Peter Corris is best known as the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction through his Cliff Hardy detective stories.

Deep Water

By Peter Corris

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2009 Peter Corris
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74175-677-7
CHAPTER 1

I woke up in an intensive care unit in San Diego, California. It was a beautiful day — the blue sky San Diego was famous for filled the window. But any day would have been beautiful because I was alive.

‘Mr Hardy,’ the tall, tanned man in the white coat said, ‘how do you feel?’

‘As if I’ve been hit by a truck. What happened?’

He reached for my hand and shook it in a firm but cautious grip. ‘I’m Doctor Henry Pierce. I’m a cardiac surgeon.’

‘Yes?’

He flipped through some notes in a ring-bind folder. ‘It seems you were walking along our pier —’ he said it the way a Sydneysider might say our harbour bridge — ‘and you bent to pick something up, or move it aside.’

‘I remember. A box of bait,’ I said, ‘heavier than I expected.’

‘You stood, shouted and then fell headlong. You suffered a head wound but, more importantly, a massive coronary occlusion.’

I heard what he said, but I was groggy, with some pain and discomfort in my upper body, and I had trouble taking it in. ‘I was looking for Frankie Machine,’ I said.

‘Excuse me?’

I sucked in air with some difficulty, as if my ribs were preventing me from filling my lungs, but I grasped his meaning. ‘Doesn’t matter, Doctor. A heart attack, you’re saying. What am I looking at — medication, that balloon thing and the bit of plastic?’

He smiled. Dr Pierce had the sort of urbanity that goes with skill, success and money. ‘Mr Hardy,’ he said, ‘you’ve already had a quadruple heart bypass procedure.’

Over the next few days, Dr Pierce, cardiologist Dr Epstein and a nurse helped me to piece it together. I’d been very lucky, especially considering the strictures of the US health system. One, I’d been carrying my passport and my wallet with a fair amount of cash in it, a Wells Fargo ATM card and a card showing my top level of medical insurance in Australia. Two, an off-duty paramedic had been fishing near where I fell and knew what to do. He got my heart started and I was in the hospital hooked up to machines within half an hour.

The diagnosis was unambiguous: a major blockage in a crucial area. My daughter Megan’s name was in the passport as the person to contact in an emergency. They called her. I wasn’t in a condition to sign consent forms, immunity undertakings, stuff like that. They got her OK, prepared me, took a punt on things like my susceptibility to medications, unzipped me and got to work.

‘It was a four-hour operation,’ Dr Pierce said. ‘Pretty simple really, and very satisfactory. I was able to use the two arteries in your chest, which gives the grafts a longer lease of life, and I only needed a bit of vein from your upper leg to complete the …’

‘Re-plumbing,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘If you like. The internal structure of your heart was very sound so I was able to make good, solid grafts. You’ll make a full recovery. In fact I think you’ll feel a new surge of energy. You were quite fit apart from the damage to your heart. What sports d’you play?’

‘I used to box and surf. Haven’t done much lately. I walk a lot, play a bit of tennis. Go to the gym when I’m at home.’

‘Keep it all up. It stood you in good stead. I see that you were in the military.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Wounds.’

‘I got those mostly in civilian life. I was a private detective.’

He shook his well-groomed head. ‘I can’t think of a worse post-operative occupation.’

‘I don’t do it anymore. Aren’t I a bit young for this? My check-ups were always OK.’

‘It was almost certainly congenital. You must have had a propensity for a cholesterol accumulation to sneak up on you. Still, you’re right. This sort of event often needs a trigger, other than the last physical effort you made. This is a research interest of mine. I believe emotional factors play a part. Have you had a major emotional upset in recent times?’

My lover, Lily Truscott, had been shot dead in Sydney five months before, shattering some dreams and half-formed plans. I’d played an unofficial part in the investigation that led to the conviction of the killer. There was some satisfaction in that, but I’d stepped on a lot of toes and crossed over some hard and fast police lines. There was no chance I’d ever be licensed as a private investigator in New South Wales again. You could say I’d taken two hard knocks — one personal, one professional — and that wouldn’t come anywhere close to describing the emptiness I’d felt.

I’d come to the US to help Tony Truscott, Lily’s brother, prepare for a fight in Reno leading to the WBA welter-weight boxing title. He won. I’d trained hard with Tony, maybe overstretching myself. The loss of Lily was like a constant ache so maybe Dr Pierce’s research had something to it, but I wasn’t about to become one of his subjects. Congenital would do me — I could blame my father. Put it on the list of my other gripes against him.

‘My father died in his fifties,’ I said.

Dr Pierce looked disappointed but clicked his pen and made a note. ‘There you are.’

Megan arrived three days after the operation. She looks like me — dark, tallish, beaky-nosed. She bustled into my room, bent over and kissed me hard on both cheeks.

‘Hi, Cliff. Sorry it took a while. Complications.’

‘Good to see you, love. You said the right things when it counted.’

‘Shit, I couldn’t believe it — Mr Fitness.’

