‘He did the fighting,’ I said.
Manny nodded. ‘I hope you didn’t break any bones, Bruce.’ From the way he said it, I had the feeling that Manny might have broken a few in his time.
‘Nah,’ Henneberry said. ‘I just raised my voice some.’
Manny grinned and looked as though he’d like to hear more, but he remembered his role and moved smoothly over towards the coffee machine.
‘Base for what?’ I said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You said this was your base and I was wondering about your operation.’
He laughed, showing his expensively cared-for American teeth and the imposing circumference of that built-up neck. I reckoned it at seventeen inches of bone and muscle you could break a hand on.
‘Well, I’m a journalist. Freelance, you know? I’ve got a commission to do a series on the drug problem here on the beach. That’s why I was hoping you weren’t a cop. Now it’ll get around that I saved some dude from getting mugged tonight. That’s not very cool, but it’d be worse if you were a cop. Who’re you looking for, Cliff? Maybe I can help. I’ve been working here a couple of weeks now.’
The coffee came, which gave me time to think about an answer. Bruce seemed extraordinarily physical for a journalist. Most of those I knew could scarcely get the glass to their mouths without help, but Americans are a different race.
I stalled. ‘Who’re you working for, Bruce?’
‘Oh, National News, right here.’
That would be so easy to check that it looked as if he was telling the truth. Also he had a way with him, a frankness and openness that might have been professional but didn’t come across that way. I sipped some of the brandy-laced coffee with appreciation.
‘I’m looking into the alleged disappearance of a guy named John Singer. Seems he went into the water around two years ago and hasn’t come out yet.’
He drank some coffee. ‘Good guy or bad guy?’
‘Bit of both. There’s a whisper that he’s still with us. I’m checking it out.’
‘I never heard of him; sorry. But I could ask on the street.’
‘What are you doing, exactly?’
‘Oh, I… ah… hang around and talk to the kids. Truth is, I feel more like a social worker than a writer. I’ve helped a few of the kids get out of the shit and go home. Not many.’
‘Plenty left?’
‘Sure.’
We drained our cups and he raised two fingers to Manny, who obliged quickly. The brandy did me a power of good; I had only a dull ache where the kid had hit. My pride hurt, but a few drinks is good for that, too.
‘Do the drugs get sold in the pinball parlours?’
‘Yeah, and in the pubs, in cars, on the beach. You name it.’
‘How’s it organised?’
‘Now, that’s a big question.’ He took a cassette out of his jeans pocket and tapped it on the table. ‘I’m going to rap to this a little. You can listen in if you want.’
He went across the room, reached under a bench and pulled up a cassette recorder. Back at the table he took a gulp of coffee, put the cassette into the machine and got out a small notebook, which he consulted while he talked softly into the microphone. He was naming names and sums of money and recalling direct speech. He spoke for about fifteen minutes before clicking the recorder off.
‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘I’m sort of in harness with this sociologist named Ann Winter. She’s working the same route as me, but for her PhD. She’s living right in the middle of the shit. We leave these cassettes for each other. Sort of swap information, you know? She goes more on the female angle. I tell you, it’s mean.’
I expressed a polite interest, but not much more. My business brings me into contact with a lot of people who do not share in this world’s joys-old whores of one sort or another, washed-up fighters, gaolbirds and drunks. I never heard of a city from Pompeii onwards that didn’t have them in good measure, and they’ll still be with us when disco and skateboards are history. You have to take the long view.
I was thinking that, as so often happened, I was off to a bad start. I’d hardly made a dent in the enquiry if all I’d achieved was to leave a freelance journo on the trail while I went off to bed with an ache in the midsection. Then Henneberry sat up straight and pulled in his slight stomach bulge.
‘Here’s Ann,’ he said.
Even in the half light, even in her dirty jeans and nondescript shirt, she was something special. She was tall, close to six feet in her medium-heeled boots. She had a bandanna around her wild, straggly black hair, and with her dark eyes and the big denim bag she carried she looked like a gypsy. Winter, I thought, a good outdoors country name. Maybe she is a gypsy. She thumped down heavily into the chair next to Henneberry and flopped a tobacco pouch and matches up onto the table.
‘I’m buggered,’ she said.
I tried to keep my eyes uninterested and my jaw firm, but Henneberry was beyond help. ‘Hey, hey, Annie,’ he stammered, ‘you’ll want a drink. Manny!’
‘Just the coffee, Bruce,’ she said. ‘If he puts that bloody grappa in it, I’ll fall asleep right here.’ She made a cigarette the right way, keeping more tobacco at the ends than in the middle and evening it up in the rolling. She stuck it in her mouth, lit it and inhaled and threw her head back to expel the smoke. She had a nice neck with dark, straggling hairs growing low on it.
She noticed me noticing. ‘Ann Winter,’ she said. ‘Hello.’
Bruce turned back from trying to catch Manny’s attention.
‘This is Cliff Hardy, Annie.’
I nodded and she pushed the tobacco at me. I pushed it back.
‘I thought you might want it, from the way you were watching.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I used to roll them. Gave it up. I just liked the way you did it. Good.’
She blew smoke over my head. ‘For a woman, you mean. Shit, there’s girls around here who can roll them one-handed in the dark.’
‘What do they do with the other hand?’
‘Almost anything.’ She laughed, the coffee arrived and she shovelled sugar into it. Henneberry watched her like a gambler watching the deal.
‘I need it,’ she said. ‘Must’ve walked fifteen miles today.’
‘How come?’ I asked.
She glanced at Henneberry, who gave her a lightning sketch of the encounter in the alley, as he called it. He made us sound like allies in a great and noble cause. She nodded and looked at me directly as she spoke.
‘One of the girls is going cold turkey and she’s on a weight-losing kick with it. She weighs twenty stone, near enough, and she’s walking it off. She said she’d tell me all about how she got that way. She’s serious. We went ten miles, I reckon.’
‘How did she get so fat?’ Henneberry said. ‘What’s that, three hundred pounds?’
‘Nearly,’ Ann said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. She worked in a place that specialised in fat girls. The manager force fed them. She just blew up. Want to hear it?’ She got a cassette out of the bag. Bruce took it and put his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off, but she didn’t nuzzle into it with her cheek either. I showed her the picture of Singer and she looked at it carefully, slanting it to get more light.
‘Don’t know him,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t mind, though.’
Henneberry glanced sharply at her and I could sense the short circuits and sparks in their connection. I was surprised to find myself pleased by it. Henneberry kept talking, but she was bored by him; she smoked and her dark eyes drifted around the room registering and recording. They came to rest on me.
‘I never heard that Singer was connected with drugs and girls,’ I said. ‘But you never know with the smart ones. I’d be glad if you’d ask around, Ann.’
She nodded. ‘There’s a guy named McLeary who runs a lot of the massage places closer to the city. Most of the girls I know are streeties, but they drift in and out of the houses. One of the older ones might know something about your bloke, but you never know.’ She gave me another one of her direct looks. ‘He might have fancied the
