The Big Ask (5 page)

‘There's a very good reason why nobody challenges Howard Sharpe and Co,' I reminded him. ‘It's a health hazard. Last time anybody so much as nominated, the poor bastard spend the next six months in traction.' Or so the story went.

Agnelli tucked his papers under his arm, strode across the office and put his hand on the doorknob. ‘I have every confidence in your abilities, Murray,' he said. ‘And turn off the lights when you leave. We're on an economy drive, don't forget.'

I stood for a long time at the window, staring down into Spring Street. Rush hour was over, the working week at an end. The city was slipping into evening clothes. Across the road, a crowd was milling in front of the Princess Theatre. Its shingled roof was the shade of ashes and the highlights in its stained-glass windows glowed the colour of clotted blood. A golden angel stood poised upon its roof, trumpet in hand, as if sounding the summons to Judgment Day. The words
Les Misérables
were blazoned across its marquee. I knew what they meant.

Out on the parliamentary terrace, the broad sweep of steps leading down to the street, stood a horse-drawn carriage, an open-topped landau. A top-hatted coachman sat stiffly at the reins, brass buttons gleaming, tall whip in hand. A bride and groom cavorted in the passenger seat, striking romantic poses while a photographer snapped away, framing his shots against the facade of Parliament House. It was a common enough Melbourne sight, a wedding album cliche.

In the stroboscopic stutter of the photographer's flash, the horse raised its tail and deposited a stream of steaming turds. The driver immediately reached under his seat and produced a whisk and a shovel.

That was me, I reflected. And I didn't even have shiny buttons or a broom. I headed for the door.

A trickle of honourable members was emerging from the dining room, braced with lamb cutlets and cabernet shiraz for a long and drowsy night of law-making. Howard Sharpe and Mike McGrath had waylaid one of them at the entrance to the main lobby, the Queen's Hall. A Labor backbencher from a marginal seat, he looked like a startled rabbit caught in the headlights of a runaway road train.

As I padded through the foyer, a woman bustled past, the press secretary of the deputy leader of the opposition. She looked the part, a snooty brunette in her late twenties with serious legs and a fiercely businesslike bearing. And a penchant for older men if the salacious scuttlebutt was to be believed. Obviously, I didn't qualify. She gave me a brusque nod and continued on her way. Considering that all the Liberals needed to do to win government was wait until it fell into their laps, I found her self-important manner mildly amusing. Her pins, on the other hand, warranted serious consideration and I sneaked a second appreciative look before heaving open one of Parliament House's massive bronzeinlaid entrance portals and slipping out into the night.

The sky was inky black, the air colder than a conservative's heart. The honk of a saxophone was faintly audible above the rhythmic clatter of a passing tram. At the foot of the terrace, overcoated couples strolled arm-in-arm beneath the fairy-lit trees of Bourke Street. Bound for dinner, I supposed. At Pelligrini's or Il Mondo, perhaps. Mietta's or the Florentino, if they could afford it. Maybe somewhere in Chinatown, a scant block away. Or one of the Greek joints on Lonsdale Street. To any of the cafes, brasseries, bistros, curry houses, pancake parlours and sushi salons that made Melbourne the epicurean epicentre of the nation. If it was edible, we'd eat it. If it wasn't, we'd suck it and see.

I paused for a moment, considering my options. A flame flickered a few paces away. Frank Farrell was standing in the colonnade, having a cigarette while he waited for his employers to emerge. We exchanged nods.

‘Off home to the missus, then?' he said.

These were the first words Farrell had spoken since we were introduced. His tone was amiable, his voice a melodious baritone with residual traces of the bush. ‘No missus,' I said. ‘No pets, either. Sorry to disappoint.'

He chuckled and extended his pack of Marlboro. My daily limit was four and I'd already smoked three. I usually saved the last for after dinner but I found myself accepting his offer, bending to light it from a flame he conjured from a gold lighter in the cup of his blunt fingers.

‘Bit rich, don't you think?' I said. ‘Sharpe and McGrath toting you along to put the frights on a government minister. No personal offence intended.'

‘None taken,' said Farrell. ‘I was there to make up the numbers, that's all. Any meeting he ever goes to, Howard likes to know he's got the majority.'

‘He's quite a character, your Howard,' I admitted.

‘How about Agnelli? What are you doing working for a dipstick like that? No personal offence intended.'

