The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  Jack had been an activist for the disability rights movement almost from the time they carried him off the boat. From Disabled People’s International, Disability Australia, to the Disability Rights Centre, to United Nations working groups. He had spent years in what he described as the toughest trenches – lobbying, cajoling, advising and plain harassing governments, from local to federal to foreign, to provide programs and policies to assist people with disabilities. Free education. Free health care. Free equipment and support services. Stem cell research. He had been a consultant to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, and helped draft the Disability Discrimination Act. Best of all, he had never become a diplomat. He had remained a warrior.

  I needed a warrior. I needed one thirty-five years younger, but you can’t have everything. A wig. Dark sunglasses. Plenty of clothing. It might work. It might not.

  Gabby offered to buy a round of beers. She walked off to the bar. Jack Bartlett briefly followed her with his eyes, turned back to me, and nodded. ‘Nice sort,’ he said. A ravishing beauty, in other words.

  ‘Gay, apparently,’ Bill said almost under his breath, or at least into his beard. ‘That is, she was fucking gay,’ he then said, staring at me coldly, grey eyes flashing like steel.

  Jack Bartlett looked back towards the bar. ‘Fair dinkum?’ He looked at me. I gave a confirmatory nod. Jack nodded back at me, sagely.

  I waited until Gabby returned with the beers. She held all four expertly packed together in her hands. Not a drop was spilt in transit. I took a sip of beer. ‘No questions just yet,’ I said when I put the glass back down on my coaster. ‘Just listen to this.’

  It was a two-schooner story. When I had finished, Bill Doyle looked like he’d had ten. Plus a lobotomy. I reached over, put my hand under his jaw, closed his mouth for him. Jack Bartlett, on the other hand, looked entirely unsurprised. Like he had heard the story before. He softly muttered the word I’d written on Bob Green’s car, using the plural form. That pretty much summed up my feelings on the matter. It’s nice when just one word will do that.

  Bill Doyle was still looking confused. ‘Explain it to me again,’ he said. ‘What’s in it for them doing this? If they are. Why?’

  ‘Profits,’ Gabby said. Again, it’s nice when one word sums up even the most complex of matters.

  ‘Profits?’ he said. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Bill,’ Gabby said, ‘every armed conflict you can name has been about profit. Capitalists happily slaughtering . . .’ and away she went. I loved her more each minute, but I could see Bill mulling over the possibility that he had been sent to Vietnam to secure the country for western businessmen. The idea didn’t please him, so I thought I’d intervene.

  ‘That’s almost it, Bill. Profits, I mean,’ I said. ‘Look, if we’re right it’s almost that simple. Plaintiffs – with big claims – taken out of the equation, so to speak, are taken off the bottom line too. The less you pay out in claims, the more profit you make.’

  ‘I follow that, but Jesus Christ . . .’

  ‘This company is young. It’s up against well-established competitors for a limited amount of business. And for support from the financial markets. They need to post profits, and they need to get bigger. The bigger the better.’

  ‘Yeah, but . . .’

  ‘Maybe they want to buy a competitor. I don’t know. You need the market’s confidence to do that. And your banker’s. Making profits, big ones, is one way of getting that. If you buy out a competitor, well . . . you grow. You acquire more premium income, from the company you’ve bought. There are synergy benefits.’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘Cost savings. Sharing assets, equipment, technology, management – all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘Yes, but fuck me dead, you’re still talking about . . .’

  ‘Everyone has to get big in this world, Bill. That’s capitalism. Look at Doyle’s Mowing and Gardening. What’s its turnover compared to twenty years ago? And there are a damn sight less competitors, right? And if expanding’s not the plan, maybe they want to be bought. More profit, higher share price. These people I’ve been talking about own swags of shares. Each share price rise, they make a motza.’

  ‘They’ve probably made some complete cock-up of an investment decision. These bastards do all the time.’ It was Jack Bartlett. ‘Maybe they’re covering for that.’

