Comfort Zone (10 page)

‘Only the big guys. And I've got a lifestyle to maintain. This stuff isn't cheap.' Matt gestured with an upward sweep of an open palm at his expensive-looking outfit.

‘So what now?'

‘Dunno. Skip town, maybe. Prick threatened to cut my ears off if I don't cough up tomorrow.'

‘How much you owe?'

‘Ten grand. Plus interest.'

‘Shit, can't you sell something?'

‘I don't own much — it's all leased. Apartment, Beemer, jet-ski, everything. Want to buy a second-hand suit?'

‘What about a loan?'

‘Not easy. Got nothing to borrow against, and my credit card's maxed out. Couldn't do it overnight, that's for sure.'

The cab fell silent for a couple of minutes. Matt seemed to have shrunk. All the brazen self-confidence had faded, and a frightened, disoriented teenager was peeking through the mask. Jack almost felt sorry for him. He couldn't help recalling his generous tip — and he had given him Farhia's phone number.

He turned left into Collins Street and looked across at his passenger.

‘Might be able to help.'

‘How?'
You're only a cabbie
, Matt's tone said.

‘Not sure yet, but got a couple of ideas. Maybe get the cash — maybe some time to pay. I know people. One good thing about this job.'

‘Give me a call if you come up with anything.' Matt didn't sound hopeful. Desperation was written all over his face. He appreciated Jack's offer, but didn't take it seriously.

After saying a brief goodbye, Jack pulled into the rank. He was a fair way back in the queue, which meant he had a break. He tossed the morning's events over in his mind, wondering how Matt would explain his bruised face at work, and how he could help him sort out his problem.

A small touch of reality started to seep into his thoughts.
What am I doing? First I'm saving Farhia from spies and terrorists, now I sign up to help a guy sort out his drug debts. Must be going crazy
. Sure, the prospect of more tips couldn't be ignored, and without Matt he would never have even met Farhia, but what did he know about drug dealers? Then he thought about his
ASIO
problem. Matt seemed like the kind of guy who would know how to tackle that, so maybe he could enlist his help on that front.

His first option for helping Matt was to ask Rowan. He knew people, all kinds of people. Somewhere in the crowd of hangers-on, crims, and B-list celebrities that Rowan knew, Jack was sure there was a serious drug dealer. Rowan might be able to get him to sort out the Doncaster guy, or something like that.

It was still spitting a bit, but Jack decided to stretch his aching legs. He worked his way through two cigarettes as he leant on the side of the cab, wrestling with Matt's problem. He was an unappealing figure amongst the expensively attired pedestrians, all power-dressing and casual elegance, but he didn't care. He had given up worrying about his appearance years ago, and in the Collins Street canyon of congealed money he was invisible. No one looked at cabbies, and if they did, about the only thing that registered was their ethnicity. Jack often noted a passenger's surprise when he realised he had a driver who spoke perfect English and knew where he was going.

His encounters with Farhia, Jeffrey, and Matt swirled around in his head. He tried to think things through logically, but couldn't quite manage it. The excitement had him tingling. He didn't know how he was going to deal with this odd mixture of challenges, but he didn't have anything to lose. Farhia was surely just a mirage, and he doubted he would be able to do anything to help Matt, but what did it matter? He didn't care if Matt ended up as the first earless banker in Collins Street.

That afternoon's driving was something of a nightmare. The nights were usually the worst, which was why Jack preferred the early shift. It suited Ajit, who had a day job in a call centre. Obnoxious drunks and crazy teenagers didn't generally get in cabs in the middle of the day.

Today was upset-housewife and drunken-weirdo day. After he'd snatched a quick lunch at a dirty noodle bar in Swanston Street, Jack picked up a fare to Pascoe Vale — a good, solid, no-fuss kind of fare. As luck would have it, he also picked up a return fare. Pascoe Vale was outside his zone, but with no other cab available, home base cleared him to do the job.

His sense of satisfaction dissipated in less than two blocks. His passenger was a middle-aged woman with a blotchy, tear-stained face and a new suitcase. Jack turned his nose up at the bright-purple, modishly curved suitcase — impractical fashion accessories in his opinion — but he put it in the boot anyway.

It soon emerged that the woman was leaving her husband. Against his better judgment, he drifted into amateur counsellor mode.

‘You think I'm doing the right thing?'

‘Depends. Can be tough out there if you're single, divorced, middle-aged, and all that.' For a fleeting moment, he wondered if she might take offence at being described as middle-aged, but she didn't seem to notice.

‘But he's an arsehole! He's been screwing my best friend, he ignores the kids …'

As they were caught in traffic, Jack took a closer look at her. Straggly, dyed-blonde hair, reddish face that was probably pretty once, nice eyes, nose a bit too big — all-in-all, not the worst-looking woman he'd ever had in his cab. Definitely not at her best, for obvious reasons, but not without attractions.

In spite of his infatuation with Farhia, Jack couldn't help himself. One of the few fringe benefits of driving taxis was the occasional appearance of attractive female passengers. Jack automatically sized up every woman who got into his cab who wasn't eligible for the pension. And it was amazing what some of them said to him.

‘If I don't do it now, I'll be stuck with him forever. That'd be worse, wouldn't it? I'm still young and pretty enough to find someone else, aren't I?'

She seemed to be talking aloud to herself, but Jack thought it would be diplomatic to respond, in case she interpreted silence as disagreement.

‘Yeah, guess so.'

‘How will I make him pay child support? Maria's ex earns heaps, but he hides it all in trusts and stuff. Do you know how much it's supposed to be?'

‘No idea.'

‘Men are all the same! Just after one thing, get bored ...' She stifled a sob and continued. ‘... leave us like a bag of rubbish on the road ...'

