Deal Me Out (17 page)

I nodded. ‘So what do they do?’

‘It’s a sociological thing, really. The people with the money write the rules …’

‘Save it, Artie. What happens?’

‘They do it the way they do everything, old son. They hold parties.’

‘Parties?’

‘Exactly. Lots of ‘em. There’s a circuit, or a couple of circuits. Certain people get invited, and they bring along certain substances. These people don’t keep a stash, see? They don’t want to think about it during the week while they’re being managing this and executive that. Quality people with quality money for quality stuff.’

‘This is what Mountain wanted to hear about?’

‘Yep. Another drink?’

He was asking, not offering. I did want another drink and I got up to get it automatically, with my mind mostly on the scene Artie had sketched. I was half way to the bar when Artie made a bolt for it; he would have made it but Harry Tickener chose that moment to open the inward swinging door and Artie had to step back. By that time I had my hand on his shoulder again. Harry looked surprised.

‘Just off? Thought I’d join you.’

‘Where’s your desk, didn’t you bring it?’ I got a firm grip on Artie’s shoulder pad and turned him around. ‘Good to see you, Harry. Let’s all have a drink. Artie here just got the wrong door. He was looking for the bog.’

‘I need it, too.’ Artie growled. ‘Get a round, Hardy. I’ll be back in a minute.’ He shuffled off unsteadily towards the door on which some wag had altered the word to read ‘Bents’. Tickener and I sat down near the pillar.

‘Can he get out of the dunny?’

Harry raised an eyebrow to near where his hairline used to be. ‘Like that is it? No, I don’t think so. I think the loo’s down below street level.’

I got some more scotch for Henderson, the same for Harry and wine for me. I filled Harry in quickly on what
Artie had told me, but I didn’t say why I’d been pumping. Harry lit a Camel and dragged on it hard.

‘We ran a story on that stuff a while ago,’ he said. ‘You must have missed it.’

‘I was probably in the middle of
The Brothers Karamazov.
Artie seems to be full bottle; would he have some names d’you reckon?’

‘Bound to.’

Artie came back with damp hands. He grabbed his glass and swore as it almost slipped through his fingers. But he got half of the whisky down and finished his beer. ‘That wasn’t a bad piece, Harry,’ he whined. ‘You should’ve put in a word ….’

‘Skip it!’ I said, ‘Let’s hear a bit more about the yuppies and drugs.’

‘I told you. Parties. Everybody’s got a legitimate invitation. Hosts do the buying. Take it in turns. All kosher.’

Harry nodded. Artie nicked a Camel from Harry’s pack.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Sounds like kid stuff.’

Artie shrugged; he would have been willing to let it stand there, but Harry wasn’t. If it had been printed in
The News,
Harry Tickener was there to defend it. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘These people call themselves recreational drug users; they say they’ve got it all under control, but they haven’t, not all of them. Some of them get properly hooked like any dumb kid on the dole, and they need a supply just as badly. They’ve got the money—at least to start with. You know that, Artie.’

‘Sure.’ Harry had touched Artie’s professional pride as he’d intended. ‘That’s right, the hooked ones have to deal bigger to keep a supply, just like Harry says. Gets to be a pressure game. Harry, would you like a piece ….’

‘No. But you can help Cliff a bit more than that, can’t you, Artie?’

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘No double dipping, Artie,’ I said. ‘You’ll be seen to if I get somewhere.’

Artie could wheedle with the best of them. ‘I could do a piece on that council, Harry. I know who’s on the take from who.’

‘Whom,’ Harry said. ‘Maybe.’

‘Well, there’s a bit of a party circuit up on the North Shore, Pymble way.’

‘Names,’ I said.

‘I’ve only got two: Gamble—that’s Anthony Gamble on Lady Jane Drive. And a woman named Deirdre Kelly—Montague Street, I think.’

Harry went off to the toilet, and I wrote the names down. ‘Are they recreational or hooked?’

Henderson shrugged. He looked weary, as if the effort of parting with information without immediate financial return had drained him of energy. ‘I heard they were on the way to being hooked. The number of gatherings has gone up or something. That’s the sign, see? You didn’t get this from me, of course.’

‘Naturally not. This what you told Mountain?’

He nodded.

‘Haven’t seen him since?’

‘Not hide nor hair of him.’

