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 onit 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?”
“TheTruth,I think. OrTheSydney 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. Severalchildren, 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 somany 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 theTruth.She recognized the front page. Her heart sank a little when she couldn’t see any other papers, except for the currentSydney 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 movieThe 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 andwatching 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...”
