Bad Debts Part 10

Charles made sure we had strong eye contact. 'The smaller one said: "You poofs tell each other everything, don't you? What did your boyfriend tell you about Melbourne?" Those were his words, Jack. Chock full of hatred, I can tell you. Almost spitting. And that is not the nature of our relationship at all. It is not physical.'

I nodded. 'How did you respond?'

He shrugged. 'I said Ronnie was a good friend and that he told me nothing about his early life and never mentioned names. And I said I'd like to have my lawyer present.'

'And then?'

'He became quite chummy in a nauseating sort of way and said they didn't have any more questions. Then he asked if Ronnie had given me anything to look after for him. I said I didn't want to answer any more questions and he said: "Answer me, c.o.c.kbreath." Those were his words. I felt scared. I said no he had not and would they please leave. And they did. Just walked out without another word.'

'They never said anything about a court case long ago, in Melbourne?'

'No. Nothing like that.'

'Did Ronnie ever speak of giving evidence against someone?'

Charles was looking into his drink. 'No. You don't think they were policemen, do you, Jack?'

'It's hard to tell, Charles. If they come around again, don't let them in. Say you have to get dressed, something's on the stove, anything, and phone the police emergency number and say you're being attacked. Then phone your lawyer.'

'I don't really have a lawyer,' he said.

'Get one.'

I finished my drink, gave him my telephone numbers, and he gave me his.

At the front gate, I asked, 'Charles, would you call Ronnie a trustworthy person?'

He clicked the gate closed behind me. Another sigh, this one much deeper. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the gatepost.

'No,' he said sadly. 'He didn't tell you much, but what he did was almost all lies. Even when it didn't matter a fig. Variety. That's all he wanted. New bodies, new sensations. Boys. Girls. Didn't matter to him. He got beaten up quite often. Once in this house by some little thug he was tying up. Face swollen like a pumpkin. Kicked in the head, all the money in the house taken, VCR, CDs. I had to take him to casualty. I thought that was what had happened when his mum rang me. That he was probably lying in some public toilet.'

'Did he need money?'

'I think so. He'd borrowed nearly five thousand dollars from me. They refused his American Express card at Latino's the day before he went. I paid for the meal with my card. And there's trouble about this house. It's going to be sold by the bank.'

'How did he get that way?'

Charles shook his head. He looked much older now, less firm of face. 'I honestly don't know, Jack,' he said. 'He didn't tell me and I wouldn't have dreamed of asking.'

We shook hands. I liked him. He clearly deserved better than Ronnie Bishop. Burdett-Bishop.

'Why did he stick the Burdett on his name?' I asked.

Charles sighed and looked heavenwards. 'He was thinking of going into real estate and he thought it sounded impressive.'

I went in search of lodgings, thankful that I'd bought a book.

13

A weak sun was shining on Melbourne, but to compensate a marrow-chilling wind was blowing. I rang the security parking garage and they sent their little bus to collect me.

'Jetsetting again,' the driver said. 'You joined that Mile High Club yet?'

He was an ex-cop called Col Boon, pensioned off the force for extreme hypertension after shooting another cop during a raid on an indoor dope plantation in Coburg. A tragic mistake, the coroner said. I suppose in some ways it's always a tragic mistake to shoot the man who's rooting your wife every time you're on nightshift and he's not.

'The club reckons I couldn't stand the excitement of high-alt.i.tude copulation,' I said.

Col made an animal noise. 'Tell 'em you'll do it sitting down. You growing a beard?'

I felt my two-day growth. 'Stewies like a bit of hair,' I said.

He shook his head. 'Bit? Seen less hair on p.u.s.s.ies.' He took a corner with a squeal of balding tyres. 'Talking p.u.s.s.ies, you want to pick your stewie. Mate of mine put his hand in the golden triangle, found a big c.o.c.k. Qantas I think it was.'

I pondered the significance of this story. My maternal grandmother apparently addressed stewardesses as 'waitress'. She would not have taken well to the idea that some of them were, in fact, waiters.

At the parking garage, Col said, 'There's a hit of a problem with your car. That grease monkey rang. Says he took your motor to pieces and he can't put it together again till he can find parts. Two weeks, minimum.'

I groaned. This was what happened when you left your ancient Lark for a service with a backyard mechanic who was a Studebaker fanatic.

'Now you tell me. What am I supposed to do?' I said. 'Walk?'

'He says he's got an old Chevy you can use.'

'I hate old Chevies.'

'Well,' Col said, 'we've got a special on unclaimed vehicles this week. Nice Celica. Say two weeks, hundred and fifty.'

'You work this out together?'

He looked hurt.

I said, 'Throw in a full tank.'

'Give us a break. There's a good bit in it.' He gave me an appraising look. 'Had a call if your car was here.'

I waited.

'Your office. A girl.'

I shook my head.

'No. Well, this isn't the lost and found either. Told her you hadn't parked here for a while.'

'You give a complete service here, Col,' I said.

He handed me the keys. 'I'd say look after it like your own,' he said, 'but that's the last thing we want.'

I thought about Ronnie all the way to Fitzroy. I'd got the addresses from Charles and visited Ronnie's two video rental shops in the Perth suburbs. One was closed. The other was in a small shopping mall and it didn't look healthy. From behind a part.i.tion of grey tin shelves came the sobbing breaths, grunts, yells and urgings of a p.o.r.nographic video and the jeers and cheers of a teenage audience. After a while, a sallow youth with a pigtail emerged and said, 'Yep?' It turned out he didn't know Ronnie but was standing in for his friend's friend, who sometimes worked in the shop.

