Kick Back

Ten

Sugarfoot nodded hello, keeping it cool, letting Bauer know he wasn’t fazed. He took in the dark cord trousers and the ribbed blue pullover under a short leather jacket, the pale hair cut close to the scalp, the shadows like gashes in Bauer’s hollow cheeks.

But Bauer ignored him and punched numbered keys next to the intercom. The electric lock disengaged. Bauer said, ‘Please go in, my friend.’

Sugarfoot felt like sneering. Bauer looked tough, until you heard that stupid accent. ‘Ta,’ he said, entering the front garden.

He let Bauer go ahead of him down a brick path to the front door. It was plain and solid, with no knocker or buzzer, only another set of numbered keys. Sensing movement, he glanced up. A security camera was trained on him. He looked at the windows on either side of the door. They were barred, but Sugarfoot wouldn’t mind betting there were also electric eyes everywhere. Bauer was probably like Ivan in that respect-had a consuming sense of security and survival. ‘Nice place,’ he said.

Bauer ignored him and entered another code. The front door clicked open and he stood back and said again, ‘Please go in, my friend.’

Sugarfoot stepped into the house. The hallway was cold and smelt of furniture polish. He’d barely taken two steps when he heard the click of paws on the wooden floor and a dog emerged from the shadows. It crouched, utterly still, observing him. Sugarfoot held his breath. Among the many things Ivan had warned him about was Bauer’s killer dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback. His hand slipped instinctively inside his coat.

‘Keep still,’ Bauer said softly. Then more sharply, ‘Down!’

Sugarfoot began to drop.

‘Not you,’ Bauer said, and Sugarfoot saw the dog lie flat and baleful on the floor.

‘Not a bad dog,’ Sugarfoot said.

Bauer regarded him expressionlessly for a moment and Sugarfoot wondered if he’d offended the man. ‘Don’t upset him,’ Ivan had said. ‘Just watch and learn and do as he says.’ Sugarfoot tried to meet Bauer’s eyes.

Suddenly Bauer smiled, a slight relaxation of his facial muscles, and said, ‘So. You are here to help me with your brother’s problems.’

Sugarfoot cleared his throat. ‘Ivan said this bird at Calamity Jane’s been skimming off the top.’

Bauer nodded. ‘Come in. Sit for a minute. Would you like something to drink?’

Surprised, Sugarfoot said, ‘Got any Corona?’

‘Corona,’ said Bauer oppressively.

‘Yeah, you know, it’s this beer.’

‘Sorry, no.’

‘Oh well, give us a Fosters, whatever,’ Sugarfoot said.

Bauer barked, ‘Placida!’

Sugarfoot heard footsteps. He looked along the corridor toward the back of the house. A young, dark-haired woman had appeared. She was meek and subservient and excessively still.

‘A bottle of beer for our guest. I will have mineral water.’

The woman disappeared and Sugarfoot followed Bauer into a sitting room. The carpet was sombre, the curtains thick. A massive sideboard faced a suite of black leather armchairs. There were no books or pictures, only a hunting magazine on a low glass coffee table.

Sugarfoot thought about the woman. According to Ivan, Bauer had ordered her through a mail-order bride catalogue. She was more servant than wife. Bauer kept her shut away here, dependent on him for a few dollars to send home to her family. Ivan reckoned Bauer was recreating the life he’d had in South Africa, without the risk of prosecution under some immorality act. Sugarfoot lost Ivan at that point: it all sounded complicated, like something on Sixty Minutes.

He looked at Bauer. ‘How do you reckon on doing it?’

‘Doing what?’ Bauer said.

‘Throwing a scare into this woman,’ Sugarfoot said.

Bauer held up his hand. ‘Wait.’ He looked past Sugarfoot to the door. ‘Put the drinks on the coffee table. You may listen to the radio in the kitchen.’

Jesus, Sugarfoot thought. Poor bloody bitch.

When Placida was gone, Bauer said, ‘We will go there and we will talk to her.’

He wouldn’t say more than that. Sugarfoot drank his beer quickly, wanting to get this over with. You don’t exactly yarn over a beer with the Bauers of this world.

