‘We didn’t have any trouble did we?’
‘No.’
‘OK. You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to, but this isn’t any kind of a test. I’m the boss here for a while and if I say you can drink, you can drink.’
‘Right.’ Carstairs took a long swig.
Ralston gazed at the open bottle with burning eyes and I saw his whole history in that look. The lost weight, the precise movements, the raw nerves, the restrained emotions. Poor bastard. He was a dried-out drunk and I felt sorry for putting temptation in his way. I took a bottle of mineral water out and passed it across to him, sliding the beer towards Carstairs.
He took it gratefully and drank.
‘How did you get along with Galvani?’
The bad moment, the worst of moments, having passed for him, Ralston relaxed a little. ‘He was shaping up well. Bright bloke. Bit young for it maybe. Len had his doubts, but I thought he was ok.
‘His mind wasn’t on the job,’ Carstairs said. ‘Simple as that. He did what he had to do and did it pretty well, but he could’ve been a bloody sight better if he’d given it a hundred per cent.’
I drank some more beer and Carstairs did the same. Ralston sipped at his drink. ‘He was still working on a couple of cases from before taking over here. I’m afraid I’ll be doing the same.’
‘More to it than that, I’d say.’ Carstairs drained his stubby.
‘Either of you got any ideas on who killed him, or why?’
‘What is this, Hardy?’ Ralston burst out. ‘Are you really the boss here, or just investigating Galvani’s death?’
‘Easy, Keith,’ Carstairs murmured.
‘Good question,’ I said. “The answer is both, and I want some help from you two. Help me with this and I’ll give you a very big rap to the bloke who takes over from me.’
The two exchanged nods and Carstairs reached for the second bottle while Ralston worked on his moustache and the mineral water.
‘I spotted someone last night-a short, dark guy getting into a silver-grey Mercedes outside. This was when I was leaving. I only got a glimpse of him and I didn’t get a good sight of the licence plate-KI, might have been an F or an E, and there was a zero in the numbers.’
‘Not much to go on,’ Ralston said. ‘You couldn’t run an RTA computer check on that.’
‘I know. But does it ring any bells?’
Carstairs made a movement as if to loosen his tie, but he checked it. It was odds-on he was an ex-cop, too. He had a lot of the moves. ‘Shit, Mercs are like fleas on a dog around here, and dark, stocky guys’re about the same. Still, we can keep an eye out, right, Keith?’
Ralston nodded. He looked worried and I wondered if that was just a facet of his battle with the booze or if another talk with him might pay dividends. A 4 p.m. start was ideal for someone in his condition-it’d get him past the six o’clock horrors and with any luck leave him tired enough to sleep when he knocked off. I thanked them both for their cooperation and they got up and moved towards the door. Carstairs buttoned his jacket and swung around with his hand just touching the knob. Another old cop trick. ‘That woman with the Beretta…’
‘She won’t be around.’
He nodded and I could see that he was looking at the fresh scratch on my face, trying to read something into it. He and Ralston trooped out, looking a lot more comfortable than when they had come in. That was good. They were allies of a kind, and I needed all the support I could get. Carstairs’ appraisal prompted me to consider my quick answer and led to the thought that Vita Drewe could be one of those women who harassed and pursued those who had offended them-made late night phone calls, heaved bricks through car windows, poisoned pets. I might have deserved it, but I didn’t need it, not now.
17
As I’d expected, the casino job was routine followed by more routine. It was a fairly quiet night I was told, and I walked through my various duties without any difficulty. My visit to the cash collection room was brief. The sight of so much money, even though it was what they called a low count on a quiet night, was numbing. I had a very acceptable light meal in the executive dining room and before knocking off at 1.30 a.m., dog-tired, I checked with Ralston and Carstairs. No sightings of the Merc and their discreet, they claimed, enquiries hadn’t yielded anything. I’d already taken possession of a Visa card with a credit limit greater than all my personal cards lumped together. Now I was handed the keys and security remote controller for a fully-fuelled, current model, maroon Holden Commodore. A long-term Falcon man, I felt like a traitor driving it away, but after a kilometre or so I decided that the only thing I didn’t like about it was the colour.
Back in Glebe, I squeezed the Commodore into a parking space-an action certain to anger my neighbours. One car per house was the unspoken rule. Inside, I approached the answering machine with trepidation-half- wanting a message from Glen, fearing one from Vita. The only message was from the video store requesting the return of Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, now long overdue. I’d watched it with Glen and I seemed to recall that her response had been strange, not nearly as accepting of Woody’s propositions as usual. I’d put it down to a reaction to all the publicity over the split with Mia Farrow and the molestation charges. Now, I wasn’t so sure, and it all seemed to have taken place in another life.
The cat reminded me that some things never change. I opened one of the tins Glen had bought and it sniffed at it and mewed, probably protesting at the drop in standards from the supposedly-fit-for-humans tuna.
‘That was an aberration,’ I told it, ‘in many more ways than one.’
It ate about half of what I’d doled out, leaving the rest for the cockroaches, before jumping out the window without so much as a grateful leg rub, I trudged up the stairs and fell into bed with Scott’s notebook pushed under the pillow. I fell asleep with the bedside light still on and dreamed that I was working in a Las Vegas casino, wearing a maroon tuxedo with a green ruffled shirt. I kept trying to slip into a toilet to remove the clothes but Carstairs and Ralston continually barred my way. Vita Drewe was a topless croupier, swinging her breasts from side to side as she leaned over the roulette wheel. Winners got to cup their hands around her breasts as she shovelled chips at them. Losers were marched away by Ralston and Carstairs. I must have rolled onto my shoulder because I woke up with pain shooting through my arm and neck. I stumbled downstairs for painkillers, thankful that the dream had ended.
I woke up at about nine and made my first mistake of the day by reaching out for Glen. Not good to come up empty on your first move. I calculated I had about seven hours of being a private eye before I had to be a security controller again. I examined my face in the mirror as I shaved. The bruises and puffiness had almost gone and the scratch was little more than a dark line. Glen was right-I was a quick healer.
Primo Tomasetti used to run a tattoo parlour in Darlinghurst near my office building. I used to rent a parking space from him before the council introduced a sticker system for residents and commercial users. AIDS had done a lot of damage to the tattoo business, what with the heightened awareness of the dangers of contaminated needles and blood, and Primo had switched horses. Unbeknown to me, he had owned the freehold on the building he’d worked out of and he sold it for big money to a developer who’d gone broke trying to turn a buck on the property. Primo, a movie buff but a practical man, had set up a small production company making promotional and instructional videos and films for corporate clients. His office was in Bondi Junction, in the shadow of the freeway. I drove out there in the Commodore with Scott’s notebook in my pocket and a hundred questions in my head. Primo’s new office was on the tenth floor in a tower block and his secretary recognised me from earlier visits and told me that he hadn’t come in yet.
I looked at my watch. ‘It’s after ten.’
She shrugged. ‘He’s the boss. He’s taken up golf…’
I groaned. I could just see Primo on a golf course, trying to get his one hundred kilos behind the ball. ‘How long?’ I said.
