The Big Ask (20 page)

One caller who hadn't yet heard the news was Donny Maitland. He rang to update me on the progress of his campaign. ‘The Haulers' traditional union enemies have been less than forthcoming with their support, I regret to report,' he said. ‘But that hasn't stopped me setting up a base down by the docks to get the word out direct to the rank and file.'

I explained that I was now out of the ministerial adviser racket and was challenging Agnelli for preselection. ‘I'll give you the full story when I can,' I said. ‘There's also something else you should know.' I told him about my visit from Webb and the interview at Citywest.

‘The cops must be getting desperate for a result,' he said. ‘Any result. I told you Farrell was up to no good. But your lawyer's right. Sit pat. That's what I'm doing. It'll all come out in the wash.'

‘I wish I had your confidence,' I said. ‘Good luck with the cops and good luck with your campaign. And keep your eye on that dog of yours.'

‘Don't worry about me,' he said. ‘I've taken your tip. Got myself some medical insurance.'

First thing the next morning, Red left on his trip to the snow, piled with the other kids into Geordie's parents' Pajero. ‘We'll have him back on Thursday night,' said Geordie's mother, a reassuringly athletic type. ‘It's a six-hour drive, so expect him about ten o'clock.'

The armed men arrived a little earlier.

It happened on rubbish night.

In the six days that Red was away, I began the spade work for my preselection campaign. This was not demanding. I called some prospective supporters. I arranged appointments to speak at branch meetings. Mostly, I shopped for a car.

About 9 p.m. on Thursday, I put the bin out and stood for a moment on the kerbside, contemplating the silver-grey 1986 Honda Civic I'd purchased that afternoon. One owner, four new tyres, eleven months registration, $11,250. Easy to park, cheap to run, and perfect for my campaign image as the unpretentious, thrifty, environment-conscious offspring of hard-working local parentage.

Just as I was stepping back through the front door, I heard rushing footsteps behind me. Before I could turn a blow struck the back of my head. Down, down I went, the walls sliding past. Then hands gripped my arms and I was being dragged forward. Then came a white radiance. I swam towards it as if from the bottom of a bucket of red jelly. Hello, I thought. Be with you in a minute.

It came to me that I was lying on my living-room floor, looking up at the ceiling light. My arms were twisted behind my back. I told my limbs to move, get out from underneath me, to straighten themselves. They wouldn't. Perhaps they'd gone deaf. Perhaps they couldn't hear because of the thumping inside my head. I tried to speak but my mouth wouldn't open. It was taped shut. Strange, I thought.

About as strange as the two figures looming above me, staring down. They were wearing powder-blue boiler suits and yellow rubber washing-up gloves. They had blobby faces; their noses and lips were all squashed. One of them was holding his penis in his hand. He began to urinate, directing the spray at my face. A hot, stinking stream stung my eyes.

‘Wakey, wakey,' said the other one, his voice muffled by the stocking over his head.

But I was more than awake. I was thrashing against the tape that bound my ankles and wrists, trying to struggle upright, trying to shout. Something hard jabbed into my chest, pinning me to the floor. When I realised it was the barrel of a shotgun, I got the message.

‘Do we have your attention?' said the one holding the gun. He bent over me, a shrink-wrapped pug-dog face.

I nodded. Certainly. Absolutely. Most assuredly. Yes indeed.

‘And you know why we're here, Murray?' His voice was calm and relaxed. Very much in control and utterly unfamiliar. I ran the socio-geographical nuances of his accent and drew a blank. He raised the gun barrel a little and tapped me under the chin with it. ‘Eh?'

I shook my head.

His twin finished buttoning his flies and kicked me in the side. Just hard enough to make the stars tap dance.

‘No idea?' said the gun one. ‘Think about it.'

I thought about it, hard. They probably weren't from the Labor Party. Not state, anyway. Nor reporters from the
Herald
. Too articulate. They knew my name, so this wasn't some random home invasion. The Haulers could have nothing against me, now that I was no longer Agnelli's sidekick. Which left only one possibility. This had something to do with Darren Stuhl.

‘Ughhgh,' I said.

The urinator sat down in my Ikea armchair, sprawled back and let gun-boy do all the talking.

