Bad Debts Page 9

  ‘Did he need money?’

  ‘I think so. He’d borrowed nearly five thousand dollars from me. They refused his American Express card at Latino’s the day before he went. I paid for the meal with my card. And there’s trouble about this house. It’s going to be sold by the bank.’

  ‘How did he get that way?’

  Charles shook his head. He looked much older now, less firm of face. ‘I honestly don’t know, Jack,’ he said. ‘He didn’t tell me and I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking.’

  We shook hands. I liked him. He clearly deserved better than Ronnie Bishop. Burdett-Bishop.

  ‘Why did he stick the Burdett on his name?’ I asked.

  Charles sighed and looked heavenwards. ‘He was thinking of going into real estate and he thought it sounded impressive.’

  I went in search of lodgings, thankful that I’d bought a book.

  13

  A weak sun was shining on Melbourne, but to compensate a marrow-chilling wind was blowing. I rang the security parking garage and they sent their little bus to collect me.

  ‘Jetsetting again,’ the driver said. ‘You joined that Mile High Club yet?’

  He was an ex-cop called Col Boon, pensioned off the force for extreme hypertension after shooting another cop during a raid on an indoor dope plantation in Coburg. A tragic mistake, the coroner said. I suppose in some ways it’s always a tragic mistake to shoot the man who’s rooting your wife every time you’re on nightshift and he’s not.

  ‘The club reckons I couldn’t stand the excitement of high-altitude copulation,’ I said.

  Col made an animal noise. ‘Tell ’em you’ll do it sitting down. You growing a beard?’

  I felt my two-day growth. ‘Stewies like a bit of hair,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘Bit? Seen less hair on pussies.’ He took a corner with a squeal of balding tyres. ‘Talking pussies, you want to pick your stewie. Mate of mine put his hand in the golden triangle, found a big cock. Qantas I think it was.’

  I pondered the significance of this story. My maternal grandmother apparently addressed stewardesses as ‘waitress’. She would not have taken well to the idea that some of them were, in fact, waiters.

  At the parking garage, Col said, ‘There’s a hit of a problem with your car. That grease monkey rang. Says he took your motor to pieces and he can’t put it together again till he can find parts. Two weeks, minimum.’

  I groaned. This was what happened when you left your ancient Lark for a service with a backyard mechanic who was a Studebaker fanatic.

  ‘Now you tell me. What am I supposed to do?’ I said. ‘Walk?’

  ‘He says he’s got an old Chevy you can use.’

  ‘I hate old Chevies.’

  ‘Well,’ Col said, ‘we’ve got a special on unclaimed vehicles this week. Nice Celica. Say two weeks, hundred and fifty.’

  ‘You work this out together?’

  He looked hurt.

  I said, ‘Throw in a full tank.’

  ‘Give us a break. There’s a good bit in it.’ He gave me an appraising look. ‘Had a call if your car was here.’

  I waited.

  ‘Your office. A girl.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No. Well, this isn’t the lost and found either. Told her you hadn’t parked here for a while.’

  ‘You give a complete service here, Col,’ I said.

  He handed me the keys. ‘I’d say look after it like your own,’ he said, ‘but that’s the last thing we want.’

  I thought about Ronnie all the way to Fitzroy. I’d got the addresses from Charles and visited Ronnie’s two video rental shops in the Perth suburbs. One was closed. The other was in a small shopping mall and it didn’t look healthy. From behind a partition of grey tin shelves came the sobbing breaths, grunts, yells and urgings of a pornographic video and the jeers and cheers of a teenage audience. After a while, a sallow youth with a pigtail emerged and said, ‘Yep?’ It turned out he didn’t know Ronnie but was standing in for his friend’s friend, who sometimes worked in the shop.

  At the workshop, Charlie was finishing up for the day, pottering around endlessly as usual—a dab of oil here, a wipe of a surface there, here a gentle opening and closing of a cabinet door, there a pull–push of a drawer. I gradually worked him through the front doors like a sheepdog with a particularly difficult sheep. We drove around to the Prince of Prussia. Usually we walked, but Charlie’s hip was hurting. I parked the Celica around the corner in a loading zone.

  ‘No respect for the law,’ Charlie said. ‘That’s where it all begins. Und du bist rechtsgelehrt.’

