Peter Temple - Black Tide

‘Well hung,’ she said. ‘Well hung’s just a memory. I’m lucky to meet badly hung. Hung at all is a blessing.’

‘The incredible shrinking men. You may be inside some kind of zone of contracting genitals. A beam from space. The aliens are clearing a landing ground in Toorak. First they shrink the dicks of the rich, then…’

‘They send in the alien shocktroops, humanoids hung like Danehill, to be ecstatically welcomed by the rich women. Speaking of rich women, how’s Linda?’

It wasn’t a question I wanted to be asked. I slid down the sofa, put my right foot out and moved a log closer to the core of the fire. ‘That’s not a question I wanted to be asked,’ I said.

‘You’ve answered it anyway. A friend of mine saw her with Rod Pringle at a television thing.’

Rod Pringle was the hottest thing in commercial television current affairs.

‘Just business,’ I said.

‘He kissed her ear.’

‘They’re like that in television. Kiss your ear, kiss your arse, kiss any part of you. Means nothing. Like size.’ I drank some red wine. It seemed to have gone sour.

‘Jack? You there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.’ A pause. ‘Here’s a number I’ve been looking for. Madame Corniche.’

‘Please God,’ I said, ‘not seances. Recovered memories before seances.’

‘Cranial massage. Did you know the plates in your skull can be moved?’

‘Rosa,’ I said, ‘if the Good Lord wanted us to pay people to move our skull plates, he wouldn’t have given us the front bar of the Royal in Footscray. You want to eat one day? Lunch?’

‘You’re inviting me to eat? Soon you could be introducing me to your friends. Male friends.’

‘I don’t know any men I’d like to be related to by intercourse,’ I replied.

‘Don’t worry about it. I’d rather be introduced to men by a warder at Pentridge. Or wherever they put the crims now. Lingalonga Social Adjustment Facility Pty Ltd.’

‘They’ll be the same people I know,’ I said. ‘Former clients.’

‘Funny thing with lawyers,’ Rosa said. ‘The respectable ones I know don’t have former clients. They have clients. It’s only the ones like you who have former clients. Former because someone shot them dead or because you couldn’t keep them out of jail.’

‘Respectable?’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you knew respectable lawyers. Name one.’

‘I can name one. One of many. I was at the races with one two weeks ago, in fact.’

‘Laurie Phelan. I saw you at Flemington with Laurie Phelan.’

‘Exactly. A commercial lawyer. Why didn’t you show yourself?’

‘Trying to avoid guilt by association. Know what they call Laurie? They call him Mr Omo. Why is that?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to know.’

‘Because he washes whiter than white. He launders money for drug dealers.’

There was a long silence.

‘Well,’ Rosa said, ‘he’s got nice hands.’

‘Must be using a kind soap powder. Donelli’s in Smith Street, Collingwood. Sunday, twelve-thirty. In the courtyard.’

‘Courtyard? A courtyard in Collingwood? I don’t think you’ve got a full grasp of the courtyard concept. They don’t have courtyards in Collingwood. Courtyards don’t have Hills hoists in the middle. With big old underpants and bloomers and bras like jockstraps for elephants hanging on them.’

‘Don’t bring Laurie Phelan.’

‘You bastard.’

I caught the last ten minutes of ‘On This Day’. Rod Pringle’s dense and shining hair kept sliding over his quizzical right eyebrow as he tried to get the Premier of New South Wales to concede that you could buy planning permission in Sydney’s western suburbs.

The Premier was confident, serious and convincing. Then an overhead camera zoomed in on his sweating scalp, showing the transplanted hair plugs, like an enhanced CIA satellite picture of a failing crop in Afghanistan. After that, he didn’t seem quite so convincing.

After a commercial, Linda came on, fetching in dark blue, standing in front of a flashy Sydney building. She pointed over her shoulder.

This building, called Cumulus, is Sydney’s newest and most dramatic. It belongs to a private company owned by one of the most private millionaires in Australia, Steven Levesque. We hear little about him from year to year. Yesterday, he came into the spotlight as the buyer of a forty per cent shareholding in Sanctum Corporation, the country’s fastest-growing property development company. But Mr Levesque is more than a businessman. He is also said to speak directly into ears at the highest levels of politics.

The camera cut to a vast minimalist office, dwelt for a moment upon a large Storrier canvas, then went to a man sitting behind a glowing slab of 300-year-old jarrah, a handsome man in his forties, perfect navy suit, blue shirt, red tie, lean and tanned face, squared-off chin.

Linda opened with a fast inswinger.

Mr Levesque, people say that you have far too much influence over both the Prime Minister and the Premier of Victoria. Why is that?

Levesque smiled, put his head to one side in a puzzled way. His straight fair hair was naughtily unwilling to stay in place and he disciplined it with long fingers.

Why is what?

Why is this impression current?

Is it? I can’t imagine why. The Prime Minister probably wouldn’t recognise me, the Premier of Victoria I’ve known for a long time but I don’t see much of. It’s usually on public occasions. We commiserate about golf for a minute or so. Also, he once asked me about a horse I had an interest in.

Whether it would win?

No. He liked its name. Momus. He wanted to know what it meant.

The camera went to Linda.

And could you tell him?

Levesque: Could you have?

Linda: Odd to name a horse for the god of ridicule, isn’t it?

Tough point won. She smiled, showing her nice teeth. My lips knew those nice butted-up teeth. You could see why she was a big hit, why the Sydney Morning Herald TV guide called her the best interviewer on television, why the Sun-Herald said she was a thirty-something spunk who paralysed the channel-surfing finger. Belatedly, Linda was having the career success she deserved.

I understood that the only place she could have that success was in Sydney. Melbourne hated success. It didn’t match the weather. Melbourne’s weather suited introspective mediocrity and suicidal failure. The only acceptable success had to involve pain, sacrifice and humility. Sydney liked the idea of success, achieved at no cost and accompanied by arrogance.

In this room, I had said those things. And I’d said, ‘For Christ’s sake, take the job. It’s only a couple of hours away. If you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of your life thinking: What if…?’

Steven Levesque was saying: I’m an ordinary member of the party and from time to time, people in the party ask my opinion on something and I give it. I imagine they seek opinions from dozens of people. And so they should.

Last July, the Premier of Victoria took a ten-day holiday in the Caribbean. He stayed at a property on Guadeloupe called the Domaine de Thierry. My information is that you own the property, Linda countered.

Steven Levesque laughed, a real-sounding laugh.

I don’t. A company I’m involved with does. It owns three properties in the Caribbean. They’re for hire. Anyone can stay there. You can stay there, Ms Hillier. My understanding is that the Premier was the guest of someone who hired the Domaine.

May we know who?

Another laugh. Even if I knew, Ms Hillier, and I don’t, I certainly wouldn’t tell you or anyone else.

I drained my glass. Now I could spend the rest of my life thinking: What if I hadn’t encouraged Linda Hillier to take the offer from Channel 6 in Sydney? Would it have been happiness ever after? What kind of idiot encourages a woman he loves to move away in pursuit of media stardom?