Kawanga. Jack Halliday

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      BOOKS BY JACK HALLIDAY

      Kawanga: A Mystery Novel

      Swan Song and Other Mystery Stories

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1988, 2012 by Jack Halliday

      First published in different form in a 1988 limited edition.

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For Richard Norton,

       Martial artist, action film star, friend.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Heat.

      Blinding, blistering, blazing heat.

      How had he gotten here?

      Where was he, anyway?

      And why this incredible heat?

      His shirt was a drenched beach towel. Sweat stung the creases of his neck as he strained to look up from the sand on which he sprawled, face down.

      He winced and gasped as the sun seared his eyes for the split second he took to look directly in front of him. Ninety-three million miles were reduced to a few hundred yards; the white globe was sucking the life from him as it hung suspended in a cloudless sky on the horizon.

      His face fell back onto his folded arms; he lapsed into unconsciousness...again.

      * * * *

      The ceiling fan turned slowly, rhythmically, one with the heartbeats of the men gathered around the dusty, wooden table.

      “He’s gone; finished; history,” Harley muttered. He spat the words out through pursed lips surrounded by a week’s growth of beard. He leaned back in his chair, contented. He folded his arms over his pot belly and with a pompous smile nodded as if to punctuate his “verdict.” He straightened his musty excuse for a hat and waited for the others to reply.

      Tom shifted in his seat. A drop of perspiration ran down his spine, chilling him, causing the hairs on his sunburned forearms to stand up.

      “I still don’t understand,” Tom said. His brow furrowed as he vocalized his uneasiness. “What if he left it...with someone...the girl; or what if the old man got a hold of it?”

      “What if the old man has it; what if the old man has it?” he said, his anxiety becoming panic.

      Harley rocked forward on his chair, his gnarled elbows landing with a thud on the table. The bartender looked up from his glass-drying, his eyes widening with interest.

      The rough seaman strained closer, squinted into the eyes of the men across from him and whispered, “I said he’s done. It’s all finished, and he’s not coming back and no one has it and it’s over!” He slapped his pudgy palms on the table, grabbed his drink and sent the whiskey down his throat. He patted his stomach as the gentle warmth began to radiate through him. He leaned back in his chair once again and surveyed his nervous comrades.

      Tom shook his head, unconvinced.

      “Okay. What about you two? Are you sure it’s so, ‘over?’”

      The boys looked at each other, then Harley, then Tom, sheepishly, wishing for all their lives the whole thing had never happened.

      “Sure...sure it’s over,” Jim said. “Me and Toby...why, we’re gonna relax now. “Ain’t that right, Toby?” he said, a half-smile creeping over his face.

      “Damn right. S’far as we’re concerned, we did our part; we settled it; and it’s all over. We’re outta here,” he sighed, trying to speak a confidence he lacked. The boys heartbeats were definitely out of step with the slow-turning ceiling fan now.

      Harley smiled.

      “Well...then...what’s left?”

      “Nothing,” Tom mumbled. “Nothing at all.” He looked out the window at the desert expanse.

      Night would fall soon. The barren terrain would offer a different type of cruelty: cold.

      His thoughts were a million miles from the dingy bar.

      “Nothing at all,” he muttered.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Sydney was never really cold. Still, the air had a slight chill, nature’s token winter weather for an eastern metropolis of the land at the bottom of the globe.

      Harriet quickly made her way around the corner and nearly ran up Henley Street to the Post Office. She glanced at her watch: 4:50 p.m. She would make it. Once inside, her cold fingers were uncooperative as she fumbled the key into the box. She whisked the envelope into her purse and was back in her car by five o’clock.

      She had never really gotten used to how it just ‘dropped dark’ in Australia. Twilight was illegal; day and night alternated with the ease of tag-team wrestlers. She breathed in a large lung-full of air and sighed it out again. “Sydney, you’re beautiful!” she thought. She smiled as she drove towards the crimson horizon, the opera house looking on, as if appreciating her assessment of this busy city in the “Lucky Country.”

      Meanwhile, her future lay in a manila envelope in her purse on the seat beside her. One edge poked out between the shoulder straps, attempting an inarticulate conversation, a warning, really. Almost an insistence that this young, attractive brunette no longer take for granted her surroundings or her affluence, or...her life.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “Don’t trifle with me, Bonnington. I have no use for triflers, no use at all.”

      Bonnington’s face remained blank. It displayed no trace of his thoughts.

      “Fat, pompous sow,” he thought. “Overbearing, inconsiderate, egotistical pig!”

      “I want the ‘property’ returned...immediately!

      “No more delays; no more excuses; no more stalling; just results, NOW!”

      Conley bellowed and his voice boomed back and forth from the shiny, marble floor to the ornate ceiling. He had not seen his feet in years, and at six foot five, he was a relative of the biblical Goliath. Indeed, the flowing beard and opulent clothing fitted him for a role in any historical epic. His stomach swayed as he leaned over his polished mahogany desk. His knuckles were white under the weight. He lowered his voice as he looked into the eyes of this former police detective. He chose his words carefully, as though each one had a price, in gold.

      “I don’t care if you never sleep again. I don’t care what you eat, or if you eat. I’m not in the slightest interested in you.

      I want it back, NOW!”

      “Ungrateful louse,” Bonnington responded, inaudibly.

      “I understand, Mr. Conley,” Bonnington replied, still devoid of any visible emotion.

      “I’m doing all that I can,” he assured his burly employer.

      “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know,” he chuckled, nervousness surfacing for the first time.

      “I’m not interested in bloody Rome! I’m not paying you to spout clichés! Get out and get it back and get it back NOW!”

      He backed out of the office. The huge bookcases built into the walls on either side seemed to sway towards each other in obeisance to the wealthy man in front of the bay window.

      The detective pulled the door towards him and left Conley a silhouette, the afternoon sun behind him.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      Of all the invisible commodities of life, what he needed most now was understanding. But where to find it? Who could understand? The whole experience was so bizarre, so surrealistic that he often wondered himself if it had all really happened. How do you get involved in situations totally out of character for you?