The Brush-Off mw-1 Page 12

  ‘You and I needn’t worry,’ he smiled, dryly. ‘The help get in for free. As for the rest’-he indicated the beau monde around us-‘they’re only too happy to pay. It makes them feel special.’ Offices led off the foyer, their doors open to display well-hung interiors. Veale cocked his head towards the nearest. ‘A quiet word in your Vincent-like, s’il vous plait.’

  The office held Perry White’s desk, cleared for the occasion but for four phones and two computer terminals. Apart from the desk and a big caramel landscape by someone whose name hovered on the tip of my tongue, we had the room to ourselves. ‘This dreadful moat business,’ Veale clucked. ‘The minister’s heard, I take it.’

  ‘Had the press on the phone at dawn.’

  ‘They have his home number?’ Veale was aghast.

  ‘It’s in the book,’ I told him. Angelo’s idea of democratic accessibility. ‘He told them to piss off.’

  ‘Quite properly so,’ said Veale. ‘All press enquiries are to be handled by the Acting Director of the National Gallery. Not that he’ll have anything to tell them, apart from confirming that it was gallery staff who found the body. You, of course, know that already.’

  In other words I was not the only one who had spent the morning appraising myself of the facts. ‘The dead man was a client of the ministry, I understand,’ I said.

  Veale’s eyebrows went up. Evidently not all the facts were yet in his possession. ‘Really?’

  ‘Got a little grant in the last funding round. Two thousand.’

  A departmental director could hardly be expected to be aware of every teensy-weensy item of expenditure. But he knew how to draw an inference. ‘Ahh,’ he exhaled.

  ‘And he was living at the old YMCA. One of our facilities, isn’t it?’

  ‘Temporarily. Pending demolition. The rooms are made available to certain worthy causes and individuals. But nobody lives there.’ The sheer squalor of the idea seemed to appal him.

  ‘At any rate, this Taylor had a studio there,’ I said. ‘It’d be interesting to know if he had any other connection with the ministry.’ This was unlikely, but I was far enough ahead of Veale to have him on the defensive. A good place for a departmental head, however efficient and congenial, to be. ‘Indeed,’ Veale hastened to agree.

  Come Monday morning, deputy directors would scuttle. In the meantime, Veale’s prompt attention to the sensitivities of the issue should not go unrecognised. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met Angelo yet,’ I said, leading him back into the foyer.

  ‘Plenty of time for that on Monday.’ He made a self-deprecatory gesture that suggested he would not be entirely upset to be found minding the shop on his day off. We went up the stairs to the mezzanine.

  Agnelli and Karlin were getting on famously, a couple of well-rounded high-achievers basking in the cloudless skies of each other’s company. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a painting while Karlin laid on a monologue. Agnelli jiggled with pleasure at his every bon mot. Ange’s hands, I was relieved to see, were firmly in his own pockets. Beside Agnelli, very close, stood Fiona Lambert. And at Karlin’s right hand, with the look of a successful matchmaker at an engagement party, stood Lloyd Eastlake.

  Veale and I went into a holding pattern, waiting for a suitable break in Karlin’s soliloquy. ‘This Szabo purchase,’ I said to him, passing the time. ‘Inheriting such a large grant allocation, sight unseen, may tend to make Angelo a little uncomfortable. If he could meet one or two of the corporate participants in the project, I’m sure it would reassure him immensely.’ Not chatting. Pimping. In the hope of catching Agnelli in flagrante. Madness, I told myself, sheer insanity. Stop it.

  ‘It looks as though he’s beaten us to it.’ Veale nodded towards the official entourage. ‘Obelisk Trust, contributor, if memory serves me right, of $150,000. Various other donors gave smaller amounts. Fifty thousand here, twenty there.’ He dropped his voice, confidentially. ‘Clients of Obelisk, I daresay, keeping in good with their line of credit.’

  I’d heard of Obelisk Trust-vaguely-and felt it somewhat remiss of me not to know more. It was some kind of financial institution, that much I knew, part of the freewheeling money market that had erupted onto the scene since deregulation and the floating of the dollar. Merchant banks, brokerage arbitrageurs, futures dealers, entrepreneurial wheeler-dealers-the media was giddy with them. You couldn’t turn on the television without some egg-headed pundit leaning earnestly into the camera and whispering about the FT-100 or the ninety-day bond rate. It was all so hard to keep up with. Fluctuations in share prices and currency exchange rates were reported with greater frequency than the weather outlook. Reading the paper was like trying to watch a sport without knowing the rules.