‘I'll get straight to the point, Murray, just so there's no misunderstanding,' said the voice at the end of the shotgun. ‘We can blow your head off. We can blow your knees away. We can knock you out and burn your house down around you. We can do anything we like, any time we like. You understand?'

If he was trying to frighten me, he was doing a sterling job.

‘Understand?'

I nodded.

‘That's the spirit. Now listen very carefully. You listening?'

I nodded.

The muzzle of the shotgun moved up until it was resting on the bridge of my nose. The barrels had been sawn short and the edges filed. I noticed this because they occupied my entire field of vision.

‘You haven't been entirely truthful with the police, have you?'

I nodded. Force of habit. Jesus, I thought. It's the cops. Webb has stepped over the line.

‘You're covering up for your friend Maitland, aren't you? You forgot to tell them what he did to Darren, didn't you?'

‘Urgh,' I pleaded. ‘Grnghf.'

‘But you're going to tell them now, aren't you?' He tapped my forehead with muzzle of the shotgun. ‘Because Bob Stuhl is not going to let some pissant like Maitland get away with murdering his son. Understand?'

I was beginning to. These guys weren't overzealous cops looking to cut a few procedural corners. They were representatives of the private sector.

‘And Bob's not going to stand back and watch while some vindictive pen-pusher helps his son's killer walk free. Understand?'

By then, my head was nodding faster than the chorus line in a Bombay musical. Bob Stuhl, Christ Almighty. The cops might threaten me, but a threat was all it would remain. But Bob Stuhl? The Prince of Darkness had a better reputation.

Pug-face swung the shotgun aside and leaned closer. ‘What are you going to do?' Abruptly he ripped the strip of tape off my mouth, taking a layer of lip with it. ‘Tell me.'

‘Aya,' I said, gulping air.

The shotgun came back up into my face. ‘Tell me what you're going to do.'

‘Aya um going to tell them Donny did it.'

‘Or?'

‘Or you'll kill me.'

‘Good boy.'

The tape went back over my mouth. The silent pisser put his heel against my hip and rolled me over onto my front. The shotgun moved to the nape of my neck. Then the light went out. I lay there in the dark, listening to the air surge in and out of my nostrils, the pounding of my heart, feeling the metal against my skull.

‘If you haven't done the right thing by this time next week, we'll be back to remind you. We won't be so polite next time.'

Then they were gone. Out the back door, across the yard and down the lane.

For a long time I just lay there, trussed up like a Red Cross food parcel, inhaling ammonia-scented wool-blend carpet fibres. I'd been threatened before. I'd been frightened before. But I'd never before been systematically terrorised.

My buttocks gradually managed to unclench themselves. Rolling onto my back, I brought my knees up to my chest and threaded myself through the loop of my arms. I hopped into the kitchen, fumbled in the dark for a steak knife and sawed the plastic tape from my hands and feet. Then I ripped the gag from my mouth, walked calmly into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet.

Red would be home soon. He couldn't find me like this, pissed-on and hyperventilating. I locked every door and window, gathered up the scraps of plastic tape and dumped them in the kitchen tidy. Then I stripped off my clothes, dropped them into the laundry sink and stood under a scalding shower, scarifying my skin, willing myself to wake up from this nightmare.

Sitting pat was no longer an option. Complaining to the police would be pointless. Even if I could persuade them that this had really happened, they could offer me no protection against men like this. Action was being forced upon me. Action I did not wish to take. Still trembling, I wrapped myself in a bathrobe and punched the digits of Donny Maitland's phone number. Jacinta answered from somewhere on the other side of Jupiter.

‘He's at the campaign office,' she said. ‘He told me what you did to help him, getting the money and everything. Thank you so much.'

I muttered a pleasantry, extracted the number for the campaign office, rang off and punched again.

‘Rank-and-file ticket,' yawned Donny's voice. ‘Stop the Sharpe–Stuhl collusion.'

‘It's Murray, I said. ‘I've had some unpleasant visitors.'

‘Cops?'

‘Worse than that, I'm afraid. I need to talk to you urgently.'

‘You want me to come over?'

‘Yes, please. No. Wait, let me think.'

