Sucked In (28 page)

‘It's round here somewhere.' He said, elbowing me aside and prematurely ejaculating my toast. ‘Her name was Anthea Lean or something like that. From your Greek class, she said. Wanted you to ring her. I wrote down the number.'

He simultaneously fed bread into the toaster, stuffed his homework into his backpack, did up his shoelaces and gestured vaguely towards the midden of scrawled notes surrounding the telephone.

He'd been out the door for ten minutes before I managed to find and decode his hieroglyphics. The deplorable penmanship of the younger generation was a matter that had long concerned me in a general sense. Now it had come home to roost. Was that a three or a five? A nine or a seven? Dammit, I'd try all of them if necessary.

But seven-fifteen in the morning was a tad too early to call on a matter like this, however impatient I was. So, hoping for the best, I dusted off my Hugo Boss dress-to-impress suit, drove to Parliament House and bided my time until nine-twenty.

A chirpy young voice answered. ‘You've called the Lanes, Nicole and Andrea. Please leave a message and we'll return your call when we can.' There followed an encouraging tinkle of classical piano music. Mozart, or one of those guys.

‘Er, this is Murray Whelan, returning your call, Andrea,' I said. ‘Sorry I missed you. Um, please call me back on my mobile. The number's on the card.' To be on the safe side, I recited the numbers. My fingers were still crossed when Inky arrived.

What with speed-reading the agenda papers and chatting with Inky, I barely made it to the chamber in time for the kick-off. Not that the legislative pace was exactly cracking that morning. The condolence motion had drawn a near-full house, but that was just good form. The second reading of the brucellosis clauses of the Livestock Disease Control (Amendment) Bill had pulled only eight members. Five of theirs, three of ours.

We were the short-straw corps. Kingers of Geelong, Butcher of Dandenong and Whelan of Melbourne Upper. Personing the post was our sole role. Kingers and Butcher took the far extremities of the front bench and I sat in the middle up the back. The expression ‘thin on the ground' came to mind as I subsided into the plush.

Across the floor of the chamber, the enemy ranks joshed among themselves until the siren sounded and the President bounced the ball. The Minister for Agriculture, an old-style National with a military moustache and enviable silver hair assumed the position and began to read from a bulldog-clipped sheaf of papers.

‘Pursuant to the matters covered in section five, subsection nine…' The public gallery was deserted. Kingers was doing a crossword puzzle, his newspaper buried in a departmental file. Butcher was checking the government benches, scouting for a possible interjection. Ambitious fellow, Butcher.

The preselection vote was Saturday afternoon, less than forty-eight hours away.

Unless Barry Quinlan already knew that the police investigation into the Lake Nillahcootie remains had been shelved, he still had very good reasons for wanting the bankbook out of circulation. By early next week, however, he'd probably be better informed, and its threat value would be nil.

A personal savings account, decades old. That's all it was. A name. Some dates. Money in, money out. Like the man said, not exactly a smoking gun. Its sole significance lay in the construction that might be placed upon it at a certain time under certain circumstances. Sid Gilpin had opened and operated it with exactly that point in mind. Two decades later, he thought he'd found a different purpose for it. Now it was my turn.

Blackmail is an ugly word. Perhaps that's why it appears only twenty-seven times in the official ALP rule-book. If Senator Quinlan was doing what he promised me beside the wishing well in Canberra, it would never need to be uttered. In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to mouth it silently in his direction.

Ayisha had already let me know he was back in Melbourne, shoring up his authority. When we adjourned for lunch, I scuttled down to the Henhouse and gave him a call. As we talked, noises leaked through the thin partition wall from the staffroom next door. Staffers and MPs were tucking into cut lunches, opening take-away containers, microwaving Cup-a-Soup and nattering among themselves. Outside, the sky was overcast. The temperature had risen overnight and an almost-pleasant humidity had superseded the previous day's damp chill.

