Thrill City (3 page)

The Balaclava was my kind of place. Unpretentious, with cheap booze, and the regulars were friendly, regardless of the rough-looking tatts. Nick mustn’t have minded it either because despite his flash clothes, which got a few looks from the locals, he seemed quite at home as he sauntered off to the bar. I’d have bet money he was mentally rewriting his book though, removing his female PI from the juice bar and substituting her wheatgrass frappé for something a little more substantial.

I grabbed a seat at the window facing Carlisle Street, watching trams, traffic and pedestrians go by. Balaclava had been sprucing itself up, but still wasn’t as trendy as nearby St Kilda and Elwood. Old ladies trundled past, dodgy dudes in shiny tracksuits, mums with prams and the occasional hipster who hadn’t been able to afford the soaring real estate prices over on the leafier, prettier side of Brighton Road. The shopping strip was dotted with discount stores, delis and bagel shops, and orthodox Jews strolled by in full regalia. The suburb had character, and if I tried really hard and squinted I could almost imagine I was living in some borough of New York.

Nick returned with a pot of Coopers for himself, champagne for me, and a whiskey for both of us. What with the warm day and the cheap champagne it wasn’t long before a fuzzy, pleasant sensation washed over me, and it took a second or two to distinguish the unfamiliar feeling as contentment. Winter had been harsh, and not just because of the temperature. Summer was going to be different. Sean would be back, work would trickle in and life would be calm and cruisy for once. I clinked my glass against Nick’s and grinned.

‘Getting your money’s worth?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He slid his notebook out of his breast pocket and flipped it open. ‘I learned that female PIs drive like maniacs, swear like wharfies, urinate frequently and dress dog-ugly when they’re trailing a guy.’

‘You didn’t like my tracksuit?’

Nick just shuddered and I couldn’t really blame him. It was no sexy, low-slung velour number but a cheap grey fleece that ballooned out in the middle and came in tight around the wrists and ankles. The set had cost twenty bucks at a discount store and made me look like a pregnant rhinoceros. I’d teamed it with no makeup and my hair tucked into a cap. Not even a builder was gonna look twice. Soon as we’d got back to the office I’d ripped the vile thing off, changed into jeans and a Willie Nelson t-shirt and slapped on a little powder, mascara and lip-gloss. Not that I was trying to flirt with Nick. Sure, he was hot for an older bloke, but I had a boyfriend and I didn’t do that anymore. Although there was no guarantee it would work out with Sean and me, if it did go to hell, I wasn’t going to be the one who’d screwed it up.

I had pretty much spilled my guts in the day spent in the car. You did when you were sitting around bored and it had made the day go faster. I’d rambled on about my hippy childhood, half-finished uni degree and all the stupid jobs along the way. Deckie on a prawn trawler, waitress, checkout chick, and finally stripper when I’d had enough of bitchy supermarket customers giving me the shits. He’d asked how I got into the inquiry agent racket and I’d explained the circuitous route, how I’d always wanted to be a cop—partly rebellion, partly because a policewoman had once saved my mum from a violent boyfriend—only I’d been ridiculously, scrupulously honest about my background on the application form and they’d decided it was best not to let me join.

I’d told him about the PI course, which had seemed the next best thing, my best friend Chloe getting kidnapped and my short-lived job with an agency. A case I’d gotten involved with degenerated into an absolute shit-fight when the lawyer who’d hired me ended up trying to kill me, and I’d been fired after the media splashed my mug across the television and newspapers. The stripper angle thrilled them to bits and allowed tabloids and broadsheets alike to print pictures of poles and girls bursting out of tiny bikinis. My boobs were on the modest side, which is why they usually supplemented the articles with pictures of Chloe: a bottle-blonde with far more impressive assets. I’d been approached to tell my story more times than I could count, and could have made a lot of money, but I was enough of a joke as it was. I didn’t want to go on
A Current Affair
and lose what last shreds of professional dignity I had left.

For all my raving I hadn’t said a word to Nick about what had happened to my mother, even though I was sure he knew. Three months earlier a missing person job had turned ugly and gotten too close to home. Mum survived, just, but her partner Steve had been killed. I was still pretty fucked up about it and the last thing I wanted was sympathy or, god forbid, a hippy-style back-rub. I’d seen a counsellor for a while but she’d had such a hard time getting me to talk that she actually suggested we quit the sessions until I thought I was ready.

