THURSDAY'S ORCHID (3 page)

I wasn’t coming across too well, but did I really have to justify myself to him? And yet somehow I felt it was important for me to do so. I could see that he was interested and not just
trying to make me think he was a good fellow. He sat quietly waiting for my answer, the coffee cup in one hand, rubbing the lobe of his ear with the other.

“Basically, Mr. Cooper,” I went on. “I suppose I’m moving around while I’m still young and
with no responsibilities. The thought of being tied down for the rest of my life is a bit scary.”

He glanced across
at his wife – sitting on a deck-chair down by the beach – and nodded his head once or twice, and then said: “I know what you mean, although it took me a lot longer to come to the same conclusion.” He smiled. “Still, it has its moments.”

“Mr. Cooper, I suppose what you’re trying to get me to admit is that I should s
tart thinking about getting a pile of money together and stop buggerising about.” There was a slight nod. “You’re right, of course, but, to be honest with you, I’m not sure how to start. You need money to make money and my modest pile is simply not enough.”

He shrugged his shoulders, stared off into the middle distance, and then replied: “Well, Jeff, I suppose for a twenty-one-year-old ex-rouseabout from a broken home, that’s quite a reasonable attitude.”

He must have been talking to Nancy. She was the only one who knew that much about me.

“Always kept clear of the law too, from what I hear. Either well-behaved, or cunning.”

“Cunning,” I shot back at him. “Make no mistake about that.” Which was a lie. I had never done anything really dishonest in my life.

“Yes,” he replied, and then was silent for a moment. I could see that he was coming to a decision, and it was taking an effort. Finally: “Tell me,
Jeff; are you averse to bending the rules in order to make a profit?”

What was he:
Taxation Department, or mafia?

“I presume
we’re talking about hypothetical cases, Mr. Cooper?”

“Of course, my boy.” He raised both forearms, palms forward, fingers slightly
open. “Would we be speaking any other way?”

“Well,” I replied. “In that case, no, I wouldn’t worry about bending a few rules as long as no-one got hurt. Tell me though, as a matter of interest, what do you do for a living?”

If he was really interested in me then it was time for him to open up a bit about himself.

“I’m a promoter,” he said. “I promote various deals: real estate, import-export. I’m into a lot of things.” His right hand moved to and fro. “And I have
a slot in my enterprise that’d be just right for a young chap of your temperament, your ability to keep a confidence.” Now it was becoming interesting. I put the cup to my lips. The coffee was cold, but I drank it anyway. “I’m prepared to start you off at double what you’re earning, including tips. Are you interested?”

The ability to stay in one spot for any great length of time was never one of my strong points. The tinsel of the island was losing its glitter; and Jim Munro was starting to get to me. Perhaps this was the time to make the move. At least it would get me back to civilization and I would be in a position to look for something if George and I couldn’t get along or, more to the point, if he was all hot air.

“Okay,” I said, jumping in with both feet, as green as they come. “When do we start?”

Two

When I look back on that day it’s hard to appreciate both how smart and how stupid I had been as I bandied words with George on that sun-drenched beach. Smart, because he started me on the road to the good life, the rich life. Stupid, because George Cooper was a much bigger man than I had envisaged, with connections on both sides of the law. If I had tried to blackmail him over Dotty, there’s every chance that I might have finished up using crutches for six months, and a cane for
maybe a year or two.

But
for some reason George had taken a liking to me. Perhaps I was the son he never had. I don’t know whether it was him or Peggy who had the problem, but they had never been able to have kids. Peggy was great company once you got to know her: a dry sense of humour, and a sharp tongue. But she only used that tongue when she was right and you knew damned well you were in the wrong.

Never once did I hear her argue with George. She questioned his ideas many a time, but never kept on about it. Once a point had been made, that was it. If her observations were ignored, it didn’t matter, as long as she had been given a hearing. She didn’t even come out with any
I told you so’s
when something went wrong – which wasn’t very often.

They complemented each other. George was big and boisterous, and talked incessantly. Peggy was quiet, with hardly ever a word to say. But what she did say was to the point and concise. George was personable
, in a bear-like kind of way. She was plain. My mother always said that a woman is never ugly, only plain. Well, she was that all right, but George was certainly fond of her, in his rollicking way.

There were no business premises as such. Everything was done out of an apartment on the Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane. It was one of the first blocks to be built back in the early sixties: four stories high, no elevator, close to the foreshore, with a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean. I spent many hours sitting on the balcony staring far out to sea, wondering where the great ships were going, and what their captains were thinking about. I didn’t realise then that I would one day find out – the hard way.

