Cheaters

by JR Carroll

  Michelle was from the northern working-class suburb of Broadmeadows, where she attended a local secondary college before dropping out at sixteen. The exotic family history, the countess, virtually everything she had told Danny was pure fiction – noble blood being thin on the ground in Broadmeadows. Basically she hated school, couldn’t relate to the teachers and found it too hard to get motivated, except for social science, the history part of which she was into. The girls there were all airheads and bogans, the boys deadshits and would-be macho men who smashed up classroom furniture with karate kicks to impress each other. Many of the students smoked dope or chased the dragon and ran wild. It was really a kind of zoo and Michelle wasn’t fond of animals. Having left, she hung out for a while, doing nothing, then started picking up men in the street and fucking them for money. Unlike many young girls who end up on the game, she did not have a drug habit or a child to support. Michelle gave herself a string of aliases, changing her appearance with each one and in general making a game of it. She was never Michelle Fleming of Broadmeadows turning tricks, but someone called Melanie, Cherry, Tanya or Zena, and they came from all kinds of places. She could even change her accent to suit the occasion, make herself sound American, Russian, Polish, whatever. She never dressed like a hooker and didn’t have a regular beat, hated St Kilda, which was too dangerous, and carried a small knife in her bag for security.

  The thing she found was, it was so easy to make money doing this. She had to put up with pathetic, inadequate males who were usually two or three times her age, but she developed the knack of giving them what they wanted without involving herself in the slightest: the persona did it all. Her favourite clients were businessmen, because they were good payers and often stayed in five-star hotels. Michelle used to walk into the cocktail lounge in the evenings, all of 17 years old, pick her mark and immediately start chatting him up. Very rarely was she knocked back. Men, she found, really got off on young stuff, and the younger the better. She told one john she was just fifteen – in the room, stripped – and he begged her to stay the night, which she did – for a thousand bucks.

  She did this for a couple of years, and then one of her clients asked her if she wanted to work as a table-top or lap dancer at a city men’s club he owned. Michelle jumped at it: the money would be good, the hours better and she wouldn’t have to fuck anyone. So she decked herself out in a hot pink sequinned G-string and bikini top and got to work. Men drooled over Michelle’s naked displays and she knew how to turn them on. The more she did, the more money they gave her, and Michelle was unstinting. She would lie on the table with her legs open, showing them everything and behaving as if she were having the time of her life. She would ask patrons to pour drinks into her navel and lick it out. She gave private parties, often for visiting Japanese or Asian businessmen, who sat transfixed and, to a man, erect during the show. She made a good living. Her parents, who thought she was doing an office management course, had no idea what she was up to, even though she still lived at home.

  Out-of-town customers would frequently ask Michelle to come back to their hotel with them after her shift, but unless the guy was a hunk or was prepared to pay plenty, she refused. She had boyfriends on and off, but no-one steady, no-one about whom she cared particularly. She just didn’t want to be a hooker any more, but the owner told her not to insult his customers in this way, that she should see it as part of the job. It was good for business for her to turn it on for what he called the premium clients. Michelle still refused. Then when she was leaving the club one day, after the lunchtime shift, this guy confronted her in the street. She recognised him as a regular and an absolute bucket of sleaze – not a premium client. This man had been following her around every day, he told her; he was stuck on her and wanted them to have a relationship. He told her he had been keeping an eye on her and knew where she lived, that he was going to be in her life for a very long time. Michelle told him to fuck off, he grabbed her and tried to hug and kiss her, she pulled away, he lunged at her breasts, exposing one of them, and she stuck her little knife into his skinny gut.

