Two

Billie stepped off the tram on Parramatta Road in Stanmore and took in the sounds of the summer evening: cicadas singing, dogs barking, children playing.

Her trench coat was over her arm. The breeze was refreshing, and she stood for a moment as it gently lifted her wavy hair from her neckline, wondering if Sam had already found the missing boy, Adin Brown, laid up in one of the city hospitals. This was her last stop before a reheated dinner and a date with the death house. It might sound grim on paper, but in fact she felt quite buoyed untangling the pieces of this new puzzle. She liked puzzles. Particularly the paid kind.

Since Netanya Brown walked out of her office some hours earlier, she’d been working through the list of Adin’s close friends. So far the work had been singularly uneventful, yet Billie was rarely happier than when embarking on a new investigation, hunting down the answers to a mystery or the hidden details of some story she knew she could break open. It was true that her cases were often frustratingly small, involving domestic and sometimes depressing issues, but she was her own boss and that counted for a lot. The banality of much of the work did not dampen her spirits. And as for returning to work as a reporter—something she’d given considerable thought to before taking over her father’s inquiry agency—the Sydney newspapers had dismissed most of their women reporters home once the men started to return from the war, or else confined them to the social pages, or covering the Easter Show, which was a bit too steep a downgrade for Billie after she’d chased Nazi activity across Europe, built a good portfolio of published articles, and worked alongside the likes of Lee Miller and Clare Hollingworth. No, she wouldn’t last in that kind of work. It was an imperfect world, and her chosen profession was decidedly imperfect, but for now she had a hint of that spark again, that sense of doing something that mattered to someone. In these moments she felt that answers could be just around the next corner. This had been true whenever she’d been assigned a new story in Europe, and it was true now that she was funneling those skills into her work as a private investigator in the city of her birth. Perhaps it was something in the blood, but launching into a case excited her more than any ticket to the pictures. In that respect she was her father’s daughter.

Let’s hope this kid knows something.

In the past two hours Billie had ticked off the first two friends on the list Mrs. Brown had given her. One boy had convincingly sworn that he hadn’t seen Adin in more than a week, and the other friend hadn’t seen him since Saturday. Neither had thought anything was amiss until Adin’s mother had rung them and asked if they’d seen him. With Billie’s arrival, they seemed genuinely concerned. Having a PI on the case made it more real, more pressing. So far, everything she’d learned had confirmed what Mrs. Brown had told her, and that left this third friend, Maurice, who she hoped would have something helpful to say and would not already be out on the town this early Friday evening.

She turned a corner, then checked the leather-bound notebook in her hand. Yes, this was it—a narrow two-story brick terrace just a couple of blocks from the tramline on the main road. The homes on this stretch of Corunna Road were crammed together, as if they had been constructed in the middle of space-poor London. Still, the overall effect was charming. As Billie approached the house where Adin’s friend Maurice lived, she could see that plenty of work went into keeping the small front garden neat, sweeping the steps, and keeping up the potted plants by the door, but the exterior was in dire need of a fresh coat of white paint, and the balcony railings looked unstable. She moved slowly up the little path and knocked on the front door with a gloved hand. A dog barked somewhere, and Billie adjusted a hairpin, listening for movement inside the house.

After a moment, she heard footsteps. It was a young man who opened the door. He was no more than twenty, long-lashed, and lean, almost skinny, and he wore his trousers rolled at the cuff to show white socks above his loafers. His single-pocket shirt was unbuttoned at the top. Billie guessed that he’d spent a fair bit of time on his hair, which was side parted in the standard way, but a bit wavy and long on top, while short at the back and sides. It was the latest style for a certain kind of Sydney boy, some of whom liked the top to sit up even higher. The style was no good for wearing hats, and Billie imagined he didn’t don one often. Doubtless he had a comb in his back pocket, because he’d need it.

“Maurice?” He looked her up and down, surprised that she wanted him. “I’m Billie Walker.” She flashed him a business card. “Glad to know you. I’d like to speak to you about your friend Adin Brown,” she explained, pushing the card into his palm.

He looked panicked for a moment, his deep brown eyes wide, and he drifted back from the door a touch and then read her card and nodded, as if having decided something. “Mum, I’m heading out to the shop. Be back shortly,” he called loudly and stepped outside onto the path, shutting the door behind him.

