Her place was pretty basic, a couple of bedrooms facing Carlisle Street and a small formica kitchen she never cooked in. The huge lounge in the middle was her command centre: vast corner desk, practice pole in the middle of the room, feather boas hanging from hooks and body-glitter ground into the carpet. Publicity pictures of the girls decorated the walls, along with posters of Marilyn Monroe and prints of old-time dancers like Blaze Fury and Gypsy Rose Lee. Opposite the desk sat Chloe’s pride and joy, a recently purchased red couch shaped like a pair of lips. French doors opened from the lounge room onto the best thing about the place: a concrete deck at the back of the building that looked out over the rooftops and train line. Chloe had set it up with outdoor furniture, potted plants and lurid green astroturf.
That’s where I found her, lying topless on a yellow striped banana lounge, simultaneously eating chicken-in-a-biskit, flicking through Picture magazine, and talking to prospective clients on the phone. She was just over six months pregnant, belly stretched taut and boobs so enormous they were terrifying. She’d always been on the busty side, but now her nipples were the size of saucers and her breasts practically blocked out the sun. She looked so rampantly fecund she reminded me of an ancient fertility symbol, although I doubted the Venus of Willendorf had ever been depicted slick with coconut oil, wearing a pink G-string and clear perspex stripper heels.
I pulled up a matching pink lounge and lay back, a pleasant little buzz on after the drinks at the pub. It was five o’clock and the sun was still quite high in the sky but the worst of the heat was gone. The smell of coconut oil made me think of cocktails and tropical holidays, and I wondered if, when Sean came back, we could take some sort of break at the beach, just for a few days. I closed my eyes, imagining salty, sweaty sex in a hotel room under a slow-moving fan. Meanwhile Chloe was on the phone, reciting the spiel she knew off by heart.
‘G-string strip’s a hundred, full nude a hundred and twenty, and raunchy—that’s open leg work, darl—hundred and seventy-five. Any extras, say, strawberries and cream, vibes, pearls, or fruit and veggies? That’s two fifty. What’s a fruit and veg strip? Use your imagination, hon. Bi twin’s three fifty, five hundred if you want the whole lezzo shebang. You got internet access? Check out the girls on our website. We also run Chloe’s Boob Cruises—very popular for a work do—and we have state-of-the-art jelly-wrestling facilities. You’ll have to book early though. Coming up to Christmas is a very busy time of year.’ She hung up and had just drawn a breath to talk to me when the phone rang again. She rolled her eyes and answered.
‘Chloe’s Elite Strippers, Chloe speaking. Hi, Tiara, what’s up?’ A pause, then: ‘You’re fucking kidding me. Listen, if you don’t wanna work, I can just take you off the books.’
Soon as she’d said that I heard tinny shrieking, and Chloe winced and held the handset away from her ear. I didn’t envy her having to organise a bunch of strippers, most of whom were even crazier than she was.
‘Fuck’s sake, Tiara. Call back when you’ve straightened out. Yes you are, you’re off your tits. Wake up to yourself. Take a fucking Valium and take the next week off. I’ve had it. This is your last chance.’
She hung up and I raised my eyebrows. ‘Tiara? Is it just me or are the names getting stupider?’
‘The names and the fucking girls.’ A midge adhered itself to one oil-basted breast and she flicked it off. ‘This one started out okay until she got a new boyfriend and got into ice. Lost a ton of weight and now she’s losing the plot. I’d fire her but she’s good, when she actually shows up.’
‘Isn’t ice just like speed?’
‘No, mate, it’s ten times as strong. I mean, we always did a bit of coke or Louie to keep us awake and give us a bit of energy for the shows, but this stuff ’s fucked up. They smoke the shit through crack pipes, don’t sleep for three days, and it sends them mental. You don’t wanna do her show, do you?’
‘What is it?’
‘Just raunchy. You won’t have to stick anything up your clacker.’
‘Sure.’ I was trying to wean myself off stripping, but with all my debts I needed every cent I could get.
Chloe made a note in her Hello Kitty diary and looked pleased. ‘Thanks, Simone. You may not be the best stripper in the world, but you are the most reliable.’
