Lugarno (10 page)

So Jason goes to Price, which must've taken some nerve, and spills the beans on Danni. All very nasty and with Price not really knowing what was going on. It hung together okay and gave me a handle on things, but it didn't tell me where Danni got her drugs from unless, just possibly, Dr Feelgood was in the picture.

I parked as close as I could to St Peter's Lane where I have my office and waited until the rain eased a bit. I had a Drizabone in the back and I pulled it on and splashed off to buy a pizza slice and a takeaway coffee to fuel me. The rain got worse, pelting down so hard it was bouncing up off the footpath making staying even half dry
impossible. I stepped gingerly over flowing gutters, ducked away from spewing downpipes and made the back entrance nearly as wet as when I rode the big, choppy, curling ones at Maroubra back in my surfing days.

It was mid-afternoon and I was hungry. Breakfast and the light beer with Tom Bolitho were a distant memory. I'd wolfed down the pizza slice and drunk the coffee and wished I could have seconds, but with the rain coming down like that I wasn't going out again. There were a couple of faxes and bills and phone messages to deal with and I did them in a routine way with the tangled Price matter still occupying most of my brain space. I opened a folder, put the contract inside, scribbled some notes and dropped Dr Cross's card in with the lot. I made my usual diagram with names in the corners of an octagon, leaving spaces for more names as they came up, and dotted lines and arrows indicating connections. I had five names so far, six if I included Detective Constable Stankowski—two to go. I figured I might need a bigger diagram and wondered what a ten-sided figure was called.

I was still wondering and still hungry and thirsty when the phone rang. I screen the calls when I'm thinking and I let the machine pick it up.

‘Cliff, Tess. You there?'

I realised that I hadn't given Ramsay a thought for some time and felt guilty. In cowardly fashion, I let Tess leave a message that only amounted to a wish to know how I was going. I put out my
hand to pick up the phone but she cut the call and I let it drop.
Come on, Hardy,
I thought.
You can handle two cases at once. You've done it before.
That was true, but as a rough rule, when I did that, one case turned out badly.

I could have called Tess back and told her about the Strathfield situation but I didn't and I wasn't sure why. Maybe I felt I needed something more solid to relay to her, like a meeting with Ramsay. Or maybe I was shying away from that out of my dislike of the man. Tess would be better off disconnected from him. Why not just let him go on doing whatever he was doing? At least he wasn't at her for money and was apparently healthy. But the truth was I was more interested now in the Price case and not just because it was an earner. It had subtleties to it I was sure I hadn't yet discerned and that was intriguing.

Although it was still early in the year, the heavy cloud dimmed the light and the late afternoon felt later. Bad weather depresses me, makes me feel heavy and slow, and I slumped at the desk until I got a twinge from my bruised stomach. That was another attraction of the Price matter, the possibility of catching up with Baldy again and being better prepared. It got to be five o'clock which is near enough to six, and I poured myself a modest slug of bargain special Scotch and made plans: for now, a visit to the sauna and spa in Leichhardt to help me get through my routine at the gym the next morning where I hoped Peter Lo would have something helpful for me. Ramsay would have to wait; but then a more forceful visit to the face-lifted
lady of Henry Street, Strathfield, would be the next port of call.

I drove through the heavy rain to the sports centre in Leichhardt, paid my money, stripped and hopped into the spa. The water temperature was about right and I played the jets on my stomach and wallowed around like King Farouk. I could feel the warmth and the water relaxing me. Apart from a couple who pretty much clung mutely together in a corner of the spa I had the place to myself. Some rolls of fat in the middle, love handles not too bad, reasonable muscle tone elsewhere. I tried not to look at the grizzled grey hair on my chest. I felt I had a viable work plan mapped out and I tried to concentrate on soothing my body and leaving all things to do with Prices and Hewitt out in the rain.

It pretty much worked and I was well and truly relaxed when I stepped into the sauna and slopped some water on the heat. I put a towel down on the top bench and stretched out on my back to let the steam do its work. I've heard of people fucking in saunas but it doesn't take me that way, rather the reverse. The sweat was pooling in my grey-haired navel and running off me and I'd pulled the towel out from under and was mopping my face when two men entered the room. I didn't bother to look at them and couldn't have seen much through the steam anyway. I was about to roll over when one of the men spoke.

