Port Vila Blues by Garry Disher

Author:Garry Disher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, Fiction, Crime
ISBN: 9781616951023
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 1996-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

21

Baker trailed Ms. Goldman back to her office, and the moment he pulled the ugly vinyl chair up to her desk he blurted it out: ‘You know what he bloody well called me? Stupid, useless, lazy.’

She took some time to respond, his file spread open in front of her. He’d noticed that about her before. Getting her attention was like trying to turn a ship at sea, you had to allow plenty of room and time. Well, she was Legal Aid, the government was paying her, so he wasn’t going to get top priority. If he had plenty of dough, she’d be all over him. Finally she dragged her eyes away from the file, saying ‘Hmmm?’ absently, looking more or less past his right ear, not into his eyes.

‘Useless,’ Baker repeated. ‘He said I was stupid and lazy.’

‘I don’t recall that.’

‘That’s what he said. Shouldn’t be allowed. I mean, fair go, there’s a recession on.’ Baker waved his hand to indicate the masses huddled in the corridors and waiting rooms outside. ‘I bet fifty per cent of the poor bastards who come here haven’t got a job, so why have a go at me?’

‘I remember he asked if you were a loafer,’ the Goldman woman said, twinkling a little.

‘See? Like I said, he called me lazy.’

‘Oh, Terry, that’s just his little joke, a play on words. Your name is Baker, right? Bakers bake loaves, hence loafer.’

Baker wasn’t about to let her mollify him. He felt obscurely ashamed and bitter. ‘What about calling me stupid and useless? Anyhow, what kind of name’s De Lisle? Wog name, not even Australian.’

The lawyer refused to answer that. She was looking into his face now, all right, so he knew he’d hit a nerve. She held his gaze, cool and blank, and he looked away, trying to make it casual, masking it with a cough, a scratch, a realignment of his limbs in the orange chair.

Maybe the Goldman woman was relenting, for she said, ‘It was the luck of the draw that we got him today, rotten luck in fact. He does have a reputation.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Baker muttered. He looked into the distance to show that he didn’t give a shit.

‘But he’s highly regarded and he does his bit, which is more than you can say about a lot of others.’

‘Yeah? How?’ Baker demanded.

She shrugged. ‘Well, he’s a circuit magistrate in a couple of Pacific countries.’

Baker grunted. ‘Let’s hope a shark gets him.’

He added the shark to the fall off a cliff, the shorting light switch igniting built-up gas, the smacking front of a Mack truck, the sort of thing he could set up so it looked like an accident.

Ms. Goldman laughed, a genuine laugh, as if they were on the same wavelength when it came to De Lisle and what he deserved. Maybe the guy had squeezed her one day without being asked, Baker thought, gazing at her, thinking he’d like a piece of that himself.

She read it in his eyes and

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