Dead and Kicking (23 page)

‘You definitely out of the gun-running caper, Lothar?’

He looked around to see if anyone had overheard. ‘That was my old life, Mr Murdoch,’ he whispered, ‘you know I’m on the straight and narrow now.’

‘Too bad,’ I whispered back, ‘because if I was deranged enough to even consider dining here I’d order up a nice little Browning so I could blow my fucking brains out.’

‘Mr Murdoch, you should keep an open mind to new things. I think you might be surprised. Here at Bluey’s we aim to give the customer a real taste of that great classic Aussie backyard barbecue experience. But without the flies.’ He paused. ‘Or the beetroot.’ He looked around again and then whispered conspiratorially, ‘The Japs and the other slopes don’t seem to like beetroot too much. Wogs neither. I don’t know why we let them into this country.’

‘Still serving up the xenophobia, I see.’

Lothar seemed confused. ‘No, I don’t think we have any Greek dishes on the menu. But I can check with the kitchen if you like.’

‘No, don’t bother,’ I said as I followed Lothar to a picnic table with a reserved sign. The table was set with disposable plates and cutlery and those cheap paper napkins that leave lint all over your face if you haven’t shaved close enough. There was also a plastic squeeze container of tomato ketchup and a tall bottle of HP sauce.

‘C’mon, Mr Murdoch, you should try my manager’s special,’ Lothar said proudly, handing me a plastic laminated menu. ‘It’s on the house and everything’s gratis.’ He leaned over to me. ‘That means you don’t have to pay,’ he said quietly.

To humour him, I took a look at the menu. Like the manager, the manager’s special was an unappetising mix of conflicting items. There was kangaroo fillet, camel sausages, half a marinated chicken, fried onion rings, oysters Kilpatrick, coleslaw and potato salad, with pavlova to finish. Including a beer or a glass of the house wine and a coffee, it was apparently a bargain at ninety bucks a head.

Further down the menu I noticed that the ‘Salt and Chilli Battered Octopus Testicles’ had been partly covered by a white label with the word ‘Tenticles’ written on it. I was tempted to say something, but decided to let it go.

I turned the menu over to look at the wine list. ‘I might have a drink, though. Does the house red come out of a bottle, a wine cask or a 50,000-gallon railway tanker?’

The look on Lothar’s face told me it was the railway tanker, so I opted for an outrageously marked-up bottle of Graveyard Shiraz, which made him wince. He passed the wine order on to a waiter and ordered a steak for himself.

‘No Jezza-licious JezzaBarrana on the menu yet?’

Lothar shook his head. ‘Mr Fischer expects the first ones to be available very soon. The growing pond at the old Gifford mine outside Gaffney’s Creek is up and running.’

So now I had a location. Gaffney’s Creek was an old goldmining town a couple of hours south. It made a lot of sense to use a flooded open-cut mine as a ready-made home for the fish.

‘Them barrana have a hell of an appetite. The abattoirs are having trouble keeping up.’

‘What abattoirs?’ I asked.

‘The places that do the kangaroos for pet food. And the beef cattle and camel slaughterhouses. Mr Fischer takes all the waste and the carcasses. We even send our food scraps from here.’

‘They’re turning all that stuff into fishmeal?’

‘Oh no, Mr Murdoch, you don’t have to do any of that. You just chuck it all in the pond – heads, feet, fur, everything. The fish do the rest. Every couple of weeks they dredge the bones off the bottom. I’ve heard some of them fish are already a metre long.’

A waiter poured me a glass of the Graveyard Shiraz, and after giving it a full fifteen seconds to breathe I downed it in one gulp. It wasn’t any way to treat a top-notch wine, but the vision of a pond full of barrana hoeing into truckloads of cow, camel and kangaroo carcasses was really disturbing.

‘Here’s dinner, Mr Murdoch,’ Lothar said. ‘Isn’t she a beauty?’

The waiter was proudly displaying the biggest T-bone I’d ever seen. There were smears of blood around the edges of the platter that held the raw meat and I guessed that if I dropped it into a pool of hungry barrana it would last about two seconds. The waiter put a serrated-edged steak knife on the table in front of Lothar and then set about lighting the barbecue grill.

I poured myself another glass of red.

‘Now, you’re sure you won’t change your mind?’ Lothar asked.

I smiled. ‘Not in a million years. But there is one little favour I want from you and I’m sure a man of your calibre won’t be able to say no.’

