It would have been better done in person, but I’d got the lead-in about right. Time for her to tense up if that’s what was to happen. I tried to imagine her standing against the big picture window with a couple of million dollars worth of harbour and city view behind her. I had her in the same clothes. All crazy- she could be in the kitchen in an apron cooking spaghetti. I held the receiver close, listened hard. Was there a pause, an intake of breath? I thought so, then I wasn’t sure. The voice, was it a tone or two higher, or was it the phone connection or my imagination?
‘No. I don’t believe I know the name. Who is he?’
I thought fast. She wasn’t the kind of woman you thought about protecting. She’d stood up to a lot so far and could probably stand some more.
‘He’s a criminal. A hard case. He was watching your flat this afternoon. He drove off when he saw me.’
‘My god. Why?’
‘I don’t know. When you go out, what’s the procedure?’
‘How do you mean, the procedure?’
‘Do you walk down to the ferry or catch a cab in the street? Do you ring for cabs? Is there someone who picks you up?’
‘All those things. Why? What are you saying?’
‘I’m worried about Henderson being involved in this. I’ll arrange for someone to keep an eye on you, but it’s too hard to do round the clock. I want you to ring for a cab when you go out, get the number, direct it to the main gate and wait until you’re sure the cab that pulls up is the right one. Will you do that, please?’
‘They’ll think I’m mad.’
‘No, not in Kirribilli. They’ll just think you’re rich.’
I regretted the words as soon as they were out. I got the deep freeze.
‘This is ridiculous. No, I won’t do that. I don’t believe you. You’re dramatising.’
‘Claudia, I…’
The line went dead. Brilliantly handled, Hardy, I thought. Telephone diplomacy at its best. I hit redial. The phone rang for a long time but she didn’t answer. The ice had melted in my drink; the Scotch was just a pale tint in the water and making it darker wouldn’t change anything. I tossed it off and set about cooking a bachelor dinner-salad with French dressing, pasta with pesto and grated cheese- living with those women had taught me something.
I had a glass of wine with the food and poured another when I sat down with a foolscap pad to try to make some sense of the day’s information and events. With any luck I’d get through the night one drink under my limit. My no doubt simple-minded procedure is to list the names of the people involved, all the relevant information on them and to draw arrows between them all pointing in all directions, noting on the shafts the things that connected them.
Sometimes this can be time-consuming and cover many sheets. Sometimes laying it all out like this triggered brainwaves and stimulated me to leaps of imagination. This time it took a few minutes and yielded virtually no results. I knew almost nothing beyond superficialities about Julius and. Claudia Fleischman. I knew still less about Robert Van Kep, Wilson Katz and Judith Daniels. The only person I knew anything solid about was the new participant, Haitch Henderson. I had another entry on the pad-’other man’, signifying the alleged accomplice of Van Kep. I drew an arrow between this entry and Henderson, but I didn’t think it was going to be anywhere near that simple.
I finished the wine and no other thoughts came other than the obvious one-dig for details on all parties still alive and available. Being kind to my liver and waistline, I resisted the fifth drink and made coffee instead. The dishes went into a newly-acquired dishwashing machine, a factory second with a scratch on the cabinet, bought cheap. I only ran it once a week and didn’t feel too bad about its environmental impact. As I waited for the coffee to perk I made a list of the things to do the next day. Top of the list was to fax Cy a contract and try to get a solid retainer out of him, despite being in the red. I’d have to try to get that past Janine and the odds were evens at best.
I drank coffee, had a shower and slopped around in a sulu someone had brought back to me from Vanuatu. I put on a cassette of the soundtrack from Local Hero and spent some time cleaning, oiling and checking the action of my Smith amp; Wesson. 38. The gun was very dusty and dry from disuse and it felt heavy and awkward in my hand, but with Haitch Henderson in the picture, it seemed like a good idea to get familiar with it again. I handled it, picking it up, aiming it, lowering, swinging it around, gripping and re-gripping until it felt like something I might be able to use, if I had to. I rewound the tape and listened to ‘Going Home’ three times.
Cy rang just before midnight.
‘Good eats?’ I said.
‘I forget already. What’s up?’
I told him about Henderson and how badly I’d handled Claudia over the phone.
He groaned. ‘What’s the good news?’
‘There isn’t any. I’ll need to slot someone in to keep an eye on her, at least for a few days until I can do something about Henderson. That’s going to cost.’
‘Do it. Tell Janine what you need up-front and I’ll OK it.’
Well, that was good news for me at least. I gave Cy a run-down on what I’d be doing next and he told me he had a meeting scheduled with the prosecutor. We agreed to keep each other fully informed.
‘I suppose you’ve got one of those fucking foolscap pads all covered with doodles?’
‘Right.’
‘And an arrow linking up Henderson and the supposed other man?’
‘Right again. But I don’t think it’s going to be that simple.’
‘Christ, I hope not,’ Cy said.
4
I left a message on Pete Marinos’ answering machine asking him to arrange an arm’s-distance minder for Claudia Fleischman. Pete has been a lot of things in his time-footballer, disc jockey, stand-up comic-and now he employs all his talents as a private enquiry agent. He can talk his way in and out of tricky situations better than anyone I know and, at about five foot six with curly hair and soft brown eyes, he looks harmless. He isn’t. If he didn’t do it himself he’d find someone to keep discreet watch on Claudia without her being aware of it. I told the machine that Cy Sackville was employing me-that would give Pete confidence and convey the seriousness of the matter. Unlike a lot of people in our game, Pete plays it straight and wouldn’t sell any information he got to the tabloids.
I went to bed very sober, feeling upright and glad to be working on something solid, even if it had disturbing aspects, or perhaps because of those aspects. One of my favourite writers is Graham Greene and I’ve read that fending off boredom was one of his big problems. Same for me, especially in these unattached days. Greene did it with drink, travel and writing and good luck to him.
Although I was tired, I lay sleepless for a while thinking of Claudia Fleischman’s toothy good looks and wishing I could have done the surveillance on her myself. Instead of which I’d managed to piss her off. Still, it was early days and the lady just might be a cold, calculating murderer. That was a little too disturbing and I tried to focus my mind on something else. A light southerly got up and a branch I’d meant to trim away weeks before started brushing against the bedroom window. It sounded as if someone was scratching at the pane, trying to find a way in. I drifted off to sleep and into a dream in which I was digging a deep hole in my tiny backyard. That dream ended; I dreamed something unconnected and then in a third dream I was in the backyard and falling down the hole. No more dreams after that.
In the old days, gathering background information on people like the Fleischmans and Katz and the dirt on characters like Robert Van Kep and Haitch Henderson took legwork, contacts and hard currency. You spent time in libraries, hung out in newspaper offices and bought drinks for reporters and cops. Now all it takes is a few phone calls and faxes to the right numbers, the reading off of your credit card numbers and the writing of cheques to organisations with names like Information Services Inc, and Access Database. When I left the house at a bit before ten the next morning, I was confident that my fax machine would soon be chattering and that I’d have a file half an inch thick before noon.