and clubs. Eventually I located Ian ‘Spider’ Herriot, a retired burglar. Spider said that the security upgrade in residential and commercial properties over the past ten years put him out of work. A fall from a roof brought on various disabilities and he wangled a pension that kept him just above the breadline. I met him in the bar of the John Curtin Hotel in George Street-good Labor man, Spider.
It was middies of light for me and schooners of old for Spider for a round or two before we got down to business. Enthusiastic morning drinkers all around.
‘Cleve Harvey,’ I said.
Spider is a failed jockey-short in stature, strong once, but retirement had softened him and smoking had wizened his features. He had the jockey’s high-pitched voice. ‘A prick’s prick,’ he piped.
‘Right. He’s dead.’
Spider raised his glass. ‘The world’s a better place.’
‘I want to get in touch with his woman.’
Spider is an old hand at the information game since his retirement. There was only one thing he wanted to know, and it wasn’t why. ‘How much?’
‘A hundred.’
He drained his glass. ‘Sol Levy’s is just down the way. Throw in a carton of fifties and you’re on.’
That would double the cost but I’d been prepared to shell out two hundred anyway. We walked down to the tobacconist’s and I bought the carton. Spider eyed it as though it was a life jacket floating towards a drowning man.
‘Lola Swift,’ he said.
I juggled the carton as foot traffic parted around us. ‘Address?’
‘Erskineville-the fuckin’ Belmont Arms at this time of day.’
I handed over the money and the cigarettes, but he didn’t thank me.
Before heading back to the John Curtin, Spider had given me a rough, highly unflattering description of Lola Swift and I spotted her as soon as I walked into the pub. About forty, looking fifty, stringy, gaunt-faced, blonde dye job, wearing a top and skirt more suited to a twenty-year-old. She was nursing a beer and bending over a racing guide.
The pub was the standard inner-city model that had undergone a bit of renovation some time ago so that the new surfaces were fast fading back towards the old. A few drinkers, singles, minding their own business, like Lola.
‘What’s Lola drinking?’ I said to the barman.
‘Old.’
I bought a schooner of Tooheys black and a middy of light for myself. I sat opposite her at the small table and pushed the beer across. She looked up from the guide, pen held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers with blood-red nails. She gave me a practised smile.
‘Hello, darling.’
I shook my head and moved the drink closer to her. ‘Sorry, love. I’m here for a talk, not for your services.’
The smile disappeared and with it the instinctive professional gestures-the raised eyebrows, tautened neck, straightened upper body. She pulled her drink a little closer.
‘Fuck off.’
I put a fifty down on the ring of moisture the glass had made so that it stuck there. She finished the drink she had on hand but didn’t touch the new one. Not yet, but she was paying attention.
‘My name’s Hardy.’
‘Oh, Jesus.’ For the first time a genuine emotion showed on her eroded face-disappointment, fear, regret… whatever it was. ‘I knew there’d be trouble.’
‘You were right. I have to talk to you about Cleve Harvey.’
‘And you reckon you can do that with a schooner and fifty bucks?’
She’d recovered and was presenting as a genuine hard case. There were two ways to play it-tough or soft. Mistakenly, I went for tough. ‘I could’ve made it a middy and twenty.’
‘You’re a bastard like Cleve said. I hope he nails you from the bloody grave.’
I had to retreat. ‘Why, Lola?’
She was in full outrage mode now, voice raised, standing up, surprisingly tall. ‘Drink your pissy light and your fuckin’ schooner yourself and fuck off.’
She stalked out, skinny legs in high heels, scrawny bum in a tight skirt, hair flying, shoulder bag scooped up and swinging. Most of the eyes-some amused, some antagonistic-in the bar were on me. I sat tight, didn’t fancy the idea of pursuing her up the street.
I drank half of the middy, picked up my damp fifty and left the bar. My car was a hundred metres away around a corner. I made the turn and became aware of someone close behind me. It was broad daylight at midday in Erskineville, which isn’t the rough place it used to be, but you can’t be too careful. I swung around, balanced, and with my hands ready.
‘Easy,’ the man said. ‘Easy.’
He was tall and thin in jeans and a sweater, sneakers. Not young, not old. After years in the job you develop the knack of noticing the people around you and filing the information. This guy had been in the Belmont bar, pouring a can of Guinness-the kind with the loud rattle and the sound of escaping gas-into a glass, a movement that had caught my eye.
‘Might be able to help youse, mate,’ he said.
I relaxed. ‘Yeah? How?’
‘Seen you talking to Lola and seen her take off. I can tell you where she lives. She’s a good root.’
‘You’d know, would you?’
He grinned, which didn’t improve his pinched, defeated look. ‘I should. Her flat’s just next to mine. When I’m flush I-’
‘Okay.’ I’d put the fifty in my jacket pocket and I fished it out. ‘I don’t mean her any harm. Fact is, I’m sort of more interested in the bloke she lived with.’
He nodded. ‘A real bastard, that one.’
‘Exactly.’ I showed him my card and my PEA licence. ‘It’s a private matter. Would fifty dollars get me to her door?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Would it make you piss off and keep your mouth shut?’
‘Another twenty would.’
‘You’re on. You seem to know a lot about her. Where’s she likely to be now?’
‘In another pub, playing the horses for the rest of the afternoon. Then she goes out on the street.’
I took a twenty from my wallet and balled the notes in my fist. ‘Lead on,’ I said.
The block of flats had seen better days, much better days. It was square, squat, red brick and faded, but the remnants of some sense of style were there in the balconies and the garden out front and along the side, now dying of neglect. My escort said he and Lola were on the third floor. No security door, no lift. We went up the stained concrete steps in a dim light until we reached the top landing, which would have given a view of some sort if the window hadn’t been coated with grime.
I knocked at the door he indicated and got no answer. He took out his key and held out his hand for the money.
‘Put the key away,’ I said. ‘You piss off down the stairs and don’t show your face within a hundred metres for the next hour, minimum.’
He looked hurt, but he put the key back. I gave him the money and he started down the stairs.
‘Let me hear the entrance door slam.’
I did. He could’ve been faking but I didn’t think so. To someone with a set of picklocks attached to his always- present Swiss army knife, the old Yale lock was a piece of cake.
I’ve been in prostitutes’ flats before and Lola’s didn’t surprise me. It was a tiny, one-bedroom job and it was