“I don’t want any trouble. My ma’s a bit deaf but she’s not stupid.”

Billie followed him, intrigued, keeping pace as he led her toward the street corner at Northumberland, out of the line of sight of the house. The sun was still up, but the shadows were lengthening and the shadows had eyes, she sensed. A group of boys was watching from the side of a terrace home on the opposite side of the street, their faces stacked like a totem pole, and when she turned her gaze in their direction they vanished like apparitions. Billie turned her attention back to her subject but thought fleetingly about how she’d sent Sam off to check the hospitals, leaving her without a strong arm in a neighborhood that was now feeling less tame than she remembered before the war. All those absent fathers and tales of war seemed to have done the local boys little good, and she was pleased with her last-minute decision to slip her little Colt 1908 pocket semiautomatic into her garter. It was hand-size and factory nickel-plated, with shining mother-of-pearl grips, and came with a sweet little soft suede change-purse pouch, which was attractive but not easy to access if one was in a hurry. The thigh garter she had sewn herself for the purpose of holding the diminutive thirteen-ounce pistol worked nicely by comparison and could be worn under most of her clothes, as it was today. The gun had been a gift from her mother, who was not stupid, either. It would take Billie only a few seconds to have it comfortably in her hand.

“I’m not trouble,” she said soothingly to the boy as they neared the corner, trying to ease his nerves, or perhaps her own, though the statement wasn’t strictly true if history was anything to go by. She and trouble knew each other pretty well. “I know you told Mrs. Brown that you haven’t seen Adin, but I wanted to ask you personally to hear your side of things.”

“Why do I have to have a side?”

“Surely you absorb information and form views like any thinking young man in this state,” she answered.

Her interview subject narrowed his eyes. “You’re not a cop?” he asked accusingly, slowing down to scowl prettily and dart his eyes from side to side to see if they were being watched, which of course they were. Billie wasn’t sure if he wanted to be seen with her or not; it seemed even odds.

“Do I look like a police officer to you?” she asked him, in response to which he looked her over from heel to hat, and took his time about it. Yes, he knew he was pretty. This boy was different from the other two. He was older and had more edge.

“No, lady, I can’t say as you do,” he finally decided, having finished his appraisal at her expressionless red lips. He paused, eyes still fixed on her mouth. “But they’ve been recruiting them lately. I read about it in the paper.”

At this, Billie had to resist rolling her eyes. In ’41, when the panic set in about a lack of able men, the New South Wales Police had added six women officers to the force, bringing the grand total to a mere fourteen in the state. But now Premier McKell had approved an increase in the number of female cops to thirty-six, and the papers were going mad with the idea, as if the fairer sex might suddenly take over the entire force, leaving men out of work or even, heaven forbid, waiting for their dinners, despite the fact that married women weren’t being accepted anyhow. Billie was on a first-name basis with the famous Special Sergeant (First Class) Lillian Armfield, who had joined the force in 1915, and through her knew well enough the struggle. The female recruits hadn’t even uniforms and weren’t paid overtime like the men; nor were they entitled to a pension. They had to sign contracts stating that they wouldn’t be compensated for any injuries suffered in the line of duty, couldn’t join the police association, and had to resign if they married—one of the reasons Lillian never had. With all that, it was a wonder so many women were keen to sign up, but the applications always far outnumbered the spaces allotted. The relationship between the police and private inquiry agents was sometimes fraught, but Billie had her contacts, as her father had before her. But a cop? No, a cop she was certainly not.

“I assure you I’m not a newly recruited officer of the law,” Billie said, placing a hand on her hip as his eyes followed the movement, “and if you’re a good boy I suspect you’ll never meet one of those fine women.” If he was a good boy, he at least wanted to be bad; that much was clear.

“You look more like you could be in the pictures,” he said.

“Well, we’re not shooting any Hollywood pictures in Stanmore today,” she said flatly, not interested in his flattery.

