I played the CD again and still liked it. The next day I phoned Roche Management Inc and made an appointment to see Manny Roche. My spiel to his secretary was that I was a security consultant and wanted to talk about the possibility of providing security for his artists.
The office was in Edgecliff, part of a complex just off New South Head Road. Manny was in suite 3, next to a literary agent and across the bricked courtyard from a firm representing actors and models. A couple of wraith- thin women, looking as if a stiff wind would blow them away, were smoking in the courtyard and admiring the city view. An overweight man wearing a beige safari suit with epaulettes and badges on the sleeves was pretending not to watch them.
I was ushered into Manny’s presence by a young Asian woman who looked as if she belonged with the models. He was sitting down, but at a guess Manny was about 170 centimetres and must have weighed 120 kilos. He watched the slender back of the Asian woman as she retreated across the expanse of white carpet to the door.
‘Not bad, eh?’ he said when the door was closed. Without waiting for a reply he went on, ‘I can give you a couple of minutes only. Make your pitch.’
I took my time sitting down in a chair near his desk without being invited. I looked him over before I spoke. He wore a blue shirt with a red tie and red braces. His suit jacket hung on a valet hanger behind him next to the bar fridge. His desk held a phone and a computer, no blotter, no paper. A shelf against one wall was filled with videos and CDs, no books. Here, the paperless office had arrived.
‘I’m investigating the death of Simon Townsley,’ I said.
‘I thought you…’ He half rose from his chair, but getting up for Manny would be a major operation, so he sank back down. ‘Get out of here.’
‘Not yet. Why so angry? Something to hide?’
He would have been a good-looking man before fat overwhelmed his features and his hairline retreated towards the top of his head. The fat reduced his eyes to slits and the jowls crowded his mouth. A difficult face to read. He shook his head slightly and the jowls and chins bounced. ‘What would I have to hide? It’s just that I’m a busy man.’
‘You’ve got time to perve on your receptionist. I bet you invite her in a few times just to watch.’
He let that go by him. ‘Simon died of AIDS. End of story.’
‘Some people don’t think so.’
He nodded and the flesh jiggled again. ‘Jordan Elliott. The classics freak. As crazy as he is queer.’
‘You’re not? Queer I mean? The perving could be an act.’
Roche reached for the phone. ‘I’m going to call security.’
‘Do that,’ I said. ‘Get the safari suit up here and we’ll get a little blood on your carpet. Be fun.’
‘What d’ you fuckin’ want?’
‘What happened on that tour to turn Townsley’s health around?’
‘Nothing that I know of. He just packed up.’
‘I want a list of the places they played with the dates, and current addresses for the other members of the band. And I want to know where they’re playing next.’
‘Will you piss off if I do that?’
‘Sure.’
He picked up the phone and briefly spoke into it. He hung up and swung around to look at his view. Within a couple of minutes the fax machine on the desk began to chatter. He slid the sheets across to me. I looked at them.
‘What about the new singer, Jo-Ho whatever?’
‘What about her? She wasn’t there.’
I glanced at the sheets again. ‘I want her address too, and the roadie, Don Berry.’
‘Jo-Jo’s in a flat just down the way in New McLean Street. Number 4, flat 6. Wall-to-wall dykes. I haven’t a fuckin’ clue where Berry is. Roadies come and go.’
I put the sheets away and stood. ‘Okay, one last thing. You don’t say a word about me to these people. I’ll be able to tell if you have, believe me. And I won’t be happy.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a pity you weren’t fair dinkum about providing security. You’re arsehole enough to be good at it.’
I tried the flat in New McLean Street. No one home. I drove to the office and phoned the members of the band one by one and got a no reply, a no longer connected and two answer machines before a human response. The woman who answered Seb Jones’ phone told me that the band was rehearsing in the back room of a pub in Woolloomooloo. Steve’s fax came through and I skimmed the pages. Of greatest interest at a quick look was a photograph of the band, including the roadie, taken during the last tour.
I shoved the fax sheets in my pocket and drove to the Loo. The rehearsal was more of a jam session and run-through with a few other musicians sitting in. I thought it showed chutzpah for the Stonewallers to replace a male singer with a female but dropped the idea when I heard Jo-Jo Moon. She was tiny and dark, possibly Aboriginal, and her voice was almost identical to Simon Townsley’s.
When they finished I managed to get a few minutes with each of the men by mentioning Steve Cook’s name. He had clout. Not with Jo-Jo though, she took off on a motorbike with a woman twice her size. I told the guys who I was and what I was doing. Reiss, who was older than I’d expected and straight-acting, was dismissive, almost aggressive. Jones was so stoned he was practically incapable of speech and I wondered how he’d managed to play. Craig Pappas seemed genuinely interested but couldn’t add anything to what Manny had told me: nothing had happened on the tour to account for Townsley’s collapse.
‘Maybe Don Berry knows something,’ Pappas said. ‘Him and Simon were real close, if you know what I mean.’
‘I thought Simon and Jordan were…’
Pappas shrugged. ‘So did Jordan.’
‘Where can I find Berry? Manny didn’t seem to know.’
‘I saw him the other day. He was asking if he could get in on the tour. I told him to see Manny but I wouldn’t fancy his chances.’
‘Why not?’
He mimed tourniqueting his arm. ‘I think he said he was at the Williams.’
Jesus.
‘Yeah, a fleabag, but you know how they get.’
The Williams is a small place off Bayswater Road. It had a brief period of prosperity during the Vietnam war when it was a favourite R amp;R spot but its gone steadily downhill, so that now it’s given over to transients, junkies and prostitutes. Twenty dollars got me the number of Berry’s room from a guy on the front desk who would probably have given it to me for ten. The room was on the second floor and it was smellorama territory all the way-stale tobacco, spilt beer, takeaway food, sweat, vomit and despair.
The door was ajar. I knocked and pushed it further open. The room was dark with the only light coming in through tears in the blind. A big man got up out of a chair and lurched towards me.
‘Have you got it, man?’
‘Got what?’ I squinted, slow to adjust to the gloom from an eye injury some years ago. He got bigger still, looming up out of the darkness, and I stepped back.
‘Fuck! You’re not him.’
It was Berry but he’d aged ten years since the photograph of a year ago. His hair was lank, he was unshaven and he smelt as bad as he looked.
‘I want to talk to you,’ I said.
‘Fuck off.’ He threw a punch and from the way he did it I could tell that he once knew a bit, but his reflexes were shot and I dodged it easily. Like an old street fighter, he didn’t mind missing and he had a better follow-up that caught me on the shoulder with some force, but he was off balance by now and I kneed him in the crotch and he went down hard.
I waited while he pulled himself up against the wall. I’d had it in mind that Berry might have got Simon