  Bill shook his head in disbelief, an incredulous smile on his face. ‘You’re saying they would kill people for this? Have them bumped off for profit? For this fucking synergy?’

  I nodded.

  ‘This company is run by men,’ Gabby said. ‘Men only in senior management. Men only on the board. They all just want one thing.’ She sat back in her chair, finished her beer, and let us contemplate what that might be. We had a fair idea.

  ‘Money,’ she said. Precisely what I was thinking. ‘Money. Buckets of it. Now. However they can get it, by whatever means necessary. What’s the political phrase? Whatever it takes? A few dead people? If that’s what it takes, they couldn’t care less.’

  Bill was still shaking his head. ‘If this is all true,’ he said, ‘how much fucking longer before they get caught? Why haven’t they been already? I mean, fuck me dead . . .’

  ‘Good question,’ I said. ‘Maybe it won’t go on much longer. Like I said, it’s a young company. They’ve been advertising aggressively. Keeping premiums artificially low to attract business. Then, once they fully establish themselves in the market, they can back off the extracurricular murder business. Leave it behind them as a once-necessary business risk.’

  Jack wheeled himself over to the bar to buy another round. I figured I already had him in the bag.

  ‘How many people do you say they’ve bumped off?’ Bill asked. ‘Surely . . . Why haven’t you just rung the bloody police?’

  ‘I’ve tried the cops,’ I said. When Jack came back from the bar I told them about Colin Dixon. ‘On the face of it, it’s just what Dixon says. A couple of suicides, a boating accident, a traffic accident, a drive-by shooting.’

  ‘What about Gerton?’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘I suppose a fatal spider bite on the penis is a bit unusual. No less than what he deserved. Anyway, I’ve sent off an anonymous letter to the Homicide Squad. That’s all I can do at the moment, but there’s no time to wait for that to sort itself out. I’m worried about those people in Perth and Brisbane. They need immediate protection. There’s another reason for acting now. If the cops do contact SP soon because of my letter, it might stop all this, but they might never be caught for what they’ve done. These people know what they’re doing. I want proof. I want to catch the bastards.’

  ‘I’ll say they know what they’re doing,’ Jack said. ‘If they can train a fucking funnel-web to bite you on the . . .’ He shook his head and winced.

  Bill took the head off his beer, wiped the foam from the hairs overhanging his top lip, scratched his beard. Then he looked at Jack. ‘What do you think? You buy all this?’

  Jack looked at me, then back at Bill. ‘Chris’s always done all right by me,’ he said. ‘I’ve never known him to be wrong yet. Except over the taxation shit.’

  Just the answer I’d been counting on. Since my early years at the bar, Jack Bartlett had accompanied severe injury victims and their families to my chambers, or a QC’s chambers, for conferences about their cases. We’d had some good wins.

  Bill drained his beer glass. He was a massive man, and he was getting through them quickly now. He gave out a sigh of resignation when he finished. ‘Well,’ he said, returning his glass to the table, ‘you want the bastards caught, you say? And you’re telling us all this. I suppose that means you want us to do something. What is it?’

  Gabby and I explained the plan in the bistro. Tuesday night was Chinese smorgasbord night. Whether they have smorgasbords in Beijing and Guangzhou is a moot point. I told them about the bogus claim. The plaintiff would be a fictitious person called Jonatho
n Bartlett. His role would be played by Jack. The fictitious Jonathon, the plaintiff in the bogus claim, was only twenty-three, but Jack would have to do. Bill had engaged the injured plaintiff to do some part-time work for him. In keeping with modern trends the plaintiff was a contractor rather than an employee and received no benefits or super. Bill negligently sent the kid up a tree full of bats. And soon after, down came the most promising medical student in the southern hemisphere. Doyle’s Mowing and Gardening had its public liability insurance with SP and would be named as the defendant with Bill.

  I told them that I’d need them for seven days. Probably from Friday. I would provide the accommodation, and most of the equipment. Bill would be needed generally for night duty only. Jack we would need 24/7. He was ready and willing. Like I said, he was a warrior.

