A month later I got a visit from a Commonwealth policeman named Wilensky. I told him everything all over again and he did a lot of nodding and a little tapping on a notebook computer. He seemed quietly pleased and I asked him why.
‘Rex Hindle was the ugly Australian personified,’ he said. ‘His ferries were floating brothels. He trafficked in young women, young men and drugs. He was slime, Mr Hardy. Your failure to protect him has left the world a better place.’
Which didn’t make me feel better about myself. I also felt bad about losing Glen Withers and the cat, but I felt okay about the twelve hundred dollars.
TV
‘I’ve come to you, Mr Hardy, because I believe you are the only private enquiry agent who lives in Glebe.’
Not the most ringing endorsement, but at least a change from the dreary summons-serving and money-minding I’d been doing recently. The characters who hire you for those jobs are only concerned about your rates and availability, they don’t care if you live in a bus shelter. The person sitting across the desk from me in my office in Darlinghurst was a bit of a change too. She was tall and wide-shouldered but thin. Her face was long, heavily but expertly made up and her hands were large. Her voice was pleasant, a bit over-precise and deep. I had my suspicions.
‘I do live in Glebe, Ms Cato,’ I said. ‘But I don’t advertise the fact.’
‘Oh, word gets around.’ She shifted in the uncomfortable chair. She wore a high-necked white silk blouse with a ruffle down the front, long sleeves. Her black skirt was tight and above the knee. ‘This job requires local knowledge and an… affection for the area. Would you say you qualify?’
‘I would. Do you live in Glebe yourself?’
‘Yes.’ She named the street, not far from mine. Naming streets doesn’t tell you a lot about a Glebe resident. Ms Cato could live in triple-storey sandstone mansion or a weatherboard cottage not much bigger than the room we were sitting in. Until she fished her chequebook out of her shoulder bag and started writing, there was no way to tell her economic status. She crossed her legs. Good legs. Dark-tinted stockings. Medium heels.
‘Perhaps you could tell me about this job for a local boy?’
She smiled. ‘Isn’t it odd how we throw these words around-boy, girl, lady, gentleman. You’re many, many years past being a boy and, as I suspect you’re beginning to realise, I’m not a woman. Would it trouble you, working for a transvestite?’
The smile helped the effect. Great teeth. Working in the Cross I’d known a number of transvestites in my time, also transsexuals at reputedly different stages of transformation above and below. Some were stupid and some were smart; some were brave and some were not, like the rest of us. ‘It wouldn’t trouble me, Ms Cato. I’ll work for anyone who doesn’t want me to break any serious laws and can pay me. I have a few no-go areas.’
She lifted one plucked eyebrow. Did it well. ‘Like?’
‘I steer clear of politics, religion and teetotallers.’
She laughed. Sounded a bit like Bacall. ‘You’re safe with me then. I vote Labor, federal, state and local, and that’s the end of it. I’m an atheist. I like a drink but I have to limit it to preserve my figure.’
‘We all should,’ I said.
She focused her heavily made-up eyes on me. ‘You’re what? Pushing fifty? You don’t look so bad. Pity about the nose and the scars. Nothing a bit of plastic surgery wouldn’t fix. You could look ten years younger.’
‘I wouldn’t feel it. Now…’
‘To the point, yes. I hold weekly gatherings at my house of other cross-dressers. It’s a small group, half a dozen or so. We’re friends. There’s no sex involved. We have a meal and a couple of bottles of wine. We talk about clothes and make-up and some of the problems of our… hobby. There are a few, as you can imagine.’
I nodded. Ms Cato could pass as a woman in the street or in casual social gatherings, especially in a dim light. Not in an office or anywhere the contact with others was close and prolonged. I wondered what she did for a living.
‘I’ve been separated from my wife for a few years, so I don’t have that problem. No children. Some of my friends have wives and families. Terribly difficult. I write and illustrate children’s books, edit them as well. I work at home and my agent handles all the business.’ She gave that good-sounding laugh again. ‘I talk to authors on the phone but I don’t often meet ‘em-a little quirk of mine. When I do, I have to decide what to wear and stick to it. I’ve been known to forget. But cross-dressing can be fun. That’s my message.’
Strange waters but I was interested. She was a very composed person and I knew that some authors of children’s books made good money. ‘So you live as a woman all the time?’
‘No. About half and half. Of course it’s difficult at times. The neighbours had to adjust. The driver’s licence is a real bother. They won’t let you appear as anything but a male unless you cut the bits off, which I’ve never wanted to do. So I have to front up in a suit and tie for the photo. Then, of course, if I get stopped…’ She waved a hand and smiled, making me suspect she’d be able to get out of most tricky situations with charm and brains.
There’s no getting away from it, people who cross over or stand astride the gender line are interesting. I wondered about her sexual preference and whether she pissed standing up or sitting down, but you can’t ask.
‘These meetings,’ I said. ‘There’s a problem?’
‘Twice now, my visitors have been harassed by an individual who arrives on a motorcycle. He sits there outside the house and passes comments in obscene language. He flicks cigarette ash at their clothes, threatens to spray them with beer. It’s very unpleasant!’
‘It would be. Couldn’t you and your visitors retaliate in some way? You must outnumber this yob.’
She shook her head. Silver earrings danced. Her hair was bleached blonde with dark streaks, short but not cropped. ‘No. You have to understand how vulnerable a transvestite feels, our sort anyway. Basically we’re rejecting the aggressive male role. We’re impersonating women for a time, getting a little relief from the pressure to be male, up-front, thrusting. See how easily the language veers towards the sexual?’
I felt out of my depth. ‘Look, Ms Cato. I sympathise. I read the papers. I know things are changing and… kind of swirling about in these matters. But I’m not sure why you can’t cope, or what you want from me.’
‘I’m glad we’ve got this far. I was afraid you’d throw me straight out. Look, I’m fit and quick. And strong. I go to a gym. I can fight. So can a couple of my friends, but when we’re dressed as women the fighting impulse goes out of us. We don’t want to fight. In a way, we can’t. To fight would be to shatter the illusion, do you see? It’s a very precious illusion to us, weird though it may seem to you.’
I was losing confidence in this fee by the minute. I fidgeted with a pen. ‘I think you should talk to the police, Ms Cato. They have gay liaison officers now… ‘
‘None of us is gay,’ she said evenly. ‘I’m bisexual myself. Some of my friends are as heterosexual as it’s possible to be. The Glebe police are not equipped to cope with this. We’d get smirks from the men and sneers from the women. Bet on it.’
I thought of the personnel at the St Johns Road station who seemed to get younger every year. There were good men and women among them, but Ms Cato was probably right. This was territory they wouldn’t have covered at the Academy. New to me, too. I must have looked as I felt-uncomfortable, sceptical.
She leaned forward and tapped on my desk with her index finger, the nail of which was Iongish, shaped, pink-tinted. ‘If that bastard scares my friends away or provokes one of us into throwing a punch, he’s won! Do you understand? He’s proved that we can’t be like this. That there’s no place for us. Have you ever felt that there was no place for you, Mr Hardy? Not that you were in the wrong place or in an uncomfortable place, but that there was no fucking place on earth for you?’