The Brush-Off (33 page)

I hid in the first place I found, a louvre-fronted closet beside the entrance to the living room. I took it for a coat closet but found it held brooms and mops and a vacuum cleaner. Shouldering my way between the broom handles, I swung the slatted door shut behind me just as a key snicked into the front-door lock.

A feather duster tickled the back of my neck. The handle of a broom toppled to rest against my cheek. The metal nozzle of the vacuum cleaner was jammed up my posterior crotch. Standing to rigid attention in claustrophobic darkness, I held my breath and awaited the humiliation of discovery.

‘Did you bring it?' Fiona Lambert opened her front door and stepped through.

Two silhouettes passed before the downward sloping slats of the louvred panel. Just as they did so, I realised that the closet door had not swung completely shut behind me. A chink perhaps a centimetre wide remained open. From where I was standing, it looked as vast as the Grand Canyon.

‘You have the delivery docket?' said a male voice, a deep rumble.

My senses were so acute that I could feel the hair standing up on the nape of my neck, taste the dust molecules in the air, smell the residues of floor wax clinging to the broom bristles. A spider in the dark behind me exuded the glutinous thread of its web. Heat radiated from my body. Sweat gushed from every pore, cascading down my skin and dripping into my eyes. My heart belted against my ribs like the bass riff from a Maxine Nightingale disco hit. The saliva had dried in my mouth and, when I tried to swallow it, crackled like a sheet of cellophane being rolled into a ball. I felt as if I was about to burst into flames.

Two shapes went past, into the living room. Through the gap, I could see the shoulder of a white business shirt. The man wearing it had something tucked up under his armpit, blocked by his torso. He half-turned and I could see the back of his near-bald skull. He was examining a sheet of light green paper. Satisfied with what he read, the man folded the page and put it in his pants pocket.

‘Show it to me,' said Fiona impatiently, just beyond my vision.

A sliver of dining table was within my narrow line of sight. The man took the thing from under his arm and put it on the table. It was a shoebox in the distinctive hot pink and silver colours of the Karlcraft chain. He took the lid off and removed banded wads of banknotes. He built them into two piles, each about fifteen centimetres high. The money was pale, the colour of hundred dollar bills. Even from inside a broom cupboard on the other side of the room, it looked like a great deal of money.

‘One hundred thousand dollars,' said the jowly voice of Max Karlin. ‘Cash.'

‘
One
hundred thousand?' Lambert was outraged. ‘That wasn't the deal. Where's the rest of my money?'

Holding my breath, I leaned forward until my eye was almost pressed to the crack in the door. My field of vision widened to include a good part of the living room. Fiona Lambert stood staring down at the money on the table, her expression caught between elation and petulance.

Karlin ignored her outburst. ‘Aren't you going to offer me a drink?'

‘You think you can short-change me, is that it?' snarled Lambert. ‘Our deal was for twice this amount.'

Karlin put his hands in his pocket and moved out of view. ‘It's all I can afford.' His attitude was take-it-or-leave-it. ‘If I really wanted to cheat you, Fiona dear, I wouldn't be here at all. Be reasonable. It's still a great deal of money.'

‘Our agreement was for one third of the purchase price of
Our Home
,' complained Lambert bitterly, her eyes never leaving the money. ‘By my arithmetic, that's two hundred thousand dollars.' Karlin had gone in the direction of the couch. Lambert turned to face him. ‘You think it was easy convincing Eastlake to pay more than double the market value?'

Karlin chuckled indulgently. ‘Oh, I don't doubt you were very persuasive, my dear.'

His crossed ankles came into view. I could picture him on the couch, leaning back, his legs extended in front of him. ‘It's just that circumstances have changed since we made our little agreement. A year ago, cash was easier to lay my hands on. I was slinging fifty thousand a month in backhanders to the building contractors alone. But things have changed. The money has dried up. My bankers are counting every penny. The other investors are watching me like a hawk.'

Fiona Lambert swung around to face him, bare arms akimbo. ‘Sell another one of your pictures.' She was spitting chips. ‘Sell two, sell anything. Pay me what you owe me.'