‘It's a living,' I shrugged.

‘Not for much longer, it won't be. Plan to stick around until the election, sink with the ship?'

‘You're not offering me a job, are you?'

‘Something can always be found for a friend,' he said.

‘Ah, there's the rub.'

Farrell nodded at the Windsor Hotel, catty-corner across the intersection. ‘Got time for a beer?'

I consulted my watch. ‘Thanks, but I've got a previous.' And drinking with toughs was not high on my must-do list.

Farrell tossed his cigarette butt aside. ‘If you change your mind, give me a call.'

‘About having a beer?'

‘About going down with the sinking ship.' Abruptly he extended his hand.

I shook it. No union of any size, whatever its ideological disposition, can operate without a bit of brawn. Farrell at least had the virtue of not pretending he was anything else. Doubtless we would have dealings, and neither of us wanted to poison the wells yet. Like we both said, nothing personal.

I continued down the steps. The previous appointment was a fib. I had no plans. If I turned right and walked briskly, I'd be home in Fitzroy in less than fifteen minutes. But home exerted no irresistible attraction. I headed down Bourke Street, shoulders hunched against the cold, hands thrust deep into my pockets, my breath advancing before me in a white mist that vanished even as it appeared, ephemeral as an election promise, enduring as a good intention.

Three minutes later I was shouldering open the door of the Rumah Malaysia, breathing deep the aroma of ginger and chilli. The small restaurant was crowded, rackety with the clatter of cutlery and good cheer. The waiter held a single finger aloft, just in case I didn't speak Malay. ‘One,' I agreed, and was led to a tragic, tiny table beside the kitchen door.

That was the way it had been for longer than I cared to contemplate. There had been the odd woman in my life since my divorce from Wendy. Odd as in infrequent, not peculiar. But none of them lasted. Not Helen the librarian or Claire the art restorer or Phillipa the doctor.

Phillipa was the most recent. I consulted her about my cigarette habit. She prescribed nicotine patches. Therapy proceeded to dirty weekends at charming little country hotels. But general practice was a tad dull for Dr Phillipa Verstak. And so, apparently, was I. Six months earlier, at the end of summer, she'd gone back to her old job, fitting artificial limbs to land-mine victims at an Austcare hospital in Phnom Penh. How could I compete with legless Cambodian kiddies?

I would've felt a whole lot better about it if she'd managed to cure my cigarette habit. The very thought was enough to make me fire one up. I smoked it while I drank a bottle of Crown lager and waited for my meal to arrive. Four, five, what was the difference? I could die of lung cancer and nobody would shed a tear. Except my son, Red. He'd care. But Wendy probably wouldn't even bother telling him.

The laksa came rich and spicy, helped down with another bottle of beer. By the time I paid the bill, my blood was warm and my head was light. I sauntered back to Bourke Street, half thinking of catching a tram home, half drawn by the tinkle of feminine laughter coming from a line of people extending along the footpath to the front door of the Metro.

Time was, the Metro was a movie house, one of the town's grandest picture palaces. In the seventies, Callithumpian evangelists used it to stage spiritually uplifting productions of
Puff the Magic Dragon and His Technicolor
Dreamcoat.
Recently, fashionable architects had transformed it into what the entertainment pages described as a cuttingedge dance club.

I wasn't entirely sure what that meant. Back when I was a barman at the Reservoir Hotel, we used to get some bloke with a panel van to bring in a mobile sound system and one of those modular disco dance floors with the flashing lights underneath. But that was hardly a dance club, was it?

Only one way to find out, I thought. The night was not yet middle-aged. Nor was I, if you counted forty as the starting point. And those bottles of beer had taken off at least a couple of years apiece. I checked out the queue.

I put the median age at twenty-eight, give or take five years. Take, mainly. I was ten years older, but not offensively so. The boys tended to designer jeans and white T-shirts, the girls to scoop-neck dresses and balcony bras. Despite the nip in the air, there was plenty of skin on display. And some of the women were definite lookers. But I was hardly an impartial judge. After six months of celibacy, I was starting to get an erotic frisson from the dummies in shop windows. Nobody screamed when I joined the queue.

The screaming would come later. And I'd be the one doing it.

