Good Money

by J. M. Green

  ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked when we came up for air.

  ‘Mind reader.’

  He put the kettle on. ‘How’s your client?’

  I didn’t want to go into the whole Chol business. And the news about the dead body in the WA desert was too depressing to share with my new … with Brophy. Best to say as little as possible. ‘Okay.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  A girl of about ten came up the steps and flounced into the room: blonde bob, freckles. She threw her bag on the floor — a satchel decorated in skulls — and slouched into a chair beside Brophy. ‘What it do, boo?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Peter. ‘How was Mum’s?’

  ‘’K.’

  ‘Hi Marigold,’ I said. Oh no, I had used the wrong voice. I intended to sound neutral but it came out in a high-pitched singsong — the I-want-you-to-like-me-so-badly-I’ll-demean-myself voice.

  ‘Yo,’ said the child.

  My phone started singing: Phuong. I waved to Brophy and his daughter and went out onto the stair. ‘What it do, boo?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Phuong said. ‘Now, bit of goss for you: Ashwood got the sack.’

  ‘’Bout time. Fondle the work experience student?’

  ‘No — humorous email. Pictures with a stupid caption.’

  ‘They never learn.’

  ‘No, they don’t. Escorted from the building. He reckons top brass have no sense of humour.’

  ‘Escorted, you say? I’d say they probably do.’

  Phuong laughed. ‘See you at the Station for a happy-hour debrief.’

  I went back inside and sat on Brophy’s couch, a relic the Salvos would have chucked. Meanwhile, Marigold swivelled on an old office chair, playing a hand-held device that emitted a jaunty, repetitive tune and the occasional tinny beep. ‘Looks like you guys are getting pretty serious,’ she said.

  Peter sighed, ‘Whatever it is, Marigold, knock it off.’

  ‘What?’ Playing the angelic child, her eyes on the game.

  Peter handed me a matching cup and saucer. ‘Too cold for the roof today.’

  ‘Shame,’ I said, eyes on the swivelling girl.

  ‘I’m just saying, if you’re serious then you should tell her.’ She made a half-hearted attempt to suppress a grin.

  I stirred my tea; there was a small chip in the cup, and a crack that probably went all the way to the bottom. ‘Tell her what?’ I asked Peter.

  Colour rose in Peter’s face; he looked like someone cornered.

  Marigold snorted. ‘Oh. My. God. This shit is going to be good.’

  Peter took the computer game from her. ‘Go and watch TV in your room or something.’

  She turned to me. ‘Ten thousand junkies can’t be wrong, you feel me?’

  I was having trouble understanding my native tongue. I turned to Peter, bewildered. ‘What is she talking about?’

  Marigold sighed condescendingly, closed her eyes and said, ‘I’m talking about methadone. Have you heard of it? It’s this drug for people —’

  ‘I know what methadone is, thank you, Professor Smarty Pants.’ I wondered why no one had put this child to work in a mine somewhere. They don’t mine like that anymore, that’s why. It’s all open-cut: dynamite and big trucks. They should go back to digging underground with picks and shovels, little lights on their hats — with children like Marigold loading coal into bins. ‘What’s ten thousand junkies got to do with it?’

  ‘Ten thousand registered methadone users in the state of Victoria.’ Smart little bugger gave me a smug look. ‘Aren’t there, Dad?’

  Time slowed, my perception sharpened. There was my cup on the coffee table, with blue flowers on a white background, and the unhurried thought: I didn’t have one sip.

  ‘Go.’ Peter was standing over Marigold. ‘Now! Go to your room.’

  The child baulked. Discipline was evidently a new experience — an affront.

  ‘Now,’ said Peter again, soft but resolute.

  ‘Fine.’ She slid off the chair. ‘But you should have told her.’ She ran from the room.

  Peter coughed. ‘Ah, you will probably —’

  I addressed a spot on the linoleum. ‘Don’t tell me what I will probably. You have no idea what I will probably.’

  He waited, silent.

