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Eight: Welcome to the Monkey House
I did the course, Private Detective First Class, it was tedious but it was definitely better than law school. I stuck to it and graduated with a small piece of plastic about the size of a credit card, it had my picture on the front, not one of my best, it looked more like a mug shot from a police line up, and it stated Jack Hamma, Private Detective, not licenced to kill and not licenced to carry a gun. I would have preferred to have been licenced to carry a gun but as I missed the damn target every time in pistol shooting they asked me to join a shooter's club and practice and then they would reassess. It's the strangest thing, in the army I had been a crack shot but every time I shot that pistol at the target I saw faces from the past, faces of people I had shot, and they stared at me as I pulled the bloody trigger and I missed every time.
I found a small, uninspiring office, with a small uninspiring foyer, on the seventh floor of a small high rise building in Adelaide, a smallish city in southern Australia. In front of the building was a plaza so I could see people queuing for buses and walking across the paved area, I thought that could be an advantage. I also needed an open view, a couple of the offices I looked at were pretty claustrophobic and it wouldn't be the done thing to be a congealed wreck when a client walked in. As I said, my office was uninspiring, but I figured it would make a better impression than glitzy. I thought of myself as an old time, hard boiled, Private Detective, like they used to turn out in Los Angeles, I'd read about them when I was in the army, I had to do something while sitting around waiting to shoot people. A single unadorned fluoro lit up the room, I had a rather large desk, it was big enough to seat eight or so people at a dinner party, not that I planned having any dinner parties, I had a big swivel brown leather chair, a bit tarnished and worn with age, and on the wall I hung a sentimental picture of kids playing in an Australian country town, it was sun bleached and old, I'd picked it up in a second hand dive, I felt it set the right tone. I also hung last year's calendar on the wall and my certificate for having completed the Private Detective's course, there were also two straw backed, slightly wobbly chairs for clients to sit on. I felt I'd got the tone of the place just right.
As promised by Lincoln, my first case was quite simple. An amateur jockey from a trots club, trots is where you race horses but the jockey sits on a buggy, it's also called harness racing, anyway an amateur jockey from a trots club had a fulltime job working for a paint company but he didn't work as he had a claim in for compensation for a back injury he had received while loading paint onto trucks. In his job he used a forklift and his story was that sitting on the forklift day after day doing exactly the same job, had over time, done substantial damage to his spine and he could no longer work and he could no longer race as a jockey at the trot meets, he was seeking mega bucks for compensation. It was my job, as described in a file from the insurance company, to check it out, was he injured or not. I went to the stables late one afternoon where the amateur jockey's horses were stabled and I pretended to be a mad enthusiastic gardener collecting horse manure. I took an old ute of Dad's, I had now inherited a few old bangers from Dad, he had collected old cars and Mum was happy to see the back of them, and I shovelled lots and lots of horse muck into old grain sacks and then loaded them into the back of the ute and then Liam, that was his name, came into the stables.
'G'day,' I said in an off-hand way not really looking at him.
'G'day,' he said.
'Just collecting horse manure.'
'We've got plenty of it, only too glad for you to take it away.'
'Yes plenty here.'
'We'll have more tomorrow, just keeps piling up, if there's one thing we've got plenty of in this game, it's horse shit.'
'Nice here, stables next to the beach, do you take the horses out for a run on the beach?'
'First thing every morning and late afternoon.'
'You ride?'
'Well no, I've injured my back.'
'Too bad.'
'Yes.'
'Do they race out at Rory Park?'
'Yes there's a meet coming up this Saturday, it's a family sport, you should go along, take your wife or girlfriend, there's a bar and a restaurant you'd have a good night out.'
'I might just do that.'
'Good on ya, catch you later, got to get my horses harnessed if I can, can't do much with my back.'
'No.'
