‘Come here and sleep on it. Something might occur to you in your sleep.’
‘Okay. Can I bring Gunther?’
‘Is he afraid of cats?’
‘Gunther’s afraid of nothing.’
‘He hasn’t met my cat. Sure, bring him. But don’t go to your place. This freak might try to make it a pair.’
‘Will you be there?’
‘No, I have to talk to Sammy Weiss. Wouldn’t happen to know where he lives, would you?’
‘I do. Well, I heard some of the journos talk about it at that office conference. They said he lived at the Beta House-I don’t know what it means.’
‘I do. Get some rest, Trude. I’ll see you soon.’
‘What about you? You must be bushed.’
‘I’m going to drink a gallon of coffee, take some caffeine tablets and brush my teeth. I’ll be okay.’
‘How is Weiss involved?’
I told her quickly what I’d learned and instructed her what to tell and what not to tell January. She told me to be careful. I hung up and put the coffee on; while it perked I got dressed in jeans and a jacket and sneakers; the only thing I wore that I’d had on before was the gun. I drank the coffee scalding hot and took the tablets. The cat ate the whole tin of food and looked at me reproachfully as if it knew that I’d invited a dog into the house.
‘Go for his nose,’ I said to it. ‘You could win on a knock-out.’ The cat wiped its whiskers and jumped out the window. A wind had sprung up and the open window rattled in its warped frame. I shut it and the cat looked at me through the glass.
I was in the Falcon, turning into Glebe Point Road, when it occurred to me that Helen might ring again and get Trudi, again. I’m very good at thinking up things to worry about.
The Beta House is a large building in Newtown which is something in between a squat and low rent accommodation. It’s for people who are on the way down or just possibly taking a breather before making a comeback. I’d had dealings with its residents before. They tended to be defensive, eccentric or downright aggressive. There’s no way into the place unless someone inside lets you in or throws you a key. All the windows are two floors up and the fire escape rusted and rotted into disuse long ago.
I parked in King Street outside an all-night video shop and walked down the narrow street to the Beta. It hadn’t changed in the couple of years since I’d been there. It was still a dark green five storey pile with broken windows boarded up, water dripping from broken pipes down the outside walls and roof iron lifting and thumping down as the night wind caught it. There’s always someone at home in the Beta. I could hear rock music coming from the fourth floor; a toilet flushed at the back, gurgled and flushed again and again.
I picked my way between the abandoned cars and refrigerators and, in the lane on the west side, found the window I wanted on the third floor and in the centre of the building. I collected some small stones and pelted it until a light came on.
‘What the fuck you want?’ The shape in the window was squat and wide with a belly that kept it back from the opening.
‘It’s Hardy, Sammy. Let me in.’
‘Got the key money, you cunt?’
I held up a $10 note. Sammy Trueman spat out into the night but missed me by a long way. Trueman had run a gymnasium in Newtown until he’d run out of fighters he could throw to the lions. As the boxing business sagged Trueman went down for the count. He’d had one good fighter in recent times, an Aborigine named Jacko Moody, who’d won national titles and then given the game away for football. Trueman thought I’d had a hand in that and I liked to think he was right. He hated me but he couldn’t afford to hate $10.
A string came snaking down the side of the building with a key tied to the end of it. I untied the key, replaced it with the $10. The string floated up and I went to the front of the building. The key turned easily in the lock; I opened the door and held it open with a piece of wood I found among the litter just inside. I figured that $10 should buy me a convenient exit as well as entry.
The stairwell stank of beer, piss and shit, some of it human, some animal. I went up three flights, feeling my way more than seeing because most of the light bulbs had blown. Trueman’s room was along a corridor past a dozen doors to rooms like his. It reminded me of prison cell block without the bars. I had to step over boxes of bottles and ruptured garbage bags. My foot skidded on something soft and ripe smelling that had slipped from a bag.
Trueman’s feet shuffled and he opened the door outwards on rickety hinges. He collapsed in a fit of coughing when he stretched out his hand for the key. I held it back. ‘I’m here to see Sammy Weiss.’
‘Don’ know ‘im.’ His singlet was grey and the room behind him was filled with smoke and the stench of sweaty, unwashed clothes.
‘Don’t give me that, Trueman. Now you know I can come in there and take back the 10 bucks and break whatever bottle you’ve got. So be nice. Weiss, where?’
‘One up and towards the front. Red door. You’re a bastard, Hardy. You took away the best boy I ever had.’
‘You had some good ones and they all ended up the same way. Except Moody.’
‘You cost me 50 grand, maybe more.’
‘Think of it in terms of brain cells. Moody saved himself a couple of million of them when he quit you.’
‘What’s a fuckin’ Abo need with brains?’
I dropped the key at his feet and headed for the stairs. It was even gloomier on the next level; I passed a half open door from which the marijuana smoke was softly eddying along with sitar music. A bit further on a door stood wide open and I saw a group of people on their knees in front of an altar draped in black cloth. The signs and figures painted on the cloth were repeated in chalk on the floor. The worshippers were murmuring and swaying gently as incense smoke billowed up from behind the altar.
The red door was closed, No exotic smells or sounds, just the rhythmic grunting and wheezing of a heavy snorer deeply asleep. I knocked but the snoring didn’t miss a beat. It was my night for easy doors; this one would have been a pushover with a nail file. I unzipped my jacket so I could get at the gun but I wasn’t really expecting to need it except perhaps to shoot rats.
It was a small room, narrow and low-ceilinged, with a window set up too high to look out of. Depression was the keynote and it continued with the gas ring, the hand basin in the corner and the rickety card table on which there were a few books and a portable typewriter. Sammy Weiss lay on his back on the narrow bed. He was wearing baggy cotton underpants and a pyjama coat with no buttons. His fish-white chest and belly rose and fell as he snored. He had a three-day stubble and the smell reminded me of when a flagon of wine had broken in the boot of my car and stayed there a few days. Lying beside the bed were an empty bottle of rum, two wine bottles ditto and a flagon of sherry with enough left in it to make a trifle. Crumpled sheets of paper overflowed a box that had held half a dozen cans of beer; the empty cans were in the wastepaper basket along with more paper.
I filled a can at the hand basin and trickled the water onto Weiss’s face. He grumbled, turned his head and twitched. I kept pouring and he came awake spluttering and moaning.
‘What this? Shit, what’re you doing. Ooh, I’m gonna be sick.’
‘Keep it down, Sammy, unless you’ve got a bucket handy.’
He forced his eyes to stay open and he tried to sit up but he couldn’t make it. ‘God, I’m gonna die.’
‘Not yet. We have to talk, then you can die. When you come off the wagon you really come off, don’t you? What happened, Sammy?’
His eyes were red and dry-looking. He knuckled them violently and moistened his lips with his tongue. ‘Is there anything left?’
‘Bit of sherry.’
‘Gimme.’ He twitched violently and attempted to locate the flagon beside the bed. I moved it away with my foot.