Stealing Picasso (8 page)

This man gives himself the assignment of chaperoning Marcel Leech into the suburbs at night to meet with clients. It's a minefield of violent incident, babysitting a whore-poof. Right up Larry Skunk's alley. He enjoys the work – Marcel's self-deprecating humour, the fifty per cent cut. And it's a blast coming to Marcel's aid when things turn sour. A blast to beat up weasel-type faggot clients who become violent or won't pay. You've got to be broadminded, because on the one hand it is, after all, a faggot you're rescuing. But on the other it's a faggot you're beating up. So it's a nil-all draw on the right/wrong scale. And as far as the drama of the event goes it's not so different to rescuing a damsel in distress. Sometimes, on good nights, when Larry Skunk is clubbing a client who has misbehaved, Marcel transforms in Larry Skunk's peripheral vision into a distressed damsel in an ankle-length velvet dress. This gives Larry Skunk a heroic blush. He takes big righteous breaths and stares down on the sprawled malefactor and delivers maxims at him like, ‘A lady tells you to stop, you better stop, Jack.' Or, ‘You agree on a price, you don't insult a lady by offering less after the fact.' Marcel doesn't mind being called a lady in these circumstances. Truth is, it gives him a thrill being Larry Skunk's lady, his honour regained in that moment of crisis.

For Larry Skunk it turns out to be cool to keep a pet as small and disgusting as Michael Jackson, whom everyone abominates. Anyone can ride with a rotty or a pitbull behind. But only a real hard-as-stone outlaw can keep a little homo sidekick crazy enough to be living out a King of Pop fantasy.

Marcel, too, feels some comfort in the arrangement. He feels safer, at least, under the protection of the Stinking Pariahs. But he is still morbidly depressed about selling his hero as a whore. Seeing his flagging morale, Larry Skunk begins to feed him speedballs. Whenever he picks up Marcel for an assignation
he palms him a little aubergine-coloured pill, and when Marcel pops it, for a few hours the significance of the life and times of Michael Jackson shrivel and deflate until that h oofer's tribulations are no more engaging than the meanderings of a carpet beetle and Marcel knows a delightful ease – before the monstrosity of his predicament comes stampeding back at him … He cries then, uncontrollable tears. Holds his throat and rocks backwards and forwards, racking his brain to find a way to make enough money so he can stop selling Michael as a whore.

Two days after completing Larry Skunk Monk's skunk Turton Pym is on his knees about to kiss the new wolverine of Wal Wolverine Symonds. In his shed in Pakenham he leans forwards and tenderly plants one on the snarling animal he has painted onto the fuel tank of a Harley Davidson Fatboy. It burns his lips. ‘Yah. Bitch. Ow.' He sucks at cold air and looks over his shoulder to confirm he is alone before blowing the wolverine another kiss. He wouldn't want anyone to know he takes pleasure in airbrushing Harley Davidsons, or that he feels affection for fuel-tank wolverines because they can be started and finished and don't need to carry the whole impossible weight of Art. When a Stinking Pariah commissions a wolverine he doesn't want or expect anything but malevolence and outsized fangs. With these moderate expectations Turton finds the fuel-tank wolverine
is a wondrous tame creature. There is nothing of the mutiny or ambition in a fuel-tank wolverine that there is in an Archibald Prize PM, who inevitably wants to be something more than simply a PM.

Turton can paint vicious critters for bikies from dusk till dawn and they never give a yelp or a squirm of rebellion. He finds a deep contentment in the work. No one in the art world has ever been to Pakenham, or will ever go, so there is no danger he'll be discovered beavering away at wolverines.

Overhead, enamel-baking lamps crackle as they cool, agitated hydrocarbons swirl about the cigarette between his lips, the air just short of sizzling and catching fire. ‘Wolverine.' He rolls the word deliciously on his tongue. ‘Wolverine. Wolverine. Wolverine.' How good it is to paint this free. To be this free. Man is only truly free when hidden away from the world in a huge shed, he tells himself.

When Wal Wolverine Symonds steps out of the dark into the circle of light cast by the overhead workstation spotlight to pick up his hog, he likes what he sees. He likes what he sees so much he says, ‘Shit, Turds. Wow.'

‘So – do you like it?'

‘It's shit-hot, Turds.' Wal Wolverine Symonds has a beach-ball afro and a black moustache with its ends twisted to points. He is a big man, as loosely leathered and as hair-triggered as a rhino. Forty kilos overweight, if he had had the nickname ‘Wolverine' legitimately bestowed on him, it must have been years ago. Most likely the president of the Stinking Pariahs had sat him down with a bestiary and told him, ‘Browse. Choose.' He leans down towards the Harley. ‘Fuckin' ace.' He runs his fingers across the newly painted fuel tank and when he gets to the bared fangs he says, ‘Ouch' and pulls his hand away, laughing.

