‘By the way, I told Bruno I couldn’t sing for him, at least not for a while. He didn’t take it well. I told him to ask me again in the new year.’
‘Sounds sensible. You need to look after yourself.’
Their coffees finished, Jack got to his feet as gracefully as the small, rickety chair would allow. But as he steadied himself, he found himself looking into a familiar, leering face.
‘Don’t you ever give up?’ he spat at Phil, his frustration showing.
‘I remember now’, Phil responded, ignoring Jack’s goading. ‘It was your mum — she was crook. Cancer or something. Not your sister.’
‘Don’t know what you’re on about. Piss off and leave me alone, will you?’
‘What sort of bloke are you anyway, Jack? Decent bloke pays his debts …’ Phil shuffled off across the street.
Jack couldn’t get Phil out of his mind as he walked back to the flats with Emily. A vague recollection floating around in the most obscure recesses of his mind was troubling him. He recalled having scraped together some money to help his mother when she was diagnosed with cancer and had to stop working. It had taken him a while to recover from his mother’s death, and he had done his best to blot out all the unhappy memories of her illness. Had he borrowed money from Phil? It was starting to feel like he had.
Doing his best to push Phil to the back of his mind, he said goodbye to Emily. The tingle of pleasure of previous embraces didn’t register this time. Maybe he was distracted by Phil, but it felt like his interest in her was receding. She seemed anxious and wary, and he worried that he’d been inflating a passing casual attraction into something it could never be. Anyway, what was the point? He was on the verge of going broke and ending up on the streets.
Then an unexpected run of good fares and generous tips made him feel slightly less worried about his financial problems. The day was turning out well — until he received another surprise phone call.
‘Jack? Peter Lanscombe from Worksafe again. Need to get you in to do that witness statement about the accident. When can you come in?’
‘Er, don’t know. I drive a cab, have to keep working, you know.’ Jack tried to work out how to deal with this unwelcome intrusion. What should he do? Refuse? Put it off?
He was pretty sure Franklin would find out if he refused to talk to Worksafe. But the Auspart crooks might have connections, too.
Lanscombe prompted him: ‘We do have powers allowing us to compel you …’
Shit. Maybe the smartest thing to do was to front up but say as little as possible.
‘Okay. I’ll talk to you in my lunch break. Can’t stay for long.’ Then, aware of the implications of being seen entering the Worksafe offices, he added: ‘I’ll meet you in a café. You pick one.’
‘How about Morelli’s? Just up from our office in Bourke Street, near the RACV?’
‘Okay. I’ll try to get there before one o’clock.’
The investigator identified himself as Jack walked carefully through the tables in the small Bourke Street café they’d agreed on. Jack scanned the other tables for signs of possible trouble, but no one looked at him. Waiters scurried back and forth through the impossibly narrow gaps between the tables as the hiss of the coffee machine rose above the hubbub.
How does he know what I look like? Jack wondered. A discreet glance around the café set his mind at rest: mostly youngish office-workers, mostly female. Must be the uniform.
‘Let’s make this quick.’
‘So tell me what happened, in your own words.’
‘Flats next door — went in to tell them off about the noise. Two blokes working — the one up the ladder fell off. That’s it.’
‘Did he have any gear on? Harness or anything?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Were the feet of the ladder secured?’
‘Don’t know.’
After a few more ‘don’t knows’ from Jack, and doing some hasty scribbling, the investigator threw a searching look at him.
‘What’s going on, Jack? Got amnesia?’
‘No such luck. Wish I had.’
‘Worried you’re in the gun here?’
‘Too fucking right I am. Where’s the other bloke gone? How come he’s disappeared?’
‘No idea. Probably knows who’s involved. Won’t be surprised if you disappear, too.’
He winked at Jack, who wasn’t amused.
‘Here’s my card. I’ve got enough for your statement for now. Give me a yell if you want to add something.’
As Jack drove off, he tried to make sense of this strange encounter. Was this guy in cahoots with the blokes putting the weights on him? With Franklin and his mates breathing down his neck, he didn’t really want to know.
It did confirm one thing, though. He’d thought about dropping in at Fitzroy Legal Service at the end of his shift to get some help with his parking fine. This now seemed like a great idea: with any luck, he could get them to sort out this Worksafe stuff, too. Then he would go looking for Dan.
Billy the Hippy had told him about the legal service a while ago: apparently, you could get legal advice there without paying. Amazing. He’d driven past it plenty of times, but knew little about what went on inside.
Jack cursed as a learner-driver in a small car marked with ‘A1 Driving School’ signs crawled out in front of him. Carlton seemed to be gripped by a plague of L-platers getting in everyone’s road and slowing down the traffic even more.
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they crawled along, and then lost patience. He squeezed the cab out past the small sedan, taking advantage of a gap in the row of parked cars in the middle of the street, and gunned the Falcon. It was a close call, but the trusty cab was up for it. Jack let out an exasperated sigh as he slowed back to normal speed and approached the roundabout at the Drummond Street and Pelham Street intersection.
Out of nowhere, a car appeared heading towards the roundabout from his left, travelling fast and showing no sign of giving way.
