The Undertow

I hit the buzzer beside the gate in Darlinghurst Road and the voice spoke softly just above my right ear.

'Can I help you?'

'You can tell Ruby that Cliff Hardy is here to see her, thank you.'

After a few minutes the gate swung open and I went through the scrap of garden to the front door, which clicked open as I approached. The woman behind the desk was typical of Ruby's receptionists-thirty plus, smartly turned out, expertly made up and with a pleasant voice and manner. 'She said to go upstairs, Mr Hardy, and that you know your way.'

'I do, thanks.'

Your two-storey Victorian terraces all follow much the same pattern on the upper level, with a large room in front, usually with a balcony, and other smaller rooms off a corridor going towards the back. The design is ideal for a brothel and a good many of them have served that purpose. Ruby, naturally, occupied the front room where she'd installed an ensuite and partitioned off a cubbyhole for her office. The remaining space isn't subtle in decor-a big four-poster bed with silk and satin trappings, two padded, velvet covered chairs, a wall mirror, a cabinet for professional equipment and a television with VCR and DVD players.

The door was standing open and I walked in. Ruby rose from a chair and sailed towards me like a galleon in a strong wind. She stands close to 180 centimetres in her stilettos and weighs close to 100 kilos. Wrapped in flowing draperies-'Rubensesque' is how she describes herself- that description about does it. She has black hair, pale skin and heavy, handsome features all owing a great deal to art.

'Cliff, darling,' she said as we embraced. 'I've longed for this day.'

'Come off it, Rube.' I slapped her ample rump. 'This is a business call.'

She laughed. 'What else, you old bastard. There was a time when I thought you might take off your trench coat and have a little fun.'

'I've never worn a trench coat in my life, and just now I'm having all the fun I need, thanks very much.'

'Amateurs,' she said as she subsided into a chair. 'Okay, waste some of my time.'

I sat and felt the soft padding ooze around me. I could almost sense the many gentlemen's trousers that had been draped over the chair.

'I'm looking for a working girl, Rube, but my last piece of information goes back over twenty years.'

While she's no saint and has played very rough in her time, Ruby has genuine concern for the people she employs and others in the sex business. She shook her head sadly. 'Not many survive that long, mate.'

'I know it's a long shot. This woman's name was Pixie Padrone. I thought you-'

Ruby sat bolt upright, her upholstered breasts heaving. 'Pixie, that bitch!'

'You know her?'

'I should. She was on the street like you say, a real low-life. Asked me for a spot but she was a hopeless junkie and she'd had more claps than a symphony orchestra. Then all of a sudden she's cleaned up her act. She's off the shit and working out of a flash flat in Point Piper. She took away some of my business for a while and didn't she rub my nose in it.'

'When was this?'

'Like you say, at least twenty years ago.'

'I mean specifically.'

'Shit, Cliff, it's a long time ago.'

'I'm talking about 1983.'

She thought, then shook her head. 'No, must've been a year or so later. I was in Enzed for most of eighty-three- avoiding a couple of warrants. I put in a manager here.'

'You didn't know her brother killed a doctor in Darlinghurst?'

'I might've heard something about it when I got back, but I didn't pay it much attention. There was a lot going on thereabouts, what with the AIDS thing hitting and all that.'

'When you say she'd cleaned up her act, what d'you mean exactly, Rube?'

'Jesus, you're really into exactly and specifically and precisely, aren't you?'

''fraid so, it's like that.'

'I mean that she must've gone to some detox place and got herself cleaned out. Takes time and money, that. Plus, she'd had her teeth fixed, boob job, the works.'

'Where is she now?'

'Haven't a clue. She took off somewhere with her pimp. Funny, you saying her brother killed a doctor. Pixie's bloke was supposed to be a doctor. Probably an abortionist.'

'What was his name?'

'Can't remember. Adolf, Boris-something German like.'

9

I pressed Ruby for more information about Pixie Padrone but she'd run dry. According to her, Pixie vanished from the Sydney sex scene 'sometime around when Australia won the America's Cup', which was as close as she could pin it down.

'That was a boom time, if you like,' she said. 'I wish they'd bung on stuff like that permanently.'

She said she'd ask around about Pixie, but she didn't hold out much hope.

'She must have had parents, family of some kind apart from her brother?'

'If Pixie had parents,' Ruby said, 'they probably kicked her out before she got her first period. She was a grade one troublemaking bitch.'

In a perverse way, that was a ringing endorsement from Ruby, who has a low opinion of humankind in general, and women in particular. For Pixie to be worthy of such an assessment, she had to be a person of some force. I thanked Ruby and promised to introduce her after I'd told her about Lily.

'I need someone to write my autobiography, Cliff,' Ruby said. 'Journalists do that sort of thing, don't they?'

'They do. Not sure Lily would. She's more on the financial side.'

'Shit, you think I'm not financial? I get all sorts of tips from the market high-flyers and do bloody well out of them. Your girlfriend'd be surprised about the financial stuff that goes on here, and the money side of this business.'

'I'll talk to her,' I said. 'What about dinner at the Bourbon and Beefsteak? On me?'

'You're on. I could go a chateaubriand. Make it a night early in the week.'

My day's work had given me plenty to think about- connections that could be important, possible survivors to seek out, questions needing answers. I drove to my office in Newtown to do the thinking and the computer work if that seemed likely to be helpful. The office is two floors up in a building at the non-trendy end of King Street. The creeping gentrification that has transformed Newtown seems to have stalled at the moment, but no doubt it'll get on the move again, like the cane toad up north.

Before going to the office I collected my mail from the post office box and, as usual, was able to dispose of a good deal of it in a street bin. The bills were accumulating as they do, but there was a decent cheque as well to help things along. Bpay had taken some of the nuisance and expense out of paying accounts, but the equation was just the same. What was coming in versus what was going out. So far this year, with about a third of it gone, I was holding my own. That was good going, because summer and spring are bad for business generally. Things pick up in winter when people tend to have darker, more suspicious thoughts.

The office is conducive to thinking-spartan, functional, with the coffee maker as the only comfort item since the bar fridge went on the blink. I booted up the computer and wrote down as many of the words spoken by all parties in the interviews as I could remember. This is a new technique for me, as advised by Lily. She says that exact, direct quotes can sometimes get you to the heart of the matter. Hasn't happened yet, but it might. For Lil, the words on the screen are totally real. Me, I need to print things out to get the feel.

I spent the rest of the afternoon going over what I'd written together with Frank's extensive notes, trying to piece things together. If Dr Karl Lubeck was associated with Rafael Padrone's sister, then the removal of his medical file was unlikely to be an accident-incidental to the removal of incriminating material-as Roma Brown had thought. If Pixie Padrone had pulled herself out of addiction through expensive detoxification treatment and had had some bodywork, again expensive, that suggested she'd got her hands on some money. Maybe some of her brother's twenty thousand?