Dark Summer (32 page)

As Malone came out of the clinic he met Ava. At first, blinking in the glare, he almost missed her. The heat and the humidity compressed one; it was as if the city were wrapped in smothering plastic. The weather report had said this morning that if this heat continued for another month this summer would be the hottest ever recorded. This year looked as if it might be one of records: weather, unemployment, bankruptcies, murders. Enough to make you feel good just to be dead.

“Hello, Inspector.”

She was modestly dressed, a long-sleeved white shirt and a loose blue skirt; she wore dark glasses against the blinding sun and her hair was pulled back in a chignon. She looked respectable enough, Malone thought, to be mistaken for a counsellor. Though he was on his way to interview a counsellor who, he had begun to suspect, might not be respectable at all.

“Miss Eden's not here,” he told her. “I'm going along to see her at St. Sebastian's. You want to come?”

Ava hesitated, then she followed him across to the marked police car at the kerb. “It'll look as if I'm being picked up again.”

“I'm your defence witness.” He introduced her to the young constable at the wheel. “This is
Miss
Redgrave, a social worker.”

“G'day, Ava.” The young officer's grin tore every muscle in his face. “How's business these days?”

“Hello, Darren.” She smiled at Malone. “Darren's picked me up half a dozen times. Always very nice about it.”

When they entered the hospital Malone took Ava into a corner of the lobby. People were coming and going, patients' visitors loaded with fruit and flowers and magazines, looking forward to meeting other visitors across the patients' beds. Nobody took any notice of the tall detective and the attractive young woman standing beneath another of the hospital's over-coloured prints, this one of the Virgin Mary. Malone sometimes wondered if the Holy Family ever shuddered at what passed for their likenesses.

“Ava, what do you know about Miss Eden?”

She took off the sunglasses, gave him a suspicious look. “Has she done something wrong?”

“Not as far as I know. But she's close to a couple of cases I'm on. Does she appear to you to know much about the drug scene in this town?”

“She'd know everything, wouldn't she?”

“Not necessarily. She'd know the general workings, but she wouldn't have to know who controls the importing of the stuff. Leroy knew, didn't he?”

“I think so. Well, he
said
he did, but he was a real crap artist.”

“Did he ever mention Denny Pelong?”

She shook her head. “Not that I remember. But we'd heard the name. You work around the Cross, you hear names like his every day.”

“You ever hear of a Dallas White? Snow White?”

“No.”

“He has a mate, Gary Schultz. About the size of a house, they call him The Dwarf.”

“Oh,
him.
Sure. He was a client of mine a coupla times. You're right, he's huge. I was glad he
never
wanted to be on top.” Above them Malone was sure the Virgin Mary rolled her eyes. “He knew I was on heroin, he used to ask me questions where I got it.”

“He wanted some for himself?”

“No, he seemed more interested in—in the marketing of it.”

It was difficult to imagine The Dwarf studying marketing. “Maybe. When did you last see him?”

“I don't know, about a week or ten days ago, I think. I don't keep a business diary, you know. We were leaving the house and we bumped into Sally and that feller you mentioned, the one who died the same way as Sally and Leroy. Grime?”

“Did The Dwarf make any comment? I mean about Grime?”

“No. They just nodded to each other. It's often like that, guys seem not to want to recognize each other. As if paying for it is some sort of reflection on their macho image.”

Malone looked at her. “Ava, how did you ever get into this game? No, don't tell me. Go home to—where is it? Wagga?—go home as soon as you can. It's getting dangerous around here and I don't want to get a call one night and find you with a broken neck or a poisoned needle in that attractive butt of yours. Go home today.”

She returned his gaze. “Do you go through life holding girls' hands?”

“I'd like to, but the wife won't allow it. Take care, Ava. I'll tell Miss Eden you're waiting to see her.”