‘Shit!’ Jack jammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel to the right. The cab mounted the roundabout’s elevated grass mound, veered sideways a little, and his front wheel struck the base of a sign on the far side of the island.
Jesus! Now they’re trying to kill me. His heart pumped furiously as he battled to regain his breath. It wasn’t the silver sedan, though, or anything even remotely like it. The familiar L-plates and loud driving-school signs said it all.
As the car crawled away, Jack scrambled out of the cab to check the damage. It had a few new scratches, and maybe the wheel alignment was askew, but there was nothing much to worry about.
He hurled a burst of abuse at the other car, got back into the cab, and reversed off the mound, taking careful note of surrounding traffic. He half-expected to be attacked by another L-plater. There was probably a bigger chance of him getting killed by a learner-driver than by a Mafia hitman.
Crunching the Falcon back into ‘Drive’ with a grunt of frustration, he drove off. The other car was now crawling down Drummond Street. Why the fuck don’t they go and practise somewhere else? he asked the rear-view mirror. Like Chadstone at three in the morning?
The steering wheel started shaking slightly when he accelerated. The car kept going, but it was clear that the front end was damaged. Jack looked up to the heavens, convinced the gods were out to get him. A huge parking fine, a disappearing share-driver, and now this. He’d have to get the wheel alignment fixed.
It could have been worse, he supposed. He tried to put the incident behind him and focus on his visit to the legal service. One financial disaster at a time, he told himself grimly.
It was a little after a quarter past three when he turned into Johnston Street. Jack was very conscious of the clearway restrictions on parking, which began at four o’clock. If he was still parked there after
then, massive fines, wheel clamping, and towing all threatened. It would be a complete bastard of a thing if he copped another huge fine when he was there to sort out the original one.
Finding a spot wasn’t that hard, as the clearway tended to work in advance. The street was already clogged up with early peak-hour symptoms, so reversing into a spot required a bit of bluff, but he managed it.
The waiting room at the front of the legal service office looked like an art gallery for left-wing protest posters. The place seemed to be empty, so Jack just stood there, drumming his fingers on the counter.
After a few minutes, a young, smartly dressed woman with long, dark hair in a ponytail appeared.
‘Oh, hi, you being looked after?”
‘Not yet. Just wanted to see about getting some help about this big fine I copped.’
‘Um, okay.’ She glanced around, looked at her watch, and then looked back at Jack. ‘Better come with me — got time for a quick chat.’
‘Will I be able to talk to a lawyer?’
‘I am a lawyer.’ Oops.
She ushered him into a small, windowless interview room next to the reception area, where Jack sat down on a plastic chair.
‘I’m Holly Nettleton’, she said.
Jack shook her hand. ‘Jack, Jack van Duyn.’ He spelt out his name as she scribbled on a pad. ‘I’m a cab driver.’
She read quickly through the ticket and then looked up at him.
‘All this accurate? Time, place, what happened?’
‘Yeah. It was this stupid bus-driver’s fault, blocking the rank — should’ve gone after him. I was just dropping this bloke off at Emergency …’
‘Doesn’t matter. Sudden death, this stuff.’
‘So that’s it then? Can’t help me?’ The anger in his voice betrayed his frustration.
‘Won’t be able to get out of it. But we should be able to negotiate time to pay. Maybe three months, a few instalments.’
‘Better than nothing, I guess’, Jack replied. At least this would ease the pain and maybe help him to stay solvent for a little bit longer.
‘Okay, I’ll open a file, give them a call. I’ll need you to give me some details on your income and assets.’
‘Think I’d be driving cabs if I was loaded?’
‘Probably not, but I have to convince the council you can’t afford to pay in one hit.’
‘Ah, sorry. That should be pretty easy. No money in the bank, struggle to pay the rent, my partner’s about to bail on me.’
‘Okay, I’ll let you know when I’ve got something.’
‘Thanks.’ Jack looked her up and down. ‘Hey, know anything about Worksafe cases? I’m being chased as a witness for a building-site accident next door to my place, got a summons …’
‘Yeah, a bit. What happened?’
‘Bloke fell off a ladder, got himself killed. Had the Worksafe guys chasing me because I saw it. It’s all got weird — just found out the company’s connected to this Auspart outfit that’s in the news about the Carlton high-rise …’
She looked up at Jack, her eyebrows raised, clearly a good deal more interested.
‘So tell me everything that’s happened.’
Jack checked his watch to make sure he still had some time, then ran through the story.
‘I can’t advise you about this, I’m afraid’, she said. ‘And I certainly can’t advise you to have a convenient loss of memory. That’d be professional misconduct. But you definitely should tread very carefully here. Some pretty dubious people are involved in Auspart. One lot is supposed to have Mafia connections, but you never know with that sort of stuff. The other guy is called David Clarkson, a big mover in the political world, fingers in lots of pies, one of those guys who smells a bit but nothing’s ever been proved.’
Shit. Jack’s head was spinning.
‘I’ll give you a call once I’ve worked something out. And I’d lie low for a bit if I were you. This stuff might all blow over, Mister van Dine.’
