by Zane Lovitt
‘This will take two seconds. Nothing special. Taxable income, reduction claims.’
‘Absolutely, John. I can’t think of any reason why I wouldn’t do that for you.’
There’s a silence.
‘You should be flattered, Leo. You’re the private investigator the other private investigators come to for help.’
‘Oh, John, I’m touched. I’m deeply touched. And I will do this for you because I know you would do the same for me. It has nothing to do with the fact that you might otherwise alert certain authorities to the access I have to certain databases. I would never dream that you would dob me in, John, or threaten to in order that I might provide you with access to those very same databases.’
‘If you’re not going to do it, Leo, just say the words—’
‘Of course I will, John. Of course I will do this for you. What name?’
‘Benjamin Waltraub. W-A-L-T-R-A-U-B.’
The sound of Leo’s treefingers typing. I’ve seen his office just once: everything in there seems miniature compared to his elongated frame. He hunches over his keyboard like a daddy long legs wrapping up a fly.
‘Benjamin Waltraub. Total income for last financial year, fifty-seven thousand. No capital gains tax. No reductions. No shares. No bonds. No directorships. Nothing depreciating. Total assets, less than five thousand dollars.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That is everything, John.’
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘No trouble, John. No trouble at all. Oh, and John?’
‘Yeah?’
‘How are you travelling without the lovely Annie? That must have been such a blow. Did I hear that she’s engaged again?’
Now is when I hang up the phone.
But Leo’s just shovelling snow. Annie and I only ended last year and I’m still finding strands of brown hair on my couch: it’s too soon for her to be engaged again from scratch. Even if she wanted to be she wouldn’t do it because that’s Annie. I ought to call Leo back with a choice insult. Instead I choose not to think about it.
I call Phil on his mobile, don’t have to pretend I’m a florist. He agrees for me to come and visit him at work. As I scoff the last of the noodles, I’m thinking I would love for Phil Haynes to be impressed because I’ve got him such a clean result in less than a day. But these are pictures of his son-in-law getting bent over a couch by a local socialite, so that’s not what I’m expecting when I arrive at the Avis Car Rentals outlet in Caulfield.
‘Crikey jeepers…’ Phil says, looking through the photos, nodding his comprehension. ‘Mate, I reckon you’re worth more than two-fifty a day.’ And he holds my eyes, his own gleaming.
So he’s impressed.
The office is tiny and windowless, dark and littered with piles of folded paper. It’s the office of a manager who never means to spend a lot of time in here, would rather be out renting or upgrading or test driving. But one thing leads to another and here he always is, managing.
Phil keeps looking through the pictures, squinting so as to filter out the explicit parts.
I say, ‘Technically what I did was trespass. Which shouldn’t be a problem, but you need to know that these kinds of pictures aren’t any good in the Family Court. When you show them to Jessica, you need to be clear that they won’t be leverage in any kind of settlement…If she wants to go that way.’
Phil shrugs. What matters is he was right and he can prove it. After a few more moments of sifting through the pictures, murmuring ‘crikey’ and ‘geez’, he asks me, ‘Who is this bloke?’
‘Charles Daschle. Heard of him?’
He shakes his head.
‘High society. Unmarried. Owns a lot of stuff.’
‘Poor Jessie,’ Phil says. ‘She’s bloody going to hate me for this. She’s going to say I’m trying to wreck her marriage. And it’s funny… but she’s kind of right about that.’
‘I know I asked you already, but she’s never mentioned any trouble with Ben? Never said she had an inkling that something might be going on?’
‘Mate, they’ve got the happiest bloody marriage I’ve ever seen. Until now, she always thought I was the problem.’ He slips the photos back into their envelope. ‘Well, I suppose you want your money. How’s three hundred sound?’
‘It sounds fine.’
He starts to search his desk.
‘I got a chequebook somewhere about…I just saw it…’
He rifles, growing flustered, his exasperation partly fuelled by what I’d guess is embarrassment about the state of the place. Being near a light switch, I flick it on. Phil looks at his watch.
