Death by the Book - Lenny Bartulin [63]
Jack finished his drink and sat back in the couch. Lois climbed onto his lap. He reached for the stereo remote, turned the sound down a couple of notches and pressed play: Sarah Vaughan, smooth and warm and perfect.
If love is good to me.
Jack listened, eyes closed. Lois purred. If love is good to me.
A late bus came by on Oxford Street before Jack could hail an available taxi. He caught it to Bondi Junction and then jumped into a cab to Double Bay. He got out on the corner of New South Head Road and Bay Street. He wanted to walk, get some air.
Dark ragged clouds swept over a bright moon. Cars and buildings looked glassy with cold. Under the streetlights, fallen wet leaves like beached fish.
Bay Street was deserted. Jack walked and looked in the windows: a real-estate agent’s, a couple of clothing stores and an antique shop with two huge terracotta pots shoulder to shoulder. One would have filled Jack’s entire apartment. Then three shops in a row, all empty, with For Lease signs hung crookedly in their windows. Unopened mail strewn under the front doors. Jack noticed more of the same further on. Closing Down Sale, 50% Off Everything, Last Days, End of Lease Bargains. Looked like the Bay had seen better days.
It began to spit. He made it to Cumberland Gardens just as the drops fattened into rain. Annabelle saw him through a window and the front door was open before he had a chance to knock.
‘Jack!’ She hugged him and then stepped back. ‘I’m so glad.’
‘I charge eighty bucks an hour. Seventy-five for cash.’ Jack smiled but he could see something was up. Her grip was tight on his hand.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
Her eyes were tired, her face pale. Her hair looked a little slept-in, loose and messy. She was dressed casually in a long, moss green, belted mohair cardigan, a pair of jeans and suede moccasins. Jack thought she had never looked more beautiful.
‘I have to show you something.’
‘What?’
‘I can’t believe it, Jack. I just can’t believe it.’
She closed the front door and led him down the hall, then left into another small corridor. They came to a pine door that had been sanded back but was yet to receive a coat of varnish. Annabelle opened it and flicked a light switch. Jack saw narrow stairs leading down below the house.
‘The cellar,’ said Annabelle.
She began to descend cautiously, side-saddle style, with one hand out against the wall. Jack followed, crouching a little beneath the low ceiling. He noticed the plaster walls had not been painted and the stairs were covered with footprints left in the plaster dust. Here and there, off-cuts of wiring and bits of timber and a few nails and screws. Jack wondered if the builder would ever be back to finish the renovation.
They reached the bottom. The air was cool and dull like paste, and smelt of dampness and wet dust. In the half-dark, Jack could see racks of wine running down either side of the rectangular room. The ceiling only cleared his head by a couple of inches. There must have been at least a thousand bottles of wine in there. And Jack doubted they were out of the bargain bin at the local liquor store.
Annabelle switched on another light. A bare globe with a metal cage around it jutted out from the middle of the ceiling. Jack thought of a torture room under a drug lord’s mansion.
‘Here,’ said Annabelle. She handed him a small key and pointed at some metal lockers that lined the rear wall. There were six of them. ‘Go and open one.’
‘What have you got for me? A body?’ As he said it, Jack realised that he was only half joking.
‘Just look.’
Jack went to the lockers. He could not help but glance at the wine bottles in their racks — the labels on one row said Penfold’s Grange 1971. Five hundred a pop, at least. Only quality hangovers for Hammond Kasprowicz.
He slipped the key into one of the middle lockers. It came open with a dull scrape of metal. Inside: books, boxes, framed photographs. Shoved in and packed tight. Jack turned and looked at Annabelle.
‘Take out one of the books.’
Jack pulled out a slim volume: The Cull by Edward Kass. He leaned