Cherry Pie (28 page)

‘Stand up,’ he ordered.

As I hauled myself to my feet I glanced at the dressing table and spotted the only items I could conceivably use as weapons, but Perry’s reflexes were a lot faster than mine and if I lunged he’d stop me before I got hold of them. There was only one thing I could do. No guarantee it’d work, but I had to try.

‘Now turn around,’ he said.

I started to obey, but at the last second spun back around and launched myself at him, scratching, punching and kicking with all my might. As expected, he retaliated straight away, a sharp jab to the jaw that snapped my head back and clicked my teeth together, then a roundhouse kick in the ribs that sucked the air from my lungs and sent me flying. I crashed against the dressing table, slid along and flopped to the floor, sweeping all Rochelle’s makeup and hair products with me.

Groaning and gasping for air I curled into a ball, assorted objects digging painfully into my bare torso.

‘Get up,’ Perry barked.

I just moaned.

He nudged me with his trainer. ‘Get the fuck up. That was nothing. I hardly touched you, you stupid bitch.’

I didn’t move, just continued to whimper until he was forced to lean over and grab my arm to try and pull me to my feet. As he rolled me around to face him I held out the canister of hairspray I’d been gripping beneath me and squirted it right in his eyes. He bellowed and staggered back and I dropped the spray, seized the metal makeup box by its handle and swung it into his temple. He fell backwards onto his butt and I jumped up and leapt over him, heading for the office door, but he grabbed my ankle and I tumbled to the carpet. I kicked back as hard as I could and struggled free. Knowing he wouldn’t be down for long I sprinted through the office, out the door and headed down the hallway for the stairs.

I was on the landing, hands on the banisters, about to propel myself down, when I saw Rochelle on her way up. She looked at me, screeched something unintelligible and I turned and bolted back into the office. Perry was staggering out of the walk-in, swearing and holding his fists against his eyes, and I ran straight out the French doors onto the balcony, looking around wildly. I briefly considered jumping into the pool, but it was so far away I would have splattered on the terracotta tiles before I got there.

A couple of metres beyond the balcony, on the master bedroom side, a palm sprouted, tall as the house. No time to think, I ran toward it, clambered over the railing and launched myself at it, holding out my arms and squeezing my eyes shut.

I slammed into the tree face first and slid jerkily down, pants tearing and belly scraping painfully against the rough bark, until I fell in a heap at the bottom. I wobbled into a standing position, didn’t stop to look around and took off down the side of the house, ran up the stone steps and tried the gate.

Locked.

The sandstone wall was at least eight feet high but I was powering on adrenaline. I took a few steps back, ran and jumped, scrabbling up, fingers searching the crevices, nails breaking, boots scuffing the rough stone. As I rolled over the top I saw Rochelle and Perry run from the house. I wouldn’t make it. They’d get me in the lane. I dropped, overbalanced, hit my knee on the uneven footpath and got up. I wanted to scream for help but my lungs were straining so badly I could hardly breathe, and all I managed was a strangled cry.

Looking up the lane I saw a white Tarago twenty metres away, parked half on the footpath, engine idling, rear doors open. One of the guys from the jazz band was loading equipment into the back. I heard Rochelle’s heels clicking on the stone steps, knew it was only a matter of moments before they burst through the gate, so I dashed toward the van, pushed past the muso, jumped in and lay flat on my back behind a PA.

‘What the—?’ The guy scratched his white beard, astonished that a wild haired, half-dressed chick had just leapt into the wagon.

‘Would you believe I’m a groupie?’

The guy in the rear passenger seat, also sporting a beard but no moustache, put his arm on the back of the seat and turned around. ‘We’re a middle aged jazz band, we don’t have groupies.’

‘Okay, I’m a PI and someone’s trying to kill me. Drive!’

They looked even more dubious.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ I rasped, tears sprouting into my eyes. ‘Look at me. Just get me out of here, please.’ The musos exchanged a glance and I heard the gate open down the street and Rochelle’s heels click on the asphalt. I hunkered down and closed my eyes reasoning, like an ostrich, that if I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. Rochelle’s voice was calm and bright.

‘Hi. Just wanted to thank you again for the show. It was fabulous. Uh, you didn’t happen to see anyone come past here, did you?’