A matching pair of blondes in micro-minis and stiletto heels stood sentinel at the Metro's entrance. They cast an appraising eye over my navy-blue Hugo Boss suit, concluded that I was pathologically unhip but otherwise both harmless and solvent, and raised the red rope. Doof, doof, doof, came the beat from the interior. Wang, wang, wang.

Twenty-five years earlier, I'd sat in the Metro and watched Gregory Peck and David Niven destroy the guns of Navarone. There was still plenty of smoke and noise and flashing light, but no sign of David Niven. Not his scene at all.

The seats had been ripped out, replaced by a dance floor. The movie screen was now a wall of video monitors, an animated matrix of MTV images, winking and blinking. DJs in white overalls tended a console of turntables, the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, warp-factor nine imminent. A central bar dispensed back-lit liquors and bottles of Mexican beer with wedges of lime shoved in their necks. Beams of coloured light zapped from gimballed prisms set in huge robotic arms that swung out above the dance floor, flexing and pumping to the relentless beat. Doof, doof, doof.

It was still early, not quite eleven, and the place was only half-f. Hardly a thousand people were milling about, crowding the bars or bopping on the dance floor. There were so many blond tips that I wondered if they were spiking the drinks with peroxide. I shed my tie, left my jacket at the coat-check counter, rolled my sleeves to the forearm and elbowed my way to the booze. The happy-hour special was bourbon. To my surprise, it wasn't watered.

Glass in hand, I surveyed the dancers. Criss-crossed by searchlights and enveloped in clouds of artificial fog, they moved with jerky, pixilated movements to a persistent, allencompassing, unvarying bass thump. Doof, doof, doof.

A suspended gangway led to the balcony where I'd once sat between my parents and watched
The Parent Trap
. It was now a lounge, booth seats with waitress service and a view of the video wall. There was no sign of Hayley Mills. Instead, clusters of frighteningly glamorous women sat around elaborate cocktails, checking the prospects. Even if I'd had the courage to approach one of them, I couldn't imagine bellowing pick-up lines over the top of Tina Turner. If the music got any louder, I'd start bleeding from the ears.

What I had in mind was a statuesque redhead with a come-hither look, the ability to read lips and a lapel badge that said ‘Take Me, Murray, I'm Yours'. It looked like she hadn't arrived yet.

Some sort of VIP area occupied the topmost level, admission by membership key-tag only. Doubtless this was where the real fun was being had, the stuff involving rolled-up hundred dollar bills and celebrity cleavage. Techno-beat clanging in my cranium, I retreated to a glassed-in area with a bar along one wall and a half-dozen pool tables covered in blue baize. It was less crowded and marginally quieter.

I took a stool at the bar, ordered another Wild Turkey and pondered my instructions from Agnelli. Any attempt to find a proxy challenger to the Hauler incumbents was bound to be noticed, further aggravating existing antagonisms. And if I persuaded some sucker to stick his head in the lion's mouth and he got hurt, I wouldn't feel very comfortable, ethics-wise.

In this sort of situation, the best way of handling Agnelli was the go-slow. His attention would soon turn elsewhere. First thing Monday morning, I would begin to drag my feet. Meanwhile, I'd clock off, loosen up and try to make the most of the weekend. The hooch was a good start. A bit of female companionship would be even better.

At the nearest pool table, three guys were putting their moves on a trio of girls. All six were in their mid-twenties, well oiled and kicking on. One of the girls was bent over a cue, poised on the toes of one foot. She was slender, fine-boned and wide-eyed, her dark hair cut short. An Audrey Hepburn lookalike, I decided.

The notion amused me. I began to think of screen equivalents for the other players. Nobody too recent, that was the rule. It had to be someone I might conceivably have seen in this very theatre.

The tallest of the girls had long, straight hair and a wide mouth full of perfectly even teeth. Seen from a distance of several miles by a man with glaucoma, she might have passed for Ali McGraw. The fleshy one with the sultry lips was definitely Maria Schneider.
Last Tango in Paris
. Butter on that popcorn, please.

The short dark guy was playing to type, doing a Jean-Paul Belmondo. Cigarette at the corner of his mouth, up-fromunder smoulder as he bent over his cue. Maria Schneider was buying it. Give them a couple of hours and they'd be propped on post-coital pillows, swapping subtitles. The tall thin bloke was a limp-limbed Montgomery Clift. He was doing a line for Ali McGraw.