The next morning I was out at the crack of dawn with my VW Beetle parked facing the sea. This time I wore a mechanic's overalls and a beanie to keep my head warm and I got excellent film of Liam taking his horses for a run. In his claim for compensation it stated that he could no longer ride and take out his horses as the pain was unbearable. On the following Saturday night I took Mum to the trots, she had agreed to come to help me out, she was my cover, we had a great time and I got more film of my man going hell bent for leather in the fifth race and whipping his horse and winning. Lincoln was pretty pleased with my film.
My next case was for another back claim. The guy had worked on ships at Port Adelaide and apparently the company he worked for had been a bit draconian forcing the workers to work more and more overtime, the pay was good but the blokes got tired. So what happened? He was undertaking repair work on a foreign ship, welding and refitting the electrics, unfortunately due to unknown circumstances, he was standing in a foot of water and he got a sudden electric shock. He claimed that his back was buggered and that he could no longer work or undertake the maintenance of his small country property. I sat in my trusty Beetle, parked in the road outside his house for a week, sun up to sun down, waiting to get film of him doing something incriminating. He stayed inside the whole time. Then there was a terrific rain storm with heavy winds and the guy I was trying to film had a tree down across his driveway. First thing next morning I was sitting outside his house when he emerged and began cutting up the giant old gum tree with a chainsaw, he cut it into fire sized logs and stacked them all up to dry. I filmed him all day. Lincoln was over the moon with the film and said I was a natural.
I celebrated my company's ongoing success by downing a glass or two of cheap whiskey, after all that's what private eyes did in the movies. I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs, wondering what private detectives do when they are not invading people's privacy, when in walked a middle aged, or possibly older, man he was short and well…fat with wiry curly hair and a short shaggy unkempt beard, he was wearing dirty jeans, a dirty sort of acrylic dark blue sweatshirt and a pair of old boots. He looked like he had just been to the city dump and had a good roll around in the dirt, and that he had obviously enjoyed the experience, like a small dog in a fresh smelly cow pat. On his arm was a woman, she was also short and fat, blonde, with acrylic clothing, old boots and jeans and she too was dirty.
'What can I do for you?' I said in my best professional private detective voice.
'Ollo Vanderburg.' said the man in an enthusiastic Australian voice, he reached out and shook my hand. 'Dad was Dutch, I'm as true blue Australian as they come.'
'Pleased to meet you,' I said.
'This is Sunshine, we were childhood sweethearts.'
'Pleased to meet you,' I said shaking Sunshine's hand.
'Her old man didn't like me, I had long hair and surfed all the time so he threw me out. I got married up in Queensland and had a successful business, bought a big house but the missus and I, we separated.'
'I see, so you want a divorce…'
'Sunshine got married and now she's separated from her old man.'
'So who do you want me to get the goods on?'
'We met again at our high school reunion, our high school had a reunion before they knocked it down.'
'So is it custody of kids, or are you fighting about who gets what in a settlement?'
'I came here to do you a favour.'
'Come again?'
'I came here to do you a favour.'
'How's that?'
'You're a private detect
ive right?'
'Right,' I said and if I had been an old fashioned private detective I would have lit a cigarette at that moment and blown smoke into his face but I didn't smoke, filthy habit.
'And I'm a private detective,' said Ollo.
'Then what do you want with me?'
'Been working in the industry for twenty five years. I've been a bouncer, here's my bouncer's licence,' he said and he pulled from a fat wallet a piece of plastic which stated that Ollo Vanderburg was a licenced bouncer. 'I can do first aid, I was a paramedic,' he said and showed me a piece of plastic with his paramedic licence, 'and here's my private detective's licence,' and he showed me a plastic card, it stated Licenced to Kill, no it didn't, but it did say Licenced to carry a gun.
I looked into his eyes, they were brown, genuine and smiling.
'Very impressive,' I said, 'but I still don't know why you're here.'
'Well, my little Sunshine,' he said and gave her a quick squeeze as his lips made contact with her lips, 'she said I should come in and give it a go, have a whirl, in for a penny in for a pound, nothing risked nothing gained.'
'What exactly are we talking about?' I said.
'You haven't got a gun and I have.'
'How did you know that?'