  It turned out the victim was a minor underworld creep who had a few outstanding warrants and no desire to get himself mixed up with cops or courts. He wasn’t seriously wounded, but it was enough to send a message to anyone who wanted to put their hands on her. However, she got a reputation as a ball-buster and a bitch, and patrons started throwing coins at her instead of the folding stuff. This she found very hard to understand: why did they hate her? She was only defending herself. But then, she realised, in their eyes she was just a piece of raw meat with no rights. She was a twat and a set of tits. So she quit the job, did nothing for a while – veged out, played music, saw movies, dreamed of seeing far-off places like Moscow, New York, Paris and Amsterdam – then ran into an old schoolfriend on the tram who was training to be a cop. Michelle was truly astounded. This girl had been quite out of control at school – smart, like Michelle, but hated discipline, hated being told what to do, was always being thrown out of class and suspended. Teachers she routinely told to get fucked. But now she had changed. She was deeply ashamed of the way she was – she was such a terrible bitch. All her attitudes were different, she said. She was about to finish her course and couldn’t wait to get on the streets and do some good, give something back. She was into community policing, she said, interested in saving young people from getting into drugs and crime and destroying their lives, as she had nearly done.

  That chance meeting made an impression on Michelle. She thought about it for a few weeks, made enquiries, then decided, shit, why not? It was a real job, a career. She would have to leave out most of her CV, make stuff up, but she was only twenty-one after all, and looked seventeen. It was merely a matter of re-inventing herself again. She applied and was accepted. Unbelievable – she was going to be a fucking cop! And so it happened, without a hitch, Michelle graduating in the top ten of her class, males included. In four months she was on a beat of a different kind. It felt so strange, marching around town with a baton and a gun on her hip. She felt as if she’d pulled off a scam, which she had, in a way.

  However, it wasn’t long before some of her colleagues got wind of who she was, the dancer that knifed that guy, and word spread. People were saying she was all kinds of things, but not to her face. At the station Michelle was treated with guarded respect, but she was always conscious of eyes being on her, and of the rampant gossip going the rounds. The brotherhood gave females a tough time on general principle, but it didn’t quite know what to do with Michelle Fleming. She went to the pub on Friday nights with the team, but never over-indulged. One night a detective tried to hit on her and Michelle said thanks, but no thanks – politely, but with edge. The detective, who was drunk, persisted and became nasty. Expect me to pay for it, he said, and threw a ten-dollar note at her. Michelle threw her drink in his face and left.

  On the following Monday morning she was hauled in for an interview with the senior sergeant, an old-culture cop who usually had stale beer on his breath in the mornings. He said he had to put in a report on Michelle’s progress, making it sound like a threat. After skirting around it for a while, he said he understood she had been an exotic dancer prior to joining the force. Michelle didn’t say anything. He then said he also had it on good authority that she had been a prostitute and Michelle denied it fiercely. The senior sergeant told her he trusted his sources and Michelle said if he repeated that accusation or tried to slander her in any way she would drag him through every tribunal and court in the land and report him to the ombudsman for sexual harassment in the workplace. The senior sergeant sat back, put his palms out and told her to settle down, that this was just an informal interview.

  Nothing further came of that and in a year or so she was posted to a suburban station. But her reputation had preceded her and that, combined with the fact that she was replacing a much-liked officer who had been killed in an accident, didn’t make for an easy life there. The word was that Michelle was not a te
am player, that you wouldn’t want to have to count on her in a tight situation. Advances were made. It was so unfair; just because she didn’t go along with their bullshit she was the worst bitch on earth. If you didn’t fuck them you were frigid; if you did you were a root rat. There was also a tow-truck scam in which she declined to participate – mainly because she suspected she was being set up – as a result of which she was shut out. In time she came around to the view that they were right, she wasn’t cut out for teamwork. Her problem was, because of her previous experience, she knew first-hand about the sleaze that lives in men’s hearts and minds. The fact that the offender was a fellow cop – a brother – made no difference in her eyes. So she applied to do the undercover course and have another shot at re-inventing herself – without the team factor getting in the way.

  Michelle discovered she was a natural for undercover work. The idea of pretending to be someone she wasn’t came easily to her, since she had done it plenty of times. Her instructors, who were experienced undercover agents, were impressed with her composure under stress and her ability to maintain a convincing facade. Good female undercover agents were rare for some reason, and they were very pleased to have Michelle. She had guts, looks to die for, nous, resourcefulness. She wasn’t frightened of going into dark places. She wasn’t intimidated by men. If she could handle herself against the brotherhood, she could deal with anyone out there.