The old guy scratched his beard again. ‘No, but fuck me if I didn’t just see some chick with only a bra on run down to the opposite end of the street.’ And he slammed the door and got in the van.

The jazz band wanted to drop me at the Balmain police station but I told them I was meeting a cop in Newtown and they were happy to drive the few extra k’s. It wasn’t every day a half-naked PI jumped into the back of their van and they were so excited they started flapping around like a bunch of chooks.

White-hair dude lent me his dress shirt and beard-with-no-moustache gave me a bottle of spring water. The driver wanted to know what had happened. Middle aged was pushing it. He had liver spots on his tufty scalp and was seventy if he was a day.

‘Client confidentiality.’ I gulped water and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘Can’t tell you.’

‘Or you’ll have to kill us, eh?’

They all laughed and I smiled politely, like I hadn’t heard that one before.

We spent the rest of the twenty minute drive listening to Louis Armstrong and I answered general questions about PI work and delighted them with graphic descriptions of peeing into funnels on stakeout. Chatting with the guys helped me calm down but I still shuddered every time I thought about those restraints. The little plastic strips were somehow more threatening than handcuffs and rope combined.

They pulled up on King Street, outside the Coopers Arms, and even from inside the van I could hear a whining guitar and feel the muffled thump of drums reverberate in my chest cavity.

I got out and asked the guy how I could return his shirt and he waved me away. ‘Keep it. I’ll be dining out on this for years.’

I slid the van door until it slammed, waved them off and looked around. The late afternoon sky boiled with puffy grey clouds but there was no rain, only an expectant wind swirling exhaust fumes and food smells. How long since I’d been in Newtown? Four, five years? I’d expected huge changes but King Street was pretty much the same, dirty, narrow and crammed with buses, cars and taxis, all with tail lights flaring crimson in the dusk. Ancient terrace buildings leaned into each other, their ground floors housing Thai restaurants, cafés, bookshops and record stores. Some fancy looking bistros and expensive clothing emporiums had sprung up in a nod to rising real estate prices, but Clem’s Fried Chicken still stood on the corner across from the 7-Eleven, crisp mountains of golden wings and drumsticks warming in the display case, filling the air with a moist, salty scent. Good to see the place was still ministering to the desperately hungover, and sending the National Heart Foundation a cheerful ‘fuck you’.

I stepped into the pub and was hit by a wall of jangly surf-rock and the yeasty tang of beer. The Coopers Arms had once been the Shakespeare, an early opener full of vinyl-jacketed drug dealers and shuddery old men, and when they’d changed the name they’d done it up, but not much. The walls and wooden tables were uniformly brown, orange pillars held up the ceiling and a flat screen TV fixed high on the wall opposite the entrance broadcast rugby league. The only decoration was a mural of King Street painted on the wall behind the stage, if that’s what you called the raised triangle in the corner where a punk chick was thrashing around in front of a drummer and a couple of squished guitar players.

Daisy wore fishnet tights, tartan hot pants and knee high leather boots. Her long black hair was streaked purple, blonde and blue and her net top showed off the bright red bra underneath. She bent over the mike growling a Cramps song,

‘Dames, Booze, Chains and Boots’, a grungy little refrain that made me want to stomp my feet and bang my head.

I scanned the rest of the crowded room. Locals, students, backpackers and dishevelled dudes I took to be old Sydney rock dinosaurs. Alex sat at the bar, drinking some sort of imported beer and thankfully not wearing his entire cop suit.

He’d teamed the black pants with a chocolate top, the sleeves pushed up, but his slicked back hair and shiny shoes still looked too neat for Newtown. Being a suave, piano bar kinda guy the music and grungy surrounds must have pained him, but he seemed to be taking a certain amount of solace in Daisy’s skimpy outfit, and the way she was grinding her pelvis against the mike stand. He didn’t notice me until I was standing right next to him.

‘Hey.’

He pulled his head back, checking out my unfortunate new look.

‘Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour.’

‘I lost my phone, and my bag.’ I had to shout over the music.

‘What happened to your hair?’ he asked. ‘And why are you wearing that ridiculous shirt?’

‘Long story, let’s—’ I was just about to suggest we went out back where it was quieter when Daisy finished the song and announced the band was taking a short break. I wasn’t sure she’d have any useful information but I had to cover my bases.

‘Back in a sec.’

