Salt and Blood by Peter Corris Page B

you,
I thought. ‘Okay. My guess is we’re being followed to find out where you’re living. Poor bugger’s been staking out that garage since Sunday. If we lose him or her it’s a win.’
    â€˜I thought you said it wasn’t a game.’
    One to him. I didn’t reply, trying to work out astrategy. Not too hard. I tooled along down to Brookvale, showing every sign of intending to stay on Pittwater Road to Manly. But before the fork with Condamine Street I edged over, crossed a line of traffic and took the Harbord turn-off to the east. The Santa Fe, if that’s what it was, was committed to Pittwater Road and there was no way I was going to let it pick me up again.
    â€˜That was slick,’ Rod said.
    â€˜Thanks. At least we’ve learned that whoever’s after you isn’t tied in to your brother and mother.’
    â€˜How do you figure that?’
    â€˜They’re looking for you. If they were tied in they’d already know. So it looks like you’re safe in Bondi for now.’
    â€˜I can’t stay in Bondi for the rest of my life.’
    â€˜No, but you can for a while. Get on that Malibu.’
    I drove on, working my way back to where I wanted to be and keeping a weather eye open. I ran my mind back over all I could remember of what had been said to who by whom since this business began. Something jumped into my head.
    â€˜What was all that about your agent?’
    I circled the block several times before deciding that it was safe to park at the flat. Rod Harkness was bearing up well under the pressure of being shot at and tracked. He seemed to be able to put such things aside and get on with his reading and cooking. He went out briefly around six o’clock and I thought,
Uh oh, happy hour.
But he came back with a yellow legal pad and spent a good bitof the next hour writing on the table in the living room. It was me who went out for a couple of drinks after his passable veal stroganoff.
    I sat in the bar of the Bondi Hotel watching the black and white Kiwis mix with the black and white Australians. You could distinguish them pretty well by their T-shirts—‘All Blacks’, ‘Wallabies’, ‘Sheep Fuckers’, ‘Warriors’, although there were probably some crossovers. They drank and played darts and pool and got on well for the most part under the great comradely influence of beer and tobacco. I nursed a couple of Scotches and thought over what Rod had told me about his ex-agent, Doug Schirer.
    â€˜It ended in a stand-up fight,’ Rod had said. ‘And I decked him. I was pissed of course, and Doug was a mad cokehead in those days. It was crazy, but there was a lot of money involved. And with residuals you can go on earning good dough for years if the commercial gets a long run and revivals.’
    â€˜Did yours?’ I asked.
    Rod shrugged. ‘I dunno. Everything went to shit after that and I …’
    He stopped there and I didn’t press him, not wanting to push him towards the brink again. Then he got stuck into his writing and I let it slide. But I had a few more questions in mind and thought it might be safe to put them when I got back. I’d sneaked a look at his pad when he went for a piss. He was writing a script about a wife who left her husband.
Okay,
I thought,
let’s hope writing’s as cathartic as they say it is.
    On my return, Rod glanced up from his pad and grinned at me. He looked the happiest I’d seen him. ‘You don’t have to do that, you know.’
    â€˜Do what?’
    â€˜Sneak out for a drink. I wouldn’t mind if you had a slab in the fridge and a case of Johnny Walker in your room.’
    â€˜Better safe than sorry. But are you really that clear of it?’
    â€˜I think so. Seven years. Well, no. There was that time early on, Buster Lewis got a couple of bottles smuggled in and then again when Luigi Coppola cooked up some grappa. But otherwise,