The Big Whatever (36 page)

We sat on a rock, drinking our mugs of tea.

I said to Denise, “How do you rate Max's work?”

She looked at me, unsure.

“His music?”

“I already know about that. He can play anything, so long as it's in the key of C. No, I meant his writing. You being a professional.”

“No need to be snarky.” She thought a moment. “It's very . . .”

“Sydney?”

“It's very
Max
. It has voice.”

“
Voice
?”

“And he does the unreliable narrator thing really quite well.”

“He's certainly proved himself unreliable over many years.”

“No, it's a formal term. I mean like the bit at the party where he hallucinates the cops hidden in the trees?”

“Did it really happen?”

She shrugged. “Could've.”

“What about the you and Cathy lesbian thing?”

“What about it?”

“Bob Gould thought the book needed more of that. But, I mean, was that bit true?”

She actually looked away.

“Aha,” I said. “A rare moment of shyness.”

She turned. “Yeah? Well what about
your
‘you and Cathy thing'? Cathy being the
other
person you've conspicuously not mentioned.”

“There was a thing, but it wasn't much of a thing. And it was long over by the time Max and Cathy did the drug rip. That was Max spicing up the story. You know, the unreliable narrator.”

She took that in, looked off into the distance.

“Cathy was Cathy,” she said quietly. “She did whatever she wanted, more than anyone I've ever known. She was a force of nature.” She turned to me. “She was hard to resist.”

“Is your book about you, or her?”

She was silent for a few seconds. “Neither. Both. I don't know yet.”

“Because people think that photo of her, robbing the petrol station, and the movie film, they now think that's you, the heiress. They lose the fact that you
took
the pictures.”

“Yeah, but there's a simple marketing, public relations advantage right there. The advice we've had is to go with what the public already knows, or thinks it knows, even if that's arse-up.”

We drove on. Dirty grey clouds came over, the bush lost colour. We were silent for a long stretch. We dodged Oberon, headed west off the plateau and pulled into a cold and misty Bathurst at four o'clock.

I slowly drove the length of the main street, then back again, until I saw what I was looking for. I parked, turned to Denise, and said, “You better sit this one out.”

“I won't say a fucking
thing
,” crossing her heart and presumably hoping to die.

I shook my head. “Doesn't matter. This one most likely won't even acknowledge
me
. And if you're there . . .”

“Okay,” she said brightly.

I walked back down the street to a shop with “Bathurst Furniture Bazaar” above the awning. Smaller signs read, “Antiques Bought and Sold,” “Curios,” “Tools,” “Colonial Bric a Brac.” Over the door another small sign: “Licensed Dealer G. Conroy.”

The inside was a long, wide space with a high pressed-metal ceiling. To the left were rows of tightly arranged tables and chairs, old lounge suites, cabinet radios. On the right were lamps, luggage, upholstered chairs, smoker's companions, ugly paintings, frames, mantel radios, fish tanks, golf sticks, dusty fishing rods, tool boxes, a couple of banjo-mandolins and an Italian guitar with three strings.

No one to be seen. I called out hello, but there was no answer.

I waited a few minutes. Nothing. I went to the back of the shop, where there was a desk with piles of papers, an ashtray, tools. I kept going, through a cramped passageway, past a messy kitchen and toilet, out the back door. To my right the building extended back another thirty feet, an old stone warehouse or maybe a former blacksmith's, with a loading dock. It had a heavy double door with a solid padlock on it. An old Morris van was parked in the back driveway.

I went back into the shop, out the front door, and walked slowly down the street, away from where the car was parked. I turned into a side street, circled all the way round to the back lane and into the yard where the Morris was parked, then tiptoed through the back door.

A gnomish, cranky-looking man of indeterminate age, with a scrunched-up face and a shock of brown and grey hair, dressed in dusty trousers and work shirt, was standing in the shop's front doorway, peering suspiciously down the street.

“I'm here, George.”

He spun around quickly, waved dismissively and shook his head. “I'm not bloody well talking to you.” A touch of cockney in the accent.

I waited by his desk, but he didn't come any closer, instead took himself off into one of the twisting passageways running between rows of battered wardrobes and kitchen cabinets. I could hear him banging around, but couldn't see him.

I sat down and started leafing through the
Daily Telegraph
on the table. Occasional bangs and thumps came from the maze, but no one showed.

“I've got all the time in the world, George,” I called out. “So why not come out now. You'll have to sooner or later.”

“Piss off,” he said.

A shadow in the doorway. Denise was standing at the threshold, hands on her hips, taking in the scene.

She marched in, turned left, disappeared down a passageway, calling out, “George! You get out here.
Right
now.”

The banging stopped. Silence.

“You heard me!”

I couldn't see either of them, but I heard firm footsteps, a yowl of pain, and some clumsy shuffling. A few seconds later George emerged out of the gloom, grimacing, Denise behind him. She had him firmly by the ear, which she'd twisted so that he was walking half-crooked.

She pushed him over to the desk, let him go with a shove. “Don't tell me. This
has
to be Steptoe,” she said to me.

“The same. Sit down, Georgie,” I said.

Which he did, rubbing his ear, looking from me to Denise.