‘Mr Hardy, my name is Lewis. I represent the Lord George Social Introduction Agency.'

I struggled to recover something from my soporific surrender to the heat. ‘You left out the word escort,' I said. ‘Not that I give a fuck who you are or what you do.'

‘It would be very unwise of you to take that line.'

I fanned away some steam and saw that the other man was Baldy. I pushed myself upright but I was sluggish from the spa and the steam and he was quick. He pinned me with an arm like a railway sleeper. He held me down without effort—he had the weight and the strength and the leverage. I lay back and blinked to try to clear my eyes and get a better look at them. Lewis was a thin, stringy type with sparse mousy hair that looked even more undernourished in the steam room. The other guy didn't have to worry about hair on the head or any other part of his body. He was hairless all over. An alopecia sufferer. He was also packing much more muscle than fat on his big frame. He lifted his arm and stood so that he could hit me with either hand on pretty much any part of my body.

‘Represent,' I said. ‘What does that mean?'

‘In my case, legal matters,' Lewis said as he took up a squatting position a level below me. ‘In Mr Stivens here's case, security. Now you appear to be mounting some kind of surveillance on an important client of ours and we're interested to know why.'

‘How d'you see it that way?'

Lewis wiped his face with the corner of his towel and looked about ready to faint. ‘Too hot for you?' I said.

Lewis's head barely moved but it was enough of a signal for Stivens. That RSJ of an arm came down hard across my chest so that I could feel the ribs separate and bend. I let out a gasp of pain.

‘To answer your question. You were seen by Mr Stivens in Kogarah and your activities at the Price home in Lugarno were reported to us. Mr Stivens and I followed you here from your office in order to have this little meeting.'

He'd told me more than he realised but I wasn't feeling on top of things as a result. ‘You should talk to the police,
Mr
Lewis. They're anxious to know what you already know. You could be very helpful to them.'

Lewis coughed. ‘You're being very foolish. What is your concern with Mrs Price?'

‘I'm in love with her,' I said. ‘She's got beautiful tits.'

Lewis gave his minimal signal again but this time I was ready. My towel was sodden with sweat and steam and I came up off the bench with it in my hand and whipped it into Stivens' eyes. It hit hard and he yelled and doubled up, clawing at his face. I slid off the bench and brought my knee up under his chin. Something gave, not enough. He roared and came at me but, half-blinded, he was easy meat. I head-butted him solidly on his wide, fleshy nose and he sagged again. You don't get many chances like that. As he was off balance and shaky I delivered a powerhouse right to his ear. It's the sort of punch that protects your knuckle and causes a lot of pain. Stivens went down heavily, bleeding from the nose and his
mashed ear. He wasn't unconscious but all the fight had gone out of him. I kicked him lightly in the ribs. ‘You stay right there, Mr Stivens. If I see you again you can say goodbye to your teeth.'

I recovered my towel, wrapped it around me and gestured to Lewis, who hadn't moved a muscle. ‘You come with me unless you'd like some of the same.'

Mustering what dignity a pale, skinny, potbellied, balding man can with only a towel for covering, he went through the open door to the pool area. The lovebirds were still at it. I shepherded him through to the changing room and pushed him down onto a seat.

‘Touch me and I'll charge you with assault.'

‘No you won't. Your kind doesn't do business in courts, you like to use muscle.'

‘I think I made a mistake.'

‘You did and he did and he got hurt. He was over-confident. But you're not.'

‘No, not at all.'

‘I didn't think so. You know, Lewis, I'm not really interested in your operation, not at this stage at least, but I do have an interest in Mrs Price and you don't need to know why. How did she get involved with your escort agency?'

He folded his arms across his skinny chest. ‘I've nothing to say to you.'

‘No?' Like me, he had the key to his locker pinned to his towel. I yanked it free, checked the number and opened the locker. Lewis made a move as if to get to the door but I stopped him with a look. I opened the locker and there was
a smart suit, shirt and tie, shoes and socks all hanging nicely. I reached inside the breast pocket of the jacket and took out a thick wallet and a small notebook.