I gave her a look.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How’d the thing with the crime writer go? I checked out his website. You never let on he was hot.
Gonna shag him?’
‘Chloe. Sean’s coming back in a couple of days.’
‘You haven’t seen him for six months. How do you know you still like him? How do you know he still likes you and hasn’t been boffing some Asian chick?’
‘I don’t. I guess I’ll find out. I guess we’ll both find out.’
‘And what about Alex?’
Alex Christakos was in the Fraud Squad and he was gorgeous: tall and broad-shouldered with black hair, dark chocolate eyes, and big hands with veins on the back that roped all the way up his forearms. He favoured expensive shirts and wore this woody, earthy aftershave that did strange things to me when I smelled it up close.
I’d always fancied Alex and had worked closely with him on a few occasions, but despite the obvious chemistry between us, getting involved would have been disastrous. He was a hell of a lot straighter than me, disapproved of pretty much everything I did, had a fiancée he was marrying in two days and, worst of all, was Sean’s best friend.
Alex had been on leave from the service for the past few months because of an injury he’d sustained working on a case with me. He’d been in a coma and nearly died, and he still hadn’t completely recovered. He was getting physical therapy to regain full use of his right arm, and the docs suspected a slight brain injury may have affected his impulse control. Not real swell when your job involves packing a loaded weapon. The police service was his life, and every time I thought of what had happened to him I felt like crying because I knew it was all my fault. Him, my mum, my mum’s partner Steve . . . Don’t think about it. That was my mantra. Nothing wrong with a bit of repression.
‘What about him?’ I asked, as casually as I could.
‘Ever since you came back from his buck’s night you’ve been acting strange.’
I’d unwittingly turned up at Alex’s bachelor party because some arsehole cousin of his had thought it would be funny to hire me to do a cop-themed strip. I strode into the room, came up from behind, and it wasn’t until I’d straddled his lap that I realised it was Alex. Soon as I clocked him I ran out of the function room and locked myself in a disabled toilet, mortified. Then he’d come into the cubicle with me, drunk, and— ‘See, you’re doing it now,’ Chloe said. ‘You’ve got this weird, faraway look in your eyes. Did something happen between the two of you at the party?’
‘I told you. Soon as I found out whose buck’s it was I left.’
‘Took you a long time to get back here.’
‘Waited ages for a cab.’
She looked like she was going to keep hassling, and all I wanted was to put everything behind me and never think of Alex Christakos again. Desperate to change the subject, I plucked the passes out of my jeans pocket and dangled them in front of her. She squinted, examining the laminated cardboard.
‘Backstage pass?’
‘To a writers’ festival. Nick gave them to me.’
She plucked one from me and read it closely. ‘The Summer Sessions!’ She sat up straight. ‘We have to go.’
‘Wow. Nice to see you’re so excited. And there I was thinking your idea of literature was Penthouse Forum.’ Mean, but I owed her for the ‘not the best stripper’ crack.
‘I read, sometimes. But that’s not why I wanna go. Curtis is doing a true crime panel there and I have to check up on him.’
I did a double take. Far as I knew, Chloe didn’t particularly like Curtis. They’d dated for five months, then she’d got knocked up and decided to have the baby and ditch the boyfriend. He’d be
en hopelessly devoted, but she’d been rather cruel, using him for sex when she felt like it then berating him for continually hanging around.
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t answer my last booty call. It got me suspicious. I think he has a girlfriend.’
‘So what? You’ve had about five boyfriends since you two broke up.’
Pregnancy hadn’t taken the edge off her libido, or her ability to attract anything with a pulse.
‘Not boyfriends. Roots. Big difference.’
‘Either way, why do you care?’
Her hand fluttered to her chest and her voice went all breathy. ‘Simone, he’s the father of my unborn child!’
What bullshit. She just loved having him at her beck and call. It was an ego trip and I told her so. ‘Chloe, you don’t want him, but you don’t want anyone else to have him.’
