Peter Corris: Aftershock

I took the lift to the third floor and stuck my head inside the always open door. Everybody, that is the whole four of them, was on the phone. Harry beckoned me in and pointed me towards a stack of the latest issue of the broadsheet due out in a few days. The artwork was stark and dramatic-a map of Australia was being eaten away at the edges by some poisonous, corrosive substance. Cape York was half gone; the Great Australian Bight was gobbling the Nullarbor. The headline was THE DIRTY DOZEN-THE COMPANIES THAT ARE GIVING AUSTRALIA CANCER. I took a seat, nodded to the other workers and flicked through the paper. Harry’s own passions were to the fore: conservation, freedom of the individual, social and political satire, readable books, drinkable wine.

He put the phone down and took a nicarette from a packet on his desk. Harry cold-turkeyed from sixty Camels a day when he started the Challenger. He reckoned one form of suicidal insanity was enough. He sucked unenthusiastically and pointed to the paper. ‘What would you say?’

‘Four bucks’ worth,’ I said. It cost five.

‘Bastard,’ Harry said. ‘That’s the best issue yet. I confidently expect six writs.’

‘Can you afford that?’

Harry ran his hand over the thinning thatch of fair hair that always made him look like a country boy although he wasn’t. ‘We’ve got back-up. If we can get a couple of those fuckers into court we’ll make them look very silly.’

‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘I’ll renew my subscription if you think you’ll last.’

‘Do it. And with the pleasantries over, what do you want, Cliff?’

‘I want to look at the cuts on the Newcastle earthquake.’

Harry’s laugh bounced off the far wall. Since he gave up smoking he’s got a lot more wind to laugh with. ‘What cuts? You think we can afford to clip papers and file them? Forget it. The cuts, mate, are over there.’

He was pointing at several metre-high stacks of newspapers on a bench running the length of a wall. I glanced around the room-Pauline, the secretary and organiser was hammering at a keyboard; Jack Singer, the sub-editor, was reading a stack of faint faxes by holding them up to the light; Beth Lewis, the lay-out person, was sticking captions under photographs on a proof sheet.

‘No help there, Cliff,’ Harry said. ‘It’s all do-it-yourself around this place. December 28 and on. What’s the problem?’

‘I’m interested in the inquest, too.’

‘July and August. Go to it.’

I groaned and got out of my chair to walk over to the bench. I heard a rustle of broadsheet and turned to see Harry smiling at me and holding out several sheets of typescript.

‘What’s so funny?’ I said. ‘You look as if you’ve just won Editor of the Year.’

‘All in good time. I just thought you’d want to have a look at this. It was submitted for the Miscellany page which, being a devoted reader of the publication, you’d be well up on. Can’t run it this month and it’ll need legalling. Writer says she’ll have to check with her sources but it’s an interesting piece.’

I took the sheets and looked at the top page. The article was headed: EARTHQUAKE VICTIM? The writer was Helen Broadway.

Helen had written three pages setting out Horrie Jacobs’ story pretty much as he’d told it to me without the embellishments. A few quotes were included: ‘If that wasn’t Oscar then it was someone who looked like him and moved like him and wore the same sort of cap. And that cap was the only one of its kind in captivity.’ I’d have to ask about the cap. Some of the piece was in point form-questions, assumptions. Helen had attached a note to Harry stressing that it was a rough draft which needed a lot more work. She wondered if he was interested.

When I looked up from the pages Harry was staring at me as if I was growing wings. ‘Are you?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Interested. Apart from the prurient curiosity, I mean.’

‘Dunno,’ Harry said. ‘Reckon there’s anything in it?’

‘Could be. This guy Jacobs has hired me to look into it.’

‘On Helen’s recommendation?’

I nodded. ‘Don’t make anything of it, Harry. She’s just doing her job. Tell you one thing she hasn’t mentioned though.’ I was suddenly reminded of Harry’s ruthless methods when he was a news hound. ‘Off the record.’

‘I’m hurt.’

‘Horrie Jacobs won the Lotto a few years back. He’s loaded.’

Harry put his Nikes up on the desk. Since he quit wearing a suit he never wears anything else on his feet but sneakers. I think he’d wear them with a suit if he ever had to go formal again. ‘Now that is interesting,’ he said. ‘D’you think it’s some kind of scam to get at his loot?’

‘I hope you don’t let your writers use language like that.’

He grinned. ‘Can’t help it-private eye on a big case, big money and a woman…’

He let the last word hang in the air. Harry had liked Helen enormously and told me I was a fool to let her go. I told him it wasn’t exactly like that-more a matter of being wrenched apart, but he’d seen me stumbling around emotionally ever since and was too good a friend not to hope for something better for me. I said I’d keep him posted. Pauline yelled from across the room that she couldn’t keep holding off Harry’s calls any longer. Harry hit a button on his handset and picked up the phone.

I went over to the bench and began to work through the Sydney Morning Herald’s account of the earthquake and its various aftermaths. The Newcastle broadsheet would have been better but the Challenger didn’t run to holdings of provincial papers. The pages seemed to grow heavy after a while: my mind wasn’t completely on the job. The thought that Horrie Jacobs was the target for some kind of confidence operation had occurred to me. It happens. People who get rich quick get blackmailed, kidnapped, threatened, tricked. For years after they have their stroke of luck they are besieged by begging letters and the creators of sure-fire schemes to double the winners’ money, who just need a little seed capital. It was something to consider along with the question of Horrie’s eyesight and mental state, the possibility of aftershocks and delayed wall-collapses. Also whether the body over which the inquest was held really was that of Oscar Bach. And who was he, anyway? Then there was the question of the involvement of Helen Broadway and whether we might be in what the sportscasters called a team situation, here.

After an hour with the papers and photocopier I had a solid press record on the earthquake, the disputes between the rescue services, the conflicts between the conservationists and developers, the fund raising and the inquests on the dead. I put five dollars on Pauline’s desk. She shook her head and tried to give it back to me.

‘I’m on expenses,’ I said.

Harry moved his mouth away from the phone. ‘Take it,’ he said.

I gave them all a general wave goodbye and left the office. The ones that noticed smiled and waved back. A happy bunch. As I got into the lift I realised that I was feeling pretty happy myself.

Back in Darlinghurst I collected the Falcon from the all-day car park that charges me more than I can afford. In the old days I parked my car on a cement slab made available to me by a tattooist in exchange for letting him share vicariously in the thrills of my profession. There never were many thrills, but now there’s no slab and no tattooist. The area’s changing-a one-time wine bar is now a fantasy lingerie shop, yesterday’s crumbling student slum is today’s smart financial consultant’s office. Depressing, especially if you’ve got no need for either service. I drove home to Glebe thinking about the time I bought Cyn, my ex-wife, a black silk nightgown in David Jones and how she’d exchanged it for something else.