Authors: Peter Corris
‘Do you know Carl Peroni by any chance?’ I compared a dull dollar coin to a shiny ten cent piece.
‘Carl? Yes.’ His fingers obviously itched to pull the right money from my handful of coins.
‘Expect him in tonight?’
His shrug sketched the coastline of the Bay of Naples in a single movement. I got out a ball point pen and flicked it; I really had his attention now.
‘Got a bit of paper? I want to leave him a message.’
He pushed a cardboard coaster across the counter towards me. I gave him the right money for the coffee and added the dull dollar. On the coaster I wrote: ‘Enjoyed our meeting in the car park, Carl. We must do it again sometime.’ I added my name and the office phone number. The counter man craned forward to read it. I pushed it across.
‘Give it to him, will you? And buy him a coffee.’
He looked out into the cigarette fug; the air was as blue as in William street and we had the noise of the mechanical
and electronic machines instead of the cars. ‘Could be in later,’ he said.
‘I’m busy. It’s not important.’ I finished the short black in a gulp and walked out. The florist was just closing; I stood on the pavement and watched him pull the street displays in and tidy the shop. He was a tall, thin, middle-aged man wearing a dust coat and a bow tie. He whistled while he worked. I remembered that it was one of the many complaints of Cyn, my ex-wife, that I never bought her flowers. It was true, I hadn’t. I tried to a couple of times after she first mentioned it, but I could never feel right about doing it. I wondered what Dr Holmes would make of that.
I’d given Erica Fong a key to my place before sending her off to stay at Bill Mountain’s house with Max. I was glad that she’d used it and glad she was asleep on my couch. I was in the lonely mood my work sometimes brings, a feeling that other people are only contacts, sources of information or problems, and I needed to talk to someone who was more than that.
She was sleeping quietly with her straight hair all spikey and her head resting on a pillow she’d made of an expensive-looking leather coat. One hand, the nicotine-stained one, was under her head and the other was curled in a tight fist as if she was ready to throw a punch the instant she woke up.
Two bottles of duty-free Scotch poked out of the big overnight bag by the couch. I guessed that at least one of the bottles was for me so I took it out to the kitchen, got rid of all the cardboard and wrapping and poured a hefty slug of it over Australian ice. I had a mouthful to make sure the stuff had travelled okay, and then took the bottle, some ice and another glass back to the front room.
She didn’t look travel-stained and I suppose that’s one of the advantages of being small. An airline seat, especially
a first class one, would allow enough room for reading, eating and drinking, and isometric exercises. A brush of the teeth, nothing to shave, and you’re right. Erica was wearing fashionably baggy pants and a loose cotton top. Her espadrilles were on the floor and I noticed that she had the shapely feet only small women have. There was a carton of Benson & Hedges cigarettes in the bag and another open on the arm of the couch. I had to conclude that either she wasn’t a woman of her word or she hadn’t brought Bill Mountain back with her.
She stirred briefly and came awake quickly. She sat up, stretched and reached for the cigarettes.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I just got in. I dropped off.’
‘You’re entitled, flying however many miles it is in however few hours.’ I held up the Scotch and she nodded. I made her a drink while she inhaled and exhaled as if that’s what life was all about. When she had tried her drink she looked at me gravely.
‘I didn’t find him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I spent Dad’s money like a lunatic just getting around. Everything costs the earth ….’ She broke off the travel chat for more alcohol and nicotine and when she spoke again the worry line was like a small fold on her forehead. ‘It looks bad, Cliff. I don’t suppose you … ?’
I shook my head.
‘I bought a bottle of Scotch for you and one for him, just in case.’
‘He’s stopped drinking.’
‘He’s what? How d’you know?’
‘I saw his sister in Melbourne.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s doing some crazy things.’
‘Like?’
She finished her cigarette and lost interest in her drink. She tucked her legs up under her and folded her arms and looked like a sad Oriental statue. ‘It’s weird, let me tell you,’ she said. ‘I went to Nice, flew there with just one
change. I can’t speak any bloody French but I showed the taxi driver the postcard and he took me to the hotel. It’s run by this amazing woman with long black hair and diamond rings. She speaks good English and she’s got a big dog, a Doberman. We big-dog people get along. Well, I had a photo of Bill and I showed it to her and she said he’d stayed there for a couple of days. He’d arrived from Marseilles.’
