‘’s right.’
‘What about the bag? It must have been heavy.’
‘Bag? What bag? She didn’t have a bag.’
8
I drove past the Champagne Cabaret on the way home but I didn’t stop. You don’t go into those sorts of places at six in the evening looking for the boss. You go in at midnight and you make sure you’re sober because the odds are nobody else around will be, and that gives you an edge. You take a gun with you too, if you have one, and some backup, also sober if possible.
I got home about an hour after I said I would. Helen was sitting in a chair reading Democracy by Joan Didion and drinking whisky by Johnny Walker.
‘Hi,’ she said. She held up her glass. ‘Join me?’
I stood behind her chair and looked at the book. It was creased and battered as if it had been in and out of her bag or pocket many times. I judged that she’d put in a day of sitting around and waiting. I touched the top of her head, smoothed down her hair. ‘No, think I’ll have some wine.’
‘Ah, you’re going out again later.’
‘I’m supposed to be the detective.’ I went through to the kitchen and got the drink. I still had the cassette and the envelope in my hand. Helen pointed.
‘Are we watching a movie tonight?’
‘This was made by the girl who got killed. I want to see it. Tell me about the flat-hunting.’ I sat down opposite her and pulled the chair closer so that our knees touched.
‘Crummy dumps,’ she said. ‘One good one but it costs the earth.’
‘D’you have to do it?’
‘Of course I do. Look, you’re going to watch a dead woman’s film and then go out to get yourself beaten up or have some depressing conversation. What am I supposed to do?’
I drank some wine and didn’t speak.
‘You hardly worked at all the last time I was here.’
‘That’s the way it happens sometimes.’
‘How long will this job last?’
I shrugged. ‘A week. A month.’
Helen drank some whisky. She sighed, looked at her book and then threw it on the floor. ‘I just don’t want to be a pain,’ she said. We reached out for each other and hugged awkwardly, sitting in our separate chairs. We held the hug for quite a while until it turned into something else which we finished off in bed.
I made sandwiches and took them and some wine upstairs and we ate in bed. Helen told me about the fifteen real estate agents she’d visited and the dozen or so houses and flats. Then she fell asleep.
It was after nine but still way too early to go to the Champagne Cabaret. I made coffee and put the cassette in the VCR.
The screen filled with an expanse of water; still, silver water that was suddenly broken by the leaping, cavorting bodies of what looked like thousands of dolphins. They jumped and flapped and the sound of their squeaking, barking calls filled the room. I turned the sound down. The word ‘Bermagui’ came up in deep blue over the fractured silver of the dolphins at play, and some music, mostly strings and drums, accompanied the credits. The film was written, edited, produced and directed by Carmel Wise.
I’m no movie buff; I’d see about six or seven new films a year and catch another dozen or so on TV and video. I like them fast and funny-Woody Allen, anything with Jack Nicholson, that sort of thing. Carmel Wise’s picture was nothing like Woody Allen, and her hero, a thin, toothy character, was more like Donald Sutherland than Nicholson. But it was a marvellous film. I forgot I was watching for professional reasons: the simple story of a schoolteacher in love with one of his students against the background of a quiet town, caught in the annual tourist rush and under pressure from the moneyed people of Canberra who were buying up the beach, grabbed me and swept me along.
The acting was fine-underplayed, done without the usual clangers and dead lines that disfigure films made by inexperienced people. The supporting cast were virtually silent which was another plus; they rapped out dramatic interjections while the main players wove the story. Most of all, the filming was terrific: Carmel Wise had resisted the cliched shots and had got the hard ones-the old house, crumbling and wisteria-covered, but still looking strong and appropriate; the beach party, slowly getting out of hand as the booze flummoxed and confused the kids, turning them from sharp and funny to slow and dull.
The 90 minutes passed quickly. I felt like applauding when the film finished and I ran the tape back to watch bits again to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. But it was all there-the sure touch, the wit in the use of the camera, the low-key emotion and the economy of the whole thing. As the final credits rolled again-brief, with a lot of the same people doubling up on the jobs, I reflected that Carmel Wise was a real loss to the city, to the nation. I was also sure that she wouldn’t have been interested in pornography. What else? I tried to grab the impressions quickly: strong social conscience, political radical with a sense of humour, more humanist than feminist, scourge of the rich… the name Jan de Vries came up on the screen- ‘thanks to Jan de Vries for criticism and coffee’.
After eleven, time to go. I got my Smith amp; Wesson. 38 Police Special from the kitchen drawer and checked it for load and action. A quick wash, a fresh shirt, holster harness on, gun away and I was ready. Images from the film floated in my mind as I drove through the quiet streets. A long shot of the beach at night, two cigarettes glowing in the dark, occupied me along Glebe Point Road and I thought about the love-making between the teacher and the student as I drove up William Street. Then I thought about Helen in my bed and her flat and other beds. As I looked for a parking place I wrenched my mind back to the job. It shouldn’t be too hard. Chat to one nightclub owner about some old pals. He’d probably be only too pleased to help, probably give me a free drink and introduce me to some nice girls.
The streetwalkers were at their posts on Darlinghurst Road, behaving themselves as the cops walked past, and then laughing and giving their blue-shirted backs the finger. The eating and drinking and game-playing places were open and doing business. The Champagne Cabaret was a few doors from Woolworths which was closed. There were people squatting in the long, deep recess in front of the store-some jewellery sellers, a pavement artist and a man just standing there, doing nothing.
The man outside the joint was working hard. ‘Come on gents,’ he called, ‘come on ladies, come on all you folks in between. Something for everyone at the Champagne Cabaret. They sing, they dance, they make romance. Come in, sir. Hey, sailor!’ He was about 21 in the body and twice that in the face. He wore a draped jacket with shoulder pads and skin-tight pants, something like the outfit I used to wear myself in Maroubra around 1956. I stopped to look at the photographs mounted in glass cases beside the narrow doorway. Sequined women clutched microphones suggestively; too-sleek men clutched sequined women.
He waved his cigarette in my face. ‘Come right in, sir. Ten dollars an’ you’re through the door an’ in another world. You look like a good sport. Do yourself a good turn.’
‘I want to talk to the boss,’ I said. ‘Big blonde guy, isn’t he? Darcy, is that right?’
He kept waving the cigarette and spoke to the passers-by. ‘Come right in, ten dollars to make your dreams come true.’
‘No trouble,’ I said. ‘Just a talk.’
He looked directly at me for a split second. ‘Twenty dollars to make your dreams come true.’
‘You said ten before.’
‘That was then, this is now.’
‘I could walk right through you.’
‘Into a locked door,’ he said. ‘Come on, gents, come on, girls.. ’
I gave him the twenty and he almost made a bow. ‘Pay at the door,’ he said.
Past the photographs, with my foot on the first step, I spun around. ‘What?’
‘Pay at the door, arsehole. Ten dollars to make your dreams come true.’