Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘McLeary,’ I muttered into my scotch.

‘What?’

‘Talking to myself. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s known anything much about Singer. I was thinking that Tom McLeary’d know a bit.’

‘I’ll say, but don’t mention him and Marion Singer in the same breath.’

‘Why?’

‘Jesus! She hates him. He used to supply Singer with girls and they had the casino deal. You know about that?’ She looked at me shrewdly as she finished her drink. Her brain was probably only half working, but there was enough of it ticking over for her to know how deep the water was. She wagged a finger at me. ‘You don’t know. Knew you didn’t.’

‘Tell me, then.’ I put twenty dollars on the table.

‘No. Fuck you, ask the bloody coppers.’

She was a bit scared and the booze was getting to her. The last one had probably been a double and it was hitting hard, the way it does when the liver’s shot. And she was probably due for her afternoon nap before starting on the evening session. It wasn’t parfit or gentil helping her to oblivion but it’s not a parfit, gentil world. I pushed the money towards her.

‘Tell me a bit more about McLeary and tell me where I can find Sandy.’

She looked at me with those eyes that had stared into countless drinks. She wanted to say no, to tell me to keep my grubby questions away from the spotless ears of her little girl. She was a mother and an alcoholic and the body chemistry won. Besides, the ears weren’t spotless any more.

‘Get us another drink.’ She held up her glass and I could feel her watching me as I limped away to get it. She could punish me just that much.

‘Won’t tell you much about Mac. In everything, gambling… Edgecliff, Maroubra… girls… papers.’

‘What do you mean, papers?’

‘Place is full of fuckin’ foreigners. Wogs, chinks. Papers, passports, you know.’

I nodded. ‘Sandy, and the name she goes by.’

‘More money,’ she said. More oblivion, more laughs, less pain.

I put another twenty on the table. She took the notes and her knuckles cracked as she closed her hand around them.

‘Modesto,’ she said.

I looked at her.

‘Her father… bigger shit than Singer, bigger shit than you, biggest shit in the world.’

‘Address?’

‘Flat two, eighty-one Robbins Road, Double Bay.’

It was a different address, but the name Modesto was the one Frank Parker had given me as the girlfriend whose movements had been checked.

‘What does she do?’ I said.

She shrugged.

‘Has she got a friend?’

‘Yeah, Yank. Funny name, Tod or somethin’. Piss off.’

Frank, you’ve been holding out on me.’ I was using a telephone in the Royal Oaks.

‘Never.’

‘’Fraid so. You neglected to tell me about the casino deal.’

‘Uh,’ he said.

‘Sounds pretty important to me. Now, did I or did I not help you to clear up two murders?’

‘One. We never even opened a file on Leon.’

‘One, then, but a good one.’

‘Okay. It’s a little difficult… ‘ He broke off and his voice had nothing of the special, concise, on-top-of-it-all Frank Parker tone. I guessed the reason.

‘Your colleagues are in the room and you can’t just shoot the breeze about casinos. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘We’ll play it the way we played it before, only I’ll ask the questions. Now, there was some sort of deal about the casinos that involves the constabulary. Yes?’

‘That’s so.’

‘All I know is that they open and close. Let me guess; the deal takes in McLeary and Ward?’

‘That’s two out of three.’

‘Singer?’

‘Right.’

It gave the thing some shape and structure at last. The casinos were big money, very big, and big people were involved, political people. It was reasonable to suppose that Singer, Ward and McLeary had the go-ahead from the cops in some way. But what way? Deal, deal, deal, I thought. What do deals involve? Time.

‘Are you still there, Hardy?’

‘I’m here. The deal is for one operator to have an open go for a period of time.’

‘Exactly right.’

‘Whose turn is it now?’

‘Moot point.’

‘Who’s doing it now?’

‘Singer.’

‘How long is the agreed period?’

‘Two years.’

‘So Singer’s overdue to bow out?’

‘Right again. We’re talking about the wife.’

‘Thanks, Frank. You’re a real pal.’

‘Don’t get too smart, Hardy. It’s tricky country.’

‘Just where do you stand on it, Frank? I know you’ve got judges playing blackjack and shadow ministers putting their shirts on the red, but it’d help to know what your considered attitude is.’

He spoke slowly and it was obvious that he’d thought it over many times. ‘Pending legalisation,’ he said, ‘I’m for a little rationalisation.’

‘Am I to understand that there’s been trouble at handing-over time in the past?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I think I can help you.’

‘This conversation never happened.’ Good old Frank. He’d extend his neck an inch or so but he wouldn’t stick it all the way out. He was right, of course; banks and insurance companies employ lots of ex-cops who’ve spoken out of turn.

‘We have an understanding,’ I said. ‘See you soon.’

Double Bay is hilly; very bad for a man with a crook leg, very good for property developers. It’s also good for hairdressers, couturiers and people who sell tiny pictures widely bordered by snowy white paper and enclosed in the slimmest of frames. A lot of media people living there kid themselves that they can walk to work in town. Usually they drive. The cars of Double Bay are a study in themselves. On a car-for-car basis, Japan and Germany won World War II and neutrality paid off big for Sweden.

Robbins Road goes up and down dramatically in a couple of hundred yards. The taxi dropped me at the end of the road and I discovered the first law of walking with a stiff knee-it’s a hell of a lot easier to walk uphill than down. Swinging the stiff leg up, you can sort of place it gently; coming down the grade you tend to thump it into place. The jar goes up the bone to the knee and the nerves do the rest. So you tend to go downhill crabwise-very slow and undignified.

Number eighty-one was a newish block, a modish five storeys with some nice shrubbery around it. There would be no change out of eight hundred bucks a month for a flat. I went up the path hoping to find flat two on the ground floor, but it was one flight up. I was sweating and gritting my teeth when I got there. Life’s a gamble, but I hoped like hell Sandy was at home. The door was a sophisticated job with an unpickable lock; kicking it in wasn’t on just then. As I pressed the buzzer, I wondered about Sandy: Singer had dropped her just over two years before when she had been eighteen. That made her twenty or so now. Twenty can be nursery-school callow or as hard as Ilse Koch.

The woman who answered the bell was Peggy cast back twenty years. She had thick, lustrous red hair, thin, arched eyebrows and a face that would have made John Singer feel years younger than he was. One of the eyebrows went up with practised slowness.

‘Mmm?’

‘I’ve just come from talking to your Mum in the Royal Oaks. I gave her fifty dollars and she gave me your address. I’ll make it up to a hundred for her or give it to you if you’ll give me half an hour of your time.’

She looked at me curiously through the eight-inch gap allowed by the security chain.

‘What would Peggy have worth fifty dollars?’

‘I’ll tell you if you’ll open the door.’

She was a careful lady; she looked me over from top to bottom. I was still wearing a heavy bandage around my ear and the top of my head. Peggy hadn’t commented on it, but I suppose she was used to people falling over and hurting themselves. That plus my hospital pallor might give me an air of fragility that would encourage Sandy to let me in. I leaned heavily on the stick for emphasis.