“I don’t want to go to any hearing. I want you to get me out of it. It’s bullshit. I wouldn’t know Beni Lenko from Alan Bond.”
“How about this Jackson?”
“I know him, sure. But there’s no connection to the Steller-Lenko thing.”
“How do you know? Have you looked into it?”
“Cy…”
“They must have something, Cliff. I know they’re trying to tighten up on all you pistol-packing types-private eyes, security guards and so on. Too many guns and payrolls going missing. But your nose is clean with the police, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So there’s someone behind it. I wouldn’t press Parker on the name of the witness. These witness protection pro-grammes are the flavour of the month since Fitzgerald. A breach by Parker could seriously damage his career if it got known.”
“I told him not to do anything to risk his job. But I can’t just sit and wait for this shit to flop on me. As my lawyer they’d have to put you in the picture, wouldn’t they?”
“Up to a point.”
“What does that mean?”
“They needn’t identify the witness specifically, but I would get a context- full transcript of statement, supporting evidence and so on.”
“Great. I can be put out of business by a faceless woman.”
“Let me think,” Sackville said.
“If you’re sneaking a quick look at the box, Cy, I’ll come around and piss in your pool.”
“No, no. This is interesting. Don’t worry, Cliff, I’m taking it seriously. What I’ll do first off is get you a delay. I can probably get a fortnight, maybe more.”
“What good will that do?”
“You’re a detective, aren’t you? You’d better ask around and find out who wants you retired. Are you vulnerable in any other way? What are you working on now?”
“A missing person case.”
“Sounds safe enough. Good, even. A little acceptable privatisation of law and order. Keep your books in shape, account for your expenses. Write up your notes every day.”
“My name card fell off the door.”
“Get a proper plate made. Screw it to the door. You need to look solid.”
Just hearing him say it made me feel all the more fragile. He got the date of the hearing and had me spell the name at the foot of the fateful letter: G-r-i-f-f-i-n. He told me he’d get back to me when he had some news. I think he expected another crack about LA Law but I disappointed him. My head was buzzing again and the torn paper, turned-back carpet and battered pizza box were depressing me. I added the documents I’d collected to the Madden file, put the police pamphlets on top of the filing cabinet and gathered up my meagre belongings. I freed the door lock, turned out the light and left the office. I went down the stairs quietly and carefully, but no one was lurking in the shadows. So if my guardian angel was hovering around he had nothing to do for the present. I stuck the key back in the wall, drove home and went to bed.
In the morning, after eight hours’ sleep, with only a slight headache and the cat for company, things seemed a lot clearer. I had a one-thousand-dollar fee to earn and a licence to protect. “Keep busy, that’s the secret,” is what my Irish gypsy grand-mother used to say. She made it to eighty-plus and keeled over while building a drystone wall. It was good advice, applicable to me at forty-plus, although the only physical labour I did these days was carrying out the garbage tin. As I told the cat, it was very simple. “Work on the Madden case in the daytime and the Lenko matter at night. Keep busy.”
I washed a couple of days’ worth of dishes and swept a fortnight’s dirt from the floor. Then I shaved and stood under a shower, letting the warm water massage my bruised head. The bulldozers hadn’t made their moves on the next two houses yet, and I was dreading the day. For the moment they stood empty, and my end of the street was unnaturally calm and peaceful. No Joni Mitchell from Soames, no revving Yamahas from number 63. I missed them both. The cat missed them more. Soames’ cat was a wimpy part-Persian that offered no competition to mine. The bikers-the house seemed to harbour a shifting population of leather-clad males and females-were an endless source of hamburger, pizza and souvlakia scraps. The cat’s calories were cut drastically when the places were sold. It drank its milk sullenly, curled up in a patch of sunlight and was through for the day. “Have a good one, sport,” I said.
I allowed myself a few minutes to sit in the sun and try to recall every nuance of the attack the night before. Nothing much came: male almost certainly, from an impression of size, and a smoker. No one who has given the habit up ever fails to detect the smell on hair and clothes. No Hercules-the blow hadn’t been delivered with enormous power. But then, that might have been compassion. There’d been no sound, no speech. At a guess, a million or so citizens of the city could fill the bill.
I told myself this was a challenge. Keep busy. By the time I was sitting in my car, turning the ignition key and putting on my sunglasses, I felt almost normal. If you can call a man who talks to cats normal.
5
I was driving to Milson’s Point to sniff around Brian Madden’s neighbourhood, get the feel of the man on his own territory, so I should have been thinking about that. Madden in the daytime, Lenko at night. Instead, I found myself thinking about Rhino Jackson. He’d be about ten years older than me, I reckoned, out of the police force for going on twenty years and into almost every other related field of activity you could name-security guard and courier, bodyguard, private inquiries, security consultant for right-wing political figures and organisations and, I’d often heard it rumoured, part-time spook. I’d run into him every few years or so in the course of my work, and he always went out of his way to be nice to me. He even apologised once, when he was drunk, for the short count. I’d forgotten about it until the apology reminded me. I found it impossible to like him for no very good reason. Now I had a reason.
I took the first exit off the Bradfield Highway and cut back towards the water. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen Jackson. It had been a few years ago, not long after my final break with Helen Broadway. I couldn’t remember anything about the meeting, except that Jackson had been drunk. Maybe I’d been drunk too. Back then it wasn’t too uncommon. The thing about Jackson was that he was good at what he did. He was an alcoholic, but it never seemed to impair his functioning. He changed course so often not because he was incompetent but because he got restless. I’d been told that or had worked it out for myself. It seemed I knew more about him than I realised, but I didn’t know why he was called ‘Rhino’.
I waited at a red light behind a truck which blocked out the water view I’d been looking forward to, one of the rewards of driving around Sydney. Indecision washed over me. Which was more important- finding Brian Madden or protecting my licence? Also, which was easier? I knew lots of places to look for Rhino Jackson. The light changed and I made the decision to stick to the plan. Tune out the static and put up the antennae, I thought. You might get lucky and find Madden this morning.
The truck turned left and I got the view I’d been waiting for. It’s quite an eyeful- across the sparkling water to the shining city. The water seems to sanitise things, to make it seem that a city blessed with such a setting couldn’t possibly be a bad and dangerous place. We know better, of course; perhaps it’s the tension between the appearance and the reality that make the town exciting. I’ve said these things to people in loquacious moments and a common reply has been, “If you feel so hot for the water view, why haven’t you got one?” That’s a new Sydney sort of question. I give the old Sydney answer: “Because I like to look at it doesn’t mean I want to buy it.”
Milson’s Point is bisected by the Bradfield Highway. Madden’s flat was in the western sector at the high end of a short street with a view out over Lavender Bay. As in all older areas with a high proportion of flats, there wasn’t much space to park in the street. The residents, who haven’t got what the real estate agents call O.S.P., leave their cars at home and catch ferries and buses to work. They use their cars to go to shopping centres, beaches and football grounds at the weekends. I got a space across the road and down the slope from Number 27 and sat for a while to pick up the atmosphere of the street. Also, my head was still hurting and the view was restful. A few people came and went, mostly middle-aged or older. A motorcycle courier roared up, left his motor ticking and ran across to a small block of flats. He scanned the letterboxes and went up a short flight of steps three at a time. He was back and performing a tight U-turn within a minute. I should have taken his registration number-the next time I needed to send something by courier I wanted him.