Peter Corris - Heroin Annie

‘Primo, caro, bonno sierra!’

He winced and adjusted the bow tie, spotted, red on white, he wears with the business shirt, the white coat and the dark slacks.

‘Cliff, you are the least talented linguist I have ever had inflicted on me.’ He reeled off some liquid sounds with gestures, and I watched admiringly.

‘Mondo cane’, I said, ‘L’adventura, Hiroshima mon amoure. Primo, old friend, I need your help.’

‘At last!’ He clasped his hands together and looked skywards like a bishop. ‘I see a Walther PPK, gun metal, under the left nipple.’

‘I see a little plastic bag, a sealed sachet maybe, colourless, with some white powder within.’

‘Stick to the wine and the Scotch, Cliff; it takes longer and you can still be interested in girls and food.’

‘Primo, I wouldn’t touch it unless I had something terminal, you know that. Just now, for a reason, I need a little leverage. Come on, amigo, I’ll pay you now and you keep ten per cent if I return it.’

He looked at me like a parachutist inspecting his pack, looking for wrinkles, folds, imperfections that shouldn’t be there. Then he shrugged and ducked back into the darkness. I examined the murals some more while I waited; Primo does not celebrate the drug culture, his preoccupations are carnal and his mission is the cure. He gives junk away, sells it, cuts it, feeds people, pays their hospital bills. The junkies respect him and very seldom stand over him, the cops leave him alone-he has a plan, a design, which no one else has ever understood but which most people take on trust. He came back with a flat, plastic square the size of a single serve of instant coffee. There was a teaspoon of white powder inside.

‘First quality shit’, he said, sounding like a dealer except that he waved my money aside.

I patted his arm, put the stuff in my pocket and went back to the car. My head was aching again as I pulled up in front of the flats in Double Bay. They must have been expensive to buy or rent, because the residents were proud enough of their occupancy to put their names over the letterboxes.

There was a Major Cahill, a Robert Something, a Henry Something-else and a Mr and Mrs and a Solomon Isaacs. The sixth flat was occupied by Samantha Coleman and her name plate was a fetching shade of pink.

I went up two flights of stairs and knocked on her door. I could hear disco music playing inside, it was loud and I had to knock again, hard. The door opened to the length of its chain, about eight inches. She was barefoot and wearing a Chinese dressing-gown; her eyes were hollow and the dark roots of her hair were showing. She looked at me, taking in the well-worn clothes and face, including the black eye.

‘Yes?’ Her voice was husky, accented. I caught a glimpse of suitcases on the floor behind her.

‘Annie Parker’, I said. ‘Paul, you and a little guy with lifts in his shoes and a white tie.’

Her eyes opened injudiciously; a network of tiny wrinkles sprang into life around them. ‘So’, she said.

‘I want to talk to Annie, I wanted to talk to her last night.’ I lifted my hand to touch the damaged eye.

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Nosey. Go away before you get hurt.’

I brought out Primo’s sachet and held it up for her to see. I looked around the deserted landing before I spoke.

‘First quality shit’, I said. ‘Guaranteed.’

‘You’re selling?’

‘Bargain basement, while stocks last. But I only deal with little orphan Annie.’

‘I’ll have to make a phone call.’

I waved my hand airily and the door closed. It was the sort of wait the weak-willed fill in with a cigarette. I filled it with doubt and fear. I waited longer than a phone call should have taken, unless she was discussing the pricing of oil. When the door opened she’d arranged her hair, put on her make-up and slipped into jeans and sweater. She kept the chain on while she wriggled her feet into a pair of high-heeled sneakers.

‘Have you got a car?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll take you to Annie, but I should tell you something first.’ She put her hand on the chain and jiggled it a little. ‘We’ll be seeing a man who knows every narc in Australia, every one. Still want to go?’

I nodded; she slipped the chain and came out pulling the door shut behind her. She went down the steps wriggling her shoulders and swinging her bum as if she was trying to get herself in the mood for something exciting. I followed, watching the show with a mixture of feelings- arousal, amusement and pity.

In the car she wrinkled her nose at the smell of age and neglect. I scrabbled in the glove box and came up with a cigarette packet containing three stand-by joints. I lit one and passed it to her.

‘Thanks.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Wait and see.’ She sucked the smoke deep and held it before offering me the joint.

‘No. I mean what general direction; I’ve got to drive it haven’t I?’

‘We going north, man.’ The accent again, South African, Rhodesian?

‘North coast or north inland?’

‘Coast, what d’you think. Palm Beach…oops, well, there it is, boy.’ She was enjoying the grass and she gave me a smile as she waved a hand signalling me to start the car. I started it and drove north.

‘You don’t smoke?’ she said as she stubbed the joint out. ‘Sometimes, not when I’m working. Where are you from, Samantha, South Africa?’

She giggled. ‘Close. Salisbury, Salisbury Sam that’s me. Greatest country in the world till the blacks took over.’

‘Good times, eh?’

‘The best man, the best. The best of everything. Can I have some more of that grass?’

‘Help yourself.’ She lit up and settled back to smoke. I drove and thought. We took the turn at Pymble and headed for Mona Vale. I pulled the car up at a small mixed-business shop set back a bit from the road. Samantha looked sleepily at me and I told her I wanted chewing gum. In the shop I bought a packet of corn flour, some bananas in a plastic bag, the evening paper and the gum. I put about a quarter pound of the flour in the plastic bag and wrapped it up in some sheets of newspaper. On the way to the car I stuffed the package down in the bottom of a little bin outside the shop. I got back in the car and handed Samantha a banana.

‘Drek’, she said, so I gave her some chewing gum instead.

We rolled on up through the northern beaches playspots until we hit the biggest playspot of them all. It was nearly ten, and everything along the strip was going full blast-it was all chicken fat and pinballs and the popping of cold, cold cans. Samantha directed me off the main road and down a few side streets which were discreetly bordered by ti-tree and money. After the last turn, the ocean stretched away in front of us like a vast velvet cloud.

The house was one of those structures that have been pinned to a hill like a butterfly to a board. The steps down to it were steep and the house touched land only along its rear wall; the rest was supported by pillars which must have been fifty feet high at the front. Before I left the car I made a show of putting the big Colt into the clip under the dashboard. Sam watched, looking bored, but I had the short barrel. 38 tucked in safe under my waistband at the back.

They were all there in the bright living room watching TV and drinking Bacardi rum-Annie, beanpole Paul, the guy in the leather jacket and the near midget. Shorty was wearing a lime-green safari suit tonight, and highly polished boots with Cuban heels. Sam headed straight for the bottle and poured herself a big slug over ice. She offered it to me and I shook my head.

‘Hello, all,’ I said. ‘Hello, Annie.’

She glanced up from her drink and shrugged. Leather jacket stood up and walked over to me; he had acne scars and a gold front tooth and he looked tough. I tried to look tough back.