Sharp Turn (5 page)

Instead of calling him, I checked the local news sites for anything about a dead body floating in the Swan. Nothing.

I searched on Johnny Viaspa as well, and sure enough there he was, large as life, shaking hands with the charity he’d supported. The photograph didn’t reveal the pus colour of his aura or his cold eyes. Nor did the article mention his criminal record or reputation as the main illegal drug dispenser in our state. Johnny V, it seemed, was working hard on looking benevolent and law-abiding.

There was a message from Edouardo on my Facebook page asking if I could do dinner tonight. I was on the point of saying no when I had a brainwave. Mrs Hara loved good-looking young males (Bok was one of her favourites). If I took Ed with me instead of Bok, she might not be so inclined to poison my zuppa. I flicked Mr Hara a text asking if it was okay for me to bring a different friend.

As the message sent icon disappeared, my phone rang again.
Jees, what now?

‘Tara Sharp,’ I said.

‘Teach, it’s Wal.’

Wal was Wallace Grominsky, narcoleptic former roadie and current chief of security at the Tara Sharp Agency – at least in his mind he was. He called me ‘Teach’ because I’d met him through a class I’d run from home called ‘Improving Your Communication Skills’. Now Wal was living with my Aunt Lavilla, due to her taking an unexpected and ridiculously bizarre interest in him. Liv was refined, gorgeous and wealthy. Every time I thought about her and Wal together, I came back to,
Da-a-amn, that’s just wrong.

‘Got some good and bad news for you,’ Wal said.

‘Best first,’ I said, leaning back against the wrought iron of my bedhead.

‘I got nowhere to live.’

‘Aren’t you at Liv’s?’

‘Need a place of my own.’

‘She kicked you out?’

‘Yeah.’ He sounded forlorn.

‘What about the boarding house?’

‘Can’t go back there on account of having no income. ’Sides, can’t work for you over there, got no car. Okay if I doss on your couch for a while till I get myself sorted?’

My garden flat wasn’t a shelter for homeless eighties tragics with sleeping disorders. I opened my mouth to say ‘No way in the world’ when the call waiting bleep started up.

‘Hold on,’ I said to Wal, and switched over.

‘Tara, darling, you MUST help me.’

‘But, Liv, I’ve –’

‘I can’t have guns in my house. You MUST take Wallace in while I sort something out for him. He has no money and no family and I won’t have him returning to his former life. He’s a changed man, and I really must insist that you help him stay that way. I’m setting up something for him but I don’t want him knowing. Just a week, darling, I promise. Must rush now. Things to do.’

Damn family!

I went back to Wal’s call with a sinking heart.

‘It’s me, Wal. Yeah, sure. You can doss on the couch. Just for a bit though.’

‘Thanks, Teach. Take the rent out of my wages.’

Wal was on a percentage of my earnings, so the wages thing was an unfunny joke between us.

‘Yeah, right. Now what’s the bad news?’

‘Sam Barbaro turned up floating under the Freo wharves with his eyes missing,’ he said as calmly as if he were ordering a bucket of chips at the drive-through.

I suddenly felt sick. This must have been the body Constable Bligh was talking about. Barbaro was the guy who’d bird-napped Brains and also left a dead bird on my windscreen after I’d seen him running away from a break-and-enter at Eireen Tozzi’s home. He was also a small-town hood who had strong ties with Johnny Viaspa. ‘Dead?’

‘Dead,’ said Wal.

‘Who did it?’

‘I ain’t got speed dial to any murderers’ confession booth.’

‘Yeah. Sorry. Shit, that’s awful. I mean, Barbaro should be in jail, not dead.’

‘It’s givin’ me a bad feelin’, boss.’

‘Yeah. Me too.’ Now there was an understatement.

‘Hey, I have to go out this evening to meet a client.

When do you have to move?’

‘Now.’

‘Now?’

‘Yeah. I’m outside your place.’

‘Jees!’ I shut my phone and bolted out the door and up the driveway. If JoBob saw Wal loitering outside, they’d call the cops. Last thing I needed was another visit from Bligh and Barnes. Or worse, Whitey.