I wasn’t officially off suspension just yet and didn’t have access to the D.E.D. armoury. The way things were shaping up, I felt the need for a little protection.

Lothar turned pale. ‘No way, Mr Murdoch, no way. I’m out of that game, I told you before. I don’t have any inventory no more, you gotta believe me.’

‘I’m out of the believing business this week, Lothar. Now we can whack this steak of yours on the barbecue or you can put it on a black eye – you decide.’

It didn’t take long for Lothar to make up his mind and while he was gone I toyed with the steak knife the waiter had set down. I’m always bemused by restaurants that offer the tenderest of steaks for your dining pleasure and then hand you a knife that could cut through a tree trunk. Talk about mixed messages. The Bluey’s logo was branded on the nasty wood-grained plastic handle, but the blade had a nice sharp edge, and since I was kind of missing my balisong I wrapped the knife in a paper napkin and slipped it into my pocket.

Lothar was back from his office in two minutes flat with something concealed in a large envelope. He handed me the envelope under the table and I took a quick peek.

‘Jesus, mate,’ I said, ‘haven’t we been here before?’ The pistol was a battered little Beretta .25 automatic and it looked way too familiar.

‘That gun brought you good luck last time I lent it to you, Mr Murdoch.’

‘You didn’t lend it to me, you little prick,’ I said. ‘You took my watch as collateral and then you sold me out to the people who wanted me dead. But nothing like that is going to happen this time, is it?’

Lothar shook his head vigorously. ‘You can depend on me, Mr Murdoch.’

‘No I can’t, Lothar. Right now, that’s about the only thing I know for certain, which is somehow strangely comforting.’

I slipped the pistol into the same pocket as the knife and stood up.

‘Lothar, old buddy, just a bit of friendly advice. If you say anything about any of this to anyone, then that octopus won’t be the only thing around this joint with battered testicles.’

The menu at Bluey’s had taken the edge off my appetite but I was still hungry. While there are some really fantastic restaurants in Darwin, I needed a quiet evening to figure out my next move, so I ordered from the hotel’s room service menu. On very rare occasions hotel room service can surprise you, and when the doorbell rang it turned out to be one of those occasions.

I peered through the peephole and quickly slipped Lothar’s geriatric Beretta into my pocket before opening the door.

‘I’m not expecting a bloody tip,’ Jezebel said, as she wheeled the trolley into the room. I poked my head out into the corridor and saw a room-service waiter standing by the elevators and smiling as he counted cash. When I closed the door and turned around, Jezebel was standing by the trolley with a white napkin draped over one arm.

‘Would sir like it on the table or in bed?’

‘We are talking about dinner, right?’ I asked. ‘You want to join me?’

Jezebel lifted the metal lids off a couple of plates and studied the food. Her nose wrinkled. ‘Not even with a bloody gun to my head.’

There was a table near the window, but I pulled the heavy curtains closed before we sat down. Being backlit in a window at night makes for too tempting a target.

Jezebel opened a beer from the trolley and watched as I took a bite of the burger I’d ordered. As hotel burgers go it was a hotel burger, nothing like the Big Bloke’s Burger at Soggy Togs in Bondi. Now that was a real burger, but unfortunately the owner had banned me for life after a couple of incidents involving gunplay during the lunchtime rush.

‘What brings you to Darwin, Jez?’

‘Playford’s new 767, as it happens. He had some business to attend to at the casino here so I hitched a ride. Bloody plane’s got bidets and gold taps in the dunnies, a pool table, a putting green and in-flight big-screen hi-def porn. Flying private craps all over first class, let me tell you.’

‘Eloquently put,’ I said. ‘And I guess you’re in town for a romantic rendezvous with Detlef?’

‘Actually, that’s why I stopped by. I was supposed to be meeting him for cocktails, but his house at Larrakeyah is locked up, the Montreal’s not in the garage and he’s not answering his mobile. I checked with that little turd Lothar out at Bluey’s and he said Detlef drove you in from the airport.’

I nodded. ‘He’s in town as far as I know. Maybe he’s too embarrassed to show his face in public because of his connection to Bluey’s.’

‘Jesus, what a dump, eh? I know there has to be a low end to the market, but that bloody place is positively subterranean. I’m trying to get Detlef to let me give it a total makeover and add a bit of class. And the first thing going into the dumpster would be that little prick Lothar, believe me.’

‘You’re not worried about Detlef are you, Jez? Don’t tell me it’s true love.’

