by Robin Storey
And as for things he was good at – the same. He’d excelled at Swindling for the Under-Sixes, from the time in Year One when he stole a packet of his mother’s digestive biscuits, re-wrapped them singly, and sold them to his classmates as Apollo Space Cookies. Not only did he make a four-dollar profit, he became the coolest kid in the class.
As he grew older and more experienced, he progressed to more daring schemes, such as running a bookie’s tote. Albert, the old man in the apartment next door who smelled of mothballs and rum, had shown him the principles of being a bookie. In sixth grade, he ran a book on whether he could get Poppy Andronicus, the hottest girl in the class, to take her knickers off during school. The odds were 10 to 1 against.
While the class was tending the vegetable plot they’d started as part of their science studies, Reuben, who was on watering duties, lost control of the hose. The result was that Poppy and a couple of her friends were drenched and had to go up to the principal’s office to change into clean clothes from the spare clothes box. When those who had bet ‘no’ demanded their money back, Reuben put his hands in his pockets bulging with coins, and smirked. ‘I won fair and square, I didn’t say she had to take them off when we were watching. Read the fine print.’
There was no fine print, of course, the premise of the bet having been nutted out in the boys’ change room after swimming. But the scheme backfired when Billy ‘Boofhead’ Barker bailed him up behind the toilets, put him in a headlock and refused to let him go until he’d promised to refund everyone their money. It taught him a valuable lesson – you can’t afford to be too smart.
In high school, he ran totes on anything his classmates were prepared to bet on, from who was going to win the cross country to who would be the first to make Peabrain (Mr Peabody the maths teacher), swear in class. He targeted the students from well-off families who had wads of disposable cash and threw large amounts of money on the tote to impress their friends. Sometimes the tote lost to keep his customers coming back, but as he usually had insider knowledge of the likely outcome, the overall result was a healthy profit for Reuben. In between his bookie’s activities, he sold false swap cards and fake IDs for buying alcohol. He had a fair idea these credentials would not impress Droopy Dave; might cause him to become even droopier.
He considered Dave’s idea of doing a course, but could think of nothing he wanted to study. Besides, he didn’t have the dedication or perseverance. After school, at his mother’s insistence, he’d started a Bachelor of Business degree at the University of Queensland, having just scraped in on the second intake. He found he was more taken with the idea of being a student than actually being one. He hung around the library chatting up the girls, was a regular fixture in the university bar and lounged around on the lawn with a thick tome open on his lap, smoking roll-your-own cigarettes. For authenticity, he even attended a few rallies – save the green tree frog, violence against women, whatever was the topic of the moment.
But by the end of his first year at university, he knew it wasn’t for him and left before the final exams. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the work – his school reports had all said the same thing. ‘Reuben is an intelligent boy who is not living up to his full potential.’ In other words, bone-lazy.
He glanced around at the other passengers on the bus. Mostly shoppers, as it was too early in the afternoon for office commuters. Two men were sitting across the aisle. Overalls, work boots, duffle bag at their feet; staring vacantly ahead, fatigue etched on their faces. Factory workers, probably. Took this same route every day, there and back, to earn barely the basic wage; only enough left after paying the bills for a couple of beers. Nights spent watching the telly, anything for an escape from the here and now, weekends mowing the lawn and cleaning the barbecue.
If that’s straight life, shoot me now. Scamming was hard work and you needed brainpower, creativity and nerves of steel. But the rewards were high – the adrenalin rush when it all came together and the money flowed and the satisfaction of seeing a well-planned scheme come to fruition – as long as he didn’t think about the people whose trust in him had afforded him that success.
Of course, as in all careers, you started out on the bottom rung. After leaving uni, he started up a mail-order company selling bogus products. As a sideline, he did door-to-door touting for non-existent charities, and started up a variety of internet-based scams. Brisbane soon became too small for him and as he was beginning to be recognised, he moved to Sydney. He kept on the hop from state to state – when the police started showing interest, he’d move on. Even so, he was arrested and charged on a few occasions and did a couple of short stints in prison.
