Heroin Annie (11 page)

‘It doesn't sound serious. You'd be better off using the police, scores of men, computers …'

The red deepened in his face and his big, moist mouth went thin and hard; any affability he'd brought in with him had dropped away.

‘I said no!' He slammed his palm down on my desk. ‘I'm involved in some very delicate business negotiations; very delicate, with a great deal of money involved. The slightest complication of my affairs, the slightest hint of police hanging about, and they could fall through.' He got the words out with difficulty through the rising tide of his anger. He seemed intolerant of opposition. Maybe Kenneth knew what he was doing. The woman blew smoke and looked concerned but said nothing.

‘Okay, okay', I said. ‘I'm glad of the work. I charge seventy-five dollars a day plus expenses. You get an itemised account. I take a retainer of two hundred dollars.'

He dipped into the bulging pocket of his suit coat and fished out a chequebook. He scribbled, ripped and handed the cheque over—five hundred dollars.

‘Do you want them shot, or tortured to death slowly?' I said.

‘Who?'

The woman snorted ‘Horace', crushed out her cigarette in the stand and levered herself up from the chair. I gathered that they were going.

‘Not so fast. I need names, addresses, descriptions, photographs …'

He cut me off by hauling a large manila envelope out of his other pocket and dumping it on the desk. I hoped his tailor never saw him out on the street.

‘I'm busy', he said shortly. ‘All you'll need is there. Just find him, Mr Hardy, and report to me.' He'd calmed down; he was happiest telling people what to do.

‘It could be unpleasant', I said. ‘He might be smoking cigarettes, taking the odd drink …'

‘A full report, no punches pulled.'

‘You'll get it.' I opened the door and he bustled out. She cruised after him, still looking concerned. He seemed to have brought her along just to prove that the boy had a mother.

I sat down at the desk again, propped the cheque up in front of me and opened the envelope. There were three photographs, photostats of a parking ticket and a speeding summons and of a letter, dated two months back, from the Registrar of the University of Sydney. It ws directed to Kenneth at an address in Wahroonga. There was also a sheet of Horace Silverman's business paper half-covered in type.

The typed sheet gave me the low-down on Ken. Born in Sydney twenty-one years ago, six feet tall when last measured and slim of build, fair of hair with no marks or scars. The last meeting with his parents was given and dated—a dinner eight weeks back. Two addresses in the inner suburbs were listed, and it was suggested that the Registrar's letter had been sent to Ken's home address by mistake. His interests were given—tennis, bushwalking and politics. His major subject at university was psychology, and a Dr Katharine Garson was listed as his student counsellor.

The photos were black and white, good quality, good size. They showed a young man in his late teens or around twenty, all three shots roughly contemporaneous. Kenneth Silverman had it all—thick, wavy hair, even features, broad shoulders. I'd have taken bets that his teeth were good. One of the pictures showed him in tennis gear, and he looked right; in another he was leaning against a sports car and he looked right in that too. I couldn't see any resemblance to Horace, maybe a little to Beatrice. There were none of those signs-weak chin, close-set eyes—that are supposed to indicate, but don't, character deficiencies. Kenneth Silverman looked healthy and happy.

Sydney University was just down the road and Silverman's last known address was in Glebe, my stamping ground. I went down to the street and along to the backyard of the tattooist's shop where I keep my car. In an ideal world, I'd find the boy in Glebe before three o'clock, deposit my cheque, draw some out and be home in time to invite someone out to dinner.

The Fisher Library of the University of Sydney is a public place, like the whole campus. This statutory fact has been found useful by a few Vice-Chancellors who've felt the need to call the cops in. I got there a little after midday and looked up Dr Garson in the handbook—a string of degrees, senior lecturer in psychology. The Psychology Department was in one of those new concrete buildings that academics have allowed themselves to be herded into. They have as much personality as a bar of soap and, in my experience, they have a corresponding effect on the people who work in them. Not Dr Garson though; she'd done her concrete cell out with pictures that actually looked like people and places, and she had a flagon of sherry sitting on the window ledge.

