Sucked In

by Shane Maloney

  Despite the repeated tellings, I still didn’t quite believe it.

  ‘What paper?’ said Bishop, pushing his glasses up his nose, avid for detail.

  ‘The Herald Sun.’

  ‘Can have that effect,’ nodded Quinlan. ‘Although it’s rarely fatal.’

  Bishop eyed me keenly. ‘Went quick, did he?’

  ‘Here one minute, bang, gone the next. One of the hotel staff gave him CPR and the paramedics got there pretty fast but he was cactus by the time we reached the hospital.’

  On the far side of the cemetery, a back-hoe started up. We were the only ones left now, three men in dark suits, perched on the lip of a grave. A trio of crows. Not a trio. What the hell was the collective noun for crows? A parliament? No, that was owls.

  ‘Heart attack,’ said Quinlan as we started towards the gate, hands in pockets. ‘It’s a caution. None of us are getting any younger.’

  Bishop and Quinlan were well into their sixties, older than me by a generation. Quinlan seemed fit enough, buoyed by inexhaustible reserves of self-regard, but Bishop looked well past his use-by date, his skin loose and mottled.

  ‘Let’s hope he didn’t suffer too much,’ said Quinlan. ‘I hear you were with him in the ambulance.’

  I nodded. It was a short trip, just long enough to make me feel completely fucking useless.

  ‘Unconscious, was he?’ said Bishop.

  ‘In and out.’

  ‘No famous last words?’

  ‘More a case of unintelligible last mumbles,’ I said.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Jesus, Col, you want me to do a fucking impression?’

  ‘Just asking. No need to get shitty.’

  We clomped down the slope a bit further. There was a hint of humidity in the air and my skin prickled under my shirt.

  ‘You mean to keep in touch, but somehow you never find the time.’ Col was trying to make amends. ‘Then you wake up one day and it’s too late. Must be donkey’s years since I last saw Charlie.’

  Quinlan nudged the subject sideways. ‘Our young protégé Murray has done well for himself, hasn’t he, Col?’

  ‘Mail room to the state legislature,’ agreed Bishop, falling back into step. ‘Who’d’ve thunk it?’

  ‘Always a bright one, our Murray,’ said Quinlan. ‘I saw his potential right from the start, flagged him to Charlie.’

  That was news to me. Very late news indeed, two decades old. Colin and I had been working for Charlie well before Barry Quinlan came on the radar. But claiming credit was one of Quinlan’s trademarks. He’d even been heard to maintain that he cut the deal that first got Charlie into federal parliament, all those years ago. If so, he hadn’t got much out of it. Charlie was ever his own man.

  ‘The transition will be smooth, I trust,’ said Quinlan. ‘No hugger-mugger from the locals?’

  ‘How about we let Charlie get cold first?’

  ‘Ah, Murray,’ sighed the senator. ‘Always the sentimentalist, God love you.’

  Simultaneously we checked our watches, busy men, and stepped up the pace. The quick deserting the dead.

  We made our brief goodbyes at the gate. As I headed for my car, I glanced back. Quinlan and Bishop had resumed their private conversation, leaning close and speaking intensely. Quinlan’s finger was stabbing the air and Bishop kept screwing his neck back towards Charlie’s grave. Maybe it was yawning a little too loud for comfort.

  My electorate office was less than ten minutes away, a refurbished shopfront between Ali Baba’s Hot Nuts and Vacuum Cleaner City in an arcade off Sydney Road. The mid-afternoon traffic was light, so I took the direct route along Bell Street through the heart of my electorate. Melbourne Upper, my seat in state parliament for the previous five years.

  Those years had not been kind to the Australian Labor Party. The voters hadn’t just shown us the door, they’d bolted it shut behind us. We barely held enough seats to play a hand of Scrabble, let alone influence the running of the state.

  Fortunately for me, Melbourne Upper was one of the safest Labor seats in the state. Rusted-on blue-collar meets multicultural melting-pot, a stronghold in our besieged heartland. With 54 percent of the primary vote and an eight-year term in the Legislative Council, I was, at least, secure in my employment. Many a colleague had gone down, better men than me among them. Better women, too.

