by Zane Lovitt
Frank says, ‘Because people don’t usually sleep with their eyes open…’
Regander, the telephone pole, he’s stooped over the couch, peering down at Angela. He doesn’t know I’m watching. He stares at the girl, takes a step towards her, keeps staring. There’s no way this is his first real-world corpse. Maybe the pretty ones get to him, too.
Frank says, ‘I suppose I have more faith in people than you do, Detective.’
Regander would keep on staring, I suppose, if he weren’t snapped out of it by Carney, who turns now to face the room and hollers, ‘Okay. Singh, Regander, Tan, do the house. Johan, Miller, the grounds. Get a move on.’
As soon as our numbers thin, the paramedics return and heave Angela onto a stretcher. One of them pulls a blue sheet over her face and they wheel her out. Frank examines his couch and appears satisfied that it’s back to normal, no stains or scuff marks. He fluffs the cushions while Carney talks to him.
Frank replies, ‘It rests squarely with her, Detective. Squarely with her.’
Nancy surveys the living room and yawns.
Trevor sees her and catches the yawn, shrugging with his mouth agape at the officer who gestures to him with the notebook, asking him another question.
I step into the hallway.
The house opens into several bedrooms, an equal number of bathrooms and another deck where you could watch all the bikinis you wanted with the telescope that’s propped against the rail. The Spanishness of the place doesn’t let up—the doorways are all curved, the walls are a messy white stucco and there are ceiling fans everywhere. Some rooms have more than one.
A smear of grease is just visible on the door to the study and I’m looking at it when Regander emerges from a bathroom at the end of the hall. His palpable decision is to ignore me as he enters the study, even as I follow him in and close the door.
He continues to ignore me as he starts through the drawers of a stained oak writing desk. Behind it is a series of windows with a view out to the garden and to its left is a wall of coloured file folders, every make and shade, rising from floor to ceiling. Frank’s life in documents.
Once I’ve taken in the sheer tonnage of paper, I say to Regander, ‘So you know Cindy?’
Regander doesn’t look up. Doesn’t react at all.
‘Constable?’
‘What?’
‘You met Cindy before?’
Still he doesn’t look up. He sifts through the desk drawers, chewing his bottom lip with that massive policeman’s jaw.
‘Nope. No. I don’t know her.’
‘You recognised her when you saw her.’
‘Whatever you say, sunshine.’
I nod. The policeman keeps rifling.
But then the silence gets too much for me and I say, ‘You didn’t recognise her real name, Angela Curzon, when I said it outside on the porch. You wouldn’t have been so surprised to see her if you knew her as Angela. So I’m pretty sure you don’t know her from an arrest.’
Without looking at me, Regander claws at the back of his neck, scratching an itch there.
I say, ‘You knew her by her working name. Cindy.’
‘That right?’ he says.
‘That’s right. Just then when I asked if you’d met Cindy, you knew I was talking about the dead girl. How did you know that?’
Regander smirks but keeps his eyes on what he’s doing. He opens a tin of thumbtacks and examines them closely.
‘I didn’t know who you were talking about. I just wanted you to piss off.’
‘I don’t think so. I think you know her working name because you know her the way a client knows her.’
He doesn’t react. Instead he replaces the thumbtacks, keeps scratching his neck.
I say, ‘But it seems to me that she’s out of your price range. A thousand dollars a night? My guess is she was a pay-off. From Executive Pleasure to you. They comped you because you did them a favour. What was it? A client acting up? One of the girls mistreated? A quick round of we-don’t-want-any-trouble-officer and you were on your way, am I right?’
‘Piss off.’
‘You don’t have to tell me. Your service log will show any visits to Executive Pleasure. Or do you think I can’t get access to those?’
He’s forgotten to stop scratching at his neck and I can see the edge of a red blotch that’s formed back there. The steady smirk has become a grimace. His eyes search the room, finally rest on me.
‘You making a threat?’ he grunts.
‘No.’
‘If you want to make threats, I can get you kicked out of here. I can, you know. I don’t give a shit who you are—’
‘Don’t get tough. Let’s drop it.’
He nods deliberately. Triumphant. In the last of the drawers he finds nothing, moves on to the mantel of tourist ornaments behind him.
I swivel to address the wall of folders, squinting. I can’t believe there’s a system to this nightmare. On the edge of the third shelf down I spot another greasy smear of sunscreen. I look close.
It’s slotted in there, innocuous and almost completely hidden. Frank’s needle-in-the-haystack approach.
I say, ‘Can you see the tip of a red folder just here along this shelf?’
Regander doesn’t answer. I wait. He doesn’t look back.
I say, ‘This is important. You’ll want to see this.’
Regander forces a smile, tries to seem casual, looks up with those young eyes. I point again.
‘The red folder there. You see it?’
‘Yeah.’
I say, ‘Pull it out.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are going to want to take it with you.’
‘Why don’t you pull it out?’
‘I don’t want to get my prints on it.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Piss off.’
‘Look, I could open it and read it and I still wouldn’t know what it is. It’s in tax language. You may not know Frank, but the tax office does. And they’d do more than just shout you a beer if you were the man who seized this particular red folder during a homicide investigation, only to discover that it was a fraudulent licence application or a dodgy insurance claim.’
