‘Hi, Cliff, you bastard.’
She was high on something; there was a slightly unfocused look to her slanted eyes and an odd, upwards angle to her neck.
‘Hello, Lettie. Sit down and have a drink. I hope you haven’t switched to Jack Daniels.’
She sat, looked at the ice bucket and glasses and a slow smile spread across her wide, thin-lipped mouth.
‘You beauty.’ She poured a good slug of brandy into a flute and let me fill the glasses. She drank half of hers in a gulp. All this was new-she used to be a sniffer, a taster, a sipper. I drank some champagne, the first drink I’d had for the day and not a bad way to start. Lettie looked older than she should and was using make-up to correct some of the damage. She still looked terrific but there was a line here, a sag there that suggested what was to come. She finished her drink and poured another. She used to be able to drink all night and not show it, but that was in her old style. With this fast-lane technique something else was possible. She was high, but also nervous.
‘So,’ she said.
‘Do you know a man named Lance Christenson, Lettie?’
‘Cliff, did you expect me to wait?’
‘Does that mean yes?’
She smiled and shrugged, not an easy thing to do, but she was full of those tricks. ‘You left such a hole in my life, Cliff.’
‘This is serious, Lettie.’
‘Drink up. You’re making me feel like the greatest lush in Elizabeth Bay, which I’m not. What d’you expect me to say? Sure, I fuck Lance. He’s got a big dick. Bigger’n yours.’
I poured some more champagne into my glass and took a drink. Somehow it didn’t taste as good. Lettie was fidgeting with a purse she’d taken out of the pocket of her jacket. I didn’t like to think about what was in it apart from money and her flat keys.
‘Lance has got some bad trouble coming his way,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you to end up with a share of it. What’s happened to you, Lettie? I thought you had it all together?’
‘You thought! Fuck you! Fuck what you thought! You know what I saw and heard when I was doing that drug work? Catholic boys who’d been buggered by priests; Koori girls who’d been raped by Salvation Army blokes. Not just once, Cliff, and not just in one fucking hole either.’
‘Take it easy.’
‘I can’t take it easy. I couldn’t, I mean. In the end I couldn’t take it any more. The holier the talk, the worse the abuse.’
‘So, it’s a shitty world. Everyone knows that. It’s no reason to take up with
‘You wouldn’t know a thing about it.’ She drank again, poured some more and put the rest of the cognac down in a swallow. Her mouth was set now and the sparkle in her eyes wasn’t just alcohol and drugs. She was very, very angry and I got ready to have something thrown at me. Suddenly, she shook her head as if to let all the anger fly out along with her frothing, bouncing hair. She grinned at me and pushed her chair back. ‘Excuse me, darling. I’ve got to go and powder my tits.’
She walked towards the toilet clutching the pocket purse. Heads and eyes followed her. There was something about Lettie that absorbed all your attention. I began to hear the bar noise-conversation, bottle-clinking and background music-for the first time. I also took notice of the customers. Same-sex and mixed-sex couples, singles… Too late. A big, darkhaired man with regular features dropped into a chair on my left. Another man, smaller and much less handsome, sat where Lettie had been. Some people claim to be able to tell cops on sight. Not me, but I can recognise two legitimate warrant cards when I see them. They were produced and put away too quickly for me to read the names, but I didn’t have to guess at the identity of the guy with the classic profile that was half-turned towards me.
‘Lance Christenson,’ I said.
‘Chief Inspector to you.’
I kept my eyes on the man opposite me, who struck me as more threatening of the two. Christenson was a little fleshy, less than fit and very self-satisfied. The other one, who was fair, with light eyes behind slightly tinted glasses, looked hungrier and keen to impress. Ambition is a very dangerous quality.
‘For now,’ I said. ‘I didn’t catch your chum’s name.’
Christenson smiled, showing perfect white teeth, probably veneered at great expense to law-abiding citizens. ‘His nickname’s Flick. Know why?’
‘I know you’re going to tell me.’
‘One Flick, and they’re gone. You’re going to be one of them, Hardy. Gone for good, unless we can talk a little sense into you.’
It was going to be a matter of timing. Just for a second, I wondered whether it was worth hanging around to swap shit with Christenson. I decided it wasn’t and slammed my reversed left fist backwards into Flick’s Adam’s apple. Done right, the blow will kill a man but I knew I wouldn’t have the force to do that with my left hand. Also, Flick had reacted. He was late, but not too late to deflect some of the force upwards towards bone rather than soft tissue. He sagged and gasped for breath just the same, and I grabbed him, hauled him up, his arm twisted to breaking point behind his back. He let me take him. He knew enough about this stuff not to get into busting his own limbs.
It happened quickly and probably didn’t look so bad to the Berlin Bar patrons-one big man dragging a smaller one towards the door which wasn’t so far away. Another big man was following at a respectable distance and not saying anything. Could’ve almost been a lover’s quarrel in that setting. I was almost to the door when I saw Lettie emerge from the toilet. She saw what was happening but it didn’t seem to worry her as she headed sinuously towards the table; she was in that neutral state where the only things that matter are inside your skull.
I dragged my man through the door and out onto the footpath. I didn’t fancy pulling him all the way to my car and didn’t think I’d have to. Christenson came out under the neon sign that showed a Marlene lookalike in fishnet stockings and top hat with a cane between her legs. He stood there as if he knew what an effective visual it made.
‘Let him go, Hardy,’ he said.
‘My car’s not that close.’
‘Too many lookers-on. We won’t bother you.’
People from the bar and passers-by were standing around getting an eyeful. I loosened my grip but stayed ready to knee him in the kidneys if I had to.
‘You and your dog mate’re in for a surprise, Hardy. A very big surprise.’
That was an exit line if ever I’d heard one and a theatrical type like Christenson wouldn’t waste it. I slung Flick down into the gutter and walked away to my car.
I hadn’t learned a thing, except that Lettie was back in the life and probably in deeper than before. It wasn’t hard to understand-unless they’re incredibly lucky, abused people gravitate to those who will abuse them. Christenson was a user of people, a handsome man with a charming smile and a heart like a hailstone. I was sorry about Lettie, but her problems predated me and were deeper and wider than mine, which disqualified me as a helper. I have enough difficulty fighting off the attractions of booze oblivion and violent solutions without trying to save souls. I would write Lettie off the way I had others and I’d feel bad about it from time to time.
Personal survival with a few basic principles intact is the bottom line. The threat to me had been real, but precisely how far Christenson and his offsider would have gone was hard to gauge. Christenson certainly hadn’t looked anxious, but his type runs on confidence and they have it and use it so much they can become insensitive to hostile forces. My involvement had concerned him enough to get Lettie to play a part and to bring his enforcer along. Men like Christenson see life as a series of deals, wins and losses, debts and credits. To some extent tonight he’d exposed himself, showed some of his cards with no result. He wouldn’t be happy.
I tried to comfort myself with these thoughts as I drove, not forgetting to watch out for tails and observers. Nothing. It was twenty minutes before I realised that I was driving towards my place in Glebe, not Oldcastle’s flat in Dover Heights. I didn’t want to spend another night on his couch, hear his catarrhal cough in the morning and eat high-fibre cereal for breakfast with the TV on. I wanted a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich and my own cut-price Scotch, my own bed and books, radio in the morning with black coffee and toast with butter. I phoned in, was told everything was quiet and left the night watch to one of Pete’s men. I circled a few blocks in Glebe until I was sure I hadn’t attracted a following and did two passes of my house, looping down towards the water and back around until I was sure there was no-one hanging around out front or in the back. If there was anyone there they were good and deserved their chance.