  We would have some other help. Some big boys. From out of town.

  If I was wrong, none of them knew anything about the fake claim. Bill had no idea that I’d named William Francis Doyle trading as Doyle’s Mowing and Gardening as a defendant. I warned Jack that false impersonation carries with it a hefty jail term. He nodded, unfazed. I would take the rap, they had my word. If I was right, though, they could be in grave danger.

  Bill and Jack looked at each other at the mention of grave danger. A couple of lazy smiles, a couple of old warriors. Now I really had them interested.

  Gabby and I walked along Coogee Beach afterwards. The tide was in, and the waves crashed on the sand just below us, and I could see the tips and crests of foam folding over the rocks on Wedding Cake Island. Which immediately set off in my mind that guitar riff, from the Midnight Oil piece of the same name. Which would usually be about the time that I’d put my arm around the girl I was with on a cold night down by the beach.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ she asked.

  That stopped me. ‘I’m trying to do the right thing,’ I said, ‘while not buggering everything up in the process.’

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘I’m going to end up a hero,’ I said. ‘Or, I’ll be putting to use my will-drafting skills for all of my new friends at Long Bay prison.’

  She stopped, turned and faced me. ‘How are your will-drafting skills?’

  ‘Unexplored.’

  ‘And the hero thing?’

  ‘I’m Bankruptcy Man. A new breed of superhero.’

  She laughed. ‘What does Bankruptcy Man believe in? Truth, justice and the Australian way?’

  ‘That depends on what the Australian way means.’

  ‘That’s a complicated issue in these times, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not for him. His views are very simple.’

  ‘As a victim of capitalism, I take it he believes the world’s resources should be shared by all, not a few.’

  ‘Of course.’ I lied. I’m not sharing anything with neo-conservative, extreme right-wing bastards.

  ‘And that the means of production should be owned by the workers, not an increasingly small number of businessmen and oligopolies whose satanic will has corrupted and bought out government?’

  Um. Yeah. I think that’s part of it. Personally, I’d start with arresting reality TV producers. We could vanquish the rich and liberate the poor after that.

  ‘And I take it Bankruptcy Man will fight for the overthrow of capitalist markets and for the foundation of a new international democratic order where each individual has an equal say in cultural and political life.’

  I stood up straight and pushed out my chest. ‘From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’

  She looked impressed, but with Gabby I was never sure whether she was winding me up. I wasn’t sure whether I was winding me up. To be frank, I wasn’t sure I really believed this, and not just because I read George Orwell at an impressionable age. I hate warmongers, the extreme right and its propaganda machine. Excessive devotion to the profit motive above human rights makes me despair. Just how far left I am is another question. Next time I have to actually pay a tax bill I may find out.

  ‘I’m sick of being angry, Gabby,’ I said. ‘And silent. I’m reinventing myself. Bankruptcy Man. Unsueable. Invulnerable. Superhero.’

  ‘So, what does he do – Bankruptcy Man?’

  ‘Mission one – he brings a corporate serial killer to justice.’

  ‘Any plans beyond this?’

  Oh yeah. South Pacific would only be a start. There was a lot more to do. Corruption, injustice and the worst excesses of the profit motive had the jump on Bankruptcy Man. They had their own political parties, factions within those parties, media outlets, newspaper columnists, PR departments, schools, role models, hit men, social networks, alleged intellectuals, business plans, tax havens, sweatshops, financial institutions, weapons arsenals, hairstylists, personal trainers and a whole raft of laws to protect them. He wasn’t kidding himself. The task was ahead of him, and these guys played dirty. He was undermanned and under-resourced. He was nowhere near intelligent enough for the issues he was grappling with. But he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He’d yarp all the way to oblivion.

  ‘Bankruptcy Man will be everywhere, Gabby,’ I said. ‘Everywhere there’s a gutless politician with a stupid adviser. Everywhere there’s a lying right-wing social commentator. Everywhere there’s a CEO axing jobs, where there’s a corrupt captain of industry trying to deunionise a workforce, he’ll be there. Like a poor man’s Tom Joad. Except, I guess, given Tom Joad was a poor man, he’ll have to be a poor man’s poor man’s Tom Joad.’

