The Tax Inspector

25

‘You pay me now,’ Pavlovic said. ‘Or I leave you here, dead-set. You walk all the way back to Franklin, wouldn’t worry me.’ He leaned back, opened the door on Mrs Catchprice’s side, and smiled.

Sarkis was smiling too. He had that hot burning sensation down the back of his throat. He sat on the edge of the back seat of the taxi with his broad white hands on his knees. He was baring his teeth and narrowing his eyes – ‘smiling’ – but Pavlovic wasn’t even aware of him. He was turned almost completely round in his seat with his hawk nose pointed at Mrs Catchprice.

‘Might give you nicer manners,’ he said.

‘You’ll be paid later,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I don’t carry cash on me.’

‘You pay me now,’ said Pavlovic.

‘You heard her,’ Sarkis said, but he was the one no one seemed to hear.

‘Or you get out of my cab. That simple,’ he smiled again. His mouth was prissy and pinched as if he could smell something nasty on his upper lip.

Sarkis did not want to have a brawl in these trousers and this shirt but he could feel anger like curry in his throat. His eyes were narrowed almost to slits in his incredulous, smiling face. Pavlovic was so thin. Sarkis smoothed the $199 grey moire trousers against his muscled thighs. He looked at Mrs Catchprice to see what it was she wanted him to do.

Mrs Catchprice, it seemed, needed nothing from him. Whatever Pavlovic said to her did not matter. Indeed she was concerned with her cigarette lighter, which had fallen down the back of the seat.

‘I did not come to the Wool Wash to sit in the car. Ah,’ she held up her Ronson. ‘I cannot bear it when I see people sitting in their car to look at the scenery.’

Pavlovic sighed loudly and Sarkis – he couldn’t help himself – slapped him on the side of the head, fast, sharp.

‘You stop that,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘Right now.’

Sarkis opened his mouth to protest.

‘I don’t hire louts,’ said Mrs Catchprice.

Pavlovic said something too but Sarkis did not hear what it was. Pavlovic was holding a clenched fist in the air and Sarkis kept an eye on it, but all his real attention was on Mrs Catchprice – what did she want him to do?

‘Maybe you should pay him,’ he said.

Mrs Catchprice ‘acted’ her response. She smiled a large ‘nice’ smile that made her white teeth look as big as an old Buick grille. ‘I always pay my suppliers when they have completed the job.’

‘I could have the police here,’ Pavlovic smirked and rubbed his bright red ear. ‘Or I could leave you here. I like both ideas.’

Sarkis did not actually have a police record, but he had experience of the police in Chatswood. To Mrs Catchprice, he said: ‘Maybe you should look in your handbag.’

Mrs Catchprice’s smile became even bigger. ‘You must not equate age with stupidity,’ she said. ‘You’d have to be senile to walk around at night with money in your bag.’

She made him ashamed he had suggested such a cowardly course but he had seen the twenty-dollar notes very clearly in the jumble under the street lights before they caught the taxi. He did not wish to insult or anger her, but he tapped her very playfully on the back of the hand. ‘I think I may have seen some there.’

Mrs Catchprice looked at him briefly, frowned, and addressed herself to the balding, hawk-nosed driver. ‘What will the police think,’ she asked, ‘of a taxi-driver operating outside the correct area?’

‘They do not give a fuck. Excuse my language, but if you were nice, I would care. You are not nice, so I could not give a fuck. The police got no bloody interest in what area I’m in. Most of the young constables don’t even know what an area is. But I tell you this – they got plenty of interest in assault, and they got plenty of interest in robbery. That’s their business.’

‘Maybe you should check your handbag,’ said Sarkis.

‘I can see I’m going to have to train you,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘When I say I have no money it is because I have no money.’ To the taxi-driver she said: ‘You wait.’ Then she slid out of the door and disappeared into the night.

The taxi-driver leaned back and shut the door. Mrs Catchprice appeared in the headlights of the car walking towards the river. Then – so suddenly it whipped Sarkis’s head forwards and backwards – Pavlovic reversed, made a U-turn, and before his passenger could do anything he was bouncing up the pot-holed track with the red electric figures on the meter showing $28.50.