They walked on for another minute or two, their route taking them almost in a loop. Curtains parted in a house across the street and a silver-haired lady looked out at them, her nose to the window glass. One more block and Maurice finally stopped. Billie noticed a milk bar farther along the street, close to where she’d stepped off the tram, and saw a small group of children who seemed to be sharing a treat of some kind. Another set of curtains rippled; this time a dark-haired youth poked his head out of a window to stare at them. They might have been far from where Maurice’s mother could see them, but plenty of others were having a gander. Billie suspected Maurice was enjoying the scrutiny, and her patience was wearing thin, but she needed patience if she was to get anything out of this boy.

“When did you last see Adin, Maurice? Can you remember what he said, what he was doing, and how you parted company?” She stopped and flashed one of her professional smiles. He seemed to like that. “It’s important.”

He considered something for a long time, hands in his pockets. His brown eyes flicked from place to place. “I don’t know . . .” he finally mumbled.

Billie waited out an awkward minute, the boy now staring at his shoes. With an inward sigh, she slipped him a shilling—did it as smoothly as a magician. He recognized the feel of it immediately and it seemed to jog his memory. Funny that.

“Look, lady, I haven’t seen Adin, just like I told Mrs. Brown. But I think I might know where he’s been.”

“Go on,” she encouraged him, offering another smile.

“Last time I saw him, he was hanging around The Dancers.”

The Dancers? That was a club off George Street, near the Trocadero. It was a far smaller and more exclusive joint than the Troc, and the cream of Sydney society liked to wine and dine there and catch the acts that came through. They had some international performers and a nice little dance floor, and there was a fair bit of glamour about the place. It had white tablecloths and waiters in bow ties and was the sort of joint where judges and gangsters might be spotted in the same room together. It was strictly for the high end of town. Unless a lot had changed since she’d last been there, it wasn’t for the likes of kids with baby pompadours and tough-guy aspirations.

Billie got an inkling as to Maurice’s reluctance to mention the club. “I’m not here because Adin might have been taking grog, Maurice. And what you imbibe is not my business.”

His shoulders dropped a touch. “His old woman doesn’t know. She wouldn’t like it.” He said the words with a shake of his head.

Billie was sure he was right about that. But even if she didn’t find it hard to imagine Adin having liquor at his age—plenty of kids not much older than him had been shot to pieces at Normandy or worked to death on the Burma Railway, but a dash of spirits was somehow off-limits—she was having trouble imagining where a kid would get the kind of money needed to get about in a joint like The Dancers. Even if he had a dinner jacket, and a fine one at that, he likely wouldn’t have got far at that sort of club.

“Look, it’s not my kind of joint, but Adin was keen as mustard. We made it in the door one time, and ended up out on our ears in minutes; we barely got up the stairs, but he was obsessed. Dunno why. He kept wanting to go back in. The doormen knew we didn’t have a brass razoo . . . There was no foolin’ ’em.” He paused. “Well, there was one guy who seemed sympathetic, but it was pointless.” He scuffed at the footpath with one loafer. “Yeah, like I said, not my kind of joint.”

“Someone was sympathetic?” Billie prompted him.

“One of the doormen. Adin spoke with him.”

“What did this doorman look like?”

“Ahhh, long face.” Maurice pulled at his chin. “Very skinny young bloke,” he stressed. “A wog, I think. About yea high.”

“I see,” Billie said, ignoring the slur. “Do you know what triggered Adin’s interest? A girl, perhaps?”

“Maybe, but like I said, I dunno.” He shrugged, and she felt a stab of annoyance. The Dancers had some glamorous acts, but if Adin was interested in someone it was more likely one of the cigarette girls. Perhaps he’d made a connection, or was trying to.

“How long ago was this?” Billie asked.

“Last weekend. I left him to it. Had a bit of a falling out over it, to be honest. I didn’t want to keep hanging around there getting snubbed like some lowlife when we could get into the Troc, no worries. I ain’t seen him since.”

Same with the rest of his friends, Billie thought. But he had gone home, because he’d only been missing two days, not six. “Is it usual for you two to have a ‘falling out,’ as you call it?”

“It wasn’t as bad as all that; I just didn’t like being turned out on my ear. Who needs it? Why The Dancers?”

“Why indeed?” she agreed, wondering who or what was so special about the place that would attract the interest of a boy like Adin Brown. “Maurice, can you think of where Adin might be now?”