‘I’m heading off to see Jessie.’ He peeks under a pile of manila folders. Then he stops, thinks, goes over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. He opens a drawer and pulls out a whisky bottle, half empty, holds it up.
‘You want one?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Just a toast. To celebrate a job well done.’
‘I don’t really drink.’
He finds a glass and pours a shot, downs it. He’s not celebrating. He’s steeling himself.
‘Look, the thing is…’ He peers into the glass. ‘Can you come?’
‘With you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘If you want.’
‘Bit of moral support.’ He waves a hand at the envelope. ‘I don’t know about this otherwise…’
I point to the chequebook. It sits on a pile of invoices skewered on a metal pin.
‘Bring that along,’ I say. ‘You can pay me when we’re done.’
Phil picks it up. He picks up the photos too.
‘I mean…’ he says, pulling on a jacket. ‘When she sees them, she’ll think it’s more legit if you’re there, right? Isn’t that what people usually think?’
‘Sometimes. Sometimes they think this is what I do for kicks and try to make it about me.’
‘No…’ Phil zips up the jacket. ‘Jessica’s stubborn and she can be hard to control, but she won’t have a go at you. I expect she’ll be too upset to even notice you’re there.’
‘Get the fuck out of my house!’ Jessica screeches, rising to her feet. And I would if she weren’t standing between me and the door. Phil has one hand in the air, placating, but when he tries to speak, she speaks louder. To me.
‘Photographing people fucking! You don’t even know Ben. You don’t even know him. Hey! Are you even listening to me?’
It’s my inability to answer that brings on critical mass. From the coffee table she picks up a ceramic candle holder and aims for my face. But her eyes are so full of tears it doesn’t hit its mark, instead it strikes a photo of her and Ben mounted in the corridor. The photo falls to the carpet, cracked.
At the irony, nobody laughs.
The second candle holder is more carefully aimed. My hands go up but somehow the missile makes it through and a sharp edge hits my face and sends me knees-first to the floor.
Phil shouts, ‘Jessie,’ and before she can throw anything else he’s on his feet and wrenching back on her arms.
‘Sweetheart!’
He keeps on speaking but it’s drowned out by her last echoing declaration—‘Oh fuck off, Dad!’—as she pulls herself free and bolts into the hallway.
With a slam of the bedroom door, there’s quiet.
Phil helps me to my feet and I can feel his heartbeat through his fingers. A lazy drip of blood comes from my nose. I wipe it away.
‘Sorry about that, mate…’ Phil says, smiling awkwardly. ‘It’s a shock for her, you know?’
I don’t know if that’s true. But if I told him what I really thought, he’d only think it was sarcasm.
We pull up outside a red-brick terrace in Balaclava, near the station. The street has an old-fashioned milk bar and around a million flyers taped to telephone poles: live music, political events, movies; trendsetters have colonised this part of town. The Waltraub house itself has no front gate or yard, the front wall simply rises straight
up from the footpath. It has a newly painted door and a window with bars across it. The bars are freshly painted too.
I ask Phil, ‘How long have they lived here?’
‘Reckon about a month. They only rent it. I’m always telling Jessie they should buy. Christ knows they can afford to. But I guess it’s good they didn’t…if she decides to leave him.’
He rings the doorbell. The pictures are in a folder under his arm. He says, ‘Oh Jesus,’ staring at the door. ‘This won’t be fun.’
The door opens and there’s Jessica, wearing old tracksuit pants and a jumper-cum-apron. She’s carrying an empty cardboard box that swings up to her hip when she plants her fist there.
‘Hey, Dad.’ She’s already, very subtly, backing away. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Hi sweetie. How are you?’
‘I’m okay.’ She smiles nervously, sensing the drama in the air. ‘What’s going on?’
Phil says, ‘This is John Dorn. He’s a private inquiry agent. I’ve hired him.’
‘What for?’
‘Can we come in?’
‘You’ve been drinking, Dad. I can smell it. What’s this about?’