They were half way through the first S bend when Sarkis leant forward and hooked his forearm round the taxi-driver’s long thin neck. He pulled it back so hard he could feel the jaw bone grating against his ulna. All he said was: ‘Turn back.’ The driver’s stubble was rubbing against his forearm. He hated to think of this against his mother.

‘Road,’ Pavlovic gasped. ‘Too narrow.’

‘O.K.’

‘Can’t breathe.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Breathe.’

Sarkis released his arm a little. The taxi-driver screamed. He screamed so loud he made the taxi like a nightmare, a mad place: ‘You a dead man, Jack.’ Sarkis could feel the wet on his arm. Not sweat. Pavlovic was crying. ‘I hit my panic button, they get you, cunt. They get you in the cells, they fuck you with their baton, you wait.’ The car slowed and slowed until it was juddering and kangaroo-hopping up the road. As the car leaped and jerked, Pavlovic was flailing around with his arm, trying to grab first Sarkis’s ear or eye but also – the panic button. Sarkis grabbed Pavlovic’s hand and held it. He held it easy, but he was now scared, as scared as Pavlovic. Pavlovic was crying but it was not simple scared-crying, it was mad-crying too.

‘You pull up here,’ Sarkis said.

‘You get twenty years for this. You’re dead.’

‘She gets murdered or something,’ Sarkis said. ‘She’s dead.’ The car shuddered and stalled.

‘You,’ yelled the taxi-driver, his face glowing green in the light of his instruments, but he didn’t finish the sentence.

‘What you think I’m going to do to you?’ Sarkis asked. ‘Did I hurt you?’

‘Just pay me,’ Pavlovic said, glaring at him from streaming eyes.

‘O.K.,’ Sarkis said, relieved. ‘You go back and get her, I’ll pay you.’

‘O.K. You take your arm away now.’

Sarkis unhooked his arm from under the driver’s chin.

‘O.K.,’ said Pavlovic, blowing his nose. ‘You got money on you?’

‘At home.’

‘Then I’ll take you home for the money, then we come back here and get her.’ He was hunched over the wheel. He did not need to tell Sarkis he had his finger an inch away from the panic button.

‘We get her first.’

‘You want me press this fucking button?’

That button was enough to get Sarkis put in jail. Pavlovic used it like a pistol. First he forced him to abandon Mrs Catchprice. Then he drove him to his house where his mother had $52 hidden under the lino in the sitting-room.

While Sarkis stole his mother’s money, Pavlovic sat in the cab with the engine running. He stayed hunched over the wheel, his finger on that button.

‘Come on,’ Sarkis said when he got back in the cab. ‘I’ve got the money.’

‘Hold it up. Hold the notes.’

Sarkis showed him – five tens, one two.

Pavlovic twisted his neck to see the money. He had to keep his finger on that button. Even when he backed out of the drive-way he had to sit twisted sideways in his seat, and he drove back to the Wool Wash one handed, all the way, in silence.

When the meter showed $52 they were almost there, on the main road up above the Wool Wash Picnic Area. Pavlovic stopped the car.

‘You pay me,’ he said, ‘or I hit this fucking button now. I charge you with fucking assault, at least. You understand me.’

‘Relax,’ said Sarkis. ‘No one’s going to hurt you.’

‘Shut up, Jack. Just pay me.’

‘I need a lift back. O.K. Can you hear me? I’ll pay you more money when we get back.’

‘Give me the fucking money or you’re a dead man.’

‘You don’t want to make more money?’ Sarkis held out the $52 and Pavlovic snatched the notes. ‘I need a lift back,’ Sarkis said. ‘I’ll pay you.’

‘Not in this cab, Jack.’

‘Just calm down, relax a little.’

‘Get out,’ screamed Pavlovic.

Sarkis shrugged and got out of the car.

Pavlovic locked the car doors.

‘Listen,’ Sarkis began, but the taxi was already driving away, leaving him to stand in pitch darkness.

It was now five minutes to eleven o’clock on Monday night. Mrs Catchprice was already back in Franklin, walking back across the gravel towards her apartment.