She sucked in the smoke. ‘Safer than hang gliding.’ She gave the sort of cackle that no person under sixty should be able to produce. Where the makeup had flaked off, her skin was a raddled ruin; her hair was thin and retreating like Glenda Jackson’s as Elizabeth I, and all the alcohol and tobacco on her breath couldn’t disguise the smell of poor teeth and lousy food. But through all that you could see she had once been beautiful, that her ruined features had once had a sort of perfection. And she still had guts.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said sharply. ‘I look like garbage. What d’you want from me?’
She pulled hard on the cigarette and took a deep drink as if she wanted to hasten the decay.
‘Singer,’ I said. ‘John Singer and his wife. I understand you know a bit about them.’
‘Knew. Singer’s dead.’
‘Okay, knew.’
‘Any more money?’
‘It’s my turn to say “It depends”, Peggy. I’ll pay well for something interesting.’ I tapped her glass. ‘Bit flush, aren’t you?’
She sighed. ‘Good double and had both of ‘em each way. Once in a bloody blue moon. Nearly all gone now. What’s your game?’
‘Private investigator. Did you read about that house in Clovelly?’
She was wearing a thin yellow cardigan draped over her shoulders. She pulled the sleeves across her chest and shivered. ‘I read about it.’
‘I helped close it down. That’s where I got the dicky knee.’
‘You must be all right, then. Shit, what a place! Were they really
…”
I didn’t want to go down memory lane so I cut her off. ‘The Singers, Peggy. What do you know?’
‘I know a bit.’
‘How come?’ I hadn’t meant to let the implication slip in- that she was light years removed from the Singers socially and financially, but she was smart and she caught it.
‘I’m a mess, I know. Wasn’t always. But my girl Sandy was on with Singer for a year or more. Then he dumped her. She was just a kid, eighteen or so, and she took it bad.’
‘Singer’d be a bit long in the tooth for an eighteen-year-old, wouldn’t he?’ I said sceptically.
She finished her drink. ‘Didn’t look it, didn’t act it. Sandy had no complaints, not at first. What’re you drinking?’ She got up with one of my tens in her hand. That’s where it would go, dollar by dollar.
‘Scotch.’ My knee was hurting. When she came back with the drinks, she gave me a smile that still had a trace of the old power in it, but it would be a sloppy grimace soon.
‘Singer wasn’t so bad himself,’ she said as soon as she’d lit another cigarette. ‘Gave Sandy plenty of money, bought her a car. It was that bitch of a wife who was the real trouble.’
I sipped my drink and let her tell it.
‘I got this from Sandy, see? She said something happened to Singer. He lost his… don’t know what you’d call it. He couldn’t get it up. All that. Depression, isn’t that what they call it? Sandy reckoned the wife was behind it, driving him mad. Hard bitch.’
‘Do you know her?’
‘Yeah, I did. She’s older than me but I don’t suppose she looks it. Well, she knocked around a bit before she got on to Singer. I knew her then and for a few years after that.’ Her voice trailed off. They would have been the bad years, when things started to slide and people started to avoid her and every problem needed two or three drinks instead of one. She snapped back to the present. ‘I tell you she’s as hard as they come. Singer always liked the girls, see? And Marion used to sort them out. I saw her do it once at a party. Bloody near ripped this kid apart.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Like this.’ She made claws of her fingers and lifted them. The skin on her hands was yellow and cracked, her nails were bright red and some of the paint had got on the skin around them. She made a slashing movement and I got the idea. It was disconcerting stuff for a loyal and faithful employee to hear about the boss. If Mrs S had turned the violence against the philanderer that would explain why Singer wasn’t out boating and banging the birds any more. But it wouldn’t explain calling me in. I was aware again of how much I didn’t know about Singer; too much. That set me to thinking about people who would have known him.
‘McLeary,’ I muttered into my scotch.
‘What?’
‘Talking to myself. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s known anything much about Singer. I was thinking that Tom McLeary’d know a bit.’
‘I’ll say, but don’t mention him and Marion Singer in the same breath.’
‘Why?’
‘Jesus! She hates him. He used to supply Singer with girls and they had the casino deal. You know about that?’ She looked at me shrewdly as she finished her drink. Her brain was probably only half working, but there was enough of it ticking over for her to know how deep the water was. She wagged a finger at me. ‘You don’t know. Knew you didn’t.’
‘Tell me, then.’ I put twenty dollars on the table.
‘No. Fuck you, ask the bloody coppers.’
She was a bit scared and the booze was getting to her. The last one had probably been a double and it was hitting hard, the way it does when the liver’s shot. And she was probably due for her afternoon nap before starting on the evening session. It wasn’t parfit or gentil helping her to oblivion but it’s not a parfit, gentil world. I pushed the money towards her.
‘Tell me a bit more about McLeary and tell me where I can find Sandy.’
She looked at me with those eyes that had stared into countless drinks. She wanted to say no, to tell me to keep my grubby questions away from the spotless ears of her little girl. She was a mother and an alcoholic and the body chemistry won. Besides, the ears weren’t spotless any more.
‘Get us another drink.’ She held up her glass and I could feel her watching me as I limped away to get it. She could punish me just that much.
‘Won’t tell you much about Mac. In everything, gambling… Edgecliff, Maroubra… girls… papers.’
‘What do you mean, papers?’
‘Place is full of fuckin’ foreigners. Wogs, chinks. Papers, passports, you know.’
I nodded. ‘Sandy, and the name she goes by.’
‘More money,’ she said. More oblivion, more laughs, less pain.
I put another twenty on the table. She took the notes and her knuckles cracked as she closed her hand around them.
‘Modesto,’ she said.
I looked at her.
‘Her father… bigger shit than Singer, bigger shit than you, biggest shit in the world.’
‘Address?’
‘Flat two, eighty-one Robbins Road, Double Bay.’
It was a different address, but the name Modesto was the one Frank Parker had given me as the girlfriend whose movements had been checked.
‘What does she do?’ I said.
She shrugged.
‘Has she got a friend?’
‘Yeah, Yank. Funny name, Tod or somethin’. Piss off.’
20
Frank, you’ve been holding out on me.’ I was using a telephone in the Royal Oaks.
‘Never.’