  After completing the course, Michelle was assigned to a combined fraud squad-NCA operation, codenamed Cathedral, which was keeping watch on a former finance investor from Adelaide, Paul Sigmund Barry, who had moved to Melbourne since his release from Yatala Correctional Facility. The objective was to find out what he had done with the missing millions, if indeed there were any left. Certainly he lived well: a four hundred thousand dollar apartment in town, expensive furnishings and fittings, a Mercedes sports which he kept garaged most of the time. Well-heeled types, suspected upper-level criminals and a variety of attractive young females who could have been models or escort girls were his most frequent visitors. The problem was, he hardly ever came out of the place except to go for his morning run or, very occasionally, to have lunch with these same associates in the Chinatown district. An inspection of his business affairs revealed that he was not a director of any company, in accordance with the laws of bankruptcy. His bank accounts were moderate and he had no major lines of credit with any bank, so where was the money coming from? On the surface he looked clean – but too clean, considering his lifestyle. Obviously he was acquiring cash, laundering it, doing something, and probably with the help of his good friend from Adelaide, Victor Deitrich Wineglass, who spent a good deal of his time at Barry’s Flinders Lane address. It was highly likely that he had overseas accounts, in Switzerland, Macau or Hong Kong, but finding the paper trail was the problem: there just wasn’t one.

  Some things, however, they did know. Barry had purchased state-of-the-art computer and video equipment so he could have been operating some kind of photographic business. The popular view was that he was publishing obscene material and making porn movies or stick flicks. In addition, Victor Wineglass was named as a director in a range of interests, including an import-export business and some art galleries. He also spent a lot of time in the casino. There seemed little doubt that he was fronting for Barry, but until Barry put a foot wrong, somehow, they couldn’t move on him. What they needed was to put someone next to him in an undercover capacity. Michelle Fleming.

  For a week or two she established a pattern of passing Cricklewood Close, pausing to window-shop and putting herself under Victor’s nose when he arrived there for his frequent visits, which tended to be around the same time of day – mid-afternoon. Michelle was always dressed to attract attention, but without overdoing it, and eventually Victor took the bait by inviting her in for what he called ‘a modelling audition’. She went on up, met the elusive Mr Barry, and was soon asked if she minded taking her clothes off – strictly for the camera. No problems, Michelle said, and undressed without hesitation, standing before the two men with one hand on her hip and the other pushing up the back of her hair, a drop-dead expression on her youthful, pretty face. Sigmund said, ‘Such insouciance. You remind me of Brigitte Bardot in the sixties, my dear.’ And from there she never looked back. She told him her name was Mischa, Mischa Fleming. That was the name her supervisor, Mike Buckland, considered the best option, since it was quite close to the real thing. Michelle had wanted Sascha. She was aware that both Mischa and Sascha were men’s names in Russia, but names were interchangeable between the sexes these days. Michel was a man’s name in French. The spelling was a bit different, but it was pronounced the same.

  She made certain things clear to Sigmund from the beginning: she would not perform sex acts in any way, and she would not do group scenes involving males or females. She would do erotica, but it had to be solo erotica. Sigmund said that was fine, he would use stills for magazines and explicit video clips for peep shows in sex shops, both here and in Europe. Michelle knew about the peep shows: men went into these seedy little booths, paid their money and jerked off watching a film of a naked woman writhing, panting, caressing and wanking herself and talking dirty to the camera. She could do that in her sleep. She knew all the right moves from her lap-dancing days. So a rate of pay was agreed on and she went to work. She insisted on bringing her own gear and make-up to project the persona that suited her – she wasn’t going to be just Mischa. On the matter of names, Sigmund suggested Pepper as a stage name, because she was like a red hot chilli pepper. She was prepared to go with that because she liked the rock band of that name. One day, after several months in the job, she was doing a cyberpunk routine with a bald wig and lots of body piercing and Victor walked in with this young guy named Danny Gold, who was – from what she could hear while she was changing – some kind of hot-shot gambler from the casino. He was cute, but when she left shortly afterwards he went straight out of her mind.