‘What was he doing in Marseilles?’
‘I think he was buying heroin.’
‘Jesus. Why d’you think that?’
‘Madame at the hotel—she said she saw Bill down at the beach sitting in a chair talking to a bloke. She says this bloke is a well-known Marseilles heroin dealer. They set the deal up in Marseilles and deliver in Nice. Don’t ask me why. They have all these chairs lined up on this concrete promenade ….’
‘I’ve seen it in the movies.’
‘It’s lovely, and you could talk privately there. I mean, not be overheard. Oh God, Cliff, he’s never had anything to do with hard drugs. I’m sure of that.’
‘I don’t think he’d be in it to play around with the stuff himself. Go on, what else did you find out?’
‘He talked to Madame a bit, in French. He speaks good French—
she
said it was good, and they don’t go in for that sort of praise much, the French. I said sil voo play and got laughed at. Anyway, he went to Antibes and a place called Cap Ferrat. Want to know why?’
I thought about it while I worked on my whisky. I was getting ready to take over her abandoned one too. Cap Ferrat—easy—Somerset Maugham lived there for years. Antibes—something to do with Picasso? Then I remembered the paperbacks in Mountain’s study—the foot or so of orange-covered Penguin editions of Graham Greene. Graham Greene lived in Antibes.
‘Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene,’ I said. ‘He went to look at their houses.’
She almost dropped the new cigarette she was fiddling with. ‘That’s right! That’s right!’ She lit the cigarette and didn’t protest when I took over her whisky. ‘How did you know that?’
I waved her smoke away airily. ‘Nothing to it; you say Arles you mean Van Gogh, you say La Jolla you mean Raymond Chandler.’
She looked at me through the haze. ‘You
are
like him, that’s the sort of trick he could do.’
‘Go on. He went to look at a couple of writers’ houses. Then what?’
‘Then nothing. He told Madame that’s what he was doing. He watched TV with her and he fucked her.’
‘She said so?’
‘No, but I could tell, just from the way she looked, the way she said things. I could tell. That’s
my
trick.’
‘Useful too. Does that change anything for you?’
‘No.’
‘Pity.’
‘Why?’
‘I told you he went to see his sister. She’s a pretty hopeless sort of case. Scared of everything. He certainly didn’t give her any comfort.’
‘He’s not the sort of man who gives comfort, he gives energy and interest. Bit like you again.’
I coughed. ‘Thanks.’
She got up off the couch and crossed to my chair. I could see her small breasts moving under the loose shirt and I wanted to touch them. She crouched in front of me.
‘Touch.’
I touched. She took my hands away, lifted her shirt and spread my fingers and palms over her naked breasts. She was warm and when I bent down to kiss her she opened her mouth and locked on to me fiercely.
In bed she was enthusiastic and experienced. She slithered around, changing positions and exciting me with her small, hard body. She came in harsh, gasping spasms
and I was only a moment behind her. I propped up and looked down at her creamy oval face with the perfect cheekbones and brown smiling lips.
‘Good?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
She squirmed out and pulled me down and went to sleep with her head on my shoulder. I went to sleep a little later when the sounds of the world that we’d blotted out started to filter back through to me. I knew that I’d been part of Erica Fong’s revenge on William Mountain, but I didn’t care.
S
HE
wasn’t in the bed when I woke up. I put on my old towelling dressing gown and went downstairs towards the smell of brewing coffee. She was in the kitchen, fully dressed except for shoes and smoking her first fag of the day. She jumped when she saw me in the doorway; her slept-on hair was spiky here and matted flat there, like badly cut grass. She ran her hand over her head nervously.
‘That was just ….’
‘I know.’ I went over and kissed the top of her head. I smoothed down some of the spiky hair. ‘It’s all right, Erica. Probably very good for both of us. No harm done.’
She put one arm around me, turned her head, inhaled and blew a stream of smoke away from me. ‘Phew, thought it might be messy.’
‘No. Let’s have some coffee.’
Over the coffee I told her about my theory that Mountain was writing again.
‘Madame didn’t mention it.’
‘Those little typewriters are silent, and you can fit one in an overnight bag.’
