The Washington Club Read Online Free

was worth doing, the place was an asset, but talk about the economic advantages of borrowing money has always confused me, so I just sit pat.
    I drove home to Glebe, glad as always to be getting onto what I considered the right side of the harbour and trying not to think of the face I’d glimpsed in that brief blur of action. The only way to trigger memories like those is to think of something else and let ithappen. I tried, but the only other thing I could think of was the face and body of Claudia Fleischman, her poise and control. It seemed unlikely that a bell would ring in my head while I was thinking along those lines. I turned on the radio, listened to Mike Carlton being nicer to a politician than I would have been, and ended up not thinking about anything.
    My street has changed over the years. Harry Soames, with whom I had an amiable antagonism over music, car parking, drainage and almost everything else, moved out—or, as he put it, ‘up’, to Gladesville. I hope he enjoys the flight path. A few big houses that were divided up into flats occupied by students and dope-dealers have become family residences once again. Fewer motorbikes, more parking space, lots more Illawarra flame trees. My house has just about become the shabbiest in the street, with gaps in its fence, rust in the balcony iron and sagging guttering. A coat of paint would do wonders, they tell me. But if I painted the house the cracked path and lifting tiles in front would look even more daggy and the overgrown garden would lose what I think of as its charm. So I sit pat.
    I eased the Falcon into a space between a Celica and a Commodore and cut Mike off in mid-sentence. The mail jutted from the letterbox and I grabbed it as I went past, stepping instinctively clear of the loosest of the tiles. Inside, the familiar smells and soundstold me who and what I was, as they always did. This was why I stayed. The bedroom held memories of my ex-wife Cyn, and Helen Broadway and Glen Withers; Annie Parker had slept in the spare room and the thought of her death from a hot-shot still gave me a pang. I’d killed Soldier Szabo by accident in the living room and O’Fear had played his last card out in the backyard. How could I sell all that to a business consultant?
    After Glen left I went a few rounds with Johnnie Walker and Jim Beam until we decided to call it square. Nowadays I didn’t drink hard liquor until after six and I had a flexible limit—three to five drinks. I also didn’t rush it as in the old days, when the next thing my hand would touch after the front door was the cap on a bottle. I flicked through the mail which held no interest and checked the answering machine. The only calls were about a late video and a client explaining why his cheque was a little bit short of a full settlement.
    The cat left not long after Glen and I could hardly blame it. It had to be able to do better than Vegemite toast and Weetbix. With the cat gone the mice asserted themselves. I kept hoping that another cat would adopt me the way the last one did. It had wandered in one day and treated the place as its own within minutes, pawing at the window it wanted left open and indicating where it would like the food put down. But so far no takers. The straysdidn’t know what they were missing—I’d resolved to treat the lucky cat better, feed it regularly and give it a name.
    I took the video out of the machine and restored it to its case. I put the borrowing card on top of the case and picked up a newspaper and a couple of books around the sitting room. I opened the back door and let some air in, also some leaves. Delaying tactics, feints, duckings and weavings. Effective. It was fully 6.30 when I made the drink—a Scotch and ice with a little water. I sat down in the kitchen, reached out to turn on the radio and the name of the driver flashed into my mind. The arrival of the information was so sudden and clear I almost dropped my