Dark Summer (10 page)

“Where do you come from?”

“From the country.” He should have picked up the slight bush drawl in her voice. She hesitated, then added, “Wagga.”

“What about you, Tuesday?”

The redhead looked at Ava, then she said, “Melbourne. But that's all I'm telling.”

“Both of you, do your parents know you're on the game?”

The two girls shook their heads, then Ava said, “We're both over twenty-one.”

You look it, he thought. “Where do you buy your junk?”

“What junk?”

“Come on,” said Malone wearily, nodding at the rolled-down sleeves. “I've got enough on my plate without doing the Drug Unit's job. I'm trying to find a murderer. You don't want him coming back
here,
do you?”

“You put it like that—” Ava rubbed her arm; Malone wondered how many needle-marks were hidden there under the sleeves and on other parts of her body. “We buy it from a guy up the Cross. But Sally didn't use it. She used to, but she gave it up, she said, a coupla years ago. She was on coke, though, but I don't know where she got it. Maybe the guy who killed her.” All at once she shivered, as if for the first time she realized the murderer might come back to this house. She looked at Tuesday. “I think we better move out.”

“If you do,” said Malone, “I'll want to know where I can find you. And I don't mean up on your beat in William Street. That's no address.”

“Why d'you have to bother us?” said Tuesday, a whine in her voice.

Malone shrugged. “We didn't start this, love. The cove who stuck the needle in her did that.”

Then Clements came back downstairs. “If there was anything up there, the Crime Scene guys would have picked it up. Unless the murderer cleaned the place out first. You girls dunno if Mrs. Kissen kept a diary or anything, do you? An appointment book?”

“An appointment book?” Ava looked at him. “What d'you think this is—the Quality Couch?” That was the city's top brothel, where clients could run an account and regulars were given bonus sex as a Christmas gift. “I dunno if she kept a diary. She was kind of funny, like Tuesday said. Sometimes she'd talk with us, sort of reminisce. Other times she was like a brick wall. I don't think she was the sort to keep a diary.”

Then abruptly she stood up, an ungainly movement; she was taller than Malone had expected and she moved with that awkwardness he had seen in some tall women. She went out of the room and when she came back she was carrying a wall calendar.

“Sally used to make notes on this. I dunno if it'll help.”

It was a calendar about eighteen inches square with a separate fold-up page for each month. Each page was an illustration, the male equivalent of a
Penthouse
centrefold. Malone wondered that Sally Kissen, in her trade, had any time for men; or were these the sort of clients she dreamed about? Mr.
January,
one hand placed strategically, smiled coyly at Malone. Below the oil-glistening beefcake, on the calendar itself, several dates were ringed and initialled. Sunday, the day before yesterday, was initialled A.H. and so was the previous Sunday. A.H., it seemed, liked to get the week's dirty water off his chest before starting a new week. Malone wondered if Mrs. Kissen charged double-time for weekend work. There had been an attempt to form a prostitutes' union and he remembered now that Sally Kissen had been one of the spokeswomen for it. He couldn't remember whether she had advocated penalty rates.

“You any idea who A.H. might be?”

Both girls looked at the calendar, seemingly oblivious of the male flesh exposed to them. “Mostly, we were never here when she let her visitors in—she tried to keep 'em out of our way. It was her snobbery bit again. She didn't have much time for the way we have to work. She was one of the old-time pros, but they didn't have to work the streets the way we do—she always worked out of a house, she said. There's too much competition now. We've practically got to strip naked up there in William Street to attract customers. It's okay in this weather, but it's no fun in winter, standing around freezing your arse off.”

“You could buy a fur coat,” said Clements. “Wear nothing under it and just flash it when the customers go by.”

“Who's got enough left over to buy a fur coat?”

After I've paid for my habit:
Malone finished her remark in his mind. He wondered what had brought this girl to this neighbourhood and line of work, wondered what her parents, secure and comfortable in Wagga Wagga or out on a neighbouring property, thought of this end to their hopes. He shut his mind against the thought that any of his own children might some day let him and Lisa down. Which was stupid, he knew: the shut mind was worse than a shut door.