After a while, he became bored with low-level scams and applied himself to studying finance and investment. His university lecturers would have been amazed if they’d seen him hunched over his scratched laminex kitchen table, cracked lampshade glowing, his head buried in a pile of books, and writing pad full of scribbled notes.
Once he’d acquired a working knowledge of the world of finance, he created more complex scams. By now, he’d returned to Brisbane because of his mother’s illness. He found a partner, Derek McMaster, an Oxford graduate in economics, from a wealthy family who’d squandered his inheritance on wild living and was searching for a way to recoup his losses. Derek knew finance as if he’d been born with a fistful of dollar notes, and together he and Reuben set up investment schemes to embezzle money from tax-dodging clients. Reuben was the front man, who, with his charm and enough financial knowledge to sound plausible, got the customers in the front door. Derek did the rest - persuaded them to sign on the dotted line, transferred the money into his and Reuben’s offshore accounts and did some creative accounting to cover their tracks. They had an office in the city, a secretary and a website. Their business, All Purpose Financial Consultants – deliberately named to sound ordinary – had every appearance of being a legitimate business.
Reuben bought himself a modern apartment in trendy Paddington and a new Audi. He could afford much more, but was careful not to be too extravagant because it would cause suspicion. Derek, on the other hand, couldn’t help but indulge himself in a Mercedes sports car, catamaran and a penthouse apartment on the river. A suspicious and embittered ex-girlfriend alerted the Tax Office, the police became involved, and after five years, their dream crashed down around them. Their bank accounts were closed and their homes and possessions confiscated. Derek received a longer sentence as the executor of the fraudulent transactions and was still in prison, not due for parole for another two years.
The bus jerked to a halt and a woman boarded. In her forties, well made-up, hair gelled into submission. Simply dressed but she had money – you could smell it on her. She took the seat beside him. He glanced at her and she caught his eye then looked away. Five years ago, he’d been readily accepted into the social circle of such women and their husbands, flirted with them at cocktail parties and restaurants and was invited into their homes. Now they looked right through him as if he was of no more importance than the street cleaner. Was that contempt he had seen in her eyes? Sometimes he felt as if he had ‘jailbird’ tattooed on his forehead.
One thing was for sure. He wasn’t going back there. The last three years, his longest time in prison, had crawled. Three years lost forever. Besides, he’d promised his mother. He’d visited her in the palliative care hospital six months before he and Derek were arrested. She had lung cancer, was only fifty-five, but looked like an old woman. Her mottled hand rested as light as a leaf in his, her eyes, shrunk within her parchment yellow face, pleading with him.
‘Please tell me this business you’re in with Derek is legal,’ she whispered. She spoke slowly, her breathing laboured. The oxygen machine was next to her bed.
Reuben stroked her hand. It was icy cold. ‘Of course it is, Mum, I promise.’
His deception was a dead weight in the pit of his stomach. He could make up the most convincing lies to tell strangers and not blink an eye, but he hated
lying to his mother. But what else could he say when she was dying?
Her face lightened and for a moment he saw the mother he’d known as a child. She moved her mouth into a semblance of a smile. He didn’t know whether she believed him, but she could pretend as well as he.
Her hand gripped his with surprising strength. ‘I want you to promise me something else.’
‘Anything you want, Mum.’
‘Give up the cigarettes.’
‘Okay.’
‘I mean it, Reuben. I’ll come back and haunt you if you don’t.’
All those years he’d pleaded with her to give up smoking and now she was doing the same to him. But he wasn’t addicted; he only smoked on social occasions.
He squeezed her hand gently and grinned. ‘That’s an incentive if ever I heard one. All right, I promise.’
A spasm of coughing wracked her body, bony and fragile with its paper-thin skin. The nurse hurried over and fixed the oxygen mask to her face. Violet Littlejohn picked up the pad and pen she used for communicating when talking became too hard. Her hand moved laboriously across the page. She held it up. On it were written three words. The letters were wobbly, but there was force behind them: ‘AND STAY STRAIGHT’.
