Garry Disher - Kick Back

‘I own a bookshop, rare books, two others sell antiques, another runs a print gallery. It’s that sort of area,’ he said apologetically.

Finn nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, we understand the hotel on the corner has applied to extend its licence and build a beer garden and a bigger car park. We’re open on the weekends. That’s when we do most of our business. We don’t want yahoos coming and going. Police breathalysers. People urinating and throwing bottles.’

Finn laced his fingers together and began to recite. ‘The Planning and Environment Act stipulates that anyone has the right to object to building development. You may appeal on social and economic grounds against council decisions to award planning permits. If a developer gets a building surveyor to give the go-ahead under the Building Control Act, you may then take the matter to the civil court.’

Wyatt shifted in his seat. ‘Is it… does it cost a lot?’

Finn swung idly in his chair. ‘Court costs can be high, certainly.’ Then he leaned forward and said, ‘It needn’t get that far.’

Wyatt looked alert.

‘Appeals to council decisions are heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal,’ Finn said. ‘Many small objectors use it. It’s not like the normal court system, where if you lose you have to fork out.’

The word ‘lose’ seemed to worry Wyatt. There was silence in the room. After a while Finn said, ‘How’s business?’

‘Business?’ Wyatt said.

‘You know what I mean. High interest rates, limited cash flow-small businesses are failing left, right and centre. Am I right?’

Wyatt was embarrassed.

‘There are ways,’ Finn went on, ‘where you can have cash in hand even if development does go ahead.’

Got you, Wyatt thought.

Finn fiddled with his watch, a chunky, complicated metal and plastic affair decorating his wrist. Wyatt bet that he wore a gold chain, Reeboks and tight jeans on the weekends and drank coffee at sidewalk cafe tables.

‘Once an objection has been lodged,’ Finn continued, ‘developers are very vulnerable. It can take eight months before a case is heard by the Tribunal. Meanwhile costs escalate- interest rates, landholding costs, etcetera, etcetera. You can imagine the mindset of someone in that predicament.’

Mindset. Jesus. Wyatt kept his face polite, expectant, naive.

It seemed to irritate Finn. ‘Mr Lake, I’ll spell it out. In return for withdrawing the objection, developers have been known to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or compromise, or offer work in kind. Perhaps you need a new shop front?’ He shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

Eagerness flickered on Wyatt’s face. But he played responsible again and said, ‘Is that legal?’

‘Depends how you look at it. A persistent prosecutor might do something with it, but why bother? In the long run it will be easier to tighten up the legislation. Wise people are acting now.’

Wyatt was anxious. There was a lot to take in. ‘I’ll have to talk to the others,’ he said.

Finn stood up and looked at his watch. ‘Why don’t you all come in? Say, sometime next week. Bring all relevant documents with you so we can map out a plan of action. I tell you what-if we do decide to go ahead, I won’t bill you for today’s consultation. How does that sound?’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Wyatt said, standing and shaking Finn’s hand.

‘See Amber on your way out. She’ll fix you up with an appointment.’

Wyatt left the room. Finn was already working on something else, scribbling on a pad, frowning. Anna Reid’s door was still closed. Wyatt could hear her murmuring to a client. He made his way to the reception desk. Here Amber watched him get into a tangle buttoning up his coat.

Finally she couldn’t help herself. ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but there’s a bit of dirt on your cheek.’

‘God, is there?’ Wyatt said. He went out, rubbing at it.

In Toorak Road he telephoned Hobba. ‘So far so good.’

‘You checked it out?’

‘Finn’s bent. Now we’ll check the woman. My room, eight o’clock-but tell Pedersen seven-thirty.’

Monday, and Sugarfoot Younger still felt bad. He got up late, taking his time, hitting the street late, just before lunch. The traffic was heavy, the Customline hemmed in by mugs in suits in the company Holden. On Victoria Street he leaned on the horn for effect, then searched the dial for some decent music. If it wasn’t easy-listening crap it was new-wave crap. Eventually he found something to match his mood, Roy Orbison singing ‘Only the Lonely’, the Big O’s voice cutting in and out because it was coming from fucking Geelong.

Matched his mood because even with having the weekend off he felt depressed. His body ached. He kept trying to get a mental grip on Wyatt, put him into some kind of perspective so he wasn’t a threat, but the picture kept slipping away.

In Elizabeth Street he stopped at a speed shop and bought twin air horns for the Customline. Got some looks-blokes admiring the restoration job he’d had done, the glossy chrome and duco and the white-wall tyres. The personalised plates: CUSTOM.

He wasn’t going to bust a gut getting to Bargain City. For old time’s sake he cruised past the Vic Market, throttling back, letting the Customline mutter past the donut trailers, the stalls where on market day you had overweight men and women in track suits, and foul-mouthed sorts scuffing along in moccasins, and ethnic guys with blow-waved hair, handkerchiefs stuffed down the front of their stretch jeans.

The thing about your ethnic is, he doesn’t trust banks. Just one of the many possibilities Sugarfoot intended to explore when he finally broke with Ivan and went freelance.

He stopped to let a garbage truck back out of the fruit and vegetable section. He had lifted his first wallet at the Vic Market, felt up an ethnic chick in a jeans stall while her old man was serving a customer, scored his first line of coke from some Asian kid, who’d told him there was a Melbourne Triad and what to expect from it if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.

But that was back in his small-time period, working with mugs who only had a limited range-like they’d do burglary but they wouldn’t do arson, kind of thing; not to mention this one guy who couldn’t control himself and always had to have a crap at the scene. Sugarfoot wound his way through to Footscray Road, saying aloud, ‘You’re a long way past all that, Sugar.’

There’d also been his Pentridge period, but that had been due to monumental bad luck. Everything had been going along sweet-six dole cheques, a bit of bag-man work, a bit of distributing, day manager of an escort agency. And then it all collapsed in a heap. He’d run up a couple of debts, bugger-all really, but the heavy boys came round and said he could either drive for them, just the once, settle his debt, or end up another statistic of the Portsea rip.

‘Crass stupidity,’ the trial judge said. No way known. He’d been set up, or someone had tipped the Feds off. Eighteen months in Pentridge.

He learned how slowly time can pass. He’d been expecting gang rapes in the showers, vicious guards just a gun and a uniform away from prison themselves, ‘invitations’ to be bum-buddies with some guy with AIDS. But the real punishment was time and tedium: up at the same time every morning, back to the cell at the same time every night; the meagre time allotted for showering, shaving, eating, exercising; the long hours at some sweatshop sort of job; the same juvenile crap on television every evening, chosen by the lifers and the long-sentence boys whose brains had turned to prison porridge. What really got to him was the simple lack of natural light and natural darkness-wherever he went they had an electric light on, bright during the day so the guards wouldn’t miss anything, dim at night but leaking into his cell, his brain, nevertheless. Sugarfoot had wondered how he would survive the eighteen months, was thankful they hadn’t given him longer, and knew he was never going back.