Deal Me Out (3 page)

I stood still by the back of the house listening for sounds of humans or other animals. It was quiet. The bush with leaves like a tomato plant growing by the back door surprised me; most people as alcohol-pickled as Mountain don’t get anything out of the stuff.

I rattled the back door and let the sound soak into the silence inside. Still nothing. I ran a thin torch beam around the edges of the doors and windows looking for wires and electric cells, but Mountain had opted for a simpler security. The lock was tricky, new and dead-locked, but the picks were new and tricky too. The lock yielded after a while; the door had a sliding bolt in place but there’s a tool for that too. All in all, it was one of my quieter and smoother entries.

It’s a mistake to creep around in strange houses trying to avoid the furniture and glassware by torch light. You bump into things, it looks suspicious from the outside and you can’t really see anything useful anyway. Put on a few
lights and the telly, bung on a kettle and no-one looks or listens twice.

I did all that, and prowled through the house. The small sitting room in front had a few ornaments and pictures and a shotgun hanging over the fireplace. Otherwise the house was dominated by books, manuscripts, magazines and newspapers. They overflowed in all rooms including the bathroom and toilet. There was enough paper in the house to re-constitute a small forest. I stood at a bookcase and flicked through magazines, galley proofs and scrap-books stacked in with expensive hardback novels. I had no idea what I was looking for—just impressions—but nothing was revealed unto me.

Mountain’s workroom was a study in chaos: there was a big desk with an electric typewriter sitting on it, but paper had flowed over the machine like lava over a hill. The surface was covered by words ranging from a volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica to a tiny three line death notice clipped from a newspaper. The desk drawers were full of notepaper, lined and unlined pads, pens, filing cards, paper clips and bits of string. I remembered looking into the room some time back at the party Mountain had got up on the spot at the pub the way he liked to do. The room looked the same now as then.

In the bedroom the bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets and the clothes in the wardrobe looked disorganised but intact. There was food and wine in the fridge and half a case of Suntory whisky in a kitchen cupboard.

Following the policy of acting natural, I went into the bathroom for a piss. There were two toothbrushes and the usual accessories. Washing my hands, I found the first independent confirmation that Mountain was ‘Worthington’. In the hand basin, only partly washed away, was a scattering of beard clippings. There were more on the floor. I didn’t sweep them up and put them in an envelope but the find jogged memories of Mountain moving around in his house, pouring drinks and … hanging his car keys
on a nail in the kitchen.

I went through to the back, found the keys and put them on the table. They rattled, and a clinking sound came from the front of the house like an answer. I went cautiously down the passage towards the sitting room. There was a chair standing in front of the fireplace and the shotgun was missing from above it. I gaped at the space and started to turn towards the door. Before I completed the turn I heard the hammers click back and a voice cut in through the sound: ‘Stand right there and don’t move or I’ll shoot you.’

W
HEN
someone holding a gun says ‘Don’t move’, what they really mean is don’t pull out a bigger gun or reach for an axe. I continued my turn, but slowly. When I stopped I was facing the shotgun. It was held by a young woman who couldn’t have been much taller than the gun was long; but she held its weight steadily enough. She wore a white overall on top of a dark turtle neck skivvy; her high-heeled boots might have lifted her over five feet, just. The only other remarkable thing about her, apart from the shotgun, was that she was Chinese.

‘How did you get in?’ I said stupidly.

She shifted the gun a little and I thought I might be able to wait her out. Maybe eventually she’d have to put the gun down from sheer fatigue. But she wasn’t tired yet. She shook back some of the short, black hair that hung in a fringe over her eyebrows. She had an oval face with a broad nose and wide mouth; those features went admirably with her slanted eyes. I’d never seen a better-looking shotgun holder.

‘I came through the bloody door. What about you?’

‘Through the back window.’

Our voices and accents were alike; she couldn’t have been born any further east than Bondi. I suppose we could have been excused our tones: mine was nervous and hers was angry.

‘What for? There’s nothing much to steal here.’

‘That’d take a bit of explaining,’ I said. ‘Could you put the gun down?’

She shook her head; the fringe danced.

