Saving Billie

'Good move.'

She got the gum going. 'No, Billie wouldn't leave Sydney. Couldn't. Born and bred here and she's done everything low-life Sydney you can think of-stripped, whored, used and sold drugs, done time, informed-you name it. And I know something about her no one else much knows.'

'Which is?'

'Are you willing to take it on?'

'It's expensive, Lou, and there's no guarantee of success.'

'Look-' she leaned forward-'I know that. I got a decent advance for this book and I can afford to pay you. At least for a while.'

'What if you have to cough up to Billie?'

She knew she had me and she smiled. 'I'd negotiate with the publisher. C'mon, Cliff. Like you said, you haven't got anything much else going on. I don't hear feet on the stairs. The phone hasn't rung. I bet you haven't got a whole bunch of exciting emails to answer.'

I got a contract form out of a desk drawer and slid it across. 'I'm in.'

'Good. You'll be deductible, too.'

'How's that?'

'Everything a writer does is deductible. If you play golf and write about it, you can deduct your membership fees.'

'What if you play poker, bet on the horses and write about that. Can you deduct your losses?'

'That might be iffy. Where do I sign?'

I had her work and mobile phone numbers and email address on her card. I gave her my card with the same information and my address in Glebe. She gave me her street address and wrote me a cheque. I took notes on her investigation so far-Billie's last known address, her car registration, description when last seen and habits. Billie smoked as though the world was about to be hit by a tobacco famine, drank as if prohibition was coming back, and was known to take every mind-altering drug in the pharmacopoeia.

'Given that,' I said, 'she could be dead.'

'No way. Tough as an old boot. Forty if she's a day and, like I said, doesn't look anything like it with a bit of makeup and the light in the right place. And, to repeat myself now that you're really listening, there's something else I know about her that I suspect not many do and you should.'

'She bungy jumps?'

'I hope you're taking this seriously, Cliff.'

'My way of taking things seriously is not to take them too seriously until I have to.'

She thought that over, chewing hard, and nodded. 'Okay. Billie's got a child. A son.'

'Eddie's?'

'I doubt it. From what I hear and from photos, Eddie resembled a chook.'

That was true. Eddie was sharp-featured with a noticeably small head.

'This child-teenager by now, I guess-was on the way to being well built and good looking.'

'Billie's genes.'

'And black.'

Lou told me she'd got into a drinking session with Billie and that Billie had passed out. Lou snooped and found the photo-taped to the back of the middle drawer in a dresser-of the child standing beside Billie. The photo was faded and had been much handled. The boy appeared to be somewhere in the eight to ten age range and from Billie's clothes she guessed the picture to be a few years old.

'You pulled out all the dresser drawers?'

'Bugger you. This one was loose-it came free.'

'Have you got the photo?'

'No, it… it seemed so personal. I re-stuck it.'

'Background?'

She shrugged. 'Nothing identifiable to me.'

'Nothing scrawled on the back? Like, "Me and Jason, Bondi, 1998"?'

She looked at me as though she'd like to tear up the cheque. 'You don't believe me?'

'I'm wondering how you out-drank a hard doer the way you say Billie is.'

'Let me tell you something about myself, Mr Hardy. I've knocked around small time and country newspapers for twenty years. I'm thirty-eight with two failed marriages. I've survived cervical cancer and I've got a mortgage I struggle to pay. This is my shot and I'm giving it everything I've got. I out-drank Billie Marchant because I had to.'

'Okay. Sorry.'

'For your information, there was something on the back of the photo. It was scribble, but it looked like B and S.'

'Eddie's middle name was Stanley.'

'I didn't know that.'

'There you go. We're a team. Neither of us knows everything.'

She stopped chewing long enough to smile and the rough moment passed. We talked it over for a while. She was going to carry on her research in the financial Sargasso Sea of Clement's business dealings and I'd tap some sources in the PEA game, the cops, the crims, the prison system, hunting for Billie.

'I wonder who she was hiding the photo of the boy from?' I said.

'Maybe Eddie. Maybe Clement. But it means he was important to her, that's for sure. Billie doesn't take any trouble over routine things. Find him and you might find her. From the look on her face in the photo she wouldn't want to let him go, so I don't think she's in Manila.'

'Where did you meet her?'

'A flat in Liston, out past Campbelltown in case you don't know. The address I gave you. It wasn't hers. I went back and asked about her but the people there were new and not welcoming.'

'The photo could still be there. For safekeeping.'

Lou shrugged. 'More likely she took it. But you could try.'

We shook hands and left it at that. Looking for people is more interesting than serving summonses, repossessing cars and bodyguarding suits. I was glad I'd saved Lou Kramer from the clutches of Rhys Thomas.

Financially, my head was above water but not by much. The rates, phone and power bills, and insurance costs came in regularly and my income was sporadic. Still, I was a volunteer. I'd had plenty of opportunities to work for the big investigative agencies, mostly American based, and always turned them down. It wasn't the suit-wearing and the possibility that they'd be tied in to Hallburton or the FBI, although those things counted, it was the freedom to say no that I valued most. No to the political apparatchiks sniffing for dirt, no to the welfare zealots looking to entrap their 'clients'.

3

Back when I was giving lectures at Petersham TAFE in the PEA course, I told the students my first rule was: check out your client. Although I was impressed by Lou Kramer and believed her, I still followed the rule. Harry Tickener, who worked on and edited and was fired from a variety of newspapers, now runs a web-based newsletter entitled Searchlight Dot Com. His office is in Leichhardt near the Redgum Gym where I go for workouts most days. I rang Harry and told him I'd be visiting.

I went to the gym and put in a solid treadmill, free weights and machine session. The Redgum is a serious place. As Wesley Scott, the proprietor and chief trainer once said, 'This isn't a lycra gym.' Many of the members are athletes- swimmers, footballers, cricketers and basketball players-and some of us older types are ex-cops, ex-army, ex-something or other, trying to stave off the effects of age and stay flexible and strong. It works, according to the amount of time you spend at it. I'm somewhere in the middle range-the despair of the true believers who go there five or six times a week and really sweat, respected by the slackers, who attend irregularly and struggle to lift what they lifted last week.

I turned up at Harry's door a little after eleven with two large takeaway flat whites from the Bar Napoli.

Harry has stripped staff back to himself and two others and he was alone in the office when I arrived. Bald as an egg, homely and cheerful, Harry wears sneakers even with suits because he has foot trouble. Today he was in jeans and a T-shirt with his Nikes on the desk in front of him.

He mimed lifting a weight, ridiculous with his pipe-stem arms. 'Good gym?'

I clenched a fist. 'Bracing. You should try it.'

'My dad lifted a coal pick about half a million times before silicosis got him. I'm against physical work. Who was it said the best thing about being working class is that it gives you something to get out of?'