‘I know, Bam. I can see that.’
‘Moment the guy brought it to us I thought, “Leni”. And not even because of what we owe you. I thought, “Leni” because I knew you’d love it.’
‘Oh … thank you, Bam.’ She rubs his arm.
‘Some other client paid you with it?’
‘A businessman so crooked he owed me more for keeping his nose clean than you do for keeping your many noses clean.’
‘It doesn’t make sense.’ Bam shakes his head. ‘The dude who sold it to me … Did he think I was going to hang it in our clubhouse and – look at it? Enjoy it?’ He sneers at the painting. ‘He knew I was going to try and sell it to an art connoisseur, who was going to laugh in my face?’ Bam feels humiliated, angry. He takes his canvas off the table and jams it, wrinkling and crumpling, flecks of paint springing from it, back into its canister.
‘Who sold it to you?’
‘Leni, I’m pretty unschooled in art. But in legal matters I been around, and know enough not to inform my barrister of an intention to commit a crime she might one day be defending me for. Especially a grisly murder like the one the little rent-arse cat that sold me this bitch is going to suffer. Which is going to leave him as jumble-featured and monster-faced as this bitch herself.’
‘Don’t do that, Bam. Better just to cut your losses. Call it a learning experience and walk away.’
‘I can’t walk away, man. I’m in the same boat as Coke. You advertise you’re the real thing, you got to be the real thing, or they close you down. You advertise yourself as a brutal son-of-a-bitch, you got to be carnage personified.’ He tilts his head, looking at her sideways. ‘Price I pay to be the real thing is I got to kill everyone who looks sideways at me.’
Leni pouts at him again and shakes her head, as if struggling to comprehend the immense burden of his office.
When Larry Skunk kicks Marcel’s door in, he has a knife between his teeth like a pirate, and when he shouts, ‘The friend you double-crossed is here, fucker’ it comes out as, ‘Fa feng who hubble-cors ee here, hucker,’ and a momentary embarrassment flares through his rage. No matter, there is no one to hear. Marcel is gone, this much is clear by the open drawers and scattered luggage. Rage closes over his embarrassment and Larry kicks the place around. Then he takes the knife from between his teeth and slashes the Naugahyde divan, knowing it is a favourite of Marcel’s.
On the many nights Larry Skunk has escorted Marcel to his assignations, he has rescued his sorry, pop-star-impersonating arse from a whole array of villains, hooligans, gangsters and even, one full moon, a werewolf. He has done Marcel big favours. He would never admit this aloud, but they had become friends, he thought. So Larry Skunk, more than any other member of the gang, is cut to the core that Marcel has ripped off the Stinking Pariahs. Larry Skunk Monk owes Marcel Leech special harm.
Larry Skunk, Bam and Wal Wolverine Symonds ride out to that particular end of the Earth that is Pakenham, to Turton’s airbrush operation. They stop their bikes a few doors down the street so he won’t hear them. He is in the shed working under a spotlight surrounded by a vast darkness. The compressor is running and Turton is bent over a Harley, stencilling a plague rat for one of the Black Uhlans. He is wearing a face mask and earmuffs and he doesn’t hear the three Stinking Pariahs arrive. Larry Skunk steps out of the dark, tears the earmuffs and mask off him and shouts what he wanted to shout at Marcel. ‘The friend you double-crossed is here, fucker.’
Turton drops the airbrush and it whips back and forth, hissing on its hose between them until Bam kills the compressor.
‘Who?’
Larry Skunk punches Turton in the mouth and he falls among paint cans and rags. They settle on his sofa and wait for him to come to, drinking his wine and smoking his hash. It’s good hash and Larry Skunk and Wal Wolverine are so stoned that when they hear a weak voice ask, ‘What for?’ they jump to their feet. Larry Skunk whips out his knife and pirouettes on his boot heels. Bam tells him, ‘It’s Turton, Larry Skunk. Give him a hand out of those cans.’
Turton’s lips are swollen and bloody and he is missing teeth. He is old, small, bent. Larry Skunk holds him up by an arm. The airbrush has covered him in grey clouds of paint, his purple waistcoat is ruined. He looks down at it and asks again, ‘What for?’
Bam asks him, ‘Where’s Arse Sell?’
‘I don’t know.’ Turton puts a hand to his mouth. It hurts to talk.
