She stuck her hand under the big pillow on the bed and pulled out an embroidered, beaded case which she opened and took out a pair of glasses with fuse-wire thin gold frames. She hooked them on to her fine, experienced face where they looked stylish.
‘They look good,’ I said. I lowered myself onto one of the cushions and took out the photo-prints.
‘Rubbish,’ she said as I handed the prints over, ‘they make me look like a hag, which I am.’ But she was pleased just the same and disposed to co-operate. She looked carefully at the pictures for a long time, then pulled off her glasses and stared across the mile or so of space between us.
‘They’re not very good of him.’
My heart bumped. ‘But you do know him?’
She leaned back, vamping: ‘Many times, many times.’
I was too tense for it. ‘Where is he now?’ I rasped.
‘Haven’t a clue, ‘ she said cheerfully. ‘Haven’t seen him for ages.’
‘Jesus! You don’t know where he lived?’
‘No dear, he never took me home to meet his Mum.’
18
I wasn’t really let down; I hadn’t expected him to be boarding there, but I’d hoped Honey would still be in touch with him. Still, a year isn’t a long time, I thought. The trail was still warm compared to some I’ve followed and it was time to consolidate, get all I could on him, and look for the next doorway.
I made a cigarette while she fiddled with the pictures. Her face was hard and vain but there was humour in it and in the set of her lean body. She looked as if a shrug might always be her next movement. I blew smoke and put the match in a seashell ashtray.
‘You must have liked this one, Honey?’
‘Why d’you say that?’ She went on fiddling nervously.
‘Do you let all your clients use you as a mail drop?’
She looked up shrewdly. ‘Know about that eh? Let me tell you, I was furious. It broke all my rules.’
‘Like not knowing their names?’
‘Well, that gets broken from time to time. No, I mean about getting involved, families and all that.’
‘I get it. Something came from Canberra?’
‘Canberra, yes.’
‘Was that the last you saw of him, when he picked that up?’
‘The very last. I wasn’t sorry, he was no good.’
‘In what way?’
‘In every way — mean, selfish, rough…’
‘He was violent?’
‘I’ll say. I thought he was going to eat me the first time. Look, this isn’t embarrassing you?’
‘No, I’m older than I look. Go on.’
‘He really liked the old stuff, you know? Kinky for it.’
‘Kinky in what way?’
‘Just… very keen, very appreciative of me and I’m no picture. I’ve been through the mill and I’ve got the marks to prove it. He lapped it up.’
‘Did he have much money?’ I butted the cigarette in the seashell; the old tart fanned the smoke away from her face irritably and reached under her gown to scratch. I decided she was closer to sixty than forty.
‘He didn’t have much money,’ she said slowly, ‘but enough. Most of what he had must have gone on booze.’
‘What did he drink?’
‘Everything, but he never got really pissed. He was big, see? I mean really big,’ she tapped the pictures. ‘These don’t show it. He must have been close to fifteen stone and getting heavier. I suppose he could carry a lot of grog.’
‘All right, now let’s try to pin it down a bit. When did this letter from Canberra come?’
‘About a year ago, October or November last year. Look, what is all this…?’
‘Tell you in a minute. Did he say what was in the letter or give you any idea of what he was doing?’
‘Not a bloody clue. He came here two or three times a week for six months or so, we had a few drinks and we…’ she waved at the bed. ‘Sometimes he stayed the night, not often He paid up and we didn’t talk hardly at all. As often as not he was drunk when he lobbed in and he stayed drunk; he always brought grog with him.’
‘What did he wear?’
‘Why?’
‘Might give me an idea of what he was doing or where he lived.’
‘Yeah, I suppose it could. Let me see now.’ She resumed the hand in chin position and seemed to be enjoying herself. Somehow she gave out a lot of warmth and I would have been enjoying her company if I hadn’t been so tense about the information. ‘I never saw him in a suit, that means he wasn’t a professional man, right?’
I smiled. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘He wore jeans and T shirts I think, jumper sometimes… boots I think.’
‘Anything distinctive — tattoo, scar, jewellery?’
‘No, nothing like that. Oh, he was very brown.’
‘Suntanned?’
‘Yeah, sort of.’
‘But not really like a tan?’
‘No, it was a yellowish colour and very even all over. He must have been a nudist.’
Something was beginning to come through, a faint buzz, a distant hum that promised a connection, a link. I closed my eyes and let the synapses tick before I asked the next question. She looked at me expectantly.
‘Tell me, Honey, was this fifteen stone all fat?’
‘Oh shit no, didn’t I say? He’s a muscle man, or he was. He was getting a bit flabby from the drink but he had muscles like this.’ She lifted her arm and flexed it in the strongman-admiring-his-bicep pose.
I smiled at her and she smiled back and rotated her wrist; I could imagine the ounce of muscle sliding along under the skin.
‘Where did you meet him Honey?’ I said quietly.
‘I picked him up outside the Spartacus Health Studio. Know it?’
‘No.’
‘Pitt Street, bottom end, it used to be a good spot in the old days. I was just going past this night, not really looking. Well, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, not any more. He was coming out and he was really something, Hercules you know? I must have looked at him right because he said something and there we were.’
I believed it, every word. It all hung together, the athletics, the adulation, the muscle-building, maybe the dissipation, too. And other things made sense. I was itching to get back to my notes, to tie things together with arrows and signs for a equals b. I was staring straight at Honey while doing this thinking and she became agitated, her blue-veined hands started fluttering and plucking at the frill on her cushion.
‘Ah, you said you’d tell me about this,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It’s not political is it? I don’t want to know if it’s political.’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Oh, Canberra and that.’
‘No, it’s not political. It’s about old ladies looking for lost boys and rotten apples in barrels and people not getting what they deserve.’
She yawned, she was used to babblers. ‘You said something about paying me,’ she said.
‘Do you know anything more about this guy, Honey? Anything at all? Did he have a car?’ I was clutching, reaching for little confirmatory details that would bolster up the theory I was building.
‘No, I never saw a car. Hey where’re you going? What about the money?’
