Too Easy

by J. M. Green

  Afshan’s house was in its usual condition — unassuming and a little untidy. The place was quiet. I couldn’t see any bicycles on the porch or in the driveway. Maybe the bikes were put away in the garage — the roller-door was down. The street was drowsy, no traffic, no parked cars. I’d come this far, I reasoned, so I went up and twisted the doorbell gizmo. Soon, I heard stomping in the hall.

  Shahid, a newcomer to the household, opened the door in his slippers and closed his eyes as he nodded me inside. His dark hair was freshly combed, the lines still visible. ‘Dude, welcome. What are you doing here, man?’

  ‘I heard the police were here,’ I said, a little taken aback.

  ‘The cops have totally gone, dude.’

  ‘Is Afshan home?’

  ‘No, no. He is visiting the neighbour. This lady, her cat was on fire, and she blames us. We would never. Afshan tells her, and the police, it wasn’t us. There is a dude in the street who is very, what is the word?’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘Yes. He is weird.’

  ‘Psychopath?’

  ‘Maybe. For now, say weird.’

  False alarm then. I was relieved, not that cat burning was acceptable. The idea shocked me. Although, I was more of a dog person. Cats baffled me. I found them grandiose and capricious. I made allowances for Brophy’s cat; Aragorn was pleasant enough.

  ‘Afshan will be back soon,’ Shahid said. ‘Come, you can watch a movie with me while you wait. Watching movies helps my English.’ He shuffled in his slippers to the back of the house where the TV was paused. I picked up the case: The Big Lebowski. That explained a lot.

  Afshan came home just as The Dude wrapped up the mystery.

  ‘Nice timing. Cat lady okay?’ I asked.

  ‘She is still upset. But she believes me, no-one in this house would do such a thing.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  His face was serious. ‘Nothing you can help me with.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. I can be very helpful. Quite helpful.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get going.’

  ‘I’ll walk you to the station,’ Afshan said.

  Shahid jangled some keys at me. ‘We can drive you to anywhere you want to go.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘He’s bought an old delivery van. Very cheap. Now he makes a little money driving people and make some deliveries. Black market money.’ Afshan winked at me.

  ‘Maybe another time.’

  Afshan and I walked through the supermarket car park, where a high school punch-on was underway, in front of a small crowd, all recording it on their phones.

  He put out his hand and we shook. A breeze swirled the plastic bags along Main Road West.

  ‘You and Shahid want to have dinner with me tonight? I’m going to The Ashbrook.’

  He smiled. ‘No, thank you. We are going bowling.’

  ‘What? You liked it then?’

  ‘Yes, it’s very relaxing.’

  I left him and walked through the shopping strip. I bought a copy of Blood Diamond at one of the last video shops in existence. Later, as I waited for my train, I thought about the cat. I didn’t even know the poor creature and I was upset about it. Come on, St Albans, you can do better than that. And a murder rate of 7.2. I checked my phone again. Murder rates in specific US cities: Baltimore, 34.9; New Orleans, 53.2; Detroit, 54.6.

  I started to calm down. St Albans was a model of community safety and peace.

  16

  BACK AT WORMS, Boss was in his office with the blinds down and the door shut. I went to my desk, and Shanninder rolled a chair up to my cubicle. ‘He’s getting worse.’

  ‘Boss? I know.’

  ‘Mid-life crisis.’

  I considered that. She was probably right; she was usually right about people.

  ‘What happens next? He leaves his wife and buys a sports car? I can’t see him doing that.’

  Shanninder shrugged. ‘My guess, he’ll quit.’

  ‘God help us.’

  ‘Seriously.’ She scooted back to her desk. ‘By the way, this came for you.’

  A parcel with Phuong’s hand writing. I dropped it on the desk and rang Brophy.

  ‘Dinner? Tonight? My shout.’

  ‘Great. Where?’

  ‘I’ll pick you up at seven. Bye.’

  That was better. I ripped open Phuong’s parcel. A USB stick dropped on my desk.

