‘Thanks.’
‘What d’you do? Take vitamins?’
‘Good genes.’
He had a glass in front of him and another beside it and there was a bottle in an ice bucket on a stand. He lifted the bottle out and showed it to me.
‘Retsina?’
‘Fine.’
He poured me a glass and pushed it across, topped up his own and proposed a toast. ‘To letting bygones be bygones.’
I raised my glass in response. ‘For now at least.’
‘Fair enough. So you’re still mates with that cunt Parker. He saved your bacon a few times as I recall.’
The retsina was cold and strong and I wanted to gulp it, forced myself not to. ‘We’re mates. Save the abuse, Piper. You’ve got no time for Frank and it’s mutual.’
Piper took a good pull on his wine and gave a contented sigh. ‘I’ve ordered. Tucker’ll be here in a while. I love this kind of food. Mary introduced me to it. You like it?’
‘Yes. Let’s get down to it. Warren North. You want him for your reasons and I want him for mine. Where is he?’
Piper smiled showing teeth he’d spent a lot of money on-crowns, ceramic in front where he once had gold. ‘Jesus, Hardy, not so fast. We have to come to terms. I dunno where the fuck he is but I’m going to find out. He’s in control of some merchandise but he’s lost the franchise, if you know what I mean. I have to know how you stand on that.’
‘I couldn’t give a shit. If people want to put poppy juice in their veins, I say let ‘em. I’d legalise it.’
‘Would you now? That’d really fuck things up. Okay… ah, here’s the food.’
I knew I was going to have to put up with Piper’s Godfather routine and decided I might as well enjoy it. The spread that was laid out looked to be enough for four or six and must have accounted for his weight gain. He speared things from a number of plates, piled them up in front of him and gave the food his full attention. I followed suit, taking about a quarter of what he did. It was the usual- stuffed olives and vine leaves, various dips, flat bread, spiced and skewered meats, grilled and pickled vegetables. Hog heaven.
I started to speak but Piper held up one hand to check me and concentrated on his food until he felt fuelled enough to get down to business. He wasn’t finished by a long shot, but he was prepared to pick now and talk between bites and sips.
‘I suppose you know by now how the Master thing was supposed to work,’ Piper said. ‘Of course, I was just a… facilitator, not a player.’
‘I’ve got a pretty good idea. But North was playing his own game. I’m betting the original shipment was meant to be soft but North and maybe Master changed it to hard and that made a certain amount of killing worthwhile.’
Piper sucked on an olive, spat the pip accurately into a dish and nodded. ‘Something like that. North’s a ratbag and the word is he’s closed down a lot of his options.’
‘So, can you find him?’
‘Yeah, given time. He’ll be trying to cut a deal with one scumbag or another, but he’s going to find it hard. Eventually he’ll end up between a rock and a hard place. Do you know that Jack Nicholson’s the first person to go on the record as saying that? It was when all that Polanski shit was going down.’
‘I didn’t know you were a movie buff
‘I’m not. Mary is.’
‘Ah, Mary’
‘That’s right. Mary. You can see that I’ve got interests to protect in this thing.’
‘One of them being Jack the Odd.’
‘You’ve got the idea. So I have to proceed cautiously and make sure it all comes out right in the end.’
‘Me too.’
“What’s in it for you, Hardy? The woman? Are you fucking her? I wouldn’t if I was you. That Master’s a tough cunt and now that he’s out and about…’
I’d had enough to eat but I thought about another piece of bread with some babaganoush and decided why not? It gave me a chance to think of a reply. I ate the bread in two bites and drank some retsina. ‘Professional pride.’
Piper’s white-toothed grin was mostly a sneer. ‘Oh, yeah, I remember you were always big on that, like fuck you were.’
‘Come on, Piper. You know what I want-to be there at the time and make sure the woman’s safe. What do you want, apart from a clean slate for all of your mates?’
Piper slid a last piece of meat to the end of a skewer and popped it into his mouth. He chewed and then pointed the sharp end of the skewer at me. ‘A hundred grand,’ he said.
24
As I walked back to my car with the bullets for the. 38 loose in my pocket, I thought that Piper’s demand for money was a good thing. If he’d offered to help out of the goodness of his heart I wouldn’t have trusted him an inch. But a hundred thousand tax free made sense. He had my mobile number and I had a number he said would reach him. I was digesting the meal and reloading the gun as I sat in the car. It suddenly hit me how suspicious this would look to an observer and brought home to me that the car itself was a hot item.
I drove to the garage in Surry Hills where I have it serviced and booked it in for a thorough check-up, telling them I’d be out of town for a while and to take their time. I hired a Mitsubishi 4WD because you never know where you’re likely to have to go in this business, and drove to my office. I circled the area carefully a couple of times making sure the police hadn’t posted a lookout and also checking that Black Andy hadn’t given me a tail. In all likelihood, Carmichael and Hammond had gone there after Glebe and then just put out a call on the car. They’d have other things to attend to, but the murders and the escape of my client’s husband and the whereabouts of the client herself would put the matter high on their list. They’d keep checking and O’Connor would only be able to keep the lid on her disappearance for so long. I’d made this point to Piper and he’d just nodded indifferently as he detached something from his renovated molars with a toothpick.
I parked at a one hour meter in William Street and went up to the office. I seldom carry the pistol but it was a comfort as I mounted the stairs in the half light, all the stairwell gets in the afternoon. I didn’t expect trouble here, and that’s exactly when you should be ready for it. I could hear some of my fellow tenants going about their businesses, legit and semi-legit. Stephanie Stargazer bailed me up as I put my key in the door.
‘Ho, Cliff. A bad karma day?’
‘Why d’you say that, Steff?’
‘You look tense. Give me your details and I’ll lay it all out for you, free of charge.’
For years I’ve resisted giving her the stuff about the time and circumstances of my birth, most of which I don’t know anyway. I could get them easily enough from my sister, who flirted with this bullshit years ago and got the drum from our mother before she died. But Mum would have made it up if she’d felt like it, and from the way she drank it was unlikely she’d have remembered accurately. Dad, in the way of dads in those days, was absent from the event.
‘Steff,’ I said, ‘When I’m less tense I’ll give you all the dope you need. Right now, I’m going in to deal with my problems and play “My Sweet Lord” and burn some incense for poor old George.’
‘He died happy.’
‘Ten years too early. Look at Paul and Ringo. They gave up smoking, like me.’
Steff did a stylish turn of her ninety plus kilos in her purple kaftan with the mirrors in the skirt and jingled her bracelets. ‘You’re a hopeless case.’
‘You love me, though.’
‘I’ll do a reading on that. See you, Cliff.’
I opened the door to the familiar musty smell. Once, the mail used to be brought up and dropped through the slot. Not now, and I’d forgotten to check the box downstairs. The answering machine was blinking so there was a message. But the bug was still in place. Did it matter?
The first message was a harmless one from a would-be client who’d have to wait. The second was from my daughter Megan to tell me she was touring with a theatre company in Queensland and was just saying hello. That was her second hello in a year. Our relationship was warming up. The last was from Carmichael, as I’d suspected. It was just to let me know that I was in trouble. I already knew that.