Cherry Pie (26 page)

Sam excused himself from the group he was talking to and walked over. He’d rolled up his sleeves against the heat and unbuttoned the top of his shirt and I noticed the ropy scar and a small crucifix nestling in his chest hair, dangling from a chain.

I hadn’t picked him for a god-botherer, especially after his comment about blowjobs and wilted spinach, but with a surname like Doyle and a cross around his neck—Irish Catholic for sure.

‘I think I do know your mother,’ he said. ‘Come to the boathouse and talk?’

‘Sure.’

We dodged a couple of Grecian urns, rounded the swimming pool and crossed the manicured lawn. Sam looked me up and down.

‘When you and Rochelle came down the stairs it was like some mad scientist was cloning a master race of big haired ex strippers.’

‘Tell me about it.’ I patted my ‘do’. ‘I get back on the Ducati there’ll be no need for a helmet.’

We reached the bright, white boathouse via a worn set of steps, sandstone like the house. The abundance of yellow rock gave Sydney a sunny, colonial air and made Melbourne’s buildings seem dark and brooding by comparison. Of course, dark and brooding had grown on me in the past few years.

Water sloshed around the wooden piles, the jetty creaked and a strong salt and barnacle smell rose from the harbour. Sam held the side door open and I saw the sparse, rectangular space had been converted into a very basic studio apartment. The bare floorboards were unpolished, a small bathroom with a sliding door slotted into one corner and in the middle of the room a kitchen of sorts hugged the wall. Sink, bar fridge and a bench with one of those two-plate gas burners you get from camping stores. There was no TV, but a stereo unit sat on a wooden packing crate opposite the kitchen. A row of mostly black shirts and pants hung from a pine clothes rack, next to a neatly made futon on the floor. At the end of the room, where double doors opened out onto the water, two red vinyl armchairs were angled to take in the view. I thought back to the master bedroom. There had been no sign of Sam, none of his clothes hanging in the closet, no blokey stuff that I could see.

‘You live out here.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Yeah.’

He didn’t elaborate and I thought it best not to pry into the state of his marriage before he’d spilled the beans on my mum.

‘No boat?’ I asked.

‘Sold it.’

‘Nice boat?’

‘Yacht. Want a drink?’

I nodded. I didn’t want to get pissed but I had a feeling the unholy glob of rice was soaking up all the booze.

‘I hope you like tequila, ’cause it’s all I got.’

‘It’s okay,’ I shrugged. ‘Bad hangovers though. I remember this one night drinking El Toro with a bunch of backpackers and—’

Sam shuddered and I thought he might spit on the floor.

‘Calling that shit tequila’s like comparing Passion Pop with Krug.’ He pointed to a row of bottles on the shelf above the sink. They were squat and rounded and looked like something you’d dredge up from a sunken pirate galleon. ‘Blanco, Reposado or Añejo?’

I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘You choose.’

He pulled down a bottle and a couple of shot glasses and told me to put some music on the stereo. I walked over to a black box with a record player on top that would have been state-of-the-art fifteen years earlier, crouched down to switch on the power then stood up to check out the records and CDs crammed on the shelf above. Lots of country, a bit of soul, some sixties and seventies, Mozart requiems. Nothing from the eighties onward but I could hardly imagine Doyle bopping around to ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ or donning a flannie and playing air guitar to Nirvana. A bunch of dog-eared novels by the likes of Hemingway and Faulkner were lined up on the shelf, and I’d already spotted a bible with a faded leather cover on the floor by the bed.

The man was freaking me out. I much preferred your classic bad guys with evil laughs, fast cars and noses full of cocaine. Crooks like the murderous lawyer I’d tangled with a few months before. My relationship with him had been quite simple: he’d wanted to kill me and I’d refused to die. Not so great at the time, but at least I’d known where I stood. Not anymore. Doyle was being friendly, as though he wanted me to like him. Was he really a nice guy, despite what everyone said, or a criminal mastermind and me the biggest dupe of all time?

I considered putting on a Gram Parsons record but having grown up in an era of tapes and compact disks I was scared I’d scratch it, so I picked out a Johnny Cash CD,
Unchained
, and stuck it in the player instead. Sam took the shot glasses over to the armchairs and clinked them down on a scratched little side table in between. The first song on the disk was ‘Rowboat’, appropriate considering the location, and Sam smiled.