‘Even if I thought I owed you anything, I've nothing left to sell.' Karlin indulged her, but he was unsympathetic. ‘
Our
Home
was the last really valuable picture I still owned outright. The rest were sold long ago. I've been leasing them back, keeping up appearances.' Compared to him, he was saying, she had nothing to complain about.

‘Liar!' She actually stamped her foot.

Karlin snorted with amusement. ‘Take the money, Fiona.' His tone was fatherly, unprovokable. He'd seen all this before. ‘Be happy you got anything at all. I'm walking away with nothing. Time was, I was a shoe salesman who liked to collect pictures. Then I decided to be a big-shot property developer. I sold my shops, hocked my pictures, bet everything on one big project. Now, after fifty years of hard work, all I've got are banks and investors and unions and construction contractors gnawing at my flesh. Jesus, I've even got an art gallery director blackmailing me.' He emitted a dry humourless guffaw, as if this was the ultimate indignity.

‘You're breaking my heart.' Little Miss Lambert didn't sound so well brought up now.

‘Be grateful you're getting anything, Fiona. I'm only here because of my sentimental attachment to
Our Home
. Because I'd rather see it go to a public art museum than be sold off in a fire sale. And because I'm a man who keeps his word. I used to be, at least.'

‘I don't care where you get it,' insisted Fiona sullenly. ‘I want my money.'

‘Or what? You'll sue me? I can picture the scene in court. I can hear your lawyer explaining how you extorted money out of me.' Karlin came back up onto his feet and gave a sarcastic demonstration. He drew himself up to his full diminutive height and waggled his chubby finger, imitating a lawyer pleading a case. ‘ “They had a watertight deal, Your Honour. She, expert on the works of Victor Szabo, proposed that she would refrain from deliberately raising suggestions that the painting known as
Our Home
was of dubious authorship. He, in return, agreed to sell the work to her gallery and to pay her a secret commission on the deal. Further, Your Honour, she proposed that if he did not comply with her demands she would cast public doubt on the integrity, and therefore the market value, of other art works in his collection. A perfectly normal commercial transaction, Your Honour.” ' His address to court complete, Karlin wheeled on his feet and headed towards the kitchen door. ‘Yes, Fiona, I can just imagine that.'

Lambert was silent, scowling, one foot tapping. Her gaze followed Karlin and flashed across my hiding place like a spotlight playing on a prison wall. I cowered back into the darkness and slowly emptied the exhausted oxygen from my lungs.

Plumbing whined in the wall behind me and water hit a metal sink. Karlin was in the kitchen, running a tap, getting his own drink. Under cover of the noise, I gulped down air and eased the tension in my muscles. My skin was tacky with sweat and my pulse still raced, but the terror of discovery was abating, replaced by a sense of exultation. My instinct in coming here had been vindicated.

This Fiona Lambert was some piece of work. Selling an entirely forged collection of art. Forcing Karlin to sell
Our
Home
and blackmailing him into paying her a secret commission on the deal. Inveigling Eastlake into raising the money.

I ran the desiccated rhinoceros of my tongue around the Kalahari of my mouth, cocked my ear for the next amazing revelation and put my eye once more to the crack. So what if I was discovered? Compared with Fiona Lambert's outrageous felonies, cupboard-skulking was a mere social misdemeanour.

Lambert was sitting at the table, staring at the money. Avarice and triumph lit her face. Karlin's voice came from the kitchen. ‘Stop squawking and be grateful you got anything. Frankly, my other creditors won't be anywhere near as lucky. The financial empire of Max Karlin is about to collapse into a pile of rubble and I'm not sticking around to see it happen. I'm on my way to the airport. I'm leaving the country. At five this afternoon, bankruptcy papers will be filed for my private holding company. At nine o'clock tomorrow morning, I'll be in Europe. A liquidator will be sitting at my desk. And the dogs will be fighting over Karlcraft's carcass.'