She died two days later. True to his word, Reuben gave up smoking. If only the second part were as easy.
The bus pulled up at his stop in Kedron, and he got out. He walked the two blocks to home – a worker’s cottage Carlene had found for rent before he was released from prison. She had fallen in love with it at first sight, while Reuben thought it rather ugly. Squat and plain with the typical gable-shaped roof, it looked like a Lego house. But he couldn’t complain about the inside – fully renovated with polished floors and all the mod cons. It was in keeping with its surroundings, Kedron being an established suburb of older homes – modest low-set timber or high-set gabled Queenslanders. With most people at work, the streets had an air of desertion about them. The afternoon sun was warm on the back of his neck. Winter had been much colder and bleaker in prison, and seemed to last forever.
As he neared the cottage, memories of his mother overwhelmed him. He was a child again, listening for the creak of the rusty front gate, then bounding downstairs and diving into her arms, his cheek against her uniform that smelled of disinfectant, because that made the world right again. Though in reality, he’d got a hiding as often as a hug.
You can’t give me an ultimatum like ‘Stay Straight’ and then die. What the hell am I supposed to do? Give me a sign, a bolt of lightning, a whack on the head – anything!
CHAPTER 3
‘Don’t turn the sausages any more, they’ll go all leathery.’
Wayne hovered beside Alec, as he stood at the barbecue presiding over a sizzling array of chicken wings, steak and the unfortunate sausages. The aroma filled the chilly evening air.
Alec poked Wayne’s beer gut with his tongs. ‘Listen mate, I won’t tell you how to tile roofs if you don’t tell me how to cook.’
His tone was good-natured and Reuben admired his forbearance. In the short time he’d known his brother-in-law, he’d discovered Wayne was like a jalapeño chilli – to be taken only in small doses. He had opinions on every conceivable topic and ignorance was no hindrance to his expressing them.
Reuben took a cracker from the crystal dish on the table, and piled it with hummus and goat’s cheese. Carlene was in the kitchen helping Nancy with the salads. A child’s shriek floated out through the open French doors.
‘Brayden, come here this minute or I’ll slap your bum!’ Carlene’s sister Jolene yelled. How could she be close enough to slap his bum unless he did what he was told? In which case he wouldn’t need to have his bum slapped. It was a no-win situation for Brayden, who at eighteen months was too young to argue the toss, unlike his older sister Indya, who always came out on top and was far too precocious for her four years.
Reuben got up from the table and wandered over to the pool. Large and kidney-shaped, it shimmered in the blazing lights of the patio – as Nancy called it. She made it sound like a quaint little courtyard when, in reality, you could fit his and Carlene’s cottage into it and have space left over. In the corner of the lush expanse of lawn, the Balinese rotunda where they had married hulked in the shadows.
The house was in Hamilton, only ten minutes drive from Kedron, but a world away in lifestyle. Perched at the top end of a short, hilly street shaded by jacarandas, it was a sprawling Federation-style Queenslander, immaculately kept, with a double front staircase, a fountain gracing well-behaved gardens and a security intercom on the front gate. From the front verandah, you could glimpse through the trees the shiny ribbon of the Brisbane River and the jumble of boat masts at Portside Wharf.
The original name plaque of the house was still attached to the front gate. Karrawa. According to Nancy, it was aboriginal for ‘that will do’ – a modest name, suitably nouveau poor.
‘There’s a lot of old money in Hamilton,’ Alec had told Reuben, with a note of pride. Who cared about the age of the money? It was just another way of being a snob. Reuben gazed down at the pool and saw himself spring off the edge, a poised torpedo of rippling muscle, scarcely making a splash as he dived into its aqua-cold depths. Lucy had been constantly on his mind and here she was again, waiting for him in the pool in an emerald bikini that matched her eyes, her hair floating on the water like seaweed. Soft, clean-smelling seaweed. He bobbed up beside her and their eyes met. He held her tightly to him and slowly kissed her tender mouth, his hand tracing the curve of her cleavage and on to her nipple…
A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder and he jumped. ‘How’s the job hunting going, mate?’