“Do you have a pimp?”

Tuesday looked blank; Ava looked offended. “We don't like that word.”

“Righto, choose your own word. Bludger? Ponce?”

“Tuesday has a boyfriend. He looks after us, occasionally.”

“
Just occasionally?”

“Yes.” The atmosphere was noticeably cooler. Why, Malone wondered not for the first time, were women so defensive of their men, even those who made slaves of them? But no amount of detective work would ever give him a satisfactory answer. Lisa had told him so, giving him no clues.

“What's his name and where does he live?”

“Why d'you wanna know that?” Tuesday demanded; her red hair seemed more fiery. “Leave him outa this!”

Malone said mildly, “I only thought he might like to move in here with you, just for safety's sake.
Your
safety.”

“We're moving out. We'll move in with Leroy, he's got room.” Ava looked at Tuesday, who blinked, then frowned, as if she did not like the idea.

“Leroy who?” said Clements. “If he's got a record, we can easily check on him. There wouldn't be too many Leroys who are pimps.”

Tuesday flashed him a look of hatred; the temporary harmony was gone, it was
you
and
us
again. “You really are shits, ain't you?”

“I guess so,” said Clements, looking unoffended; he had heard it so many times before. “But so's Leroy. Now where can we find him?”

Tuesday looked at Ava, who said, “You better tell 'em, honey, otherwise they'll never get off our backs.”

Tuesday hesitated, then she gave Clements an address in Bondi, ten minutes' drive away. “His name's Leroy Lugos. But don't tell him who gave you the address.”

Malone stood up. “If any feller comes here asking for Mrs. Kissen, don't let him in. Try and remember what he looks like, then phone us. Here's my card.”

“If he murdered Sally,” said Ava, “why would he come back?”

“To do the same to you,” said Malone and picked up the last Iced Vo-Vo from the plate on the brass coffee table. “Mind if I have this? They're my favourite bickie.”

“
Shove it up your arse,” said Tuesday.

There was a crude retort to that, but Malone let it go. He alternated between anger and pity for girls like these two; he had decided there was nothing to be done for them. They supplied a commodity that had been in demand since Adam got the first erection. Most cops no longer took any notice of the soliciting laws and left the girls alone; the few who had hang-ups about commercial sex, the poofter-bashers, now got their work-out grabbing homosexuals in public toilets.

The two detectives drove out to Bondi Beach. Clements parked the car and they got out, turning their faces to the nor'easter that had suddenly sprung up and was coming in across the sea. They left their jackets in the car and walked across to the promenade. Malone had put on his hat, a grey-green pork-pie that, if elderly crims had walked by, or even his father, would have identified him as a plainclothes man of the late 1940s; the Ds of those days had all worn pork-pie hats, like a uniform. But Malone had just been born then, didn't know what even a uniformed cop was.

Far out sea and sky seemed to merge; the horizon was just a faint pencil-mark. The surf was rising, shark-toothed waves rolling in. Though it was Tuesday, a supposed working day and the annual summer holidays over, the long white beach was crowded. The recession had been creeping, like salt erosion, over the country since the middle of last year; lately, its bite had increased and thousands more had been thrown out of work. In the good times that had lasted for so long, the Bumper Years, as sentimental economists, a contradiction in terms, were now calling them, the beaches had been populated only by waiters, night-shift workers and the dole-bludgers who worked harder at polishing their surf-board technique than they did at looking for a job. Today, Malone guessed, more than half the beach's population would be on the dole, though not as bludgers. They lay on the hot sand being eaten into my melanoma and hopelessness. There were two generations of voters who had to learn that “tighten your belt” was not something you did after a course of aerobics.

“The Lucky Country,” said Clements sourly. “You reckon any of them are thinking about the Gulf war?”

“Are you?” He had looked at the headlines this morning, but had already forgotten them. “Let's
go
and talk to Lee-roy.”