  I slotted the USB: a sound file, and a word document named Vanderhoek enters Footscray premises. The recording Copeland had asked her to delete — along with her transcript of the audio. Phuong was nothing if not thorough. I tapped a finger on my lip. That she was willing to share it with me might mean that she was having second thoughts about Copeland. That was promising.

  I clicked on the audio and was informed I would have to download a more up-to-date version of the audio software to my ancient WORMS computer before it would play. I thought about just reading Phuong’s transcript, but I wanted to hear the voices for myself. After endless clicking, and agreeing, and restarting, the damn thing finally played.

  Phuong’s voice: ‘Subject enters house at … four oh eight p.m.’

  The quality of the audio was poor. At times, the voices were faint or muddied by ambient noise. I replayed it and read along with Phuong’s notes.

  PECK: Vanderhoek, you fucking junkie, why aren’t you dead yet?

  VANDERHOEK: Dunno mate, tin-arsed I reckon. [giggling]

  PECK: Tin-brained more like it. You’re working for us now?

  VANDERHOEK: Gorman reckons the jacks don’t notice me.

  PECK: Yeah? You’re a forgettable prick, I’ll give him that. Come on then, sit down. I’ll get the gear.

  [23 seconds of silence]

  PECK: … close to pure so be fucking careful.

  VANDERHOEK: I’ll cut it down.

  PECK: Don’t want to kill off our customers. [laughs]

  VANDERHOEK: [inaudible] … old junkies.

  PECK: Do they?

  VANDERHOEK: [inaudible] … be okay.

  PECK: So Gorman found you, did he? Lifted a rock and there you were, ay?

  VANDERHOEK: He’s expanding the network.

  PECK: [laughs] You dumb fuck, you don’t even know what that means.

  VANDERHOEK: He’s brought in Mortimer. That Asian cunt. I can’t keep up.

  PECK: Isaac-fucking-Mortimer’s a Corpse Flower, you idiot. He’s the western sector distributor to the youth demographic. And you can tell him that the Turk and I would like a word.

  VANDERHOEK: I’m not going near the Turk.

  PECK: Did I say you had to go near the Turk?

  VANDERHOEK: No, Ricky.

  PECK: I said if you see Mortimer. I’m starting to think Gorman made a mistake, picked a donkey. Are you a donkey, Vanderdumbfuck?

  VANDERHOEK: No, Ricky. It’s just that the Turk scares me, that’s all.

  PECK: [laughs] Yeah. He’s a fucking lunatic. [inaudible] … me best mate, the little wog. Seen the world together, Asia, USA.

  VANDERHOEK: [inaudible. Counting?] There’s four grand.

  PECK: [inaudible] … getting serious, online MBA, management shit. The US-style of fuck-your-competition.

  VANDERHOEK: Not that smart. He’s always drinking at the Spida Bar. Jacks drink there, too. Blyton and that bastard, Copeland.

  PECK: That’s why he likes it. Checking up on them. Not Blyton, he’s useless.

  VANDERHOEK: Blyton’s not —

  PECK: Ask for your opinion?

  VANDERHOEK: No. [yelp of pain] Leave it off, mate. I’ll tell Mortimer, no worries.

  PECK: Just keep your mouth shut, Jeffy, you’ll live longer.

  I read through Phuong’s transcript again, taking note of each name. Jeff Vande
rhoek was the addict and dealer who, years before, had saved Brophy’s life. Hearing the fear in his voice, the awful grovelling, gave him a fresh presence in my mind. I thought about the man I loved, and his past. He and Jeff must have been friends, at one time — acquaintances, at least — and yet I couldn’t picture it. Brophy must have changed a lot since then. Or maybe I just didn’t know him as well as I thought. Felicity was making me paranoid. I shook off that suspicion and focused on the transcript. Jeff had only just joined the Corpse Flowers, so the conversation had taken place before he had stepped up to the role of police informer. Or, in fact, mis-informer. Ricky Peck was horrible, but soon after this recording would die in a bath. And the Turk was an apparent sadist, with a dubious business degree. He sounded like some managers I’d had.