‘Let’s come in and sit down, love.’
He gently pushes inside and she lets him through and I follow into a bare corridor of stained floorboards. The bedroom to the left is vacant but for a small mountain of empty cardboard boxes spilling out to the hall.
I look at them and she says, ‘We just moved in.’
I nod, smile as pleasantly as I can. Into the pile Jessica throws the box she carried to the door. It’s decorated with an elaborate Allingirra Drop insignia. All the boxes are.
‘That’s a lot of wine.’ I say, pointing goofily.
‘Yes,’ she laughs drily. ‘Don’t worry, my husband and I didn’t drink it all.’
‘What did you do with the rest?’ I ask, still smiling. Phil’s eyes widen at me. He wants us to get to the living room, get on with it.
‘Oh, you know…’ says Jessica, wistful. ‘Gifts…That sort of thing. We gave you a bottle for your birthday, didn’t we, Dad?’
He nods as though he’s only pretending to remember. ‘Yes,’ he says, and keeps moving down the hall.
I say, ‘Do you know Charles Daschle then?’
Phil stops, turns and stares at me. He can’t understand why I’d be so indelicate.
Jessica says, ‘Who?’
And she shakes her head, and she turns and leads her father towards the living room. And the whole thing blooms inside my brain, like it must be blooming inside hers. The actuality of it paralyses me for a moment.
Maybe I should pull Phil out of here, tell him what I think is going on before this big confrontation happens. Perhaps the kindest thing to do would be to prepare him for what he might be about to find out. But then there’s a sad curiosity that leads me headfirst down the hallway. I want to see what she does.
Back on the footpath I’m wrapping my coat tighter around me and getting ready to ask for my cheque. Phil leaves the front door ajar and comes to me with his eyebrows raised, a mild smirk on his lips, like we just came out of a movie that had more sex in it than we’d expected.
‘Hell hath no fury, don’t you reckon?’
Because he says this I put my hand to my nose, but it’s stopped bleeding.
I ask, ‘How often does she get like that?’
‘Like that? Hardly ever, mate. I mean, she can be difficult. But I never seen her act out like that.’ He shakes his head, reaches into his pocket and pulls out the chequebook. ‘Guess you can’t blame her for taking it bad.’
‘Did anything seem strange? I mean…did she seem strange to you?’
Phil opens the chequebook and stops to look at me and there’s a voice in my head that’s telling me I should get the money before I start breaking things down. But there’s a louder voice that says to do this now.
‘Of course she acted strange. She just found out her husband’s a poof.’
‘I mean strange even for that.’
He shakes his head, impatient. ‘What?’
‘Think about it. Jessica would have to know where all this stuff is coming from. The wine, the furniture, the car. Have you seen Ben’s car?’
Phil blinks. ‘Ben paid for it…’
‘He couldn’t have. I looked him up, Phil. Ben makes fifty-seven thousand a year. He makes less than you. His family doesn’t have money. He’s just a civil servant.’
‘That’s bullshit. His family’s loaded.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Jessie told me…’
I pause, lead into this as gently as I can. ‘I think she told you that because she doesn’t want you to know where the money’s really coming from.’
Phil’s eyes bug out, but I don’t give him time to think.
‘Why did she look at the pictures that way? Analysing them one at a time. She was buying time, figuring out what to do.’
This is me trying to think of all those clues I missed.
‘Charles Daschle owns Allingirra Drop. You saw the boxes. And if Ben is so wealthy, how come they’re still renting? Why don’t they have a mortgage?’
Phil points absently to the house. ‘Wait…You’re saying that was…what happened in there was…’
‘She didn’t have a choice, the two of us showing up the way we did. We cornered her.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you? What kind of bloody dragon do you think she is? For one thing, Jessie’s not going to stay with a bloke who’s a bloody homo…’
‘Maybe he’s not gay. Not the way you think. Maybe he and Jessica have a great marriage. You said yourself they’re mad for each other. But they’re broke. She doesn’t work, he’s in the arts. Then one day Ben meets Daschle at a fundraiser for the mayor and a pretty sweet opportunity presents itself.’
