part of it.
The lights dimmed and the Kiwi Kuties trouped onto the stage. Unusual, I thought. One by one, getting hotter as they come on deck is the standard thing. We were standing well back from the lit-up stage and if the performers could see us they made no sign. Stripper music started blaring out and I saw right off that this was something different. The three women were all tall, leggy blondes with light tans. They wore satin blouses and loose silk trousers with very high heels. Red, white and blue with the odd star and stripe. As the music got going they began to gyrate, all keeping good time with some intricate steps, and to strip each other. They weaved around the stage, well choreographed, undoing buttons, sliding blouses off shoulders, letting silk pants whisper half down and toying with g-string ties and the fastenings of front-opening bras.
Suddenly, with an abrupt change in the rhythm of the music, this all changed and the performers went into their own routines, although they only mimed the actions so far- all that was needed, I supposed, in rehearsal.
‘Good, aren’t they?’ Montefiore said and I fancied he was struggling to hold his heavy breathing in check.
‘They are.’
‘The one on the end’s a bloke.’
‘Which end?’
Montefiore snorted. ‘Yeah, you’d never tell. Fay’s in the middle. She’s the best of them in my book.’
Fay certainly had all the attributes for the job and she seemed to be enjoying it. Montefiore moved forward into a patch of light and she stopped dead in the middle of a slither when she saw him.
‘Jesus Christ, Jay.’
‘Hi, babe.’
‘What is this?’ one of the others complained.
‘I’m taking five.’ Fay jumped down from the stage, landing with perfect balance on her high heels, and ran into Montefiore’s waiting arms.
They hugged and kissed for a minute or two and then Montefiore introduced me. Dropping his voice, he said, ‘He’s got our ticket out of here-twenty-five grand. Right, Cliff?’
What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her until it wouldn’t hurt me. I nodded and she gave me a hard look. ‘For what?’
‘Remember that creep who was hanging around and you got a snap of him?’
A yell came from the stage. ‘Hey, Faysie, are we gonna do this or what?’
‘Keep your gaff on, Rox. I’ll be there in a minute. That much for the photo?’
‘And information. You’ve still got it, haven’t you? I told you it was insurance.’
‘I think so.’
‘Think! Jesus!’
‘Don’t fuckun’ come uht wuth me, Jay.’ Her accent thickened with anger. ‘You got into this mess all on your own.’
‘Twenty-five grand and out of this shithole,’ Montefiore said. ‘Sandy beaches and beer at three bucks a pop. A chance at some real money.’
‘Yeah, with you puhmping me.’
‘C’mon, babe.’
Montefiore was good. He had that quality a lot of women like, the quality that presumably attracted Lorraine to Stewart Master. Glen Withers, who’d shared the taste, told me about it once after we’d watched a video of Chinatown. Nicholson had it, she said, a bad twinkle in the eye.
‘I’m pretty sure I know where it is. Have you seen the colour of his money?’
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’m right here.’
‘Yeah, sorry. You’ve got it.’
‘I hand it over the minute I get the picture and a few details.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Details?’
I looked at Montefiore, who made a gesture of resignation. ‘I know you fucked him, Fay. Things were crook at the time.’
She was back doing it. ‘So he wants to know how big his cock is?’
‘I want a name and a close-up description of everything about him you can remember. Any paper you might have seen, phone call you might have heard. Anything.’
‘Fay!’
‘Coming. Right, we’ll shoot over after the rehearsal. Three-quarters of an hour tops. Stay and watch the show.’ She pecked Montefiore quickly on the cheek and danced back and up onto the stage, giving us a good look at her moving assets. We’d hardly touched our drinks and we both now took deep swigs.
‘You think I’m nuts, don’t you?’
‘Mate,’ I said, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ll just do my business with you both and then you can do as you please. You’re not getting twenty-five though.’
He shrugged. ‘Sweetening the pot. It’s a habit. There’s a public phone out front. Think I’ll give the old Reg a call and see if I can set something up.’
‘I’ll take a walk on the beach.’
‘It’ll cost you to get back in.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s not my money, and it’s not yours yet either.’
You don’t leave Australia for beaches. The Ansa Vata beach was stony and gritty and the sand, what there was of it, was mud-coloured. The water looked good and the evening breeze had got up so that it wasn’t such a bad place to be if only I hadn’t been anxious about a number of things. Was Montefiore on the level? Would he have trouble dealing with Fay if he was? Could I stay out of their travel plans and how would I arrange my own? I sucked in the clean Pacific air and tried to tell myself that I’d done well and that everything was going to be all right. It never is.
Fay wore Montefiore’s jacket over her stripper’s outfit and she glided into the back seat of the car, pulling him in after her. She told me where to go and then they started whispering. I was surprised to hear her speaking French. There was more to Fay than I’d thought. Half a kilometre short of where we were heading she told me to pull up.
‘Right here,’ she said.
I stopped. You don’t argue with a blonde stripper who speaks French. ‘Why?’
‘Old Jay here’s a bullshitter from way back. You’re not going to pay him twenty-five grand, are you?’
‘Not quite.’
‘How much? Really’
‘Like I said, depending on your information and the photo, maybe twenty.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Mr Detective-’
‘Fay!’
‘Shut up, Jay. It’s twenty down and twenty when we get to Australia.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘You want the name of the guy?’
‘Sure.’
‘I know it and a good bit more. Twenty in Sydney town and you get the lot.’
I swivelled around to look at her and she stared me straight in the eyes with her baby blues. Maybe contacts, but it made no difference. She was serious and she knew what she was doing. I couldn’t help wondering if she knew more about the Master business than she was letting on. I told myself it could be useful to have her in Sydney, but maybe that was rationalisation. She had me over a barrel and she knew it.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But Jarrod said you might be pissing off as soon as you got back to Australia.’
‘Uh-uh. We’ll stick around. I can smell the money in this.’
Clearly, she’d be calling the shots. I started the engine. ‘Can we get this moving now?’
I heard her kiss Montefiore somewhere; at a guess, on the cheek. She was a card player. ‘We’re almost there, boys.’
