Authors: Peter Corris
The most alarming thing was that the manuscript ended with Shaw back in Sydney with a large supply of pure
heroin and cocaine and some useful contacts. He has a plan to establish a drug empire and use the profits to fund pornographic films, rock bands and counter-culture communes. But the writer himself becomes addicted to heroin very quickly, and the signs were of a disintegration of some kind being held together by fantasy.
The last scene broached a new subject:
‘
He looked at the heroin for a long time. There was enough for him to make his exit through a tunnel of warm pleasure. He’d have time to sit in a padded chair and say a long, sweet goodbye and wait for the flash that would mean the doors to the tunnel were opening.
’
The warm pleasure was being imparted by various women whom Mountain must have conjured up partly from his imagination and partly, if Erica had it right, from memory. At the point where the outline broke off, our Morgan had a lot of irons in the fire; he was plotting the set-up of his network, still baiting the car thieves with copies of false documents and real tapes, and playing around with the idea of suicide. Lambert, reading the stuff as autobiographical, must have been able to hear his knees knock. His ten per cent couldn’t have seemed very safe.
I flicked through the pages looking for clues, slips, conscious or unconscious signposts to where Mountain might be. No luck. Place names were potent and well-chosen, but fictitious. The typewriter he was using had a correcting function, so that if he had had second thoughts about identifying places too closely and made changes there was no record of it in the typescript. It was like reading a deposition by someone who had sworn to tell the truth but had no inhibitions about committing perjury. On the last page, Shaw was in a hotel not far from the heart of a major city, which could mean that Mountain was in a private house somewhere in the backblocks.
I made a list of the apparently important things in the manuscript, and checked it against other information I had. Nothing happened; there were confirmations of the obvious things like the alcohol cure and the heroin purchase, but nothing on the movements or locations or the suicide idea. Small comfort in that. Next I listed the characters, and entered the few remarks and descriptions allotted them in the synopsis. This amounted to little more than a thumbnail sketch in most cases, but provided more confirmation. Mal was recognisably there as ‘Eddie’, the writer’s first contact with the criminal world; poor Miss Mountain was there, her fragile, suburban respectability brutally etched. Other characters were either heavily disguised or fictitious but the portrait of the journalist, Andrew Hope, rang some bells. My notes on him read:
Andrew Hope, 35, dark, heavy build, journalist, ex-football player, practical joker, gambler, experimental drug user.
Arthur Henderson was fifty-two, not thirty-five: he was short and fair and had been a good tennis player. But he was a freelance journalist, said to be the first man to take cocaine on television (accounts differ on whether the substance he had sniffed on The Jimmie Martin Show really
was
cocaine), and his idea of a joke was to balance a bucket of piss over a door and sit back to watch the result.
I’d had some dealings with Henderson, but I didn’t have a way of contacting him. As it turned out, doing this was like trying to read the label on a turning record—you can almost do it but not quite. The first few calls I made got me nowhere except from one blank wall to another. There was no other course open than to add another favour to the long list I already owed Harry Tickener. Since Harry became deputy editor of
The News
rather than its star reporter, he sees and hears less than he used to, but still more than most. He took my call, but I had the feeling that he had at least one other phone to his ear.
‘Hi, Cliff, I’m busy. How’re you?’
‘Trying to be busy, Harry. When did you last see Arthur Henderson?’
‘Who?’
‘Artie Henderson—when did you last see him?’
‘I can’t answer that.’
‘Why not? I thought he hounded your place to flog his stuff. It can’t be that long.’
Harry laughed and gave one of his forty-Camels-a-day dry coughs. ‘I’m joking, Cliff. It’s like Philosophy. You ever do Philosophy?’
‘No, Harry.’
‘You don’t know that thing about stepping into the same river twice?’
‘No, sounds like a dumb thing to do.’
‘Yeah, well. I can’t answer the question “when did I last see Arthur Henderson” because I’m looking at him right now. He’s here trying to interest the editor in a piece on Tim Tully. Ever heard of Tully?’
‘No.’
‘Nor has the editor. What ….’
‘Harry, hold onto him. I’ve got to see him. Buy him a drink.’
‘That’s asking too much, Cliff. I’ve never heard of Tully either, and I don’t want to.’