  Now Charlie had also vanished from the political landscape. Not turfed by the electors of Coolaroo but felled by a fit of fatal dyspepsia while leafing through a Murdoch rag. Suddenly his seat was up for grabs.

  Not that I had a dog in the fight. Charlie was federal, I was state. But the borders of our electorates overlapped and there were party branches and personalities in common. As a responsible member of the parliamentary team, I’d be expected to see they toed the line during the anointment of Charlie’s successor. I knew this. I didn’t need to be reminded of the fact by Barry Quinlan, the presumptuous prick.

  As long as most people could remember, Quinlan had swung a very big dick in the Left faction of Labor’s Victorian machine. Over a twenty-year period, he’d risen from union official to federal senator to a member of the federal cabinet. And even though our electoral battering had eroded his influence, he was still a major player. It was axiomatic that Barry Quinlan would have a finger in the Coolaroo succession pie. Which finger and exactly how deep remained to be seen. Nor would his be the only digit in this particular opening.

  By long-established custom, the ALP is loath to pass up any opportunity to erupt into a full-fledged public brawl, particularly with a safe seat at stake. As the long years of opposition grew ever longer, however, the faction bosses had called a truce in the internal bloodletting. Rather than carrying on like a sackful of rabid badgers, we now tried to pretend we were one big happy family.

  But old habits die hard. Top-level jostling continued behind closed doors and some of the rank-and-file persisted with their delusions of democracy. Hence Quinlan’s graveside remarks.

  A block after Bell Street crossed Sydney Road, I turned left and drove into the carpark behind the shopping strip. At three-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, the place was chockers. Italian senior citizens loading groceries into modest sedans. Somali women, swathed in turquoise and aquamarine, waddling down the ramp from Safeway. Schoolkids on skateboards slaloming through the parked cars. I nabbed a spot vacated by a fat new Landcruiser and parked my taxpayer-funded Mitsubishi Magna next to the overflowing skips behind Vinnie Amato’s Fruit and Veg Emporium.

  I locked the car and entered the arcade. Exchanging familiar nods with the track-suited layabouts at their table outside the nut shop, I bought two takeaway coffees at Vida’s Lunch’n’Munch, then pushed open a plate-glass door with my name on it.

  Murray Whelan—Member of the Legislative Council—Province of Melbourne Upper.

  My reception area contained six metal-frame chairs upholstered in fish-belly vinyl, a side-table strewn with information brochures, three framed prints from the Victorian Tourism Commission, an artificial fern, Philodendron bogus, and one modular reception desk, off-white.

  A teenage girl in track pants, a Mooks sweatshirt and a hijab was leaning on the desk, a slumbering child in a cheap fold-up stroller parked beside her.

  ‘Anyway,’ she was saying. ‘I reckon it sucks.’

  Sitting behind the desk was my electorate officer, Ayisha Celik. ‘Sucks big-time,’ she said. ‘But Supporting Mothers Benefits are a commonwealth matter. We’re state. You’ve come to the wrong place, I’m afraid.’ She clicked her tongue and gave an empathetic shrug.

  Empathy was one of Ayisha’s strong suits, along with a good memory for names, extensive networks, an inside knowledge of the bureaucracy and a well-tuned political antenna. The package made her indispensable to the smooth functioning of my retail operations. Parliamentary matters, the upstream side of the business, she left to me.

  The girl in the hijab heaved a resigned sigh and angled the stroller towards the exit, another diss
atisfied customer. I held the door open and gave her my most benign smile. She looked at me with a mixture of contempt and pity. The baby started to wail. A normal reaction all round. It came with the territory.

  Ayisha reached across the desk and relieved me of one of the coffees. Done up in her funeral weeds, a navy pants suit and cream blouse, her jet black hair piled up in a mushroom, she could’ve passed for an SBS newsreader. Back when I first met her, the resident radical spunk at the Turkish Welfare League, she favoured skintight jeans and a keffiyeh. But that was before a career in public administration had dampened her activist zeal and two children had gone to her hips.

  ‘So Charlie Talbot is laid to rest.’ Ayisha raised her polystyrene cup.

  I returned the salute. ‘And now the games begin. I’ve just had Barry Quinlan pissing on my lamp-post.’

  She cocked her head at the glass wall that separated the reception area from the inner office. Through the angled slats of half-closed slimline venetians, I could see a dark-suited figure sitting at the conference table.