  The evil spawn had a point. Status: junkie. That’s probably something he should have told me sooner. Much sooner. Like at ‘hello’. I gathered my belongings, made some progress at the laborious business of walking. At the door, I pulled my shoulders back. ‘Lates, yo.’

  The stairs appeared obscured by cloud. I stumbled down and out into the street. In a panic, I turned right. The eastern end of Paisley Street was bus-stop central — buses all over the place, pulling in and trying to pull out. Car horns beeped. And the crowds. What time was it? A surge of humanity churned along the footpaths, spilling onto the road — groups of men laughing together, herds of school kids, big kids like giants in school uniform, mothers with children in strollers, hipsters, junkies, office workers, people with ten shopping bags on each arm or pulling two-wheeled shopping carts — all trying to squeeze around each other.

  I moved among them, was absorbed, going nowhere. I changed my mind and did a one-eighty, aiming now for a café at the far western end. I passed by The Narcissistic Slacker in a rush, not looking up. I kept going, passing the medical centre on the corner. Around the café entrance, a group of locals had stopped to discuss important matters of the day.

  I pushed through the crowd and practically fell through the doors. The café was an old-fashioned coffee shop that made cheese-and-tomato toasted sandwiches on plain white bread, with butter on the outside. Here quinoa or kale were unheard of. I ordered a pot of tea — and like I always did when my heart was broken, I pretended it wasn’t.

  I took a table by the window and watched the crowds. It wasn’t so bad. Things had not really progressed so very far. It wasn’t like I had to sift through the bookshelf or record collection. All we’d really shared was one night and some crazy ideas. A nice lady brought the tea and called me ‘love’. I held the little stainless steel pot over my cup and poured; tea went everywhere, some made it in the cup.

  The problem, as I saw it, was that I was always doing things for other people. In the process, I’d been hung out to dry. It was time to focus on myself. On my own affairs. Not men. Not smart-arse little girls. Not sick bastards with tins of petrol wondering the halls of the Flemington Housing Commission with nothing better to do. Not craven politicians. Not crazy-arse billionaires.

  I drank my tea and focused on myself. The overwhelming sensation I felt was the heaviness of my body in the chair.

  Better to focus on Tania. The last time we spoke she had promised me the mythical Golden Trifecta — gorgeousness, in fact — at her salon in Knifepoint. If I went to her salon, I could freshen up and ask her colleagues about Jimmy. I stood to go. Onwards, I thought, to Knifepoint — and into the fires of Mount Doom.

  26

  I ENTERED the muzak-filled acres of consumption-land and located Tania’s salon on the touch-screen map at the entrance. On the way there, I passed Peppermint Sherbet, a hairdressing salon decorated with enough mirror balls to double as a discotheque after-hours, where I made an appointment for a trim, and continued on my way. Superlative Skin Sensations was fitted out with crystal chandeliers and swathes of black tulle. A series of curtained-off cubicles at the back were where, I supposed, the miracles happened. I surveyed the young beauticians as they stood around chatting among themselves, all made-up and shiny in their medical-looking white jackets. I approached a girl sitting behind a glass desk. She looked me over dismissively.

  ‘Any chance of a triple golden?’ I asked.

  ‘A gold triple,’ she corr
ected me and paused for the duration of a disdainful sigh. ‘We’re fully booked.’ She was the one I’d spoken to on the phone. Another girl, who had been looking into a mirror and tweezering stray hairs from her eyebrow, came over. ‘I have half an hour before my next client.’

  The girl behind the desk looked doubtful. ‘You sure, Sophie?’

  Sophie looked at me and nodded. ‘A mini-facial. No worries.’ She guided me towards one of the rooms. ‘It’s not the gold, but you’ll love it.’

  I climbed onto the narrow massage table and under a pre-warmed doona — that part was kind of nice. I was about to doze off, when Sophie said, ‘Where did you hear about our famous gold triple?’

  ‘From Tania. I had an appointment for Friday but she didn’t show. Where do you think she’s got to?’

  ‘Honestly, when she didn’t come to work, we all just thought she was sick. But now everyone’s saying she’s, like, missing.’

  ‘Do you think she’s gone back to WA?’

