‘Who cares?’ She seemed to find it all funny; flesh on her face shook as she laughed and she puffed at the cigarette without touching it.
I fished out my licence card and waved it in front of Chris and his mate.
‘I’m a private detective. I’m looking for Kenneth Silverman; now who’s going to talk to me? There’s money in it.’
The woman took the cigarette out of her face and tried a fat, pursed-up smile.
‘Now you’re talking’, she said. ‘Come along here.’
‘Don’t talk to him, Fay’, the bearded one said.
‘Shut your head, Lenny. Come on whatever your name is, I’ll talk your arse off.’
I went past my opponents and followed her to a back door in the middle of the row. We went into a kitchen that was neither dirty nor clean. I smelled something vaguely familiar, and sniffed at it.
‘Candles’, she said. ‘No power in here. I can make you a coffee, though.’ She gestured at a small stove hooked up to a gas cylinder.
‘Don’t bother, thanks. Do you know Silverman?’
‘Straight to it, eh? What about the money?’
I got out ten dollars and put it on the cracked linoleum-topped table.
‘And another if I’m satisfied’, I said.
‘Fair enough.’ She bobbed her head and the fat bounced on her and ash fell down onto her lumpy chest. ‘Yeah, I knew Kenny, he lived down the end there.’ She waved back towards the scene of my triumph. ‘He left when they cleared us out; no, a bit before that.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘The developers-Forbes Realty. They own this terrace and a few others. Cunts!’
‘What happened?’
‘Came around one morning, about six o’clock, two big blokes with a guy in a suit. He told them what to do- they dumped all our stuff out; everything, every fucking thing, just out in the bloody street. Then they boarded the place up.’ She laughed.
‘What’s funny?’
‘I was thinking, Lenny lost a fight that morning too-it’s bullshit, that karate crap.’
I grunted. ‘You said Silverman had gone by this time?’
She squinted at the ten dollars, remembering, or pretending to. ‘Yeah, he wasn’t in the house that morning. No sign of him. I think some of his stuff got dumped, but I’m not sure. It was a pretty wild scene.’
‘Why are those two so jumpy?’
She spat the cigarette stub out onto the floor, put her thonged foot on it and fished a packet of Winfield out of her pocket.
‘We’ve only been back a couple of weeks; it’s been quiet, but you never know with that mob.’
I nodded, she lit up and puffed an enormous cloud of smoke at the window. I looked around at the artefacts of the squat-packing case shelves, a hose running in through the window to the sink, the small carton of milk on the table. She read my mind.
‘You’re wondering what a silvertail like Kenny was doing living in a dump like this?’
I pushed the money across to her. ‘Yes.’
She picked it up and put it away with the cigarettes.
‘Kenny and the others were taking on Forbes’, she spoke around the cigarette. ‘Kenny was living here as a political act, that’s what he said.’
‘Who else was in the group?’
‘Chris and Lennie, couple more. I think I’ve said enough, I don’t know a bloody thing about you. Do I get the other ten?’
‘You’re not political yourself?’
‘Shit no, I squat ‘cos it’s easy.’
‘Did they have trouble with the developers before?’
‘Oh yeah, plenty-slashed tyres, windows busted-usual things.’
‘Anything since you moved back?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What sort of action did Kenneth and the others take?’
‘Letters to the papers, attending council meetings, street meetings about the plan. They’re going to build right down to the water, you know? We won’t be able to see the bit we see now.’
I gave her another ten dollars and went across to the dusty, cobwebbed window. Blackwattle Bay was an ugly, oily gleam under the dull grey sky and its Glebe shore was a blasted landscape of car bodies, timber and scratchy grass. The view was a long way short of cheerful but there was water in it, it promised better things; it was Sydney. I thanked Fay and tramped through the back yards; Lenny and Chris weren’t in sight and I pulled myself up to one of the windows of the house Silverman had occupied. It was in bad shape, there were black- rimmed holes in the floorboards, and plumbing had been ripped out and hung limp and useless on the kitchen wall.
I drove to the post office and looked up Forbes Realty. The address in Norton Street, Leichhardt niggled at me as I wrote it down. Back in the car I found out why-Kenneth Silverman’s parking ticket had been incurred in Norton Street.
It seemed like time for some telephone research; I went home, made a drink and called a few people including Cy Sackville, my lawyer, and Grant Evans, a senior cop and friend. The results were interesting. Forbes Realty was a semi-solid firm and the word in financial circles was that it was over-extended. Its two leading shareholders were Horace Silverman and Clive Patrick. Silverman’s interests were extensive and Forbes was a small part of his action. From Evans I learned that Forbes Realty had been burglarised eight weeks back and that enquiries were proceeding, also that a Constable Ian Williamson had stopped MG sports model JLM 113 registered to Kenneth Silverman and booked the driver for speeding. Evans arranged for me to talk to Williamson and that made one favour I owed him.
I reckoned I’d put in a day. It was time to tease out a few loose ends and do some thinking. I needed to know more about Forbes Realty and Kenneth’s tactics, also, I was stalling: I didn’t like the look of things and I might have to play a very careful hand. I bought some Lebanese food on the way home and washed it down with a few drinks. Then I took a long walk around Glebe; they were selling food and drink and fun in the main road and God knows what in the back streets and lanes. I nodded to the shop and street people I knew, and avoided the dog shit and cracks in the pavement by long habit. The water was shining under a clear sky and a slight breeze brought a salty tang to the nostrils. You wouldn’t have washed your socks in the water and every tree in the place was struggling against the pollution, but it was home and I liked it. Its minute foreshore didn’t need blocking out with flats.
I went home and phoned a contact in motor registry. He got back to me an hour later with the information that Silverman’s car hadn’t been sold, traded, stolen or smashed in the last two months. It had disappeared. I went to sleep wondering about how Kenneth reconciled the car with his radicalism; I wondered whether Horace Silverman’s delicate business negotiations involved Forbes Realty, and I wondered whether Dr Garson would accept if I asked her out to dinner.
At ten in the morning I phoned Horace Silverman and asked him about his role in Forbes Realty. He went silent and I had to prompt him.
‘I can see you’ve been doing your job, Mr Hardy.’
‘I hope so.’ I was thinking fast trying to guess at his meaning and keep the upper hand. ‘Would you care to tell me all about it?’
There was another pause and then he spoke very deliberately. ‘I don’t know how you found out, but it’s true-Kenneth and I had a falling out over Forbes Realty.’
I breathed out gently. ‘How bad?’
‘Quite serious. He was very critical of the firm, I suppose you know why.’
‘Yeah. You didn’t tell me he’d stopped taking your money.’
‘That’s true too. I’m sorry I wasn’t frank, Mr Hardy. It’s painful to discuss.’
I could imagine his cocky little face expressing the pain, and part of it would be due to having to apologise