‘That thing we discussed,' I said, when Quinlan came on the line. ‘It took quite a bit of doing, but I've got it in my possession. I thought you might like it as a souvenir.'

‘That's very thoughtful of you, Murray.'

‘My pleasure,' I said. ‘You haven't forgotten your promise, I hope?'

‘I said I'd do my best and that's exactly what I'm doing. But the situation is very fluid at the moment.'

Fluid? From what I'd heard, it was forming an oil-slick under his hand-stitched size sevens.

‘So I understand,' I said. ‘You wouldn't care to hazard some numbers?'

‘Later in the day perhaps.'

‘I look forward to it,' I said. ‘You don't happen to be going to this casino shindig, I suppose.'

As well as every state parliamentarian and city councillor, the casino bosses had invited all Victorian members of federal parliament to partake of their hospitality. Barry was a big man for the gee-gees and a keen plier of the knife and fork, so it was odds-on that he'd taken up their offer.

‘Excellent suggestion,' he said. ‘We'll get our heads together over a post-prandial snifter. They'll be laying it on in spades, I daresay.'

I called Ayisha. She was out of the office, escorting Phil Sebastian to lunch with a Frank Abruzzo, a salami manufacturer with an over-inflated sense of his influence with the Italo-Australian small business wing of the Melbourne Upper component of the Coolaroo rank and file.

My mobile had been switched off while I was sitting in the chamber. I'd turned it on the moment I got out, but it still hadn't rung. I checked the message bank. Lanie had called.

‘It's about tonight,' said her recorded voice. ‘I'm not really contactable at the moment. I'll call you back, okay?'

There was a questioning tone in her voice. I'd been too late getting back to her. She wasn't sure we were still on for it. Damn, shit, bugger.

I hung up and rang Mike Kyriakis. He'd been sussing out the likely disposition of the union votes on the central panel through his wife's brother-in-law, an assistant state secretary of the Construction Workers Federation.

‘Len Whitmore's considering a last minute jump into the ring,' Mike reported.

Whitmore, National Secretary of the CWF, had long been touted as a parliamentary contender. He ponced around the country in a bomber jacket, getting his photo in the paper at every non-industrial opportunity. A blatantly obvious attempt to position himself as a common-sense, good-bloke candidate should the parliamentary seat allocators ever have the wit to utilise his talents.

‘Here's hoping,' I said. The CWF was militant. If Whitmore nominated, the moderate unions would be backed into Quinlan's corner.

We talked for a while, then I rang Helen Wright to touch base. She was out and about, so I grabbed a slice of quiche in Strangers Corridor and hit the benches for the afternoon session.

With the sick cows out of the way, our numbers had been beefed up to five for Question Time. I slung the Health Minister a curly one about the negative impact of hospital waiting times on senior citizens in the northern suburbs, then proceedings moved to final passage of the Gas Industry Privatisation (Further Amendments) Bill. Carriage was a fait accompli, but the least we could do was put our objections on the record. Con Caramalides had supplied me with a magazine of bullets, which I fired at the required moments, working from Con's crib-sheet.

Thereafter, when I wasn't contributing to the general spear-rattling and name-calling, I ducked outside to the portico, switched on my mobile and checked the messages.

And a fat lot of good it did. Still no Andrea Lane.

The session adjourned at six, giving me a comfortable thirty minutes to drop my bundle in the Henhouse, try Lanie's home number again, stick a collapsible umbrella under my arm and trudge the five despondent blocks to the Adult Education Centre.

As usual, the stairs and corridors were congested with self-improving mature-age students of Introduction to Computers and Resume Writing for Success. I got to Greek for Beginners with five minutes to spare. Lanie hadn't yet turned up. Exchanging
yasous
with my arriving classmates, I lingered in the hallway.

And lingered and lingered and lingered. By the time everybody else was seated and Agapi, our teacher, was making starting noises, Lanie still hadn't shown.

