The Tax Inspector (9 page)

15

The Blue Moon Brasserie was loud, full of clatter and shouting. Glasses broke, were swept up. The air was rich with olive oil and garlic. The Tax Inspector threaded her way through the chrome-legged chairs towards her table. She was wearing a red deco blouse and a black skirt with a red bandanna which sat above her bulging stomach. She wore a peasant print scarf around her head and silver bracelets and a necklace. In the privacy of her bedroom mirror, she had thought all of this looked fine, but now she saw how she was stared at, she felt she had made an error of judgement – she was a blimp with bangles.

The grey-aproned waiter was eighteen years old and had nicked himself shaving. He was new that day and had no idea that this pregnant woman’s emotional life was deeply enmeshed with the place he worked at. He sat her in the corner, next to the table where she had told Alistair that she was having a baby. All around her there were couples, lovers, husbands, wives. They touched each other’s sleeves, arms, hands, and were pleased with each other’s company. It was a perfectly ordinary table – square, varnished, wooden, as devoid of obvious history as a hotel bed. Then it had seen the death of an affair. Now it celebrated a birthday. Maria craned her neck towards the blackboard menu but she was really watching that table – a man with a thick neck and pouched, melancholy eyes took a small gold-wrapped box from his wife – whose face Maria could not see – and passed it to his daughter. The daugher was sixteen or so, very pretty with long dark hair.

‘Happy birthday, angel,’ her father said. He gave her a kiss and a crumpled rag of a smile. He rubbed at the table surface, dragging bread crumbs into his cupped hand.

‘I’ve been flirting with stockbrokers,’ said Gia Katalanis, sitting down opposite Maria.

Gia was crisp and yellow in a linen suit. She dumped her files and briefcase on the floor and papers from the files spilled out towards the wall. She looked down at the papers, wrinkled her nose and shrugged.

‘I’ve been flirting with stockbrokers,’ she said again, leaning forward and taking Maria’s hands. She was small and blonde with a dusting of golden hairs along her slim, tanned arms. She smelt of shampoo and red wine. She had straight hair she always cut in a neat fringe. She had fine features, a fine chin which clearly suggested both frailty and determination. ‘Well they
think
they are stockbrokers,’ she said, ‘but they are used car dealers in their secret hearts. One of them is from Hale & Hennesey. We hit them for three-forty thou in back taxes, plus the fines, and I think he fell in love with me.’ She laughed. ‘Ask me is he cute.’

‘Is he cute?’

‘He’s cute.’

A champagne cork popped at the next table and they both turned to watch the champagne being poured into the sixteen-year-old’s birthday glass, then laughed at their own Pavlovian response to the cork pop.

‘These days,’ Maria said, ‘when they drink champagne in movies, I always look at the label.’

‘Me too,’ Gia said. ‘Exactly.’ She lit a St Moritz and put lipstick on its gold filter tip. ‘Heidsieck,’ she said. ‘Krug, Taittinger, Bollinger, Moët, Piper-Heidsieck …’

‘Pol Roger …’

‘Veuve Clicquot.’

‘I used to think anything with bubbles was champagne,’ Maria said. ‘When I told my mother I had drunk champagne she said, “Po po anaxyi yineka” – no one will want to marry you now.’

‘Your mother always said that.’

‘She was right, poor Mama. This would kill her if she wasn’t dead, really. Even my father. I visit him at night and I always ring first and say, “Papa I’m going to come over.” I don’t want to shame him with someone …’

‘But, Maria, come on – the street knows …’

‘The street knows? Don’t be nice to me.’

‘O.K., all Newtown.’

‘Newtown? Mrs
Hellos
knows. She was in Balmain inspecting real estate. I always felt safe in Balmain …’

‘Oh God, Mrs Hellos. I saw her in D.J.’s with that buck-toothed nephew.’

‘Tassos.’

‘Tassos, that’s right. She said, poor Mr Takis, such a good man – first his wife, now his daughter. I said, but Mrs Hellos, Maria is not dead. No, said Mrs Hellos – so melodramatic, you know – no! So I said – Mrs Hellos, are you saying it is better that Maria is dead? I’m not saying nothing, said Mrs Hellos, I’m just thinking about Mr Takis and his kidneys.’

‘Oh God, Mrs Hellos. Oh shit,’ Maria said laughing. ‘Dear Gia, you always make me laugh. The birth class was so miserable without you.’

Gia took Maria’s hand. ‘Did they show one of those horror tapes again?’ Maria’s skin was so moist and supple and her fingers so long that it made her own hands seem dry and neurotic.