I told you my name before, Jack muttered to himself, but he resisted the temptation to point that out. ‘It’s van Duyn, as in spoon. Don’t worry, everyone gets it wrong …’
‘Sorry, maybe I’d better stick to calling you Jack. See you next time.’
Jack slipped into the driver’s seat of the cab just as the clearway time ticked over. It didn’t take him long to get to Hotham Street. Franklin might reckon the other bloke had done a runner, but Jack wanted to check for himself.
He took a deep breath and knocked on the door of number twenty-nine. There was no sign of life inside the small, run-down cottage. Jack thought about trying around the back, but decided that would be asking for trouble.
The door opened just as he was turning to leave, and a frazzled, bleary-eyed woman stood there, squinting into the light. The smell of mouldy carpet and damp walls was all too familiar.
‘Hi, sorry’, Jack began. ‘I’m looking for Dan … youngish builder guy, met him on a site in Brunswick …’
The woman blinked several times, and Jack started to wonder if she spoke English. Finally, she responded.
‘Not here. Left a few days ago. Really weird. These guys came around — next thing, no more Dan …’
Jesus. Jack was now on high alert. It sounded like Dan had been abducted.
‘So where’d he go? Leave an address or anything? Do you have his number?’
‘You a cop?’
‘Course not!’ Jack spluttered. ‘I’m a cab-driver. Just need to find Dan.’
‘Sorry, can’t help you. I know he was freaked out about something, left some of his stuff here … only been here for a few weeks.’
‘So you haven’t got any idea how I could find him?’
‘No, that’s all I know. You’re the third guy who’s been around looking for him. What’s he done?’
‘Nothing. Just a witness at an accident’, Jack replied. ‘Thanks, leave you to it. Here’s one of my cards — tell him to give me a call if he turns up.’
He was convinced Dan was now at the bottom of Port Phillip Bay.
13.
A sudden desire to see Emily again hit Jack: he was feeling very alone, and a bit of moral support might help. All the fears lurking inside him had been crystallised by the visit to the house in Hotham Street.
He didn’t want to try the flat, but he figured there was a good chance she’d be at the Tenants Association or the Welfare Centre.
As he stepped out of the cab outside the flats, a voice boomed out at him: ‘Hey, Jack!’
Oh no. There, yet again, sprawled out on a bench near the tram stop, was Phil, clearly the worse for wear.
‘Er, hi, Phil.’ Jack kept walking, and then changed his mind.
‘I remember it all now. It was definitely your mum, not your sister. Your mum was crook …’
Jack took a deep breath and sat down next to Phil.
‘Listen, Phil, I still reckon you’ve got it arse-end up, you’ve never lent me anything, but here’s twenty bucks. It’s all I’ve got. I’m nearly as broke as you — losing my share-driver, copped this huge parking fine …’
‘Still got a roof over your head …’
‘Surely you can find somewhere …’
‘No one’ll touch me, mate.’
Jack looked at him sceptically.
‘Heart’s dodgy. I’m on the drugs, but I’m still falling apart.’
‘Why’s that stop you?’
‘Try fronting up to the local estate agent like this. And what do I do for rent?’
‘How long …?’ Jack left the rest of the sentence hanging.
‘They never know. They have stuff that keeps you going, but I think I’m fucked anyway. Get pissed, forget to take the pills …’
Jack fell silent, unsure what to say next. His better nature told him h
e should try to do something a bit more than handing over a $20 note, but he kept thinking about the abuse he’d copped from Phil.
‘Got to go, mate. Where do you hang out? Where can I find you? I’m in the shit, but I’ll try and get some more cash for you, okay?’ Jack rationalised this uncharacteristic display of generosity as a smart way of getting Phil off his back.
‘Lygon Street, just a bit further down, most days. Some good spots to crash in the lanes. Get some scraps from the cafés, and all that.’
‘I’ll try and drop some more off tomorrow, okay?’
As Jack stepped off the pavement, a middle-aged woman in drab clothes approached them.
‘Phil, everything okay?’
Phil grunted in response.
She looked up and noticed Jack’s uniform.
‘You free? Just need to go over to the bottom of George Street in Fitzroy. St Mark’s …’
Jack was already likely to be late for changeover, and he had been about to go looking for Emily. Chatting with Phil had distracted him a little, though, and he desperately needed the money. It wouldn’t take him too far out of his way. Emily would have to wait for another day.
His passenger turned back to Phil, and after a brief exchange got into the cab.
Jack couldn’t help himself.
‘You know Phil?’
‘Yes. Very sad case. I work for Anglicare, helping homeless people with stuff, see him a fair bit.’
‘Poor bastard says his heart’s packing up.’
‘Not his biggest problem. Drinking himself to death.’
‘How come?’ Jack was starting to regret handing over $20.
‘You never know for sure. His wife left him about seven or eight years ago — at least that’s what he says. I think he was in a car accident where a small boy was killed. I don’t think it was his fault, but I think a fair few people thought it was. His drinking got worse, he lost his job, ended up on the street. Pretty hard to recover from. There’s plenty of blokes like Phil out there.’
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