A note of panic entered his voice. ‘What're you doing? Leave that alone. Take the money, but …'

‘I don't want your money. I don't even want your dirty little secrets. I want the answer to the question I asked you.'

He thought about it and while he did I started pulling cards and bits of paper out of the wallet and dropping them on the floor. One of the cards had a familiar look and feel and I glanced at it before dropping it—Dr Ephraim Cross. Lewis still didn't speak so I tore a page from the notebook, crumpled it and flicked it towards him. ‘The next one I tear out I'm going to make you eat for ruining my sauna.'

‘Okay, okay. Mrs Price came to us through one of our personnel.'

‘Name?'

He sucked in a deep, wheezy breath and looked at the door as if hoping Stivens would burst in and save him. He knew it wasn't going to happen though, and he reached out a shaky hand for the notebook. ‘Jason Jorgensen,' he said.

‘Pick up your stuff!'

Lewis started to gather up his things as I opened my locker and got dressed. I took my time about it and that increased his distress as I'd intended. Everything had gone wrong for him and he wasn't used to it.

When I was ready I pointed a finger at him. ‘You knew where to find me, but I know where to find you. I don't think either of us wants to meet up again, do you?'

Lewis shook his head and I took a wire coat-hanger from my locker and twisted it into something nasty in case Stivens was outside the door. He wasn't and I was surprised. I thought he'd have a bit more go in him, but you can never tell. The spa room was empty and I opened the door to the sauna. Stivens was sitting on the top bench. He'd mopped up the blood and was getting the benefit of the steam.

‘It's okay,' I said. ‘Mr Lewis and I talked things over. You can leave now.'

‘Fuck you.'

No marks for originality. I let the door swing
back and walked out, thinking that the tough guys didn't seem to be as tough anymore. In the old days men like Rhino Jackson and ‘Haitch' Henderson went all the way and it'd take a bullet or a lead pipe to stop them. The modern heavies seemed to know when to call a halt. Maybe there's a TAFE course on it.

The rain had stopped but it was dark now and I exercised some caution in the parking lot. It's always possible that the muscle you meet and deal with isn't the only muscle around. But all was quiet. At a guess the gunmetal Saab parked a few spaces from my car was Lewis's and I was tempted to do some work with my Swiss Army Knife on the tyres. But there was no way to be sure. From habit I made a mental note of the number. I put the twisted coat-hanger on the bonnet; if I was wrong about the car, no harm done, if I was right—message delivered. I was well ahead of Lewis and Stivens on points anyway, and it was definitely time for a drink.

I had one small glass of red with a plate of spaghetti in Leichhardt. Over the meal I pondered why the beautiful Sammy had needed to employ professional escorts and whether she'd had her first encounter with Jason in that capacity or as a poacher of Danni's boyfriend. Maybe she just had a taste for commercial sex. Emotion-free, producing fewer lines and wrinkles. Maybe the escorts were good drug contacts. I bought a bottle of champagne for three times the price I was used to paying in case I needed an entry prop and then
headed for Strathfield. The rain stopped and started and a blustery wind added to the discomfort and danger of driving. It was a night for any sensible person to stay at home, but I was hoping that the woman in the high-security house in Henry Street hadn't called off her Wednesday night parties.

No worries. When I drew up outside the house the lights, the music and hum of voices and the fact that there was nowhere close by to park told me that there was a party going on. I parked on the other side of the street fifty metres away and watched while a taxi dropped a passenger. She was neither young nor old, fat or thin and she was dressed to the nines in a stylish frock and an elegant jacket that shimmered under the streetlight. I watched her go up the path and step inside. Open house, and not BYO.

Although I was never a Boy Scout I try to be prepared. I keep a tie, a jacket and an electric shaver in the boot of the car in case I have to tog up. I put the jacket on and tied the tie, taking three goes to do it as it's something I don't do that often. I customarily shave with a blade on account of my heavy beard, but I ploughed away with the shaver and got the stubble down to a sandpapery smoothness. A red Porsche sports car pulled up a bit ahead of me and a woman got out and activated the automatic locking. She was tall and slim to the point of gauntness and had silver hair flowing to her shoulders. Black velvet pants suit, high heels, white silk scarf. She crossed the road and headed for the house and I followed her, just
far enough back not to be annoying but close enough to surf in on her stylish wake.