‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s those fuckin cops?’
‘We could find some,’ I said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘Now, what’s the point?’
‘Okay,’ I moved the. 38 a little closer to the nose. ‘You see how things are. Mr Salmon’s not vindictive. You and your mate can walk down there and turn the corner and go home or I can shoot you somewhere. What’s it to be?’
‘We’ll walk,’ he said.
I heard a shuffling step and then the dull sound of a hard kick being delivered and then another. A man groaned and whimpered. I held the gun steady.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Nothin’,’ Salmon said. ‘This one can crawl. Let’s go.’
I moved back to the wall and we watched the guy who’d been kicked lift himself up off the ground and steady himself. Neither of them looked at us. They walked and hobbled down the lane and around the corner. Salmon and I went the other way out to the neon-lit street.
‘You were good, Hardy.’
I grunted. ‘Why’d you kick him?’
‘I was feelin’ good. He spoiled my night.’
The next day Salmon spent the morning in bed. He made a few phone calls in the afternoon, watched some TV. I went out and got some Chinese food and a paperback of Dutch Shea Jnr by John Gregory Dunne. We ate, I read; Salmon watched commercial television and went to bed early. I slept on the couch but not well; I spent most of the night reading and drinking instant coffee so that I’d finished the book by morning. Good book.
On Friday morning I told Salmon I needed some fresh clothes and wanted to go to the bank, so I had to get back to Glebe. That was all right with him because he wanted to go to Harold Park that night anyway. We had our discreet police escort over to Glebe, and I did my business with Salmon hanging around looking bored. Putting a couple of hundred in the bank to cover a mortgage payment probably wasn’t a very big deal to him.
In the afternoon I watched some more of the tennis while Salmon yawned over some back-issue magazines he found in the living room.
‘You miss these inside.’ He flipped over the pages of a mid-year National Times.
‘How did you find it? Prison, I mean.’
‘Hot and hard. You ever been in, Hardy?’
‘Not really, short remand at the Bay.’
He snorted derisively and seemed to be about to say something. Then he yawned and turned another page. John Alexander was giving ten years away to Peter Doohan and the games were going with service.
About half an hour earlier than I’d have thought necessary, Salmon announced it was time to go.
‘It’s too early,’ I said. ‘It’s just down the road.’
‘I want to get a good park.’
‘I thought we’d walk. Do you good.’
‘No, we drive.’
He was paying. We drove. I like Harold Park; somehow, even though they put in new bars and generally ponced the place up a few years ago, they managed not to kill the atmosphere. With the lights and the insects swarming in the beams and the Gormenghast houses up above The Crescent, the track feels like a special place-just right for what happens there. The race call and announcements over the PA system boom and bounce around in the hollow so that everybody knows what’s going on. You get a cheerful type of person at Harold Park-it’s almost a pleasure to lose money there.
Some sort of change had come over Salmon. He was decisive about where he wanted us to park-out on The Crescent, well down from the Lew Hoad Reserve-and for the first time he showed a real interest in our police escort.
‘Give ‘em plenty of time to pick us up,’ he said as I locked the car.
‘If they’re any good, they won’t need help.’
‘Just do as I say.’
We walked around to the main entrance in Wigram Road and I looked across to the pub.
‘That’s it,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The Harold Park-the pub over there. Didn’t you say it was one of the places you wanted to visit before you took your trip?’
Salmon glanced at the pub which was doing its usual brisk race-night business.
‘Skip it,’ he said nervously. ‘The rozzers with us?’
They were, two guys in casual clothes looking like family men on a matey night out. They went through the turnstiles a few bodies behind us. I could feel the tension in Salmon as we stepped out of the light into an area of shadow in front of the stand.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Now we lose ‘em. Right now. We make for the exit over near the car.’ He moved quickly, pushing through clutches of people heading for the bars and the tote; the mob swirled around us with no pattern yet, no fixed positions taken, and the gaps closed up behind us. I sneaked a look back after a while and caught a glimpse of the cops anxiously inspecting a toilet entrance.
Salmon moved fast on the way back to the car. He hugged the wall and people got out of his way.
‘They’re likely to leave someone watching the car?’
I considered it. We hadn’t been evasive at any time, rather the reverse; anyone who knew my habits would wonder why I’d drive such a short distance, but not too many cops knew my habits.
‘Doubt it, but there’s no time for a recce. That pair’ll be on our hammer pretty soon.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’
‘Where?’
‘North.’
I took Victoria Road to the Gladesville Bridge and ran up through the back of Pymble to pick up the turn-off to French’s Forest. RBT seemed to have quietened Friday night down: the traffic moved smoothly and after Salmon got finished checking behind us for pursuit, he settled down and enjoyed the drive.
‘Nice night.’ he said.
‘Yeah, where’re we going?’
‘Whale Beach.’
‘Jesus, why?’
He gave a short laugh, one of the very few I’d heard from him. ‘Not for a swim.’
The traffic stayed light on Barrenjoey, all the way past Newport to the Whale Beach turnoff. The Falcon handled the drive well, but Salmon only grunted when I commented on it.
‘Fords are junk.’ he said.
It was true that Fords weren’t in abundance in the drives and on the road in front of the big houses. I saw Mercs and Jags, Celicas and the like, all looking good in the moonlight like the houses themselves. Salmon was concentrating on the terrain and when we reached a sign that said ‘Public Pathway to Beach’, he told me to stop.
‘What’s here?’
‘Me cabin. Not too many know about it.’
We started down a steep and long flight of steps. I could see the water gleaming out ahead and heard the big surf crashing on the beach. About half of the houses were in darkness and the whole area was quiet and still apart from the sound of the sea and a few night birds calling. Halfway down the steps Salmon stepped over the rail and took a look into the blackness.
‘Shoulda brought a torch,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t you know the way?’
He glanced at me sharply. ‘Sure, but it’s been a while.’
We pushed through the bushes following a rabbit track until a squat shape loomed up in front of us. Salmon had taken his jacket off because the path ran slightly up and it was sweaty work on a mild night. He fumbled in a pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. He handed me the jacket.
‘Wait here, Hardy.’
I stood in the shadows holding the jacket and feeling like a five hundred dollar-flunky; then I remembered that it was a thousand dollar-flunky and felt better. Salmon went up some wooden steps and took a long time selecting a key and getting it into the lock. Then he opened the door and took a long time turning on a light. The jacket felt heavy because there was a. 45 automatic in one of its pockets. It was a long time since my army days when we practised stripping guns in the dark but I found I could still do it. I kept an eye on the light in the cabin while I ejected the bullet from the chamber, turned the top bullet in the spring-loaded magazine around and effectively jammed the thing as tight as a seized piston.
When Salmon came out of the cabin he was carrying a small canvas bag and wearing a look of satisfaction. I handed him the jacket.