Simone Kirsch 02 - Rubdown

by Leigh Redhead

  ‘If you’re serious about massage I know a great place to work.

  Do a couple of shifts there a week. Female management, sixty-forty split, good clients. It’s illegal but really discreet, members only so there’s no chance of getting busted. You interested?’ She swigged from the bottle.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tammy pulled a card from her bra. Plain white with black lettering that read Tollhurst Consultancy. I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘Told you it was discreet. Talk to Hannah and say Tammy recommended you. Don’t mention anything to Neville, he’d fucking kill me if he knew.’

  I slipped the card into my bag as the others entered the room, thanked them for their help and went back to reception where Taylor was leading a taxi driver through to the other side of the building.

  Neville was still leaning on the desk. ‘How’d you go, love?

  Hope the girls didn’t turn you off.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

  ‘Best not to think. Best to jump straight in.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I said.

  Chapter Three

  That night I met my best friend Chloe for a drink and dinner at the Elwood Lounge on Glenhuntly Road, just a short walk from my flat on Broadway. It was a typically Melbourne bar slash restaurant full of mismatched furniture and attractive young hipsters.

  Swatches of gauzy cloth floated down from the ceiling and local artwork hung from stripped-back walls.

  Chloe had become a famous exotic dancer since she’d been kidnapped and I’d kind of rescued her. The publicity had led to magazine spreads, TV appearances and a stint hosting ‘Sin City’, a show about Melbourne’s seamy side. She’d even quit working for other people and opened her own agency called, aptly, Chloe’s.

  I found the little vixen at the back of the bar racking up balls on one of the two pool tables, a bottle of champagne and two glasses at the ready.

  She ran up on spike heeled boots and gave me a hug. ‘Fuck, mate, how long’s it been?’

  Success hadn’t changed her. She was still a short arse with a foul mouth.

  ‘Couple of weeks at least. How’s the agency?’

  ‘Busy. I need more girls and a new driver. Start of the footy season and people keep getting married. Fucking idiots. Want to do a show Friday? You can be warm-up bitch for a buck’s. One-fifty and I won’t take any fees.

  ‘No thanks.’ I poured myself a glass of champagne. I could have used the money but was really trying to go straight. Flashing your gash didn’t enhance one’s reputation in the PI game and I’d promised Tony I’d given it away.

  ‘I bet you miss it.’ Chloe leaned over the pool table, lined up the white ball and broke. She wore tight black pants and a low cut top with ‘Bad Kitty’ in pink glitter on the front. Her long hair hung loose and had become blonder. How it managed to look healthy and not fall out was anybody’s guess.

  ‘Sure, sometimes I get pissed and strip in my lounge room, dancing to an invisible audience.’ It was true.

  Chloe laughed. ‘Mate, you are one sad individual.’ She handed me the cue, sipped her champagne and lit a Winfield Blue.

  ‘How’s work?’

  ‘Good because Tony’s finally letting me do stuff on my own.

  Bad because I feel terrible about a case we’re doing.’

  She raised an eyebrow. I potted a small in the corner pocket and lined up my next shot. ‘We’re following this chick for her parents. They want proof of her working in massage joints and taking drugs.’

  ‘What, smack?’

  ‘She didn’t look like a junkie. Probably just E’s on the weekend. I mean, she’s twenty, making some money, having a bit of fun. Doesn’t even root the guys, for Christ’s sake. She’s not so different from us, and I’m sneaking around videoing her for her stuffed-shirt father and feeling like a supergrass.’ I missed the shot and handed the cue to Chloe.

  ‘I don’t know what to tell you, mate. You would have had to do worse stuff if you’d got into the cops.’

  She was right. Before I started the PI course I’d been rejected by Victoria Police because of my dodgy work history. I’d been cut at the time, but eventually realised it was for the best. Chloe sank three balls in quick succession. Seriously misspent youth.

  ‘You’ll never guess what I got up to today,’ I said.

  ‘Finally got a root?’

  ‘No, but I could have. Went for a job interview at the Good Times Club.’

  ‘Get out!’ she squealed. ‘That’s where old hookers get put out to pasture!’