  16

  Celebrities flocked into town, Clive James appeared everywhere on TV, darlings partied late, horse trainers got up early as usual. Keen aficionados breakfasted on champagne and sausages with the stars, outfits were made and hired, office sweeps were organised, once-a-year punters queued in TABs, the talk of the town was horse talk. The best hotels and restaurants were all booked solid, and a stretch limo could not be had for love or money. Melbourne was in the grip of racing fever, at the heart of which was the world’s most famous handicap race – the Cup. Who would win? Everyone had an opinion; everyone was an expert at this time of year. The Premier gave his tip in the Herald Sun, along with wealthy industrialists, social butterflies, Jana Wendt, anyone who was anyone. The sun blazed, the track at Flemington was rock-hard, the 1200-metre straight a dazzling strip of baize. Rolls-Royces, Jaguars and Range Rovers filled the members’ car park. There, on tartan rugs, crayfish at sixty dollars a kilo was consumed and Moet corks were popped amid squeals and high jinks, while the rank and file contented themselves with beer and Four ’n’ Twenty pies.

  In perfect conditions the race was won and run – but not by Geoff Egan whose mount, like a third of the field, was unable to stay when it counted. Victory on this day went to a champion interstate jockey on a horse prepared by a champion trainer, a man whom the press liked to call the Cups King, or the genius of the turf. He was also a survivor: misfortunes that should have finished him did not quite, and now the clouds had parted and he was a winner again. Friends had been rarely sighted in recent years and now the whole country celebrated for him, even people who had no interest in horseracing. It was a classic fairytale result: it was racing; it was life; it was what the Cup was all about. When asked by a TV reporter how he was feeling, the trainer, who was not known for his verbosity, scratched his chin and said: ‘Good.’ But a large tear managed to creep down his cheek.

  And while all this was going on, Danny Gold went about his business too, steadily and unspectacularly accruing winnings at the casino by day and dining in
restaurants and sleeping with Mischa Fleming by night. Once or twice he saw Lewis Kenny – or Kenny saw him – and Danny began to feel so paranoid he took to wearing a nylon money pouch around his neck, in which he would secrete his skim. And, in the Platinum Room, he met again the red-haired, buxom daughter of Brand Filjar. She was, he discovered, not easily avoided or ignored. She wore body-hugging garments that were so low-cut at times she was nearly out of them and Danny found it was a constant struggle not to stare at her deep cleavage during their brief conversations. He was aware that Patti was flaunting it, that she was trying to impress him, but Danny was simply not available, or interested. He remembered Victor saying she wasn’t right in the head, although she seemed fine as far as he could tell. But she did chain-smoke, and it just seemed a little sad that she had to trawl for a man – a toy boy, really – this way, when she had so much going for her. He could not understand why this was so.

  He was having a coffee with Patti and Victor in the lounge section of the Platinum Room during time out one afternoon when a loud, muffled report came from somewhere off. There was an instant hush over the tables as two security men went into the toilets.

  Patti said, ‘What was that.’

  ‘I have a pretty good idea,’ Victor said, getting up. ‘Pardon me a minute.’

  Victor, it seemed, was the kind of man who liked to involve himself in a drama. Danny saw him exchange words with Brand Filjar, who had risen from a roulette table. Then one of the security staff hurried from the toilets, speaking urgently into his walkie-talkie. He was a young man, about Danny’s age or less, and looked deathly pale as if he had just had a big shock. There were traces of blood on the hand holding the walkie-talkie as the man’s eyes darted this way and that. There was also blood on the sleeve of his dark jacket. Danny sat up, aware that something very bad had taken place. People were paying attention. There seemed to be an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty in the room, as if the giant space station had struck a meteor and been knocked off course. Now the passengers awaited word from the captain. Cards and gaming chips were frozen mid-wager, tables were stilled, people glanced at each other with question marks written on their faces.