Rubdown (2 page)

Luckily Tony asked for me: ‘How old is Tamara?’

‘Twenty.’

‘She live at home?’

Wade shook his head. ‘Flat in East St Kilda.’

I scribbled on my notepad.
Tamara Wade. Pill popping pro?

Officially an adult. Old enough to do her own thing.

Tony said, ‘We’ll need an address, photographs, car registration.’

Wade slid a buff manila folder across the desk.

‘It’ll be expensive. Around the clock surveillance will require myself, Ms. Kirsch—’ Tony nodded in my direction—‘and another subcontractor.’

‘Bugger the expense.’ Wade took a chequebook from the inside pocket of his pinstriped jacket. ‘Take cheques?’

I perched on an old armchair and torn vinyl nipped my thighs.

The working girls gave me the once over.

‘I’m thinking of getting a job here but I’ve never worked before. What’s it like?’ I addressed the question to all of them but it was Tamara who replied.

‘Massage or sex?’ She swigged from a litre bottle of Coke, lit a cigarette and shook out the match.

‘I don’t know, what do you do?’

‘Massage, it’s the best. They lie down, you stand up, you’re the boss and you only have to use your hand. Shit easy.’ She leaned back on her palms and a tall Islander girl with crimson lips pulled a chair over and started brushing Tamara’s shoulder length hair.

‘No it’s not,’ said a desiccated older blonde with a voice like sandpaper. ‘That fucking massaging’s hard yakka. Thirty bucks for the half hour versus fifty? And for your information I am always the boss when I’m in the room, even if I’m lying on me back.’

Tamara snorted and smoke plumed out her nostrils. I hoped I hadn’t started a fight.

A fat lady, her tight pink dress revealing every stomach roll, guffawed and broke the tension. She put down the scarf she was knitting and nudged the older blonde in the ribs. ‘Only reason Taylor doesn’t massage is she’s too lazy to get off her back.’

‘Piss off, Janine.’ Taylor smiled as she lit a cigarette.

The Islander was styling Tamara’s hair into an up-do using bobby pins with small roses attached. ‘Maybe you should start with massage, love. Less likely to fuck with your head.’ From her low, rich voice I guessed she was, or used to be, a man.

A sweet faced girl with a brunette bob waved her copy of
Personal Investor
magazine to clear the cigarette smoke. ‘You’d do well at massage. Marketable looks. Just make sure you set a financial goal, put aside a percentage of your earnings and quit when you’ve reached your target. I’m saving for an investment property and a blue chip share portfolio and then I’m out of here.’

Janine cackled again. Her boobs, more twin planets than breasts, threatened to spill from the hot-pink sheath. ‘You’ll be back.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘I started in eighty-six,’ Janine told me. ‘Only going to work long enough to buy a secondhand car.’

Taylor nodded, ‘Ten years ago I needed money for Chrissie pressies for the kids. Thought I’d work two weeks but you get used to the cash, it’s addictive.’

‘And impossible to save.’ The Islander blasted a mist of hairspray at Tamara’s head and I was amazed her ciggie didn’t cause the whole room to ignite. ‘Sex industry money slips through your fingers like sand.’

‘Not as long as you set goals,’ the brunette said.

Taylor blew smoke toward the ceiling and ran a hand through her over-bleached crop. ‘I don’t want to leave anyway. I like the job. Before this I waitressed at the local club for fifteen years getting paid nothing, customers giving me crap all day. Someone pisses me off here I refuse to see ’em, plain and simple.’

I knew what she was on about. I’d never felt degraded taking my clothes off, but I sure as shit had while I was waitressing and working in retail.

A news break interrupted ‘Good Morning Australia’. The latest bombing in Iraq then highlights from Sunday’s AFL match.

Young men with bulging triceps leapt into the air reaching for the ball. I knew nothing about footy—pretty shameful for someone who’d lived in Melbourne for four years. A handsome blonde player squared up to the goals and Taylor pointed to the TV.

‘Hey, Tammy, isn’t that your brother Blaine?’

‘Stepbrother,’ Tamara sighed, stubbing out her ciggie.

That got my interest, but I didn’t say anything, just plucked at the threadbare brown carpet and checked out a poster of a black guy in a red Phantom suit.
Condom Man says, ‘Don’t be shame, be game!’

‘He’s hot,’ Taylor rasped at the TV. ‘Get him in here and I’ll do him for free!’