‘D’you know where Bill Mountain is?’ I didn’t know
what to do with my hands so I clasped them in front of me like a clergyman.

‘You know Bill?’ She sounded more concerned than angry now, and her attention slipped away from the gun a little.

‘I’ve had the odd drink with him. I’ve been here to a party once. Put the shotgun down. I’ll explain.’

Like any sane person, she was looking for an excuse to put the gun back on the wall, but she hadn’t found it yet. Her pure Sydney accent got the harsh edge to it we develop when things don’t go our own way.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Cliff Hardy.’

‘Never heard of you.’

‘Why should you? I’m a private investigator. I can show you the ID. I’m looking for Bill.’

‘Oh shit! That’s all I need!’ She moved the hand on the stock up to join the other one on the barrel; then she leaned the gun against the wall like a broom. I breathed out fully for the first time in minutes and unclasped my hands. She got a packet of cigarettes and matches out of the back pocket of her overall and lit up in a smooth, unhurried movement. She sat down on the arm of the couch and put the spent match back in the box. From that point, about three feet off the floor, she blew smoke up at me; she squinted against the smoke and her eyes disappeared altogether—very disconcerting.

‘You’re after the alimony then?’ she said.

‘I didn’t know he was married.’

‘Twice.’

‘I’m not interested in any alimony. It’s a bit hard to explain. Could I sit down?’

She waved the hand holding the cigarette and I plonked myself down in one of Mountain’s easy chairs. My legs felt stiff and old. The shotgun leaned against the wall equidistant from us, but she seemed to have lost interest in it. She drew deeply on the cigarette.

‘Hard to explain, you said. Probably bullshit.’

I tried to look like a non-bullshitter. ‘No, but it’s not exactly a public matter. Could I ask who you are?’

‘Erica Fong. I’m Bill’s girlfriend or whatever you call it. Or I was—not sure now. Let’s see this ID you mentioned.’

I took out the wallet that contains the investigator’s ticket, and leaned forward to pass it over to her. I brought the hand back, took hold of the shotgun, and moved it along the wall closer to me. She appeared not to notice. She looked at the licence, shrugged and handed it back.

‘I just might have heard him mention you. Is that likely?’

‘Depends on what you were talking about and how much he’d had to drink.’

‘What does he ever talk about? How he hates the crap he writes and ….’

‘And what?’

‘Why do you want him, Mr Hardy?’

That was the crunch. Here we were in Bill Mountain’s front room, me in my burglar gear and her in what I now realised was a ski suit and getting along so well and I had to tell her that I was after her bloke for stealing a car. Tricky. She threw her cigarette butt into the fireplace and leaned back watchfully.

‘It’s to do with a car,’ I said.

‘A car! No-one has adventures in cars anymore—not since Kerouac.’

Adventures,
I thought,
who said anything about adventures?

‘Have you read Kerouac?’ she said.

‘On the Road,
that’s all. Long time ago.’

‘I haven’t. I haven’t read anything. I just picked that up from Bill. I’ve picked up a lot of stuff like that. If you say Harold Pinter I can name a couple of plays, but I haven’t seen them.’ She reached back for her cigarettes and matches, lit the cigarette and tossed the match into the fireplace. It landed neatly beside the butt. She drew in the smoke and her tough voice started to waver.

‘Bill said he’d take me to all the plays.’ She sniffed. ‘He said I could read all the books too, but he could never find the right ones in all the mess.’ She was crying now, quietly with her cigarette burning down between her fingers and her slim shoulders shaking.

I let her cry, and occupied myself by breaking open the shotgun, removing the shells and replacing the weapon on the mantelpiece. Erica Fong got control of herself, got the cigarette back up to her mouth and took a drag. Her tear-stained face was in profile, firm-chinned and strong. She didn’t wipe her face and I got the feeling that she hadn’t cried very often.

‘I haven’t seen Bill for three days,’ she said. ‘This is the fourth. I was used to seeing him every day and most nights. I’m very worried about him.’

‘How long have you known him, Erica?’