The address they had been given was a coffee lounge and café across from the promenade, the Larissa. It was clean and attractive and cool inside; and popular, too, judging by the number of customers at the tables. Malone and Clements walked down to the rear of the long marble serving counter and told the girl who came to take their order that they would like to talk to the owner. She went back up the counter to the man on the cash register, who frowned, then came down to the two detectives.

“We're looking for Leroy Lugos,” said Malone.

“You police? Ah.” He was middle-aged, fleshily handsome; he might have been on his way to being a Greek god when young, but indulgence had got in the way. There was just a trace of accent in his thick voice, but otherwise he was all-Aussie: he was suspicious of police. Or maybe he had been suspicious of police back in Athens or Larissa or wherever. “I ain't seen him today. He could be over on the beach.”

“He could be,” Clements agreed. “Would you like to close up the shop for ten minutes and come over to the beach and pick him out for us?”

“You wouldn't expect me to do that! Close up the place?”

“I think he would,” said Malone. “He's a real bastard on hot days.”

The café owner looked at them; then he sighed and nodded. “That's him in the back booth. The one in the blue T-shirt.”

“Thanks,” said Malone. “Could we have two iced coffees down there?”

“On the house?”

“Why not? We're both corrupt.”

They moved down to the back booth, where Leroy Lugos sat with two youths both younger than he. Clements told them he and Inspector Malone would like to talk to Mr. Lugos alone and, after a worried glance at Lugos, they got up and moved up to the front of the café. The two detectives slid into the booth opposite Lugos.

“What's this about?” It was a polite question, no belligerence.

“You're Leroy Lugos. Lee-roy—that your real name?” Clements had taken out his notebook.

“
Leroy is an American name,” said Malone. “You don't hear it much out here. Your mother or father American?”

“No, I chose it myself.” He was still polite, if strained.

“You didn't like the name your parents chose?” This was fencing stuff, but Malone was prepared to take his time.

“Ulysses? Would you like it?”

Malone grinned and shook his head; and Clements said, “Did you choose Lugos, too? It wouldn't have been Lugopolous, would it? I saw it over the door when we came in.”

Lugos hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. Ulysses Lugopolous. Who'd believe it and how far would I get with it, a wog moniker like that? Are you sympathetic to wogs?”

“All the time,” said Malone.

He wondered if Lugos really was Tuesday's boyfriend besides being her pimp; he seemed too intelligent, too particular. He was in his early twenties, good-looking, black hair expensively cut, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans that would have cost more than Malone's polyester suit. He had an amiable look to his thin, handsome face; but it was a mask, there was a sharpness behind the easy smile and the amused eyes. He would never be a Greek god, there was no money to be made on Mount Olympus.

“You know Mrs. Kissen is dead?”

“Who's she?”

Malone patiently told him. “You mean your girlfriend Tuesday didn't ring you to tell you what happened? You didn't see her last night and she told you then?”

Lugos sipped on a Coke, waiting while the two detectives took their iced coffees from the girl who brought them. One hand went to the gold chain and cross round his neck; one wrist wore a thick gold bracelet and the other a gold-banded watch. Malone wondered if he ran not just Ava and Tuesday but a stable of girls.

“Yeah,” he said at last, “she told me.”

“It doesn't upset you?”

“
Why should it?” He was less polite now. “I hardly knew her.”

“The same thing could happen to one of your girls.”

Before he spoke Clements had made a sucking noise through his drinking-straw, an angry gasp. Malone recognized the symptoms: the big man was ready to get rough with Lugos. Malone leaned back, glanced under the table: Lugos wore Reeboks with no socks. Malone was willing to bet that, when they stood up, Clements would tread on one of the Reeboks, accidentally of course, and Lugos would suffer a badly bruised instep or even a broken toe. Clements, who had played rugby when he was a youth, knew the use of a heavy boot in a ruck.

“What do you do for a living?” Malone asked.

“I'm unemployed. Isn't everyone?” He was becoming cheeky now. “There's a recession on, but I don't suppose you cops notice the difference. You're never made redundant, right?”