My security chief was leaning against Mona, smoking a rollie, looking like a Russian Mafioso: tatts, tight black jeans, long red hair pulled back in a ponytail, cut-off tee showing brawny arms.

I grabbed the cig from his mouth and crushed it underfoot. ‘No smoking in my place and no visitors.’

I trusted Wal, but I didn’t trust him. He hadn’t let me down – yet – but the truth was, he was a bit psycho. He wasn’t a huge guy, but he was stocky and tough and kept a kitbag full of weapons he was always eager to use. The scariest thing about Wal, though, was his lack of fear. He reminded me of Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
– sans the pretty face and shapely legs. Mel acted the half-crazy thing really well. Wal
was
the half-crazy thing.

He picked up his bags and followed me back down the driveway as meek as a lamb.

Inside my flat, I scooped all the clothes off the couch and threw them on my bed. ‘Couch is yours.’

Wal slung his bags down and then joined them.

Spotting my errant bra hanging from the window rail, I dived over and stuffed it in my jeans pocket.

‘I gotta go now, Wal,’ I said. ‘I think there’s food in the –’

But Wal was asleep; head lolling, lips puttering as he exhaled. He’d only been on his narcolepsy medication a short time and hadn’t really stablised.

I shook my head and sighed. This was turning out to be one strange day.

Chapter 4

I
CLIMBED INTO
M
ONA
and headed out for my meeting with Bolo Ignatius. I was a bit early so I thought I’d drive up to the Burger Bus near the Ocean Beach Hotel for a double meat and bacon burger. Dinner was a couple of hours away and I didn’t want my stomach gurgling through the meeting.

The OBH had long been my local pub. I’d met boyfriends there, shot pool with mates, and poured my heart out to Smitty and Bok over many a cheap scotch with beer chasers. As for half of the young people of Perth, the OBH held many memories for me, including some I wished I’d forgotten. This evening it was already filling up with its crop of beautiful young things, and I envied them their eighteen-and-anything-is-possible attitudes. At almost twenty-eight, I was still unfettered and knew I probably shouldn’t be. Where was the mortgage? And the life partner? And the kids?

Pushing my momentary life crisis to the side, I paid for the burger and decided to eat in the car park above Dog Beach. I took the beach road back north a little, and drank in the view.

Like most cities, Perth has different faces. Today, my city was all business and get on with it. The weather was shiny and crisp, with neat whitecaps on the Indian Ocean and a sharp cleansing wind. Days like this infused me with energy and made me think I could take on anyone.

I pulled into a parking bay just above Dog Beach and got out of the car to sit on my bonnet, eat and scout for Smitty and Fridge. It would be hard to miss them seeing as Fridge was the size of a Shetland pony. With the brown and white shaggy coat of a Saint Bernard and the square head of a Great Dane, he was also a kind of mutant beast.

I spotted him bounding crazily about in the sand below, chasing his ball, seagulls, anything that looked like fun.

I waved and called out to Smitty. She saw me and threw Fridge’s ball back up towards the dunes in my general direction. It landed on the rocks below where I sat.

Fridge bounded across the strip of beach and leaped effortlessly up the jagged outcrop to reclaim it. He paused at the top, his nose pricked up into the wind as he scented me. With an excited yelp, he dropped the ball and rushed at me like a bull. I reacted too slowly and he fell upon me before I could move. Giant paws knocked me on my back and gobs of stringy saliva slathered my hair. I tried to shout but a dog’s tongue the size of an Atlantic salmon muted me.

The next thing I heard was the gulping swallow of my burger disappearing into that giant mouth and gullet.

‘Fridge! Fridge!’ shouted Smitty, puffing up the rocks. ‘Bad dog! Get down!’

After a bit more remonstrating, some manoeuvring to attach his lead and some heavy-duty tugging, Fridge withdrew. Not without one final sloppy lick up the side of my neck and into my ear.

Dazed, I sat up.

‘Dammit, T, sorry about that, but you know Fridge thinks you’re cool.’