  Sophie put a hairnet over my hair and started slathering cream on my face. ‘Doubt it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of her work, and because her family are there.’

  ‘Her family are … difficult?’

  ‘Very. That’s why she came to Melbourne all on her own. Her family are so mean to her. She had to get away. You know her stepmother came in here last week?’ She wiped the cream off me with a damp sponge.

  ‘No, Tania’s never mentioned her.’

  ‘It was, like, totally random,’ she said. ‘And she was such a bitch.’

  ‘Really?’ More cream on.

  ‘Right in front of a client — calling her a scheming so-and-so.’

  ‘Tania? Scheming?’

  ‘I know! As if, right? And she was, like, “whatevs!”’ Cream off.

  ‘Good for her,’ I said.

  ‘Totally. And her step-mum’s hair was so dry. All that money and she hadn’t had a treatment in, like, forever.’ Different cream on.

  ‘But what about her friends,’ I asked. ‘She left Jimmy behind in Perth, didn’t she?’

  ‘She never mentioned a Jimmy. Is he cute?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘Well, like I told her, there’s plenty of hot guys here.’ Cream off. ‘You know, you should consider an eyebrow shape and tint.’

  Consider it I did, and at the end of it all, my face glistened like a ripe plum. I gave a ridiculous sum to the snotty cashier, and Sophie wished me good luck. With what, I didn’t ask.

  Now I headed to Peppermint Sherbet where the colourist coated my medium-brown hair with an ash-brown tint and applied a contrasting colour on strands that had been wrapped in foil. She set the timer and offered me magazines — but I could sit still no longer and spent the time pacing the room in my plastic gown. The problem with going to the hairdresser was all that staring in the mirror. I usually had my hair cut at a blue-rinse place, among pensioners with their curlers under the dryer — without fuss, and cheap.

  When at last my colour had ‘taken’, the scissor artist cut my hair fully eight centimetres shorter than requested, significantly altering my appearance. I feigned joy and paid for it. Three figures.

  At last, after three hours in the shopping bunker, with a clean face and straight silky hair, I emerged, blinking, into the daylight. But it was all so temporary. My hair would, on the next wash, return to its usual state — hair that was conscious, an autonomous and capricious life form.

  It wasn’t far from Knifepoint to my flat and I decided to walk. I crossed the footbridge and trespassed on the golf course, passed through the driving range, and entered a deserted Union Road. Squally winds tossed a flurry of plastic bags. I looked to the sky and, sure enough, it was thick with ominous storm clouds. Then came the first drops, and I covered my new hairdo with my jacket and hurried home. Once safely upstairs, I listened as the now driving rain beat down on the window. A fire hose could not have saturated my washing more thoroughly.

  When it stopped, I went downstairs and put it all back in the machine to wash it again. I checked my watch; there was still two hours before I was due to meet Phuong. I put on my coat, grabbed an umbrella, and headed out.

  As the automatic doors of the Ascot Vale public library slid apart, a familiar and reassuring hush greeted me. I took the empty seat at the information desk and waited. A woman wearing a Rosamund name-tag pushed her tortoiseshell bifocals down her nose. ‘Can I help you?’ She had on a lot of red lipstick.

  ‘I need information on a company called CC Prospecting, in relation to a Nina Brodtmann.’

  Rosamund, her manicured fingers hovering above the computer keyboard, thought for a moment. ‘Company information, business registrations?’

  ‘Yes, everything you’ve got if it includes Nina Brodtmann.’

  Flurry of finger tapping. ‘Nothing in the ASIC register. I’ll try the business journals.’ Pause. ‘No. Nothing for that name and CC Prospecting.’

  ‘Try combining CC Prospecting and Blue Lagoon Corp.’

  A short burst of typing. ‘This might be something. The directors of CC Prospecting are on the board of Blue Lagoon Corp.’

  There was no rivalry. Tania was not hiding Blue Lagoon Corp information from CC Prospecting, they were Blue Lagoon Corp.

  Rosamund looked at me, her fingers waiting.

