looked clean and the bridge was a noble arch. There were trees growing down to the water in some places and even the industrial bits looked dignified. Not what Captain Arthur Phillip would have seen but not bad. I put my gun down and lifted the phone.
I heard it as the phone responded to the punched buttons. A faint feedback; a hum so soft you wouldn’t hear it if you were breathing hard or scratching your nose. The phone in the flat, which the late Fuller, who was tied in to the Albion Reef development, had procured for Kelly was bugged. I looked back down the passage towards the door and wondered how many people had keys to it besides Byron and Pauline. I could spend some time and money on it, probably come up with some names, but I knew that Michael Parsons had had his last briefing and Pauline had had her last fight and I’d had my last drink with Byron Kelly.
Norman Mailer’s Christmas
Henry Quinn was a burly man with grey curly hair and a face that had been shaped by good days and bad nights, booze and a fair amount of self-admiration. He looked a lot like Norman Mailer and he was aware of the resemblance. A shelf in his study carried a large photograph of Mailer and hardcover copies of the books, from The Naked and the Dead to the latest best-seller. There are people who say Mailer isn’t subtle; that’s nothing compared to Quinn-there were no other books in the study.
Quinn leaned back in his leather chair and swilled the brandy in his glass. ‘You see it, hey? The likeness? Boy, have I had some fun with that.’
It was midday; I’d refused Quinn’s offer of brandy and was drinking beer. ‘Have you read the books?’
‘No. Never had the time. But lemme tell you. I’m on a plane see? An’ these up-country types’re lookin’ at me and I know what they’re thinkin’. They’re whispering an’ then one of ‘em gets up the nerve to talk to me. Know what I say?’
I shook my head. I didn’t want to know but he’d called and said he had a job for me and that he’d pay for my time from the minute I’d said ‘Hardy Investigations’ into the phone. So he’d paid for me to drive to Cronulla and to drink with him in his penthouse with its northerly ocean view on a beautiful summer day. I owed him a hearing.
‘I say: “I’m not who you think I am,” and they’re hooked, see? After that they eat outa my hand and I sign anything they give me. Sign it Norman M. It makes their day. Hah, hah.’
I shifted uneasily in the chair-too deep, too soft, more like marshmallow than leather. ‘So Mailer’s threatened to punch you or have you punched and you need protection. That it?’
‘Nah, nah. Him’n me’d get on fine, I’m sure. I’m a Brooklyn boy myself, well, Jersey. Close enough. Nah. I got a wife problem. I had three.’
‘I think Mailer tops you there.’
‘Right, right. And I never knifed one neither, though God knows I woulda liked to. But now, I wanna bury the hatchet. Get the girls all together on Christmas, have a few drinks, a few laughs. Show I’m a big guy. Hell, I’m thinking of gettin’ married again an’ I’d like a clean slate.’
‘Where are they all-Reno?’
‘What?’ He looked disconcerted for the first time but he recovered fast. He laughed and shook his head so that the curls floated around. It was a much practised movement. ‘Nah, nah. All Aussie girls. I been here since ‘56. Came over for the Olympics. I was on the US boxing team, light heavy.’
‘How’d you do?’
‘Lousy, got disqualified for gougin’ in the first fight.’
‘You was robbed, I suppose?’
He grinned. The sun had moved and with some more light falling on his face I could see that he’d had a lot of work done on his teeth and some on his nose. Maybe he’d given the surgeon the picture of Norman to work from. ‘Nah. I went for his eye all right. We played it a bit rougher Stateside. But I liked the country an’ the people so I came back. Went inna business.’ He waved his hand around the room with the View. ‘Did okay.’
‘Mm. Well, the wives…?’
‘Can’t locate one of ‘em-Shelley.’ He reached behind him, took a large, glossy photograph from the top of the bar fridge and passed it to me. ‘ Good looker, eh, mate?’
His phony Australian accent was excruciating but Shelley fitted the description. She was a brunette in her twenties with bushy, wild hair, slanted eyes and a generous smile. ‘Got the other wives lined up, have you, Mr Quinn?’
‘Call me Henry. Man drinks with me, works for me, he calls me Henry. Secret of my success. Yeah, Francine an’ Dawn are all set. They’re bringing their guys along, no, Dawn is. Francine’s a lezzie though you coulda fooled me at the time. Know what I mean? Hah, hah.’
It was December 20, not long to find someone for a Christmas party. On the other hand it was about as long as I’d care to work for Mr Quinn. ‘A hundred and fifty a day and expenses. Half up front.’
Quinn nodded, reached for his wallet and extracted notes. ‘Give you a grand now, another grand if you find her, quits if you don’t. This is important to me, Hardy. Serious. So I’m putting up serious money.’
‘Fair enough. I’ll need a smaller photo, names, addresses and dates.’
‘An’ another beer,’ Quinn said. ‘Hah, hah.’
Quinn gave me what I asked for-a snapshot-sized photograph, the name of the last place his ex-wife had worked and her last home address. Their divorce had been finalised six months before and he hadn’t been in touch with her since. He also gave me a sealed envelope for her which he said contained an invitation to the Christmas party. I rode the lift twelve floors down to the lobby and walked through the plush reception area with the potted palms and the mirrors thinking that the job stank.
Why the short notice? Why not put an ad in a paper? Why not go through Shelley’s solicitor? But in this business you can’t be too choosy, especially in the holiday season when things are slow. I had a mortgage to meet, car repair bills, credit card instalments and I also liked to eat and drink once in a while. Outside the day was almost as perfect as it had looked from the penthouse. The air was clear after a wet, windy couple of days and the promise of a long, golden year’s end and year’s beginning was showing on the sea and the sand and in people’s faces.
The addresses helped me to make my decision. Shelley Quinn had worked the previous summer as a water skiing instructor at a health club at Narrabeen and her most recent address was Whale Beach. Not hard places to take at that time of year. Swimming costume country, suntan territory. But first I needed to make sure that Henry Quinn wasn’t CIA or the Mafia.
I drove back to Glebe and opened all the windows in my house to catch a breeze that had a faint salty tang to it as well as some chemical and industrial smells. There was no need to steam open the letter. It was a plain envelope and the name was typewritten, easily duplicated. Inside was a white card with gold lettering on it. It invited Shelley Quinn to ‘drinks to celebrate Christmas’ at noon. The place was the penthouse and the scrawled initials were HQ. I sipped a glass of white wine and looked out into my backyard which, ever since Hilde planted the herbs and put in the ivy and the pots, could be called a courtyard. The cardboard boxes with the empties and the yellowed metre-high stack of newspapers were my own touch.
I held the card up to the light. What did you expect? I thought. A death threat? He wants to have a drink with his ex-wives, wouldn’t you like to have a drink with yours, with Cyn? How about Ailsa and Kay Fletcher and a couple of others? I knew I’d hate it, but then I wasn’t like Quinn who seemed to be one of those people who only believed in his own existence. To the Quinns of the world, life without Quinn is unthinkable.
I put my drink beside the telephone and made some calls about my employer to people whose business it is to know people in business. Quinn checked out as only slightly grubby: he’d made money in a variety of ways- interstate trucking in the early, rough days, swimming pool manufacturing, land development. One of my informants, a banker with a conscience, said that Quinn might have some problems with the US Treasury.
‘He moves money around a bit. Dodgy from the US point of view. But his Australian resident alien status protects him.’
‘How did he come by that?’