‘Do anything you like to him, but don’t let him get away.’
‘Is it life or death or money?’
‘All of them.’
Harry laughed and coughed again. ‘Okay, Cliff. He’ll be here, but hurry.’
I slammed down the phone and rushed out of the house, still buttoning my shirt. There was a white envelope lying on the doorstep; I swooped on it and crammed it into my shirt pocket as I felt for my keys. It wasn’t until I stopped at some lights that I could open the envelope. It had my name printed in block capitals on the front and inside was a thick clump of straight, black, Oriental hair.
T
HE
reporters’ room at
The News
was busy as usual with men and women whaling away at computer keyboards, telephones ringing and filing cabinet drawers shrieking. I couldn’t see Arthur Henderson when I walked in, but Harry Tickener was there. He seemed to have shrunk over recent years, but perhaps it’s just that his desks had got bigger. The surface of the one he was at now was covered with telephones, writing pads, print-out paper and a couple of gross of pens and pencils. Harry had kept up the journo’s tradition of an up-ended typewriter on his desk, although it’s doubtful that he had much use for it anymore. He also used to have a use for the pencils—to scratch at his hair—but there wasn’t enough hair left now to scratch.
He saw me coming from across the room and made a show of grabbing up some paper and running. He stood his ground though, and lit one of his Camels. When I got close enough he blew smoke in my face.
‘Any regrets?’
I waved the smoke away. ‘None. I pull my lungs out from time to time to have a look at them. You’d need a fishnet to get yours up.’ I stabbed at his thin chest. ‘With a fine mesh!’
‘Charming. You’re probably right, but my old man’s smoked fifty a day for nearly sixty years, and there isn’t a hill in North Sydney he can’t walk up. I’m a great believer in heredity. I suppose you want to know where Artie is?’
‘Right.’
‘I’m sorry; we couldn’t keep him. The stuff he had was so bad there was nothing to say. But we did you a favour.
He’s so depressed he’d have headed for the pub.’
‘Shit, Harry, there’s a lot of pubs in Sydney.’
‘Artie’s a lazy bugger, he’ll have taken the Continental across the road, nothing surer.’ He was back behind his desk before he finished talking; it’s hard to hold Harry’s attention these days unless you’ve got a leaked document or a film of the politician actually taking the money. He took a paper out from under an identical stack of other papers; the total chaos of his desk is an orderly filing system in Harry’s mind. He glanced up at me dismissively.
‘Must have a drink sometime, Cliff. Or have you given that up too?’
‘No, Harry. I haven’t given it up. I’m humbled by your help and I’d like to have a drink with you. Give me a ring when you get a quarter hour off.’
He grinned, drew defiantly on the cigarette and bent his pale pink skull over his papers.
The Continental is a typical journalists’ pub with different bars suited to different purposes. There’s one for talking or reading the papers in peace, one for eating after a fashion and another for fighting. Artie Henderson was in the fighting bar. I hoped Harry hadn’t mentioned to him that I wanted to see him, because one of Henderson’s chief characteristcs is suspicion. He is suspicious of everybody and everything. Most of his published articles in recent years had been paranoid conspiracy pieces with just enough substance in them to get a run after heavy editing.
He saw me, and he had money on the counter and was heading for the door, preparing to skirt around me, before I was one step into the bar. I blocked him.
‘Artie, I’d like a word.’
He tried to step around me, but he’d had a bit too much already and his reflexes were shot; I side-stepped faster and baulked him off balance. He stumbled and lurched
towards the nearest table for support. The few other drinkers didn’t even look around; it’d take six good punches and some blood to get them interested. Artie breathed hard and pushed up from the table but I pushed him down again. He was badly out of condition and went down easier and harder than I’d expected. I helped him up onto a stool near one of the pillars that divided the room. He leaned back against the pillar, and his hand searched automatically on the shelf nearby for his drink. He was in a bad way.
‘Take it easy, Artie,’ I said. ‘Just stay right there and I’ll get you a drink.’
He nodded resignedly, but I kept my eye on him as I backed off to the bar. He lit a cigarette, coughed cataclysmically and wheezed, but he stayed where he was. When I got back with a scotch for him and some red wine for me, he was breathing better and his eyes were bright with anticipation, maybe for the whisky, maybe for calamity. He put the scotch down in one gulp, sucked on his cigarette and rubbed his back where it had hit the wall.
