‘Cathy should keep her bloody trap shut, then.’
‘She’s worried about Kevin, just wants to know he’s okay.’
Follan’s piggy eyes drifted along the bar to the right and left of us; it looked as if he could measure earshot to within an inch. He sucked froth from his empty glass and somehow I knew it was to oil a lie. ‘ I dunno any more than what I told Cathy. I got the word from a bloke who was just out. Kevin told him to look me up. I gave it to Cathy word for word and that’s all I know.’
‘I could be lying about Cathy, I could be a cop.’
He signalled for more beer. ‘Who gives a shit? I dunno where Kevin is.’
‘That’s a good safe story you’ve got.’
‘It’s true, too. Piss off.’
I downed my drink and walked away; before I left the bar I turned and looked back. Follan was jiggling his change like a man about to make a phone call. I walked up the street and moved my car to a point where I could see the pub door, but was hidden behind three or four cars. I was hungry and the two quick middies felt like a gallon on my empty stomach. A taxi pulled up immediately outside the bar door and Follan took three steps across the pavement and got in. ‘If you drink, don’t drive’-an honest citizen observing the law? Not likely; I U-turned dangerously and followed the taxi.
After fifteen years in the business of doing for people what they can’t do for themselves, I thought nothing a human being did could surprise me. Follan proved me wrong; I thought he’d head for some Ultimo or Chippendale boarding house, or another pub, but the taxi drove to the Bellevue Hotel. Follan got out and waddled into the foyer as if he belonged there. I couldn’t park and I didn’t fancy hanging around behind aspidistras in the lobby anyway. I drove home, had a sandwich and some wine and sat out behind the house looking at the big city glow and smelling the big city smells. They jangle some people; they soothe me.
Dave Follan looked at me sullenly. I’d followed him from the Grenadier the next day to his flat in Avon Street, Glebe. I’d bailed him up as soon as he turned the key, pushed him in, and tried to impress him with my seriousness as much as with the. 38. But I wasn’t sure it was working. He sat on an overstuffed, floral covered chair and looked belligerent. The flat was fussily decorated and arranged but the arrangements were fraying and breaking down as if the woman who’d set them up was no longer around. Fat Dave Follan looked incongruous amid the floral prints and china, but he didn’t seem to know it.
‘You won’t use that bloody thing,’ he growled. ‘I’m just sittin’ here wondering where to hit you.’
‘It could come to that,’ I said evenly. ‘After we spoke the other day you made a phone call and then you went to the Bellevue. I want to know why.’
‘You know what you can do.’
I took off my jacket and put the gun in the pocket, dropped the jacket over a chair. ‘You’re fat and I’ve got ten years on you. You’ll get hurt and we’ll break things. You really want to do it this way?’
‘Yes.’ He came up out of the chair heavily but not too slow. He expected his bulk to help but it didn’t. He swung at me, I moved aside and he nearly lost balance.
‘You’ve had a few too many as well, Dave. Don’t push it.’
He swore and drove a pretty good punch straight at me. I took it on the shoulder moving back. He was slow to recover and I put my bunched right hand in his face, fingers near the eyes and the heel on the nose and pushed hard. He grunted and went down.
‘This is silly,’ I said. ‘But if that’s the way you want it, okay. I’ll fix you up here, go to the Bellevue, find out what room you went to, give it a call and throw your name in. Be interesting to see what pops up.’
That got to him. The beer courage and the bully drained out of him. He got up slowly and eased onto the couch; his flesh spread and settled as he let it take his weight. That left him with the weight on his mind.
‘Don’t do that. Jesus, don’t do that.’
I picked my jacket off the chair and sat down. ‘Well, you can see where we are, Dave. You have to tell me why you’re so scared.’
‘I’m a dead man if I bloody do,’ he muttered.
‘It’s up to you, maybe I can keep you out of it. I could try. D’you have any choice?’
He shook his head. ‘Wish the missus was here; I could do with a cuppa.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Dead. Month back.’
‘Get on with it, Dave.’
His cigarettes had fallen on the floor and he reached down for them; the effort brought the blood back to his face, and I watched him scramble and wheeze until he had one lit. ‘Big job on, of course. Interstate money.’
‘Where from?’
‘North. Kevin and the others are gonna do it. Cost money to get ‘em out.’
‘Why them?’
‘It’s a fuckin’ cowboy job, that’s why. You’d have to be bloody desperate to try it. They’ll have other guns on ‘em while they re doin’ it. I picked that up by accident, wasn’t supposed to.’
‘Where and what?’
He sucked on his cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. ‘I don’t know, that’s the truth.’
He could have been lying, it was impossible to say; he was going to lie at some point, I was sure of that.
‘Why the message to Cathy?’
‘That was a blind; Kevin reckoned she’d get a car and get some dough together. The cops’d watch her and he could stay outa sight-keep clear of her.’
‘Where?’
‘Don’t know.’
That was all I’d get from him, I knew. We were manoeuvring each other; he’d said enough to make it not worthwhile for me to blow him to his principals; but if the worst happened and he had to front them he could claim he hadn’t sung the whole song. They might leave him a toe.
I pulled on my jacket and shoved the gun in under my arm. ‘I’ve got you by the balls, Dave. I can drop you in it with the cops or the other side. You know that?’
He nodded. ‘Why would you?’
‘I wouldn’t need a reason. Last thing-give me the number at the Bellevue. That’s it, just three little words.’
‘Five oh six.’
‘I thank you. You’re on your own now, Dave. You’d better play it by ear.’
If you’ve got the room number, fifty dollars will get you the name of any hotel resident in the city. Room 506 at the Bellevue was occupied by a Mr Carpenter of Southport. My informant, who arranged transport for the guests and did a stint on the desk, threw in for free a physical description and that Mr Carpenter would be leaving the hotel at 10 a.m. the following day. He was new at the job-he could have negotiated that into another twenty.
The example of Dave Follan turned me off drinking for the night. I went to a film that tried to make me cry; it didn’t, but it could have. I walked up through Hyde Park to Darlinghurst to drink coffee worth walking that far for. The blocking of the streets has caused the girls to move to William Street where they seemed to be crowding each other a little. In Darlinghurst you do it in a terrace bedroom rather than the back seat of a car, but it’s the same thing. I thought about Cathy who made calls and went out to dinner more these days, but that’s the same too.
Ten o’clock found me illegally parked and alert outside the Bellevue Hotel. Carpenter was easy to spot-a beefy, florid guy wearing a beige safari suit that might have cost five hundred bucks but still looked like a rag. He put two sizable suitcases into a new Falcon wagon and we were off. My ancient Falcon followed the new model like a discarded bull trying to keep up with the new leader of the herd.
The drive wasn’t far and wasn’t scenic. The Falcon pulled up outside a blighted-looking terrace house in Enmore on the Newtown side. It was as unneighbourly a house as you’ll see around there-on a corner, with an empty factory next door and the railway across the street. The house was a grimy, crumbling hulk, but it had one big advantage-you could get away from it in at least four different directions, and one route, by the tunnel under