He shook his head emphatically. “Miss, I don’t know.”

“If you had to guess his whereabouts, what would your guess be?”

He shrugged again. “I wouldn’t like to guess, lady.” There was worry behind his eyes and she was inclined to believe him. Some of his bravado had fallen away. Beneath it was a young man anxious about a friend. Again, a set of curtains moved, and he seemed to notice or at least feel the prying eyes. He straightened, not wanting to be seen as soft. “Nah, I don’t know nothin’,” he declared.

“Is there anything else you can think of? Anything unusual that happened in the past couple of weeks or so?” She watched him as he frowned. “Did he talk about a girl, perhaps? Or something else? Did he act strangely on any occasion?” she ventured.

“Well . . .”

Ah, there is something. “Anything might help,” she stressed, and slipped him another shilling. That frown of his eased up a touch, but only a touch.

“Look, it’s probably nothin’, but there was this thing at the Olympia,” he said. “The milk bar. Something with the paper. He went wild when he saw it.”

How peculiar, she thought. “What did he see in the paper, precisely?”

Maurice shrugged. “That I don’t know, precisely or otherwise. It could be nothin’, but somethin’ in there sure seemed to set him off.” He shook his head.

“But if he went wild he must have told you what it was about.” Was the boy fishing for yet more coin? “You don’t know, or you won’t say?”

“Listen, lady, I honestly don’t know. He just went into a fury and ripped the page out of the paper and pocketed it. He didn’t show me what it was. Really cut up, he was. I thought it weird at the time.”

Now, that could be something, Billie thought. “What did he say? I want every word, if you can recall them.”

“Nothing I want to repeat to you.”

“I can take it,” she said, and gave him another smile. If this kid thought he was more worldly than she was, he had another think coming.

Maurice hesitated, then noted the smile, and his eyes stayed on it for a moment. “Okay, lady,” he finally said and let off a long trail of expletives. “Something like that, give or take.”

“I see. What day was this? Think hard, now, kid. You’ve got a pocket full of my coin.”

“Maybe Thursday last week, though I can’t swear to it.” He squinted for a moment, thinking. “Yeah, probably Thursday last week.”

“Do you remember which paper it was?”

“The Truth, I think. Or The Sydney Morning Herald. Not sure.”

“This was at the Olympia?” She pointed in the direction of the milk bar at the end of the street. “And he tore the page out, is that right?”

Maurice nodded. Billie thanked him—though he ought to thank her for the shillings he’d collected—and reminded him that he had her card and should contact her if he thought of anything else. She did the smile. He looked her up and down one more time, wagged his chin at her, affecting a cool manner, and turned away, pulling a comb from his pocket to smooth his hair as he walked back toward the house he shared with his mother.

Billie turned on her heel and ventured the extra block down Northumberland Avenue toward Parramatta Road and the Olympia. At last she’d got something.

She stepped out and paused, passed on the corner of Corunna Lane by a smiling man in black, with a stiff white clerical collar, riding a bicycle. He dipped his head to her, and she returned the gesture from her place on the footpath. She watched the cycling rector pass, stepped onto the main road, and focused on the strip of shops and the Olympia Theatre. It wasn’t hard to find the milk bar. The local kids were drawn to it as flies were to honey. Several children, some still in school clothes, with scuffed knees and unkempt hair, played around the footpath outside under the awning. The Olympia was famous for its milkshakes, Billie had heard. It would doubtless be a popular place, particularly in summer.

A man with dark hair slicked back from his forehead, wearing slightly shabby but elegant pants and a shirt topped with a white apron, emerged from the milk bar as she approached and shooed the children away from the entrance. “Time to go home,” he told them firmly but kindly. “Go on.

“Kids!” The man spoke with a pleasant accent Billie guessed was Greek, and she followed him through the concertina timber doors of the milk bar. A bell tinkled as they crossed the threshold. “Latchkey kids,” he added. “Those factories let their parents out too late. After school they all come here.” He threw up his hands, a potent gesture that seemed to sum up a widely felt frustration with the ways of the world.

