Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

CHAPTER FOUR

Midnight, she came out into the foyer and smiled warmly when she saw me. ‘It’s good to see you, Rex,’ she said and tucked her arm firmly into mine. ‘How is the hangover?’

‘Fine,’ I said. We walked out to the car. I started the engine.

‘Rex,’ she said, ‘I want you to take me to a party.’

‘I’m easy,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’

‘In the carnival ground,’ she said. I felt something hard press into my ribs and looked down. She was holding a gun. ‘Please don’t be difficult, Rex,’ she said. ‘I like you – I really do. I’d hate to have to shoot you.’

We reached the carnival ground twenty minutes later. The shows were all shut down and the last few people were leaving. I drove down the lane and she told me to stop outside the Harem Girls’ Hall. Tyson was waiting there. He also had a gun in his hand.

‘Good work,’ he said to Katherine. ‘Sorry to bring you out this late, Mr Kaufman, but we wanted to ask you some questions. Follow me.’

We went across the stage and down to the back of the tent. Waiting there were the two guys who’d picked a fight with me the day before. Tyson went over to a large wooden box standing in the corner and lifted the lid. I looked down at the corpse of Joh

‘Since you left him on our doorstep this morning,’ Tyson said, ‘we thought you might like to tell us why.’

‘I thought he belonged to you,’ I said, ‘so I returned him.’

‘I can assure you, Mr Kaufman,’ there was an edge to his voice, ‘I am not in the mood for jokes! Rudolph and Hans over there,’ he looked at the two hoods, ‘are both itching to lay their hands on you! You can either answer my questions sensibly, or I’ll turn you over to them.’

‘He was shot in my apartment,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who by. He was standing there talking to me one moment and the next moment he was dead. I never saw who killed him. By the time I got outside into the corridor, the elevator was on the way down.’

Tyson sniffed. ‘Why did you bring him here?’

‘I thought he belonged here,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want him and he had always said you were a great friend of his.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘To be strictly truthful, his wife gave me your name. She’d seen a receipt for two hundred bucks signed in your name.’

‘Wife?’ Tyson repeated. ‘What story is this? Brent never had any wife!’

I began to feel awfully tired. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this dame came to see me, said she was Brent’s wife and he was missing and would I find him for her. She told me about that receipt, that he used to go to the Green Dragon a lot and there was a name written on a piece of paper.’

‘Cielli?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

Tyson paced up and down. ‘Brent had no wife!’ he said harshly.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said. ‘I tried to contact her this afternoon at the address she gave me. No one had been there for the last two days. A Miss Jones, who sounded awfully like the Mrs Brent I knew, had the apartment for one day.’

Tyson stopped and looked at me. ‘Your story is too stupid to be anything else but the truth,’ he said.

‘Perhaps, now I think of it, it is just as well you did put Brent’s body outside here last night.’

‘I’m so glad you’re happy,’ I said.

Katherine lit a cigarette. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

‘We can get rid of Brent’s body,’ Tyson said, ‘that is one thing for sure.’ He looked at me again. ‘Kaufman is a problem. I am not sure about him.’

‘Don’t hurt him,’ Katherine pouted. ‘I like him.’

Tyson started pacing up and down the room again. ‘Why were you snooping around the carnival?’ he asked. ‘Who hired you to do that?’

‘The dame who called herself Mrs Brent,’ I told him. ‘She wanted me to find her husband – she said.’

‘You’re lying! You were snooping before that.’

‘Dusberg wants to get the carnival off the lot,’ I said. ‘He hired me to find out why everyone stays here when they don’t make any dough.’

‘And have you found out why?’

‘Not yet,’ I gri

He snorted and went on pacing. ‘Tyson,’ I said, ‘I’ve got something in my wallet that might interest you.’

He stopped pacing and looked at me. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Information,’ I said. I put my hand up casually inside my jacket. Just a bunch of amateurs – they hadn’t even looked to see if I had a gun. I brought my hand away with the.32 in it. ‘Drop it!’ I told Katherine.

She didn’t need to be told twice. I swung the.32 in a short arc which covered the lot of them. Tyson glared at Katherine. ‘Now it’s my turn to ask some questions,’ I said. ‘Just why does everyone stay here and lose dough?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said.

‘You can tell me or I ring the cops and tell them I’ve just found you with Brent’s corpse,’ I said. ‘Take your choice.’

‘Ring them!’ Tyson said loftily. ‘Brent was murdered in your apartment, remember?’

I was remembering. I was remembering the drunk who had helped me put Brent into the car. Sober, he’d remember. I was remembering that probably Brent’s fingerprints were all over my apartment.

‘Why don’t you ring them?’ Tyson jeered.

I hooked Katherine’s gun closer to me, picked it up and put it in my pocket. ‘You’re coming with me,’ I told her. I looked at the others. ‘Anyone tries to follow me and they’ll collect lead!’

I told her to drive back to her own apartment. When we got there I closed the door behind me, then locked it. I put the.32 back into the holster and gave her gun back to her.

‘How deep are you in this thing?’ I asked her.

‘Pretty deep,’ she admitted.

‘It’s going to blow up,’ I told her. ‘It’s starting now – you want to get out?’

‘How can I get out?’ she asked.

‘Maybe I could get you out,’ I said. ‘If you told me what you know I could put you on a fast train tonight to somewhere a long way away. When this thing blows up, people will be too busy to worry where you are.’

‘It’s not so easy as that,’ she shuddered. ‘Wherever I went to, Cielli would find me. You don’t know that man!’

‘I don’t even want to know him!’ I said.

A gun pressed hard into my back. ‘Now is that polite?’ a suave voice asked. I didn’t move. ‘That’s being sensible,’ the voice went on.

‘How did you get in here?’ Katherine whispered.

‘I was early,’ he said, ‘and I thought I might spend the evening with you, but you were out. So I waited. When I realised that someone was with you, I hid in the kitchen and listened to the conversation. Very interesting! Just exactly who is this man?’

‘He’s Rex Kaufman, a private detective,’ she said.

‘Really?’ The gun was removed from my back and he walked round in front of me, a tall, lean character with deep-set grey eyes and a hard jaw. He looked tougher than the rest of the bunch put together. Then he frisked me expertly and removed the.32 from my holster.

Katherine looked at him with fear in her eyes. ‘You didn’t take me seriously when I was talking to him, did you?’ she asked. ‘I was only kidding him along. He brought me here with a gun poked in my ribs.’

She told him the story as I had told it to Tyson. He listened carefully. ‘A blonde with her hair in short curls around her head?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me,’ he frowned.

I was getting tired of watching them. ‘If you’re all through with me, I think I’ll be going home,’ I said.

‘I don’t think so, Mr Kaufman,’ Cielli said courteously. ‘I’m afraid you seem to have had too much success with your snooping. I think you’re going to have to stick around for a while.’ He turned to Katherine. ‘I think we had better go and see Tyson. That body must be got rid of correctly.’

It was just after two in the morning when we grouped ourselves in the Harem Girls’ Hall again. Cielli had a look at the corpse. ‘I’m sorry for Joh