At the workshop, Charlie was finishing up for the day, pottering around endlessly as usual-a dab of oil here, a wipe of a surface there, here a gentle opening and closing of a cabinet door, there a pullpush of a drawer. I gradually worked him through the front doors like a sheepdog with a particularly difficult sheep. We drove around to the Prince of Prussia. Usually we walked, but Charlie's hip was hurting. I parked the Celica around the corner in a loading zone.

'No respect for the law,' Charlie said. 'That's where it all begins. Und du bist rechtsgelehrt.'

'Have a heart,' I said. 'It's only a little munic.i.p.al regulation, shouldn't apply after 5 p.m.' When we were alone, Charlie often expressed his doubts and disappointments about me in German, language of my great-grandfather.

Wilbur Ong and Norm O'Neill were in position, beers, pies, Herald Sun form guides on the counter. They gave us the briefest acknowledgment.

'My feelin is we're lookin at a rerun of Kyneton twenty months ago,' said Norm. The peak of his flat cap rested on his spectacles, which rested on a nose of heroic size.

'Well, I've always loved yer feeling, darlin,' said Wilbur, 'but there's a lotta wishful here. He's bin five, seven, five first-up since then.'

''Course he has,' said Norm. 'That's why we're lookin at b.l.o.o.d.y forties here. Know it in my bones.'

'Relied on your bones,' Wilbur said, 'we'd be round the Salvos eatin rabbit stew.'

'Given these pies, that's not a frightenin thought,' said Norm. He turned to me. 'Jack, prepared to divulge yer thoughts on the gallops at Geelong?'

'People in the know treat my tips as scratchings,' I said. 'However, since it's you lot.'

Charlie Taub gave a snort and went off to talk football to a retired tram driver called Wally Pollard. Wally's only son, Bantam Pollard, ruined a promising career with Collingwood through bad timing. On a Friday night in 1975, the club president took six guests into the committee box to show them the ground's new floodlights. They came on, casting a cold white light on the playing field and on Bantam Pollard's spotty bottom. It was dead centre of the field, bracketed by the fleshy thighs of the president's sixteen-year-old daughter.

We were on race four when a man came in the street door. He was about fifty, bald, of below medium height, with a heavy body. RayBans sat on a darkly tanned bull-terrier face. He'd spent about three grand on his gear, most of it on gold chains and a golden brown leather jacket that fitted him like a condom. The style said Sydney or the Gold Coast; the walk, as if he were rolling a tennis ball between his upper thighs, said cop, probably vice squad.

Stan the barman was at the far end of the counter. He exchanged a few words with Mr Gold Coast and then came down to our end of the bar.

'Bloke's asking for Jack,' he said, looking at Wilbur. 'What'll I tell him?'

'Tell him I'll be along in a minute,' I said. I lingered for a minute or two and then walked down the bar.

Stan had served Mr Gold Coast something with tonic. At my approach, he smiled at me, a lip lift to show lavatory-white capped teeth. It conveyed no more sentiment than a facial tic. He put out a hand.

'Jack. Tony Baker.' The hand exerted no pressure; a hand that felt to be made of one-inch bra.s.s plumbing fittings didn't need to do anything other than Be.

'What can I do for you?' I said.

'Have a drink with me.'

'I've got one waiting.'

'You do work among the elderly. That's nice.' He swallowed the contents of his gla.s.s and rapped it on the counter several times. Stan responded to the summons by leaving the room.

Tony Baker edged closer to me. The top of his head came up to my chin. This gave me all the physical confidence the giraffe feels when it meets the rhino. He showed me his teeth again.

'Clubby here, am I right? No risk of anyone wanting to join though, mate. Well, this isn't a social occasion. I'm here to straighten a coupla things out.'

'Such as?'

'Such as your getting in the way of an official investigation.'

'Of what?'

'Of a number of matters, one of which touches Mr Ronald Bishop.'

'What do you mean, touches?'

Tony Baker put his hand to his muscular sausage of a neck and turned his head a few centimetres to each side. 'Jack,' he said, speaking softly, 'you don't want to know, right? If you get in the way of this investigation you'll get squashed so f.u.c.ken flat they'll post you.'

'Who'll squash me?' I asked.

His eyes went hard. I noticed a small gold fleck in the right iris. 'You're not listening, Jack. I'm telling you to back off, drop it. This matter is at a very high level, a national level. I've said too much now.'

'Have you got some identification?' I realised I should have asked earlier.

Tony Baker closed his eyes and sighed. 'Can I get this across to you without a map? You don't want to know anything about me. Take it as gospel: you are obstructing an official operation. Pull your head in, forget about Mr Bishop, or you'll wish it was you that c.u.n.t blew up in the carpark. Just f.u.c.ken b.u.t.t out.'

He left. I went back to the form but couldn't concentrate. At six-thirty, Charlie's granddaughter, the lovely Augustine, hooted outside. I went out with him. It was intensely cold after the warmth of the pub and the air had the burnt petrol smell of winter cities everywhere.

Charlie got into the car and wound down the window. 'Eat some proper food,' he said. 'You need someone to look after you.'

I put my hand on his shoulder. 'Maybe you can talk your driver here into marrying me. It's all indoor work.'

'Let's talk pay and conditions,' Gus said. She was a trade union official.

Charlie snorted. 'Go,' he said to Gus. 'Some men you don't want in your family.'

I stood in the street and considered whether to go back into the pub and settle down or to go home. I decided to go home. I've learned to take the hard decisions.

The apartment was cold, the bulb in the bathroom had fused and the fridge smelled of five-day-old fish. Cam, Wootton and my daughter were on the answering machine. Claire said: Listen, Jack, I'm just ringing to say I miss you and I'll be down for a visit soon. I might bring Eric to set your mind at rest. Your letter sounds glum. Don't be. Love you. Bye.

I made a stiff Jamieson's and soda and rang Linda Hillier. She wasn't in the office.

14