‘Not all blokes do that.' Jack felt obliged to defend his gender. He hadn't ever had much chance to love ‘em and leave ‘em, so he was a bit offended by this sweeping accusation.

‘You're all the same,' she mumbled, as if Jack wasn't really there.

‘Hey, listen love. I'm sorry about your husband and that, but ease up, okay? I've never done that to anyone, lots of blokes haven't. Just because you married a dickhead, doesn't mean we're all like that.'

Oops, there goes my tip
, Jack thought.
Stupid bitch, can see why he's nicked off
.

By the time he dropped her at her sister's place in Fairfield, Jack was mightily relieved. On an ordinary day he wouldn't have minded that much — the conversation could even have been rather diverting — but today he had other things on his mind.

One short fare later, and he got the drunk weirdo. This bloke was a fountain of conspiracy theories — angry, aggressive, and physical. It wasn't easy from the passenger seat of a car, but he kept invading Jack's personal space, grabbing his arm, leaning over too close to him, and exhaling beery, oily breath all over him.

‘They're fucking crooks, I tell you, mate. That prick Jackson, his wife's best mates with the developer's wife, play tennis together, all that kind of shit, they went …'

He paused to let out a prolonged burp, then resumed without drawing breath. ‘… on holiday together. Stinks, you know what I mean?'

Jack wasn't in the mood. His passenger was one of those people whose appearance is so bland that his image fades from your mind almost before they've left your presence. He was dressed casually, not obviously derelict or down on his luck, just drunk and obnoxious.

‘Hey, do you see that plate, mate? Rambo, but spelt with a double “M”! What kind of dickhead'd have that? What's the point? Show he's illiterate or something? Christ, I hate personalised number plates! Why would you spend good money on that? And how about the idiots with a one for an “I” and a three for an “E”? How stupid's that? World's full of fucking morons …'

Once in a while, Jack came away from encounters like this with the disturbing feeling that he had just been listening to himself. He agreed wholeheartedly with this passenger's view of personalised number plates — in his opinion, they all spelt the same thing — ‘WANKER' — but it was disconcerting to hear his own views coming from such an unpleasant source. The thought that he might be degenerating into a ranting loser like this guy troubled him.

He often enjoyed a chat while he was driving, but not if he had things on his mind. Then he preferred to zone out, put the cab on autopilot, and chew over his problems. He had long outgrown the novelty of listening to the secrets of emotional passengers, and he had a robust dislike of dickheads.

‘It's amazing,' he would often tell mates over a drink. ‘People tell you stuff they wouldn't dream of telling their friends and family. Having affairs, ripping people off, shafting their boss, bad-mouthing their best friend … it's incredible. All just gets spewed out, and I just sit there and say a few words every ten minutes or so …'

He glanced across to his annoying passenger, and wondered if he was looking at himself in a different body. Listening to this agitated bore gave him an uneasy feeling. Were they both members of the same unloved species?

Farhia was doing funny things to Jack. He was questioning himself — about himself. For the first time in many years, he was peeking out of his crusty shell and catching a glimpse of who he really was. And even though he fought back with excuses and rationalisations, he didn't much like what he was seeing.

After finally getting rid of his unpleasant passenger, who was still telling him about internet sites he should visit as he was getting out of the cab, Jack sat quietly at a rank in William Street for twenty minutes. He tried to shut Matt out of his mind and concentrate on Farhia. It didn't work — the two streams of thought kept getting jumbled in ever more absurd patterns.

He had to come clean about the
ASIO
stuff. That would make him a kind of double agent. Maybe he could do a trade with
ASIO
, dob in Matt and his dealer mates in return for them laying off Farhia. But he didn't think
ASIO
were interested in drugs. And what if there really was terrorist stuff happening? They bugged people's phones. He might end up in serious trouble if he wasn't careful.

Jack checked his phone for messages, and another troubling thought hit him. How long before they worked out that he had found his mobile? What if they already knew?

He thought about deleting the photos, but remembered something he'd seen on TV about there always being a deep record of everything on a computer that you couldn't delete. So maybe it wouldn't work, and would just look suspicious. Anyway, he was still curious about what was written in the book's pages.

He could feel stress rising inside him as these thoughts tumbled around in his head like clothes in a dryer.

His romantic euphoria was still there, but it now had a nasty edge to it.

He was glancing nervously at people he'd never met, turning the radio on and off, and occasionally gripping the steering wheel tightly for no reason. Every now and then, a tiny flutter appeared in his left eyelid.

There was still no sign of another fare. Jack shifted awkwardly in his seat. Ford Falcon seats weren't renowned for comfort, but they were good enough for his usual needs. He didn't go in for the enhancements favoured by some drivers, like sheepskin covers and wooden beads, and he always set the seat in the same position. Ajit moved it around a bit, which annoyed him because he then had to fiddle around with the base position and the back angle to get it right. He checked the settings just in case they were wrong, but everything was in order.

Eventually, a passenger materialised, so he spent the next twenty minutes making small talk about the weather and pushing Farhia from his mind. It succeeded up to a point: by the time he'd dropped his passenger off, he was more relaxed.

Harbouring thoughts of inevitable disaster, Jack entered Farhia's number in his phone as he stopped outside the Elgin Street flats. After four rings, he concluded that she wasn't home. Either she had forgotten, or she was avoiding him. By the sixth ring, he was about to abandon the call, when finally someone picked up the phone.

An unfamiliar male voice growled aggressively in a foreign language.

‘Hello, sorry, I was wanting to speak to Farhia.' There was a tremor in Jack's voice. How could he go weak at the knees so easily?

Silence ensued for a moment, and then he heard Farhia talking in Somali to the unknown man. Her voice also contained a tremor — one that suggested fear rather than just nervousness.