Baldy practically ran back along the bench and threw himself down in front of one of the screens.
‘Be with you in a minute’, he said. ‘This is nearly out. Bloody exciting.’
Nice to see a man happy in his work, I thought. I closed the door behind me and walked in. ‘Graphics’ suggested paper and pens to me, scissors and set squares. Apart from the paper in the bins there was nothing like that. A big photocopier was in the corner, and here at least there was some frivolous paper-a big poster of Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane-I was surprised it wasn’t a holograph.
The bald man’s hands danced over the keys and he tapped his sneakered foot as if he was playing Scott Joplin. I looked over his shoulder but couldn’t make anything of the zig-zag flashes that appeared on the screen.
‘Got it!’ he bawled. ‘Fucking A!’ He swivelled around and stood up. Two long strides took him to the coffee table, and his leather pants didn’t split.
‘Coffee?’
‘Okay. Thanks.’
He shovelled coffee into a filter paper, fitted it into the machine and poured the water from a plastic jug. The machine was already hot, and the water hit the element with a loud hiss.
‘Boil the water first. That’s the secret.’
I nodded. ‘I boil the water and then pour it in on top of the powder.’
He shuddered, stagily. ‘Barbarian. Well, what can I do for you?’
He took two polystyrene cups from a metre-high stack and set them on the table. He put two spoons of raw sugar into one and looked enquiringly at me. I nodded and held up one finger-I thought I might need the energy to keep up with him. He jigged while the coffee dripped through. When the beaker was half-full with liquid the colour of shellac, he poured.
‘Here you go. I live on the stuff-it calms me down.’
I drank; the coffee was strong enough to clean drains.
‘I’m trying to locate a man named Phillips’, I put the cup down, dug out one of my cards and handed it over. ‘He was in the same business as me, and he had an office at this address. Some time back.’
He looked at the card and shook his head. Dead-end, I thought. ‘You don’t know him, that right?’
He fiddled with the stud in his ear. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You shook your head.’
‘I was shaking my head at the terrible design of this card.’ He flicked it with his forefinger’s long nail. ‘Look at that lettering. Depressing! That’s no way to win business, Mr Hardy.’
‘I’ll get a new one designed’, I said. ‘I might give you the job if you can help me.’
He did some more stud twiddling. ‘Have a look at this.’ He rummaged in a drawer and came up with a pile of cards held together with an elastic band. He flipped one over to me like a croupier. The words TOTAL GRAPHICS stood out black and bold against the gold background.
‘Very nice, Mr…?’
‘Style-Ian Style, good name isn’t it? It’s my real one, too.’ He finished his coffee and poured another; I was still waiting for my tongue to stop throbbing. ‘You’re right, one Phillips had this place before me. That’s oh… seven years back. You should have seen it. A real mess.’
‘No style, eh?’
He looked at me. ‘Oh, God’, he groaned. ‘I think I stopped counting remarks like that at about five thousand.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right. Yes, Phillips. I kept getting mail for him for years. The re-direction system has never been very effective.’
‘Where did you send it? Do you have an address for him, did you write it down?’
If he had had any eyebrows they would have shot up, but his head was quite hairless. ‘Write it down! No chance. We’re computerised here-totally.’
I smiled, although I didn’t think his joke was so much better than mine.
‘I’ve got it on file.’
‘I’d be grateful if you’d give it to me. I need to see him, urgently.’
‘Do I got the re-designing job?’
‘Sure.’
He got up and bounced across to one of the consoles. His fingers got busy, and symbols began scrolling on to the screen. I sneaked a look at the bookshelf-all computer manuals. He punched a key and froze the image.
‘Here it is. Joshua Phillips, 33A MacDonald Street, Erskineville.’
I went back to the nineteenth century, and wrote it down. ‘When was the last time you got mail for him?’
The screen came alive again, froze.
‘About this time last year. An envelope, private. Nothing ever came back. Does that mean the address still applies?’
‘I hope so. That’s amazingly efficient: I should get a system like that.’
‘You’ll be out of business in five years if you don’t. More coffee?’
I refused the coffee, thanked him for the help and he said he’d submit some designs for the card. I thanked him again and let myself out. By that time he was sitting down at a keyboard again and the sneakers were beating a tattoo.
Erskineville has been hit by the middle class money only in patches. Most of it retains the old atmosphere of toil- awkwardly angled streets built for foot and horse traffic, and a mix of residential and factory buildings. A few of the terrace houses are wide and rise to three storeys, but most are more modest and some get down to the narrowness of 33A MacDonald Street. The house was so narrow that my car, parked exactly outside, seemed to overlap its boundaries.
The tiny place crouched behind a privet hedge three or four metres back from the street; that put its front door about forty metres from the railway line. A train rattled past as I pulled open the rickety gate. The line was on a viaduct over the road, and with the wind in the right quarter it must have sounded in 33A as if the trains were coming through the front window.
It was 4.30 in the afternoon, a time when there were a lot of reasons to be out. It occurred to me that I should have asked Style for Phillips’s phone number which he would surely have had on file, along with his blood type and date of birth.
The man in striped pyjamas who answered the door to my knock looked as if he’d have a blood type all his own. His skin was white as few skins are; his sparse hair was white as were his eyebrows-his fiercely bloodshot, eyes were all the more alarming in the almost colourless face. It was impossible to guess his age-I was having trouble with his species. He was a whole head shorter than me, so I got the red eyes upturned-an unnerving sight.
‘Have you brought it?’ he said.
‘Brought what?’
‘I rang up the bottle shop; they said they’d send it round if they had time.’ The red eyes looked at me and judged me not to be a delivery person. ‘I guess they didn’t have time.’
‘Are you Joshua Phillips? Used to have an office in Mahoney Place?’
‘Yes. Phillips. That’s me.’ His voice was reedy, as if it was wearing out. ‘Who’re you?’
I gave him one of my despised cards. He pulled spectacles out of his pyjama jacket pocket and looked at the card.
‘It’s a mug’s game.’
‘Maybe. I’m after information on a case you handled nearly twenty years ago. How’s your memory?’
The red glare dimmed and his eyes went cunning.
‘It improves with money and sweet sherry.’
‘Okay.’ I stepped back. ‘What brand?’
He grinned, showing two teeth, maybe three. There were thickets of white hair in his ears and in his nostrils. He cackled at me. ‘Flagon brand.’
The pub was ten minutes away by foot. I came back with a flagon of sherry for him and two cans of light beer for me. He let me in and we went down a dark, narrow passage to a kitchen which was lit by a single, naked bulb. The broken part of the window was blanked out with masonite; the unbroken part was so dirty that no light could penetrate. He put the flagon on a shaky, laminex-topped table which stood on an uneven floor covered with cracked, lifting linoleum.