me. I’ll flatten you if you try.”
She looked quickly at me. I wasn’t smiling and neither was she. It was a risky declaration because the help she would be giving me would be substantial and things could get into a hell of a mess without it. Maybe they would anyway. She had a right to know the rules I was playing by but I hoped it wouldn’t come to an outright conflict between us. She had strength and guts and would fight hard. Also there was something between us, a connection, part sexual, part temperamental. It would be a nasty falling-out if it happened.
The plane swayed around like a mast in a high wind on the last hour of the flight and Penny didn’t seem quite so blase about flying. I didn’t enjoy it myself and then I had to face a moment of tension when I presented the out-of-date credit card at the car hire desk. It passed muster and there was a white Datsun waiting for us in the company bay outside the airport building. The air was warm and dusty. A haze in the sky suggested that the day would get a lot warmer. I unlocked the driver’s door and threw the bag into the back seat. Penny stood by the passenger door sneering at me as if I was some inferior and unpleasant exhibit at a zoo. I didn’t like that look. I settled myself in the seat and turned on the air-conditioning. She tapped on the window. I wound it down.
“Yes?” I said.
“Let me in, Hardy.”
“A girl like you wouldn’t ride in a big, fat, Nip capitalist car like this would she? Take a bus, I’ll meet you behind the pub.”
Her eyes blazed at me and I could hear her breath coming in short, hard bursts.
“Let me in!”
I flicked the door open, she got in and sat down hard staring straight in front of her. It was a bad start.
“Don’t be so touchy,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Look, we need a car for this job. They’re all rubbish, they’re all too expensive and they fall apart too soon, but we need one and this’ll do. Alright?”
“Yes,” her voice was tight and small.
I swung the beast out of the car park. I wanted to tell her to get ready for some lying and shooting, but I didn’t know how.
We drove in silence along the dusty roads into Macleay. I hadn’t liked being there the last time and I didn’t expect this time to be any better. Penny sat with her arms wrapped tightly around her thin body as if trying to physically contain her resentments. The car handled well, a bit squashy and soft compared with the Falcon, but it would be fast if that was needed. The air conditioning worked, cooled me down and smoothed the edges off my temper. Penny took her coat off and threw it on the back seat. We exchanged small smiles as she did so. She hit the radio button and got some country and western music which she turned down very low.
I drove into Macleay and cruised slowly past Bert’s garage. Penny looked out at the place with the rough- painted sign hanging over the bowsers and nodded. “You did know where they were going.”
“Yeah. The thing is, are they still there?” The garage looked closed although it was after ten a.m. and a piece of cardboard with something written on it was hanging on the handle of the office door. I drove past again and could see at least two cars parked in the alley beside the garage. I found a phone booth and located Bert’s number in the directory. I called it. The phone rang twice, then it was answered by the voice I’d heard telephonically at Ted Tarelton’s. I asked for Bert and was told he was sick. I asked when his place would be open again and the voice said “tomorrow”. He hung up.
The way to the hospital was signposted and the building couldn’t have been anything else; it was like hospitals everywhere, all clean lines, light and airy, set in lawns and trying not to look like a place where people died. We parked in the visitors’ area and Penny got out of the car. “Wait here,” she told me.
I did as I was told. I rolled a cigarette and fiddled with the tape recorder. It seemed to be working alright, drawing power from the batteries and responding to all buttons. I smoked and waited while the morning heated up. Sweat was soaking into my collar when Penny got back. She climbed in and unrolled a bundle.
“Chic, isn’t it?”
She held up a pale green, front-buttoning, belted dress with yellow piping.
“Terrific. Your size?”
“Close enough. We’ll have to go back to town, I’ll need a scarf and some sneakers.”
We drove back to the shopping centre and bought the things and a pillow case and a plastic bucket. On the way back I showed her how the tape recorder worked. She nodded, wrapped the machine in the pillow case and put it in the bucket. She changed clothes in the back of the car and left her platform soles, slacks and top on the back seat with her coat. I drove to the service entrance of the hospital and let her out. She stood beside the car while I told her what I wanted to learn from Trixie Baker. I gave her two hours and she didn’t argue about it. She pointed to a park bench near a small copse artfully contrived by the landscape gardener.
“There, in two hours.” The sheer confidence in her voice made me look at her carefully. She’d moved into the role already, her shoulders were slumped and she carried the bucket as if she’d forgotten it was there. The uniform and the scarf and the sneakers toned her down. She’d pass as a menial as long as nobody got a good look at her fierce, alert face and beautifully tended nails. She slouched across to the heavy plastic doors of the service entrance and slipped through.
I drove slowly back into town, turning the next steps over in my mind, looking for snags and dangers. There were dozens of both. It took me nearly half an hour to pick my spot from which to watch Bert’s garage. Behind the building and across a narrow lane was a shop that had been burnt out. The blackened brick shell still stood and an iron staircase took me up to the second storey which was intact apart from many missing floorboards. Crouched by the back window I could get a good view through the binoculars of the back doors and windows of the garage.
It was hot, boring work. I didn’t want to send smoke up into the still air in case the watched were also watching and I hadn’t brought the Esky and the chilled beer with me. For a while nothing happened and as my eyes adjusted to the light and the shadows and shapes I began to be aware of a fine mist drifting out from one of the windows. Coming from a motor garage that could mean only one thing – spray painting. This was confirmed when a man wearing overalls came out into the yard pushing painter’s goggles up onto his head. He was short and stocky and dark – very dark.
He took a few deep breaths and some more mist came floating out of the open door behind him. Then he ducked back into the garage and came back a minute later with a welder’s torch. He gave it a few experimental blasts and took it back inside. The set-up wasn’t too hard to figure and I had to admire it. You’ve got a hundred thousand or so dollars in ready money but it might be marked. You’ve got cops in Sydney and Newcastle looking for you. And you’re black. So what do you do? Fix up a truck, really fix it up with bars and secret compartments and a new spray job and take to the roads. Get out into the bush where you can camp, spend the money carefully, spinning it out, while the heat dies down. You can come out in Perth or Darwin or wherever the hell you please. Not bad. It was a pity to disturb it but I had to. Fixing a truck in the way I imagined they’d be fixing it would take time and that was what I needed.
I watched for another hour but nothing changed. I fiddled with the adjustment mechanisms of the glasses, trying to get a clearer focus on an oil drum near the back door of the garage. Something about that drum disturbed me, but it was in shadow and I couldn’t pick out any details. I backed away from the window and went down the staircase and out to the car. My shirt was a wringing wet rag when I got there and I took it off and draped it over the hot roof of the car while I rolled and smoked a cigarette. The shirt was hot and stiff after a couple of minutes. I put it back on and drove to the hospital.
Penny was waiting on the seat when I drove up. She ran across to the car and threw the bucket savagely into the back.
“Easy,” I said. Then I noticed that she was carrying the tape recorder. I took it from her and settled it gently on the seat. “How did it go?”
“No trouble,” she said tightly. She got into the back seat and began changing her clothes. I resisted the temptation to watch her in the rear vision mirror. She stuffed the uniform, sneakers and scarf into the bucket and clambered over into the front seat. She put the tape recorder on her lap and patted it.
“Want to hear it?”
“Not now. How’s Trixie Baker?”
“Bad. I don’t think she wants to live.”
“Upset about all this?” I nodded at the machine.
