Peter Corris - Burn and Other Stories

I crumpled the second can and stuffed it into the plastic shopping bag we’d used to carry the towels and stuff. Charlie eyed the two remaining cans but he shook his head when I offered one. ‘Never touch it in the daytime.’

‘Wilbur showed me your hate mail,’ I said.

He popped a warm can of Taurina Spa. ‘Yeah?’

‘But that’s not what got you scared. Tell me about it.’

‘Nothing to tell. Phone call. Black bastard, threatening to off me.’

‘How d’you know he was black?’

He grinned and did a good imitation of the slightly guttural, slightly harsh tone that characterises the speech of a lot of Aborigines. ‘You can tell a Koori talking, can’t you, Cliffy?’ He jumped up, spraying sand on me. ‘C’mon, got to get back to work.’

We went back to the house. I had a quick shower in one bathroom, he had a long one in another. That gave me time to prowl in his study and find things I wasn’t surprised to find.

I was getting used to driving the Merc, liking it, even. Maybe Charlie’d give me a job as his permanent minder and I could drive Mercs and body surf and drink at night until my brains turned to mush. In my mind’s eye I could see Cyn nodding her head. Go for it, Cliff. Sleaze is what you love. Admit it. I wouldn’t admit it. As I drove Charlie MacMillan to his late afternoon appointments, I worked on a headstone inscription, while he used the car phone to get the day’s news, gossip and headlines from his researcher. The best I could come up with was: ‘He left the world no dirtier than he found it.’

We got back to the studio about half an hour before Charlie was due on air. A quick skim of his researcher’s material and he was ready. I drifted into Wilbur’s office, ransacked his drawers and played with paper and plastic tape while Charlie MacMillan told a story about his uncle who’d fought in World War II:

‘Uncle Ted said, “The Germans were clean fighters, but the Japs were animals.” I’m quoting a man who fought for this country from 1939 to 1945. That man’s views are worthy of respect. Think about that!’

‘You think about it,’ I said to the speaker on the wall. ‘You lying bastard.’

I was ready to tackle him when he finished his stint, but he gave me no time. He barrelled out through the sound studio door, pulling on his jacket and fumbling for the car keys. ‘Come on, Hardy. We’re not paying you to sit on your arse. Let’s roll!’

I followed him out onto the street to tell him what he could do with himself, and that’s when they arrived. Two of them, and not junked-up punks this time. Pros. One had a sawn-off and the other a baseball bat. MacMillan stopped dead when he saw them, retreated a step and looked around for me. The guy with the shotgun pointed it at Charlie’s head. It was pure reflex on my part- I cannoned into Charlie, knocking him down. I had my. 38 in my hand before he hit the ground and I fired at the gunman, going for his legs but hitting him higher. I lost my balance, fell on my elbow and dropped the pistol. The street light caught the varnish on the bat as it whipped through the air and shattered Charlie’s shoulder. He screamed. The bat went back in an arc; the hitter was taking his time, aiming, and the return swing would’ve reduced MacMillan’s right knee to fragments. I scrabbled on the cement for the shotgun, grabbed, raised and triggered it, left-handed. The charge hit a pair of legs in blue jeans, ripping the fabric, shredding the flesh. Another scream. The bat fell free and the man followed it down, hard.

After that, there were cops and ambulances and pressmen. Temporarily, as the relatively uninjured party, I was almost the villain of the piece. MacMillan said I was a hero. That was just before they sedated him. It made me feel dirty. I gave a statement to the police at the Glebe station and Wilbur arrived to back me up. The reporters had followed Charlie and his assailants to hospital. I felt like something washed up on the beach.

A constable bought coffee in plastic cups from an all-night place in Glebe. Good coffee. He also offered cigarettes. I refused. Wilbur accepted. The constable lit him up.

‘What gives?’ I said.

‘The Ds will tell you, Mr Hardy.’

Mister, I thought, must’ve done some something right. I had. A detective sergeant explained that identifications had come through. The two men I’d shot were well-known enforcers, gambling debt collectors and frighteners-contented sadists with long records.

‘Brent Burke’s going to have a plastic stomach and Tommy Mather’ll be on sticks. For life, with luck,’ the cop said. Thanks.’

Wilbur drove me back to where I’d parked the Falcon in a side street near the 2IC studio. On the way I told him how MacMillan had faked the hate calls-verbal and written-and conned his employer into providing him with protection.

‘Jesus,’ Wilbur said. ‘Gambling?’

‘Yeah. He’s got books on gambling systems — cards and horses. He’s got three typewriters and he practises writing left-handed. Does a pretty good Charlie Perkins imitation, too. He might do it on air one day, if you’re lucky.’

‘You’re pissed off,’ Wilbur said. ‘I’m sorry.’

I patted his shoulder which hurt my jarred elbow. ‘Not at you, mate. Not at you.’

Charlie MacMillan was back on air, with his shoulder in plaster, more popular and racist than ever, within a fortnight. He sent me a note explaining that by having me around he was just buying time until he settled his gambling debts. He hadn’t been expecting anything heavy. He claimed to have been so broke that he couldn’t afford to hire anyone good. Anyone like me. But he was in the clear now and he enclosed a bonus cheque for five hundred dollars. I signed the cheque over to the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service in Redfern and mailed it to them. Maybe they banked it, maybe they burned it. I don’t know.

A month after he returned to the airwaves, MacMillan was gambling in a Dixon Street club. He went to the toilet and a man, described by witnesses as ‘of Asian appearance’, followed him. MacMillan was found ten minutes later, lying on the tiled floor, with his large and small intestines overflowing the blocked toilet bowl.

‹‹Contents››

Henry Hathaway lowered his well-padded buttocks onto my unpadded clients’ chair and said, ‘How long have you lived in Sydney, Mr Hardy?’

‘All my life,’ I said, ‘bar a few periods overseas.’

‘And how long have you… practised as a private enquiry agent, if I may ask?’

‘Sometimes that seems like all my life, too, but I guess it’d be about twenty years.’

‘You must have seen some changes in that time?’

That didn’t seem worth a reply. I grunted and waited for him to get to the point.

‘When I first came here in the mid-’50s, Australia was still essentially British. Anglo-Celt, as they say. You know what I mean?’

His accent was English with an Australian overlay. I’m mostly Irish myself, with some English and French thrown in. Or so my sister, who’s interested in such things, once told me. I said, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hathaway?’

Maybe my tone was rougher than I’d intended, or perhaps he liked to meander on. Anyway, he took some offence, got red in the face and glanced at the door. I didn’t like him but I couldn’t afford to lose him. He looked prosperous. I gave him one of my I’m-the-soul-of-discretion-and-reliability looks and watched him smooth his own feathers. He patted his abundant silver hair and stroked his fleshy chin. He liked himself enough for the two of us.

‘I have a daughter, Fiona. She’s nineteen. I discovered that she has been keeping company with an entirely unsuitable person.’