‘I’ll pay him!’ said Janine and all the girls laughed.

The Islander fluttered her false lashes. ‘He’s worth it.’

‘In your dreams, Lulu,’ said Taylor. ‘He’s going out with that singer chick. Used to be on the soapie, “Sassafras Street”. What’s her name? Valerie?’

I glanced at Tamara and saw she was rolling her eyes like it was all too boring for words.

‘Veronica,’ said Janine. And suddenly it came to me.

Blaine Wade was Emery’s son and he and his equally famous fiancée Veronica were staples in the social pages and glossy magazines, Australia’s answer to Posh and Becks. Blaine was the clean-cut rising star of the AFL and Veronica was one of the new breed of ‘virginal’ pop stars who kept their clothes on in videos and claimed to attend church. Apart from their regular incomes they made a mint in endorsements. No wonder Emery Wade wanted Tamara locked up in rehab before a scandal broke out.

I wondered why Wade hadn’t given us the whole story. Had he assumed we’d know who his son was?

Marla’s voice crackled over the intercom: ‘Intro, ladies.’

They jumped up, primping hair and checking lipstick before filing into the hall. Tammy was back before the others. She grabbed her Coca-Cola and sat close to me in an orange plastic chair, eyes occasionally darting over my shoulder. I was glad the digital video made no sound. She smelled of vanilla body spray and her slightly buck teeth pushed her lip into a pout and gave her a sultry look.

‘If you’re serious about massage I know a great place to work.

Do a couple of shifts there a week. Female management, sixty-forty split, good clients. It’s illegal but really discreet, members only so there’s no chance of getting busted. You interested?’ She swigged from the bottle.

‘Yeah.’

Tammy pulled a card from her bra. Plain white with black lettering that read
Tollhurst Consultancy
. I raised my eyebrows.

‘Told you it was discreet. Talk to Hannah and say Tammy recommended you. Don’t mention anything to Neville, he’d fucking kill me if he knew.’

I slipped the card into my bag as the others entered the room, thanked them for their help and went back to reception where Taylor was leading a taxi driver through to the other side of the building.

Neville was still leaning on the desk. ‘How’d you go, love?

Hope the girls didn’t turn you off.’

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘Best not to think. Best to jump straight in.’

‘I’ll call you,’ I said.

That night I met my best friend Chloe for a drink and dinner at the Elwood Lounge on Glenhuntly Road, just a short walk from my flat on Broadway. It was a typically Melbourne bar slash restaurant full of mismatched furniture and attractive young hipsters.

Swatches of gauzy cloth floated down from the ceiling and local artwork hung from stripped-back walls.

Chloe had become a famous exotic dancer since she’d been kidnapped and I’d kind of rescued her. The publicity had led to magazine spreads, TV appearances and a stint hosting ‘Sin City’, a show about Melbourne’s seamy side. She’d even quit working for other people and opened her own agency called, aptly, Chloe’s.

I found the little vixen at the back of the bar racking up balls on one of the two pool tables, a bottle of champagne and two glasses at the ready.

She ran up on spike heeled boots and gave me a hug. ‘Fuck, mate, how long’s it been?’

Success hadn’t changed her. She was still a short arse with a foul mouth.

‘Couple of weeks at least. How’s the agency?’

‘Busy. I need more girls and a new driver. Start of the footy season and people keep getting married. Fucking idiots. Want to do a show Friday? You can be warm-up bitch for a buck’s. One-fifty and I won’t take any fees.

‘No thanks.’ I poured myself a glass of champagne. I could have used the money but was really trying to go straight. Flashing your gash didn’t enhance one’s reputation in the PI game and I’d promised Tony I’d given it away.

‘I bet you miss it.’ Chloe leaned over the pool table, lined up the white ball and broke. She wore tight black pants and a low cut top with ‘Bad Kitty’ in pink glitter on the front. Her long hair hung loose and had become blonder. How it managed to look healthy and not fall out was anybody’s guess.

‘Sure, sometimes I get pissed and strip in my lounge room, dancing to an invisible audience.’ It was true.

Chloe laughed. ‘Mate, you are one sad individual.’ She handed me the cue, sipped her champagne and lit a Winfield Blue.

‘How’s work?’

‘Good because Tony’s finally letting me do stuff on my own.

Bad because I feel terrible about a case we’re doing.’