  The thirty or so young urban professionals in the bar turned and looked.

  ‘They’ve got a … handjob division too.’

  ‘You ever given a handjob before?’ she asked.

  ‘Not to completion. I mean, what’s in it for me?’

  Chloe shrugged. ‘A sticky hand.’

  Tamara’s flat was on a rundown street off Inkerman where anaemic gum trees struggled through the cracked pavement and dry white dog turds littered the nature strip. Her block faced the road, two storeys of pale brick with concrete balconies running the length of the building, accessed by stairwells on either side. It had probably looked quite spiffy in the sixties, but now rust stains slithered down the white railings and four decades of traffic grime smothered the walls. Some residents had tried to cheer up their entrances with potplants, plastic chairs and even the odd garden gnome. Not my target. When I trained my binoculars on her first floor flat I could see she hadn’t even sprung for a welcome mat.

  I’d taken over from Tony at four pm and followed Tamara from the Good Times Club to East St Kilda, hanging well back on account of my pale blue 1967 Ford Futura. Even without the zebra skin seat covers and dancing Elvis it was conspicuous as hell and Tony was going to lend me an anonymous white hatchback the next day.

  TV detectives never show you how mind numbingly boring the average stakeout is. I’d been watching the flat since five-thirty.

  It was now eight and my legs were cramping and my arse had lost all feeling. I clenched and released my butt cheeks, bobbing up and down to improve the blood flow. Didn’t work.

  The only excitement had been hanging a leak into a funnel, and a suspicious old lady knocking on my window. I’d seen her coming and had quickly rubbed my eyes till they were red and smeared with mascara, wound down the window and sobbed.

  ‘I’m not going back in there until he comes out and apologises. How could he do it with that slut? He’s such a bastard, but I really love him…’

  She left me alone after that. Apart from the funnel business us female PIs really have it over the blokes, who often get mistaken for perverts or picked up on suspicion of kerb crawling. Even if someone suspects they’re being watched by an agent they never pick the chick.

  I glanced at my watch. Jesus. Five more hours until Dave took over the graveyard shift. For a supposed crack whore Tamara was pretty dull. Tony and I had formulated a vague plan that I would ‘coincidentally’ run into Tamara when she went out somewhere, befriend her, then try to score drugs. Course that wasn’t going to happen if she insisted on staying home to watch ‘The Bill’.

  Movement at the flats caught my eye. An old lady wrapped in a dressing gown left the ground level apartment directly under Tamara’s, climbed the stairwell, shuffled along the first floor balcony and knocked on her door. I sat up straight. ’Ello ’ello ’ello. There was no answer and the woman started banging and yelling. Neighbours emerged and clustered around Tamara’s flat.

  I slipped out of the Futura and sauntered down the street toward the building, smelling fried onions in the chill night air.

  I sat on a low brick wall in front of the units, hidden by a bank of letterboxes, and listened in.

  ‘No one’s answering.’

  ‘My flat’s being flooded!’

  ‘Call the agent. I’ve got the emergency number somewhere.’

  My stomach fluttered as I conjured up possible scenarios.

  Tamara had le
ft a tap on, slipped out and I hadn’t noticed? Impossible. Even when I was peeing into the funnel I’d kept my eyes on the flat, and earlier reconnaissance had shown there was no back door. Maybe she really was a junkie and had nodded off while running a bath. But wouldn’t all the banging snap her out of it? Not if she’d overdosed.

  I felt my face go hot then cold. A couple of minutes later a dark green Laser braked hard in front of me and a young man in a striped tie and rolled up shirtsleeves slammed the door and hurried along the concrete path to the flats, a big keychain jangling in his hand. The urge to know what was going on overrode concerns about blowing my cover and I jumped up and followed him, lurking out of sight in the stairwell as he tried different keys.

  ‘Hurry up,’ screeched dressing gown lady.

  The real estate agent fumbled with two keys before the third caught the lock and clicked it open. The lady shoved past him, pushed open the door and ran inside. He trailed after her.

