‘Piss off, Hardy.’
‘Don’t be like that ‘Woolfie’, we’ve got things to talk about.’
‘Yeah, like why you belted up the “Bomber”.’
‘The “Bomber’s” not even a Tiger Moth anymore, you know that.’
‘I’m busy, Hardy, I don’t need your crummy jokes this time of the day, or anytime.’
‘Busy at what?’
He glared at me and lit another cigarette from the stub of the last. His teeth were as brown as his fingers and the air was like in a billiard room at midnight. I didn’t want to spend anymore time with him than I had to. I took the sheets of paper out and smoothed them on his desk top.
‘Oldest one around, Holland, someone used it on Mae West when she was a girl. How’d you get yourself fixed up to do the investigation?’
What passed across his face almost made me feel sorry for him; it was a ‘ Oh no, caught again!’ look combined with a flicker of hope that I didn’t have the proof and maybe a bit of bluster coming up.
‘You used the paper cutter across the road on the note and the copies, sport-that puts you right in it.’ I blew on my palm. ‘There goes your licence. What’s a three thousand dollar fraud worth these days? Couple of years?’
He put down his cigarette, dropped the hand to a drawer, slid it open and pointed a dusty-looking. 38 at me. I laughed.
‘Don’t be silly ‘Woolfie’. I don’t want you. I’ll take the money out of your hide if I have to, but I don’t want you.’
The gun wavered and he put it down and picked up the cigarette again-easier to kill yourself than someone else.
‘What d’you want?’ he croaked.
‘Whoever put you up to it. Whoever wrote the reports and stands to gain. Straight deal-you tell me and I don’t tell anyone how naughty you’ve been.’
He groaned. ‘She’ll kill me.’
We went across the hall to Chloe Smith’s office, and as soon as ‘Woolfie’ came in, with me manful and commanding by his shoulder, she knew that her latest dream was a fizzer. She was a redhead, redder now than she had been once, and the dye job had hardened her features. Her thin face was beaky and aggrieved despite the touched up brightness of her eyes and lips. She looked at ‘Woolfie’ as if she was seeing him as he was for the first time.
‘He knows,’ she said.
‘Woolfie’ nodded and dropped into a chair in front of her desk. He dislodged a pile of manuscripts which cascaded over the floor in their loose-leaf binders, manilla folders and exercise books. There were a lot of manuscripts in the room and the shelf that carried the line ‘Client’s works’ had only a few, thin volumes on it.
As it came out it was a typical loser’s story. Smith and Holland had convinced each other that they could pull off the big one-that ‘Woolfie’ could milk Carla Cummings for enough money to enable Chloe lo put on a good enough front to get Cummings to come over to her once ‘Woolfie’ had sown enough seeds of doubt about Thackeray. She showed me the letterheads she’d had planned and told me about the Hash office she was going to rent in Paddington. Smith had got wind that Cummings’s next book was to be a private eye yarn and ‘Woolfie’ had turned up at the right time-just after the letter about Thackeray had been delivered-to offer himself as an informant initially and then as an investigator.
‘It wouldn’t have worked,’ I said. ‘She has this yachting type with capped teeth sniffing at her for his ten per cent, probably others as well.’
Chloe flared at that. ‘It would have worked! Reginald would have influenced her to accept my services.’
‘Reginald Who?’ I said. ‘Woolfie’ lit another cigarette.
‘What are you going to do, Hardy?’ he asked.
‘How much of the money can you give back?’
He shrugged. ‘Half.’
‘I’ll take that and talk to Thackeray and Cummings. She might think she got her money’s worth in a funny way. You never know, ‘Woolfie’, you might end up in her next book.’
I smiled, but they didn’t. I got a cheque from ‘Woolfie’ and got out of his office before my clothes smelled as bad as his. For no good reason I’d brought The Singing Gulls with me from home, and I grabbed it out of the car and went back to Holland’s office. He looked at me through the haze with red, tormented eyes.
‘What now, Hardy?’
I threw the book on his desk. ‘Read that,’ I said. ‘Part of your punishment.’
‹‹Contents››
Rhythm Track
He was wearing the oldest T-shirt I’d ever seen; it was a faded blue, tattered around the neck and sleeve ends, and had holes everywhere. The almost obliterated letters across the chest read CREDENCE. His thin, nicotine-stained fingers flew across a couple of thousand buttons and switches, then he sighed and poured himself a cap full of Jack Daniels Tennessee whisky. He tossed the drink off, capped the bottle and picked up an electric guitar.
‘What’s he doing?’ I whispered.
‘Rhythm track,’ Vance Hill said. ‘Shh.’
I shushed and watched the strong fingers dance along the frets as he strummed; his long black hair flopped as he jerked his head convulsively. After a few seconds he nodded, flipped a switch and the studio filled with the music. He strummed and jerked for a few seconds and the jumpy chords he was hitting seemed to sit in the air in front of him. I wanted to tap my foot but kept it still. After a few seconds he said ‘Shit!’ and hit a button. The music stopped.
He took another drink and lit a menthol cigarette. When he turned around to face Hill he looked about five times older than his fifteen-year-old T-shirt.
‘You hear it? Nowhere near blappy enough. I can’t get it. I try for more blappy and I just get blah-balah. We need Tim.’
‘Easy, Con, we’ll get him. This is Cliff Hardy, he’s a private investigator-finds people. Right, Hardy?’
‘Sometimes,’ I said. I nodded to Con, who acknowledged me with a double puff on his cigarette. ‘You seemed to be doing all right to me.’
He shook his head. ‘I was doing lousy. I’m a keyboards man. Without a good rhythm track this’ll sound like shit.’
‘I just brought you in here to give you the feel, Hardy.’ Hill said. ‘Let’s go outside and talk. Don’t worry, Con.’
‘I won’t breathe either,’ Con said. He pushed some more buttons and we went out of the studio.
The place was packed into a high, narrow-fronted building in Annandale. Outside the studio door there was a narrow passage leading to a narrow office and reception area. Hill waved me into a chair and lifted his hand to a young woman who was answering a telephone behind the glass panel. She grimaced and made a throttling motion with one hand.
‘Want some coffee, Hardy? Drink or anything?’
‘No, thanks.’ I got out my notebook and balanced it on my knee. The denim under it was fashionably faded but unfashionably thin and non-stretch. ‘Tim Talbot’s his name. That real, or nom de stage?’
‘Real. Tim’s a studio muso, I doubt if he’s ever been on a stage.’
‘Introvert?’
Vance Hill looked as if he’d heard the word before but couldn’t quite remember what it meant. The young woman came to his aid. She’d slipped out from behind the glass and into a chair near mine.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He is.’
‘Hardy, this is Ro Bush. Ro, Cliff Hardy.’
We nodded at each other. She was a brunette with very white teeth, lustrous brown eyes and an athletic figure. I was nodding in approval as well as greeting. She wore a white sleeveless top and jeans, no jewellery, short fingernails and an intelligent expression.
‘Tim’s shy,’ she said, ‘withdrawn even. He doesn’t get on with many people. He’s also tremendously talented.’ She shot a look at the door that led to the studio which I interpreted as saying that not everyone on the premises was equally talented.
Hill leaned forward in his chair. ‘Like I said on the phone, we’re working on the theme song for The Dying Game. Great song, sure hit. Tim wrote it and started on the recording with Con and a couple of others. The vocal’s fine and we can probably do something with the bass track, but there’s some mandolin to go on and a rhythm track needed. Tim’s the only guy who can do it. Jesus, just the rough demo he laid down sounds a hundred times better than anything else we’ve tried.’