‘A sherry?' she said when she'd installed me in a chair.

‘Please; then I can show you what good manners I've got, how well I can sip and murmur appreciatively.'

‘Don't bother', she said pouring, ‘piss is piss'. She set the glass on the desk near me and took a belt herself. ‘So you're a private detective? Some of my colleagues wouldn't allow you on the campus, let alone in their rooms.'

‘It's a public place.'

She raised one plucked eyebrow. ‘So it is.' She finished her sherry and poured another. She had fine bones in her wrists and even finer ones in her face.

‘I want some information about a student you counselled.' She laughed. ‘Unlikely.'

‘I want to help him—find him, that is.'

She sipped. ‘Perhaps he wants to stay lost.'

‘He still can if he wants to.' I drank some of the sherry, dry. ‘I find him, report to his father and that's that.'

‘You don't look like a thug, Mr Hardy, but you're in a thuggish trade. Why should I help you?'

‘One, you've got an independent mind, two, Silverman might be in trouble.'

She didn't jump out of her skirt at the name but she didn't treat it like a glass of flat beer either.

‘Kenneth Silverman', she said slowly.

‘That's right, rich Kenneth who dropped out and disappeared. His Mum and Dad would like to know why. You wouldn't be able to put their minds at rest by any chance?'

‘No.'

‘Can't or won't?'

‘Can't. I was surprised when he dropped out, he was doing well.'

‘What did you do about it?'

She finished her sherry with an exasperated flick. ‘What could I do? I counsel twenty students and teach another sixty. I wrote to him asking him to contact me for a talk. He didn't.'

‘Had you counselled him much?'

‘No, he didn't seem to need it.'

‘It looks now as if he did.'

‘Not really, he became radical at the beginning of the year. It happens to most of the bright ones, although a bit late in his case. The process sends some of them haywire but Ken seemed to be able to handle it. His first term's work was excellent, he trailed off a bit in early second term, nothing serious, then he just suspended for no reason.'

‘Are you curious about that?'

‘Yes, very.'

‘Then help me.'

She took her time thinking about it. The process involved pouring some more sherry and tossing back the thick mane of chestnut hair.

‘All right.' She held up her glass and sunlight sifted through the pale, amber fluid. ‘You'd better talk to his girlfriend, Kathy Martin.'

‘How can I contact her?'

‘She'll be at my lecture at a quarter past two. She's a blonde with a suntan, you can't miss her.'

‘You won't introduce us?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

She smiled. ‘My reputation', she said.

I finished my sherry, found out where the lecture was held, thanked her and left.

The lecture theatre sloped steeply and had front and back entrances. I killed some time with a sandwich and coffee and was back at a quarter past two watching the acolytes roll up for knowledge. I stood up the back, and tried not to be depressed by their impossible youth. One of the last students in was a blonde with her hair tied back; she had on a simple, sleeveless dress and sandals; her arms and legs and face were very brown. She sat down and got out a clipboard and looked like business as Dr Garson started in on R.D. Laing. I snuck out for coffee I didn't want and when I got back the students were dribbling out. I approached the blonde girl as she loped out into the quadrangle.

‘Kathy Martin?'

‘Yes.' Up close, she was the original outdoors girl with a demoralising sheen of good health.

‘My name is Hardy, I've been hired by Mr Horace Silverman to look for his son. I understand you were a friend.'

‘Yes.' I got the impression she wasn't a big talker.

‘Well, can we have a chat?'

She looked at her watch. ‘I have a tutorial in an hour and I haven't done all the reading.'

‘It won't take long.' I herded her across to a bench. She sat down after looking at her watch again.

‘When did you last see Kenneth?'

‘Nearly two months ago.'

‘Where?'

‘At his place.'

‘Where's that?'

‘He had a squat in Glebe, Sweatman Street.' She gave me the number and I wrote it down.

‘Why was he squatting? He had plenty of money didn't he?'

‘Kenny stopped taking his family's money. He went left, extreme left.'

‘Did you?'

‘Not so extreme.'

‘Did you quarrel?'