  Five seconds later my shoulders spasmed in shock as I heard a short, sharp scream. I didn’t think, just ran to Tamara’s, elbowing curious neighbours out of the way. The real estate agent was sitting on a tatty brown couch, head in his palms. Dressing gown lady was crawling along the hallway outside a closed door, panting like a dog, strings of saliva hanging from her mouth. As I approached the carpet became spongy and wet. I pulled my jumper down over my fingertips and reached for the handle.

  ‘Don’t,’ said the agent.

  But I did.

  The bathroom was covered in blood. Arterial sprays splattered the tiled walls as far up as the ceiling and the air was ripe with a metallic slaughterhouse tang. Tamara floated naked in the overflowing bath, face up on a sea of red. Bloody water bubbled up from the blocked drain hole and lapped at my feet. I saw her wrists had been slit deeply, lengthways, the puckered wounds exposing severed veins and tendons.

  Her dead eyes stared right at me.

  Chapter Four

  Tamara’s funeral was seven days later at a church in Brighton.

  It had been a shit of a week. Questions from St Kilda CIU and interviews with the Homicide Squad, called in whenever a death is suspicious. Tony, Dave and I had to surrender client instructions, surveillance logs, still photos and video. We were about to be re-interviewed when the forensic pathologist in charge of the case ruled suicide. Tamara had taken a whole bunch of Temazepam, then slit her wrists. Her prints were on the packet and blade and no one else had been in the flat. End of story.

  The media wallowed in it like pigs in shit. Poor Little Rich Girl, From Private School to Prostitution. They faked sympathy while revelling in the salacious details. As I crunched through brittle leaves I saw them huddled across the road from the church.

  Cameras, tripods, boom mikes. Not one gave a damn about poor dead Tamara, just the money shot of Veronica and Blaine.

  I slid on sunglasses and turned up the collar of my brown suede coat before entering the gates and hurrying up the steps to the old sandstone church. I’d had my photo in the paper after Chloe’s kidnapping and once was more than enough in an industry where anonymity was your greatest asset.

  Inside the double doors I looked for a place to sit. The pews on the left held family, footballers, entertainment types, journalists scribbling notes and a whole bunch of straight folks all dressed in black. A smattering of sex workers stood out in bold colours and shiny fabric on the right hand side and that’s where I sat down, in the last row next to the aisle for a fast getaway. Four pews in front I noticed a tall woman in a silver lamé dress with matching pillbox hat and veil. When she turned to swig from a half bottle of Wild Turkey I saw it was Lulu, the trannie from the Good Times Club, and she was crying. Rivulets of black mascara ran down her cheeks.

  My throat constricted and I looked away, right to the altar where white flowers draped a glossy mahogany coffin. Jesus. Hot welling joined the tight throat and I was glad of my sunglasses. I hadn’t been to a funeral in a long time. Why had I come to this one?

  I’d tried to work it out during the drive over. There was definitely guilt involved. For not realising she was suicidal. For sitting outside her flat like a stalker while she was in there slicing up her veins. In a small way she reminded me of me but probably the main reason was a selfish one. By coming to the funeral I might get some Oprah style ‘closure’ and stop seeing Tamara’s wide open eyes, burned on my retinas like I’d stared straight into the sun.

  A priest got up and did his thing. ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death’, a hymn and then Blaine Wade approached the lectern looking like he’d just stepped off the pages of GQ: black suit, broad shoulders, sun-kissed hair flopping onto high cheekbones. He cleared his throat and read from a series of index cards, telling the crowd how Emery married Susan and adopted two year old Tamara. That he was born a year later and couldn’t have asked for a better older sister … until…

  ‘She was fourteen when the trouble started. Typical teenage stuff, I guess. Staying out late, sneaking cigarettes, arguing with Mum and Dad. Then came the drinking, and later, the drugs.’ He shuffled cards and his voice cracked. ‘I … I should have reached out to her but I was so into my sport then, training morning and night. When she was sixteen she ran away and moved in with an older friend. Eventually, like so many others, she drifted into prostitution and drugs…’

  God, he made her sound like a smacked out street whore when I suspected it was just handjobs and eccies.