  McKechnie said the Brodtmann’s were litigious. ‘Try legal cases, all jurisdictions.’

  She typed and clicked and typed some more. ‘There’re two cases that mention both companies.’ She cut and pasted the results onto a Word document and printed it out.

  I took the documents to a quiet corner of the library and read. The first was about a contract being invalid for breach of corporations law — something about a quorum of directors. All very dull. My eyelids started to close involuntarily.

  I flipped the page. The next case was a matter heard in the Supreme Court of Western Australia. Dated December 2009, the plaintiff was the liquidator of Bailey Range Metals Proprietary Limited. It appeared to be a routine bankruptcy. I studied the company name again: Bailey Range Metals. The other company on the mining report.

  I tapped a finger on my lips, pondering. According to the report, the two companies anticipated mining for gold at Mount Percy Sutton in 2008. Then, in late 2009, one of those companies went bankrupt. I wondered what Blue Lagoon Corporation had to do with Bailey Range going into liquidation. My eyes darted across the page, looking for a mention of Blue Lagoon. I found it mentioned in passing as background information — and it was a tale of mining folly.

  There had been a formal joint-venture agreement between Bailey Range and Blue Lagoon Corp. The two companies intended to combine their tenements, or mining claims, in a region west of Laverton, WA, looking for gold and sharing the exploration costs.

  According to the terms of the joint venture, each company brought something to the arrangement that was of value to the other. Blue Lagoon had a large amount of land under its claim, about twice what Bailey Range had.

  Bailey Range contributed tenements, approximately half the total land area of the venture. They also brought about thirty million dollars in capital, as well as permission to explore from the traditional owners. I wasn’t sure if permission was hard to get, but against the vast area of land Blue Lagoon had access to, it must have been worth something.

  So the two companies had made a deal to work together. So far, so good. Until exploratory drilling found nothing of value and both parties conceded reluctantly that there was insufficient gold to justify any further expensive extraction.

  I sat back. Tania’s mineral report told them that. If they had read it, it would have saved them a lot of time and money. I checked the dates. The joint venture was signed in December 2008. The report was written in August 2008.

  Why did the d
irectors of Bailey Range Metals and Blue Lagoon not know about the lack of gold? Maybe they did. Someone at Blue Lagoon certainly knew — since Tania had their report to that effect.

  But a more puzzling question now arose. Since Crystal and Clayton Brodtmann were directors of both CC Prospecting and Blue Lagoon, they must have known there was no gold in the mountain — why, I wondered, would they deliberately set out to fail?

  I checked my watch. There remained only fifteen minutes to get to the Station Hotel and see Phuong. I stuffed the documents in my bag and headed for the door. A taxi was turning into Union Road. I stepped from the pavement and waved as it approached. It pulled over and I asked the driver to take me to Footscray. The inscrutable movement of a turban told me he had heard of such a place.

  27

  PHOUNG WAS seated on a bar stool and had started without me. She looked ready for a photo-shoot, in a skin-tight mini-dress — long sleeved, floral print — and her hair loose. She raised her champagne flute in greeting. I spied oysters, three missing from a plate of six. I signalled same for me to the barman. He put a glass on the bar, filled it and gave it to Phuong. She slid it over to me. ‘Here’s to Ashwood’s poor judgement.’

  ‘Have they appointed you a new companion?’

  ‘We’re all friends in the force. One big happy family.’

  I must have been thirsty. The champagne disappeared, and almost immediately a comforting wall rose up, separating me from the harsh reality of the day’s events. It was a blessed relief.

  Phuong glanced at me. ‘That book of Adut’s you had — we’re still going over it. It’s full of names and dates. All little people, but no leads on the Big Banana. No prints we can find, other than yours. It does confirm that Adut Chol was one of a group of young African boys selling ice for Cesarelli.’

  I tried an oyster. ‘A group of them?’

  ‘Yes. They recruit them young and shower these impoverished kids with cash. And we’re still trying to figure out the Funsail thing.’

  ‘Don’t ask me; I’ve been trying to work that out. Mrs Chol doesn’t know either.’