Make Me Rich (3 page)

“He might have gone wrong already.''

“I know it. I'm prepared for that. But I'm sure Ray's basically solid. There's something … what do the kids say? … bugging him. I know it doesn't take long to go off the tracks. All the more reason to step in. Will you do it?”

It didn't take much thinking about. I liked Guthrie, and the few times I'd seen Liam Catchpole up close I'd wanted to go and have a shower. Youth is worth saving. It sounded like a more worthwhile way to make money than some of the things I'd been doing lately.

“I'll try,” I said. “The money you mentioned is too much—I'll take seven fifty for a retainer, and work for a hundred and twenty-five a day, plus expenses.”

“Bonus for results,” he said.

“Fair enough.”

We shook hands and I felt self-conscious as some departing guests looked at us curiously. Guthrie's hand was hard and corrugated, dry to the touch. He stepped back; he seemed almost sprightly. “Just come here to try to cheer myself up,” he said. “Pat couldn't face it. I didn't think I'd do anything positive about Ray.”

“Don't get your hopes too high,” I said. “You can't make people be good, you can't make them be grateful, you can't make them be anything. Not really.”

“Why d'you say that? About being grateful?”

“Most parents want their kids to be grateful.”

“You got any kids, Hardy?”

I shook my head. “I'd probably want them to be grateful if I did. And they probably wouldn't be.” I grinned at him. “Too disappointing.”

“I don't want him grateful. I just want him … safe.” He handed me a card; his colour was better already—action did him good. He checked his watch. “Ring me later today. Okay? We'll get started.”

It was 2 a.m. I did a last check on the people and the silverware. Nothing seemed to be missing and when I put Mr and Mrs Olsson, who seemed to have shot for the “drunkest couple” title, in their cab I was through for the night.

Roberta was snoring gently in an armchair. One brown breast had fallen out of her dress and she had one silver shoe in her lap. I shook her gently.

“Roberta. Party's over.”

She opened one eye theatrically. “Wasn't it awful?” she groaned.

“It was fine—great success.”

“I'll send you a cheque. Thanks, Cliff.” She dropped the eyelid.

I collected my jacket and took off my tie. In the kitchen I annoyed the clearing-up caterers by making myself a chicken sandwich. I took it out to the car with me, chewing slowly and wishing I had some wine to go with it. But I gave up keeping wine in the car a long time ago. As I started the engine I remembered Helen Broadway. I hadn't seen her go and I didn't know where she lived. I could ask Roberta—but not just now.

3

I got home to Glebe around 2.30 a.m. I've given up tucking the car away in the backyard; the strain of the backing and filling is too much and the local vandals seem to have decided my car isn't worth their attention. The street is narrow, with a dogleg; my place is just past the dogleg. I let the wheels drift up on to the kerb and slotted her in—slapdab outside.

I glanced at a newspaper Hilde, my tenant, had left lying around while I got a few last dribbles from a wine cask. We had a commission of enquiry into the early release of prisoners scheme on the front page, and a commission of enquiry into the conduct of boxing on the back. Both dodgy was about all the reaction I could muster. I took the glass up to bed; there was light showing under Hilde's door; I knocked softly and pushed the door open. She was sitting up in bed, reading. A long strand of her blonde hair was in her mouth, and she was chewing it rhythmically as she read. She lifted her blue, German eyes reluctantly from the page.

“It's 2.30,” I said.

“I'm reading
Gorky Park.
”

“That explains it. Goodnight.”

I slept late. By the time I got up, Hilde had gone off to do her dental research. She tells me that fluoride in the water has cut dental decay by 84 per cent, so that the emphasis in
her trade these days is on preserving and presenting the dentition. When I asked her what that meant she said, “Capping and straightening.'' I understood that.

She'd left a pot of coffee on a low flame, and I got to work on that while I ran a routine check on Paul Guthrie through the telephone book and
The Company Index.
He lived in Northbridge, between the golf course and Fig Tree Point. It sounded like a well-preserved and presented address for a client to have. Guthrie Marinas Pty Ltd was at Balgowlah, Double Bay, and Newport. The ski lodge and dude ranch were probably called the Alpine this and the Western that. Guthrie Enterprises was listed as a private company; Paul Guthrie, principal.