‘If you do, you could ask him to get in touch with me.’

He got down off his stool and hitched up his sagging trousers, fighting for a bit of dignity as Harry rejoined us. ‘I might do that, Cliff. See you, Harry.’ He walked away swaying a little and pausing at the open door to make sure he had the all-clear. Harry watched him go, and shook his head.

‘Sad case.’

‘Would that article you ran on this stuff be worth reading?’

‘You can hurt, Cliff, you can really wound. Buy me another drink and I’ll dig it out so you can see for yourself. How’s Helen?’

‘She’s up the bush,’ I said, ‘worse luck.’

I
SAT
in the library next to the reporters’ room at
The News,
and read the article about the professional persons who used drugs recreationally. In a way, it was like reading Bill Mountain’s synopsis; the people interviewed talked freely and articulately, but they had been given false names, and it was hard to tell whether they were lying. None admitted to being hooked, and none would give any information out on how they obtained the drugs. The drugs, doses, effects and justifications for what they were doing, they would talk about
ad nauseam.

The reporter presented the material straight and with an oddly incurious air, as if he had found his informants rather boring. Hard facts were few—the North Shore was one of the centres of the activity and the participants feared only two things—exposure as drug-users to their straight professional colleagues, and accidental overdose.

I called on Harry after I’d read the article. I knew the protocol now.

‘Great piece,’ I said. ‘Your idea?’

‘Partly.’

‘Any reaction to it?’

‘A lot. Plenty of denials, advice from doctors about the perils of addiction, worried letters from employers who suspected their staff and from staff who suspected other staff. Lots of defensiveness and paranoia.’

‘Police response?’

‘Complete silence. Before you ask, Cliff, I checked the files on the two people Artie named. Nothing on Gamble, minor item on the woman. She was attacked outside her flat a few months ago and got cut up a bit. Claimed to have
no idea of the reason.’

‘Thanks, Harry. With all this information at your disposal, why don’t you write a novel? They say there’s big dough in it if you get it right.’

Tickener rubbed the smooth shiny skin on the top of his head. ‘Fuck you, Cliff. I’ve written six, can’t get ‘em published. Now that you’ve thoroughly depressed me, you can piss off.’

I went, leaving him to rub his shiny head. Maybe if he rubbed it the right way it’d conjure up a genie who’d help him get his novels published.

An instinct told me that this was something like the right track. Dealing with the young, upwardly-mobile drug-interested sounded just like Mountain’s style, and the subject seemed like a good fresh one for popular fiction. One article in
The News
was hardly over-exposure.

It was late in the afternoon, with heavy traffic building. The weather had turned uncertain; the sky was a leaden grey, purplish in the distance, and the wind was an irritable, swirling thing that seemed to be snapping at the nerves of the people in the street. More than usually, they were jay-walking, misjudging speeds and mouthing obscenities at the drivers, me included.

Part of Elizabeth Street was being torn up and, with the number of lanes reduced, the cars moved along in snarling, resentful jerks. It took me almost an hour to get from Broadway up to St Peter’s Lane, and I had an aching head and a dry throat when I got there. An hour of swearing and being sworn at is bad preparation for anything; the stairs up to the floor where my office is seemed to have doubled and got steeper, and the corridor looked longer and gloomier than usual.

I opened the door, and the letters inside skittered across the floor. I left them there and ran the answering machine tape. The first two calls signified nothing; the
third was crisp and to the point:

‘Hardy,’ the voice was light, neutral-sounding—possibly Grey’s. ‘Message: call 827 3410 before midnight without fail. Whether you have anything to say or not.’

I wanted to talk back to the voice, ask it to be reasonable, enter into dialogue, maybe work out a deal. But the message was as brief and uncommunicative as a classified ad. Grey had a sound psychogical grasp though. After another business message the voice came through again:

‘The girl is in good health.’

Unless Hardy screws up.
I thought. I ran the rest of the tape in hope that there might be some good news on it. The last message was a somewhat breathless one from Lambert, the literary facilitator, asking me to call him urgently. I got Maud first, but she put me through without any chat. When Lambert answered, I imagined I could see him twisting his head in that nervous, persecuted manner. I felt like doing some head-twisting myself.

‘Oh, God! Thanks for calling, Hardy. Another section of the synopsis has just arrived.’

