Sharp Shooter

by Marianne Delacourt

  Dad stood silent, nonplussed.

  When I could catch my breath I explained what the classes were about.

  Relief lifted thirty years from his face.

  I got up and came around the desk to give him a hug. Then I told him about my paralanguage business. ‘I was keeping it quiet from you until I earned some money. I thought you’d think I was being flaky and irresponsible.’

  He sighed and gave me a quick squeeze. ‘I would have lent you the money.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t want you to.’

  There was a pause and the moment passed. He stepped away awkwardly. ‘Just as long as you’re alright then.’

  I smiled. ‘I’m right. I gotta go, Dad. Work, y’know.’

  Chapter 12

  PETER DELGADO HAD GIVEN me the address of a party in Claremont, the next suburb to Euccy Grove. Claremont was wall-to-wall millionaires without the welfare housing contingent to keep its nose up in the air about.

  I’d been told to be there by 9 pm sharp. In high heels.

  My gut feeling about the high-heels emphasis wasn’t good, but, with only twenty cents to my name, the lure of a retainer and the possibility of a thousand-dollar bonus meant I could ignore a few little client foibles.

  As I slid and wriggled into my newest LBD (two years old, on sale at Rucci’s), I called Mr Hara and left a message. ‘Hi Mr H, it’s Tara. The client is in the bag and I start work tonight at the usual rate. Will let you know how it goes, but nothing to worry about. Hope Mrs H is ripping up the ski slopes.’

  As I eased Mona out onto the highway and took a right at Bayview Terrace, I tried to imagine Mrs Hara skiing. For some reason I conjured a picture of her with her head and body buried in the snow, legs poking up in the air. I tried to change it – God knows, the woman could probably read my mind from Japan – but it wouldn’t go away. Thick, varicose-veined legs waving in the air.

  Blech.

  As I turned left into Victoria Avenue though, the street was its own distraction. ‘Millionaires’ Row’ they called it. Palatial houses and smug apartments that looked out onto a contented, yacht-strewn river. Some of the houses had their own little piers which looked as picturesque at night as they did in the daytime.

  The address Peter Delgado had given me was both palatial and had its own jetty. I drove up past the house and turned right, parking Mona outside a block of luxury apartments. As I walked back I saw Mercs, Porsches and Beamers sweeping up into the white-gravel driveway.

  Fortunately my LBD and black strappy heels were simple enough to be invisible. You can’t go wrong in black. You can’t go wrong in black, I told myself all the way to the gate.

  I waited there for the car congestion to clear, then clattered up the front path and rang the doorbell.

  A butler answered.

  Butler! Yikes! Lots of my friends’ parents had had expensive houses, but none of them had a butler.

  I told him my name and he checked his list and asked for ID. Satisfied that I was who I said I was, he stood aside, making a sweeping motion with his hand. ‘The ballroom is the first door on the left. Do you have anything you would like to check in, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Uuh?’ I said. ‘Like what?’

  ‘A coat. We also have a no-weapons policy.’

  I shook my head dumbly. I mean I’d been brought up properly, Joanna had seen to that, but no one had ever asked me if I’d like to check in a weapon with my coat.

  For Chrissake, this was Perth!

  ‘Enjoy your evening, Miss Sharp,’ he intoned, then dipped his head to hide the kind of superior grin reserved for people who had gravy stains on their shirt, or sauce on their chin.

  I make a point of standing tall when I’m nervous, so as I entered the ballroom I was ram-rod straight. This put me close on six feet four in my high heels, something I was ordinarily comfortable with . . . though not when every head of a hundred-plus Party Elegant swivelled in my direction and stared.

  The staring was not because of my beautiful posture, not even because I was the tallest person there (because I wasn’t – there were a couple of absolute giants), but because everyone else was dressed in white.

  Peter Delgado appeared from nowhere, an expensively dressed woman with straight, dark hair clutching his arm. The woman’s aura was wintery blue and lumpy, and an unattractive sneer lifted her top lip back from her teeth.

  ‘Good evening, Ms Sharp. This is my wife, Carlotta.’