Fiona Lambert couldn't give a damn about Karlin's misfortunes. Breaking the band on one of the wads of cash, she licked her thumb and started counting. Her lips moved silently like a devotee telling her rosary beads. Karlin came out of the kitchen and when he spoke the sound was so close it startled me. ‘Don't bank it all at once. Large cash deposits get reported. And don't start spending it either, not unless you want Lloyd suspecting something.'

‘You think I'm stupid?' said Fiona rancorously. ‘You think I don't know that?' He'd made her lose count and she had to start again. ‘And leave Lloyd to me. I know how to handle Lloyd Eastlake.'

Karlin was standing immediately in front of my hiding place, blocking my view. ‘Tch tch. Greedy girl, tch tch.' His shape moved towards the front door. ‘Goodbye, Fiona.'

Lambert got up from the table. I leaned backwards and held my breath. The front door opened. ‘Bon voyage, Max.' Fiona was caustic to the last. ‘And thanks for nothing.' Karlin's footsteps rapidly receded down the stairs. The door was pulled shut and Fiona spoke under her breath. ‘You miserable little Shylock.'

Charming.

My big moment, I decided, had arrived. Throw open the cupboard door, jump out and spring Ms Director of the Centre for Modern Art with her hands sunk elbow-deep in ill-gotten loot. Bang her up, dead to rights, with the evidence of her sins piled on the Baltic pine dining table of her over-geared pied-à-terre.

Lambert's silhouette passed the louvred door. I pressed my eye to the crack, waiting for exactly the right moment to make my move.

Her mood had improved remarkably. She kicked off her shoes, sashayed her hips, pumped her arms at her side and sidled across the living room. ‘Let me look at you,' she cooed throatily. ‘You beautiful, beautiful money.'

She picked up one of the packets of bills and fanned it with her thumb. She kissed it. She slowly ran it over her bare arms, luxuriating in its feel. She squirmed sinuous. ‘Money, money, money,' she sang. The tune from
Cabaret
.

Tearing the band off with her teeth, she smeared a fistful of bills across her neck and torso. The loose notes cascaded past her swaying hips and settled on the floor around her feet. She reached for another wad and danced a slow silent rhumba with it, pressing the cash to her belly with one hand and describing a slow circle in the air above her head with the other. She was in a trance.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Turned on by a wad of cash. It was a mesmerising sight. And sexy as all hell. She slid the wad of bills slowly down her body, moaning a low guttural tune in the back of her throat. She moved out of sight. Glassware clinked. She segued back into sight, drink in one hand, money in the other. I'd seen enough. Time to spring.

Bang. Bang. A sharp metallic rapping came from the flat door. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I cringed backwards and my line of sight narrowed.

Startled out of her reverie, Fiona dropped her bundle. She went down on her knees, scrabbling for the bills strewn about the floor. Rap, rap, came the knock at the door. ‘Just a moment,' she called, scooping up an armful of loose money, dumping it on the table and going down for more. ‘Who is it?'

‘Me.' A male. Not Karlin.

‘Coming.' She disappeared from my sight briefly, then darted back with a piece of cloth, some sort of throw-sheet off the couch. It billowed above the table and fell loosely over the money. She composed herself, smoothing down her clothes and hair. She came towards me, scooping up her shoes on the way. When she reached my hiding place, she paused to slip on her shoes. She leaned against the louvred door. It clicked shut.

My heart shot backwards in my chest, hit my spine and bounced off. My legs requested a transfer to other duties. I braced myself for exposure. Fiona, oblivious to the pulsating tom-tom of my heartbeat, stepped to the front door and opened it. All I could see was a section of carpet, visible through the downward-raked slats of the closet's louvred door.

‘Hi.' Fiona was purring, butter not melting in her mouth. ‘What brings you here?' Like this was the nicest surprise she'd had all day.

‘Just a chance visit.' The voice sounded familiar. When I heard it again, I had no trouble putting a face to it. ‘I called in across the road to see if the picture had arrived safe and sound. Janelle said you'd come home for lunch, so I thought I'd join you.' It was Lloyd Eastlake.

Things were getting more interesting by the moment. I hung on Lambert's response. She said nothing.