His face is confused. ‘Why don’t you take it?’
‘If I do, it’s theft. If you do, it’s in the throes of a perfectly legal criminal investigation.’
‘I don’t get it…You’re trying to screw your own client?’
‘He’s not my client. My client is a man who gets paid the most when Tenant’s in the most trouble. You’ve got to take it out of here under your jacket, because you don’t want the fuss you’ll kick up if Frank sees you with it. Later on you say there were some crystals on it you thought might be cocaine, turned out to be baking soda…But you’re a cop, I don’t need to tell you how to manufacture evidence. Meanwhile, your cunning as a criminal investigator led you to question the contents of the folder and send it to the ATO. Open and shut.’
‘Not interested.’
‘Then I’ll have to refer you to the earlier part of this conversation.’
‘What?’
‘If you don’t do it, or if you do it wrong or associate my name with it, I’ll offer my services to your wife. I’m sure she’ll be interested to know what kind of business relationship you had with Cindy. And she’ll pay me with your money, understand?’
Regander doesn’t say anything. Looks at the red folder.
I say, ‘The alternative is to enjoy with her the half-price movie vouchers the commissioner will send you when you bring down Frank Tenant. It’s up to you.’
Regander scowls, shakes his head. But at least we’ve connected. I thought maybe I’d have to go through this whole spiel with him still searching the desk.
He says, ‘That could get me sacked.’ ‘So don’t let it.’
I stare at him, try to think of another good point to make. I can’t think of one, so I leave the study.
I set myself on the stool by the front door and Frank sees me. He nods, victorious. I ape it back to him.
Nancy is in her big armchair, the sunglasses back on her face. She is turned mournfully to the french doors, watching the ocean, the ennui turned up to eleven. I wish she could have seen what I just did.
When Regander comes out I can’t tell if he’s got the folder under his jacket. But he makes straight for the door and as he passes he gives me the same kind of nod Frank did, gets nothing in return.
Pretty soon I’m going to have to think of a way to explain to Frank and Trevor why the folder isn’t there. Something convincing that will keep Demetri retained. But I’m not going to think about that for another few seconds. I’m going to rest on this stool for a moment.
I didn’t have much doubt that Regander would take it. His instinct is to save himself, and cops make decisions on instinct. I’m the opposite. I can stare at the ceiling in my office and overthink what to have for dinner.
Not that I thought hard about this.
It’s something I’ve been doing lately: Comedy Johnson, Rodney Fisher. I can’t seem to find a client I want to help. I can’t seem to find a client I don’t want to undermine. What’s funny is, my big failure, the one at the Pioneer Hotel, the one I’ll be almost-famous for forever, that’s still a couple of weeks away. And when that all unfolds, I won’t be undermining anybody. Not even myself. I’ll just be trying to do my job.
THE CRYBABY TECHNIQUE
WHAT I’M DOING in the lobby of the Pioneer Hotel is waiting for a guaranteed no-show. A martini and a few hands of blackjack must be the last things on Billy Benedict’s mind. But here I am anyway.
Waiting.
The lobby is like a well-lit aeroplane hangar where a rich man stores all his good couches. I’m sitting in one of them now, facing the entrance, waiting for a security guard to question me or nudge me with a nightstick. There are dozens of these uniforms hovering confidently around the entrance, more than you’d normally see in a hotel like this, and something’s got them frisking and wanding everyone who comes in. Suitcases pass through metal detectors, handbags are opened and rifled. The front wall of the building is a window, tinted and big like God’s sunglasses, and beyond it are more security officers peering into the taxis and limos that motor along the driveway and brake to a smooth professional stop. These guards carry mirrors on broom handles they use to see if something’s attached to the vehicle’s undercarriage, like a bomb or a machine gun, I guess. No one’s panicked, it’s business as usual, but a sunny afternoon at the Pioneer surely can’t always be like this.
Patrons get searched at the entrance, giggle about it, come in, look up and gawk at the sheer size of the hotel lobby. At one end is an open-plan piano bar the size of an ordinary city block. It’s so far away I can’t hear the piano, but I can see the stick figure in the tuxedo running his fingers along the keys. At this end is me, and behind me the walkway to the casino. I’ve chosen this couch because of that—no one gets into the hotel, or from the hotel into the casino, without me seeing.
The man I’m waiting for, the one who isn’t coming, he likes casinos.
Billy Benedict was a financial planner in Sydney, handling hundreds of small-time investors, four point three million of whose dollars he vaporised at plush casinos like the Pioneer. This was over the three years when the gambling got really bad, and it meant the total life savings of several dozen families, as well as most of the life savings of about a hundred more.
His method was to poach the small-timers from his colleagues at ANR, who were more than happy to hand over the low-commission accounts and never bothered to ask what good they were to Billy. He skimmed a little off each at a time, juggling money from one to the next, pleading uncertainty in the market when anyone asked why their nest egg was getting smaller. According to the papers, he got the royal treatment at casinos in Brisbane and Sydney: drinks, canapés, naked croupiers, whatever. How that made him feel might have been more of an addiction than the gambling; either way it cost the same. Sometimes, when Billy had a big win, he’d pour a few dollars back into the accounts he’d fleeced.
