I got up and pulled out my wallet, released a twenty and five and let them flutter down onto the bed. She looked at them with disappointment shaping her eyebrows and pouting lips.
‘I thought there’d be more.’
I reached down and patted the purple hair, partly out of curiosity. ‘You’ve been a great help, Honey. Tell you what, if it all works out I’ll buy you a present. What d’you need?’
‘A facelift.’
I thought of other faces, faces changed by time and booze and distress. My most recent picture of Warwick Baudin was more than eight years old. I wondered if I’d know him.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said. ‘Talking of faces, is Warwick recognisable from the pictures?’ I bent and gently retrieved the prints.
She shrugged. ‘I dunno. Warwick is it? It just said W on the letter. I recognised him but I’m good with faces — depends how good you are with faces.’
Fair enough. I patted the hair again, it was stiff with spray and dye and chemicals. ‘I hope it all works out Honey, I’ll be in touch.’
She muttered something I didn’t catch and I left the room and went down the stairs and out of the house. The sun had broken through again and the day was bright and glaring but Inge wasn’t on her chair any more. Honey Gully didn’t come out on her balcony to wave me goodbye — all the good whores were indoors waiting for the day to end.
19
My theory was built on hints and mortared up with guesses and intuitive leaps. I worked on it as I plodded through the steamy heat towards my car. Richard Selby looked to be at the bottom of it; I assumed he was Henry Brain’s benefactor, the one who had set the works in motion and had followed up by talking to young Booth, the lawyer. He had a stake in it, his wife and kids were in line for the Chatterton money or threatened with the cold shoulder. He had a lot to lose but the question was — how had he got into the game? The obvious answer was in response to something dropped from Henry Brain’s wagging, alcoholic tongue.
The car was a sweat-box; I wound the windows down and drove along with the other perspiring prisoners down past the park to lower Pitt Street. I parked a few blocks from the station, stuck the. 38 in my pants and hit the street. The place was listed in the book and I reached it in a couple of minutes. There were two windows above an army disposals store; one said Spartacus and the other said Health Studio in big, freshly painted letters. I went up a narrow staircase and met the same words again, this time on two plate glass doors. Smaller letters said that the manager of the establishment was Leonidas Green. I went into a small room formed by six-foot-high movable partitions. A girl was sitting at a desk reading a magazine, smoking and drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup. Her yellow hair fell down from a centre part that ran like a white scar along her skull. She looked up and gave me a fifty carat smile with capped teeth, red lips and eyes like jewelled spiders.
‘Good afternoon sir,’ she breathed, ‘are you interested in building your body?’
‘Not really, I need a new one.’
She smiled at lower voltage. She was wearing a sleeveless dress the colour of her hair and an even, sun-lamp tan; she drew on her cigarette and showed me her profile when she blew the smoke away. Her voice was phoney- American.
‘How can I help you?’
‘Is Mr Green around?’
‘He’s very busy. If you could tell me your business.’
I cave her a card. ‘A few questions, no trouble.’
‘I’ll see.’ She got up and came sashaying around the desk on three-inch heels.
‘I’ll see, too,’ I said and went through the gap in the partitions with her.
We went into a gleaming room about sixty feet long by thirty wide. The polished boards gleamed, chrome barbells and other equipment gleamed, but the gleamingest things of ill were the mirrors that ran around all four walls. There was even a mirror on the back of the partition that formed the reception room. They ran from floor level up to the height of a tall man and after taking a few steps into the room I felt as though I was surrounded. The girl swayed over to where three men were throwing a medicine ball around. They stood about ten feet apart at the points of a triangle and they were heaving the big ball hard, mixing up low and high throws. We stood back and watched for a minute and when one of the players missed his catch the girl stepped forward.
‘Mr Green, there’s a gentleman to see you.’
The shortest man in the group, a chunky guy with crisp curling grey hair, jerked his head around impatiently.
‘Not now Ronnie, tell him to come back later.’
I moved around Ronnie and stepped up to him. He was about five ten and four feet across the shoulders; muscles bulged everywhere under his black singlet. He was middle-aged but the skin on his face was tight and smooth. The other two were carbon copies — six-footers with waved hair and vacant expressions. Their muscles looked to be trying to burst out of their singlets and shorts and run away to start life on their own.
‘Let’s make it now,’ I said. ‘It won’t take a minute and then you can go back to playing ball.’
The Adonis on the left suddenly flicked the medicine ball at me, I moved aside and it hit Ronnie in the stomach. She collapsed and coffee from her cup flew everywhere and her cigarette dropped onto a canvas mat. Green swooped on the butt and snarled at the ball-thrower.
‘You fuck-wit Kurt, go and get a mop.’
The other man helped Ronnie up; her spider eyes blazed and she shook off his hand. Green was holding the smoking butt between two fingers as if it were a dead mouse.
‘I’ve told you not to smoke in here Ronnie,’ he said. ‘Go away, I’ll talk to you later.’ He passed the cigarette to her and bent down again to pick up my card which the girl had dropped. He read the card and clapped his hand to his forehead theatrically.
‘Oh my God, what do you want?’ He eyed me professionally and noticed the bulge. ‘Keep the gun where it is will you? I’ve got some sensitive people here, they’re likely to faint at the sight of a gun.’
Kurt was back with a mop soaking up the spilt coffee. The other he-man had wandered off towards a wall. He picked up a small bar-bell and began moving it one-handed from waist level to shoulder; he turned sideways and looked lovingly at the overblown muscles in his upper arm. I pulled out the photographs and gave them to Green.
‘I’m looking for this man. Do you know him?’
He gave them a bored glance. ‘Hard to tell, I don’t think so.’
‘Look again, it’s important.’
‘Just who do you think you are? I’ve said I don’t recognise him.’
Raised voices and a flurry of movement took our attention to the end of the room.
Green groaned, ‘Not again,’ and hurried off towards the commotion. Kurt shouldered his mop and followed; his mate moved in front of the mirror like an entranced Narcissus. At the far end of the room, away from the windows, four men were gathered around two who were lying on a canvas mat. A big, fat character who was polishing one of the mirrors stopped work and turned to watch the others. The men on the floor were stripped to their athletic supports and they lay in a line with the soles of their feet touching.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked Green.
‘A bet,’ he said grudgingly. He addressed one of the men on the mat. ‘What is it this time Carl, five hundred?’
Carl put his hands out behind his head and took a grip on a medicine ball. ‘Seven fifty,’ he grunted. Green shrugged. ‘Fifty against,’ he said.
‘You’re on Leo,’ said one of the watchers, a tall, heavily muscled citizen with a widow’s peak of slick black hair. Kurt and one of the other body-builders got their bets down and Carl’s companion flipped himself up into a squatting position, still keeping his feet braced against Carl’s.
‘Carl’s betting he can get the medicine ball up to where Saul can touch it and back above his head seven