He found Janis Eden in a small cubicle, the walls bare of everything, even colour prints of St. Sebastian or the Holy Family. There were two chairs, a table and that was all. It reminded Malone more of a police interrogation room than a place for counselling. He told Janis that Ava was waiting to see her, then he sat down opposite her.

“You're not surprised to see me?”

They called me from the clinic, said you were looking for me. What's it about, Inspector?”

“Mostly you.” He decided to be direct. “How much do you know about the drug scene, Miss Eden? Not around here at the Cross, the dealing in the streets. I mean the big picture.”

“
What makes you think I know anything?”

“Because yesterday afternoon, out at La Perouse, you met with a man named Dallas White, who has a list of convictions as long as his arm and who we suspect of being up to his thick neck in drug smuggling.”

“You're mistaken. Inspector, I don't know any Mr. White—”

“Janis, don't let's beat about the bush. I should imagine when you're counselling anyone in here, you demand the truth from them or you'd get nowhere. It's the same with us police. So let's cut out the bull. Your car and White's—yours, I believe, is a Capri and his is a Jaguar—you were observed and the cars' numbers taken and checked.”

“Were you following me?” That was a slip, and she cursed herself for it.

“Blame it on Saddam Hussein.” She frowned in puzzlement and he explained: “With the Gulf war, they're afraid of terrorist attacks on the oil refinery at Kurnell. You two sit in a car at La Perouse, just across the bay from the oil refinery, and you're bound to attract attention. You could have been lovers, but I don't think Snow White is your type. Now why did you meet him?”

She was trapped; and she was not prepared for it. She had never expected the police to be attacking her so soon. She was not the least bit interested in the war in the Middle East; that was something between politically ambitious men, a fight over oil. But now she wondered if Saddam Hussein had, like herself, miscalculated. She had not thought of herself being in a war, at least not against the police; the analogy had not occurred to her. But of course she
was
in a war, against Denny Pelong, against the police, against even Jack Aldwych. He had declared it against her last night. It was a shock to her intelligence to realize how unintelligent she had been. Too clever, but not clever enough.

“Well, yes, I did meet Mr. White.” Her mind was in high gear, almost out of control, as she sought some plausible reason why she should have been out at La Perouse yesterday afternoon. Her demeanour, however, was cool, relaxed, none of her tension showing.

“Why?”

“I don't think I have to tell you that, do I? The Consorting Act no longer applies, does it? You
can
meet with known criminals now, can't you, and not be charged? From what I've been reading, some of your police officers have been doing a lot of that.”

“Sure, and we've sacked them. You have some idea of the law?”

“In this job you have to.”

“You can meet with the Devil himself, if you want to, and we can't touch you. But it wouldn't look good if ever we hauled you in.”

“Are you thinking of hauling me in?” She was playing for time, trying to find some defences.

“That depends what we come up with on Dallas White. You sure you don't want to tell me why you met him?”

She hesitated, unsure that she should go any further. Weren't there minefields in a war? Then she said, “He wanted to sell me information.”

“What about?”

“About drug distribution. He'd somehow got the idea that here at the clinic we were interested in that.”

“And you're not?”

“Not in the sense of wanting to find the dealers. That's the police's job, isn't it?”

“Then why would he come to you? Janis, this clinic of yours wouldn't have enough spare cash to buy a street map, let alone any real information. Especially from someone like White. There are some dumb cops, Janis, but most of us are reasonably smart. We have to be, otherwise the crims would run rings around us and do-gooders like you would be lying in the streets with your throats cut. Though, actually, I think Mr. White and his mate, Gary Schultz—have you met him, too?—they go in for breaking necks. You might like to tell Mr. White I said that, next time you meet him. He can sue me for defamation.” He stood up. “You're lying, Miss Eden, but you'll keep.”

“If you repeat that outside,
I
might sue you.”

“Do that. It'd be nice to have everything out in the open. Did you know Denny Pelong is in the private section next door?”

“
Yes, I'd heard.” She had gone out of her way to make enquiries. She was still waiting to hear from White, to hear his excuse for botching the killing.

