Peter Temple: Black Tide

We shook hands. ‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I said.

‘My pleasure. Breaks the monotony of a model prisoner’s life.’ The right side of his face scrunched up. He had a facial tic.

I sat down. ‘Alan Sargent sends his regards.’

‘Give him mine. Chips down, only client prepared to be a character witness. I can do something for you? Ask.’

‘TransQuik,’ I said. ‘Alan says you thought the potato wasn’t entirely clean.’

Miles smiled, sardonic smile. ‘Where the legend begins,’ he said. ‘Steven Levesque. Little company is seed of empire. Like Rupert Murdoch.’

I prompted him. ‘Levesque bought TransQuik from Manny Lousada.’

His facial tic. ‘I did that acquisition for them. Before that they were only in the household move market, undercutting everyone, all the other small companies, pushed some of them to the wall, then bought them for bugger-all. The Killer Bees they called them, Levesque and Brent Rupert and McColl and Carson, his partners.’

‘Where’d the money come from?’

‘Asking the important question. Rupert’s family owned Pert Clothing. Big company once. Lots of money. Levesque had bugger all, just brains. His old man was a tram conductor, migrant, Lebanese-French. A West Heidelberg boy, now that’s a hard school. Grew up in an Olympic Village house. They built those places in about three days in ’56. Not too many of the local kids went on to Melbourne Uni and Harvard.’

‘Ones I know mostly went on to juvenile detention and Pentridge. How’d you get involved with Levesque?’

He lit a new cigarette from the old one, offered the packet. I shook my head.

‘I knew Brent’s older brother. I did some work on their early acquisitions. Looked over these little transport companies. Pretend to be representing some Queensland outfit. Happens all the time. Then I didn’t hear from them for a while. Came back to me in ’84. I was doing pretty well by then, had a bit of a reputation. Not them though. Their wheels were coming off. The whole enterprise sailing south under all canvas. Brent had milked the Ruperts dry. Pert Clothing was up for sale.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Well, between professional colleagues, they’d got themselves into serious shit, helped by the banks, who thought lending money to a Rupert was a zero-risk proposition. And Brent relied on Levesque. Steven claimed he only needed two minutes with a business’s balance sheet to know everything about the company. On the basis of this talent, they bought crap you would not believe. Harvard MBA. He’s got one, y’know, Steven. Now I laugh when I hear the magic words “Harvard MBA’’. Master of Bugger-All.’

‘So they needed accounting advice?’

Miles laughed until his tic stopped him. ‘Accounting, business advice. Lots of it. My opinion was that the three wonderboys were looking down the barrel at doing some time. Rich, don’t you think? Now one’s the bloody federal A-G, the other one bankrolls the Libs, and I’m doing time for some piddling malfeasance.’

‘Very rich,’ I said. ‘What could you do for them?’

‘Well, they were trying to unwind some deals, handle some very menacing inquiries from the Tax Department. The big thing was, they’d gone in for a share play, no names, not big by market standards, but much too big for them. A person who must remain nameless because he has people killed, this person convinced them to buy a large number of shares in company X for him. Bought in small parcels over about a year in the names of all these little companies they owned but were registered in Levesque’s mother’s name, his father’s, Rupert’s hippy cousins stoned witless in Nimbin, all kinds of names. But not bought with the nameless person’s money. No, oh no. With the Killer Bees’ own money, borrowed.’

New cigarette. Through the slit windows, I could see a Lombardy poplar in silhouette against the dying light.

‘The deal was,’ said Miles, ‘that when the person makes a takeover bid for the company, Levesque, Rupert and company sell him their holdings off-market. At a discount to the market price but a nice profit over what they paid.’

‘What would that amount to?’

‘They expected to make six or seven million clear.’

‘And didn’t?’

Miles scratched his upper lip. Tic. ‘One morning the shares went into freefall. By the close, the twelve million they’d spent was worth about two. The person, their trusted associate, was unavailable. No longer in the country. Finally, he rings Levesque from somewhere, Egypt I think it was, and says, sorry it didn’t pan out, that’s business. And he offers them two million for their holding.’

‘One could almost feel for them.’

‘Yes. Well, I talked to the banks for them, got a bit of relief, unwound a few of the loonier deals, but basically they were a basket case. Then Levesque gets me over to HQ in East Melbourne, very pleased with himself.’ He paused. Tic.

‘They’ve found a buyer for fifty-one per cent of TransQuik. An American freight outfit called Eagle Exprexxo, based in Tampa, Florida. That’s E-X-P-R-E-X-X-O. For fifty-one per cent, Eagle offers $20-odd million, I can’t remember the exact figure. I remember I started laughing. That valued TransQuik at around $40 million-a company that had never made a profit. And this is 1984, mind you. Serious offer, says Levesque. They see our potential, springboard into the region, etcetera. All that bullshit. I said, let’s see it on paper.’

‘What did Levesque want from you if he was such a hotshot business analyst?’

‘Nothing. He didn’t want me at all. Brent Rupert wanted me. To look at the deal. It was dawning on him through the coke haze that Levesque was dangerous. Could take a long time for things to dawn on Brent in those days, I can tell you. The short of it is that the next week we have a meeting with two lawyers. One is Rick Shelburne from Sydney. Well, I’d been at the sharp end of a few things by then and the sight of Shelburne made my scrotum shrink. Heard of him?’

I nodded. ‘Someone said he had a talent for winning over councillors.’

Miles smiled. Tic. ‘He used to be a spook, my Sydney friend tells me. ASIS. Worked for the Americans in the Philippines. He’s mixed up with very strange things.’

Tic.

He looked out of the embrasure at the coming night, moved his lips soundlessly. Faintly glazed look. ‘Hate the nights,’ he said. Tic. Tic. ‘I’m a prison librarian and Rick Shelburne’s presumably on the beach at Noosa. Says a lot about the criminal justice system.’

Tic.

‘And the second lawyer?’ I said.

He shook himself, looked at his cigarette, extracted a fresh one from the packet. ‘Person you wouldn’t cross either, Carlos something. German-sounding name. I forget.’

‘Siebold. Carlos Siebold.’

‘Siebold. That’s right. He’s representing the Americans. Well, not directly. There’s a bank in Luxembourg involved, forget that name too.’

‘Klostermann Gardier.’

‘Correct. Absolutely. The finance will come through them, he says. He wants a new company set up to own TransQuik, a Hong Kong-registered company. The Killer Bees to own forty-nine per cent of that. Another company will own the fifty-one per cent. Not the American company.’

‘Not Eagle Exprexxo?’

‘No. A company that owns Eagle.’

‘Complicated.’

More laughter and tics. ‘And this Carlos whoever, he says the bank, on behalf of whoever, they’ll lend TransQuik $40 million for acquisitions. Through the Hong Kong holding company. Terms to be discussed.’

‘To my untutored ear, an attractive offer.’

Miles smiled. He had a nice smile, a smile a child would like. ‘Untutored ear. I like that. I’ve been trying to learn to appreciate classical music. Funny how you spend your life. All I ever did was chase money. Never read a book.’