  Ah, the cut-snake lady. I smiled and held out my hand, despite remembering Garth’s description of her. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  The woman declined my handshake and shot her husband a searching look.

  ‘Get me a drink, will you?’ Delgado told her.

  She flicked her hair over her shoulder and walked away through the crowd without a backward glance. It was the height of her killer heels that jogged my memory. She’d been standing at Delgado’s reception the other day.

  ‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Delgado said to me between gritted teeth. ‘It’s a “white” party.’

  ‘You told me to wear heels,’ I gritted back. ‘Nothing about the colour of my clothes.’

  ‘Francine rang you.’

  Francine? The Giggler? ‘You mean your PA?’

  He nodded and swung me into a position so that his body partly obscured mine. Over his shoulder I could see people going back to their conversations. Show over.

  ‘Yess,’ he hissed.

  ‘Well maybe you’d better get yourself a new PA with an IQ higher than her boob measurement, ’cos that one clearly can’t understand plain English. She never contacted me,’ I said, furious, then I shook him off me and tried to think of something else to talk about. ‘Nice house. Who owns it?’

  ‘Mr Viaspa.’

  I swallowed. ‘Johnny Vogue?’

  Delgado looked me in the eye. ‘You do know who he is, don’t you, Ms Sharp?’

  I glanced around at all the people. The white suits and gowns made their auras sharper. It was like stepping out into the centre of a very bright rainbow. I screwed up my eyes and searched the room until I located the face I’d seen in the newspapers. ‘Skinny dude over there with the big nose and the mullet, standing in between the gladiators and sucking down the Corona –’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be flattered by the description,’ said Delgado dryly. ‘There’s Nick. I’m going to introduce you. Now do your thing, Ms Sharp.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Do what it takes to get close to him, then dig around in his private life. I want to know everything you can find out. Especially, the state of his finances.’ He slipped a white envelope into my hand. ‘Here’s your retainer.’

  I peeked inside and saw five crisp hundred-dollar bills. ‘Um, thanks,’ I said, stuffing it in my bag.

  I didn’t have time to ask anything else before my prey responded to Delgado’s wave and came over.

  I looked up. I had to. The guy was close to seven foot and built like an athlete who’d only gone the teensiest bit to seed by the way his suit hugged his massive frame. He had the face of a boy, an attractive one at that, and there was something familiar about that face . . .

  Dark ’n’ delish is how Bok would have described him. I suddenly wished Bok was here with me to poke fun at the beautiful people and tell me I looked hot in my LBD.

  ‘Delgado,’ nodded the giant, holding his fingers out for a slap, homey style. Though his smile was in place and perfectly pleasant, his gorgeous, creamy caramel aura shrank to a mere silhouette as he touched hands with Delgado.

  ‘Nick Tozzi, meet Tara Sharp.’

  I held out my hand for a traditional man-shake. When we touched, his aura expanded warmly, engulfing Delgado’s sludge-brown shadow. I almost jumped back, which would have looked flaky, because for all intents and purposes he was wearing a smile and just politely shaking my hand.

  He caught my slight wince and loosened his grip.

  I grabbed his hand harder, not wanting him to th
ink I wasn’t up for a decent handshake, and succeeded in making his eyes widen in the way a person does when they are getting a Mason’s secret shake – or a come-on. Imagining he was thinking the latter, I dropped his hand an instant later.

  This was getting off to a bad start, and Delgado was creeping me out with his intense eyeballing, so I resorted to my default male conversation topic. Sport.

  ‘Hi, Nick,’ I said. ‘You look like you might have spent time at the back of the scrum.’

  He broke into a wide grin. ‘I was just thinking the same thing about you.’

  A girl could take offence at that kind of comment, but strangely it felt more like a compliment. I laughed. ‘That’s no way to speak to a girl who’s wearing spiky heels.’

  His eyes quickly dropped to my shoes then took a very slow trip back to my face via my legs, hips and chest. ‘Why? Will you take it out on me?’ His smile was more boyish this time.

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. We were already flirting inside our first fifty words to each other. I hadn’t had that happen in a long time.

  ‘I’ll be right back, Nick,’ said Delgado, slapping him on the back.