‘How’d you become a writer?’ I asked. Nick had more than enough background on my life. Now we’d clocked off it was my turn to interrogate him.

He grimaced and ran his fingers through his thick hair. ‘God,’ he said, ‘where do I start? Wanted to be one since I was a kid. Soon as I could pick up a pen I’d be jotting down stories about cowboys and aliens and monsters. I was sick a lot when I was little so I spent a lot of time propped up on pillows, writing from my bed. Then as a teenager I had a rather unfortunate case of acne.’ He gestured towards his face. ‘I didn’t socialise much. There’s all the time in the world to write if you’re not burdened with the responsibilities of partying and picking up girls. What can I say? I was a nerd.’

‘I was kind of nerdy too,’ I admitted, and Nick rolled his eyes like he didn’t believe me.

‘Anyway, I went to uni, studied English lit, did a Dip Ed, met my first ex-wife, Jenny, and started teaching. I was always writing and finally finished a semi-autobiographical novel based on my childhood growing up in Sale. A small press offered to publish and I was thrilled—my lifelong dream was coming true. They warned me it would be a small print run, two thousand copies, and I wouldn’t make any money out of it, but I was stupidly optimistic. In my heart I just knew it would take off, get published overseas, and someone would turn it into an award-winning movie.’ He smirked at himself, shook his head, drained his beer and moved on to the whiskey.

‘I’m guessing it didn’t work out like that.’

‘Book got some good reviews, but pretty much sank without a trace. I kept teaching and continued writing. Beavering away on my next manuscript in the evenings after school. Damn thing was giving me grief though. Classic second-novel syndrome. I couldn’t make it work, so I started penning this hard-boiled detective novel. I’d always loved crime. Read it to escape from all the dense, literary stuff I studied at uni. I created this character Zack, bit of an alter ego, and he took over and the book seemed to write itself. I was way behind schedule with the serious novel, and in a meeting with my publisher I told them, just joking, that I had a PI manuscript in the bottom drawer. They wanted to see it, and the rest is history. My crime series sold ten times better than my literary novel, and is really taking off now the first one’s come out as a telemovie. The others are in preproduction as we speak.’

‘Wow, congratulations.’

He shrugged, then looked at me and asked something weird. ‘Why are you a private detective?’

‘I already told you about the cops saving my mum and stuff.’

‘That’s the how. I want to know the why.’

I’d asked myself the same question but had never come up with a definitive answer. I liked being my own boss. I got a kick out of spying on people. I was easily bored and addicted to adrenaline. Sticking it to the Victoria police by proving I was better than them was part of it, but mostly I hated when rich, powerful people tried to become even richer and more powerful by screwing with people who couldn’t defend themselves. I didn’t tell Nick any of those things, though.

‘I dunno.’ I shrugged.

‘What about your dad? Is he on the scene?’

‘Haven’t seen him for fifteen years.’

‘How does that make you feel?’

‘It doesn’t make me feel anything. Why?’

‘Sorry, I can’t help myself. I’m always trying to figure out motivation.’

‘Let me guess—I became a stripper because I needed the male attention and I became a PI because, shit, you tell me.’

Nick shook his head and blushed a bit. It made him look like a teenager. ‘I shouldn’t have . . .’

I chucked him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t stress. I’m just messing with you, not pissed off.’ It was half true.

Nick changed the subject. ‘When’s our next session?’

I pulled my diary out of my bag and flipped through. ‘How about Monday? I’ve got something a bit different from the WorkCover case. Guy thinks his wife is having an affair, little lunchtime liaison, so I’m gonna follow her around the CBD. No trackie-daks either, we’ll have to go corporate on this one.’

‘Monday’s great. Meet at your office?’

‘Nah, I’m gonna follow from her home. Lives in Collingwood.’

‘I’m in Abbotsford.’

‘Great. I’ll pick you up.’

We shook hands and Nick got up to leave. ‘Oh, almost forgot.’ He patted his jacket, withdrew a couple of laminated passes and handed them to me.

‘Yarra Bend Summer Sessions,’ I read out. ‘Sounds like a dance party.’

‘It’s a mini arts and writers’ festival at Yarra Bend Park in Clifton Hill this Saturday. Come along if you’re not busy, bring a friend. I’m on a panel with Shane Maloney and Peter Temple, so should be a good one. Pass includes entry into everything and a couple of free drinks.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. May have some work coming up . . .’