  Veale responded to my blank look. ‘Lloyd Eastlake,’ he said. ‘Obelisk Trust’s executive director.’

  Wheels within wheels. Hats upon hats. ‘Handy,’ I said. And precariously close to conflict of interest.

  Veale’s voice took on a slightly miffed tone. ‘As far as the Centre for Modern Art and the Visual Arts Advisory Panel are concerned, all procedural guidelines have been rigorously observed.’ No funny business on any committees in Phillip Veale’s jurisdiction. Not on paper, at least. ‘As to the Obelisk Trust, I have no reason to assume other than that Lloyd Eastlake conducts himself with the utmost probity.’

  One hand washes the other. While we stand by, holding the soap. But there was no point in ruffling Veale’s feathers. ‘So where’s this Szabo picture,’ I said, gawking around. ‘It must be quite something.’

  Veale loosened up again. ‘You mean at six hundred thousand dollars it had better be.’

  ‘The last picture I bought was on the lid of a box of shortbread. Five dollars fifty and I got to eat the biscuits.’

  Karlin, Agnelli amp; Co had ambled along the mezzanine into a spacious boardroom hung with more pictures. A horseshoe-shaped table ran down the middle, invisible beneath a sumptuous buffet of fresh fruit and architect-designed pastries. The aroma of excellent coffee perfumed the air, making my mouth water. ‘I doubt if anyone ever expected a Szabo to fetch such an amount,’ Veale was saying. ‘Arguably, his contribution to Australian art might have gone largely unremarked if not for Fiona Lambert’s tireless work in developing his reputation and bringing him to public notice.’

  ‘And what better measure of a man’s significance,’ I said, ‘than the price of his work.’

  Veale pursed his lips, pitying me my cynicism. I conceded him the point, sort of. ‘Ironical, though, isn’t it,’ I remarked. ‘So many artists never get to enjoy the fruits of their own success.’

  ‘True,’ conceded Veale. ‘I never met Szabo myself, but I used to know his dealer, Giles Aubrey, quite well. I doubt if Karlin paid Giles more than five or six thousand when he bought the picture back in the early seventies.’ A steal. Only a year’s take-home pay for one of Max’s employees at the time.

  Much of the crowd had followed the official party into the boardroom and were tucking into the mille-feuilles and moka blend. I helped myself to a hair of the dog out of a bottle marked Bollinger, poured one for Veale, and sniffed at a tray of dainty pink-and-white sandwiches. ‘Caviar?’ I wondered.

  ‘Strawberries,’ said Veale.

  Christ. Strawberry sandwiches. Now I’d seen it all. But I hadn’t. Not by a long chalk.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Karlin began, his voice barely above conversational volume. As if by magic, the chatter of voices and scrape of forks across plates faded. It was Karlin, at least as much as his artworks, they had paid to be near. His entrepreneurship, luck and taste were legendary. Famous, at the very least. Stand close enough, listen attentively enough, and perhaps some of it might rub off.

  ‘Welcome to today’s open-house in aid of the CMA’s acquisition program.’ Karlin’s public voice was both smooth and gravelly, a combination of wet cement and washed silk, conveying a mixture of amenability and conviction. The expression ‘If madam would just care to try this on’ sprang to mind.


  Karlin pressed on. ‘And an especially warm welcome to our new Arts Minister, the Honourable Angelo Agnelli, who has made a special effort to be here, which I think speaks volumes for his commitment to the visual arts…’

  Just in case anyone didn’t quite know which one he was, Ange took a half-step forward, smiled bashfully, and let the gaze of the congregation fall gently upon him. There was a shuffling that might have been applause. Ange nodded, recognising in all humility that it was the office, not the man, to whom acknowledgment was due. But conveying, nonetheless, a distinctly personal pleasure at finding himself among like-minded people. A photographer circled, flash popping.

  Karlin allowed Ange his moment of grace before continuing. ‘Because, thanks to the vision of the government, a great painting hitherto seen only by a fortunate few will soon hang in the Centre for Modern Art where it will be accessible to all. I refer, of course, to Victor Szabo’s Our Home.’