Sugarfoot found it all a bit shadowy. He knew that Bauer worked for the Sydney outfit, which had fingers in several pies-drugs, gambling, kickbacks, places like Calamity Jane’s- but he couldn’t quite work out the chain of command. Bauer was sort of in charge, but you wouldn’t exactly call Ivan a member of staff. He had money invested with them and he managed some rackets for them. The only explanation Ivan would give him was that, in this game, the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and you don’t ask questions.

Sugarfoot put down his glass. Bauer said immediately, ‘We will go now.’

Sugarfoot drove them in his Customline. As they wound through the streets of St Kilda, he dropped a few leading remarks about the V8, the restoration job, where to go for a good rechroming, but Bauer ignored him.

So he raised the Calamity Jane job again, approaching it sideways. ‘There was this bloke,’ he said, ‘I put the frights on a couple of year ago, before I started working with Ivan. Anyway, he threatens to go to the jacks. I said, mention my fucking name, mate, and you’re dead. I said, if you go to the cops, I’ll come in your bedroom and kill you while you sleep. That’s fear for you, going to bed not knowing if you’ll see the morning. I go, I’ll burn you and all your family, me, personally. You, I said, your daughters, especially your daughters, plus that slag you’re married to, every one of youse. I said, you got to sleep sometime, pal, you can’t fucking stay awake twelve months of the year. Work it out for yourself, I said. What’s more important, keeping up your payments or waking up one morning with a hole in your head?’ He paused. ‘Worked,’ he said, nodding his head.

There was silence. Bauer stirred. He said deadeningly, ‘You talk too much.’

Yeah well, fuck you. Sugarfoot cornered the Customline and pulled up at the kerb. Calamity Jane’s resembled a western bordello, complete with a red clapboard facade and Wild West decor and writing. On summer nights the girls lounged on the iron lace balcony in saloon-style garters, ribbons and corsets, hooting invitations to passing men and insults at women. A number of signs were tacked to the wall near the front door: ‘Private Suites’, ‘Adult Movies’, ‘B amp;D’, ‘Waterbeds’. The word ‘Aids’ in ‘Sex Aids’ had been painted out and the word ‘Appliances’ substituted. Sugarfoot had an image of doing it with a Mixmaster.

They went in. There was nobody in the front room. Whenever he came here for a freebie, Sugarfoot tried to place the smells: cheap perfume, cleaning fluids, incense, no trouble there, but under it all was a faint, troubling smell he supposed was sex itself.

‘Yes, gentlemen?’

They turned around. A young Thai woman stood in the doorway of a room along the corridor. Then she recognised them and her professional expression disappeared and she looked afraid.

‘We want to see Ellie,’ Bauer said.

She went upstairs. Two minutes later a well-dressed, middle-aged woman came slowly down the stairs. She stopped on the last step, saw Bauer, and paled.

‘We want to talk to you,’ Bauer said.

She looked at them, nodded briefly, and turned to go up again. They followed her to a room at the back. It was furnished with a king-size waterbed, angled mirrors and a mohair rug. A small open door revealed an ensuite bathroom.

Bauer turned to Sugarfoot, said, ‘Do not speak. Do not interfere, just watch,’ and pushed the woman onto the bed.

Sugarfoot watched him take a thin nylon rope from his pocket. He bound the woman’s ankles and wrists, bent back her knees, and looped a noose around her neck. If she struggled or straightened her legs a fraction, the noose would tighten and slowly strangle her. Even as Sugarfoot watched, the woman began to choke. She struggled against it, which only increased the risk.

Bauer placed his face near hers. ‘You are dirt,’ he said. ‘You are nothing. You have been extracting a percentage for yourself each week, am I right?’

Sugarfoot gathered from the woman’s noises that she was assenting. He saw that she had wet herself.

‘We are short by seven thousand dollars,’ Bauer said. ‘You will repay that, with interest, yes?’

Again the woman gurgled.

‘You will work for it, here,’ Bauer went on. ‘Yes?’

The woman nodded her head, moved her legs, and blacked out.

‘Release her,’ Bauer said.

Sugarfoot bent down and fumbled at the knots, feeling oddly disturbed and excited by the coldness, the professionalism. Bauer was mad, no risk, but Jesus, he knew his stuff.

He heard taps being turned on in the ensuite bathroom. Bauer was washing his hands.