‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now sit down and let’s keep it friendly. You tell me what I want to know and nobody gets hurt. If you don’t, I won’t be answerable. This leg makes me very bad-tempered. How’s Rex, by the way?’
He sat down on the edge of a chair, hitching at his pants a bit as he did it. His black beard was carefully trimmed and didn’t look as if it hid a weak chin as my father always opined beards did. He had been wrong about a lot of things. Tal didn’t look quite as wide out of his overalls, but he was wide enough. He was wearing a blue suit with a blue and white wide-striped shirt under it. I picked out the point on the stripe I’d have to hit to stop him.
‘Rex is real anxious to meet you again,’ he said.
‘I’ll bet. Sandy, you mentioned a drink before. And did you find any painkillers?’
She looked at Brown, who nodded impatiently. ‘How did you take Rex? He wouldn’t tell us. And what did you do with his gun? He was crazy about that weapon.’
‘I took him with a bit of string and a hell of a lot of luck. I’d say Rex was an unlucky type. He should be in a different line of work. I gave his gun to the cops.’
He looked surprised at that and not pleased.
‘I never knew a driver who was any good with a gun. Have you got one, Tal?’
‘No.’
‘Good. You know, I saw a pump shotgun the other day. Belonged to the guy who gave me this leg. If I had it here I could demonstrate what it can do. I should have souvenired it. It’d knock that fancy TV set through the wall, for a start.’
Sandy had been clinking things in the kitchen. She came in with a tray and nearly dropped it when she heard me. There was a bottle of Teacher’s scotch on the tray with some glasses and a bowl of ice. She’d filled a milk bottle with water and it rattled against a glass as she put the tray down. A strip of Aspros was beside the scotch.
Tal didn’t look too comfortable; he glanced at my head bandage a couple of times as if he was wondering whether I’d suffered brain damage. That was all right with me.
‘I’ll take four Aspros,’ I said to Sandy. She peeled the paper off. ‘And a bit of the Teacher’s with water. Keep to one side as you do it!’
I sat down in the chair with the money on it and sipped my drink while she poured two more. She sat down; I put my glass down, picked up the money and flicked it at her. The notes fell untidily on the Persian carpet.
‘What’s that for?’ Tal asked, and his accent was a little less soft.
‘Information,’ I said. ‘Like what you’re going to give me, except that I’m not going to pay for it.’
‘Get fucked.’ He was lifting his glass to his mouth. I swung the stick and the metal ferrule hit it just right-the glass shattered and the liquid sprayed all over him. Sandy shrieked and dropped her drink.
‘A waste,’ I said. ‘And bloody bad for the carpet.’ I put the stick down, keeping the gun steady, and had a drink. I crumbled two of the Aspros in my fingers and put the powder into the glass.
‘My leg hurts. And I’m nervous, and I don’t like people who kick me. As I said, you’re in trouble.’
‘He’s mad,’ Sandy whispered.
‘I told you to get fucked.’ He was picking glass out of his clothes. His trousers were wet at the thighs and a little cut on his cheek just above the beard was bleeding. A sliver of glass caught in the dark beard glittered like a gem. Adrenalin was rushing through me and my mind was speeding, but I reckoned I didn’t have long in the cockpit. The phone could ring; someone could call. Tal was genuinely tough and resourceful the way racing drivers have to be. He’d try something.
‘I won’t try to be reasonable with you,’ I said. ‘Racing drivers are fucking lunatics to start with. I want to know why Freddy Ward was so interested in me.’
His mouth started to form those same words again and I tapped him on the knee with the stick, not hard, not soft. ‘I learned a bit about knees in the hospital. How they work, and all. Tricky things, easy to hurt.’ I whacked the side of the same knee. He winced and swore.
‘Knees and eyes,’ I said. ‘That’s what a driver needs. I guess hands aren’t so important.’ His hand was resting on the arm of the chair and I slammed the stick down on it. He yelped and wrung the hand.
I kept my eyes locked on his and moved the gun up a bit. ‘This is a Smith amp; Wesson Combat. 38, two- inch barrel, six shots. But you won’t have to worry about the six shots. I’m going to shoot you in the right knee, then I’m going to poke your left eye out with this.’ I tapped the stick. ‘With a bit of luck you’ll still be able to drive- automatics.’
Sandy started to cry softly. ‘I won’t lay a finger on you,’ I said. It was a crude hard-soft sell and I was using all the props I had. I kept tapping the stick and Sandy kept crying and it all got to Tal eventually.
‘You wouldn’t do it,’ he said shakily.
‘Why not?’
‘You’d lose your licence.’ It was a weak effort and he knew it. I grinned at him and moved the two-inch barrel forward one inch.
‘You abducted me and beat me up. I’ve got a witness to the abduction and people saw me afterwards. Now, I’m in a hard game; if it got around that you did that to me and got away with it, I’d lose a lot of business. That’s one thing. Another is that I’ve had a traumatic experience. You can see the bandages. I’m not quite right in the head, you might say. That’s two. Last, who’s on your side? Sandy might go to the cops, but she might not. I might lose the licence. I don’t think so, but what difference would it make to you in your wheelchair? I’m finished talking, Tal. Last chance.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’
I took a sip of the scotch and couldn’t taste it. ‘Good. Don’t bullshit me, or we’re back where we started. I know there’s politics in it, and the casinos. Let’s take it on from there.’
He took a deep breath. ‘There’s this new area near Camden; what do you call it down here? A growth area? Freddy wants in with the massage parlours and the gambling. He’s decentralising, but he’s afraid he’s losing his grip. I don’t know much about the casino deal; it’s some kind of three-way split and Freddy missed the boat. This Camden thing is real big for him. There’s people don’t like him and people who have to like him if he’s going to get the action. He thought you might be working for someone who’s trying to keep him out of this new spot.’
‘How would I do that?’
‘By digging up the dirt on his operations in the eastern suburbs and passing it on.’
‘The cops know all about that.’
‘It’s not cops we’re talking about.’
‘Politicians?’
‘Right.’
I let out a slow breath I hadn’t meant to hold that long. ‘What else?’
‘Nothing. I swear it, Hardy. He needs to be Mr Clean for these political types.’
‘Why? He’s buying them, isn’t he?’
‘That’s the way it works.
I thought it over while he fidgeted. People don’t like to see other people thinking. You never can tell which way thinking is going to pan out. I let him sweat. What he’d said sounded right. The new slums-to-be they called ‘growth areas’ were an open go. Fucking and gambling were the in-demand services; there wasn’t much else to do in those dumps. You needed to fix some aldermen, which took more money than subtlety, and some of the next rank of politicians, which took a bit of both. Bill Anderson would be interested. I thought I knew how to use the information myself.
‘Is Freddy Ward insane?’
The change of tack brought a look of relief to his face, which had been locked into a grimace of doubt. He dried his palms on his pants leg. Sandy was quiet.
‘I wouldn’t say that. You saw him. Look, I just drive for him; I don’t talk to his goddamn doctor.’
He was getting cocky again and it was time for me to go. ‘Okay, I believe you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you something for free- Tom McLeary says Ward killed John Singer.’
‘Jesus.’ He looked quickly at Sandy.
‘That’s what Tom told me and what he’s told a lot of people lately. Anything in it, d’you reckon?’
Brown shook his head slowly. ‘Before my time.’
‘Sandy?’