“Denny's in the drug racket. If he survives, you might like to buy some information from him. He won't come cheap, but these days, in a recession, you never know.”

The cracks were cheap, pulp stuff, but they were more sensible and less dangerous than slapping her face, which he was tempted to do. She got under his skin as not even Luisa Pelong had done; there was a cold arrogance to her that put him and, he guessed, most men down as creatures far less worthy, in her eyes, than herself.

He left her, giving her rope to play with. She would not run away, nor attempt to disappear; he was sure she was not the type. Her arrogance, and whatever else drove her, would keep her on the scene.

When Malone left, Janis continued to sit in her tiny room, staring at the blank wall opposite. She had been challenged, something that usually stimulated her; but now she felt drained, even afraid. But she was more afraid of failure of the dream than of the consequences; that was the worst of it. She had tasted cream, but already it was turning to sour cheese. She wondered if Dallas White would consider killing a policeman.

Then her beeper startled her.

For a moment she thought of ignoring its call. It would be from the clinic to say another junkie was looking for her. To hell with the junkies. In her role as counsellor they might be her bread and butter; in her role as drug supplier, they would provide riches. If she survived . . .

She went along to the ward desk. Two ward sisters, one of them a nun, were there and a clerical assistant; all three of them gave her a smile and the clerk handed her the phone. “It's for you, Janis.”

“From the clinic?”

But it wasn't the clinic, it was Dallas White. “Who done it?”

“Who done it?” He was joking, of course. She saw the clerk and the two ward sisters look at her curiously; she turned her back on them, saw Ava Redgrave sitting on a chair just along the corridor. “What are you talking about?”

“
Denny Pelong, of course, who'd you think? I heard it on the radio. I tried to get you at the clinic, but you weren't there. Is he dead yet?”

“I don't know.” And she certainly wasn't going to turn and ask the ward sisters what they knew of Denny Pelong's condition.

“You can't talk now, that what you mean? Well, find out what you can, he's there in your hospital. If he snuffs it, it looks like someone else has done the job for us.”

She couldn't help the question: “You mean you weren't there?”

“Christ, no. You do a job like that, you never do it in a public place.”

She hung up in his ear, her hand remaining on the phone. The minefield was proving denser than she had expected.

“Bad news?” said the clerk. She was grey-haired, plump and motherly, always ready with sympathy as well as the account.

“I don't know.” Janis recovered, dug up a smile from somewhere. “You never know what to believe in this job, do you?”

Then she gestured to Ava to follow her back to the counselling room. It would be ironic, she thought, if she persuaded this girl to give up her habit and go back to where she came from.

V

Malone walked through to the private section. Here were the five-hundred-dollar-a-day rooms, cheap compared with what one had to pay in some other countries but still thought exorbitant by most of the voters. It was a national tenet that medical care shouldn't cost more than car repairs.

He went up to the floor where the intensive-care unit was located. The ward sister, not a nun, young, smart and with an obvious distaste for looking after gunned-down criminals, was not welcoming. “Why did we have to be landed with Mr. Pelong? Why couldn't they have shoved him in the public section?”

“Don't worry. If you save his life, he'll probably give the hospital half a million.”

“
Dirty money.”

“Run it through the sterilizer. Can he talk?”

“Are you kidding? We've got tubes in every hole he's got, including the two bullet holes.”

“You're a real angel of mercy, aren't you?”

“No.” Then she smiled, relaxing as she realized that he was not the hard-nosed cop she had been expecting. “We're not even sure he's going to pull through, Inspector. Even if he does he is going to be a paraplegic for the rest of his life. One of the bullets hit his spine before lodging in one of his lungs.”

“Is there a police officer still guarding him?”

“Yes. We don't like that, either. We've got some distinguished people in that ward. How do you think they're going to feel when they wake up and see a uniformed copper sitting opposite their bed?”