Sharp Shooter (27 page)

‘Tara?’ a muffled voice called out. ‘Are you
alright
?’

Dad was at the door, face pressed to the glass.

I cut short my dramatics and jumped up. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, opening the slider.

He looked flustered. ‘Tara, do you have Brains in here with you?’

My heart missed a beat, and I rushed past him to look into the cage. The main door was open. Hoo was sitting over the water container looking slightly bewildered. Alone.

‘But she was there when I came back from my run. And then I had a shower and made some calls . . .’ I trailed off as I remembered the screeching when I was on the phone to Wal.

‘Dad, you’d better come in,’ I said, shutting the cage door.

His flustered expression turned into something much sallower. He came in and sat stiffly on the end of the couch. ‘What is it, Tara?’ he said, tersely.

‘I’ve got some stuff going on to do with my new work. Some criminals are involved. I’m – I’m working with the police to help catch them.’

He digested this for a moment. ‘You’re working
with
the police. Are you sure about that?’

‘Dad!’ I feigned hurt. ‘I think one of the crims has taken Brains.’ I paused, letting that sink in as well.

‘That’s why you moved them around the back here. To protect them?’

I nodded. ‘Didn’t do a very good job of it.’

‘But what’s it all about?’

‘I can’t tell you yet, Dad. It’s police stuff. But I will soon. I promise.’ Too much. I sounded like something out of a B-grade cop show and the suspicious look in Dad’s eyes suggested he thought so too.

He stood up slowly, his brow crinkling into something quite stern. ‘You need to sort out your affairs, young lady, and bring our bird back. Is that clear?’

Dad hadn’t used that tone of voice on me since I’d broken his lawnmower in high school, racing against Mr Bok’s ride-on.

He hadn’t finished either. ‘If anything happens to Brains, your mother will be heartbroken. And I’m telling you very clearly, Tara, I WILL NOT HAVE IT.’

I don’t know what I’d expected him to say, but it sure wasn’t that. ‘Yes, Dad,’ I said meekly.

He turned to leave then stopped at the door. ‘I’ll padlock the cage door and give you a key. In the meantime I’ll tell your mother that you’ve taken Brains to the vet because she has beak mite. You’ll then report that the vet recommended an overnight stay. That should give you time to sort this out.’

‘Yes, Dad.’

He nodded and left.

Chapter 41

D
AD’S VISIT LEFT A
throbbing lump in my stomach. It wasn’t very often my saintly father got peeved with me, and the guilt was almost worse than the thought that someone in a blue BMW was trying to kill me. But nowhere near as bad as the thought that Brains had been hurt or killed because of me.

I fished around under the couch until I found my thongs and walked to the corner deli to buy some phone credit and a large bag of clinkers. The clinkers raised my blood sugar level sufficiently to narrow my panic from a gushing waterfall into a fast-flowing stream.

I fell into a Q and A with myself.

Who’s taken Brains?
I asked.

The BMW driver.

Possibly. But who is that?

The crazy woman who rang me?

Yeah. But who was she?

Whitey’s wife?

Hmmm. She had been acting pretty crazy in the shop with
Smitty
.

Peter Delgado?

Nah
.
Never get his hands dirty.

A random?

Possible again, but unlikely given the dead bird and the
photo.

Sam Barbaro?

He said he’d get me. Plus, he and Zach Lupi could have
worked out by now that I was the snooper at the SUP labs.

Barbaro was the most likely.

My head hurt.

Then I had a brain wave. Maybe two different people were threatening me.

If that was true then there were still only two I was likely to be able to locate. June Whitey and Sam Barbaro.

Whitey lived in Mosman Park. That was a cinch. But how did I find out where Barbaro was, while he was out on bail?

It took me the entire bag of clinkers to come up with an idea. I dialled in the credit and then rang Bok.

He sounded harassed. ‘Can’t talk, T. Major crisis here. I’ve got a day to find another major profile for the first edition or I might as well give the Louies back.’