‘Were you actually in on this? Arse Sell says you were. But I’d of run if I was you and I’d ripped off me.’
‘Oh, no. What’s he done?’ Turton has taken his hand away from his mouth and has a grip on his sideboards, ready to shake himself at the bad tidings.
‘Made me look a fuckwit.’
‘No. Marcel?’
‘Sold me that Weeping Woman painting. Said you and him stole it. And him and you being mates, and you being in the gallery, it seemed …’ Bam takes out his cigarettes. ‘What he’s done is sell me a forgery so fucking bad it precipitates a near killing fit of laughter when you show it to people lucky enough to have a education and a cultural framework.’ He lights a cigarette. Turton moans and pulls at his sideboards. ‘He says you and him are accomplices,’ Bam tells him.
Turton shakes off Larry Skunk’s hands and drops to his knees, feeling under the sofa for his practice copy of the painting. Finding it gone he remains on the floor and, still staring under the sofa, begins to whisper, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck …’ until Bam kicks him gently in the ribs.
‘Marcel didn’t steal the Weeping Woman. I did.’ Turton sees no point in implicating Harry and Mireille. ‘I was going to sell a forgery to this guy, this rich arsehole, then give the real one back to the gallery. Marcel liked the idea so much the stupid bastard stole it – the idea – and used it on you. The one he sold you was a canvas I’d practised on. He stole that from me. Jesus, why? I mean, didn’t he think …?’
Bam is holding out a phone to Turton. ‘He’s leaving. Ring him. Tell him he needs to get back here fast to stop the torture.’
‘What torture?’
Bam stares at Turton, right into his eyes.
‘Oh.’ Turton reaches up for the phone and rings Marcel. When he hears his friend answer, his voice so excited and happy, he sucks in a deep breath and tells him, ‘Go. I mean it. What’s done is done. Go …’
Bam snatches the phone from Turton and puts it to his ear and says, ‘Yeah, go ahead and go. Bon voyage, Marcel.’
It is $30,000 exactly – Marcel saw Bam count it. But, looked at one way, it in’t as bad as it could have been. Marcel could have been slapped around. Bam could have taken the painting and not given him a cent. So, in a way, every cent of that half beer box of deal money is a bonus. But, looked at another way, Turton’s gang has sold their guy exactly the same thing as Marcel sold his guy, for a … million … dollars.
Marcel thinks himself a poor salesman in comparison, and he knows his guy has ripped him off to the tune of $970,000 dollars. And he’s only ripped Bam off $30,000 by selling him a fake. So, in a way, in their deal, if anyone has a right to be aggrieved it is he, Marcel thinks. He’s been ripped off $940,000 more than he’s ripped off the Stinking Pariahs. And all because he is a weakling, in no position to negotiate when Bam came up with that silly wildflower-press nonsense. Marcel should be at the front of the complaints queue, really. But, with his forgiving nature, he has no axe to grind. He is happy for peace to reign and for bygones to be set-in-stone, bona fide bygones, where nobody kills anybody. Why, then, does everyone want to kill everyone?
Marcel is ready to go. The travel arrangements have been made and are beautiful. His destination is limited only by the hatred his appearance inspires throughout the Western world. That precludes New York and San Francisco, and Paris, which he knows he would have loved.
He eventually chooses São Paulo because, his research tells him, only one in five households there have a TV, and Western pop music is pretty much drowned out by sambas and tangos, and the Ca
tholic Church forbids any mention of paedophilia. Michael has never been a superstar in Brazil, so the Brazilians aren’t interested in vilifying him. There is lots of music in bars, a must for Marcel. He envisions a few lost souls who have wandered down from the United States in the early eighties and never returned, who haven’t heard of Michael’s downfall, smiling at him on the street, waving at him from buses. Life will be like it was before the fall. His name will soon be on the door of the best clubs. He will be an attraction. Not a superstar, but a respected man; a man who looks like a man who has done good work. It is all he wants.
Thirty thousand dollars is a small fortune in São Paulo, where the real has collapsed. Everyone is a street bum there now, Marcel gathers from his reading. Nobody works. They have cafés where old men sit outside and eat feijão com arroz and Moqueca Capixaba and drink Coca-Cola and rum all day. They play cards and talk and wear white singlets under open shirts. They wear sisal hats. It is all so dignified. They nod their heads at people who go by and wish the grace of God go with them.