She raised an eyebrow. I potted a small in the corner pocket and lined up my next shot. ‘We’re following this chick for her parents. They want proof of her working in massage joints and taking drugs.’

‘What, smack?’

‘She didn’t look like a junkie. Probably just E’s on the weekend. I mean, she’s twenty, making some money, having a bit of fun. Doesn’t even root the guys, for Christ’s sake. She’s not so different from us, and I’m sneaking around videoing her for her stuffed-shirt father and feeling like a supergrass.’ I missed the shot and handed the cue to Chloe.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, mate. You would have had to do worse stuff if you’d got into the cops.’

She was right. Before I started the PI course I’d been rejected by Victoria Police because of my dodgy work history. I’d been cut at the time, but eventually realised it was for the best. Chloe sank three balls in quick succession. Seriously misspent youth.

‘You’ll never guess what I got up to today,’ I said.

‘Finally got a root?’

‘No, but I could have. Went for a job interview at the Good Times Club.’

‘Get out!’ she squealed. ‘That’s where old hookers get put out to pasture!’

The thirty or so young urban professionals in the bar turned and looked.

‘They’ve got a … handjob division too.’

‘You ever given a handjob before?’ she asked.

‘Not to completion. I mean, what’s in it for me?’

Chloe shrugged. ‘A sticky hand.’

Tamara’s flat was on a rundown street off Inkerman where anaemic gum trees struggled through the cracked pavement and dry white dog turds littered the nature strip. Her block faced the road, two storeys of pale brick with concrete balconies running the length of the building, accessed by stairwells on either side. It had probably looked quite spiffy in the sixties, but now rust stains slithered down the white railings and four decades of traffic grime smothered the walls. Some residents had tried to cheer up their entrances with potplants, plastic chairs and even the odd garden gnome. Not my target. When I trained my binoculars on her first floor flat I could see she hadn’t even sprung for a welcome mat.

I’d taken over from Tony at four pm and followed Tamara from the Good Times Club to East St Kilda, hanging well back on account of my pale blue 1967 Ford Futura. Even without the zebra skin seat covers and dancing Elvis it was conspicuous as hell and Tony was going to lend me an anonymous white hatchback the next day.

TV detectives never show you how mind numbingly boring the average stakeout is. I’d been watching the flat since five-thirty.

It was now eight and my legs were cramping and my arse had lost all feeling. I clenched and released my butt cheeks, bobbing up and down to improve the blood flow. Didn’t work.

The only excitement had been hanging a leak into a funnel, and a suspicious old lady knocking on my window. I’d seen her coming and had quickly rubbed my eyes till they were red and smeared with mascara, wound down the window and sobbed.

‘I’m not going back in there until he comes out and apologises. How could he do it with that
slut?
He’s such a bastard, but I really love him…’

She left me alone after that. Apart from the funnel business us female PIs really have it over the blokes, who often get mistaken for perverts or picked up on suspicion of kerb crawling. Even if someone suspects they’re being watched by an agent they never pick the chick.

I glanced at my watch. Jesus. Five more hours until Dave took over the graveyard shift. For a supposed crack whore Tamara was pretty dull. Tony and I had formulated a vague plan that I would ‘coincidentally’ run into Tamara when she went out somewhere, befriend her, then try to score drugs. Course that wasn’t going to happen if she insisted on staying home to watch ‘The Bill’.

Movement at the flats caught my eye. An old lady wrapped in a dressing gown left the ground level apartment directly under Tamara’s, climbed the stairwell, shuffled along the first floor balcony and knocked on her door. I sat up straight. ’Ello ’ello ’ello. There was no answer and the woman started banging and yelling. Neighbours emerged and clustered around Tamara’s flat.

I slipped out of the Futura and sauntered down the street toward the building, smelling fried onions in the chill night air.

I sat on a low brick wall in front of the units, hidden by a bank of letterboxes, and listened in.

‘No one’s answering.’

‘My flat’s being flooded!’

‘Call the agent. I’ve got the emergency number somewhere.’

My stomach fluttered as I conjured up possible scenarios.

Tamara had left a tap on, slipped out and I hadn’t noticed? Impossible. Even when I was peeing into the funnel I’d kept my eyes on the flat, and earlier reconnaissance had shown there was no back door. Maybe she really was a junkie and had nodded off while running a bath. But wouldn’t all the banging snap her out of it? Not if she’d overdosed.