‘No…’
‘If Ben is gay then what’s he doing married to Jessie? Why keep living a lie? He works at the St Kilda Town Hall, half the staff there must be gay. He doesn’t need to pretend he isn’t. Unless he actually isn’t.’
‘What are you trying to do?’ He asks softly, eyes watery with confusion, hands trembling. His denial seems to be happening all over his body.
‘I’ll bet you Daschle owns this house. I bet Jessica and Ben live here rent-free. I bet there isn’t even a bond lodged with the Bond Authority. And I know a bloke who can find out for us. He’ll probably cost a couple of hundred and God knows he can be hard to work with, but—’
‘Fuck that,’ Phil says, his voice so soft and fierce. ‘I don’t reckon you realise what you’re saying. Do you realise what you’re saying about Jessie?’
He takes two steps towards me, stops. He’s shaking. Something in his face has changed. His eyes flicker left and right and I know he’s weighing up whether to hit me.
He says, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’
I don’t have an answer for him. I make a deal with myself that if he strikes me I’ll go down and stay down until he’s gone. His eyebrows twitch and I can tell that the gentlest summer breeze will be enough to blow him over the edge. I stay frozen. My eyebrows are twitching too.
He turns to the car and lays the chequebook on the roof, writing hurriedly, barely legibly. ‘Maybe you think you’re smart, but that kind of thing…I reject that.’
‘No, look—’
‘Jessie was right about you,’ he says.
‘Listen—’
‘Shut up.’ Staring hard, daring me to say more. ‘You are disgusting.’
Then he tears out the cheque, gives it to me. Exactly two hundred and fifty dollars.
Phil lingers a moment, full of a pained energy, glowering at me like he’s trying to think of something else to reject. I’ve got nothing more to say. Really, he’s right. Maybe he should have hired a ‘private investigator’, not some half-arsed ‘private inquiry agent’. Maybe that’s what he’s thinking as he goes back into the house.
He closes the front door.
<
br /> I bury my hands in my jacket pockets and hike back towards Dandenong Road, brooding on it. Ben Waltraub seems to have accidentally carried over his desire to ‘challenge modern perceptions of love, sex and relationships’ into his adult life. The student in him would have loved to see Phil’s reaction: the confusion, the internal panic. The world goes and changes on men like Phil Haynes, and telling them so doesn’t do any good.
Even after the divorce, after my mother had thrown him out, my father would still let himself in and set down his bags and ask, entirely serious, what was for dinner. It got so that my mum had code words arranged with the neighbours that would prompt them to call the police.
On the corner of Inkerman Street and Dandenong Road there’s a tram stopped at the lights and I break into a run. Just as I reach it the driver looks at me, looks through me, closes the tram doors and moves off. I’m left here, hugging my jacket tight because summer is over.
Since forever, people only see what they want to see.
Which makes this an ordinary job after all.
KAHRAMAN
I’M AWAKE BY the time anyone comes to my office. It’s a boy and his mother, both diffident, both Mediterranean. She wears a cream and black hijab, floral silk flowing out from beneath the headdress. He walks with his arms straight down his sides. If they rang first I didn’t hear the phone because of the ringing in my ears. I suppose I should be embarrassed by the state I’m in, but I’ve been to the toilet to vomit already, so at least that won’t happen while they’re here. Probably.
I ask them to sit and they do. Hunched over my desk and grimacing, I wonder if I smell as bad as I feel.
‘We read about you in the paper this morning,’ the boy says. He’s barely old enough to drive, with shiny hardened hair and a smile like my fly’s undone. ‘It was all about that Turkish bloke who got killed. We read about you, what you did.’
I glance across at his mother. She doesn’t seem to be put off by my bloodshot eyes.
The boy says, ‘My family’s Turkish. I mean, we’re Muslims. Not like that other bloke. My parents came over from Ankara.’
My head gets suddenly too heavy and I let it fall into my hand. I wait for him to get to the point.