‘Screw you, Alby. Bastard will surface sometime, I guess. I know he’s got a meeting with Playford tomorrow to check out the fish.’

‘You and Playford aren’t a twosome, are you? Or maybe a threesome with Detlef?’

She laughed. ‘I’m not exactly sure what lights Playford’s fire, but it’s not me. I guess some things don’t run in the family.’

That piqued my interest. ‘You and Old Peng?’

‘We might have had a moment, back in the early nineties. I did some cooking on private yachts when I was just starting out and Old Peng had a nice junk that he used for entertaining business clients in Hong Kong. He was a very generous employer. When we parted company, he bankrolled my first restaurant, which was sweet of him.’

‘Too bad about the stroke,’ I said. ‘I hear Playford may have been a contributing factor.’

She shook her head. ‘He’s been spreading that rumour himself, thinks it might make him sound more like a tough guy if people believe he took out the old man to gain control.’

‘Carrying on the proud Peng family tradition of patricide?’

Jezebel shrugged. ‘He likes playing the heavy, what can I tell you? Poor bugger had a really awful time as a kid at that shithole Fairbrothers. When I was working for Old Peng he’d come home for school holidays and I’d try to make his life a bit more fun for a few weeks. I’d take him jogging and put him on a more sensible diet after all that boarding-school stodge.’

‘Every schoolboy’s dream vacation,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘He seemed to enjoy the jogging part.’

‘We talking your short shorts, no bra and that Hash House Harriers T-shirt I gave you? The one that shrank in the dryer?’

She laughed, glanced down at the Lady Rolex on her wrist and stood up. ‘I have to meet Playford in the VIP room at the Darwin Casino. Maybe Detlef’s over there with him.’

‘Is Playford worried he couldn’t get an honest game at his own tables?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s planning on making a takeover offer for the place and he likes a bit of glam at his elbow during negotiations. Says it keeps the other side from thinking straight.’

I could see Playford’s point. I could also see quite a lot of Jezebel through the gauzy top she was wearing.

‘That meeting you mentioned, tomorrow at the fish farm, you tagging along by any chance?’ I asked.

‘No way. I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn and anyway I’m only interested in getting my name on the label and the money in the bank. Plodding around stinky fishponds out in the boondocks isn’t my idea of early-morning fun. And from what I overheard Playford saying, it sounded like it was just going to be him, Detlef and Leroy Fong – boys only.’

‘I’m in that club.’

‘I remember,’ she said, giving me that look I’d seen on the plane.

‘Maybe I should stop by tomorrow, offer to take some snaps to introduce the barrana and its proud parents to the world.’

‘That’s JezzaBarrana, Alby, and it’s trademarked. And seriously, mate, you probably should steer clear of the place. Playford is paranoid about security out there – wouldn’t even tell me the exact location. And Leroy Fong is a real nasty bastard, with a very short fuse. The smart move would be not to go snooping around.’

I walked her to the door. ‘Smart never was my strong suit, Jez, you know that,’ I said, ‘but I’m touched by your concern.’

I was also touched by her left hand in a fairly intimate spot, and I jumped a little but finally managed to disengage myself from her grasp.

‘Can’t blame a girl for trying, Alby,’ she said, giving me a goodnight kiss, ‘not with a lemon meringue pie and a perfectly good hotel bed going to waste.’

When Jezebel had gone, I took the Beretta from my pocket and checked the clip. It was interesting news that Leroy Fong was in town. It was the kind of news that made me wish Lothar had had something with a little more stopping power tucked away in his office.

After stabbing at the lemon meringue pie with a fork to make sure it was as dead as it looked, I poured a cup of room-service coffee, hoping to wash the taste of the hamburger out of my mouth and sharpen up my brain a little.

If Playford and Fischer had an early-morning meeting planned at the fish farm, popping by uninvited might give me some insight into what the hell Playford was up to. Of course, with Leroy Fong in attendance it might also get me dead.

The doorbell rang a couple of minutes later and I looked around the room for any furniture I could use to block the doorway, but there was nothing heavy enough to even slow Jezebel down. But this time it wasn’t Jezebel.

Nhu was wearing a floaty dress in a pale grey fabric with a half-moon pattern and contrasting sleeves. There were echoes of the
ao dai
in the way it was split rather fetchingly from mid-calf to upper thigh. Red patent-leather sandals finished off the outfit, the red leather accent picked up by the large soft tote bag she carried over one shoulder.