She frowned. ‘A bit, but we didn't split up, if that's what you mean.'

‘You didn't?'

‘No, he was around. I saw him, we did what we usually did. You wouldn't understand.'

‘One day he was there and the next day he wasn't?'

‘It wasn't a day-to-day thing.' She tapped her battered briefcase. ‘Look, I really have to read this stuff.'

‘Won't keep you a minute. What did you do about it—Kenneth's disappearance?'

‘Nothing. I said you wouldn't follow. It wasn't a disappearance. The people he was in with, they do it all the time—go north, take jobs for money, you know?'

‘So you weren't worried.'

‘What could I do?' she snapped. ‘I couldn't go to the police or anything, they were really
out
in Kenny's terms. I didn't know his family. I just hoped he'd turn up; I still do.'

‘What about the people at the squat?'

‘They were raided. The house was taken over.' ‘This was after Kenneth went missing?'

She paused. ‘Kenneth sounds weird. Yes, I think so, soon after.'

I tried to digest the information and lost her while I did it. She got up and said goodbye in a voice that meant it. I thanked her and watched her walk away with that long, bouncy step and the thought came to me that Kenny had at least one good reason to stick around.

Sweatman Street has seen worse days; the big, two-storeyed, bay-windowed houses had been broken up into flats and rooms until recently, when small, affluent families had taken them over. More European cars and four-wheel-drives than beaten-up Holdens with a rust problem. The street is down near the water and getting more leafy and smart daily and the pockets of poverty in it are not old-style—port and pension—but new-style; dope and dole poverty.

The address Kathy had given me was the last house in a terrace of twenty. It featured weeds and broken glass and peeling paint. The windows at the side and back were set too high up to see in. Around the back, I was surprised to find that all the fences dividing the yards had been removed. This left an immense space which was taken up with trees, rubbish and children's play gear in about equal proportions.

The broken windows at the back of the house were boarded up and the door was nailed shut. I gave it an experimental tug, and a shout came from behind me.

‘Hey! What're you doing?'

He was big, with a lot of hair on his head and face. His jeans, sneakers and T-shirt were old and dirty. I stepped down from the door and tried to look innocent.

‘Just looking', I said.

He was close enough for me to see the aggression pent up in him and something else—there was a nervousness in his movements and a frozen look in his eyes that I'd seen before in speed-freaks and pill-poppers. I opened my hands in a placating gesture which he misunderstood, perhaps deliberately. He crowded up close and bumped me back against the crumbling brick wall. I wasn't ready for it, and lost a bit of breath.

‘Take it easy', I said. I put out a hand to hold him back and he swept it aside. His punch was a clumsy looping effort, and I couldn't resist it; I stepped inside and hit him short, just above the belt buckle. He sagged and I grabbed him under the arms to hold him up.

‘Let him go.' Another man came from behind the trees; he was slighter and clean-shaven, and he dropped into a martial arts pose about ten feet away from me. I let the bearded man slide down the wall.

‘Don't be silly', I said. ‘All this is silly; I just want to ask a few questions. I'm looking for someone.'

‘Do him, Chris', my winded opponent said, and Chris didn't need any encouragement. He jumped up and let go a flying kick at my shoulder. It was a good, high jump, but the trick with this stuff is not to watch the acrobatics. I ducked under it and kicked the leg he landed on out from under him. He went down in a heap and the stiff-armed chop he came up with might have looked good on the mat but was way too slow in the field. I swayed away from it and hit him just where I'd hit his mate; and that was a mistake because he had washboard muscles there, but I had the combination ready and the next punch landed on his nose where there aren't any muscles, just nerves to cause pain and blood vessels to break. He yelped and threw his hands up over his face.

So I had one on the ground and one with a bloody face and no information. Then I heard a slow, ironic handclap; she was standing on the steps of the next house, dark and fat in a shapeless dress and with a cigarette between her lips.

‘I didn't start it', I said inanely.

‘Who cares?' She seemed to find it all funny; flesh on her face shook as she laughed and she puffed at the cigarette without touching it.