‘Uh-huh.’ There was a veiled, weary look around her eyes.

‘Are you mad at me?’

‘Of course not. Really. Not even a tiny bit.’

‘Oh Maria, I’m sorry. Did you have a shitty day as well?’

‘Well, I wasn’t flirting with stockbrokers.’

‘But I thought they finally sent you out to catch some rats?’

‘They sent me to Franklin. Can you believe that?’

‘Franklin
. My God. Who’s in Franklin?’

‘No one’s in Franklin. It was some shitty little G.M. dealer.’

‘Maria, you’ve got to just tell them “no”.’

‘That’s what they want. They’re going to keep giving me these insulting little audits until I blow up. I’m like the emperor’s wife. They have to kill me too.’

‘The emperor’s ex-wife.’

‘I cooked dinners for the creeps when Alistair was director. They came to my house and drank
my
Heemskerk Cabernet. They were meant to be my friends. Billy Huxtable, Sally Ho. It was Sally who sent me to Franklin. I said, “What if I go into labour in Franklin?” She said, “There are very good medical facilities.” What a bitch! Plus, the clients – really – they were mice! They looked like they were Social Welfare clients, not ours. They were trying to commit her – this is an old woman, eighty-six – to a mental home when I arrived. Her children were trying to lock her up, and she seemed more sane than they did. If I hadn’t arrived she’d be locked up right now.’

‘Good for you, Maria.’

‘Well, maybe – I’m investigating her, and I’m sitting here, talking about champagne, surrounded by people drinking vintage Bollinger.’

‘Well, let’s go somewhere else. I don’t like all this either.’

Maria chose not to hear that. ‘It makes me feel sleazy,’ she said.

‘What? The clients or the restaurant?’

‘Both, together. The juxtaposition.’

‘Maria, you’re not sleazy. You’re the least sleazy person I know.’

‘I’m going to pull this investigation. I can stop it.’

‘You can’t stop it, and you’re being really dumb. Listen, my dear, you are the least sleazy person I know. You never spend more than twenty bucks here. You’ve got a village mentality. Remember when you told me Alex was wealthy … He had a new 1976 Holden and went to Surfers Paradise for his holidays. You know what you said to me … You said, “Typical Athens Greek.” And you wouldn’t go out with him.’

‘I was a little prig,’ Maria said. ‘All I’m thinking is how I can cancel the investigation.’

‘So you’re going to break into the computer, right?’ When she was anxious Gia had a tendency to shout.

‘Shush,’ said Maria. ‘I think that is what I am going to do. Yes.’

‘You don’t know how to.’

‘Shush, please, but yes I do. I’m not going to be made into a bully.’

Gia picked up Maria’s bread roll and began to tear it up. ‘O.K. Maria … O.K… . If you’re really upset by crooks drinking vintage Bollinger, we’ll just go somewhere else.’

Maria saw the stoop-shouldered man at the next table flinch as he heard himself labelled a crook. He looked up sharply.

Maria said, ‘All the poor guy is doing is giving his daughter a birthday party.’

Gia leaned across the table and spoke in her idea of a whisper. ‘That “poor guy” is Wally Fischer.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh. That’s right. Oh. We’re going to get him. He’s an inch away from jail. He can get away with dealing smack and organizing murder but he’s not going to get away with tax. He didn’t hear me.’

‘I thought he was an accountant being sweet to his wife and daughter,’ Maria whispered. ‘He heard us. He knows we’re talking about him now.’

‘This restaurant makes me sick,’ Gia said. ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’

‘No,’ Maria said. ‘I like it here.’

Gia started giggling.

‘I do,’ Maria said.

‘I know you do.’

‘When the baby’s born I won’t be able to afford to come here, but it’s very cheap for the sort of place it is.’

‘I know,’ Gia said. ‘You can
get focaccias
for $7.50 and wine for $3 a glass and once you sat next to Joan Collins, right over there.’

‘Right,’ Maria said. ‘And you always give me the best scandal here.’

‘I’m less interesting elsewhere?’

‘There are artists and celebrities here. The atmosphere is good,’ Maria said. ‘It promotes gossip. It’s the only corner of my life where gossip is acceptable. It stops me being a total prig.’ She seemed to have abandoned her thoughts about breaking into her client’s tax file. ‘Also, I have a history here. Alistair and I used to sit there, it was our table.’

‘Don’t do this to yourself.’

‘He’s a part of me,’ Maria said. ‘Don’t make me pretend he isn’t.’

‘Maria, he’s a creep – he dumped you.’

‘He didn’t dump me. I dumped me. What did he do?’

‘Even now, you can’t see who he is.’