Wal having paid Turton $500, they settle into chairs and smoke a joint. An odd couple, nervous grey-haired artist and outlaw rhino, they nevertheless are close at this moment. A cosy partnership of artist and patron, they blow smoke and compliment each other at intervals. Wal compliments Turton for his art and Turton Wal for his taste in a happily symbiotic union, each confirming the worth of the other. Wal reaches out every now and then to stroke his new wolverine, saying that Asp Matthews' asp is going to have to be some fucking asp to top this. Turton observes that asps don't, generally, offer as great an opportunity for displaying inner psychology as a wolverine. ‘Can't snarl,' Wal confirms. ‘Dead eyes.'

When Harry and Mireille step into the light Wal, thinking these people guests of Turton, is unsurprised. The first of many gorgeous chicks digging his new wolverine, she kneels before the motorbike, close enough for her breath to whiten on its glossy coat. She lays a fingertip on it and marvels at the depth of the glaze, before announcing, ‘Oh, I am head over heels for this otter.'

‘Wolverine,' Wal smiles. ‘Distant cousin. Fiercer, braver. Kills twice its own size.'

‘It is so real. It would scare another wolav …'

‘Wolverine,' Wal smiles at her.

‘Wolverine. It would scare another wolverine out of the ball park.'

Harry stands in the outer reach of the light smiling apologetically to Turton, who is quickly on his feet, his face pained, his hands hovering close to his sideboards, staring into the dark to see who else might be hiding there. ‘How did you find me?'

‘The Stinking Pariahs.'

‘Rubbish. The Stinking Pariahs have a code.'

‘I told them I was your son who'd been away.' Harry shrugs. It was true. He had seen Turton dropped off at the gallery by Stinking Pariahs on several occasions, so he knew he had a connection with them and guessed he was either tattooing them or painting their bikes. Information gave him the number of the Pariah headquarters and some stoned thug there, upon hearing that a happy reunion between father and son was in the offing, told him where Turton could be found.

‘The Stinking Pariahs told you I was out here? You said you were my son and they gave you this address?' Harry nods and Turton turns on Wal, shouting, ‘Jesus, Wal. Half your chapter are dodging child support and you lag me to a son who rings up. I'll have words with your president, you bastards.'

Turton is bending at the knees, incredulous, clutching his sideboards. ‘What about your code? Of silence? No-one-says-nothing-to-no-one? Omerta?'

Wal strokes his moustache with the back of his forefinger, then holds the finger up in the air, nodding, accepting responsibility. ‘'Pologies, Turds.' He stands and casually snatches Harry towards him by the collar of his coat, pulling a revolver from his belt, touching it to Harry's nose gently. ‘You want him to go away again?' he asks, the grotesque ramifications of the question paved under a monotone nonchalance.

‘Jesus Christ.' Turton turns his head towards Wal by leverage of his sideboards. ‘You damn bikies. You set up a sacred code and swear in blood you'll abide by it. Then the code is totally ignored. “Codes are too hard and bothersome for us, we're fat and lazy and stoned, which is why we became bikies in the first place.” And when the shit hits the fan because no arsehole has abided by the code, you're straight away into rash acts and hoodlum high jinks to avenge the fucking code.'

Wal looks slightly saddened by this tirade. He taps Harry's Adam's apple gently with the muzzle of the revolver. ‘So is that a yes or no on the lad?'

‘Shoot yourself,' Turton shouts. ‘He never swore to abide by the code. You did. You …' Wal, holding the revolver loose in the palm of his hand like a stopwatch, slaps Turton in the side of the head with it. He is bending over him to slap him again when Mireille, still on her knees, snatches it from his hand. She holds it before her face, blinking at it, the perplexed frown of a woman who has just unwrapped a new appliance. She asks the gun, ‘Here?'

The muzzle-blast lights a fire in Wal's hair that flares and dies, leaving a soup-bowl-sized crater in his afro with wisps of smoke rising from it. Wal grabs at his assaulted eardrum with one hand and takes hold of his penis through his jeans with the other, much like a scolded toddler.

‘That was so loud.' Mireille says, shocked, still talking to the gun.

She stands, not pointing the gun at anything and not not pointing it at anything. Its black eye wanders lazily. Harry and Wal and Turton cower and wince in turn as they come under its incidental stare. She begins to berate Wal. ‘A man who painted for you a wolverine of beauty. An old man. Maybe not right in the head.'

Turton is lying at Mireille's feet. And though assaulted, and with gunplay taking place above him and an angry Stinking Pariah on the premises and his sanity being questioned, he can't help but move his head slightly, the better to see up her skirt. Even in his most desperate hour the seed of man's propagation whistles a tune he can't help but hear. Thankfully, she is keeping eye contact with Wal Wolverine Symonds, and is saved the unedifying sight of the man she has rescued trying to
ogle her underwear. Turton glimpses her mound covered in a diaphanous garland of embroidered lace roses. The throbbing in the side of his head subsides.

She steps towards the bikie and hands him the gun. ‘Here. I shot only your hair. Okay?'

‘Okay.' He takes it from her, so relieved he has to bite his lip to stop himself from saying thank you.