'I have my sources.'
'You want a job?'
'I see it this way, I can work for you and you can work for me.'
'Tell me about your experience.'
'Well, it's all highly confidential, but I've spent a lot of time sitting outside bikie gang strongholds and if anything suss transpired, then it was my job to tip off the local police, you know, a man seen entering with a strange case in his hand, that sort of thing.'
'Dangerous work.'
'Always carried a side arm but that was nothing, I had to do the same with the Triad…'
'Chinese?'
'Cut your throat as soon as look at you that mob.'
'They certainly would.'
'I've done all the usual stuff, following husbands, following wives, filming people for insurance fraud, all that sort of stuff. I've been a bouncer, a paramedic, I've been around the blocks. I even sat in an old second hand car and watched my wife in case she was cheating on me.'
'That would have been pretty bad.'
'Best thing that ever happened to me, because of my missus playing around, I got back with Sunshine here, they say every cloud has a silver lining.'
'I couldn't employ you fulltime, it would have to be strictly on a contract, case by case basis.'
'Suits me fine.'
'Nothing exciting.'
'I've had exciting, now I've got Sunshine, mind you, she can get me pretty excited at times.'
Sunshine walked over to my desk and sat on it revealing a rather impressive cleavage.
'I can do the books,' she said licking her lips.
'She's a fully trained bookkeeper,' said Ollo.
'And I can answer the phone,' she said in her sexy voice.
'You'd have to dress, er…'
'Oh don't worry about the way we look,' said Ollo. 'You see we heard about you but we didn't know where your office was so we trailed you, God it was easy. We decided to look like a couple of old deros so you wouldn't notice us, you walked past us a few times.'
'I'm good on the computer,' Sunshine purred.
'Isn't she a darl?' said Ollo and he gave her a squeeze. 'And she's great in the sack.' Sunshine blushed, I didn't blame her.
'I do have a sort of alcove, or an outer office, where a receptionist could work and I could do with a gun. I'm a pretty good shot but…'
'Shit happens.'
'It certainly does.'
'That's a yes then,' said Ollo, 'that's great.'
'I have a job that you could help me with right away. There's this bloke, hurt back, works for a department store, in the warehouse, he's got a claim in for a payout, says he can't walk, can hardly stand up, his back hurts even when he's lying down, problem is his house has got a high fence around it. I was spying through a hole in the fence and he came out of his gate and nearly caught me but I dropped my keys and pretended I was a bumbling fool of a pedestrian who had lost their keys. I've followed him down to the beach and he had a gay old time on the water slide at Glenelg, no hint of a bad back then, but I don't seem to be able to get film of him.'
'Leave it to me boss,' said Ollo. 'Sunshine and me, with our contacts, will bring in heaps of work.'
'Hang on a minute,' I said. 'If the two of you are so good…'
'We're a team.'
'Well if you are such a good team why do you want to work for me, let's face it, I'm a rank amateur.'
'I've been at this kind of thing for years, I'm good, I'm very good but I'm tired. I can't be bothered running even a small outfit like this, if you're the boss you take all the flak, it's your head on the chopping block, yours is the head that rolls if you fuck up. I like it that way.'
'Thanks for being honest.'
'Sunshine and I, we just want to be together and…' Sunshine blushed again.
'Okay, glad to have you aboard, but how did you find out about me?' I said.
'I have my sources,' said Ollo. 'Let's shake on it, my word's as good as…well it's good.'
'Welcome to the monkey house,' I said and we shook hands. 'Didn't I nearly trip over you in the entrance way?'
'That's right.'
'And you followed me into town on an old motorbike?'
'You did notice us.'
'I was trained to notice things, let's drink on it.'
'Suits me.'
I took out the bottle of cheap whiskey and a couple of extra glasses and poured out three doubles.
'To snooping,' I said.
'To a fully documented, legally valid, evidence set,' said Ollo.
'To good times,' said Sunshine giggling.
'Cheers,' we all said and clinked our glasses.
Shakespeare on the Roof Page 8