‘Not really, as it turned out. What complications? You and Simon?’

It was spring in Sydney, fall in California. Megan had dressed for somewhere in between, which was about right. She ran her fingers through her hair, a mannerism she’d inherited from her mother, before answering. ‘Kaput. History. Not a problem.’

‘I’m sorry. He seemed OK. You all right?’

‘I’m better than all right. So, I saved your life, did I? That makes us even.’

I hadn’t even known about Megan until my wife Cyn was dying and told me about her. Cyn was pregnant when we split and put the child out for adoption without telling me. Fair enough — back then I would’ve been the world’s worst parent. Megan had tracked Cyn down when she was close to the end. She was keeping bad company and I took her clear of that. I hadn’t exactly saved her life, but I’d stayed in her corner ever since. So we’d each been there for the other, and the feeling was good.

‘The thing is, what’s to be done with you? What’s the drill?’

‘They’ll keep me hooked up like this for a while, they say, checking on the ticker and other things. Then they’ll get me moving. A week at the most in the hospital and then out.’

‘Jeez, that’s quick. What’ll you do then?’

‘First thing — have a decent meal and a drink.’

‘I’d have guessed that. Then what?’

‘I don’t think I’m supposed to fly for a bit. I like this place from what I’ve seen of it, and I have to stay in touch with the doctors and the physios for a while. How long can you stay?’

She shrugged. ‘A week, I guess, ten days.’

Megan and I never pressed each other for details.

‘Maybe you could line me up a furnished flat to rent for a month. Somewhere near the beach. Use it yourself to start with.’

I told her where my cash card was and the PIN. She gathered her bag and the discarded jacket and vest. ‘I’ll get right on it. Anything you want now?’

‘A Sydney paper.’

I walked the corridors, did the exercises, took the medications.

Progressively, drains, canulas and the heart monitor were removed. They x-rayed and ultrasounded me and pronounced me fit to leave the hospital. I had leaflets on cardiac rehabilitation, diet and lifestyle choices. Appointments with the various medicos had been lined up. I thanked everyone who’d treated me. It cost eight hundred dollars to get out of the hospital — my meals and phone calls — but they assured me that the health insurance would take care of the rest. I’d resented paying the insurance for decades but now, not wanting to even think about what American surgeons and anaesthetists charged — I was grateful.

Megan picked me up in the car she’d hired. I wore the clothes I’d been wearing for my walk on the pier, the only difference being knee-length elastic stockings to combat the danger of post-operative blood clots. Outside, in the car park, I sucked in the first free-range, non-conditioned air in ten days. It had a touch of the sea in it as well as the ever-present American smell of petrol. My chest felt tight, my legs felt weak, my breathing felt shallow but I felt great. Megan stowed my bag and helped me into the car without any fuss.

She drove straight to a bar more or less attached to the marina. It had an outdoor area with tables shaded by umbrellas. The air was salty; surf beat on the sand; close your eyes, ignore the accents, and you could have been in a Manly beer garden. Megan ordered a pitcher of light beer.

‘It’s even more pissy than at home,’ she said. ‘But I thought you should start quietly. Would you believe I had to show ID to get a drink in here the other night? What’s the legal drinking age — thirty?’

The beer came. I poured; we touched glasses. ‘I think it’s twenty-one,’ I said. ‘Be glad you don’t look your age.’

‘You look OK, Cliff. A bit pale.’

‘I’ll sit in the sun and clean my gun.’

‘You’re going to miss it, aren’t you?’

The beer was thin and sweet but it still had enough bite to feel like a drink, a return to one of the great consolations of life. ‘I suppose I will, but in a way this could be some sort of signal. Time for a change.’

‘You’ve had a few of them — banned for life and … Lily.’

‘Shit’s like luck, someone told me. It comes in threes.’

Megan had found a first-floor serviced apartment in a small block on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach. It cost a lot, but Lily had left half of everything she had to me. Her house in Greenwich was worth close to a million and she had some blue chip shares. Even after the lawyers and financial advisers had taken their bites, Tony and I were left comfortably fixed. I’d given Megan a substantial deposit on a flat in Newtown but left before I heard what she’d bought. Along with the money I inherited some guilt, because I’d never known that Lily had made that gesture.

‘One floor up,’ Megan said as she keyed in at the security door. ‘Gives you a bit of a view and you said they want you climbing stairs.’

‘Right, and one flight sounds about enough just now.’

The flat had two bedrooms, a sitting room, bathroom and kitchen, all fitted out in US modern. There was a big fridge, a microwave, cable TV and DVD player and recorder. Sliding glass doors opened onto a balcony that gave me a view of the pier, the beach and the Pacific Ocean. That helped to make the price very reasonable.

‘I stocked the fridge and the cupboards,’ Megan said. ‘You’ve got a month with an option to extend. How d’you like it?’

I put my arm around her broad shoulders and kissed the top of her head, which wasn’t very far down. ‘You done good,’ I said.

‘A woman comes in to clean every second day unless you put a notice on the door that you don’t want it. All paid for.’