  As he delivered this phrase, Karlin moved slightly to one side, offering the painting on the wall behind him to the perusal of the assembly. Unfortunately, Phillip Veale was in my line of sight, obstructing my view, and all I could see of it was a bit of blue in the top right-hand corner. As Karlin continued to speak, informing us that the occasion was tinged with regret at the departure of a cherished possession, I popped the last of the strawberry sangers into my mouth, craned my neck over the bureaucrat’s gelati-hued shoulder and feasted my eyes.

  My jaw froze in mid-chomp. You could have knocked me down with an ermine bristle. The picture I beheld, hanging on the wall of Max Karlin’s boardroom, was strikingly familiar. So much so that I thought my eyes were playing tricks with me. It depicted a cloudless Australian sky and a swathe of vivid perfectly manicured lawn. In the middle of the lawn sat a Victa Special two-stroke motor-mower. Behind it was a red-roofed double-fronted brick-veneer house, brooding with malevolent intensity.

  I might not know much about art, but I’ve been a member of the Labor Party long enough to recognise the aroma of rodent when it wafts my way. So, when the speechifying was over, I introduced Veale to Agnelli and left them exchanging pleasantries while I examined the Szabo at closer range.

  An expert might have detected subtle differences-the demeanour of the brushstrokes, the gradation of the colour, the intangible aura of genius-but on face value I was buggered if I could tell this picture from the one I had seen scarcely two hours before in Marcus Taylor’s studio.

  Eastlake noticed my close interest and joined me. ‘Following in the footsteps of Van Gogh?’ he said. This joke was beginning to wear thin.

  ‘Angling accident,’ I said. ‘You should see the fish.’

  He inclined his head towards Our Home. ‘Come on,’ he beamed. ‘Admit it. It does have a certain je ne sais quoi, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, I dunno,’ I shrugged.

  But Eastlake was right. And not just about there being nothing in the painting to provoke outrage. He’d been right that people would genuinely warm to it. It did for suburbia what nineteenth-century Australian painters had done for the bush-made it a worthy subject for art. And, by inference, made heroes of those who dwelt there. Our Home was the Parthenon of tract housing, with a bit of laconic satire chucked in for good measure. And an edge of the mysterious, so you knew it was proper art.

  ‘I used to build houses just like this,’ Eastlake confided with a proprietary sentimentality.

  And millions grew up in them. I dipped my head in acknowledgment of his superior judgment. ‘How does it get from here to the CMA?’

  Administrative detail didn’t interest Eastlake. ‘In a crate, I imagine.’ His contrivance at being both amiable and patronising could easily have grated. But compared with the unremitting dullness of most of the business types I met, Lloyd Eastlake’s candour was disarmingly refreshing. ‘Fiona handles that sort of thing.’

  Fiona Lambert was across the room, thick as thieves with Becky Karlin and a helmeted honeyeater I recognised from the CMA. ‘That guy who got up on the table last night and tried to make the speech,’ I started. ‘The one who fell over.’ Eastlake’s attention was elsewhere. Max Karlin had detached Agnelli from Phillip Veale and was leading him out onto the mezzanine, steering him towards one of the offices. The holy of holies, I took it. Eastlake made a must-rush noise and headed after them.

  I should have too, I suppose. Monitoring what passed between Agnelli and Karlin had, after all, been the whole point in bringing them together. To have my suspicions confirmed, wasn’t that why I was here? But now something else was exercising my mind, something that took me instead down into the melting heat of the street, to the row of upmarket cars lining the kerb, to crack open the seal on the refrigerated interior of Eastlake’s big silver Merc. ‘Morning,’ I said, ‘Noel.’

  Spider didn’t turn. He just sat there, fish-faced behind his shades, contemplating the sporting section of the Herald, his hat on the ledge above the dashboard. Even when I slid in beside him he didn’t look around. A knob low on the instrument panel might have been the cigarette lighter. I put my thumb on it and pushed until it clicked into place. Agnelli didn’t let me smoke in the Fairlane.

  We sat there, me side-on, Spider gazing into the V of his paper. Profile was definitely Noel Webb’s better angle. Made him look less like a plumbing fixture. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Long time no see.’ Long time no answer, too. More than long enough for me to get a smoke out and tap it on the side of the pack. Pop went the lighter. Spider’s hand shot out. He held the glowing element short, so I had to bend across to fire up, offering the nape of my neck. A gold pinky ring glistened on his little finger, fat and square, set with a crescent of tiny rubies, a real tooth-breaker. Quite the primitive, Spider. ‘This job suits you,’ I said. ‘You’ve got the silent menace bit down to a tee.’

