass. Now, suppose I give Pauline the quarter million, she’s so straight what’s the first thing she’ll do?’

  ‘Clear it with the tax people, after she pays me my fee I hope.’

  ‘Right, so then I have to account for the money and what do I say?’

  ‘Legitimate capital gains on property sold in the US.’

  ‘I didn’t sell any apartment in New York, that was just a story for Pauline. I didn’t own the apartment. I’m supposed to be clean; a floating two hundred and fifty grand makes me look very dirty. You see my problem?’

  I drank some more of the Scotch and saw the problem very clearly, except that I saw it as Pauline’s problem and my problem too. ‘When can she expect something then? You don’t have to keep this cleanskin pose up for ever, do you?’

  He opened his hands expressively, the first flourish he’d permitted himself. I noticed then that he had a big stoned, un-architect-like ring on his right hand as well as a broad wedding ring on the left. ‘You read the papers—commissions of enquiry into this, investigations of that. It’s heads-down time. I can raise the money all right, no problem there, but Pauline’s the original Miss Clean. This case, she’s her own worst enemy.’

  His matey tone and the good Scotch made me incautious. ‘What’s the new Mrs Angel think about it all?’

  He clenched his hand around the glass. ‘Have you been snooping around her too? Now that I really don’t like.’ The matiness was all gone. ‘Tell me what you did?’

  I finished the drink. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Joel!’

  Joel came back into the room and I stood up with the empty glass in my hand and backed towards a wall.

  ‘Our friend here’s got some more talking to do, Joel; persuade him.’

  He came at me fast and bent low in a crouch which still put his head on a level with my shoulder. I stepped aside and hooked at the head but it wasn’t where it’d been a split second before. He slammed me with his left as he moved past and I’d have sworn he landed on exactly the spot he’d hit before. The pain cooled me down for some reason and made me quicker; I walked through a punch and got in close enough to land a short right well below the belt. He wasn’t ready for it and he gasped and faltered; I put my knee in the same place and when his head came down I uppercut him with a double clenched fist. He fell away from me, flailed and ripped the front out of my shirt with his clutching hand. Something flew out of the pocket and bounced on Angel’s desk. I was breathing hard when I turned to face him and for the second time in two hours I found myself looking into a gun.

  ‘Thought you wanted to stay clean, Angel,’ I panted.

  ‘I do. There’s a hell of a difference between killing a guy and tax evasion; killing’s safer or hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. Don’t count on it, it was the killing they got Terry Clarke for.’ I moved towards the desk. ‘I don’t think you’d do it.’

  He fired and I felt the heat of the bullet as it went past my ear. The door slammed open and Ugly II’s face appeared with an expression on it that suggested he was ready to fire bomb the room if he was asked to. Angel waved him away.

  ‘Shoulder, left arm, right arm; you name it, Hardy. What’s this?’ His hand closed over the roll of film.

  ‘Bugger it all,’ I said. I slumped back down into my chair and looked at Joel who was stirring and muttering darkly. ‘What about another drink?’

  Angel watched Joel get up and struggle to pull himself together, then he tossed him the film.

  ‘See if you can do a better job with this. Run it down to one of those one hour places. Nothing dirty is there, Hardy? Oh, Joel, before you go you could pour us both another drink.’

  We got the drinks and Joel went out. Angel put his gun down on the desk and demonstrated to me how quickly he could pick it up again.

  ‘I can strip it in seventy-four seconds,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s see.’

  He smiled. ‘Wouldn’t do you any good, there’s three other guys in the house as good as me.’

  ‘Better than Joel?’

  ‘Bit of a disappointment, I must admit. Where’d you learn to handle yourself—the service?’

  ‘Partly, Malaya.’

  ‘Yeah? I was in Nam—just for a bit, got too goddamn hot.’

  ‘Private Angel?’

  ‘Sergeant Pietangeli.’

  We didn’t say much after that and Joel got back with the prints in just over the hour. Angel motioned him away, and let the prints slip out onto the desk. I stopped breathing while he arranged them in a line; he shuffled them around a bit, but the expression on his face told me nothing except that he was interested. He looked up at me and the stillness was back in his eyes and hands.

&n
bsp; ‘Guy’s name?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  He drained the few drops left in his glass and stared at the wall behind where I was sitting; I’d already looked at it, the bullet had cracked and split the plaster and knocked a chunk out that was roughly the shape of Italy.

  ‘Tell Pauline to be patient.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tell her wait. Tell her to borrow some money or something. End of the year at the latest, I’ll give her everything she wants. Now, get your lousy Australian ass out of here.’

  Kay delayed looking over Sydney several times and it was into the New Year before we were having that first, tentative drink at the airport. She looked wonderful—tall, tanned from skiing and slim from her energetic, self-denying lifestyle.

  ‘You don’t look too bad, Cliff, considering.’

  ‘Considering what?’

  ‘You know. When did you last take a break, fishing?’

  ‘Never caught a fish in my life. Boring.’

  ‘Well, Pauline thinks you’re the best. She got her money not long after she went to Melbourne.’

  ‘Yeah, she got it.’

  ‘Why so sour about it?’

  I hadn’t meant to tell her but I did. I gave Pauline Ben Angel’s message and she took it to heart—borrowed some money, paid me and went to Melbourne. I didn’t feel good about it; the case felt incomplete and although there’d been something totally convincing about Angel I was left with no ideas. Then, a few weeks later, Tolley Angel was killed in a car accident. Along with her was Claude Murray-Jones, forty-nine, screenwriter of Drummoyne. The BMW had left the highway at speed, rolled and burned. The police had asked the driver of another car reportedly at the scene of the accident to contact them, but with no result.

  ‘That’s awful,’ Kay said. ‘But I can’t see what is has to do . . .’

  ‘I took some photos of her and this Wilcox. Angel saw them—that was the first he knew they were having an affair. I tipped him off, by accident.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Angel couldn’t get his hands on any money he couldn’t account for, remember?’

  ‘Yes, Pauline wrote me.’

  ‘There was a three hundred thousand dollar insurance policy on her life. Angel was the beneficiary. That’s where Pauline got her money.’

  I had another drink and Kay didn’t, and it got worse from there. We gave it a try, went to the places you go to when you’re trying to be happy, but it didn’t work. She didn’t like the sound of the job they offered her, she didn’t like the editor and she didn’t like the weather. I drove her past Angel’s place at Camp Cove; she looked but she didn’t say anything. Next day she caught a plane back to New York City.

  The Arms of the Law

  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. Salm
on 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.