I thought I’d ask the sleuthly question first this time. ‘How was it delivered?’

‘What? Oh, by mail. Special delivery or something.’

‘Posted in Sydney?’

‘How do I know? Oh, I see, the envelope. I’ll get Maud to look. Does it really matter?’

‘Don’t know,’ I grunted. ‘Well, what does he say?’

He wasn’t a complete fool, and he remembered that he was getting my time for free. ‘What have you come up with?’

‘Some things, some names. I could be getting closer. But what he’s writing is still crucial. I need to know.’

‘Of course. Well, it’s frightful, gripping stuff … but very disturbing.’

‘Can you still hear the cash registers?’

‘I’ll ignore that. I’d be a hypocrite if I said it wasn’t
commercial; but the disturbing thing is that the suicide motif seems to be getting stronger. The hero …’ he broke off and coughed, ‘well, the protagonist is well and truly hooked on the drugs he’s selling, and he’s developed a new interest.’

‘Hold on, I’m more interested in threats. He’s still being threatened by the original crims, the car people?’

‘Umm, he feels so, and also by people involved in the drug business. He’s stepping on toes there, but there’s something worse.’

‘Jesus, worse?’

‘It’s another level of threat, really, and coming from himself. He’s sort of splitting into two personalities and the one threatens the other with physical extinction.’ I could hear the excitement in his voice; maybe the breath-lessness had come from ringing me while reading the last few words. ‘It’s extraordinary. I’ve never read anything like it—very contemporary and powerful.’

‘You’re writing the reviews, Mr Lambert. I wouldn’t if I were you. Any note with it?’

‘No.’

‘I’m going to need to see this. Can you run me off a copy? I’ll come by and get it now.’

‘I can do that, yes. Do you really think you’re getting somewhere?’

Oddly, I thought I was. I had a feeling that I was gaining on William Mountain, but I also had a feeling that he knew he was being gained on. I made encouraging noises to Lambert, and left the office. On the stairs I remembered that I hadn’t made a note of the contact number Grey, if it was Grey, had left. I swore, and went back and wrote it down. On the stairs again and I realised that I hadn’t looked at the mail; this time I just swore and kept going.

Maud was waiting for me just inside the door at Brent Carstairs. She handed me a manila envelope, ritually, as if it contained the Bruce-Partington plans, and waited for me to make a smart remark. I fooled her.

Lambert evidently didn’t want to see me, and I could live with that. I wanted to think of the synopsis as cards in my hand and Erica’s safety as the pot. I didn’t want to see Lambert’s bow tie or the best-seller-at-risk look in his eyes.

When I got back to Glebe, Hilde was there collecting some pot plants from the garden and some other things she’d left behind in the house. She was about four months pregnant, very happy, and had never looked better. She kissed me and stood back.

‘You look like hell, Cliff. What’ve you been doing to yourself?’

I tried to review my day—Grey, Tickener, Henderson, Lambert: unloving company—no wonder I wasn’t looking my freshest. I grunted something unintelligible, and peered through the dusty window at the backyard, which looked a bit more dusty itself now that a couple of the pots had gone. Hilde pulled at the envelope in my hand.

‘What’s this?’ Her tolerant, amused curiosity about my work was one of things I liked about her. One of them; there were plenty more. I gave her an abbreviated account of the case while she made some coffee. I didn’t give her the details about the night with Erica, but I didn’t need to—Hilde’s antennae for sexual signals were highly tuned.

‘What will Helen think about that?’

‘What can she say? Do I object to her giving ol’ Mike his conjugale?’

‘You do, but you don’t say. It’s not quite the same, somehow.’ She bent down and stroked the cat. ‘He’s sleek, looks like you’re taking better care of him than yourself.’

‘He runs the show. How’s Frank?’

‘He’s fine, working hard what with all this hood-killing going on.’ She patted her stomach and looked proudly at her big breasts. ‘He’s looking forward to it like mad. I hope he’s there on the day.’

‘He’ll be there. I’m sorry, love. I’ve got to read this.’

‘That’s all right. If you find out any more, you can go on
with the story. I know you always keep back the nasty stuff anyway.’

I grinned. ‘That’s true.’

‘I’ll collect up some more of my junk. What happened here? Everything’s all messed up.’