  It would be handy to have a hard copy to refer to. I hit ‘print’ and ran to collect it. Shanninder was standing by the printer, collating a stack of flyers. She looked at me, rolled her eyes. ‘How bad is Boss’s singing?’

  ‘Atrocious.’

  I hung around, whistling a tune. When she left, I pulled the transcript from the tray, folded the paper, and shoved it in my wallet. Back at my desk, I faffed around, rang a few clients, arranged a house inspection after a family of Sri Lankans were unexpectedly deported.

  I did a quick online search for ‘The Turk’. The internet told me he was indeed a sadistic thug. A string of vicious assaults. He was often associated with, but not a member of, the notorious outlaw motorcycle gang, the Corpse Flowers. Luigi ‘The Turk’ Tacchini was a crazy person, without fear.

  At four, needing sugar to get through the last hour, I moseyed into the staff room, where Raewyn Ross was sounding off. I dropped a coin in the charity chocolates box and took a random hit.

  ‘… kids running away from home, missing persons. We have to find them. But they’re not missing, you know? They always turn up. I don’t see why we bother,’ Ross was saying.

  ‘Sometimes they really are missing,’ Shanninder said, with the patience of a saint.

  Late in the day, a call came requesting emergency accommodation for a family of South Sudanese refugees who had been evicted. I managed to get them one night in a motel. Tomorrow, after the inspection, they could move straight into the house left by the Sri Lankans. Human lives, bureaucracy, random chance: enough to make you drink. I turned off my PC and went out into another storm. I was picking up Brophy at seven.

  17

  FIRST, I ran a bath. Then I went to choose an outfit. After ten minutes, I hadn’t made a decision, and went to check on the bathwater levels when I saw a message on the machine. ‘It’s your sister, just ringing to see how you are. Give me a call, please. ASAP.’

  Kylie rarely rang me. The call would be about the so-called Tyler business, whatever that was. I hit delete.

  Now, what to wear? Something suitable for north winds, dry heat, hail storms, Armageddon. I pulled out some leggings, a vintage frock, and my good cardigan. Not that one’s best was required for The Ashbrook Hotel. A clean tracksuit would suffice. Actually, so would a filthy pair of old tracky-daks. A fresh singlet with no holes, or a putrid one with holes in which you had laboured all day. Your best shoes, or your old thongs. Whatever, as long as you were well behaved and kept it nice, or went bat-shit crazy and started bashing people. The main thing was to show up with money, and then lose it all on the poker machines. That was all.

  The bath was nearly full. This particular date night called for more than water and soap. In the cupboard under the sink, I found a packet of orange-scented bath salts I scored in a WORMS Kris Kringle a few years back.

  As I reclined in the warm, citrusy water, fumes clearing my nasal passages, I wondered what Phuong had made of the conversation between Ricky Peck and Jeff Vanderhoek that she had recorded, then copied, then transcribed, then deleted. I couldn’t ring her to ask because her calls were probably being monitored. Just the mere mention of his name on the tape had made Copeland nervous. And what of the other cop mentioned on the recording — Blyton. I would ask Phuong about Blyton tomorrow.

  Dressed and clean, I headed to Paisley Street. I parked near the Narcissistic Slacker, and tooted once. Brophy appeared, clean and shaven, wearing a jacket. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘Get in.’

  He opened the door and I caught a whiff of what marketers call ‘male fragrance’: bergamot and a floral scent, rose maybe, an exotic spiciness. He loved me. ‘That’s a pleasant scent you’re wearing.’

  ‘Like it? Felicity gave it to me. She said if she had to sit around my studio all day, at least I could smell good.’

  He loved me not.

  ‘Well, I suppose she has the right —’

  ‘The top notes are vetiver.’

  ‘You don’t know what that is.’

  ‘No.’ He smiled to himself, as though at a private memory. ‘And the base notes are musk and cashmere wood.’

  Cashmere wood? Not a material of the natural world. Felicity was a total fraud.

  ‘And you, my darling Stella, you smell of …’ He nuzzled his nose in my hair and inhaled. ‘Lemon peel?’