‘I don’t want to talk to you, Hardy. You’re trouble in large doses. Jeez, me back hurts ….’
‘Don’t be like that, Artie. I just reacted automatically to your side-step. You’ve slowed down.’
He sighed. ‘At everything; at some things I’ve bloody stopped. All right, Hardy, get us another drink and let’s hear what’s on your excuse for a mind.’
I put five dollars down by his empty glass and his pudgy, liver-spotted hand reached for it automatically.
‘You buy the drinks, Artie. The walk’ll do you good.’
He heaved his bulky body off the stool and shuffled across to the bar. His suit bagged at all pockets with the weight of assorted articles, and his shoes hadn’t been cleaned that year. If he’d had any contact with Bill Mountain recently, it hadn’t done him any financial good unless he’d already drunk it. He came back with a double scotch and beer chaser and a packet of cigarettes, all
bought from my five. He put the couple of coins in change down on the shelf and gave me one of his rare smiles.
‘There you are, Cliff. Shocking price things are today.’
I lifted what was left in my glass. ‘Cheers, Artie. Quick trip to the grave.’
‘You always were a humorist, Cliff. What’s up?’
‘When did you last see Bill Mountain?’
He sipped his whisky and tapped the side of his head where his pepper-and-salt hair stood up untidily over his ears. ‘Dreadful memory,’ he said.
‘Have
I seen old Bill lately?’
‘Yeah. You’ll be flattered to hear he’s been writing about you.’
‘Me?’ He looked as alarmed as if he’d discovered that his fly was open.
‘You. This is a secret, but I’m telling you because I can’t see how you’d make any money out of it. Mountain’s writing a novel. He’s got a character in it who’s unmistakably you. Like Fleming and Le Carré used Dicky Hughes, you know?’
He nodded, I assume flattered.
‘Well, this character gives the hero the drum on the heroin racket.’
Artie’s eyes narrowed in a parody of cunning. ‘We did have a word or two on the subject.’
‘Right. I suppose he told you he was researching for a TV script?’
‘Exactly.’ The scotch was nearly all gone and he started on the beer.
‘But he’s gone and got himself personally involved in the business.’
‘Jesus!’
‘The less you know the better, but what I want you to do is tell me everything you told him—the names, the places, the procedures. Anything that might help me get a line on him. He’s history unless someone pulls him out of it. I don’t have to tell you that.’
‘Sure. I assume someone’s employing you, Cliff?’
‘Yeah, I’m not poking into this for fun, believe me. I assume it’s all going on around Darlo and Bondi and I know there used to be a nice phone hook-up between the Customs and a city hotel we won’t mention. But I’m a bit out of touch. Put me in touch, Artie.’
I didn’t recognise the sound at first; it came from deep within his frowsy frame, and he shook like a man hanging onto a pneumatic drill. It ended in a shuddering spasm and a series of coughs that started at his ankles. His face flushed red and his hand shook violently when he picked up his glass. He got a swallow down and resumed normal breathing. It was Artie’s way of laughing; if he did it too often he’d drop dead. ‘That’s rich, Cliff, really rich. Darlo! Phone hook-up! You think it’s all kids and hard cases, eh? Out of touch? You don’t even know what the bloody game is.’ His wide grin threatened to split into spasm again. I gripped his upper arm and dug my fingers into the spongy flesh until I felt him tense up in the pain.
‘Cut out the bullshit, Artie. You’ve had your laugh. Okay, I’ve got it all wrong—steer me straight.’
‘Anything in it for me?’
‘If I get a result, maybe.’
‘Hardly a promise, but I’ll trust you. I’ve got bloody little coming in. Okay, Mountain knew more about it than you, but not enough. All that sleazy stuff still goes on, always has, always will. I’ve written a bit about it ….’
‘I don’t want your CV, Artie. Get on with it.’
‘There’s a whole new drug market opened up. Lots of professional people are skin popping, sniffing, smoking—all that. Some are weekend users and they stay that way. You’d be surprised at some of the jobs they hold down. Top people or on their way to the top. Young and youngish is what I’m talking about, but there’s some oldies too. They don’t just go down the usual places to score, d’you follow?’