Peter Corris - The January Zone

‘God.’ January sounded tired and dispirited. ‘Well, this is all just crap anyway. It’s the speech tomorrow and the Senate hearing that count.’

‘When can we leave?’ I said.

Trudi raised one of her plucked eyebrows. ‘You don’t like it?’

‘I’ll tell you after we go to the decent place to eat.’

The procedure at the next place was much the same except that there were a lot of uniforms about and they wanted to confiscate my weapon if I was to take a step past the desk.

‘It’s not worth the grief,’ January said. ‘Meet us down here in an hour.’ He flashed a grin that had some of the old charm in it. ‘From what I hear of him we might be back before you have time to take a piss.’

They went up and I sat down on a long padded bench beside a low table piled with magazines. I turned the pages of a few copies of Time and the National Geographic but it seemed like I’d read it all before-peace talks, famines, lost stone age tribe in Indonesia. I was in a waiting room adjacent to the reception desk; I sat so I could see out at the people who passed the desk but I soon got bored with that. I changed my seat so I could see out into the carpark. The light was fading; most of the traffic looked to have that going-home feeling to it, but there were still a few cars arriving.

I was practically asleep when two thoughts hit me-I hadn’t sent my postcard to Helen and I was facing the prospect of going out to dinner with a man whose life was threatened. Not only that, but I was a threatened man myself. I couldn’t do anything about the postcard where I was but I could do something about the threat. I took out Billy Spinoza’s card and approached the desk.

‘Could I use your telephone, please?’

The young man at the controls looked at me suspiciously. He wore a crisp white shirt with blue and gold epaulettes and a dark blue tie. His cheeks were pink and his teeth were very white. ‘It’s for government business only, sir, I’m sorry.’

‘This is government business. I’m on Mr January’s security staff and I want to call a number I’m pretty sure is government too.’

I showed him the number on the card. He examined it very carefully, holding it in his scrubbed hands. ‘I guess it’s okay. I can’t give you privacy, though. I can’t leave the desk.’

‘Just give me the phone, that’ll be enough. How do you get a line?’

‘Here, I’ll get it.’ He stabbed the buttons and handed the phone across. ‘Sure hope we don’t impose those sanctions.’

‘What?’ I could hear the dial tone.

‘Against South Africa. I’m against it.’

‘Do you have Mr January down as a South African?’

He consulted the sheet in front of him. ‘What it says here.’

‘Christ!’ I said.

‘Watch your language, sir!’

I stared at him and felt his discomfort. He moved his hand on the desk and I could see the edge of the National Enquirer slip inside the pages of the Washington Post. I turned as far away from him as I could and called the number. Billy Spinoza came on the line immediately.

‘Spinoza.’

‘This is Cliff Hardy. A hole has opened up in my man’s schedule. We’re going to be running loose for a couple of hours. I thought I should talk to you about it. Also there’s been a…development.’

‘Can you tell me now?’

‘Nope.’

‘Okay, where are you?’

I glanced around the reception lobby. ‘It says Navy 10, G6, by the door. That mean anything to you?’

‘Yeah. I can be there in 30 minutes.’

‘That’s about when he’s due out.’

‘Okay. Anything else troubling you? I mean as of right now?’

There was but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Something vague – something I’ d seen or something less definite, like a smell. I told him no and he hung up.

I handed the phone back. ‘Thank you.’

He nodded and went back to sitting still. He was faintly flushed; he knew he’d said something wrong but he was too polite to ask. I went back to the waiting room and waited.

January stormed out of the lift; Bolton was gabbling at him and being ignored; Trudi’s face was set in a grimace of anger. If he thought he could use his bodyguard as a punching bag he changed his mind when he saw my face. He stopped a few feet from me and jammed his fists into his jacket pocket which ruined the cut.

‘Well, are we ready?’

‘We’re waiting.’

‘For what?’

‘Spinoza. I’m not waltzing you around in a city I don’t know with bull’s eyes painted on our backs.’

‘What bull’s eyes?’ Trudi said.

‘Tell you in a minute. I think you should let Bolton take the car back to the hotel. Spinoza’ll have a car.’

January fought for calm. He was flushed, his hair was ruffled and a nerve was jumping in his cheek under his right eye. But he was an experienced man and no fool. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’re in charge.’ He turned to Bolton and managed a few polite words. Bolton looked relieved to be pulled out of the action; he nodded, smiled tightly at Trudi and me and went out of the building.

We stood outside the waiting room watching the light traffic in the lobby. The servicemen predominated over the civilians and men predominated over women. They all looked busy; they all looked important and most looked worried. Billy Spinoza came through the doorway. I suddenly realised that his was the first dark face I’d seen in the place. He was wearing a rollneck sweater and a checked jacket-tough guys don’t wear ties.

‘Ms Bell, Mr January, Cliff, shall we go?’

‘Have you got a car, Mr Spinoza?’ January said.

‘No, sir, not right now. Have to be careful with cars in my line of work.’ He steered us towards the door.

‘Why’s that?’ Trudi said.

‘It’s just another thing they can wire. Fact is, there hasn’t been a single bombing or bugging in a taxi cab yet. We appreciate that.’

It was dark outside but the afternoon warmth was lasting. Spinoza collared a cab that was dropping a much be-ribboned officer at the building and he ushered us into the back.

‘Where to, brother?’ the driver said. He was darker than Spinoza with a shiny bald head. The photograph of him above the sun visor must have been taken years before when he still had a fringe of grizzled grey hair.

‘The Strip, I guess. What would you folks like to eat?’

The driver flicked the meter on. ‘Creole?’

‘Yuk,’ Trudi said.

The driver smiled. ‘Chinese?’

‘How about Australian?’ I said.

‘Say what?’

Spinoza pulled at his tuft of beard. ‘We’ll eat Italian. The food’s okay but more to the point we’ll get good visibility.’

‘That again,’ Trudi said. ‘Tell me.’

We told her as we drove to Georgetown. She listened in silence, asked for my descriptions of the men in the car again and then sank back in the seat. ‘Prohibition’s over, isn’t it? Let’s get a drink.’

After the grey wasteland of the administrative buildings, putting foot on the Strip was like arriving on another planet. The neon and the traffic noise and the music seemed to blend into a roar of sound and light. We three Australians were edgy and tired and Spinoza was tense, but something about the place revived us. It wasn’t quite a good feeling; it was almost as though the world’s problems were too big and this was a place to come to forget them for a while, until they reached out and snuffed you.

Spinoza directed us through the streams of people on the pavement who were milling around briefly, forming groups and breaking up and staying compulsively on the move. Cars crawled along the street, parked, honked and were honked at, moved on. There was flow between the road and the pavement. I saw a man park almost in the middle of the road, walk to the kerb; hand his keys to another man and take up the conversation as his car was driven away. The road and pavement people were all of the same tribe.