“Well-known receiver of stolen goods and one-time proprietor of ‘Georgie's World of Bargains' of Parramatta Road, Camperdown. Go to Georgie, he'll see you right. He'll give you a price for warmish items, no worries. But then he might just let the jacks know. And then go ahead and sell the same goods and split the take with those same jacks. Right, Georgie?”

Now he was sheepish and ingratiating. “I never done that to you, Billy, you know that.”

“No bullshit now, Georgie. Max Perkal was here. I want you to tell me when, and why.”

“Year before last. Came in, bought a guitar and an amplifier.”

“What sort?”

“Eh?”

“What brand?”

He looked off. “The guitar, oh, the Australian one. Maton. I can't remember the amplifier. Australian-made, though.”

“A Moody.”

“Yeah, that one, that's right.”

“And since then?”

Looked at me quickly. “Never seen him since. That's true, Billy. Never seen him.”

“Know what he wanted the guitar for?”

“He had a job. Working with that mob.”

“What mob?”

“The old sheila with the group. Can't remember the name. They come through here every year or so.”

“When was the last time?”

“Couldn't tell you. Not my cup of tea.”

“Now Georgie, I want you to think hard before you answer this. You being who you are, and having seen Max, who was widely believed to be dead – that must've struck you as the sort of information that others might be interested in.”

He was already shaking his head. “Nuh, I never, Billy, I never. You and Max – I wouldn't do that.”

“Didn't mention it to anyone, ever?”

“No one. Never.” Georgie's confidence was growing, each time he repeated the denial, slowly convincing himself.

We camped that night by the Turon River, a mile outside the almost-ghost town of Sofala. I'd knocked on the farmer's door and politely asked permission, which was given. Our tent was set up on a grassy rise above a bend in the fast-flowing river, well out of sight of the road.

We'd eaten a Chinese dinner in town and now we had a good fire going and a bottle of Penfolds red, which we were drinking out of tin mugs, half-demolished. There was still a touch of blue light in the sky, but a sharp, crisp chill was rising. We were
propped up against logs, facing each other across the fire. Warm in front, freezing at the back.

I topped up Denise's mug. “I got to say, back there, you flushed little Georgie out of his rathole in fine style,” I said.

“I heard that pommy accent and I just knew he'd be a forelock-tugger of the old school. My father had a good way of dealing with that type.”

“The lower orders, you mean.”

“It worked, didn't it?”

“But we got nothing from him. Not really.”

Denise straightened herself, pulled a sleeping bag over her knees, patted it down around her curves. “So you figure that none of that list in the book is an accident? There's a point to it?”

“Yeah, I know, it sounds thin all right. But it's the way Max does things: never say or do anything directly if you can go round about.”

“Unreliable narrator,” she said.

“Yeah, that.”

We were silent a while. Denise had written in her journal then rolled a slim hash joint, as she did every night. This time I'd taken a couple of puffs. The night was still, and the river seemed loud. But nice.

“Anyway,” she said. “This is what I don't get. We outran the posse in Gippsland. But now . . .”

“We're leaving a trail wider than the Hume Highway?”

“Yeah. Dropping in on notorious give-ups like that character back there. Max and everyone else always told me you were Mr
Super
Secretive. Couldn't be contacted. Lived in a secret hideaway.”

“When the Troubles started, I kept out of the way best I could. Then it became a habit. I got to like it.”

“And now?”

“Sometimes you have to sneak around to get things done. But other times it's better to shake the bejesus out of everything, see what falls out of the tree.”

We sat and listened to the river. The sky got dark. There was
no moon, but the stars shone as brightly as ever they did.

After a while Denise said, “You know, you could do a book about
your
life.”

“I'll leave that caper to Max. He did one years ago, did you know that? Back in 1960, somewhere around then. Called
Confessions of a Downbeat Daddio
.”

She didn't laugh. “I'm serious, Bill. There's one in the pipeline now, in Melbourne. A bloke named Brian. one-time police informer. Not like Georgie, this is the guy who blew the whistle on police pay-offs at the royal commission. He's working with a journo, but it's the crook's point of view.”

“‘Criminal chic'?”

“Mock away all you like. But you just wait and see what happens.”

“You could be right. Like the old stories about bushrangers and the traps. No one
ever
barracked for the traps, right? But what about your film, that really going to happen?”

She nodded vigorously. “Australian film. There's something brewing there, for sure. I've got a bunch of friends, they're all learning filmmaking. At tech, at the new film and TV school.”

“Yeah?”

“They're making shorts and documentaries, mostly. But why not feature films?”

“What about surf films?” I said.

Her face went blank. “What about them?”

“Never mind.”

“Anyway,” she said, “Australian films, Australian settings. With genuine Australian characters.”

“That's what you're aiming at?” I said.

“My fucking oath I am,” she said. “The book first, then the film.”

“Where does the money come from?”

She smiled, very pleased with herself. “That's the trick of it. Getting the money. My brother will help with that side of it.”

“The old boys' network.”

“Not only. What you do, you tap all these Johnny-come-latelys
– property developers, TV stars, advertising people, sportsmen – who are cashed up but a little bit unsure of themselves still. You give them a chance to buy into something to do with culture. They get to meet actors, go to good parties. Maybe make some money back. At the same time, Richard and a few of his friends are working on the other side of it, talking with people in the government about creating tax concessions for film investors. So it's in the investors' interests too.”