She nodded. ‘Isn’t that good, that he’s writing?’
‘The psychiatrist says it could go either way. I suppose it depends on what he’s writing about.’
Her answering nod was glum, and we sat in silence for a while. I was conscious of a slight headache, maybe the result of sleeping on a stomach that was empty apart from some whisky. Toast and eggs suddenly appealed but I’d have been happier with a good idea.
‘I can’t imagine Bill not drinking,’ Erica said. ‘It’d be like
Max not barking. I can’t imagine what he’d do with the time.’
I nodded. I could remember the first few heaving days of nicotine withdrawal and the desperate cravings of the few times I’d been alarmed by my alcohol consumption and had sworn off the stuff—life had seemed flat and the days full of dark, empty holes. I got up and put some stale bread in the toaster. Erica shook her head when I held up an egg.
‘Bugger everything,’ she said.
I started scrambling three eggs. ‘How much ready money would he be likely to have?’
‘Oh, tons. He made heaps from the TV writing and he didn’t just do that one soapie. He did re-writes for other shows, script doctoring.’
‘But he didn’t get no satisfaction?’
She smiled. ‘He said you patch shit up with more shit. He’d have plenty of cash and credit cards galore. I didn’t find his cards in the house.’
‘And nothing unusual apart from the notes?’
‘Just one thing, a docket for a video camera, but no camera.’
The eggs were ready and the toast wasn’t too black. I poured us both more coffee and sat down with the food. ‘Maybe he went to New York to film Norman Mailer.’
She shook her head. ‘No, he’s here somewhere. ‘Ome.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what Madame told me—he said he was going ‘ome.’
We arranged that she’d go home and feed Max and I’d have another shot at Mal. As a double act it wasn’t much of a show but it was the best we could do. We went to the front door together, still talking. I reached past her and opened the door; she started to go through when the door suddenly swung in hard and threw her back at me. She
dropped her bag and stumbled over it. I used both hands to catch her and my flabby friend from the car park stood in the doorway with a gun in his hand. The bitter-faced man stood beside him, and my brain, which had been too slow to anticipate exposing Erica to this sort of danger, worked fast enough to register that this must be Carl Peroni. He leered as Erica disentangled herself from me.
‘Like to eat Chinese, do you, Hardy?’ He laughed at his own joke, then he stepped back towards the gate and spoke in a respectful tone to someone in the street. ‘It’s okay. He’s here and we’re in.’
Flabby gestured with the gun which I noticed then was the Colt from my car, and Erica and I backed down the hallway. Peroni stood with his back to the wall to allow a small, thick-set man dressed in a dark, three-piece suit to pass him. He did so and moved past me on towards the back of the house as if he made forcible entries like this at least three times a day. His step was jaunty, and I stood in the hall and watched him check the kitchen and living room quickly before coming back and stepping neatly sideways through the first door off the hallway.
Flabby stood with his back to the front door and Peroni moved restlessly like a sheep dog yapping at heels, almost herding us into the front room. Erica stood close beside me; Peroni leaned against a wall and the small man in the suit stood in the middle of the room. He had an old-young face, unlined but jowly; his hair was white but thick, his eyes were deeply sunk but of a clear, untroubled blue.
‘Mr Hardy, you can call me Mr Grey.’ He had a light, prissy voice and speaking style with some traces of accent, possibly English.
‘I can think of some other things to call you.’
‘I daresay.’ He looked at Peroni whose eyes were fixed on Erica. ‘I want you to locate the telephone and unplug it. Then come back in here. Understand?’
Peroni nodded; he brushed past Erica, running his hand down her back, and went out. I’d already started to move
towards him when Mr Grey took a small, flat gun from his pocket and pointed it at me.
‘Don’t!’ he said.
I stopped. Erica got her cigarettes out of her pants pocket and put one in her mouth.
‘Don’t smoke, please,’ Grey said. ‘I suffer from sinus trouble.’
‘Fuck your sinuses. I hope they flood.’ She lit her cigarette and puffed.
Grey looked pained, then amused. ‘Tough,’ he said. ‘All right, let’s all be tough. I represent some people who want to locate William Mountain, a certain motor car and other items.’
Erica deliberately blew a cloud of smoke in his direction. ‘We want to find him too.’