Louie was Bok’s name for his Louis Vuitton travel luggage. He’d been given it as a sweetener when he’d got the new job.

I wanted to cry on his shoulder, but I sucked it up. Bok had his own stuff going on; I couldn’t run to him every time I had a problem.

‘You’ll find someone,’ I said confidently.

‘Sure.’ After a bit more chitchat, he hung up.

In the time it had taken me to walk up and back to the deli, Dad had put a padlock on the cage door. Short of carrying the ten-by-eight-feet birdcage off the property, or using a gas torch, no one was going to get at Hoo.

Meanwhile the poor darling was busy trying to bite the lock off through the bars. I scratched his head but he was much too engrossed to stop.

I went into the flat and fell on my bed. My feet were sore from running, and I hadn’t felt this miserable since my ex-boyfriend, Mauritian Pascal, had cleared out of our semidetached with all our furniture and our share-buddy, Janis.

After some long aching moments of soul searching, I did what any desperate woman would do – I called a crazy, narcoleptic, ex-roadie for help.

‘Wal?’

‘You gonna let me work for you, Teach?’

I hesitated one last time before I sealed my doom. ‘Yeah.

OK. Deal. Remember, there’s no money to pay you with at the moment, but I’ll try and cover any expenses.’
As if!

‘Cigs?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘Booze?’

‘No.’

‘Bullets?’

‘Errr . . . no.’

‘Hmmph.’

‘But I’ll get you a business card,’ I said, thinking of Bok’s colour photocopier. ‘Now, here’s your first job. I need to find a guy called Sam Barbaro, really quickly.’

‘Barbaro? Did he used to work at the servo on Forest and Gugeri? No forehead? Aggro?’

I remembered Barbaro’s angry surprise when he’d collided with me, his ugly expression. Then later on, Bligh’s inquisition.

‘He’s the one.’

I waited for Wal to continue, but all I got was the sound of heavy breathing.

‘Wal!’

‘Yo!’ he sounded startled.

‘Did you go to sleep?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s Tara Sharp. We were talking about Sam Barbaro,’ I said, between clenched teeth. ‘I need to find him. Quick. Today. Wal, concentrate, please.’

‘Oh that,’ said Wal, collecting himself. ‘Too easy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He lives in the boarding house behind mine.’

‘For real?’

‘Yup,’ said Wal. ‘That mean you’d be coming over here right now?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m out of baccy. Champion Ruby.’

I gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Tell me your address.’

Chapter 42

I
T SHOULD BE TOO
ridiculous to be true, but the sad fact was that Perth was so small, as cities go, that it wasn’t even weird that a small-time criminal and a big-time crazy had gravitated towards boarding houses in a similar part of town.

Upper Perth to be precise.

I changed into a grey, sleeved t-shirt, black track pants and a cap and joggers. As an afterthought I looked around for something solid. Under the sink I found one of Dad’s wrenches. I dropped that in my Duck, which was looking less handbag and more pregnant tyre.

Before I fired up Mona, I rang Nick again.

Jenelle answered this time.

‘Hi Jenelle. It’s Tara Sharp,’ I said.

‘Hi Tara. How are the feet?’

‘Fine,’ I answered. ‘How’s the Cayenne?’

‘Got a speeding ticket but no damage.’

‘Good for you.’ I grinned to myself.

‘If you’re looking for Nick he’s diverted his phone to me. He left for Sydney half an hour ago. Not sure when he’s back. I’ll be the last to know, of course.’ She sounded decidedly put out. ‘Shall I get him to call you?’

‘Just tell him I rang.’

‘Okey dokey. Bye Tara.’

I hung up.
Why had Nick rushed off to Sydney?
After a moment’s puzzling I put that one away in the too-hard basket. I knew nothing about the man or his life. He could have gone there to play golf. Or visit his bondage mistress.

