The Unexpected Salami: A Novel (7 page)

“That’d be good.” He headed for my panel van. I felt bigger than him, but Stuart was about two inches taller than me, six one or six two (Australia turned metric when I was a kid, but I still think of height in feet.) He was skittish as hell, eyes darting around for whomever he owed money to. His fear was fine by us; it would make our pitch that much easier. We bought some flake, scallops, and potato cakes, and drove the few blocks to Port Melbourne pier.
The wind whipped our skin. There wasn’t anyone around. Phillip said bullshit like “We’re worried for you, mate.” Phillip, in his own way, felt awful. You could see it in his mouth, which never wavered from a straight line.

Cormac couldn’t be saved, I rationalized to myself, but I could ship Stuart away from Melissa, away from the streets where he’d spent his childhood in poverty.

Stuart still looked jittery, but he wasn’t saying anything like “Why don’t you two go fuck yourselves?” I gave him an envelope with the fake ID, which had Stuart’s new name, Ian MacKenzie, and the passport we’d gotten through a Vietnamese bakery. Peter had heard the bakery could get you anything for the right price, which in our case was $300.

Stuart looked over the documents and didn’t say a word. Then Phillip took out $500 and said we’d give him another $1500 to get him off to an okay start. We told him what we wanted out of his death, how he would have to play dead for Phillip’s ambulance mates. He kept my gaze. I imagined him thinking that I was the true prick in the end—the wrong one to have trusted those past few years. But he had money in an arm’s reach. He was a dog who’d do anything for a chunk of stew. “All right,” he said finally.

The last thing I said before we went back to the flat was “Don’t say a word to Rachel.” Stuart had the money in his hands and stared at me. I saw that he was going to do it, for the $1500 more than anything else, and that he hated us for it, too.

The Victorian Ambulance Corp
staff we clued in were Robert and William, twin emergency techies. They were identical
down to their bushy gray moustaches. “The only way anyone can tell them apart is by personality,” Phillip had said. “William’s the big talker, and Robert nods at everything he says. William told me in seven ways over ten pints of VB that he loved the mateship of the plan.”

The twin techies loved Phillip. He was the Elvis of the Corps, amusing them for hours on end about the girls he fucked behind Kerri’s back. What a beaut idea—help a small-label band get off the ground! William and Robert were going to say Stuart was wounded, not dead, but critically ill. Stuart would have to be whisked away towards the hospital, but they would say he died en route, and subsequently direct the corpse to the Victoria Forensic Science Centre in Macleod. William had a brother-in-law who was a big-shot over at the Forensic Centre. He scheduled himself to be senior staff on duty so when the body was brought in by the twins from the criminal investigation site for analysis he was going to “ask for the case.” He told us to schedule the video shoot for Sunday, when he could see the body alone. William’s brother-in-law would say it was clearly what it appeared to be—gunshot wounds to the cheek and chest—and arrange for a prompt burial. No one would ever be suspicious enough to take another look at the body. In a midnight brainstorm session in Phillip’s Ambulance Corp video suite, more suggestions dovetailed from the existing plan. The twins’ younger brother, Tim, a failed actor, had a blue Nissan we would paint white. Tim would play the role of mobster.

“It’ll be the biggest role I’ve had yet,” Tim had laughed. “I’m not exactly flat out with work.” Five men besides Phillip and myself were in on my demented, Peggy Lee–inspired plot. Would
they keep their mouths shut? But these were five Australian men.
Members of the we-have-a-dick-and-we-stick-together club
, Rachel might have said. After five beers, the idea seemed possible, even exhilarating. Magic. And it worked. William’s brother-in-law announced publicly that he’d arranged for a simple burial when no relatives came forward.

Melissa wasn’t even at the funeral. She came over to the house with another junkie who she was obviously bonking, a week after Stuart’s death. They wanted his things. How fucking transparent that she and her smelly friend were planning to score off Stuart’s effects.

“He sold anything of value months ago, thanks to your lot,” Phillip said. He was a beautiful liar. “We gave the clothes to the Salvation Army.”

“You had no right, he was my boyfriend!” Melissa yelled right near my eardrum.

“Give her some money for his things, you cunts,” her new boyfriend said.

“You can have his sideboard,” I said, and that shut them up.