‘Why’d you pick this?’

‘Are you kidding? I’ve loved Johnny Cash since I was a kid, which is totally fucking bizarre.’

‘How come?’

‘ ’Cause I grew up listening to a bunch of hippy shit …bongos, whales mating, protest songs. If I never hear another pan pipe in my life it’ll still be too soon. I remember hearing “Ring of Fire” when I was little but I’m not sure where. My mum hates country. Reckons it’s redneck music and refuses to let me play it in her house.’ I lifted my glass to slam it down and Sam held out his hand to stop me.

‘You don’t shoot it. This is Gran Reposado, one hundred percent blue agave, aged for two years. It’s meant to be savoured.’

‘Oh.’ I took a tentative sip and a mellow, smoky liquid seeped across my tongue. I hadn’t known tequila could be so smooth and I wished I’d never found out. I didn’t exactly need a new drink to become obsessed with. ‘Wow. That’s amazing.’

He nodded.

As my brown-nosing had gone down so well with Rochelle I decided it wouldn’t hurt to try it on Sam. ‘You know, you’ve got a bit of a Johnny Cash thing going on yourself,’ I said. ‘The black outfits, gravelly voice. You even sounded like him at that karaoke bar last night.’

‘That’s very flattering but it’s not true. There’s only one Man in Black.’ His voice was stern but I saw a corner of his mouth lift, and could tell he was pleased. I was almost as accomplished at sucking up as I was snuffling around rubbish bins.

‘So how do you know Mum?’

He was silent for a second and I followed his gaze out over the water. Clouds were banking up, coming in from the west. Huge clumps piling on top of each other, purple-black like a bruise.

‘She ever told you about the Cross in the late seventies?’

‘No. Can’t get a thing out of her. Weird, because on most topics she won’t shut up.’

Sam ran his hand over his chin. I couldn’t actually see any stubble but heard it rasp against his palm. He put down his shot glass, rested both hands on the arms of the chair and leaned back, like someone about to take off in a plane.

‘There was a protest, outside the Love Tunnel.’

‘I knew it. When?’

‘Jesus. I don’t know. Seventy-nine, eighty?’

‘What about?’

‘Exploitation? Promoting violence against women? Take your pick.’

‘Mum and Joy would have definitely been in that. What happened?’

‘A group of about twenty of them were marching around on the footpath in front of the Tunnel, carrying placards, yelling slogans and generally intimidating anyone who tried to enter the club. First I asked them to leave nicely and when that didn’t work I shouted, demanding they piss off.’

‘I’m guessing that wasn’t successful either.’

‘No. By that stage Don, the owner, had got wind and rang to call me a soft cock for not doing anything about it. We had two bouncers who were itching to have a go, but I told them to back off, hoping the protesters would get bored and pack it in. Don ordered me to ring some of his friends from the Darlinghurst and Kings Cross police.’

Sam finished his drink, got up with a sigh that made him seem every one of his sixty something years and crossed to the kitchen, retrieving one of the tequila bottles and bringing it back to the small table. Up close I could see the brand was Patron. The bottle hand blown with little air bubbles lodged in the glass. He refilled his drink but I put my hand over mine.

I still had a little left, and an interview with Daisy in two hours.

‘So what happened?’

‘Don Davison was never what you’d call a sensitive, new age guy and neither were his cop mates. Violent, corrupt bastards. We used to pay them off every week so we could keep operating. Anyway, it got ugly. Even uglier than I thought it would. I’d hoped the cops would go easy on the protesters, since they were female, but it didn’t turn out that way. If anything it was the opposite. The women resisted and the coppers laid into them worse than if they’d been blokes. The guys seemed outraged that a bunch of femos and diesel dykes would challenge them on their turf. It was like …’

‘An affront to god, country and scone-baking Australian womanhood?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You got involved in the stoush?’

‘No. Shit no. I used to be a boxer and I’d done a lot of …security work for Don. But I’d never hit a woman.’

‘Try and stop it?’

Sam was silent for a bit, staring at the clouds piling up on the horizon as Johnny sang about breaking out of a rusty cage.

The music was upbeat, but the lyrics were sad. Sam lit a Lucky Strike and offered the pack to me. My throat was still raw from the one I’d scabbed at the Hot Rock so I refused. Little Miss Goody Two Shoes, paying penance for the night before.