  ‘Speaking of which, Mike would like a word.’

  I locked the front door, hung up the CLOSED sign and followed Ayisha into the windowless heart of my political fiefdom. A laminex-topped conference table occupied most of the room. The rest was taken up by an Uluru-sized photocopier-printer, a row of filing cabinets, a steel stationery cupboard and three colour-coded recycling bins. Office Beautiful.

  Our visitor was a slim, good-looking man in his late thirties with close-shaved olive skin and the liquid eyes of an Orthodox icon. He, too, had come straight from the cemetery. Come, I assumed, to ventilate the pressing topic of the moment, Charlie Talbot’s succession.

  ‘Yasou,’ I said.

  Michelis Kyriakis had trodden the well-beaten path from immigrant childhood to university to local politics. He’d worked for Charlie Talbot for a while, keeping the home fires burning while Charlie was busy running the country. Now he was mayor of Broadmeadows, the primus inter pares of the coterie of Laborites who controlled the sprawling municipality at the centre of the seat of Coolaroo. Capable, energetic and well-motivated, he was going to waste in the small world of roads, rates and rubbish. This fact had not escaped his attention.

  ‘Sorry if it looks pushy, mate, turning up like this straight after the funeral,’ he said. ‘But things are moving pretty fast.’

  I sat down, facing him across the table. ‘I’ve been a bit tied up, Mike, dealing with the undertakers and so forth, but I’ve heard murmurings about the FEA being convened ASAP.’

  A conclave of local branch members and delegates appointed by the central machine, the Federal Electorate Assembly would select Charlie’s successor.

  ‘Saturday week,’ said Mike. ‘Ten days away. That must be a record.’

  Ayisha perched herself on the desktop, legs dangling. ‘The FEA’s just a formality, you know that,’ she said. ‘There’s a cross-factional agreement that the next federal vacancy in Victoria goes to the Left.’

  ‘Yeah, but who in the Left?’ said Mike. ‘Charlie promised me that I’d get the seat when he retired. But now that he’s gone, I’ve been sidelined. I’m out of the loop and it’s obvious somebody else has been given the nod.’

  I shrugged and showed him my empty palms. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, Mike. Better, in fact. You are a member of the Left, after all.’ I turned to Ayisha and raised an eyebrow. ‘You heard anything?’

  ‘Not a whisper,’ she said. ‘None of the usual suspects at state level have been mentioned, not that I’ve heard.’

  ‘Maybe they’re airlifting somebody in from Canberra,’ I shrugged.

  Mike made an acid face. ‘Fucking typical,’ he said. ‘You put in the time, pay your dues, bust your gut, then some prick nobody knows gets handed a seat on a platter. Waltzes in, brushes you aside and you’re expected to grin and bear it.’

  ‘Welcome to the Labor Party,’ I said. Or any party, for that matter. Mike knew the rules. You pays your money and you takes your chances.

  ‘What would you say if I told you I’m thinking about throwing my hat into the ring?’ he said.

  I glanced sideways at Ayisha. She widened her eyes in mock horror. Mike had a lot of friends, us included, but he lacked clout in the places that counted.

  ‘I’d say you’ll be pushing shit uphill,’ I said. ‘It’s obviously a done deal.’

  ‘Even so,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of principle.’

  Principle. The weeping scab of the Australian Labor Party.

  ‘Climb aboard your saw-horse if you like, Mike. Point it at the windmill. Wave your lance around. But tell me, end of the day, what’ll you get for your trouble?’

  Mike straightened up and fixed me with the earnest expression he used for citizenship ceremonies. ‘I feel very strongly about this, Murray. And I’d like your support. You’ve got a lot of sway in this part of the electorate.’

  I ought to, I thought. I was paying the annual dues of half the branch members.

  ‘You’d be an ornament to federal parliament, Mike,’ I said. ‘And I’m not the only one who thinks so. But you know the current party line. Heads down, bums up, noses to the grindstone. Strictly no muttering in the ranks. I’d need some pretty compelling reasons to buck company policy. Apart from my profound admiration for your personal qualities, of course.’