There were holes we’d left open in our enthusiasm—like which cemetery? But no one realized it was an elaborate scam. I didn’t have journos around shoving recorders in my face. It wasn’t a pressing whodunit. The general consensus was that the Mafia made good on their promise to settle the score with anyone who didn’t pay them back a loan. It fucking worked! Only much later did I feel like Raskolnikov.

After we honored the
bastard Bendigo Institute of Technology gig, our new manager Angus decided that now that we
were his boys we wouldn’t be playing any more country-town shows. He wanted us to save up the gigs, not spread ourselves thin playing every bullshit venue in the sticks and outer suburb big-hair pub in Melbourne. “From now on,” Angus said, “the Poppies will play snob gigs every three months. With the amount of publicity you’ve had, you have to watch out for overexposure. You’ll play Lounge or Prince of Wales in Melbourne, or the Phoenician Club in Sydney. Fuck Brisbane and Adelaide, no one lives there.”

Phillip thought Angus didn’t have a clue. “How long could the fame from ‘Gnome’ last?’ Phillip wanted to milk all the money he could from the song and set up a recording studio like Greg Ham, the sax player from Men At Work, did. I tried to point out to him that Men At Work had
the number one album in America
for a fucking year, but as far as Phillip was concerned, Men At Work were one-hit wonders. Flash-in-the-pan definition differences aside, he was willing to accept asterisk fate, if he got enough dollars from it. There was a three-piece suit underneath those green seventies polyester shirts and tapered black jeans he’d bought in the secondhand shops on Greville Street. If Phillip was a Beatle he’d be Paul fucking McCartney.

During the band direction meeting, Phillip kept bringing up that guy Joe, who owns a mod clothing store on Brunswick Street with his wife. Years ago Joe wrote “Shaddup You Face,” the novelty song of the century. It was even a surprise smash in the States: “Whatsa matter you, Gotta no respect, Whatya thinkya do, Why you looka so sad, Itsa notso bad, Itsa nicea place, Ah shaddup you face.”

“Joe’s fucking laughing,” Phillip said to me after Angus left the room. “He’s got a great house off those residuals.”

Unfuckinbelievable. Phillip knew how to piss me off saying things like that. I wasn’t a
Eurovision
or
New Faces
contestant; I was a serious rock musician and I wanted to have some impact. I was hell bent on letting our fucking manager fucking manage. We risked jail for our fame. Why did Phillip have to cut us down now? I mean the Beatles had arse luck right? No one goes around citing “Love Me Do” as poetry. They ran with their success. They matured because of the limelight. If we were ever going to be consequential musicians, this was the time to go the elite route. And things were going fine. Stuart, that canny bastard, had kept to his word. As far as everyone knew, he was dead; there wasn’t a hint of his not being dead. Even our drummer Mick-O thought that the murder had happened. And the ultimate test: bullshit-radar Rachel was fooled, though I felt rotten about that.

But Phillip came to his senses with that EMI Records contract. It took us all by surprise, even Angus. The CNN bit was wild, but it didn’t truly astonish me, that’s the kind of coverage we were going for. But EMI, fuck, that’s the label the Beatles signed to. I thought if all went to plan, we might get signed to Mushroom, the major Aussie label. This was getting bigger than a kick-in-the-arse catalyst. If I wasn’t already shitting myself, I began getting really nervous—like a bandit on the lam. Where the hell
had
Stuart gone? He had told us he was going to Buffalo. He’d promised to send a postcard from “Aunt Sally” once he got there. I was pretty sure Buffalo’s a city in Canada.

That Friday we were offered a three-album global contract with EMI Records. The extent of our deceit began to hit me full
force. I wanted someone to lampoon Phillip’s lack of business sense with me. Rachel would have had me in stitches.

I’d planned on telling her about the whole scheme a few days after the film clip (and Stuart) was shot, but her mother had gotten her panicky about the publicity and couriered her that ticket to the States. After that, the time never seemed right. Rachel wasn’t the first person I would think of when envisioning a partner, though she was a decent looker. I had always pictured a docile sweetheart who wasn’t going to care about my life compromises. Like my mum and aunties who put up with the slack men in their lives. But after that kiss in the toilet, the month before Rachel flew home to New York, I’d first likened our connection to the relationship I have with my guitar. I didn’t tell her this because she would have spat “misogynist” at me; she has no idea how much a muso can love his guitar. I played bass for the Tall Poppies, but it was my guitar I chose to spend free time with. She was moody and her room was an obstacle course, but I did seem to want to spend every minute with her. And no one else ever thought I could do more with my life. For some mysterious reason, Rachel thought I could.