He exhaled smoke and a gust of wind sucked it out the double doors and dispersed the plume across the water.

‘What could I do? I ran the fucking place, I worked for Don and you didn’t say no to him if you wanted a long and fruitful life. Seeing the cops bash the women made me sick to my stomach but I didn’t have any say.’

‘What happened after they were beaten up?’

‘Charged with resisting arrest. Verballed probably.’

‘It still doesn’t explain why she’s so scared of you.’

‘It wasn’t just the arrests and bashings. The protesters were going to go to the media about it and create a big stink. Don and some of his mates threatened them, their families …their kids. Because I was manager and had a bit of a reputation for standover and so forth, it must have looked like it came from me.’

‘But it didn’t.’

He looked me in the eye. ‘No.’

‘Did the protest happen before or after Melody disappeared?’

‘Before.’

I sat forward and leaned my elbows on my knees. I was nervous, but I had to ask. ‘Did you make her disappear?’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘No.’

‘Do you know who did?’

‘No.’ He blinked. Didn’t mean he was lying, maybe his eyes were just tired.

I took a tiny sip of smooth tequila and sat back in my chair. ‘It kind of makes sense about my mother. Only why would she still be scared now?’

He shrugged.

‘And why are you telling me all this when you don’t have to?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? I’ve got nothing to hide.’

Well that was bullshit. Everybody on earth had something to hide.

‘You know, I never even liked running the strip club,’ he said, out of the blue.

‘Come on,’ I laughed, ‘it’s every guy’s dream. Naked chicks, pussy on tap.’

‘I started at the illegal casinos, worked my way up from bouncer to floor manager, then Don had me manage one of his restaurants. I liked the restaurants and when he put me in charge of the Fu—’ he stopped himself just in time—‘the Tunnel, it felt like a step backwards even though he was paying me more. But you didn’t argue with the Don. I was there for five years and, sure, I met some good people and we had some times, but it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself. The Tunnel wasn’t one of your upmarket lap dancing clubs like today. There was plenty of shit going on out the back. Don encouraged the dancers to sleep with his mates and a lot of the girls were addicted to heroin. In fact Don preferred to pay them in smack, if they were that way inclined.’

‘Like Melody?’ I asked.

Sam shook his head. ‘She didn’t use. Anyway, it could be depressing. I think I sympathised with the protesters ’cause they weren’t too far off the mark.’

I looked at him. Was he playing the SNAG to get me onside? Some guys did that. They’d turn up at a strip club, pay money to ogle your box then come over all reconstructed and say stuff like, ‘How awful for you, being exploited.’ It always offended me because I knew it was just an underhanded pickup routine. But why was Sam doing it? He definitely wasn’t trying to crack onto me, I would have gotten the vibe.

Even more interesting was his description of the Love Tunnel and of Melody, totally different to Rochelle’s. One of them was lying.

Sam stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You going to tell your mother what you know?’

‘If she’s talking to me. She wanted me to leave Sydney and I didn’t. We’re kind of having a fight.’

‘You should apologise.’

I laughed. ‘My god. If she could hear you say that.’

‘I’m serious. Cherish your family. In the end they’re all you’ve got.’

I resisted the urge to cross my eyes and poke my tongue in my cheek.

Sam went on. ‘I was estranged from mine when they found out what sort of work I was doing, and Rochelle and I never had children …’

‘What about your stepdaughter Holly?’

‘We never warmed to each other when she was a kid. Not that I blame her, it must have been hard losing both her parents.’

‘Do you get on now?’

‘We see each other when we have to.’

‘And Dillon?’ I asked, remembering Trip’s theory.

Sam poured himself another drink, slumped in his chair and sighed. ‘If I have to hear him go on about another bloody short film … I shouldn’t have kept giving him money, but Holly dotes on him and I guess I’ve always felt guilty packing her off to boarding school when she was growing up. Must have forked out at least thirty thousand over the last couple of years and nothing to show for it. He never gets selected for any of the festivals because his movies are crap and his head’s so far up his arse. In fact, I think Dillon’s even more vain than Rochelle, which is a hard ask.’ He looked down at his glass then up at me. ‘Sorry. Tequila’s talking.’