‘I’ll have to try and make it worth her while. Grot the place up a bit.’

Her look and tone were severe. ‘Don’t skite. The way you are, you couldn’t make the bed.’

That’s Megan.

They’d told me that I’d be exhausted on my day of release. I wasn’t. We went out for lunch and then I was. I slept for a couple of hours and then went through the tedious process of the exercises. Arms up, deep breaths, rotate shoulders — again and again and again. And then it was on to the bloody nozzle and ball game — three balls inside plastic tubes. Suck to get them moving.

Megan laughed as she saw me struggle to hold the balls in suspension. On the third try I kept them up longer than I had in the hospital.

‘Hey, that’s pretty good.’

‘I’m going to try out for the bypass Olympics.’

She stayed for three days — cooked me up some meals — bolognese sauce, a couple of hot curries, a stroganov — and froze them. I didn’t ask her about the break-up with her boyfriend, but she volunteered that she’d be moving into the Newtown flat as soon as she got back. Who with? I wanted to say but I didn’t. Maybe no one, and she’d tell me when she was ready. I thanked her too often, tried to give her some money, which she refused, and saw her off.

I settled into a regime of walks, exercises, more walks, more exercises. At first I was slow, doing not much more than a shuffle, but, as the physios had promised, improvement came rapidly. After two weeks I discarded the elastic stockings and was walking pretty freely. I stayed on flat surfaces for a while, then gradually tried myself on small inclines. In the beginning I had to stand still to allow the ubiquitous rollerbladers to avoid me, but eventually I was nimble enough to avoid them. If there was a better place for rehabilitation than San Diego, I didn’t know it. The temperature hovered around the seventies in the day and there was a sea breeze at night. It didn’t rain.

I had some blood tests and reported to Dr Epstein who expressed his satisfaction.

‘You’re making remarkable progress. Blood pressure good, rhythm excellent, rate the same. Your heart is functioning really well. Cholesterol’s coming back into line. You’ll have to stay on the medications for the rest of your life. You realise that, don’t you?’

‘Doesn’t worry me,’ I said. ‘Just to have a rest of my life’s the bonus.’

‘I’ll refer you to a man in Sydney for you to stay in touch with.’

Dr Epstein put his hand on my chest and ordered me to cough.

‘That sternum’s solid,’ he said. ‘You can do pretty much anything you did before. You worked out, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Nothing too solid.’

‘Give it another couple of weeks and get back to it. You’re going to feel ten years younger.’

So apparently I could get back to normal life. But what was that, with my career as a private enquiry agent effectively brought to a full stop? I put such thoughts on hold as I went about the rehabilitation full steam. Ocean Beach pier, the structure everyone is so proud of, is about a mile and a half long, taking in the main length and the two cross pieces — a perfect walking track with interesting things to look at along the way: the Vietnamese men and women, fishing for food, with their basic equipment; the others, for sport, with their high-tech rods and reels; the professionals in their high-powered boats. At the right times of day the bodysurfers were out and the windsurfers and the board riders.

It was the longest I’d ever stayed in one place in the US and I found it growing on me. Almost everything was commercialised, privatised, corporatised, except the people. They came in all shapes and sizes and colours and varied from aggressive semi-sociopaths to the utterly normal men and women you can find anywhere. Television was appalling, but books were cheap.

After a few days of walking the pier I had people to nod to — the guy from the bait shop, the professional photographer, other walkers. Then I met, or re-met, Margaret McKinley.

CHAPTER 2

I was sitting on a bench near the end of the pier reading. Megan had left a pile of paperbacks she’d picked up and one was The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. I was keen to read it because, in a way, Winslow had brought me to San Diego. His book, The Winter of Frankie Machine, was one of the best crime novels I’d ever read, and the description of the San Diego waterfront was so graphic and compelling I’d taken it into my head to go there as I slowly wended my way back up the west coast towards a flight to Australia. In the book, Frankie Machine ran the bait shop on the pier. The area had lived up to the description and it was lucky for me I’d been there when I had the heart attack. If I’d been driving around LA, as I was a few days before, things could have been very different.

‘Hello, Mr Hardy.’

I looked up from the book. The woman standing in front of me was familiar, but I couldn’t place her.’

‘Nurse Margaret McKinley,’ she said.

I half rose in the polite, meaningless way my generation was taught to do, but she put a hand on my shoulder to interrupt the movement.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise you out of uniform.’

‘Understandable, a uniform’s the best disguise there is, they say. May I sit down?’

I shuffled along, although there was plenty of room. ‘Of course.’

‘You look very well,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen you here before.’

‘I walk the line,’ I said.

She smiled, took the book and examined it. ‘Ah, that explains it.’

‘What?’

‘What you said to Dr Pierce when you were coming to the surface. You said you were looking for Frankie Machine. We were puzzled. I see it’s another title by this writer. I gather the book’s set here.’

(Continues…)Excerpted from Deep Water by Peter Corris. Copyright © 2009 Peter Corris. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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