  ‘Sure, Peter,’ he said, his aura shrinking when Delgado touched him, then growing as soon as he looked back at me.

  Flattering really, I guess, but then I noticed something I’d missed before. There was a spot of darkness like a bruise in his lovely caramel aura. Something was wrong in his life.

  ‘So what is your sport, Nick?’ I asked, truly curious now.

  ‘Basketball.’

  ‘Seriously? Errr . . . what I mean is . . . you look –’

  He interrupted before I could bury myself. ‘I played college in the States. Got invited to NBA tryouts and didn’t make it.’ His smile faded a bit then.

  ‘Shame. But then not really. That’s more than most players even dream about,’ I said brightly, while I racked my brains. Who was this guy? I knew most of the ex-players around town, but Nick was probably ten or fifteen years older than me. I’d probably been wearing water wings when he was a contender.

  He shrugged. ‘I decided to come back home to play the Aussie league but things had changed here a lot. I was the last of the big, slow centres. They’re all my size now, but quick as well. I got sick of training harder than everyone else just to match up. Running up sand hills when you’re my weight . . .’

  I nodded in sympathy. ‘Yeah, there are some things some bodies are not meant to do.’

  ‘Your body looks like it’s pretty versatile,’ he said, looking me up and down again with a bald-faced appreciation that should have got me hopping mad. But he had a way about him, a slight goofiness that took the sting out of it. And a longing, like he hadn’t been with a girl in a while. But that couldn’t be right.

  ‘So what do you do now?’ I asked.

  ‘When I quit playing I missed it so much, I kinda went out and . . .’ He glanced at the wall and then the ceiling.

  ‘And what?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Bought the team.’

  It took a few seconds for what he’d said to sink in. ‘You mean the Western Thunder?’

  He nodded and I wondered if the flush creeping up his neck was embarrassment or annoyance.

  I bit my lip. ‘You’re Nick Tozzi, owner of the Western Thunder.’ I had to say it out loud just to be sure I got it right.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said mildly. ‘Sounds like I should apologise?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. But I think I’ll go home now and crawl under my bed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know who you were. You look different on TV,’ I finished lamely.

  To my relief, I saw Peter Delgado shouldering his way back to us with a couple of drinks in his hand. Not so shiny was the ship sailing in his wake, Johnny Vogue.

  ‘I mean I’m not just a fan, I used to play,’ I babbled on.

  Delgado was sliding towards us as quick and determined as a snake after a rat.

  ‘I know,’ Nick said softly. ‘I remember you.’

  Chapter 13

  DELGADO STOPPED IN FRONT of us and thrust a drink into my hand, insinuating his way in between Nick and I with his oily manner. ‘Nick. You know John?’

  Johnny Viaspa stepped into the middle of our cosy little tête-à-tête, splitting it like an arrow through an apple. Heads were turning our way again – a ripple of interest: Nick Tozzi and Johnny Vogue?

  Where the sheer size and energy of Nick’s aura had me stepping back, Johnny Vogue’s made my skin crawl. It was stained yellow, the colour of pus.

  ‘Tozzi,’ said Viaspa.

  ‘Yeah. Fancy.’

  The air was so thick with conflicting charges that I felt a rush of nervousness. As usual it got me opening my mouth. ‘I’m Tara,’ I said.

  Johnny Vogue mustn’t have heard me. There wasn’t even a twitch, or a flicker in my direction.

  ‘Tara Sharp!’ I said louder.

  Nothing again.

  ‘I think the lady is speaking to you,’ said Nick.

  Vogue turned his head ever so slightly and our eyes made contact. It wasn’t an experience I ever wanted to repeat again. I’d felt bad karma with people before; I mean, Peter Delgado had enough. But no karma was even worse. There was a guy one time at uni, a friend of Bok’s. The three of us hung out for a few months but I always found it uncomfortable because Tikki had no aura. Thing is, he died not so long after in a car accident. If I see people without auras these days, I don’t make friends.

  That wasn’t Johnny Vogue, though. What he was carrying around was diseased. I could see the black blotches in it. Even as his pinned-out eyes held mine, I was aware of his aura flaking: sloughing small bits onto the furniture, and the floor, and my clothes. It made me want to run home and stand under a hot shower for a few hours.