Most of the time, Billy didn’t have a big win.
So he got creative. He recycled receipts and analysis certificates, drew up fake stock charts, even forged trading tickets on his home PC. With the kinds of methods available to a crafty accountant, I’m surprised it took them only three years to catch him.
It was a group effort featuring the Casino Squad, the Fraud Squad, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, even the Stock Exchange had a hand in it. Everybody loves a bad guy like Billy Benedict. He’s the lone gunman of financial impropriety—purge him and you can claim to have purged everything that’s wrong, so then you don’t have to wonder if the problem goes deeper, if deregulation and corporate cults and the free-market mantras might all be tricking mum-and-dad investors into believing the playing field is actually level. The New South Wales Minister for Finance held a press conference and said the defalcations of Benedict shouldn’t be allowed to reflect badly on the industry as a whole. He said we should all sleep better knowing he’s behind bars.
Not that he ever got there. Benedict was released on bail and for ten months now he’s been saturating the news. His lawyers had him sign a self-exclusion agreement with the Mercury Casino in Queensland, to shore up evidence of his gambling addiction and maybe win some clemency from the sentencing judge. I don’t know why anyone would need more evidence that he’s a gambling addict.
Most of the investors got their money back through ANR’s guaranteed account. But all the attention must have cost ANR more than just money, so they’ve been lobbying for Benedict to be prosecuted to the full extent of every available law. Nothing was going to save their reputation, the newspapers said, but the total destruction of William Benedict.
Today it’s in the papers that the trial begins in a fortnight.
What isn’t in the papers is that William Benedict has vanished.
The firm who called me, Linehan and Tillman, the ones representing Benedict, they said he went out for breakfast this morning, came home, quickly packed some things and, as far as they could tell, jumped off the face of the earth. Now they’ve got two days before he’s due to show up at his local police station, which he has to do every few days, which is one of his bail conditions. Meantime, if the police or the court or worst of all the press get hold of the fact that Benedict has disappeared and not even his lawyers know where he is, then Linehan and Tillman’s case, especially the not guilty part, is dead in the egg. Absconding is taken, rightly or wrongly, to be evidence of guilt. Not to mention a default on the bail money. Which, in Benedict’s case, was exactly one million dollars.
I asked Terry Linehan, when he called me, who posted Benedict’s bail. At first he wouldn’t say. Through a subtle use of tone he implied that it was none of my business.
The job, Linehan said, was to wait at the Pioneer Hotel here in Melbourne, on the off chance Benedict shows up. They’ve got PIs like me posted at every legal and illegal casino in the country. They figure a gambler like Benedict can’t keep away for long.
Linehan used to be a Supreme Court judge here in Melbourne; he’s the one who sent down Spiros Angelis for eleven years. But he must have got tired of umpiring instead of playing, so he stepped down from the bench and started up his own firm in Sydney, which is where he called me from. I don’t imagine he usually makes these kinds of calls, but it’s more intimidating when the big guns call you themselves. You’re more willing to do stuff for someone you’ve seen on TV about a billion times. You’re less likely to sell your story to the press.
I a
sked Linehan, ‘He’s on the run and you think he’s going to play cards? He can’t be that dumb.’
‘We have to cover our bases.’
‘Expensive bases.’
‘There’s a million-dollar surety at stake.’
‘It was your firm who put the money up, right?’ I’m not proud of it, but this is me trying to show a hotshot lawyer how smart I am. ‘Or someone close to you? Someone who’s feeling pretty silly right now?’
There was silence. Then Linehan breathed into the receiver, said, ‘It would be a breach of ethical standards for our firm to act as Benedict’s surety.’
Lawyers aren’t supposed to do it. Unofficially, it happens all the time.
Linehan said, ‘But hypothetically, if we were to have done so, my reasons would have been the same as those the judge had for granting bail in the first place. Benedict’s high profile, he’s surrendered his passport and the whole country knows what he looks like. I said to myself, he can’t be that dumb.’
In my mind, in a conference room at Linehan and Tillman’s office in Sydney, there’s a clamour of lawyers flailing with telephones and laptops, panicking to find their missing asset.
‘Do you know for sure that he’s fled? He hasn’t officially skipped until the day after tomorrow when he fails to report. Maybe he’s planning to be back in time?’
Linehan breathed into the phone again. ‘Call it thirty-five years of dealing with white collars like Benedict. They get petrified of jail, tie themselves up in knots about it. His answering machine picked up this morning and I knew he’d absconded.’
‘Okay. So long as you’re happy for me to sit in the Pioneer lobby and do nothing for fifty dollars an hour.’
‘That’s the deal. Unless you spot him.’
‘And if I do?’
‘Bring him back to Sydney.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll leave that up to you.’
Even though he couldn’t see me, I shook my head.
‘If you want him clubbed and dragged back to Sydney, Mister Linehan, I’m not sure I’m your man. You should look up Leo Spaske. He loves the jobs where he gets to hurt people.’