Barely restraining her laughter, Smitty handed her beach towel to me to dry off. Then she tapped Fridge on the haunches with his lead and he sat down, tongue lolling happily. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

I scraped up the remnants of my burger – now only bits of beetroot and lettuce strewn across Mona’s bonnet – with the wrapper and dumped them in a nearby bin.

‘On my way to Sable’s. Jees, Fridge.’ I wagged my finger at the unruly dog. ‘Don’t eat my food or we can’t be friends.’

He yipped.

‘I think you’d better get going before he decides he’s coming home with you,’ Smitty said.

I nodded. ‘Good idea.’

Fridge howled as I jumped into Mona and began to reverse out. The last thing I saw was him trying to haul Smitty after me. I planted my foot to make a quick escape.

Sable’s was directly behind the Stoned Crow (a place of many a cider incident in my early drinking days). My cousin Crack and his go-getting girlfriend, Sable, had bought the warehouse lease from a fashion designer wholesaler and converted the place into a slick cocktail bar. The interior was all acid-cleaned walls and plush couches. Sable’s dad was a grano-worker who’d scored her a selection of granite slabs for a low price. With the right lighting on them, the bar tops twinkled greens and pinks and reds from their black rock backgrounds. Gorgeous!

Cousin Crack was behind the bar and gave me a wave. With his long dark hair tied back in a neat ponytail and a fitted tee-shirt and jeans on, he looked like a younger version of Christian Kane. The opposite sex had always dug Crack, but he generally only had eyes for girls named Ducati, Aprilia and Honda. Until Sable came along.

Crack’s mum, Cynthia (Syn to the family, on account of some of her wilder ways), was horrified to see her son change so much. But my mother lauded Crack’s new girlfriend as having ‘whipped the fellow into shape’. That was, until she and Sable went head to head over the intricacies of making pavlova one family Christmas. Since then Sable had been relegated, along with Syn and Crack, into Joanna’s ‘tolerated’ basket.

I ducked into the ladies, washed my face and hands, then combed the Fridge-attack out of my hair, before going over to say hello.

‘Hey, Crack,’ I said, plopping myself down on a bar stool. ‘How’s it going?’

Crack pulled a dismal face. ‘Slow. Sable wants me to sell one of the bikes to pay for next month’s rent. Or get a job.’

Until he’d met Sable, Crack had lived in a large room underneath his parents’ two-storey home surrounded by the bits and pieces of his thirteen motorbikes. One time, I’d crashed on his couch after a party and managed to step in a tub of sump oil trying to find the loo in the middle of the night.

‘That bad?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Worse. We had an investor to get us over the opening hump, but they went belly up in the recession and we’ve had to borrow from the bank. Just need a bit of breathing space to get the place happening. Numbers have been pretty good but we’re carrying a shitload of bank interest that’s eating up our takings.’

My heart went out to him. Crack had never been going to amount to much before he met Sable. He thought the world of her . . . but selling one of his bikes . . . didn’t she know he’d rather sell a testicle?

‘Wish I had some money to lend you,’ I said. ‘What’re you going to do?’

He served me a glass of tequila and lime with a cute strawberry cut into a flower shape clinging to the straw. ‘Dunno. Here, it’s on the house.’

I reached into my purse and slapped some coins on the bar. ‘No way. Not with things the way they are.’

He counted the money into the till appreciatively. ‘What’s happening, anyway? How’re Joanna and Bob?’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting a guy called Bolo Ignatius here in a minute. He might have some work for me.’

Crack poised mid-count. ‘Bolo Ignatius?’

‘Yeah. You know him?’

His eye roll told me that I needed to get a brain transplant. ‘Moto-Sane Racing. Who doesn’t?’

‘What have you heard?’

‘Moto-Sane’s one of the top teams. You need a lot of money for that kinda gig. Good sponsors and a good rider. He’s got both. Do me a favour and find a way to mention my name,’ he said, pulling a business card from his wallet with his name and number underneath a Sable’s logo. ‘Or better still, introduce me.’

‘Sure, cuz.’

We touched knuckles and he mooched off down the bar to serve someone else. I dropped his card in my bag and munched my strawberry flower as I watched the door.