  Satisfied that he’d quelled me, he turned back to Nick. Not a word had passed between us, just a look and a whole lot of karmic buffeting.

  ‘How’s that team of yours going? Heard the recession’s hit you hard.’

  ‘The Thunder is doing just fine,’ said Nick, flushing.

  The words they were exchanging were civil, pleasant even. Delgado was smiling, Nick was smiling, and Johnny Vogue had his mouth set in a way that could have been a smile. But their auras were conducting a private war and I felt like my head was sticking too far out of the bunker.

  Fortunately, diversion came in the form of a tall, slim blonde leaning against the entrance to the ballroom.

  It wasn’t just our happy group that paused to ogle her either. This girl was a room-stopper. I mean she wasn’t beautiful, she was beautiful. And the dress! A hugging, low-scooped white tunic embroidered with Swarovski diamonds. Her ‘D’ cup looked natural but couldn’t have been – nobody could be that slim with breasts so big, it’s just not physiologically possible. I mean, you can’t just order your fat to stay in that one place. Her hair was like her legs, long and honey coloured, and her face was the kind of perfection that made you breathe deep. I couldn’t even be jealous; you gotta bow before a goddess when you see one.

  ‘Wow!’ I muttered under my breath. ‘A fallen angel.’

  ‘You’ve met my wife before, have you?’ asked Nick Tozzi.

  I hadn’t. But I’d seen her alright. Antonia Falk. Her family were big-time mining magnates. Capital ‘L’ loaded. Somewhere along the track I’d missed the fact that she’d hooked up with Nick Tozzi. Probably happened when I was four-wheel driving that toad, Pascal, around Cape York so he could see real live crocodiles. Shoulda fed him to them.

  ‘Nicky?’ the angel tittered, then swiped a drink from the hovering waiter’s tray. She staggered a little, clearly stoned.

  Nick Tozzi crossed the space between them in two giant strides and they spoke some quiet, tense words to each other. Their auras mingled uneasily, her fire-red psychic energy bleeding into his, diluting the caramel colour, as he took her arm and directed her back out the door.

  I felt
a little deflated as I watched them go. Of course he’d be married, I told myself. Only married men know how to flirt like that. Still, it had been fun for a few moments.

  I glanced back at Johnny Vogue. He was watching them too – his eyes glazed with preoccupation. And it didn’t look like it was Nick Tozzi he was thinking about. Then his cell phone rang, and he and his unhealthy aura disappeared through another door to answer it.

  ‘Gotta go to the ladies!’ I announced, and dashed off to the loo before Delgado could pin me.

  The loo was nearly as grand as the ballroom – green and black marble, and a vase of fresh-cut flowers the size of King’s Park. I washed my hot face in the gleaming handbasin and patted it dry with a fresh, white handtowel from the pile the maid was restocking. Garth had been right about Peter Delgado, and I tried to think of a discreet way of begging off the job. I ended up deciding to cut and run instead. I’d mail his retainer back to him.

  Scooting out of the toilet, I headed deeper into the house looking for a back exit. But as I rushed past an impressive living room the sound of Johnny Vogue’s muffled voice stopped me in my tracks. It was coming from the patio outside the French doors. Unable to quell my curiosity, I sidled up to the curtains and turned the handle of the door, opening it just a crack.

  ‘– find a way to bring the arsehole down. Tozzi won’t get away from me this time, even if I have to plant coke up his arse. Give it six months and he’ll be ruined. She’ll come begging.’ He paused. ‘Yeah. See you at the Bunka warehouse on Monda–’

  OMG.

  ‘Ms Sharp?’ Peter Delgado’s cold fingers grabbed my elbow.

  ‘Oops!’ I let go of the handle. ‘There you are. I was on my way back from the loo and I must have taken a wrong turn. Then I heard a voice and I was about to ask for directions.’ My excuse sounded ridiculously lame.

  He stepped past me and pushed open one of the French doors. He and Johnny Vogue exchanged looks. Vogue shut his phone then inclined his head in an abrupt semi-nod which could have meant anything.