‘Just wanted to know if he was on a trip. You stopped him in Gymea, going south?’
‘Right. He was doing 115, like it says.’ He tapped the document and I reached over and took it back.
‘Drunk?’
‘No, he was driving okay and he looked and smelled okay.’
‘Where did he say he was going?’
‘Didn’t ask.’
‘What was his voice like?’
‘Well, Silverman, I don’t know. He wasn’t Australian, some kind of foreigner.’
I finished the beer and set the can down on the wrought iron rail. ‘Thanks for the help and the drink.’
He waved it aside. ‘What’ll you tell Evans?’
‘I’ll tell him you co-operated.’
‘Fair enough.’
The morning was grey and cool; I showered and shaved and dressed. The Smith amp; Wesson went into a holster under my jacket and I put a couple of fake business cards in my wallet. The wallet didn’t look healthy so I banked Silverman’s cheque and drew out some money in a thick stack of small notes. As I was packing it away I took another look at the speeding and parking tickets. The parking ticket was dated eight weeks back and timed 7.30 am, the speeding ticket was thirteen hours later on the same day.
Norton Street was fairly busy when I arrived but I managed to park exactly where the parking attendant had booked Kenneth’s sports car. The spot gave me a clear view of the Forbes office, which was a converted two-storey terrace house behind a high wooden fence. I could see the windows of the upper level and down a lane which ran beside the building. The parking place was legitimate now, but ceased to be so at 7 am when a clearway came into operation.
I had only the vaguest idea of what I was going to do and I tried to think which of the business cards I had was the least incredible. I decided that I knew something about books and that I might be able to gauge the probity of the firm with the right approach. The small front courtyard behind the fence was covered in bark, and there were flowers in pots on either side of the solid door. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a girl who looked too young to be working; she had big eyes swamped in make-up, a lot of straight blonde hair, five inch heels — and she still looked fifteen. I looked over her shoulder and saw a cigarette burning a hole in a piece of typing paper on her desk.
‘Hey, your desk’s on fire.’
She spun around, shrieked and snatched at the paper which knocked the butt on to the floor, where it started burning the carpet; she also knocked over a vase of flowers and spread water across the desk. She started to cry, and I went in and picked up the cigarette. I eased the big blotter out of its holder and used it to soak up the water. She stood watching me while I dried the desk and dropped the cigarette and sodden blotter into a tin wastepaper bin. I also read the letter-it advised a shopkeeper in Newtown with an unpronounceable middle-European name that his lease would not be renewed. The door had opened into what would have been the hall in the original house, but the wall had been taken out and it was now a fair sized office with two desks and several filing cabinets. The girl was fumbling on the desk for another cigarette. She got it going and sat down.
‘Thanks’, she said. ‘What can I do for youse?’
I handed her the burnt letter. ‘You’ll have to do this again.’
She looked at it. ‘Shit’, she said.
I gave her the card that said I was a secondhand bookseller and asked to see Mr Patrick.
‘You need an appointment.’ She puffed smoke awkwardly and tried to look eighteen.
‘I just prevented your office from burning down.’
She giggled. ‘What do you want to see him about?’
I pointed at the card. ‘I want to open a bookshop; I need premises.’
‘Oh, you don’t need Clive… Mr Patrick for that; Mr Skelton will do,’ she swung around to the empty desk. ‘He’s not here…’
I leaned forward and dropped my voice. ‘Well, you know, I might have to deal with Clive. You see, this is not just an ordinary bookshop, if you get what I mean.’ I did everything but wink, and she got the message. Just then a short, well-stuffed guy in a pale blue suit bustled into the room. He had a high complexion, and pink showed through the thin fair hair which was carefully arranged across his skull. He shouldn’t have been that heavy and thin on top, he wasn’t much over thirty. The girl batted her eyes at him.
‘Mr Patrick, Mr Henderson here wants to see you about business premises…’
‘Give him an appointment’, he barked. ‘Have you got the letter for that wog yet?’
She made her hands look busy on the desk. ‘It’s almost done.’
‘Snap it up, Debbie.’ He turned without looking at me once and went out of the room. The girl looked helplessly at me.
‘He’s nice really’, she said. ‘Now when are you free?’
The front door swung open and a man came through. He was tall, dressed in a narrow-cut dark suit: narrow was the word for him, he had a long, thin, swarthy face with a sharp nose, his dark eyebrows grew in a V over his yellowish, slanted eyes. He had close cropped black hair which receded on both sides and grew in a pronounced widow’s peak in the front. His wolfish eyes swept over me as if he was measuring me for a coffin, then he dismissed me.
‘Is Clive in, Debbie?’ His voice was light and, although it sounds corny, musical. It also carried a distinct foreign accent. Debbie looked scared, and nodded mutely. He brushed past me and went down the corridor.
‘Not Mr Skelton’, I said.
She pulled on the cigarette. ‘No, Mr Szabo.’
‘What does he do around here?’
She shrugged and pulled the desk calendar towards her.
‘Don’t bother’, I said, ‘I think I’ll look for a more friendly firm.’ She looked hurt behind her cigarette so I was careful not to slam the door. I scouted the building and established that it had only two exits-the front door and a gate that led out to a lane at the side. I dodged the traffic across to the other side of the road, bought a sandwich and two cans of beer and settled down to watch.
A short, plump man with ginger hair arrived after ten minutes. If he was Mr Skelton he didn’t look any more appealing than the rest of the gang. A bit after that Clive Patrick came out and drove off in a white Volvo, probably to a lunch he didn’t need. Then Debbie stepped out and tottered down the street, she came back with a paper bag, a can of Coke and a fresh packet of cigarettes.
I’d finished the sandwich and the beer and was feeling drowsy when Szabo stepped out into the lane. I whipped the camera up and started shooting. The shots in the lane wouldn’t be much good, the one when he reached the street would be better. He sniffed the air like a hunting dog and looked directly across the street at me; I snapped again and could see him registering the car, my face and the camera and then he was moving. I dropped the camera and turned the key; a bus roared away from a stop and held Szabo up. I was clear and fifty yards away when he made it round the bus; I glanced back at him, wolfish visage and widow’s peak-he didn’t look happy.
I’m about as interested in photography as I am in flower arrangement but, like a true professional, I knew the man to go to. Colin Jones was an army photographer in Malaya; if you could see it, he could photograph it. He worked for The News now and we met occasionally over a beer for me to tell him how much I envied his security and for him to say how much he wished his work was exciting like mine. I stopped in Glebe, phoned Colin at the paper and arranged to meet him outside The News building.
When I arrived Colin was standing there, smoking a cigarette and looking like a poet. The printers were on strike and there were picket lines in front of the building. The pickets were harassing the drivers who were loading the papers which were being produced by scab labour. Colin got me past the union men on the door and took me up to his smelly den.