She opened her mouth wide, trying for shocked and hurt, but there was a sly look in her eye and I knew I’d hit the mark.
chapter four
Chloe and I headed off to the writers’ festival in my pale blue ’67 Ford Futura. It was good to be driving The Beast again, zebra-patterned seat covers, dangling mirror ball and all, much more fun than the boring, innocuous Laser I used for work. I’d even added a new sticker to the bumper that read, in Western-style script, Country Music Is Not a Crime.
It was another hot day and I was wearing my usual summer uniform of faded, ripped hipster jeans and a top with the sleeves cut off. My ‘Damn Right I’m a Cowgirl’ t-shirt was in the wash so I’d gone with ‘Save Water—Drink More Champagne’.
Chloe, however, was a different story. A hint of competition and she’d pulled out the big guns. Platinum hair boofed at the roots and curled at the ends, two hours of makeup including individually applied false eyelashes, a double session at the solarium and even a new dress: a pink gingham baby-doll number cut so low you didn’t notice the belly because you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the cleavage. As usual she was tripping along on high heels, but in deference to the location had gone for cork platforms to minimise her chance of getting bogged.
Yarra Bend was a huge swathe of parkland on the northern edge of the inner city right next to Clifton Hill, made up of grass ovals, bushy slopes and scenic bike paths. A broad, muddy stretch of the Yarra River twisted through it, lined with ghost gums and overhanging willows.
I squeezed The Beast into a car park and we made our way across a sports field towards a cluster of canvas marquees. Melbourne folk loved festivals; there was about a dozen taking place at any given moment, and the ground was packed with people and dogs and kids. I smelled barbecued meat and heard amplified voices and the occasional burst of laughter and applause.
I resolved to get out of the office more and into, like, nature and shit. Sean was back in less than twenty-four hours and, if everything went well, we could do stuff like this all the time. Like normal people. Speaking of normal, all the ordinary citizens were staring at Chloe like she’d just beamed down from the mother ship, but that was okay. She’d always been a rampant exhibitionist and got seriously perturbed when folks didn’t gawk. The one time she passed a building site and no one whistled she’d turned feral and screamed abuse at the construction workers.
Nick’s session wasn’t scheduled to start for twenty-five minutes so we headed straight for the bar tent to take advantage of our VIP passes. Lord knew I was going to need some liquid encouragement if I had to sit still for an hour while three middle-aged blokes nattered on about the writing process, and also I had a feeling we’d find Nick there. I was right. He was at a white plastic table in a corner, sitting with Curtis Malone and two women I didn’t recognise. I waved, Chloe pretended she hadn’t seen Curtis, and we headed to the bar where she flirted with the waiter, waving around her laminated card, declaring it was her ‘back-door’ pass and that she was with the band.
Nick pulled across a couple of chairs as we approached with our champagnes, and when I introduced him to Chloe I witnessed a massive triumph of will as he managed to keep his eyes on her face.
‘It’s so great to meet you, Nick,’ she said, jiggling as she talked, laying it on thick for Curtis’ benefit. ‘Simone’s told me all about you and I love your books.’
Nick raised his eyebrows and looked pleased. ‘You’ve read them?’
‘No, but I saw them on TV! Cameron Davies was so hot as Zack.’
Nick gave me a look and all I could do was shrug. He pointed to a woman on his left with shoulder-length, flicked-out blonde hair streaked with silver. ‘Simone and Chloe, meet Liz. She’s not only my publisher, she’s also my twin sister.’
‘Twins?’ Chloe squawked. ‘Get fucked.’
‘It’s true,’ said Nick.
‘Not identical.’
‘No.’ Liz pursed her mouth.
‘Keeping it all in the family.’ I laughed, trying to lighten the mood.
‘My publishing Nick’s books has nothing to do with nepotism and everything to do with the quality of the work.’
Yikes. The sharp tone and stern look made me feel like I was fourteen and back in the principal’s office.
‘Curtis you know,’ Nick said quickly, ‘and this is Desiree. She’s another author.’
Chloe usually stared out other blondes, kind of a territorial thing, but that day she only had eyes for Desiree or, more specifically, the hand Desiree had just proprietarily placed on Curtis’ thigh.