I rang him at 10.30; he came across eager and energetic; he made sixty-two sound like something to look forward to.

“Tell you what,” he said. “I have to go up to Newport to look a few things over. Like to come up? Go out on a boat?”

“Is there any point?”

“Yes, Ray kept a lot of his stuff on a boat up there. I suppose you could look through it. Must be a photo of him there—you'll need that?”

‘‘Yes, I will. Anything else?”

He paused. “Yes. His girlfriend's there. Girlfriend that was. She's a nice kid. I talked to her, of course. Said she hadn't heard from Ray, didn't know anything. But it might be worth your while to talk to her.”

“Okay. I'll meet you there. I've got the address.”

He sounded nonplussed. “How's that?”

“I looked you up in the book and the commercial directory. You check out just fine, Mr Guthrie. You got my credentials, remember? And Roberta was a little past giving you a reference last night.”

He laughed. “That's smart. I'll give you some money. What time suits you?”

“Let's say at the marina at noon. Nothing's happened to change your mind about this, has it?”

“No. Why?”

“It sometimes happens that way. You act, like by hiring me, and something else happens. Never mind. Noon.”

It was hot and Friday, which meant heavy traffic on the road and a slow, sweaty drive to Newport. I was passed by cool-looking people in air-conditioned cars and I wondered, not for the first time, whether I should get a soft top. I didn't have a woman to ride in it with me—wearing a scarf and with her sunglasses pushed back on the top of her head—but maybe I could do something about that. Roberta Landy-Drake's cheque would take care of the rent and the mortgage for a month; a couple of steady weeks work for Guthrie, and maybe then I could think about a soft top. I thought about it anyway as I drove sedately north, past the hamburger bars and surf shops, and eventually past the pub in Newport where we used to come in the bad old days with our genuine thirsts and phoney addresses, and pass ourselves off as
bona
fide
travelers.

The approach to the marina was through a bumpy car park beside a pub that hadn't existed back in the sabbatarian days. I parked in a small patch of shade that would get smaller as the day wore on. The marina was an arrangement of boat sheds, office, workshops, and jetties all connected on different levels by steps and walkways. I walked down toward it, jiggling my keys and thinking ambivalent thoughts about boats.

Guthrie was waiting for me on a wooden walkway that led to the moorings. He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and canvas shoes. I was relieved to see that he didn't affect the cap and scarf of the pseudo sailor, but I hadn't expected he
would. We shook hands and I realised that the hard ridges I'd felt the night before were from boat work. He might have sounded full of beans on the phone but he looked a little tired now, not at the peak of his form, and he was hiding his eyes behind sunglasses.

“Going out to check some of the moorings,” he said. “Routine work in this game.”

“Don't you employ people to do that?”

“Sure, but I like to keep my hand in. Along here, and watch your step.”

The planks and rails seemed to be in good condition—no splinters, no flaking paint. There must have been more than a hundred boats tied up there—big, swank things like over-blown birds and neat, smaller craft with more interesting lines. The water was a deep green around the pylons and the boats were mostly white with blocks of red, blue and brown. The bright sun flashed on brass name plates—
Pocahontas, Bundeena, Shangri-la.

Guthrie stepped over piles of rope and mooring lines like a mountain goat on a familiar path; I followed him carefully to where a handsome motor yacht was moored between high, rope-wrapped pylons.
Satisfaction
was painted in bold, white letters across the stern and at the bow on the side I could see. A flag was flying from a high mast and a couple of seagulls hopped along a polished rail on the side. As boats go, this was a beauty. Guthrie jumped down onto the deck from the jetty untroubled by the distance or the motion of the boat. I edged down the metal ladder a few steps, waited for the rise and stepped aboard carefully.

“Not used to boats?”

“Been a while.''

“This is the one Ray used to knock about in mostly. Not in bad nick, is she?''

