He seemed to be about to speak again and I finished my beer and let him have the silence.
“Funny thing, Ricky’s a popular boy just now, you’re the second bloke been asking for him.”
“Who else?”
“Don’t know, didn’t see him. Freddy, he lives here too, he saw him and told me.”
“Oh yeah. White man was he?”
“Yeah, old guy, real pale.”
I nodded and stood up. I held the beer can in my hand and Williams pointed to the carton. I tossed the can in and thanked him. When I left the room he was putting the arm back on the record; an ear-splitting guitar chord, distorted by the wah-wah pedal, tore into me as I reached the front door. I put the wood between me and the sound and went down the steps to the street.
The rain had stopped and the grey sky had thin, pale blue rents in it. I stood outside the house and a young Aborigine in a faded green track-suit came jogging down the street sticking out his hands in jabs and hooks. He went through the gate and bounded up the steps. I walked down the street towards a phone booth. A green Fiat pulled out from the kerb on the opposite side of the road and took off up the hill in a smooth effortless glide. The driver looked vaguely familiar in the quick glance I got at him but I dismissed the possibility. The only person I knew who could afford that car was Ailsa and she drove other things. I called the NRMA, gave them the location of my car and took a taxi back there. In the cab I prised Tarelton’s money out of my sock. Some of it was mine already.
The blue van was pulled up beside the Falcon and the guy in overalls had his head under the bonnet when I arrived in the cab. I waited while he did what I could have done except that for fifteen bucks a year I reckon I should keep my hands clean. He pulled himself out, took a look at my membership tag and told me to start the car. It kicked first time, he slammed the bonnet down and waved. I gave him a thumbs-up and crept out into the five o’clock rush.
To get to La Perouse you stay on Anzac Avenue all the way passing through the suburbs that blossomed there after the first war. The old permanent building societies and friendly societies lent the money to fill up this part of Sydney and its red brick uniformity is their monument. The streams of cars moved sluggishly along the wet road between the traffic lights in congested fits and Stans. I battled along in the middle lane letting the wild men barrel past me on the right and staying out of the way of the geriatrics and rabbits on the left.
The traffic thinned out as the road swung down towards Botany Bay. Long Bay jail loomed on the left. I’d spent a few unpleasant weeks there on remand and didn’t want to be reminded of it. I speeded up for the last slide down to La Perouse. The place is named afterr the French explorer who spent a few weeks there in 1788 before going off to get himself eaten somewhere in the Pacific. It might have been a clean, pretty spot in his time but it isn’t pretty now. Botany Bay is polluted to hell. On bad days the sea has a dark, oily sheen and the few scraps of beach are grey and faded as if leached of colour by the hand of man. The foreshore has been mostly swallowed by roads and is dotted around with drab municipal buildings that wear a low-grade military look. I drove around the streets of La Perouse for a while getting the feel of the place. There were a lot of overgrown gardens and falling-down fences and houses that needed paint jobs badly. The rain had cleared out to sea; a purplish grey cloud lay out over the coast like a deep bruise in the sky and the landscape was bathed in a yellowish translucent glow.
I drove down past the kiosk and the pit where the snake man does his weekend show and stopped the car by a rail above the narrow beach. I got out, rolled a cigarette and watched a young Aborigine throwing a boomerang out over the water. The weapon left his hand shoulder-high, climbed steeply about ten yards away from him and moved off in a high air-cleaving circle. It made its banked turn fifty yards out and spun back slowing down until he plucked it out of the air like Young Griffo catching flies. He threw three or four times and each throw was perfect. I finished the cigarette and scrambled down the path to the beach. He saw and heard but ignored me until I was close.
“Nice throwing.”
“Thanks, wanna try?”
Boomerang throwing is something all Australians think they can do by instinct. I knew better.
“No, haven’t been here long enough.”
He grinned. “It’s easy, show you.” His thin brown arm snapped out like Jacko Moody’s straight left and the boomerang seemed to be grafted onto his hand. He lifted the arm and threw in a short, chopping motion that launched the boomerang off in a skipping, dancing spin; it arced out and came back humming like a model plane. I ducked and he threw his hand up. The wood slapped home with a crack that rang out over the water and bounced off the old island fort a hundred yards offshore.
My knee joints creaked as I lifted myself up.
“You’d have won if they’d banned guns.”
“Yeah, some hope.”
He swung around and fronted me. He was nearly as tall as me but rail-thin. His thick lips were bluish and he breathed heavily through them like a runner at the end of a race. His nose was a flattened ruin. He shifted his feet and flexed his thin sloping shoulders. He was twitching with bottled-up energy. I pulled our the makings, began a cigarette I didn’t want and offered him the packet.
“Thanks.” The slim fingers with their tulip pink nails made a smoke as thin as a Mexican bandit’s cigarillo. I got out matches and we lit up.
“Know a bloke named Ricky Simmonds?”
“Yeah.”
“Know where I can find him?”
“Might. Why d’you wanna know?”
“I’m looking for his bird, Noni. Know her?”
“Yeah. You a cop?”
“Private enquiry. I just want to locate her, nothing heavy.”
He smiled, reached out and patted me on the chest – the hand hit metal and leather.
“What’s that for then? Rabbits?”
“You never know. Look all I want to do is get a line on this Noni, report back to her old man and pocket a few bucks. I’m not looking for trouble.”
“No trouble for Ricky?”
“None, why?”
His mouth split open in a wide grin that showed white teeth stained around the edges by tobacco and a fine network of white scars around his eyes. I realised suddenly that he wasn’t young at all, he was closer to forty than twenty.
“Nothing. We’re related, and trouble follows Ricky. Who told you he was down here?”
“Ted Williams.” I explained the way of it, he listened, not very interested except when I said I’d seen Moody spar.
“What’d you think of him?”
“Terrific. Too good for Sammy Trueman.”
“That’s what I reckon.” He grinned again and the scars showed like badges of rank on the dark face. “He’s a bastard, Sammy. Rooked me rotten. You interested in fighters?”
I said I was.
“Maybe you seen me. Jimmy Sunday.”
“Jimmy Sunday. Yes I did. You had a great go against Booni Jack. Draw wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. I fought two draws with Booni, Melbourne and Brisbane. Bloody hard man Booni.”
“You weren’t bad yourself.”
He sucked on the last inch of his cigarette and flicked the stub away. He expelled the smoke with his wheezy fighter’s breath and did another little shuffle on the spot. He was wearing only a thin football sweater over a singlet and the wind coming off the water was sharp. I shivered inside my layers of cloth.
“Why don’t we go and have a drink,” I suggested, “while you make up your mind whether you’re going to talk to me.”
He slapped the boomerang in his palm. “Orright.” He lifted his arm and sent the boomerang off again. I moved away and watched it swing up into the pallid, darkening sky. It came back about knee high and he jumped neatly over it and let it land a few feet behind him.
“Nice one.” I picked it up. “You’re good. Where’d you learn, Burnt Bridge?”
“How’d you know?”
“A guess. Fighter country.” I tossed the boomerang over to him and we walked towards the path up the low cliff. He asked my name and I told him. He nodded. We reached the car and I got in.