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by Ron Elliott

  ‘You were placing bets.’

  ‘What? Oh that. No, we use certain key words to check the frequency modulation. You know, like the roadies do for a band. Check, check. L-l-l-l-l-egs. Leg-gs breaker breaker.’

  ‘You were placing bets on my phone.’ Her eyes were fixed on the phone as if his act of defilement were visible. She started around the bed towards the phone.

  Dave didn’t panic so much as make a split second strategic decision which, in hindsight, proved tactically poor. He grabbed the phone and cradle with both hands and pulled hard, ripping the socket out of the wall and upending the bedside table.

  The woman stood, looking in horror at the wall and then the table and finally at Dave holding her telephone.

  ‘Sorry. I had to do that. For your own protection. Couldn’t risk feedback shock from the digital pulse through an unalloyed signal.’ Dave tried to meet her eyes.

  She raised the mobile telephone that was still in her hand and poked buttons.

  Dave righted the table and set the broken phone back on it. He picked up the book which had fallen.

  She said, ‘Yes, Complaints Department please.’ She stood waiting, looking at him.

  Dave’s pulse quickened. His breathing got faster. His brain clicked into an extra gear. It was the feeling he got when he’d put everything from the whole meet on the last race. The longer the odds, the greater the rush.

  ‘Okay. You’re probably the richest, most powerful woman I’ve ever met. Right now, this very second, I’ve got to tell you, you look like one of the sexiest. And most powerful.’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘I can tell you work too hard. All these phones. All those calls. Work work work. And for what? What about you in all this. You have needs. I can see from these mirrors, the bathroom, these soft, delicate nightclothes – that you’re a sensuous woman.’

  She looked down at her bed, possibly aghast. But maybe, just maybe – not aghast.

  Dave said, ‘Let’s not leave this room wondering all our lives what might have been. Say “no” to the rest of the world. Say, “Yes. Let’s go a bit crazy, and both make wild, passionate love together, right now.”’

  Dave was panting, just a little. He smiled. Knew he had the shy thing going in the smile that women had said made him look like a cute, naughty boy.

  She was looking. She had looked at him and then to the bed, calculating the potential profit/loss perhaps. For that frozen moment, Dave knew, she was starting to think about it.

  Then her mobile, still at her ear, said, ‘Telstra, Complaints.’

  Dave said, ‘What do you say? Want to take a chance?’ He tossed the book on the bed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said to the telephone. ‘I’d like to make a complaint about one of your workers.’

  Dave sighed. Throwing the book on the bed had probably been a touch too much.

  ‘Actually, it’s a large number of complaints that include malicious damage and sexual harassment.’

  She smiled at Dave, her mouth like a paper cut.

  ‘You used to be a lawyer, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘That was the job I came back from.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You were on the phone when I got back from it.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ***

  Dave’s desk abutted Terry’s in their workshop/office area. There was one piece of paper on Dave’s desk and nothing else.

  On Terry’s desk were two computers, two blotters, two staplers, two paper punches and two telephones, one of which was at Terry’s ear.

  ‘Keep the Telstra shares and the Commonwealth, for sure, but I want to get into insurance. Any big company. Right.’

  Dave looked at the paper on his desk, then back up to Terry as Terry put down the phone.

  Dave said, ‘Can I use one of your phones?’

  ‘Nope.’

  Dave looked over his empty desk. ‘My chair?’

  ‘What are you going to sit on?’

  ‘Who says I’m going to lose?’

  ‘You always lose. Ray’s looking for you, by the way.’

  Dave looked down at the piece of paper in the middle of his desk.

  ‘Yeah, well maybe I’ll get my reprimand a bit later.’

  Terry smiled in the smug way he had.

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  Terry smiled and said, ‘Okay. Your chair against one of my phones.’ He took the well-worn deck of cards from his drawer. The cards had once been Dave’s. ‘Why don’t you use your mobile?’

  ‘No credit.’

  Terry shuffled, looking up at Dave. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, mate.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I will, but get it out of your system.’