This is the place for Marcel. A foreign land where Michael is barely known, where he can sip rum among old men whose hearts have been broken. Marcel wants to spend his days in these cafés of remembered sorrows, where each man trumps another’s tragedy with his own, waiting his turn to tell his story and offering the grace of God to people passing by.
He is at the airport ready to board a plane. He has bought a sisal hat and is checking himself out in the plate glass when his phone rings. It’s Turton. His voice is urgent and high-pitched and he says, ‘Go. I mean it. What’s done is done. Go …’
Then Bam Hecker comes on the phone and says, ‘Yeah, go ahead and leave. Bon voyage, Marcel.’
In the glass Marcel sees himself put his fingertips to his throat. He tells Bam he doesn’t have time to talk to him because they are calling his flight number. He holds his phone out so Bam can hear a flight number being called. When he puts the phone back to his ear he hears Bam say, ‘I’ve got no time to talk myself, Marcel. I got to lubricate and defoliate Turton – get him ready for escapades of pain.’
‘Turton wasn’t involved. You can’t think Turton was involved. I stole the painting from him. He didn’t know anything about it. Why would he still be hanging around if he’d sold you guys a fake?’ Marcel watches himself in the window shaking his head involuntarily at the stupidity of these guys.
‘I’m not saying Turton was involved in the crime. I’m letting you know he’s involved in the aftermath. He’s been elected to the important office of hostage, of bargaining chip, of … of “You either get your little Michael Jackson self back here, Marcel, or we’re going to electrify Turton’s skin off him.” Which won’t be a hundred per cent satisfying, because vengeance isn’t sweet as Juicy Fruit when you serve it up to old men who are, as you said, innocent.’
‘You can’t hurt Turton for this.’
‘I can’t think how else to hurt you.’
Marcel has a vision of Turton naked and bound, bikies shaving him all over, slathering him with unctions that will conduct the flow of voltage, joking about his scrawny old body and laughing at his fear. ‘When Michael became monster / You dressed me as man.’ Marcel has no real friend other than Turton. And the old man will be so frightened right now. He hears the echo of Turton telling him, ‘Go. I mean it. What’s done is done. Go …’
What else can he do but come back? ‘Wait on,’ he tells Bam. ‘I’ll get a taxi. I’m hailing a taxi now. I’m jumping the queue. Don’t get him ready for anything. He’s innocent.’ Marcel throws his sisal hat in a bin on the way out of the airport.
What would the old boys at the street tables in São Paulo make of this horrible tale? he asks himself. If only he could be there to relate it to them.
‘He’s coming back,’ Bam says. ‘Contrary to your advice.’ He taps Turton on the top of the head with the phone.
‘I can get you the real one, Bam. If you let him go, I’ll get you the real one,’ Turton pleads.
‘Don’t shit me, Turton. You can’t get me the real one, ’cause you haven’t got it. I know who has it. I seen it.’
‘No. We’ve still got the real one. We sold a forgery. You must have seen the forgery.’
Bam taps the phone receiver on Turton’s temple. ‘Turts – enough. So far you’re not involved. Don’t get involved,’ he warns. ‘As it stands, for us it’s just a smallish financial setback and a kick in the arse of my pride. And when Arse Sell gets here, and pays us back, I’ll be able to stand up at our AGM and announce that a smallish financial setback suffered in the art market has been reversed. After he pays us back I’ll kill him. You wouldn’t believe what a salve that is to your pride, to kill the man who kicked its arse. So there’s that problem solved. And you and me? You and me are good, and you’re back artworking fancy creatures onto our hogs like you always did.’
‘I told you, I stole the real one so I could sell a fake. And I sold the fake. And I’ve still got the real one. I’ll swap you the real Weeping Woman for Marcel.’ Turton is on his knees now, hands pressed together, praying to Bam.
‘You sold a fake one.’ Bam looks down on him awhile. Looks at Larry Skunk and Wal and raises his eyebrows to ask what they think. ‘We got three now. Three paintings. This is murky waters,’ Wal warns him.