  I sighed. ‘Pine lime.’ An ingredient more suited to ice-cream. Cheap bath-product remorse was a new kind of remorse. If I couldn’t afford top-shelf French fragrance, then plain water and soap it would be from now on.

  He buckled up. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The Ashbrook.’

  He laughed. ‘No, seriously. Where?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  He stopped laughing. ‘Mate, why? There are plenty of good options around here. Have you been to The Drunken Tweet?’

  I bristled. ‘Been there, yes.’

  ‘The pomegranate and cauliflower salad has cashews in it. Cashews!’

  As delicious as that sounded, it was out of the question. I had a high horse to climb up on, and a sharp glare to shiv him with. ‘The Ashbrook has salad. Decent, honest, proletariat salad, made with iceberg lettuce and quartered tomato.’ How did I know this? I didn’t; it was a guess. It was possible my assumptions were wrong. It was not inconceivable that The Ashbrook had pomegranates on the menu, next to the steak and chips. The suburb of Braybrook surprised one sometimes.

  He leaned across and mashed my lips with his, until I started to black out and pushed him away.

  ‘Ladies’ choice,’ he said. ‘Wherever you want to go.’

  ‘The Ashbrook it is.’

  The Ashbrook was not an elegant Victorian-era pub. It was a modern-day horror with ample parking, floor to ceiling windows, wide open spaces, a gaming room, and a serve-yourself carvery from a bain-marie the length of a train carriage.

  The gaming area was a barrage of noise. At every machine, punters pressed buttons, images rolled, synthetic music repeated. The cashmere wood of amusement.

  Brophy grumbled through the menu and passed it across to me. He looked sad. Pasta and a glass of wine, what was so horrible about that? I told him my choice, and he sniffed.

  ‘You seem frazzled.’

  ‘No, not really,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to know the details.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I’m managing; Felicity’s a great help.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘She’s developed a painting schedule, it’s pretty intense. But if I stick to it, the work will be ready on time.’

  ‘Does this plan include time with me?’

  He coughed. ‘I’m not sure that is going to help at this stage.’

  ‘Help what?’

  ‘Sorry, Stella. It’s not personal. I’m just anxious about the exhibition.’

  I touched his arm. ‘It’s going to be amazing.’

  He smiled faintly, seeming more dismayed than encouraged, and went to order.

  I studied my fellow patrons. There were families with young children, couples, and group tables of m
iddle-aged women. But mainly there were men in singlets with shaved heads and sleeve tatts, beefy blokes drinking at the bar who seemed ready to fight. But none, as far as I could see, had fuck yeah tattooed on their face.

  At work, regular updates on local issues had informed me that this venue alone turned over twenty million a year in poker-machine revenue. Take that much money out of the low-income economy, and see how great life is. No wonder they were angry.

  Brophy returned with a number on a stick, and two glasses of wine. I sensed his mood had deteriorated. I picked up a promotional card that was on all the tables. It was an ad for a brand of beer, masquerading as a competition: give them all your details, win a hat.

  ‘Don’t you hate those competitions where the prize is hardly worth the effort?’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, a ticket to the movies, a stubbie holder. If I go to the trouble of entering, it has to be for something way more substantial. Like an island, or a submarine. Something cool.’

  ‘Marigold and I once won an inflatable armchair,’ Brophy admitted.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘The competition was on a packet of nuts. Around the time of the World Cup. Watch it from the comfort of your inflatable armchair. I won, but the chair didn’t arrive until the World Cup was over.’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘It had a puncture.’

  I noticed he was hunched down in his seat, like he didn’t want to be recognised. No chance of that, I thought. Unless he had another life as a factory worker. He probably did have another life. I coughed. ‘How’re the paintings coming along? Think you’ll be ready?’

  He looked into his wine. ‘Don’t know if I’ll have twenty ready on time.’

  ‘And the opening is Melbourne Cup Day, that night? Five days’ time?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The waitress brought two plates. There was a lull in the conversation while we comprehended the consequences of our choices. Brophy bravely picked up his fork. And I took another sneaky scan of the landscape for the target. Negative. Brophy stopped skewering his penne. ‘What was that you were asking me about Isaac Mortimer?’