  ‘You sure you’re not spinning out of control?’

  ‘Is this a roulette wheel image, Terry, or a crashing plane image?’

  Terry put the cards down on the desk, face down. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m thinking of a ferris wheel. More your style. At the fair. Next to the bearded lady.’

  ‘Maybe I like spinning.’ Dave cut the deck, holding up the face card. It was a five, not good when high card wins.

  ‘But the ground is rushing up to slap you on the face.’

  ‘That’s beautiful, Terry. That’s a beautiful turn of phrase. You were at the fair, I could tell and the thing was a ferris wheel and it spun me off, didn’t it?’

  Terry nodded.

  Dave said, ‘Now are you going to cut the fucking cards?’

  Terry cut the deck. Kept his hand face down a moment for dramatic effect, then showed Dave and watched Dave’s face to see, but Dave gave him absolutely nothing, forcing him to look at his three of diamonds.

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  Dave said, ‘My luck’s turning,’ as he dragged one of the phones back onto his desk.

  ‘Watch out for the ground.’

  Smug. Very smug.

  ***

  Dave’s flat was nearly empty. There was one black vinyl armchair, a phone and an answering machine in the living room. Dave believed that message bank was a rip-off. Some racing formguides were scattered across the floor.

  Dave switched on the answering machine, and headed for the kitchen.

  ‘Hi. Dave Kelly. Speak to me nicely.’ Beep.

  In the fridge alcove was an eski. Dave opened the eski and took out a can of beer and a pizza box.

  Kevin came on the answering machine. ‘Um hi, Dave. Um. Sally asked me to call. Um. It’s about your maintenance payments. Um. Sorry mate.’ Kevin lowered his voice and said, ‘You could try Excalibur tonight. I’m riding, and I reckon it’s got the nod.’ Beep.

  Dave sat in the chair with his beer wondering about Kevin pimping his ride so his wife’s ex-husband could make the back maintenance payments.

  There was another call. Mungo. ‘Denmark Prince is still running. Which is extremely bad news, Dave. Come and see me. Now!’ Beep. Click. Whirr.

  ***

  Trish Fong ran a thriving Cash Converters franchise very close to Dave’s house. Trish said it had picked up considerably during the two-speed economy era of rampant mining profits for some and soaring unmanageable prices for everyone else.

  Dave took his eski into the shop.

  ‘Dave. What you doing here so late?’

  ‘Missing the home comforts.’

  There was a couch and another armchair that matched the one in Dave’s lounge room. There were other bits of furniture that would probably kit out Dave’s flat rather nicely, including a newish refrigerator.

  ‘I had to shift your TV, Dave. Sorry.’

  Dave shrugged, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the diamond bracelet.

  Trish jumped back from it with a squeal, ‘Agggeee.’

  Dave twirled the thing, making the diamonds flicker.

  Trish came forward. ‘Dave. This is no good.’

  ‘Thought you’d be interested.’

  ‘A present? For my daughter?’

  ‘Trish, you never
let me near her. No, I mean business. Big sentimental value mind. My dear grandmother’s. But I need to sell it. For her operation.’

  Trish didn’t smile. She was looking at the bracelet like it was a blue-ringed octopus. ‘Are you crazy? With agreements and police checks and waiting periods, unless you’ve got an actual sales docket, and twenty years worth of provenance and chain of custody. And a stat dec – even with all that this’ll take about four weeks to clear.’

  Dave shrugged, returning the bracelet to his pocket. He picked up the eski from the floor and took out his passport and his telephone answering machine.

  ‘I’m not buying your passport.’

  ‘I could Chinese up the photo.’

  Trish shook her head. She pointed at the answering machine. ‘Nobody uses those things anymore. It’s all on your mobile.’

  Dave looked glum.

  Trish sucked her front tooth as she did and then said, ‘I’ll give you ten for the eski and the thing.’ She meant the answering machine.

  ***

  Dave came out of Trish’s Cash Converters and was punched in the nose.

  He fell back to find himself sitting on the pavement looking up at Mungo’s enforcers. Daryl was smiling. But Tiny, who wasn’t, looked concerned.

