“None, why?”
His mouth split open in a wide grin that showed white teeth stained around the edges by tobacco and a fine network of white scars around his eyes. I realised suddenly that he wasn’t young at all, he was closer to forty than twenty.
“Nothing. We’re related, and trouble follows Ricky. Who told you he was down here?”
“Ted Williams.” I explained the way of it, he listened, not very interested except when I said I’d seen Moody spar.
“What’d you think of him?”
“Terrific. Too good for Sammy Trueman.”
“That’s what I reckon.” He grinned again and the scars showed like badges of rank on the dark face. “He’s a bastard, Sammy. Rooked me rotten. You interested in fighters?”
I said I was.
“Maybe you seen me. Jimmy Sunday.”
“Jimmy Sunday. Yes I did. You had a great go against Booni Jack. Draw wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. I fought two draws with Booni, Melbourne and Brisbane. Bloody hard man Booni.”
“You weren’t bad yourself.”
He sucked on the last inch of his cigarette and flicked the stub away. He expelled the smoke with his wheezy fighter’s breath and did another little shuffle on the spot. He was wearing only a thin football sweater over a singlet and the wind coming off the water was sharp. I shivered inside my layers of cloth.
“Why don’t we go and have a drink,” I suggested, “while you make up your mind whether you’re going to talk to me.”
He slapped the boomerang in his palm. “Orright.” He lifted his arm and sent the boomerang off again. I moved away and watched it swing up into the pallid, darkening sky. It came back about knee high and he jumped neatly over it and let it land a few feet behind him.
“Nice one.” I picked it up. “You’re good. Where’d you learn, Burnt Bridge?”
“How’d you know?”
“A guess. Fighter country.” I tossed the boomerang over to him and we walked towards the path up the low cliff. He asked my name and I told him. He nodded. We reached the car and I got in.
“Bit of a bomb,” he said as I turned the key a few times till the motor caught.
“Yeah. I hear Ricky’s got a Chev.”
He grunted. He disapproved of the Chev.
“Where to?” I asked as the engine was ticking over.
He named a pub and directed me through the streets. We went through a smart section on into the low- grade housing with the overgrown privet hedges and the bungalows wearing defeated looks like the faces of old men in a dole queue. I parked outside a pub that looked nearly old enough for La Perouse to have had a few vins in. Like all the best pubs it occupied a corner block and had a balcony running around two sides above the street. The timbers were lifting on its walls and the wrought iron was pitted and blasted by the salt air. It was dark now and the rain had started again. The light flooding out through the windows of the public bar had a soft, amber glow like the beer itself.
Jimmy Sunday pushed open the door which had “Public Bar” etched into the frosted glass. The room was quiet, the after-work drinkers had gone and the evening regulars hadn’t come in yet. Two old Aborigines were sitting over their middies and a game of cards in one corner and in the narrow space between the short section of the L-shaped bar an intense quiet game of darts was in progress. One of the players was dark, the other two were young white men with the long, greasy hair and leather jackets of bikies. The painted circle, flanked by ancient, cracked black boards, was flooded with light from a naked bulb mounted above it.
We moved up to the bar. Spilt beer had lifted strips from its rubberised surface and the draining trays were rusted around the edges. We both put one foot on the rail and an elbow on the streaked surface in a ritual that means absolutely nothing. The barman looked like a football player gone to seed. Flesh hung off his face and shirtsleeved arms and his belly kept him well back from his work.
“Two middies,” I told him. “Old?”
Sunday nodded. The barman pulled them, his thick fingers were puffy and mottled like supermarket sausages but they did the job neatly. I slid five dollars across to him, he made the change and I left it on the bar. We drank some beer. I asked Sunday if this was his local. He said it was and borrowed the makings from me. He rolled a cigarette, lit it and expelled the smoke in a thin stream through the next mouthful of beer.
“Made up your mind yet?”
“Not yet,” he grunted. He looked at the money on the bar, reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. He signalled to the barman and spread the money out on the bar. The fullback pulled two more, the sausage fingers flicked out the right money with the delicacy of a croupier. I looked around the room. The greasy cards flipped over noiselessly, the darts bit into the pig bristle with soft pops like reports from a silenced pistol.
I finished my drink and pulled the second one across. “Thanks.” I lifted the glass and drank. Sunday did the same.
“You’ll do,” he said. “At least you’re not a bloody sociologist. They come down here with some weird fuckin’ stories.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
He grinned. “They never let a man buy them a drink. This the dinkum story, about Ricky and the girl?”
“Yes, any reason why it shouldn’t be?”
“Two. Ricky’s had trouble with the pigs before, I wouldn’t want to put him in the shit.”
“And…?”
“Someone else’s been asking.”
“Little white guy, oldish?”
“That’s right, who is he?”
“I don’t know. I heard of him up in town. He could mean trouble but I’m not part of it. I just want to find the girl, she’s a free agent as far as I’m concerned.”
“Fair enough. I reckon Ricky’d be at his auntie’s. If he’s not she’ll know where he is. He moves around a bit, could have gone up to Macleay even. Anyway, try his auntie, Mrs Sharkey, she’s on the corner opposite the bakery. You go left up beside the pub and it’s one street along on the other side. Want me to come?”
“No, I’ll be right. Thanks, see you around.”
“Yeah, right.” We each scooped our change off the bar. He picked up his beer and wandered over to sit with the old card players. They gave him a nod and took sips from their glasses, acknowledging his presence in the ritualised way of drinkers everywhere, but the sips were small because those beers had to last.
I walked out of the pub, crossed the road and used the public toilet. The hum of an aeroplane landing at Mascot filled the night air, which was moist, with a faint chemical tang. The area is ringed about with industrial plants of different kinds; tongues of fire shoot out from them like ignited gases from the escape valves of Hell. I walked over to my car, opened the door and dropped into the seat. I knew at once that something was wrong. There was something missing and something was there that shouldn’t have been. I put the key in the ignition in a reflex action and then jet engines roared in my ears and an oil refinery exploded in my skull. Cascades of sparks and glowing concentric circles flared and died.
5
The hand shaking my shoulder seemed to be rattling the vertebrae like dice. I lifted my head off the stem of the steering column and blood dripped down into my eyes. As I came up out of the gloom I remembered what had been wrong – Sunday’s boomerang wasn’t on the seat where he’d left it.
“You all right mate?” Sunday was trying to steady me and get a look at the back of my head as I swayed about in the seat. I put both hands on the wheel.
“Think so.” My voice was a squeak, the beer rose from my belly and burnt my throat. I choked it down. “Did