I had it pretty good for Australia. Not many people go to uni, I read something like five percent. Rachel had once claimed that in the States, anyone with money gets a spot. In Oz, it’s a privilege. I had a degree, the first in my family—not from Melbourne Uni or Monash, but Swinburne wasn’t anything to sneeze at. And graphics wasn’t rocket science, but it was a full three-year course. I was going okay with the graphics; a few years out I was the art director of a small card company. Then came the big switch to computer
graphics, and it was out-with-the-old time. I could have retrained; the company wasn’t so hard-boiled that they’d leave us out in the cold. They offered to pay half of the training course. But I wasn’t interested. Graphics was always tactile for me. I liked selecting the colored Textas and positioning the paper on the waxer, the way I like feeling the strings on my guitar. Most of the others in the firm adapted and learned Quark and Pagemaker, but I got an easy job running a printing and architectural blueprint shop. It was a rut I didn’t know how to get out of. No one ever seemed to question what I was made of. Except Rachel.

I wrote Rachel about the new recording contract, but I never heard back from her. I had planned to ring her with the full story, but I was afraid there was an outside chance that the police might tap the line. They were centering their investigation on pinning down the mob connection.

Mum was calling a lot to see how I was. Aunty Grace got it in her head that I might be caught up with heroin, too.

Mum and Aunty Grace
were lifelong best friends. Aunty Grace wanted me and Liam, who was a month older than me, to share the same type of relationship as she had with my mother. I was sad to leave my St. Kilda schoolmates behind—terrified was more like it—but much to everyone’s delight, Liam and I became super close. There was a reason Aunty Grace wanted us to become best friends, Liam confided. He had been caught sticking an exploratory finger up the “private place” of Tina, his last best friend, a classmate who lived in the neighboring town of Carrum Down. Tina’s thumb was missing. She’d told Liam that she might have
been born that way because of a “nuclear stream.” She and three other Carrum Down kids talked to a judge in a big powdered wig about their missing body parts.

Angus and I eventually convinced Phillip to shut up about more suburban gigs. We played to a full house at Lounge in Melbourne, and this gorgeous redhead named Hannah started talking to me afterward. A potter (“a ceramist,” she corrected me)—before the murder we’d get okay-looking banktellers, or a travel agent at best. Hannah had a brain, and shit she was beautiful. And since Rachel was not writing back, after four letters!, I figured she’d shacked up with a New York surgeon or someone of that breeding. Hannah suggested that we go to the Valhalla to see a new print of
Pandora’s Box
, a classic silent movie. Jen, a friend of hers, had been commissioned to do a live violin accompaniment that weekend. I was impressed as hell. I didn’t have friends who played the violin.

Hannah and I started going out. Phillip and I didn’t talk much about the plan that had served us so well. It was creepy the way the bad points disappeared.

The next morning, for
the briefest moment, I considered tracking down Will. He’d always kept a clear head, even when I’d pulled the plug on us from a distant land. I hadn’t spoken to Will since that dreaded phone call from Melbourne. Calling him now to steer me through the reverberations of my original wormy sin would be more than vulgar.

My parents were planning a thirtieth-anniversary trip. They’d talked about it since I got back; they’d never been to Europe together. “Not with you two in college, we never had the money for a proper trip to Paris.” They didn’t need this mess. Sylvia and Joseph Ganelli were hip enough for sixty-somethings, in an updated sitcom way. They recycled. They sporadically used terms like
cyberspace
or
alternative rock
. But aiding a heroin addict?

And I did not want to get my girlfriends mixed up in Stuart’s salvation. Then I’d have to spill the story, and I couldn’t chance that. Frieda knew a Brooklyn-based Aussie filmmaker, and Veemah the Jetsetter—oh boy. Veemah was the warlord of us gossips. We’d spent many an entertaining afternoon together tearing some bitch to shreds. Loose lips sink ships. I imagined a knock on the door from Interpol.