When Agapi gave me the coming-or-not, I took a seat at the back next to the children's book illustrator and we proceeded immediately to
.

Lanie arrived just as we were åôïéìïé íá âïõôçîïõìå óôï íåñï. She broadcast an apologetic look to the room in general and grabbed the only spare seat, two rows in front of me. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and carrying a sports bag. She'd just come from the gym or she was bound there immediately afterwards; either way the casino clearly didn't feature in her plans for the evening.

‘
Malaka fungula
,' I muttered silently.

The rest of the lesson passed in a self-pitying funk. I'd been stood up in favour of a Stairmaster. But then maybe the gym wasn't such a bad idea in Lanie's case. Those jeans did nothing for the woman's bum.

At seven-thirty, Agapi collected our worksheets, handed out fresh ones and closed the lesson. In the general mill of departure, Lanie made straight for me. ‘I'm really, really sorry,' she gushed. ‘You must think I'm hopeless.'

‘No, no.' I shrugged and laughed.
Aha-ha-ha
.

‘I've been on tenterhooks all week,' she said. ‘We've had the state netball finals and we didn't know if Nicole's team would be playing tonight or not. That's why I couldn't be sure on Sunday. Depended if they got through the semis, and in the end they didn't. Got knocked out last night. Still, she played well and there's a good chance she'll be selected for the national under sixteens.' She beamed proudly. ‘And I've been up to here with new students.' Her finger drew a line across her redoubtable poitrine. ‘And on top of everything else, bloody Telstra cut the phone off on Wednesday because of some mix-up with the bill. You were probably getting the no-longer-connected message when you called. How embarrassing. So, when you finally got through…' She paused abruptly. ‘You must have asked someone else by now.'

I'd been drinking her in with rapt attention. ‘No, no.' I shook my head furiously. ‘It's my fault. My son's a half-wit. Chip off the old block. He only gave me your message this morning. I'd've called earlier but I didn't have your number. I haven't, um…' I glanced at her casual outfit. ‘We could, er, go somewhere else instead, if you like.'

Not really. Not tonight, anyway. I couldn't jeopardise my chance for a discreet tête-à-tête with Barry Quinlan during the post-banquet mix-n-mingle.

‘And miss the fun and games?' said Lanie brightly. ‘No way.' She hoisted her gym bag. ‘Do you know the Duxton Hotel?'

‘Used to be the Commercial Travellers'?'

The Duxton's place in Melbourne hostelry history wasn't the point. She reached over and firmed the knot of my tie, an eighty-dollar silk Armani I'd bought myself for Christmas.

‘328 Flinders Street. Meet me in the lobby in half an hour.' She spun on her heels and took off at a rapid clip.

Her bum wasn't big at all, not really.

I re-inflated my male ego, edged through the Understanding Modern Art crowd milling at the classroom door and went down to street level. The Duxton was less than two blocks away. I sauntered towards it, rehearsing some studly moves in the shop windows and whistling under my breath.

People were coming from all directions, heading towards the river. Some carried rolled-up banners, protesters bound for the anti-casino rally. Others were evidently angling for good vantage points to watch the fireworks or do some star-spotting. Kylie and Kerry would be representing the A-list and a who's-that cast of B and C celebrities would soon be debouching from hired limos for exclusive private dinners, before the doors were flung open to the punting public.

The Duxton was one of Melbourne's first skyscrapers. A fine example of Belle Époque Moderne, its twelve storeys had spent most of the twentieth century descending into shabby gentility as a home away from home for suitcase-and-sample men. Recently, it had been refurbished for the Asian package-tour trade. I found the lobby full of heaped suitcases and gregarious gents in comfortable trousers with faces like Genghis Khan. Not the trousers, the Chinamen.

I bought a Jamesons and water at the bar, sat in a new-smelling club armchair and re-read my entrée card to the blackjack dealers' beanfeast. Ribbon cutting and banquet, Crown Towers, eight for eight-thirty. Hotel entrance.