Red would be through the door at any tick of the clock, full of stories to tell. If Donny then turned up and we went straight into a closed-session conference, the boy would wonder what was going on. Lies would be required. On top of which, I wanted to get out of the house. The place felt like a trap. I didn't want Red there.

‘Better if I come to you,' I said. ‘How do I find the place?'

As Donny gave me directions, a horn tooted in the street. I opened the door and found Red heaping his luggage on the step. One arm waving thanks to the departing Pajero, I went down on my knees and embraced the startled boy. ‘Dad,' he protested. ‘Somebody'll see.'

I pointed to the Honda. ‘Our new wheels,' I said. ‘Let's go for a spin.'

He ran an appreciative eye over my purchase. ‘Only if you get dressed first,' he said.

I threw on some clothes, cranked up the batmobile and drove. While Red babbled about chairlifts and nursery runs and snowball fights, I steered a course for the docks, following tram lines that glistened like drawn swords beneath the streetlights. A painful bump was swelling at the back of my skull. I felt like I was wearing a subcutaneous yarmulke.

‘Is this to test the shockers?' said Red as we juddered down a pot-holed service road, barbed-wire alley.

‘Since we're out and about, I thought we might visit a friend.' I turned into a compound marked by a handsprayed sign.

Our headlights swept a quadrangle walled by stacks of shipping containers that rose four-high like gigantic Lego blocks. In the centre of the yard stood a white box, a portable site office. Donny opened the door and stood watching our approach. In his black pea-jacket and knitted cap he looked like an extra from
On the Waterfront
.

I parked beside his dinged Commodore and we walked towards the office, gravel crunching. Red nudged me and pointed up. Above one of the container-stack walls, the superstructure of a ship loomed in silhouette against a backdrop of moonlit clouds. ‘Cool,' he said.

Donny read at a glance both the alarm in my eyes and the situation with Red. ‘Welcome to the liberated territories,' he said, spreading his arms. ‘And this must be the boy.' He extended a beefy hand to Red. ‘Haven't seen you since you were knee-high to a hubcap.'

Red shook hands tentatively, somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer masculinity of the situation, and we followed Donny inside. Maps, whiteboards and posters covered the walls. A photocopier was churning out leaflets. Behind a partition was a galley kitchen with a Cafe-bar and a refrigerator plastered with stickers. Beer $2, read a note on the door.

Donny steered Red towards a computer with winged toasters fluttering across its screen. ‘There's supposed to be some games in there, but nobody can find them. How about you take a crack while I talk with your old man?'

Within a few clicks, Red was putting Pacman through his paces. Donny tilted his chin towards the door and I nodded. As we started back outside, the phone rang. Donny picked it up. ‘Rank-and-file ticket.'

He listened intently for about twenty seconds, then started rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Of course I'm pissed off,' he said at last. ‘We're trying to present ourselves as a credible alternative, you pull a stunt like this, makes us look like feral crazies.'

He listened some more. The fluorescent light made him look old and tired and brought out the boozer in his face. ‘If that's your attitude,' he said wearily, ‘we're better off without you.' He listened a bit longer, then dropped the handpiece back in its cradle with a shake of his head.

‘Problem?' I said. It couldn't be as bad as mine.

‘Roscoe,' he explained. ‘He was driving past the Haulers' head office in South Melbourne a little while ago and noticed the lights were on. It seems the organisers were all there having a meeting. So Roscoe unilaterally decided to mount a guerrilla raid. The fucking idiot aerosoled our slogans all over their fleet of cars. When I expressed my disapproval, he accused me of lacking militancy and quit the ticket.'

‘Very mature,' I sympathised. ‘Can you find somebody to fill his spot?'

‘It won't be easy. Len's dropped out, too. His wife got the jitters. The bastards were parking in front of the house while he was at work. A couple of them'd just sit there all day. Tell you the truth, things aren't going quite as well as I'd hoped.' He glanced at Red, his face lit by the glow of the screen, then chucked his chin towards the door. ‘Anyway, enough of my troubles. Come for a walk.'

We crunched slowly across the yard, hands sunk deep into our pockets. A milky moonlight filtered though the clouds. The air smelled of exhaust fumes, the sea and wet gravel. I fired up a cigarette. ‘Haven't you heard?' said Donny. ‘Those things can kill you.'