I pushed through the crowd and caught up to her at the other end of the bar just as the barman handed her an icy can of VB.

I tapped one sweaty shoulder. ‘Daisy? Sorry I’m late. Simone.’

She swung around in the exaggerated fashion of someone who’d been drinking and doing god knows what other substances for an entire weekend.

‘Hey!’ She held me to her bosom like we were long lost sisters. ‘I didn’t think you were gonna show. Whatcha think of the band?’

Really out-of-it people made me feel as prim and sober as a school marm, but I knew that wouldn’t score me any points so I summoned up the enthusiasm of a video DJ.

‘You guys were going off!’ I shouted over the crowd.

‘Wooo!’ Daisy yelled. She punched one arm into the air and staggered backwards, jostling a guy and spilling some of his beer. He glared at her but she just smiled, a huge grin that engulfed her face. ‘I love this chick!’ She hugged me again.

She was a little taller than me and when my face pressed into her damp chest I smelled beer and cigarettes and some musky essential oil. I pulled away.

‘Got time to talk about Andi?’ I tried to catch her rather glazed eyes. She was looking over my shoulder.

‘Who’s that hot guy you were talking to?’ She licked her lip stud. ‘Boyfriend?’

‘No, police officer.’

Cops and punks were natural enemies, in the wild. I’d hoped to turn her off.

‘Handcuffs!’ She put both wrists out in front of her and thrust her groin a couple of times.

‘Not on him.’

She leaned towards me, conspiratorially. ‘Big dick?’

‘I really couldn’t say.’

‘Introduce me!’

‘He’s engaged.’

‘And?’

‘He’s really straight.’

‘Ha! So is spaghetti, until it’s cooked.’ She pushed through the crowd and marched over to him as I trotted along behind, thinking that this had been one more in a long line of really crap ideas.

‘Hello, orrificer.’ She saluted, swaying slightly. ‘Cunt-stable Daisy.’

He looked from her to me, slightly puzzled, until his innate suaveness kicked in. ‘Alex. Would you like a seat?’ He moved to get up, but before he could vacate the stool she’d slipped sideways onto his lap and sat there, swinging her legs, one arm slung around his neck. I raised my eyebrows. He looked bemused.

‘You looking for Andi too?’ She put her face so close to his he was forced to pull his head back. She seemed to have completely forgotten about me.

‘Yes he is,’ I said quickly. ‘We’d really like to know what—’

‘Man, I thought she would have showed up by now. I love that girl. You know? She’s my best friend.’ She poked Alex’s chest to emphasise each word. ‘Just hope she hasn’t done anything stupid, like last time.’

‘Last time?’ I asked. She didn’t hear, too busy gazing at Alex and running one black painted fingernail along his jaw.

I gave him a look that said ‘go along with it’. He nodded.

‘What happened last time?’ he asked.

She smiled, sighed and leaned back so far he had to grab the bar with one hand and catch her around the shoulders with the other so they wouldn’t both topple off the stool.

‘Tried to top herself. Year Twelve. Took three packs of Panadol and hid in our shed.’

Joy had told me Andi had run away once before. I hadn’t known she’d ended up at Daisy’s.

‘Doesn’t sound hardcore but that shit’s toxic. My parents took her to hospital, stomach pumped.’

‘Joy didn’t—’

‘Her mother didn’t know. Andi, like, fucking begged my folks not to tell her. Said she wouldn’t do it again.’

‘Why did she …?’

‘That’s the stupid part. It was over this cocksucker at school who fucked her, dumped her, broke her heart.’

‘She doesn’t seem the type.’

‘Tell me about it. She’s got her shit together in every way except that. Going for the wrong fuckin’ guys.’

‘Macho arseholes?’ I asked, thinking of Trip. ‘Good in bed but fuckwits in every other respect?’ I’d had more than a few myself.

‘Nah. That’s my type.’ She laughed. ‘Rugged, manly, fucks like a jackhammer.’

She pulled on the neck of Alex’s top, glanced down at his abundant chest hair and smiled lewdly. It took great effort not to cross my arms and roll my eyes. She was all over him, sexual harassment basically. If the genders had been reversed she’d have been in the local lock-up by now.

‘Andi always went for pretty boys, more into themselves than her. Cute faces, smooth chests, probably no fuckin’ balls.