  ‘Have a heart,’ I said. ‘It’s only a little municipal regulation, shouldn’t apply after 5 p.m.’ When we were alone, Charlie often expressed his doubts and disappointments about me in German, language of my great-grandfather.

  Wilbur Ong and Norm O’Neill were in position, beers, pies, Herald Sun form guides on the counter. They gave us the briefest acknowledgment.

  ‘My feelin is we’re lookin at a rerun of Kyneton twenty months ago,’ said Norm. The peak of his flat cap rested on his spectacles, which rested on a nose of heroic size.

  ‘Well, I’ve always loved yer feeling, darlin,’ said Wilbur, ‘but there’s a lotta wishful here. He’s bin five, seven, five first-up since then.’

  ‘’Course he has,’ said Norm. ‘That’s why we’re lookin at bloody forties here. Know it in my bones.’

  ‘Relied on your bones,’ Wilbur said, ‘we’d be round the Salvos eatin rabbit stew.’

  ‘Given these pies, that’s not a frightenin thought,’ said Norm. He turned to me. ‘Jack, prepared to divulge yer thoughts on the gallops at Geelong?’

  ‘People in the know treat my tips as scratchings,’ I said. ‘However, since it’s you lot.’

  Charlie Taub gave a snort and went off to talk football to a retired tram driver called Wally Pollard. Wally’s only son, Bantam Pollard, ruined a promising career with Collingwood through bad timing. On a Friday night in 1975, the club president took six guests into the committee box to show them the ground’s new floodlights. They came on, casting a cold white light on the playing field and on Bantam Pollard’s spotty bottom. It was dead centre of the field, bracketed by the fleshy thighs of the president’s sixteen-year-old daughter.

  We were on race four when a man came in the street door. He was about fifty, bald, of below medium height, with a heavy body. RayBans sat on a darkly tanned bull-terrier face. He’d spent about three grand on his gear, most of it on gold chains and a golden brown leather jacket that fitted him like a condom. The style said Sydney or the Gold Coast; the walk, as if he were rolling a tennis ball between his upper thighs, said cop, probably vice squad.

  Stan the barman was at the far end of the counter. He exchanged a few words with Mr Gold Coast and then came down to our end of the bar.

  ‘Bloke’s asking for Jack,’ he said, looking at Wilbur. ‘What’ll I tell him?’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be along in a minute,’ I said. I lingered for a minute or two and then walked down the bar.

  Stan had served Mr Gold Coast something with tonic. At my approach, he smiled at me, a lip lift to show lavatory-white capped teeth. It conveyed no more sentiment than a facial tic. He put out a hand.

  ‘Jack. Tony Baker.’ The hand exerted no pressure; a hand that felt to be made of one-inch brass plumbing fittings didn’t need to do anything other than Be.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ I said.

  ‘Have a drink with me.’

  ‘I’ve got one waiting.’

  ‘You do work among the elderly. That’s nice.’ He swallowed the contents of his glass and rapped it on the counter several times. Stan responded to the summons by leaving the room.

  Tony Baker edged closer to me. The top of his head came up to my chin. This gave me all the physical confidence the giraffe feels when it meets the rhino. He showed me his teeth again.

  ‘Clubby here, am I right? No risk of anyone wanting to join th
ough, mate. Well, this isn’t a social occasion. I’m here to straighten a coupla things out.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as your getting in the way of an official investigation.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of a number of matters, one of which touches Mr Ronald Bishop.’

  ‘What do you mean, touches?’

  Tony Baker put his hand to his muscular sausage of a neck and turned his head a few centimetres to each side. ‘Jack,’ he said, speaking softly, ‘you don’t want to know, right? If you get in the way of this investigation you’ll get squashed so fucken flat they’ll post you.’

  ‘Who’ll squash me?’ I asked.

  His eyes went hard. I noticed a small gold fleck in the right iris. ‘You’re not listening, Jack. I’m telling you to back off, drop it. This matter is at a very high level, a national level. I’ve said too much now.’

  ‘Have you got some identification?’ I realised I should have asked earlier.