The Olympia was a narrow space, its name proudly picked out in colored terrazzo on the floor just beyond the entry. The ceiling, Billie noted, was made up of ornate paneled plaster. A few neon signs were up on the walls, and a glass-fronted stainless steel counter faced the wooden tables and chairs dotted around the green, red, and yellow tiled floor. It was a cheerful place, colorful and stylish, though it appeared a touch the worse for wear, like much of the rest of the neighborhood. Some of the mirrors and the green vinyl covers of the stools had begun to crack. In places the chrome had lost its polish, though not for lack of care if the busy proprietor was anything to go by. He was already polishing again, his calloused hands pushing a cloth over surfaces, seemingly cleaning up on autopilot while his restless eyes surveyed his domain. He’d have to be eagle-eyed with so many unaccompanied kids trailing in, Billie thought. Bold dares and light fingers were childhood rites of passage.

The sparsely stocked shelves held boxes of chocolates, bright gumballs, and a couple of basic sundries; rationing had made its mark. Billie turned her eyes to the proprietor again. He was working alone and wasn’t quite the young soda fountain assistant—or “soda jerk” as the Americans were fond of calling them—you saw in the upscale city joints. His glossed hair was black, but under the lights he looked older than she’d first assumed.

“What can I get you, miss?” he asked.

“I’ll have a soda, please,” she replied, and slid onto one of the stools. She felt the slightly cracked vinyl fight with the weave of her skirt. “Keep the change,” she added as she pushed her money across the counter.

“Soda coming up,” the man said and busied himself.

“You’re not from around here, are you, miss?” he remarked, and she let that ride for the moment as she spotted a stack of Hollywood and entertainment rags and a single newspaper at the end of the bar. It was today’s copy of the Truth. She recognized the front page. Her heart sank a little when she couldn’t see any other papers, except for the current Sydney Morning Herald. She noticed the owner filling her glass with a lot of ice, but that wasn’t entirely unwelcome on a warm evening.

“You know that movie The Killers?” the proprietor asked, placing the drink in front of her. “I ain’t seen it yet myself, but I’ve seen that actress in all those rags. What is her name? Ava something. You look like her.”

Billie knew she was no Ava Gardner—if she were, she sure wouldn’t be running a humble Sydney private inquiry agency and watching her mother sell heirlooms to pay the rent—but it was one of those compliments a lot of men fumbling for a pickup line had come up with lately, and she had to admit a fair resemblance was there in her even features and long neck and limbs, and the way she wore her dark hair long and parted on the side, though Billie’s locks flared red like a flame when the sun hit them. For a moment she’d thought Maurice was going to go there, too, with his quip about the pictures.

“Thank you kindly,” Billie said. From this gentleman, the compliment was sweet.

“She’s pretty, isn’t she? Now, in my younger days . . .”

Billie cut in before he got too carried away with his nostalgia. “I wonder, would you happen to have any old newspapers out the back? I’m packing up, you see. If you don’t need them anymore, I mean. I would be most grateful.”

He peered at her. “Moving into the area?” he asked, a touch puzzled. Admittedly she wasn’t dressed for packing up a house.

“I’m helping a friend, actually,” she responded, lies falling easily from her lips. She could lie about unimportant things, she’d found. That kind of creativity was second nature. Good for the work. She took a sip of her cool soda and again flashed that winning professional smile she’d learned to use years ago.

“Well,” he said, “we have some out the back. You’re welcome to them, though they might have got a bit damp in the rain last night.” He came around the bar and led her to a back door, on the other side of which were heaped boxes, cartons, and a messy pile of newspapers, perhaps two weeks’ worth.

“Thank you, that will help a lot,” Billie said, and sincerely hoped that would be the case. Checking through the papers would be no cup of tea, but it was worth a shot if what Adin had got steamed up about proved to be relevant. There were worse things than pawing through damp paper.

“Okay, pretty lady. You’re welcome to them.”

He gave her three brown paper bags to carry them in, then excused himself as the bell tinkled and a customer entered the shop. Billie searched through the papers for those dated from Tuesday the previous week, grabbing about a week’s worth in case Maurice was wrong about it being the Thursday, and shoved them into the bags, bundling them to her chest so the papers wouldn’t fall out the bottom. She called her thanks to the proprietor, then bobbed and weaved her way around the children still playing on the footpath and made for the tram.