“I took him across the harbor, like you told me to.”
Haklander didn’t correct me. Maybe he’d forgotten telling me that Ramirez needed a ride to the city. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. I had the impression he was waiting for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he said, “I hope he made it worth your while.”
“Sure. Mr. Ramirez gave me a big tip.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“By the way,” I said, “one of the rear door handles needs fixing.”
“Leave it with me.”
I knew what that meant.
In the corner of the room was an old pair of Tannoy loudspeakers wired up to a secondhand amplifier that no longer worked. I pulled the front off one of the loudspeakers, unscrewed the bass driver, and pushed the slab of cocaine into the cavity.
I was living in a run-down art deco block in Potts Point. My apartment was on the top floor, facing the back, with a bay window that offered glimpses of the Finger Wharf and the rust-streaked warships in Woolloomooloo Bay. It cost me $525 a week, which was less than it was worth but more than I could afford. I sold a bit of weed to make ends meet.
Six months earlier a neighbor had collared me on the staircase. He lived in the apartment below mine. Heavyset, careless shaver, always wore a crumpled sports coat and Hush Puppies. He wore a wedding ring but lived on his own, did his laundry on Saturday nights, and rarely bothered to pick up his mail. We’d nodded to each other a few times but never had a conversation. I knew his name — Fowler — from the intercom list beside the front door.
I was pretty certain I had seen him at Haklander’s barbecue but Fowler would have been too drunk to remember. I had assumed he was another of Haklander’s drivers. Haklander liked to have more drivers than taxis for them to drive; it kept everyone hungry. It turned out that Fowler was a detective at Manly. It was possible he moonlighted as a cab driver. Plenty of cops did.
He stopped me on the stairs and said, “Quite a social life you’ve got going up there.”
I didn’t reply.
Fowler leaned forward until his face was a few inches from mine. “I know you’re dealing.”
“Not me,” I said.
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Fowler stood aside courteously to let another tenant pass us on the staircase and waited while she let herself into her apartment. When she’d bolted the door behind her, Fowler asked, “Do I look stupid?”
I’ve never been good with rhetorical questions. What was the right answer? That he was stupid and didn’t look it or that he wasn’t stupid and did? “What do you want?” I asked.
Fowler reached into his coat and took out a packet of cigarettes with a picture of a gangrenous foot and the words, Smoking causes peripheral vascular disease. He shook a cigarette out of the packet and offered one to me. I told him I didn’t smoke.
Fowler followed me upstairs. I kept my stash under a loose floorboard in the second bedroom. There was a small chest of drawers over it. As Fowler helped himself to the stash — and eleven hundred dollars in cash that I was going to use to pay the rent — he said, “You should be more careful.”
I wasn’t sure which of us was more pathetic — Fowler for shaking me down or me for letting him do it. The bastard walked away looking smug but he missed out on another five hundred I kept hidden behind the microwave.
An hour after my conversation with Haklander, I heard a fist banging on the front door. It was Fowler. This time he hadn’t brought his manners with him. I had to let him in before he broke the door. He pushed past me and went straight to the spare bedroom. I stood in the doorway while he shoved the chest of drawers away and pulled out the loose floorboard. He lay on the floor groping between the bearers. “Where is it?” he demanded.
“Where’s what?”
Fowler got to his feet and said, “I could arrest you now.”
“On what charge?”
He didn’t answer. I knew what he was after, but who had told him about it? It had to be Haklander. Fowler let me stew for a while. Then he said, “The Colombian. I know he left something behind.”
“Did he?”
Fowler walked toward me. “You’re out of your depth, son. Tell me where it is.”
I hesitated. I had allowed him to rip me off once but I wasn’t planning to let it happen again. “It’s somewhere safe,” I said. “Not here.”
Fowler stood so close that I could smell the lunch on his breath. “Don’t play games with me, son.”
“Fifty,” I said.
His mouth fell open. “What?”
“Fifty thousand. The stuff’s worth two hundred. All I want is fifty.”
For a while Fowler stood there wheezing like an old Labrador. Then he started laughing. On his way out he said, “You’ve got some balls.”
My mobile was ringing. I looked at my watch. It was just after ten in the morning. I had drunk too much gin. The sun was blazing through the broken blinds. I rolled over and picked up the phone. It was Haklander. He said we had to talk about something, the oil gauge or the broken door handle on the taxi. He sounded flustered. I said, “I’m not driving today. Can’t it wait?”
Haklander said he needed to come and discuss it in person. There was a pause and then he asked me for my address.
“My address?”
“Yeah,” said Haklander. “Where do you live?”
I sat up. Haklander already knew where I lived, although he had never been inside the apartment. It sounded like a warning. I had the feeling that somebody was with him and telling him what to say. Ramirez? Or the people Ramirez was working for? I wondered how long Haklander had been dealing with the Colombians. Was it cocaine that had paid for that mansion in Bellevue Hill?
Suddenly the phone went dead. Haklander’s visitors must have realized what he was up to. I doubted it would take them long to get what they needed. I threw on some clothes, grabbed the cocaine from the speaker cabinet, and stuffed some spare clothes in a holdall along with whatever cash I had in the apartment. Then I put the radio on and left. I was watching from the laundromat on Macleay Street when a silver Subaru WRX pulled up outside my apartment block. I saw two men get out, a dark-skinned Latino in jeans and a white T-shirt and a younger man in a leather jacket. Fifteen minutes later only the Latino came out.
There was a public phone in the laundromat, although the sound of the machines made it hard to hear. I rang triple zero and told the operator I wanted to report a break-in.
I agreed to meet Fowler at nine p.m. at a self-storage depot on the industrial side of Chatswood. I thought Chatswood was all apartments and Chinese restaurants; I didn’t know there was an industrial side. According to Fowler he’d been renting a storage unit there since his divorce. He said it was cheaper than an extra bedroom. The kids were grown up and none of them wanted to stay with him anyway. He hadn’t spoken to his eldest since she was sixteen.
I arrived twenty minutes early but Fowler’s ten-year-old Magna station wagon was already in the car park. He had promised to come alone but I could see someone sitting beside him. I drove around the car park and back onto the street, parked a couple of blocks away, and walked back.
The roll-a-door to Fowler’s lockup was half open. I had to bend down to get under it. As I straightened up Fowler said, “This is Mr. O’Connor. He’s offered to come along. For security.”
O’Connor was sitting on a fishing chair in the corner. He was smartly dressed in chinos, polo shirt, and a blazer, but he had a boxer’s busted nose. He was smoking a cigarette.
“It was supposed to be just you and me,” I said.