For the first few weeks of our association I stayed with them; but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t going to work. There was plenty of room for the three of us: three bedrooms, a study, separate dining room, lounge, etc; a large apartment by current standards. Plenty of room for three, but not for four. Peggy was broad-minded, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a girl back for the night. It just didn’t seem right. And those four flights of stairs to the top floor would dampen the ardour of most young ladies.

I could see that I would be spending a fortune on motel bills unless I found a place of my own. It wasn’t hard to fi
nd: a newer, compact unit about two hundred metres down the road. Not as flash as George’s, and no view to speak of; but I only wanted it for sleeping and entertaining, so it suited me fine.

As George had explained to me over that cup of cold coffee on the island, his business was, to all appearances, promotion. If somebody had land they were thinking of developing then George would line up the finance, bribe a couple of city councilors to issue the necessary permits and then organize enough shifty salesmen to sell whatever swamp it happened to be. The entertainment business was another side of
his operation. George would engage up a couple of has-been performers and spend a huge amount of money on advertising – haul the crowds in. Then he would collar the gate-money and pay peanuts to the entertainers. They complained but couldn’t scream. George kept the books. They never knew how much was collected, and he made sure they realised they would never get another job if he let it be known they were hard to get along with.

Those were the legitimate side
s of the business – if you could call them that. Those were the deals on which the tax was paid, what there was of it. But we had to pay something to the government. We had to show we were earning some sort of income to justify our existence. They were the front for the real money-spinners, the profitable side of things. Dealing in land and entertainers would have left us both broke in no time flat.

During the ten years or so that I worked with George – he took me in as an equal partner after six months – we travelled to nearly every part of t
he globe: bribing government officials and others in places too numerous to mention; smuggling; fencing stolen goods: diamonds and other items of high value; exporting stolen luxury cars; arranging for experts to attend to certain matters on behalf of interested parties; industrial espionage, and so on. The money that passed through our hands and into Swiss banks was mind-boggling. If there was a dollar to be made, we would be in on it.

But we always operated through a middle-man, a go-between. We were never in direct contact with the operation. If something went wrong, which was very rarely, we would be in the clear. We made certain there
was nothing in writing to link us with the actual participants. Once or twice we found ourselves very close to the law, but there was always a loophole, and we made use of it. A lack of willing witnesses was of considerable assistance, that and the absence of documentary evidence kept us far removed from the action.

Western systems of justice are built on documentary proof. If it’s not written down in plain language, with a simple meaning incapable of being twisted, then it can’t be relied upon as evidence. Perhaps that’s a simplification, but not too far off the mark.

Those ten years were full ones. I met a lot of people and saw a lot of places, not just the tourist scenes but the real side of life in many exotic latitudes. Life was good. We both had plenty of money; money that we invested wisely but quietly – mostly under assumed names, never putting all of our eggs into the one basket.

We fitted together, the three of us, George, Peggy and me. We were each different from the other and there was no competition, no jealousy. We each had what we wanted, more than enough.

Whilst George and I would be away on some deal, Peggy would be keeping the home fires burning, so to speak. She didn’t seem to mind. She must have suspected that we got up to a bit of mischief with the ladies now and then, but as long as George came home to her, she was content.

Peggy died three years ago. The cancer that had been nibbling away at her body started taking huge chunks. It was a terrible thing to watch. She just wasted away before our eyes. It must have been agony for George. I know it was agony for Peggy. The pain in her eyes was the worst of it, for she covered up the rest; but she couldn’t conceal
what had happened to those once sparkling eyes.

She lasted three months from the date the diagnosis was confirmed.

Yes, she died on a Thursday.

With the passing of Peggy I lost the only female friend I had. I had plenty of female companions; any amount to take to bed and kid around with. But Peggy had been the only one I could sit with and talk to about problems, frustrations and the like.

But I wasn’t the only one to lose her.

After she died, George wasn’t the same person. He became moody, morose. He would mope around the apartment, half-reading books, watching a bit of television now and then, and gradually withdrawing into himself. I gave up my unit and moved in with him, hoping that the company and my constant presence would bring him out of it. But he sank deeper and deeper.

And then one night he hit the bottle. He hadn’t had a drink for quite a while, trying to hold himself in; but this particular night he just let go and gave the whisky bottle a punishment it had never seen from him.