‘I know who he is,’ Maria said quietly. ‘Please. Gia, allow me to know him a little better than you.’

‘O.K.,’ said Gia, grinning like a cat. ‘So allow me to tell you where Paulo wants to kiss me.’

She was gifted with perfect recall. She recited a whole phone conversation with her ‘love interest’. He wanted to kiss her armpit. He had said to her, ‘Guess where I want to kiss you?’ She had guessed everywhere but arm pit. She had shocked him with her guesses. This sort of talk was making Maria look alive and happy again. The headscarf showed off her beautiful face, her dark olive skin and white, perfect teeth. She could have any man she liked, even now, this pregnant.

Gia spoke very quietly, so quietly no one could have heard them, but they laughed so much they could hardly see. Through her tear-streamed vision Maria saw Wally Fischer speaking to Tom, one of the owners of the Brasserie.

Tom was a small, solemn man of thirty who had made himself look forty with a belly and a pair of round, wire-framed glasses. He leaned across the table and put a hand on the back of their chairs.

‘Gia, Maria, I’m sorry … would you mind, you know, a little
cleaner.’

‘All we’re doing is laughing,’ Gia said. ‘It’s not as if we’re murdering anyone.’

The words fell into the silence like stones into an aquarium. Maria could see Gia’s eyes widening as she heard what she had said. She looked at Maria and made a grimace, and up to Tom and shrugged, and across to Wally Fischer who had heard this very clearly – his thick neck was beginning to puff up and turn a deep plum colour.

Gia was pale. She sat with her palms flat on the table. She looked helplessly in Wally Fischer’s direction and smiled.

‘Hey,’ she said. Her voice was so loud and scratchy, Maria knew she was very frightened. ‘I’m sorry, really.’

Wally Fischer moved his chair back and stood up. You could feel his physical strength. He had bright, shining, freshly shaven cheeks and you could smell his talcum.

‘One,’ he said to Maria, ‘I don’t like my daughter having to listen to smut.’ He turned to Gia: ‘Number two: I like even less for her to hear people say untrue and insulting things about her father.’

‘All I …’ Gia began.

‘Sssh,’ said Wally Fischer. He was no longer plum-coloured. He was quite pale except for the red in his thick lips. ‘You’ve done enough hurt for one night.’ He blinked his heavy-lidded eyes once, and turned to take his daugher by the arm.

‘Sheet,’ said Gia as they walked out of the door. She leaned across to the abandoned table and retrieved the Bollinger from the bucket.

‘Gia, don’t.’ Maria looked down, ashamed.

Gia was pale and nervous, but she was already holding her trophy high and pouring Wally Fischer’s Bollinger into her empty water glass. ‘Have some. Don’t be such a goody-goody.’ Maria looked up to see Wally Fischer looking in the window from the street. He made a pistol with his finger and pointed it at Gia. Gia did not see him but she looked pale and sick anyway, and there seemed no point in making her more distressed. ‘Have some,’ she said to Maria.

Maria took the champagne, not to drink, as an act of solidarity. It frothed up and spilled on to the wooden table. Gia drank without waiting for the froth to settle. Her hand shook.

‘You all right?’ Maria asked.

‘Yeah, I’m O.K. But I don’t want to come here any more.’

Maria took her hand. Gia shut it into a fist, self-conscious about her bitten nails.

‘We don’t have to come here,’ said Maria.

‘It stinks,’ Gia said. ‘I can smell the dirty money at the door.’ Gia pushed away the champagne. ‘I don’t even like the taste of this.’

‘It isn’t the restaurant that’s the problem. It’s us.’

‘For instance?’

‘We keep doing things we don’t believe in. I didn’t join the department to be an anal authoritarian. I’m not going to bankrupt these poor people out at Franklin.’ Maria soaked up the spilled champagne with a paper napkin. ‘I’m going to pull their file,’ she said.

‘Maria, what’s happened to you?’

‘Nothing’s happened.’

‘You’ve had a character transplant.’ Gia took back the champagne and drank it.

Maria smiled. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘A complete character transplant.’

‘Goody two-shoes?’ Maria asked, her eyebrows arched.

‘That was a long time ago I said that …’

‘Fourteen years …’

‘I was angry with you. You made me feel bad about cheating on my car mileage. But there are people in the department who would drop dead if they thought you were going to pull a file.’

‘And you?’

‘I think it’s very therapeutic, Maria. I think it’s exactly what you should do.’ Gia reached over and emptied the last of Wally Fischer’s champagne into her glass. ‘You know the computer codes? That’s the important thing. You’ll need old Maxy’s access code.’