I nodded. Everything looked well cared-for without being
fussy. Truth was, I was accustoming myself to the motion but, to show willingness, I went under the awning that covered the rear section of the deck and looked around. I noted the life jackets safely stowed. Guthrie noted me noting and grinned.

“Don't know why, but I feel a bit better about things when I'm on the boat. Hard to believe he could go bad, the old Ray. Help me to cast off, will you? Then you can go below and poke around—look at anything you like.”

We unlooped the ropes; Guthrie started and warmed the engines and then took the boat smoothly out into the channel. Although I grew up by the water, at Bronte and Maroubra, I wouldn't say I had boating in the blood. The inner tubes from car tyres were the first craft I remembered, and I didn't rate the inflatable rafts and boats we'd trained in as soldiers much higher. I spent a very tricky night and a day in one of those things up a river in Malaya, and being afloat wasn't my favourite sensation. But at least I wasn't a lunch-loser.

After doing some suitable appreciation of the scenery, I ducked my head and went into the saloon section and from there down a short set of steps to the cabin. The circumscribed space held a two-tiered bunk, built-in shelves, and a cupboard. There were two portholes and between them a shaving mirror, a wineskin, a belt with a knife in a scabbard, and a heavy oilskin were hanging on hooks. The books on the shelves were mostly paperback thrillers but there were also a few navigation manuals and an anthology of sea poems. There was a plastic coat, a work shirt, a sweater, and a pair of very greasy and stained overalls in the cupboard. The bed was neatly made on the bottom bunk; the top bunk was covered with a single blanket.

Ray's personal belongings were in a tin chest under the bunk. I pulled it out and teased open the cheap padlock with
a pocket-knife blade. I turned the bits and pieces over thinking how alike we all are—how we all keep the same things, the bits of paper and objects that mark the staging posts of our lives. Ray had stored away a couple of not discreditable school reports, a learner-driver permit, a swimming proficiency certificate, a half-empty box of long rifle .22 bullets and some photographs.

I stood up from my crouch with creaking muscles, and spread the snapshots out at eye level on the tight blanket on the top bunk. There were five: one showed a big-looking, blond kid at the wheel of the
Satisfaction;
another was of the same boy with a younger and slightly smaller and darker version of himself, sitting in the yacht's dinghy; there was one of a small, handsome woman in early middle age standing with her hands on her hips and looking amused at the camera; and a fourth snap showed a teenage girl with long legs and short shorts sitting on a low stone wall. She was smiling at the camera and displaying good teeth, shining mid-length hair and an optimistic glow. If Paul Guthrie had given me intimations of hope about getting old, she was a reminder of the joys of being young. She was the sort of girl song-writers used to write songs about before they discovered Freud and drugs.

The fifth photograph was the maverick in the bunch; it was old, not so old as to be sepia-tinted, but it looked as if it had just escaped that photographic era. It was also cracked and creased as if it had once had a less loving home. The picture showed a man in army uniform caught in the act of lighting a cigarette. He was bare-headed, short-back-and-sided and his face was half-hidden in his cupped hands. A sergeant's chevrons were on his jacket sleeve; an expert might have been able to tell from the other insignia which unit he belonged to—I couldn't. The interior shown in the photograph looked like a pub; there was a window with
reversed lettering on it behind the military figure. It was impossible to tell anything about the man except in the most general terms—not old, not ugly, not fat.

I took the pictures up on deck to where Guthrie was standing with his legs slightly spread and his hands lightly on the wheel. He breathed a sigh when I spread the photographs in front of him on a flat surface in front of the wheel.

“You sound relieved,” I said.

“I am. I was dreading you coming up with something like drugs or …”

“Nothing like that. Can you give these your attention for a minute?”

He glanced at his course, decided all was well and looked down. He came barely up to my shoulder, but his easy command of the boat seemed to give him extra stature. “No problem,” he said. “What have you got there?” He stabbed one picture. “That's Ray.”

“Thought so. His brother and your wife?"

He nodded.

“This the girlfriend?”

Another nod.

I nudged the old picture. “What about this?”