Peter Corris - The Big Drop

I drank some more of the Scotch and saw the problem very clearly, except that I saw it as Pauline’s problem and my problem too. ‘When can she expect something then? You don’t have to keep this cleanskin pose up for ever, do you?’

He opened his hands expressively, the first flourish he’d permitted himself. I noticed then that he had a big stoned, un-architect-like ring on his light hand as well as a broad wedding ring on the left. ‘You read the papers-commissions of enquiry into this, investigations of that. It’s heads-down time. I can raise the money all right, no problem there, but Pauline’s the original Miss Clean. This case, she’s her own worst enemy.’

His matey tone and the good Scotch made me incautious. ‘What’s the new Mrs Angel think about it all?’

He clenched his hand around the glass. ‘Have you been snooping around her too? Now that I really don’t like.’ The matiness was all gone. ‘Tell me what you did?’

I finished the drink. ‘Nothing.’

‘Joel!’

Joel came back into the room and I stood up with the empty glass in my hand and backed towards a wall.

‘Our friend here’s got some more talking to do, Joel; persuade him.’

He came at me fast and bent low in a crouch which still put his head on a level with my shoulder. I stepped aside and hooked at the head but it wasn’t where it’d been a split second before. He slammed me with his left as he moved past and I’d have sworn he landed on exactly the spot he’d hit before. The pain cooled me down for some reason and made me quicker; I walked through a punch and got in close enough to land a short right well below the belt. He wasn’t ready for it and he gasped and faltered; I put my knee in the same place and when his head came down I uppercut him with a double clenched fist. He fell away from me, flailed and ripped the front out of my shirt with his clutching hand. Something flew out of the pocket and bounced on Angel’s desk. I was breathing hard when I turned to face him and for the second time in two hours I found myself looking into a gun.

‘Thought you wanted to stay clean, Angel,’ I panted.

‘I do. There’s a hell of a difference between killing a guy and tax evasion; killing’s safer or hadn’t you heard?’

‘Yeah, I heard. Don’t count on it, it was the killing they got Terry Clarke for.’ I moved towards the desk. ‘I don’t think you’d do it.’

He fired and I felt the heat of the bullet as it went past my ear. The door slammed open and Ugly II’s face appeared with an expression on it that suggested he was ready to fire bomb the room if he was asked to. Angel waved him away.

‘Shoulder, left arm, right arm; you name it, Hardy. What’s this?’ His hand closed over the roll of film.

‘Bugger it all,’ I said. I slumped back down into my chair and looked at Joel who was stirring and muttering darkly. ‘What about another drink?’

Angel watched Joel get up and struggle to pull himself together, then he tossed him the film.

‘See if you can do a better job with this. Run it down to one of those one hour places. Nothing dirty is there, Hardy? Oh, Joel, before you go you could pour us both another drink.’

We got the drinks and Joel went out. Angel put his gun down on the desk and demonstrated to me how quickly he could pick it up again.

‘I can strip it in seventy-four seconds,’ he said.

‘Let’s see.’

He smiled. ‘Wouldn’t do you any good, there’s three other guys in the house as good as me.’

‘Better than Joel?’

‘Bit of a disappointment, I must admit. Where’d you learn to handle yourself-the service?’

‘Partly, Malaya.’

‘Yeah? I was in Nam-just for a bit, got too goddamn hot.’

‘Private Angel?’

‘Sergeant Pietangeli.’

We didn’t say much after that and Joel got back with the prints in just over the hour. Angel motioned him away, and let the prints slip out onto the desk. I stopped breathing while he arranged them in a line; he shuffled them around a bit, but the expression on his face told me nothing except that he was interested. He looked up at me and the stillness was back in his eyes and hands.

‘Guy’s name?’

‘Don’t know.’

He drained the few drops left in his glass and stared at the wall behind where I was sitting; I’d already looked at it, the bullet had cracked and split the plaster and knocked a chunk out that was roughly the shape of Italy.

‘Tell Pauline to be patient.’

‘What?’

‘Tell her wait. Tell her to borrow some money or something. End of the year at the latest, I’ll give her everything she wants. Now, get your lousy Australian ass out of here.’

Kay delayed looking over Sydney several times and it was into the New Year before we were having that first, tentative drink at the airport. She looked wonderful-tall, tanned from skiing and slim from her energetic, self-denying lifestyle.

‘You don’t look too bad, Cliff, considering.’

‘Considering what?’

‘You know. When did you last take a break, fishing?’

‘Never caught a fish in my life. Boring.’

‘Well, Pauline thinks you’re the best. She got her money not long after she went to Melbourne.’

‘Yeah, she got it.’

‘Why so sour about it?’

I hadn’t meant to tell her but I did. I gave Pauline Ben Angel’s message and she took it to heart-borrowed some money, paid me and went to Melbourne. I didn’t feel good about it; the case felt incomplete and although there’d been something totally convincing about Angel I was left with no ideas. Then, a few weeks later, Tolley Angel was killed in a car accident. Along with her was Claude Murray-Jones, forty-nine, screenwriter of Drummoyne. The BMW had left the highway at speed, rolled and burned. The police had asked the driver of another car reportedly at the scene of the accident to contact them, but with no result.

‘That’s awful,’ Kay said. ‘But I can’t see what is has to do…’

‘I took some photos of her and this Wilcox. Angel saw them-that was the first he knew they were having an affair. I tipped him off, by accident.’

‘Yes.’

‘Angel couldn’t get his hands on any money he couldn’t account for, remember?’

‘Yes, Pauline wrote me.’

‘There was a three hundred thousand dollar insurance policy on her life. Angel was the beneficiary. That’s where Pauline got her money.’

I had another drink and Kay didn’t, and it got worse from there. We gave it a try, went to the places you go to when you’re trying to be happy, but it didn’t work. She didn’t like the sound of the job they offered her, she didn’t like the editor and she didn’t like the weather. I drove her past Angel’s place at Camp Cove; she looked but she didn’t say anything. Next day she caught a plane back to New York City.

‹‹Contents››

The voice on the phone was hoarse and not much more than a whisper. ‘Hardy? This is Harvey Salmon.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘and who else?’

‘Huh?’

‘The way I hear it, Harvey, you haven’t had a private phone conversation in years.’

‘Don’t joke, Hardy. This is serious.’

‘Must be. When did you get out?’

‘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.