Instead of wasting time worrying about Nick, I drove Mona down to Croker Street and followed it back towards the river. Whitey lived in a renovated thirties brick and tile along one of the intersecting streets. His mother had left it to him, and June had moved in shortly before the wedding. So Smitty said.

I parked around the corner and did two walk-bys before ducking in the side gate and snooping through the back windows. No sign of Brains, or June, or Whitey; only a fat ginger tabby asleep on top of the agapanthus.

I jumped back in the car and sped out of the western suburbs, cutting across the city into Upper Perth. Remembering the tobacco, I pulled up outside a dodgy looking deli, a stone’s throw from Nick Tozzi’s office. It was tucked in between a laundromat and a tired junk-and-antiques shop.

Despite my hurry, there was something in the junk shop window that stopped me dead in my tracks. The ghastly pink and green of the glazing was what snagged my attention, and a second look confirmed it: a Wembley Ware dish. Before I knew it, my feet had taken a sharp left turn in through the door and transported me to the counter.

The shopkeeper was older than most of her merchandise. She sat on a high stool, fanning herself, and gazed at me from under thick blue eyeliner and a curly brunette wig.

‘May I have a look at the glazed dish in the window, please?’

Her expression was a rebuke, as if I’d committed a serious crime by asking.

The process of retrieving the ashtray from the display took so long I began to jig.

‘Can I help you?’ I asked, as she knocked her wig askew for the third time, trying to reach between a four-tiered glass cake stand and a stuffed one-eyed peacock.

‘Hold your horses, Missy,’ she scolded me.

I gritted my teeth, and counted passing cars until her trembling fingers placed the pottery on the counter.

I examined it closer, and my heart began to race. The plate had a grey marron attached to the edge, complete with pincers and painted-on feelers. This would improve my stocks with Mrs Hara.

‘How much?’

‘Forty dollars.’

I only had thirty on me. ‘Thirty,’ I countered.

‘Thirty-five,’ she said sharply, ‘and not a cent less.’

I took a deep breath. ‘Twenty and my handbag,’ I said, waving my Mandarina Duck in front of her nose. ‘It cost a squillion, you know.’

The old woman scraped the front of her teeth with a yellowing fingernail then nodded.

I handed her twenty and tipped the contents of my Duck onto the counter.

She didn’t blink at the wrench, just fished underneath her till and found me a plastic bag.

‘Don’t bother wrapping it. Bit of a hurry.’ I scooped my things into the plastic, grabbed the marron plate, and ran out the door before I changed my mind.

My Duck. My poor, poor Duck
.

I climbed back into Mona and sped past Tozzi’s office driveway, turning left at the park. The business district suddenly melted away, replaced by houses that made the streets in Bunka look pretty damn shiny. There were no half-starved, angry dogs, no hoons; just broken fences and boarded-up windows. I kept the doors locked as I sat around the corner from Wal’s and went over my plan. It was pretty much the same one I’d had at Whitey’s. Snoop around Sam Barbaro’s, find my bird, and get out of town – well, out of Upper Perth at least.

I employed a fragment of forethought to ponder what could possibly go wrong. If Wal fell asleep I could just leave him, I mean he lived close by. If Barbaro turned up and got nasty I had my wrench. What else? My phone was charged, and I’d set Bligh’s number on one-touch dial. If the car wouldn’t start, or something like that, I could run to Tozzi’s office.

Bok and Smitty would be proud of me; nothing impulsive going on here.

Before I could put my perfect plan into practice, there was a knock on my window.

When my heart steadied enough for my vision to return, I identified Wal in a once-white singlet, thongs and ripped blue jeans. I cracked the window. ‘Jesuus, Wal.’

‘There’s a lane behind. I’ll meet you back there,’ he said, sauntering off before I could answer.

I started the engine and drove the short distance to the laneway. As I turned between two large fence posts onto the dirt road, I wondered if there was a connection between backalley lanes and heading down the wrong path in life.