  ‘Fuck you, too, comrade,’ said Mike, letting out a little air. ‘It’s not like a bit of grass-roots democracy is going to damage our electoral prospects, since we currently have none. And by the time the next federal election rolls around, the punters will have forgotten all about it anyway.’

  ‘Probably,’ I agreed. ‘But you’ve got to appreciate my situation.’

  Mike nodded. ‘I know I’ve got nothing to offer in return,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to be straight with you, that’s all. Your help would mean a lot to me.’

  I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms, pursed my lips and impersonated a man wrestling with his conscience.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said at last. ‘Why don’t we sleep on it? Nominations don’t close until next week. By then, we’ll know the identity of the mystery candidate and meanwhile you can do your arithmetic, see how the numbers stack up. We’ll talk again after the weekend.’

  Mike knew it was the best he could expect for the moment. He stood and extended his hand. ‘Fair enough.’ We shook on our mutual good sense. ‘See you at the wake, then. Broady town hall, right? Sundy arvo.’

  Mike had taken upon himself to organise an informal send-off for Charlie, one for the constituents rather than the apparatchiks. Broadmeadows Town Hall was Mike’s home turf. A good choice of venue for a man with his eye on the empty saddle.

  Ayisha showed him to the door and came back grinning. ‘Did that sound to you like a wheel squeaking?’

  Mike Kyriakis hadn’t come down in the last shower. He was well aware that he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance of elbowing his way into serious contention. But he also knew that by threatening to upset the apple cart with a grass-roots lunge, he might be offered an inducement to drop out. The promise of a seat, possibly, or even a paying job. At the very minimum, he’d be noticed—the essential requirement of political survival. Either way, it would cost him nothing to take a shot.

  ‘He can squeak all he likes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think it’ll get him any grease.’

  Ayisha fished a blank sheet of paper from the photocopier feeder tray and put it on the table between us.

  ‘Coolaroo,’ she said, drawing an elongated circle with a black marker pen. ‘An aboriginal word meaning “the Balkans”.’ She drew a second circle, overlapping the bottom edge of the first. ‘Melbourne Upper.’

  She hatched the circles with a series of crosses. ‘Coolaroo’s got about a thousand party members spread across ten branches. Four of the branches are down here, inside Melbourne Upper. Those four only account for about a quarter of the total membership.’ She jabbed her pen into the top circle. ‘Anybody
considering a run will need major support here.’

  ‘In other words, somebody acceptable to the Turks, the Lebanese and the Greeks,’ I said.

  ‘An Anglo,’ confirmed Ayisha. ‘Somebody neutral who can balance out the competing sensitivities of those wonderfully inclusive communities.’

  ‘I guess we’ll know soon enough,’ I said, glancing at my watch. ‘Won’t your kids be wondering if their mother’s still alive?’

  ‘Shit!’ Ayisha grimaced and dashed for the door. ‘Mail’s on your desk. Usual bumph, nothing urgent. Bye.’

  I ambled into my private office, a glass-walled cubicle distinguished only by a view across the K-Mart carpark towards the Green Fingers garden centre. I yawned, sprinkled some slow-release fertiliser granules on my African violet, plonked myself in my ergonomic executive chair and waded into my overflowing in-tray.

  Even in opposition, the flag must be flown, the good fight fought, the flesh pressed, the creed recited, the candle kept burning. Over the next couple of weeks, according to the priorities flagged by Ayisha’s multi-coloured post-its, my presence was required at the Housing Justice Roundtable, the Save the Medical Service Action Committee, a performance by the Glenroy Women’s Choir, the Greening Melbourne Forum, Eritrean Peace Day, the Sydney Road Chamber of Commerce, the Free East Timor Association and a citizenship ceremony at Coburg Town Hall.

  I checked the dates against my parliamentary schedule, then moved on to constituent matters, correspondence for signature and an urgent memo on Y2K compliance.

  Apparently some inbuilt computer glitch was going to cause planes to plummet from the sky and hospital operating theatres to black out at the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1999. This global catastrophe was still more than two years away but meanwhile an incessant stream of paperwork had to be completed, with the usual object of ensuring that nobody could be blamed.

  I stared down at the pages of techno-babble, thoughts wandering. I was going to miss Charlie Talbot. He’d been one of the good guys. Spent his life getting us into power, keeping us there when we won it and reminding us why we made the effort.