  ‘Although Tamara had fallen by the wayside she deserved our compassion, not our condemnation, and so do all the other girls caught up in that nightmare world. Because if it happened to my sister it can happen to anyone.’ Blaine was crying now, but my eyes were definitely dry. Nightmare world? Puh-leese. Then it got worse.

  ‘Veronica and I refuse to let Tamara’s death be in vain so we’ve set up the Tamara Wade Foundation. A charity to get girls out of the sex industry and off drugs by providing rehabilitation, education and sporting programs to help them reach their true potential and be the best they can be.’ He was smiling now, sad but hopeful. ‘To kickstart the foundation we’ve pitched in twenty thousand of our own money and Veronica has recorded a ballad, “Tamara’s Song”. A dollar from every copy sold will go to the foundation. Veronica, come up here, honey.’

  Veronica walked up to the altar like she was walking onto a stage. She was thinner than she looked on TV and appeared to be composed entirely of different shades of caramel, from her tawny skin to her hair to her eyes. Her flowing black dress managed to be both groovy and virginal and would have left no change from two grand.

  The priest handed her a microphone and sad piano music seeped from hidden speakers. Veronica began to sing, swaying and swishing her hair around, not in a slutty, Christina Aguilera way, but all soulful and churchy.

  The song was shithouse, in the same vein as ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ but with lyrics about broken dolls and street kids.

  When she hit the high notes I feared the stained glass windows would shatter and impale us all with deadly shards. Soon as she stopped warbling the entire left side of the church jumped to their feet and clapped. The sex workers remained seated, arms crossed.

  When the applause finally died down Lulu slurred loudly, ‘Tammy would have hated that. She liked Limp Bizkit.’

  I was leaning against a rough stone wall in the churchyard hiding behind my sunglasses and smoking a cigarette when pallbearers slid the coffin into a waiting hearse. I’d promised myself not to smoke unless I drank but felt sure alcohol was only moments away.

  The sun was doing its typical Melbourne thing, ducking in and out of clouds as mourners spilled down the church steps onto a gravel driveway. Emery, an anaemic blonde who had to be his wife Susan, Blaine and Veronica arranged themselves into a receiving line and people in expensive black ebbed around them, complimenting Veronica on her beautiful voice. A motley band of working ladies, nightclubbers and trannies congregated under an oak tree and sparked up durries, debating the wherea
bouts of the nearest pub.

  From where I stood Susan Wade didn’t look so good: pale and sweaty with eyeballs darting all over the place. I wasn’t surprised when her knees sagged and she lurched against her husband.

  Emery caught her around the waist and nodded towards a short, barrelly guy hanging around the edge of the family. He wore cowboy boots and a curly mullet and the two of them helped Susan into a waiting black Mercedes.

  Soon as they were gone Lulu broke away from the oak tree posse, swigged the last of the Wild Turkey and chucked the empty bottle over her shoulder into a shrub. She weaved her way over to Blaine and Veronica and stood in front of them, swaying on her heels.

  ‘Darlings, so happy to hear about your engagement,’ she said, and spread her arms as though to gather them both in a group hug.

  Blaine blushed, looked down and kicked a small stone.

  Veronica’s gracious smile froze on her face. She looked around for help and the guy with the mullet trotted back from the car on his miniature feet, inserting himself between the celebrities and six foot trannie like an overprotective pitbull. Too short for security, I wondered if he were their publicist, desperate to keep his charges from being photographed next to a chick with a dick. The photographers, sensing trouble, inched into the driveway.

  Lulu kept coming. Mullet guy pushed her back and told Blaine and Veronica to get in the car. The cameras moved like a multi-headed hydra. Flashes, electronic clicks.

  Veronica grabbed Blaine and dragged him towards the Mercedes. Lulu lunged to stop them and mullet shoved her in the chest. She stumbled, recovered and slapped him on the face.

  He roared and charged her in a rugby tackle, grabbing her waist and slamming her onto the gravel where they rolled around punching and grabbing. Everyone froze except the photographers, who crowded around, madly snapping off shots.