When Turton is helped to his feet he introduces Wal, prompting Harry to introduce Mireille, after which they shuffle and smile in the small talk of a slightly embarrassed truce. Turton apologises to Wal and Wal tells him no big deal and apologises back, and Turton touches the side of his head and says when he got smacked he saw a quartet of lurid green goblins that might look good on a Harley if anyone down at the clubhouse is interested. Wal says he'll ask around.

Wal rides away, the belching of his Harley shrinking into the night noises. Alone now with Harry and his woman, Turton begins to take on a look of shame. He clenches his jaw, purses his lips, his chin mottles and quivers like a boy about to cry and he looks away into the dark of the shed. ‘Here I am, then. You've found me out. I'm a hack. I airbrush angry stoats for a class of people no more visually erudite than moles. In the city I preach art – out here in the boondocks I raise up cobras and tigers.' He turns to face them. ‘I'm a fraud.'

‘That depends on the cobras,' Mireille observes. ‘Are your cobras as good as your wolverines?'

‘Cartoons,' Turton says.

‘No. Why?' Turton has photographs of other Harleys he has airbrushed posted on steel lockers all around his workstation. Mireille puts on her glasses and begins perusing them. She is engaged enough to tilt her head this way and that. ‘This is a genre, I think. These are good.'

‘You like them?' asks Turton. Ever since he has begun working for the Stinking Pariahs he has secretly wondered why airbrushing ghouls isn't considered a reputable art form. ‘It is Hieronymus Bosch in an age of robots,' she tells him.

‘You know – I think it's all right, too.' He is astounded to be saying this.

‘How is it done? The technique?' She picks up the fuel tank of a Sportster with a leering genie on it. ‘How do you three-dimension with a spray gun?'

He puts his arms around her to show her how to hold the airbrush. ‘Like a pen, but with your index finger on top of the trigger.' His hand holds hers. ‘This one is a gravity feed. The paint is in that little bowl there. Loop the hose over your wrist to keep it out of the way.' He turns on the compressor and places a metal drum in front of her. ‘Push down on the trigger.' She does so and air hisses through the nozzle of the gun. ‘Now pull back on it.' A runnel of yellow paint is released through a valve and shredded by the rushing air into myriad droplets fired at the drum. ‘Sweep your hand back and forth. Move your hand. Kill the paint. Too much paint, move your thumb forwards.'

‘Aieee …' Mireille shrieks as yellow paint floods the side of the drum and begins to drip to the floor. Turton snatches the gun from her and kills the compressor. With his handkerchief he wipes the yellow paint from his fingers. ‘It's an acquired skill. It's not easy,' he says. ‘You've got to control the air, the paint, your own movements. It's a juggling act. Choreographed. A dance, even. Then you've got masking techniques and shading and layering … It's a mighty learning curve, even if certain people don't know it.'

He shows her a photo album of his work. ‘This skull was for Big Smith. He was master at arms for the Stinking Pariahs.
He's doing time for demanding money with menace – a fancy name for robbing a bottle shop with a sawn-off shotgun.'

‘You should have an exhibition. A herd of the Harley Davidsons painted with such crabby animals and parked in a … a church?'

‘Oh, no.' His face flushes red. ‘No, no, no. It's just fun. Just piecework. Pocket money.' He stares down at the album, blinking. ‘You think it might make an exhibition?'

‘Why not? It is ferocious. A dreaming by outlaw bike guys.'

They try again. Harry watches, the old man with his arms wrapped around her, guiding her hand as she holds the airbrush, showing her the sweep and rhythm of the technique. She seems fascinated, but Harry can't decide: is he watching a beautiful woman con an old man, or does she genuinely like all these airbrushed creatures? Is she working this old man over? And if she's this good, then maybe she's working him too. What's real about this woman?

When they are leaving Turton asks, ‘Are you the woman Harry is bringing along on one of our little excursions? I hope so. I think, perhaps, you'd enjoy it.'

Harry stands blank-faced. ‘You said you didn't want to be carted off to chokey.'

‘What are you talking about, lad? Chokey.' He bends in close to Harry and whispers, ‘Bears and lions, Harry. Bears and lions. And quite right, too.'

Then he turns to Mireille and insists she accompany them into the National Gallery some night, this heroine with a garland of lace roses adorning her pubic mound. ‘You must come with us. At night you can hear her weep. Both ghostly and mechanical, both distant and close, a great wailing, like a squadron of junkers. Sirens ricocheting off brick. I'm sure you will
hear it, Mireille, though the masses in their cardigans are deaf to her. I have total faith you will hear her.'

Harry watches Turton for some show of embarrassment, a shame-faced shrug behind Mireille's back. Some sign to acknowledge that as soon as she showed the first tic of interest in his art he became her slave. But he sees no sign at all.

‘We'll take a bottle of Moët and some top-drawer, skull-melting Marrakesh hash and an angora picnic rug. We'll loll about and listen to her weep. We'll weep ourselves. Not a critic or a Callithumpian in sight. Just us.'