Wayne was grinning at him, his meaty hand clasped around his stubby of beer. In his wedding photos he had the athletic, fresh-faced looks of the surf lifesaver he had once been, but over the years his features had coarsened and his body had gone soft. Reuben noted with satisfaction that although Wayne was the same age as him, he looked much older.
‘Great! I’ve had six job offers this week. I just have to decide which one I want.’
Wayne narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
He leaned closer to Reuben. ‘I’ve got one for you.’
‘A job?’
‘Yep. I’ve just had one of my boys resign, so the job’s yours if you want it.’
‘Roof tiling?’
He looked at Reuben incredulously, as if he had just offered to perform brain surgery. ‘No mate, that’s a specialist’s job. You’d be unloading the truck, carrying tiles, cleaning up – basic labour. You’re okay with heights, aren’t you?’
Reuben blotted out of his mind memories of plane flights pretending to be asleep so he couldn’t see out the windows, and during his wealthy phase (new money of course), holidaying in a penthouse apartment at the Gold Coast and downing a stiff bourbon, before he could admire the view from the balcony. It would be different at work – he’d be too busy to worry about heights.
‘No worries. When do you want me to start?’
‘Monday. I’ll pick you up, six o’clock.’
‘Thanks, that’d be great.’ He tried to muster a tone of enthusiasm. His body was not built to function before eight o’clock in the morning; even three years in prison of getting up at six o’clock hadn’t altered his body clock. He’d blamed his disastrous performance at the building site on his early morning start, but at least that was on solid ground. He poured himself another glass of red wine to drown the niggle of apprehension in his gut.
As they sat down to eat, Reuben found himself wedged in between Jolene and Brayden in his highchair. Brayden was naked from the waist down, drumming his chubby legs against the highchair as he pulled apart a bread roll and threw pieces on the ground. He didn’t seem to feel the cold, and in any case, two large gas burners at opposite ends of the table emanated a cosy warmth.
‘Hey, young fella, where are your duds?’ Alec said, as he placed a
tray of glistening, aromatic meat on the table.
‘He won’t let me put his nappy on,’ Jolene said. ‘He screams every time I come near him, so I’ve given up.’
Two years younger than her sister, Jolene was a thinner, angular version of Carlene, with the same unruly dark hair. Her face had the tired, defeated expression often seen on the mothers of small children.
Nancy cast a pretend-disapproving glance at her grandson, as she coordinated the passing of serving dishes along the table. ‘Grandma will have to smack your bare bottom.’
Brayden squealed with excitement at the prospect and threw another piece of bread on the ground. Indya, perched opposite Reuben, wore a pink, sparkly dress and a tiara. With her blonde hair and dainty features, she was an angelic-looking child, but it was obvious that the wheels of her mind were in constant motion. She chewed half-heartedly on a sausage, gazing at Reuben with large, solemn eyes.
‘Are you a fairy, Indya?’ he asked.
Indya’s expression turned to disdain and she drew herself up in her chair. ‘I’m Princess Marvella. Don’t you know anything?’
‘Indya, that’s very rude,’ Jolene said. ‘Say sorry to Uncle Reuben.’
‘No,’ Indya said. ‘He’s dumb.’
Nancy pursed her lips. ‘It doesn’t matter how dumb he is, young lady, you apologise to him this instant!’
Indya cast her eyes downward and muttered, ‘Sorry.’ Then she threw her sausage on to her plate. ‘I can’t eat this, it’s too tough!’
Wayne cast a sideways glance at Alec. ‘I’m sure you can, sweetheart.’
‘I can’t! I’m going to watch TV.’ She slid off her chair and ran inside.
Wayne shook his head with a resigned grin. ‘Four, going on twenty-four.’