  Spider tossed his chin in the general direction of the Karlcraft building. ‘Won’t you be missed?’ he said, unimpressed. ‘Big shot.’

  ‘Never too busy to catch up with old friends,’ I said, absently flicking a molecule of ash onto the car’s pale grey carpet. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ I stretched my legs out and leaned back against the headrest. ‘Twenty years since we’ve seen each other, now our paths cross all the time. Down at the Ballet Centre carpark this morning, for instance.’

  Spider very slowly closed his newspaper, folded it neatly in half and laid it beside his hat. ‘MOAT DEATH PUZZLE,’ read a column-wide headline on the front page. He turned his mirrored face towards me, at last. ‘I dunno what you’re talking about.’ His delivery was flat, sneering. ‘And neither do you.’

  The big car’s interior felt suddenly very claustrophobic. Noel Webb had been a tough kid. And if he was acting the hard man maybe it was because that’s exactly what he was. Spider wasn’t the sentimental type. Never had been. And any tenuous connection between us was long gone. My feet were getting colder by the second.

  For nearly an hour I’d waited at the Oulton Reserve, clutching that contraband bottle of bourbon under my duffel coat, its neck sticky and warm in my hand. Footy practice ended, the oval emptied, and still I sat, half of me ashamed, the other half defiant. Ashamed for the theft, for I’d never before stolen from my father. Ashamed for my reason for doing it, to buy friendship. Defying my father to catch me out, defying Spider Webb to doubt that I could deliver. As I waited, I took little sips. The liquid was fiery and harsh, but it kept me warm. Kept me waiting.

  When Spider finally arrived, he came out of nowhere, looming out of the leaden dusk. ‘Got it?’ he said, sinking down beside me. I hesitated then, kept the bottle hidden beneath my coat, wanting some spoken confirmation of our pact.

  ‘You haven’t, have you?’ His scorn was wounding. ‘You didn’t have the guts, did you?’

  That’s when the Fletchers exploded out of a clump of tea-tree edging the football oval. Georgie, the big one, had a steel fencing picket in his hand. The twins trotted at his heels. Like Attila and his horde, they swept down upon us.

  Twenty years
is a long time. People change. But if Noel Webb had, I couldn’t see it. Maybe I’d underestimated him, though, pegging him for a car thief. Maybe he’d graduated to something more sophisticated.

  ‘Nice car,’ I said, running an eyeball over the walnut inlay. ‘Been Mr Eastlake’s chauffeur long? His status symbol, that’s what he called you, didn’t he?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Annoyance had crept into Spider’s voice, evidence that communication might be possible.

  ‘Probably nothing at all,’ I agreed. Probably nothing more than ancient adolescent resentment, octopus-induced irritability, and a suspicious mind. But if I stirred the pot a little, something more might come bubbling to the surface. ‘It’s just that there are points where your employer’s activities and my employer’s interests overlap. And proper attention to my employer’s interests requires that I keep myself broadly informed. I rather hoped you’d understand that, us both being in the service sector.’

  He snorted contemptuously. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do with your time?’

  As a matter of fact, I did. It was nearly 12.30. Red’s plane was due in little more than two hours and, apart from picking up a pack of cigarettes, I still hadn’t done any shopping. ‘I guess I can always ask Lloyd,’ I shrugged. ‘Just thought I’d ask you first, not wanting to embarrass an old friend and all.’

  ‘I’m shitting myself, Whelan,’ Spider said, brimming with schoolyard disdain. But he tilted his head a fraction and I knew his eyes had gone to the rearview mirror.

  The Mercedes had power windows. Mine made a little whirring noise and let in a wilting gust of heat. I stuck my head out, looked back at the stragglers drifting out of Karlcraft and whirred it back up. ‘Have it your own way,’ I said. ‘Mr Eastlake will be along soon.’

  Spider puffed his cheeks and blew a long steady breath, like I was a deliberately obtuse child, trying his patience. Then, shaking his head as though reluctantly coming to a decision he already regretted, he leaned across in front of me and casually opened the glove compartment. The lid fell down to reveal a shiny, chrome-plated pistol.