He sat huddled in his favourite chair: an old leather-covered, brass-studded
monster of a thing. Peggy had threatened to have it recovered a number of times, but been forbidden to do so on pain of death. One minute he was mumbling to himself and the next he was sobbing and crying, tears sliding down his cheeks, his whole body shuddering like a child awakening from a nightmare.

He broke down, his face somehow grown old
, and began to unburden his shame; not shame of our business and the way we had dealt with society, but shame at the way he had treated Peggy: how he had fornicated, wined and dined attractive women, travelled the world – without giving poor Peggy even a thought; about poor Peggy who had stuck by him: taking the little love and affection he saw fit to mete out; about poor Peggy: shriveling before his eyes, gurgling and gasping as the end drew near, and yet still uncomplaining. He cried with his head in his hands, his hair matted and twisted from clawing fingers.

“What good is all the damn money?” he moaned, looking up at me through red eyes. “It couldn’t do a damn thing to stop the cancer. What good is it to anybody?” He looked down at his slippered feet and then back up to me. “We’ll all be going one day, Jeff,” he said softly.

I did my best to calm him, explaining that Peggy knew what he was like, what his needs were; and that his happiness was what she had wanted most. I told him that she would have left him if she had been unhappy, but she had stayed – content with him and his boisterous ways.

I believe I convinced him of Peggy’s love, assured him that if he hadn’t been the man he was then she would have missed out on many things, things that had made the last years of her life rich and full.

For the next couple of weeks or so he seemed calmer. We went to the races in Brisbane and to the dog track once or twice, and even took in a nightclub. It was probably the nightclub that did it, for after the nightclub he became even more lethargic than before, shuffling around the apartment, hunched over like some old man. He began to close himself off in his study, the study in which we had spent so many hours planning and scheming our way to the money we now had locked away safe and sound in Switzerland, and other places. Each time I entered – on some pretext or other – he would simply raise his head from his papers, covering them with his hands, and stare at me until I left.

The windows were kept closed, the air mouldy. His once massive frame was dwind
ling, the shirts sloping away off his shoulders.

Time. It was only a matter of time and he would come right, or so I kept telling myself. But I knew it wasn’t true. He was becoming worse as each day went by.

About a couple of weeks after he had started spending those solitary days – and sometime entire nights – immersed in his papers, I went looking for a copy of a magazine I had left in the study. Gorge was asleep in his bedroom, exhausted after an unusually long confinement at his desk.

I noticed that he had been using the tape recorder. And more out of curiosity than with any in
tention of eavesdropping, I wound the tape back and switched it to
play
. George was sleeping like the dead with his bedroom door firmly closed. There was no way the noise would wake him.

Sitting down at the desk I began to flick through the magazine, wondering at the properties displayed by certain of the sensuous forms, with only half my mind on the tape. George’s voice droned on, difficult to hear and to understand; but slowly my unconscious mind began to grasp the fact that he was discussing the finer details of the last illegal transaction we had worked on. I put down the magazine, turning my whole attention to the tape. In between his mumbling and his murmuring he had set out the whole deal: the people involved; the money earned, and where it had gone.

I locked the study door; not actually locked it, as there was no key; but I propped one of the chairs under the door handle and wedged it in tight. I needed privacy. I tried the drawer to the desk. It was locked. But I knew the key would still be where it had always been kept: under the large porcelain ashtray.

I took out the papers I had seen him working on over the last few days, and the rest of the tapes. It took me nearly three hours to go through the lot. The entire collection was a petition, a confession of his evil life. He was begging for punishment for everything he had done throughout his life. It went back to the days before we met, covering every shady deal up to the time of Peggy’s death. His memory was fantastic. Maybe it was all he had left in life. It was an atonement for his attitude to Peggy and his treatment of her.

If it ever reached the authorities – the police – then we were both in trouble. Everything would be confiscated: the bank accounts, the safety deposit boxes, the properties – they were all listed on the tape. Another few days and it would be complete. He had even typed a letter ready to send the whole lot to the Attorney-General.

George needed help and it was up to me to find that help for him, for he had given me so much. He had taken me in and shown me the ways of the world, shown me how to succeed. Without George I would probably have finished up as some sort of beach-bum, without a cent to my name and no future of any kind to look forward to. Maybe it would have been better for both of us if he had left me alone.

But then I would never have met Mee Ling, never have known what life really was,

I lay awake for hours that night, trying to figure out how I could help him over this crisis. Reasoning with him was not enough. I had tried that. It had worked for a while, but he would always slip back, and it might happen when I was not on hand to talk him round again. He needed counsel
ling, professional help. But how could I get that for him and still keep our secrets. I could find no answer.