  Dave touched his nose experimentally. ‘I was coming to see you guys.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ said Daryl. ‘And here we are.’

  Dave looked at his fingers and saw there was no blood. ‘Are you losing your touch, Tiny? It’s not broken. I’m not even bleeding.’

  Tiny said, ‘Yeah, I pulled it a bit, Dave.’ Tiny demonstrated his gentler punch in the air above Dave’s head.

  ‘Thanks, mate. I appreciate that.’

  Tiny nodded.

  ‘When you two girls have finished catching up, Mungo says you’re to give us $20,000.’

  ‘Quite right,’ nodded Dave, remaining down on the pavement.

  Daryl said, ‘It’s broken legs time. On account.’

  ‘That’s fair.’

  Dave reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the diamond bracelet, holding it up towards them like garlic to vampires. Or was that raw meat to wolves?

  Daryl took it and stepped close to the light of the shop window where he pretended to have jeweller skills. Finally, he said, ‘Twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  ‘Done.’

  Daryl started walking towards a dark Lancer, but Tiny shuffled forward and bent down. ‘You didn’t steal it, did you Dave?’

  Dave didn’t want to lie to Tiny. He liked him. He nodded.

  Tiny said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve always respected you, Dave.’

  ‘Thanks, Tiny.’

  ‘But now I don’t.’

  ***

  Dave stood near the monitor in the sparsely populated TAB listening to Kevin’s race. The buzz had been mild as he’d placed the bet. True, it was his last ten dollars, but it was only ten. A bald punter stood in a corner, red, sweating and grunting, as if he were in the middle of a solo sexual act. Dave waited for his own rush of anticipation or adrenaline or dread. He waited as the race neared the end. Another punter, a lady in very stretched trackie daks, looked like she might cry. Dave took his ticket to the window, feeling nothing.

  Geraldine fed it in. She brightened. ‘Good call, Dave. Nice odds.’

  ‘Winners are grinners, Geraldine.’

  She started counting out money. Hundred dollar bills.

  ‘Let’s put it all on the next, eh?’

  ***

  Dave sat in the visitor’s seat across the desk from his supervisor. Ray raised his finger like a conductor about to start the orchestra up. Looking at Dave he moved the finger over to the mini-recorder on the desk between them and pressed the record button.

  ‘I am giving you a verbal warning concerning dissatisfaction with your performance. Do you acknowledge you understand this?’

  Dave leaned forward and talked into the recorder as slowly as Ray had. ‘Yes, Raymond Beam, I, David Kelly, understand your verbal.’

  ‘This is the third verbal warning of poor performance.’

  ‘Yes, three.’

  ‘Have you received written material concerning your rights and the nature of your performance management?’

  ‘Yes. Received and read.’

  ‘Is there anything you do not understand about these verbal warnings concerning poor performance?’

  ‘I, David Orlando Kelly, understand, Raymond Beam. What’s your middle name, Ray?’

  Ray pressed stop. ‘When you get back from up north, I’ll have something in writing.’

  ‘North?’

  ‘Yeah, Dave. As far away from other humans as we can find. Middle of nowhere. You can pick up a van in Port Hedland. Now fuck off.’

  ‘Ah, so he’d turned the recorder off by then?’

  ‘Ray is less polite when he’s not “on”.’

  ‘You do have a way with authority figures.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It has been a shitty week.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve called you. You’re not still up north are you?’

  ‘I’m coming to that.’

  ‘It’s not nowhere, Ken,’ said Dave to the dead man. Dave had covered him up with a jacket. He’d found his wallet and was looking at Ken’s driver’s licence.

  The driver’s phone started ringing again. The ringtone was ‘Journey’. Dave tracked it to an Iridium 9555 lying in the dirt behind the jeep. He’d always thought ‘Journey’ should have been called ‘Marrakesh’ or ‘Kasbah’. Something Middle Eastern. ‘Hash Salesman’ would have worked.