‘’bout a year. I know he’s a drunk and everything, but he’s a lovely man really. We were going to go to China together. He was going to show me things.’ She sniffed and drew on the cigarette. ‘He’s been there before and he speaks Cantonese. Isn’t it funny? I don’t speak a word of Chinese.’

I gave her one of my semi-professional smiles; I was feeling very confused and in need of something to stimulate thought. When you burgle a place you expect creaking boards and cats, not non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese girls with shotguns.

‘Can we make a cup of tea or something, a drink? We’ve got a pretty tricky situation here.’

Socially speaking, it should have been more awkward than it was—the Occidental burglar and the Oriental girlfriend, but a strange sort of harmony grew between us in the kitchen as she made instant coffee, using the spoons and utensils with familiarity.

I fiddled with Mountain’s car keys at the table while the water was boiling. She smoked non-stop, practically lighting one cigarette from another, and the smoke hung
heavily with the steam in the still, small kitchen. One part at least of her story checked out: the milk in Mountain’s fridge was a week old and had gone off. When the coffee was ready she sat down opposite me and put three heaped spoonsful of sugar into hers and stirred vigorously. Her lean figure suggested that this was something new. She sipped and puffed.

‘Are you running on coffee and cigarettes, like in the movies?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hasn’t Mountain ever taken off somewhere for a few days before? He’s not Mr Steadfast as I recall him.’

‘No. He hasn’t.’ Puff. Sip.

‘You were going to say something else back there a bit.’ I tried to recall the conversation. ‘Something about other things on his mind apart from his crappy work.’

She looked angry again. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

‘I was just trying to get the words right.’

‘But you don’t like him?’

I shrugged and drank some more coffee. It wasn’t a good brand and they always taste worse black. ‘It’s not relevant. It’s not a personal matter.’

‘What sort of matter is it then? All I know is that it’s about a car.’

‘I can’t tell you. I’ve got a client and his business is confidential. It’s serious, the part involving Mountain I mean, but it’s not life and death.’

‘You’re going to have to tell me more than that.’

‘How can I? All I know about you is that you can handle a shotgun and you’ve made coffee here before.’

She stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer and almost upset the cup. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve! All I know about you is that you sneak around in other people’s houses.’

I grinned at her. ‘If Mountain was here d’you reckon he’d think this was good dialogue?’

She smiled, and it was as if her face had been waiting days to do it. It was a good smile. ‘He might. I don’t know.
Did you ever see him do a send-up of the stuff he writes?’

‘Yes. Hilarious. What did he call the show — Tumourville?’

‘That was one name, there were lots of others. Oh God, I might as well finish the thought I had before. He seemed to be talking a lot more about wanting to write a novel and needing some more experience to do it.’

‘I’ve heard him talk like that.’

‘Mm, well, it seemed to be getting more and more important to him. He took leave from the TV job a while back to work on the novel. I told him he’d had all the experience he needed—two wives, kids, God knows how many women.’

I murmured, ‘Fights,’ and she glanced sharply at me.

‘I suppose so. He wouldn’t listen. On and on about life and experience. First he drops out of sight and now you turn up. I was worried before, but I’m really worried now.’

‘Why? He’s a grown man.’

‘It’s this word
experience.
D’you know what kind of stories he wrote? What that novel of his was about?’

I shook my head.

‘Weird stuff. Crime. Horror.’

‘I thought it got a good review in
Meanjin?’

‘Oh, it had “art” in it as well, but it was
about
what I say.’

‘And it still didn’t sell?’

She shook her head. ‘Bill wouldn’t let me read it. He didn’t keep a copy himself.’

‘Maybe it needed more crime and horror.’

I looked down at her and wondered how old she was. Under thirty, I judged but it was hard to tell. I realised that one of the interesting things about her was that I had no idea what she was going to say next. This time she looked away from me, spoke slowly and suddenly made me wonder how old
I
was.

‘That’s not a very bright thing to say,’ she said.

After that there didn’t seem to be much point in being coy about my enquiry. I told her about the hire car racket and the photograph of Mountain signing out the Audi. She smoked, listened and drank her cold coffee. She didn’t know that Mountain had cut his beard. I showed her the clippings in the bathroom.