‘No,’ says Bam. ‘It’s pretty clear.’ He takes hold of one of Turton’s sideboards between his thumb and forefinger. ‘If we cut this deal, I get the Weeping Woman or you and Arse Sell are wrapped in chook-wire and overboarded in the rip. That’s pretty clear to you, isn’t it?’
‘It’s clear.’
Bam lets go of Turton’s sideboard and lays a hand on his head and smiles. ‘So you’ve still got it?’
‘I have.’
Bam shakes his head and laughs. ‘So the one she’s got’s a fake, too. She’s laughing at mine like I’m the ignorant guy in town. And hers is a hundred per cent as forgeried as mine. By the same guy did mine. Little Turton. Pumping ’em out like a battery hen.’ He unbuttons his vest, lets his belly fall. ‘Man, that is beautiful.’ His face is bright, pleasure pulsing in his eyes as he imagines Leni Richtofen’s bewilderment when he unrolls the real Weeping Woman in front of her, points out the deficiencies in hers and tells her he hopes she didn’t pay too much for it.
‘People think they know culture,’ he says. ‘“This is good.” “This is bad.” “This one here’s a masterpiece and this one here stinks.”’ He shakes his head. ‘They don’t know, man.’
‘They don’t know,’ Turton agrees.
‘They don’t,’ says Wal.
‘Nuns,’ Larry Skunk nods. ‘Or speedboats. Who’s to say?’
In Melbourne on a good spring day a sun sits on every car along every street. People waiting for trams smile and squint and shade their eyes from these ranked galaxies, and laugh out loud for no reason and admire themselves in sunglasses in shop windows. The light has been missing since March and now it’s back it promises holidays, the beach, Christmas, your childhood to live again. There is never domestic violence in Melbourne in bright spring. There are no murders. People buy last year’s ice cream and smack their lips at how good it tastes.
Harry and Mireille have been out shopping in Chapel Street. She has bought a Barbara Pilecka print skirt and a pair of Charles Jourdan boots and Wayfarers. He has bought Levi 501s and a Blaupunkt stereo and Aviators with a black frame. But none of these have worked. None of these have lifted their hearts and defeated their cares as they should have. The ice creams they lick taste like yesteryear’s permafrost. Vaguely pistachio, vaguely steppe.
Returning from shopping they climb Mireille’s stairs burdened by bags and flop onto her sofa. The beach across the road has people lying on it for the first time since Harry has known Mireille. Children paddling, waving bright plastic toys; dogs running in circles, as if a general happiness has been declared for all creatures great and small who haven’t committed major larceny.
‘We give it back,’ she
declares.
‘He kills us,’ Harry answers.
‘Then we do not give it back.’
‘The police catch us. We go to jail.’
‘Then … shit,’ she concludes.
It is a conversation they have repeated for days, sporadically, and she has come to the same conclusion she always does.
‘What about we give Laszlo his money and then return the painting to the gallery?’ Harry asks. ‘Everyone’s back to where they were. No one’s out anything. No need for revenge or law enforcement.’
‘But he’s sold the forgery for, let us say, two million. Even if we give him back his million he has to give back two when the real Weeping Woman surfaces. He is out a million profit and in deep waters with whoever he sold the fake to. He still kills us.’ She sneers at her ice-cream cone. ‘This is not pistachio. Is like wood. Pinocchio is a flavour in this country?’ She takes it to the kitchen bin and dumps it. When the phone rings she answers it sullenly. ‘Yes, hello.’
‘Hello – it’s me. Turton.’
‘Turton? You sound …’ Turton sounds like a man choking on the opening of a eulogy.
‘I’m in trouble. The Stinking Pariahs have me. They want the painting.’
‘The motorbike gang of hoodlums? How do they know about the painting? You did not tell a motorbike gang of hoodlums about us, Turton?’
‘They found out.’
Harry is off the sofa, by her side, leaning in to hear.
‘Well, and they want to buy it too now?’ She smiles, hopefully.
‘They already bought it. Now they – want it. Or they’re going to – they’re going to kill me.’
‘Oh …’ she draws a breath. ‘Then, we will … bring it.’
‘No. Don’t come here. They don’t know you’re involved – let’s leave it like that. Put the painting in a locker at Spencer Street, like Weston Guest suggested. Then ring me in Pakenham and tell me the number of the locker. Don’t worry about the locker key. These guys don’t need a key.’
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