Desiree looked strangely familiar; she was about ten years older than Chloe and me, late thirties perhaps, and my first thought was that I wanted to be like her when I grew up. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was stunning, tall and slim with burgundy hair blunt-cut at her shoulders and a thick fringe that skimmed her black eyebrows. Her skin was tanned and her face angular, with sharp cheekbones, a long nose, feline eyes winged with liquid liner, and a wide mouth painted red. She wore a tight black knee-length skirt, a sleeveless, dark red cheongsam top and exotic-looking jet earrings. She seemed sleek and predatory, a red-haired Cleopatra, and made my friend, in her flouncy gingham, look like a kewpie doll in comparison.
As Desiree stared back evenly at Chloe I suddenly realised who she was: the former high-class callgirl who’d penned a book about her exploits, naming no names but providing just enough information so you could make a fair guess who her rich and powerful clients had been. After the memoir she’d written a book of sex tips and now had regular spots on various television and radio shows as their resident ‘sexpert’.
I had to hand it to Curtis, he had a lot of luck with the ladies considering he wasn’t the hottest tamale in the bain-marie. He wasn’t ugly exactly—in fact, with his sandy, slightly curly hair, boyish face and putty nose some people might have called him cute—but he’d always seemed like an annoying younger brother to me, even though he was thirty-three. When we’d first met, Curtis had worked for Picture magazine and had been the proud owner of a mullet-style haircut, a host of flannelette shirts and Dunlop Volley tennis shoes. After moving to Melbourne, becoming a crime journo and dating Chloe, he’d changed his style, going to the other extreme: natty shoes, slicked-back hair and shiny ties that made him resemble an extra from The Sopranos, albeit an albino one. Now that he was an actual true-crime author his sartorial style had settled: khaki chinos, Adidas slip-ons and a short-sleeved, red-checked, tastefully retro Wrangler shirt.
‘Hey, Curtis, how you going?’
‘Great.’ He stretched out the word and slouched into his chair, one arm slung over the back. Mr Cool, these days. ‘Book about the Wade case is all but done, just waiting for the trial and soon as that’s over, bam, we rush the release. Couple of other writers are covering it too but I’ll blow them out of the water, seeing as how I was personally involved in the situation. You know there’s still time for you to give me an interview, let me know exactly what was going through your head when you thought you were gonna die.’
‘No thanks.’
Curtis shrugged. ‘No probs. I’ll just make it up.
’
I tried to like him, god help me I did.
‘Any word on the trial date?’ Nick’s sister asked.
‘Early next year,’ I said. ‘Late January, early Feb.’ I didn’t want to think about it because every time I did my stomach flipped.
Emery Wade was one of those rich, powerful people I couldn’t stand: a high-profile criminal lawyer who’d knocked off members of his own family to protect his reputation and get ahead. His favourite hobby had been to visit prostitutes, find out what they wouldn’t do, and try to force them into doing these things by using money, drugs or violence. Most crims were dumb or on drugs or both; Wade scared me because he was as intelligent as he was sadistic. I kept worrying he’d exploit his wealth and connections to worm his way out of the murder and manslaughter charges, and I couldn’t relax until he’d been found guilty.
‘See you there.’ Curtis pointed a pen at me, studiously ignoring Chloe just as she was ignoring him. She was pretty focused on the woman next to him, though.
‘Desiree, like, that’s your real name?’
I couldn’t believe that after five whole minutes that was the best she could come up with. Maybe pregnancy really did melt your brain.
Desiree just smirked. ‘It’s more real than your hair colour, honey.’
Curtis sputtered with laughter, Chloe gasped, and I was sure she was going to leap across the table and go her when suddenly a festival volunteer, a plump young woman wearing an oversized ‘Summer Sessions’ t-shirt and carrying a walkie talkie, ran up and said, ‘Nick Austin?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh, thank god I found you.’ She was breathless and sweating, and wisps of light brown hair were plastered to her forehead. ‘There have been a couple of last-minute changes to your panel. Shane and Peter have had to drop out. It’s unbelievable. Shane’s plane was delayed and Peter’s come down with the flu and—’
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