  Tony Baker closed his eyes and sighed. ‘Can I get this across to you without a map? You don’t want to know anything about me. Take it as gospel: you are obstructing an official operation. Pull your head in, forget about Mr Bishop, or you’ll wish it was you that cunt blew up in the carpark. Just fucken butt out.’

  He left. I went back to the form but couldn’t concentrate. At six-thirty, Charlie’s granddaughter, the lovely Augustine, hooted outside. I went out with him. It was intensely cold after the warmth of the pub and the air had the burnt petrol smell of winter cities everywhere.

  Charlie got into the car and wound down the window. ‘Eat some proper food,’ he said. ‘You need someone to look after you.’

  I put my hand on his shoulder. ‘Maybe you can talk your driver here into marrying me. It’s all indoor work.’

  ‘Let’s talk pay and conditions,’ Gus said. She was a trade union official.

  Charlie snorted. ‘Go,’ he said to Gus. ‘Some men you don’t want in your family.’

  I stood in the street and considered whether to go back into the pub and settle down or to go home. I decided to go home. I’ve learned to take the hard decisions.

  The apartment was cold, the bulb in the bathroom had fused and the fridge smelled of five-day-old fish. Cam, Wootton and my daughter were on the answering machine. Claire said: Listen, Jack, I’m just ringing to say I miss you and I’ll be down for a visit soon. I might bring Eric to set your mind at rest. Your letter sounds glum. Don’t be. Love you. Bye.

  I made a stiff Jamieson’s and soda and rang Linda Hillier. She wasn’t in the office.

  14

  Hardhills was a shop, a garage and a weatherboard pub at a churned-up crossroads. The nearest town of any size was thirty kilometres away. In between, it was all low sky, wet sheep and ponds in every hollow.

  There were three utes outside the pub. Harry Strang eased the BMW to a stop beside the shop and switched off. He looked at his watch.

  We sat in silence for five minutes. I was thinking about Ronnie Bishop. Cam was reading the Sporting Globe. Harry had his eyes closed, head back on the rest. Then he said, ‘Now this fella Rex Tie, supposed to meet us out here twelve sharp, he’s sittin in the pub over there with this other fella we’ve come to see. Talkin horses. Couple of the yokels no doubt waterin the tonsils. Publican’s hangin about. Rex’s takin the view that we’ll come in, have a few gargles first.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable,’ I said.

  ‘Not in this line of work,’ Harry said. ‘Thought I’d schooled Rex the last time. Easier to train a horse.’

  At 12.15, two men came out of the pub. One of them, a gangling figure in a battered half-length Drizabone, came over to the car. At his approach, Harry pressed the button and his window slid down. The man bent down to look in. He had a long, sad, middle-aged face, much of it nose.

  ‘Sorry, Harry,’ he said. ‘Thought you might come in for a quick one.’

  Harry looked at him. ‘Rex, you’ve forgotten.’

  Rex straightened up and then he came down again. ‘Jeez, Harry, have a heart. This is bloody Hardhills. There’s only about four people.’

  ‘That’s four too many, Rex. Drive. We’ll follow.’

  Rex and the other man got into their utes and drove off, the other man in front. We followed at a distance.

  ‘Harry, why do you need a lawyer for driving around the Western District?’ I asked. The question had been on my mind for some time.

  He gave me a quick look. ‘The yokels’ve got a lot of respect for lawyers, Jack. Doesn’t hurt to show them one. That bloke up front, he’s got a horse called Dakota Dreaming, five years old, hasn’t run for two years. Not that it ran much before that either. What’s the ’rithmetic, Cam?’

  ‘Seven, one, one,’ said Cam. He was studying the landscape out of the side window.

  ‘Five-year-old. Seven races. Now that’s what I call lightly raced,’ Harry said. ‘And the reason is, Jack, the animal’s got a horrible record, truly horrible. Lucky he’s not in the pet’s mince or got a big copper’s bum on him. The fella up there, he’s owner number four, and number three made him a gift of the horse. Gratis and for nothing. He’s put two years into patchin up the beast and he reckons it’s got one or two big runs in it. Tell Jack the history, Cam.’