  ‘But he’s bankrupt.’

  True. A poor man’s poor man’s poor man’s Tom Joad? Something like that. ‘He’ll be like the voice of reason in this world, Gabby. Small, stupid, but persistent.’

  ‘You’re not small.’

  I waited for her to say I wasn’t stupid. Then I said, ‘I was paraphrasing Freud. “The voice of reason is small but persistent”.’ Freud told me that. I’d added the ‘stupid’ thing. Freud had also told me something about the dreams I’d been having about Gabby, but that’s another story. ‘The point is,’ I continued, ‘Bankruptcy Man, for all his limitations, will persist. He will try and try and try again. And he may be a complete, utter, raving bigot,’ I said, ‘but he’ll be one for the left.’

  She smiled. ‘My favourite kind of raving bigot. I like this guy.’ And he likes you, Louis. ‘Is Bankruptcy Man dark and brooding?’

  ‘Dark and bumbling,’ I said. ‘And he sees everything as black or white, good or evil.’

  ‘I think shades of grey are becoming increasingly overrated. Dangerous, in fact. Do you have a uniform? Stockings or tights?’

  ‘Would I look good in them?’ A rhetorical question, of course.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘It would depend on the colour. I could knock something up for you.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as the cutting and stitching type.’

  ‘You’d be amazed at what I can do.’

  I let the thought pass. She drove us back to her place. The thought caught up with me again about 2 am.

  Us men, we’re never really free.

  Even us superheroes.

  Thirty-Three

  Next, I needed money.

  It was Monday morning, and I was in Helena Abbott’s office at her gallery. I’d expected minimalist. Maybe a Lucien Freud sketch or two on the walls. Liquid crystal screen computer. Videophone open on a glass-topped desk.

  Instead, it was carnage. Papers everywhere. Paintings stacked around the walls. Four coffee cups on the old wooden desk that was littered with dozens of burn marks were not covered in papers. There were two computers. One new, on a makeshift stand, one obsolete on the floor. A Moroccan carpet, all burgundy and browns. Maybe from Fez. Maybe not. There were several handbags strewn around the room. Helena seemed to have one for every mood. There was a hatstand in one corner, no hats, just coats, and enough to warm the Red Army.

  ‘Francis Bacon could have painted a masterpiece in here,’ I said.

&nbs
p; She smiled. ‘I just finished cleaning up.’

  ‘You’ve obviously had the feng shui people in.’

  ‘They just left. Coffee?’

  ‘If you have any clean cups.’

  ‘Hillary will dig some up.’

  Hillary, Helena’s new assistant, did.

  ‘I dropped in on Laura and Heather the other night,’ Helena said when Hillary had brought in the coffee, more than half-decent cappuccinos from the DeLonghi they had in the kitchen. ‘They were so pleased to see you the other day.’

  ‘It was good to see them,’ I said.

  ‘Laura told me about your misspent youth. Growing up with Edward, playing in her yard. And your long romance with Heather, of course. Were you happy with your gifts?’

  ‘More than happy,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I need you to sell two of them for me. I need some cash.’

  She frowned. ‘You’re not serious. Are you?’

  ‘I’m kind of desperate,’ I said. ‘And it’s urgent. People in my position don’t have many options when it comes to raising large sums of cash quickly. I take it Laura filled you in on the troubles I had last year?’

  Helena put her coffee cup down in her saucer with a loud crack. She gave me her sternest businesslike look. ‘Chris, I’d rather lend you the money than see you sell those paintings now. So would Laura, I’m sure. Don’t do this before . . .’ She paused. ‘They’re an investment. If you hang on to them for a few years you’ll be rewarded.’

  ‘I don’t have a few years.’

  ‘Neither does Laura. She just gave them to you. She is very fond of you.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I know that, but it’s life or death. Literally. My life and those of others. I can’t –’