  He buttoned on the phone and a Scotsman started yelling, ‘Aboot bloody time. I don’t like being messed aboot, Ken, and ye’re messing me aboot. I’ve set things up fir Perth. Yir ticket and travelling money are at airport. Getting t’stones through is up tae ye.’

  ‘Um,’ said Dave, when there was a gap. ‘Bit of bad news on that.’

  ‘Don’t ye start haggling wi’ me, laddie. Twenty thousand. Do it or I’ll huv bad news for ye,’ yelled the Scotsman. ‘Doon’t fook me aboot.’ Click.

  The aluminium case flashed in the sun again like a wink. It was the kind used by geologists to carry samples. Dave opened the case. Inside were small brown and white rocks. They didn’t look so much like stones as bits of muesli. One of the bits of muesli sparkled.

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘Diamonds, Terry.’

  ‘Diamonds!’

  ‘Diamonds.’

  ‘Cos you were working a mere two hundred kilometres from Argyle? Dave, you are so full of it.’

  ‘Am not.’

  ‘You can barely fix a fucking phone. How come you know you’ve got a case of diamonds?’

  Dave left the scene of the accident and he flew back to Perth. When he opened the aluminium case at the Cash Converters, Trish Fong leapt back and screamed like a fifty year old Chinese-Australian woman jumping into the cold surf.

  When she recovered she said, ‘Have you suddenly got a direct line into the diamond industry?’

  ‘Things are starting to fall my way.’

  Trish took a metal pen and used it to turn a couple of the rocks. ‘Diamonds, but uncut. They look industrial.’

  ‘Industrial?’

  ‘Not for jewellery. For making cutting tools and drills and shit.’ She shrugged.

  ‘So worth anything? Curio value?’

  ‘Are you crazy? Ever hear of Triads? Tongs? These have got to be hot. You heard of the Spider Boys? Africans. There’s Africans here, you know. Everywhere you look. Are these blood diamonds?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re blood diamonds. I was working up north a few hundred K away from the Argyle Diamond Mine.’

  ‘And you thought you’d dig in the ground, huh? They aren’t very pink.’

  ‘Pink?’

  ‘They have these pink diamonds. No. No good. You’re trying to get me killed. No more diamonds please, Dave.
’ She nudged the case closed using her elbow. ‘Household goods and electronics.’

  ‘You already have most of my household goods, Trish.’

  ‘I’ll give you twenty for the case.’

  ***

  Dave stood near the check-in of the Perth International Airport counting the money in the envelope for the third time. One thousand English pounds.

  Dave had shown Ken’s driver’s licence at a pick-up counter in the airport, deciding the photo on that looked a little more like him than the one in Ken’s passport. They gave him a manila envelope. Inside was an airline ticket to Amsterdam and an address. A typed note said Go by the name of Angus MacFergus, rest of payment COD. There was a smaller envelope containing the money.

  Dave was calculating how many Aussie dollars that would be and how quickly he could build that stake into a dream run at the track when a couple of businessmen hovered a little too close and he felt he should not flash his roll. That was when Terry phoned.

  Terry said, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Mate. Um, trying not to spin out of control.’

  ‘Well, I think you’re seconds from impact.’

  ‘You’re such a pessimist, Terry.’

  ‘That solar panel you were supposed to fix. You didn’t. And there are certain enquiries from the cops up north that you might be the person leaving the scene of an accident.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And they’d like to ask you if you took any personal effects, like money and identification, from the deceased.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Daryl and Mungo have been calling the office.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And more police down here in Perth would also like to talk to you as a person of interest.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that about?’

  ‘A missing diamond bracelet.’

  ‘Is that everything, Terry?’

  ‘I think that brings us both up to date with the events of this week. Maybe you should head for Darwin.’

  Dave looked past hundreds of waiting or wandering passengers to a beautiful woman standing near the newsagent’s. She smiled at him.

  Terry said, ‘So, what are you gunna do?’

  ‘I think I’m going to keep spinning, Terry. But not to the ground. I’m going to spin faster and faster and go up – like a helicopter.’