God I was a liar.

chapter
three

A
fter the pub I decided to drop in on my best friend, Chloe. She held the lease on the building that housed my office and sublet to me while she ran her agency, Chloe’s Elite Strippers, from her flat upstairs.

The Carlisle Street entrance, a glass door next to mine, was locked, so I entered my office intending on scooting out back, before hesitating. I don’t know whether it was the champagne, or Nick’s amateur psychology, but I booted up my computer and composed an email to my dad, care of the IT company he’d worked for the last time I’d seen him. I kept it simple—
Hi Mark, it’s your prodigal daughter, Simone. Long time no see. What’s up?
—and pressed send before I could chicken out. I turned off the computer, left my office, jogged across the small rear car park, and took the back stairs up to the deck at Chloe’s.

Her place was pretty basic, a couple of bedrooms facing Carlisle Street and a small formica kitchen she never cooked in. The huge lounge in the middle was her command centre: vast corner desk, practice pole in the middle of the room, feather boas hanging from hooks and body-glitter ground into the carpet. Publicity pictures of the girls decorated the walls, along with posters of Marilyn Monroe and prints of old-time dancers like Blaze Fury and Gypsy Rose Lee. Opposite the desk sat Chloe’s pride and joy, a recently purchased red couch shaped like a pair of lips. French doors opened from the lounge room onto the best thing about the place: a concrete deck at the back of the building that looked out over the rooftops and train line. Chloe had set it up with outdoor furniture, potted plants and lurid green astroturf.

That’s where I found her, lying topless on a yellow striped banana lounge, simultaneously eating chicken-in-a-biskit, flicking through
Picture
magazine, and talking to prospective clients on the phone. She was just over six months pregnant, belly stretched taut and boobs so enormous they were terrifying. She’d always been on the busty side, but now her nipples were the size of saucers and her breasts practically blocked out the sun. She looked so rampantly fecund she reminded me of an ancient fertility symbol, although I doubted the Venus of Willendorf had ever been depicted slick with coconut oil, wearing a pink G-string and clear perspex stripper heels.

I pulled up a matching pink lounge and lay back, a pleasant little buzz on after the drinks at the pub. It was five o’clock and the sun was still quite high in the sky but the worst of the heat was gone. The smell of coconut oil made me think of cocktails and tropical holidays, and I wondered if, when Sean came back, we could take some sort of break at the beach, just for a few days. I closed my eyes, imagining salty, sweaty sex in a hotel room under a slow-moving fan. Meanwhile Chloe was on the phone, reciting the spiel she knew off by heart.

‘G-string strip’s a hundred, full nude a hundred and twenty, and raunchy—that’s open leg work, darl—hundred and seventy-five. Any extras, say, strawberries and cream, vibes, pearls, or fruit and veggies? That’s two fifty. What’s a fruit and veg strip? Use your imagination, hon. Bi twin’s three fifty, five hundred if you want the whole lezzo shebang. You got internet access? Check out the girls on our website. We also run Chloe’s Boob Cruises—very popular for a work do—and we have state-of-the-art jelly-wrestling facilities. You’ll have to book early though. Coming up to Christmas is a very busy time of year.’ She hung up and had just drawn a breath to talk to me when the phone rang again. She rolled her eyes and answered.

‘Chloe’s Elite Strippers, Chloe speaking. Hi, Tiara, what’s up?’ A pause, then: ‘You’re fucking kidding me. Listen, if you don’t wanna work, I can just take you off the books.’

Soon as she’d said that I heard tinny shrieking, and Chloe winced and held the handset away from her ear. I didn’t envy her having to organise a bunch of strippers, most of whom were even crazier than she was.

‘Fuck’s sake, Tiara. Call back when you’ve straightened out. Yes you are, you’re off your tits. Wake up to yourself. Take a fucking Valium and take the next week off. I’ve had it. This is your last chance.’

She hung up and I raised my eyebrows. ‘
Tiara
? Is it just me or are the names getting stupider?’

‘The names and the fucking girls.’ A midge adhered itself to one oil-basted breast and she flicked it off. ‘This one started out okay until she got a new boyfriend and got into ice. Lost a ton of weight and now she’s losing the plot. I’d fire her but she’s good, when she actually shows up.’