  Cam looked around. ‘He’s bred for staying. Third highest price for a yearling in New Zealand in his year. Won his first race by seven lengths. Then Edgar Charlton bought him for a fair bit for a dentists’ syndicate. First time out he ran seventh against a good field, pulled up lame. Out for seventeen weeks. Came back at Sandown in December, second in a bunch of spring leftovers. Tendon trouble, twenty weeks off. March at Caulfield. Ninth out of thirteen. Ballarat three weeks later. Stone last. Bleeding. Took the compulsory count. The dentists spit the dummy, sold him. Turned out twice for the third owner for one sixth and one last.’

  ‘Fella trains over near Colac,’ Harry said. ‘John Nisbet. Gave our friend up ahead the horse with a bowed tendon on his near side and bone chips in both front legs. A dead loss.’

  ‘With respect, this outing doesn’t look like an investment to me,’ I said.

  ‘Shake,’ said Cam.

  ‘Won’t hurt to have a look,’ Harry said. ‘Old Rex’s no Rhodes Scholar but he’s not Curly Joe.’

  The front vehicle turned right. A rutted track ran around the gentle eastern slope of a round-topped hill. At the foot of the northern slope were a farmhouse, stables, assorted sheds, a round yard. Horses in rugs were standing around looking bored in half a dozen paddocks. About a hundred metres from the buildings, the front driver pulled half off the track, got out and opened a gate. He waved us through.

  Rex parked next to a shed and Harry pulled up beside him. We all got out and put on our coats. The north wind had ice in it.

  ‘Christ, Harry,’ said Cam, ‘can’t we do this in the summer? Bloody nun’s nipple.’

  The lead driver parked next to the farmhouse. All the buildings except the stables were old but the place was kept up; fresh paint, taut wire, raked gravel. As we got out of the ute, a boy of about fourteen appeared at the front door of the house.

  Harry introduced us to Rex and when the other man came over, Rex said, ‘Tony Ericson, this is Harry Strang, Cam Delray, and Harry’s lawyer, Jack Irish.’

  We shook hands. Tony was jockey size but too heavy, lined face, thick dark hair cut short, big ears.

  ‘Never thought I’d meet you,’ he said to Harry. ‘Me dad used to say, “Think you’re Harry Strang?” when we tried some flash riding.’

  ‘How’s your dad?’ asked Harry.

  Tony Ericson cocked his head. ‘You remember me dad? He always said he knew you.’

  ‘Ray Ericson,’ Harry said. ‘Still goin?’

  Tony Ericson shook his head.

  Harry patted his arm briskly. ‘Sorry to hear it. Ray could get a camel to jump. Now what’s the story?’

  Tony Ericson looked at Rex Tie. ‘You want to, Rex…’

  ‘You go,’
Rex Tie said.

  ‘Let’s get down the stables,’ Tony said. ‘I brung the horse in. Lives outside normal. Bugger’s had enough soft in his life.’

  We went down a gravel path, through a gate and round the corner of a long cinderblock stable building. There were eight stalls but only one horse. It was waiting for us, brown head turned our way, nostrils steaming.

  Tony said, ‘Rex tell you his name’s Dakota Dreamin? We call him Slim.’

  The horse snickered as we approached. Tony stroked his nose and fed him something.

  ‘They say he was a deadset mongrel, kickin, bitin, but we never seen it. Like a lamb. Me girl looks after him, ten-year-old.’ He looked behind us and said, ‘Tom, shake hands with the gentlemen. This is me boy Tom, waggin school. He’ll give the horse a little hit out.’

  The boy from the front door came up and shook hands awkwardly. Someone other than a barber had given him a recent haircut. He was going to be too big for a jockey.

  We walked down a road between paddocks and over a small rise. Below us, invisible from the stables, was a training track. You could smell the watermelon scent of new-mown grass before you saw it.

  ‘Two thousand four hundred metres,’ said Tony Ericson. ‘Got a twelve hundred metre chute over there.’ He pointed to the left. ‘Starting gate. Same grass as Flemington. Bloke done it in the sixties. Went bang here. Used to have rails and all. Had sheep on it for twenty years but we mowed it and rolled it and it come up good.’

  I looked at Harry. He had his hands in the jacket pockets of his leather-trimmed loden jacket and a faraway expression on his face.

  He took a hand out and rubbed his chin. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Pride of the district, I imagine.’