‘Today. I need your help.’
‘Mr Salmon, I’d reckon you need prayers and airline tickets in about that order.’
‘Stop pissing around. I want to meet you to talk business. D’you know the Sportsman Club, in Alexandria?’
I did know it although I didn’t particularly want to; it was a dive that went back to six o’clock closing days and beyond as a sly grog joint and SP hangout. In those days the sport most of its associates were familiar with was two-up. I’d heard that it had gained some sort of affiliation with a soccer club, but it had still worn the same dingy, guilty look when I last drove past.
‘It’s one of my favourite places.’ I said. ‘Are you a member there?’
‘Yeah, about the only place I still am a member.’ His voice was bitter. ‘Meet me there in an hour and we’ll talk work and money.’
‘I don’t know…’
‘A thousand bucks, Hardy, for two days’ work.’
‘Okay.’ The phone clicked as soon as I had the second syllable out. I sat there with the instrument in my hand thinking that I was about to associate with a known criminal. But then, as a private investigator, I did that a lot of the time and it was what my mother had predicted I’d end up doing anyway. Besides, we’re associating with criminals all the time-motor mechanics, doctors, real estate agents-it was only the ‘known’ part that made this any different.
I needed the thousand bucks, not because business was especially slow. It wasn’t; I had a few party- mindings and money-escortings to do in the days ahead, and I was on a retainer from a group of wealthy Ultimo squatters who were trying to keep leverage on the smelly company that owned their row of terraces. But things kept getting more expensive, like food and Scotch and sneakers, and it would take a lot of fear to turn me away from a thousand dollars.
The name Harvey Salmon generated a certain amount of fear, mind you. He’d been a key man in a syndicate which the press had dubbed ‘the rainforest ring’ because the marijuana grown in Australia, or some of it, had been cultivated in rainforests. But the ring had operated on a broad field, importing from South-East Asia and exporting to the US, and there had been the usual number of couriers killed and businessmen who’d found it expedient to go off into the bush with just their Mercedes and a shotgun.
The ring had collapsed under two simultaneous blows-the death, from a heart attack at the age of 43 while jogging, of Peter ‘Pilot’ Wrench who’d been the chief organiser. Some said that Wrench had got his nickname from his early days of flying drugs into Australia through the open northern door, others said it was really ‘Pilate’ because he always washed his hands of a bad deal and a bad dealer. The death of Wrench threw the lieutenants into confusion and doubt. One of them gave interviews to certain law enforcement officers which resolved the doubts of some of the others who got long sentences to repent in. The interviewee was Harvey Salmon who’d backed up his allegations with scores of hours of telephone tapes. I’d heard a lot of that on the QT from Harry Tickener and other journalists; for public consumption, Salmon had got fifteen years a mere eighteen months ago.
It was 3 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, traffic in Alexandria was light and that made it a halcyon time of day. Alexandria seems to live on hope; the city and airport bound traffic moves through its broad and narrow streets like a cancer, but the area has been promised a park, a big project park. Acres of industrial land, including a bricking quarry and factory, have been slated for development as a park to rival Centennial. People were hanging on to their slum terraces and the real-estate operators were waiting for the park like a kidney patient waits for a donor. Meanwhile, the place is home to a few different ethnic groups and some restaurants to match-most of the restaurants will survive the park, most of the people won’t.
I parked only three blocks away from the Sportsman Club, almost back into Erskineville, but that’s nearby parking in Alexandria. At 3.30 the club already had a quota of drinkers-some of them afternoon specialists, some for whom the morning session had dragged on a bit, some for whom the evening had started early. I had to wait by a flyblown receptionist booth while my name was sent ‘upstairs’. After I’d spent 10 minutes comparing the fly spots on the glass of the booth to the blackheads on the nose of the girl inside it, Harvey Salmon came down the stairs to escort me into the precincts.
Salmon was tall and heavy with thinning brown hair and an expression that suggested things were bad and getting worse. I’d never met him but his picture had been in the papers at the time of ‘Pilot’ Wrench’s departure; in the flesh he looked heavier, thinner on top and even less sanguine. But gaol changes a man. He stopped a couple of steps from the bottom and studied me carefully. He wore a pale grey suit, white shirt and dark tie, suede shoes; I had on sneakers and jeans, an open-neck shirt and a leather jacket. I wondered which of us was dressed right. Salmon hopped down the last couple of steps with fair agility, gave me a nod and put two dollars between the sliding glass panels of the booth.
‘Thanks, Teresa.’
Teresa didn’t even glance up from TV Week. ‘’kay,’ she said.
I went up the short flight of stairs with Salmon, through a smaller drinking room with fewer poker machines than the one below, and into an office that was dark and musty. The only light was struggling in through some Venetian blinds and the only places to sit were on the desk or on a rickety chair behind it. I sat on the desk and Salmon moved towards the chair. He also cleared his throat to speak but I got in first.
‘How about a drink?’
‘What? Oh yeah, sure, sorry.’ He moved back and opened the door; for a minute I thought he was going to yell his order across to the bar but he didn’t. He went out and I had about a minute and a half to study the room before he came back with two schooners. A minute and a half was plenty and I hadn’t drunk schooners of old for years. It wasn’t such a good start.
When he was settled behind the desk and his glass, Salmon cracked his knuckles-I hoped he wasn’t going to do that too often.
‘I need someone around for two days.’ he said.
‘Try downstairs. If you’re good company you shouldn’t have any trouble.’
‘I need someone who can handle a little trouble, if it comes up. Not that it will.’
‘You never can tell,’ I said. ‘Especially in your game.’
He ignored me as if he had a set speech to deliver and was going to do it, no matter what. ‘I was all set to fly out today, that was the deal.’ He paused, maybe to see if I was shocked. I wasn’t. ‘But there’s been some screw-up over the passport. I’ve got two days to wait, and I’ve got enemies.’
‘Book into the Hilton, watch TV and wait.’
He ruffled the thin hair which made it look even thinner. ‘I don’t want to do that. Am I going to do that for the rest of my life? The cops say they’re keeping an eye on me and also on certain people. But I don’t know. Who can you trust?’
I drank some beer and looked at him; he wasn’t sweating and he didn’t look afraid, but maybe he just lacked imagination the way he, apparently, lacked a sense of irony.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘R… South America. Same thing, see? The cops say they’ve squared it over there but I want to get a feel of what it’s like. I’ll have to get someone over there, but I want to do a few things while I’ve got those couple of days. Jesus, I’ve lived here fifty years, I don’t want to spend the last two days in a hotel room.’
An appeal based on the pleasure of Sydney will get me every time. Salmon could see he had me and he took a confident gulp of his schooner before giving me the details. He had the use of a flat in Erskineville for the next three nights and expected to catch his plane on Saturday afternoon. He had a few places to visit, a woman to see. He wanted to have a few beers here and there; he wanted to go to the trots and the beach. He wanted me to stay in the flat and tag along with him. He’d give me five hundred now and five hundred on Saturday. I said I’d do it. Truth was, I was getting rather bored with party-minding and money-escorting.
We finished our beers and stood up together-the Sportsman wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to stick around.
‘Got a gun?’ Salmon asked.
‘Yeah. Got the money?’
‘In the flat. Let’s go.’
We left the glasses on the desk and went out of the office and through the bar. A couple of the drinkers
