The Tax Inspector

52

Jack Catchprice was scared and amazed by what he had brought off. The thing happened so fast. Really, he was just enquiring – could he do it? He was testing his strength – did he know the guy who knew the guy? Did he have the clout with the first guy to get him to use his clout with the second guy? Did he have enough in the favour bank to get this investigation stopped? The truth was – he was flirting with it. But then he was in the deep end and suddenly he was in a very dark place and it was, like, you want it or not, yes or no, shit or get off the can. ‘Sure,’ he said. What the fuck else could he say?

Thirty minutes after she left the Bilgola house, without her knowing anything had changed, Catchprice Motors was no longer a part of Maria Takis’s professional life.

Jack had not been able to achieve it in two steps, but in three, and the steps were dirty and the connections dangerous. He was now joined to things he would rather not be joined to.

He wanted to ring Maria, straightaway, and tell her what he had done. But it was like ringing to check that a dozen long-stemmed roses had arrived – you could not do it. You had to wait to be thanked.

For Jack who had made his impatience into something like a professional virtue, waiting was difficult. But he did it. He had no choice. He told Bea he would take any calls from Maria Takis, and any call from any female who did not seem inclined to give a name.

He had a meeting with the dopey architect who had wilfully ignored his brief and now wanted to give the Circular Quay land to the city for a park in return for the right to put two towers in the water where the ferries came in. It was like a giant π, a gateway to the city with a ballroom, a fucking ballroom, across the top. It was wrong to call him dopey. The guy was right in everything he said. He was trying to make a proper gateway for the city. He said the Cahill Expressway was like the Berlin Wall. He was a fucking genius, but he did not see that Jack could not sell a ballroom, and he did not have the resources to fight ten years to build in the water at Circular Quay. But he could not bear a gifted man like this to dislike him – he asked him to take his drawings to another stage.

After that, he called all the troops in for the Lend Lease meeting – three hours later than scheduled but Lend Lease still bought the whole Woolloomooloo package and when they went out of the door he opened a couple of magnums of Moët for the staff to celebrate.

There was still no call. He started to worry the connection had fucked up, that the case had not been stopped. He went back into his office. He picked up the phone, put it down, picked it up, put it down again.

Then he buzzed Bea and had her book a table for two at Darcy’s for that evening, just in case.

‘You’re not going to Darcy’s,’ Bea said. ‘You’ve got dinner at Corky Missenden’s.’

‘Then I’ll cancel Corky. Get me Corky.’

‘Good luck,’ Bea said.

But of course there was no way Corky was going to excuse him.

‘All right,’ Jack said. ‘Well, if I have to come, I’m going to have to bring someone.’

‘Jack, don’t do this to me.’

‘Corky, I don’t want to. I have to.’

‘You’re a shit, Jack. This dinner has been planned for weeks. You don’t know what a tricky placement this is. Who is this person? Is she anyone I know? Does she do anything?’

Jack thought it best not to reveal her occupation. ‘You’ll like her,’ he said, ‘she’s a friend of Daniel Makeveitch. You’ll love her.’

But there was still no call from Maria.

Jack was tight and twitchy in the legs and at the back of his fingers. He had lunch at Beppi’s with Larry Auerbach and took his cellular phone to the table like some nerd from the Parramatta Road. When Larry went for a piss, he rang Catchprice Motors, but the phone wasn’t even answered.

At three he got the Taxation Office but her number did not answer either, and the switchboard said she was unavailable.

At four, now in his office, he telephoned Maria’s home and got the answerphone.

‘Hey, Maria. You there? It’s Jack … Catchprice … I just had a crazy idea,’ he said. ‘It might be fun.’

She picked up.

He stood up and pulled the phone off his desk. ‘You’re there.’

‘If it’s fun, I’m up for it.’

‘Are you O.K.? I worried you had gone into labour.’

‘My fingers look like sausages,’ she said, ‘and I’ve had my worst day all year …’

‘Nothing good happen at all? All day?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Did my legs look sort of funny last night? Were my knees puffy?’

‘No!’

‘Are you sure? Because if they looked like they do right now, I’m going to die of embarrassment.’

‘Maria, you’ve got great legs. What happened that was so bad?’

‘Something very shitty. I don’t want to even think about it.’

‘But your investigation stopped, right?’ He had done the fucking impossible. He had fixed what she had failed to fix. ‘You got called back to your office? Catchprice Motors is out of your life?’

Remember me? The generalist?

There was a pause. ‘Jack, how do you know this?’

‘How do you think?’ he said. I did the fucking impossible for you. I crawled down sewers. I shook hands with rats. ‘How would you reckon?’

‘Oh, your mother told you.’

He made a silent face.

‘Well,’ Maria said. ‘She’s pleased.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘you can rely on that, but I’m sorry you’re not happier.’

‘Oh, I want to have fun now.’

He felt anxious that now she would not like him, angry that she did not appreciate what he had done for her, indignant at what he suspected were her double standards, relieved she would probably come out to dinner with him, even if it was at Corky Missenden’s.

‘You might say no when you hear – but there’s a dinner party at Rose Bay I thought you could have a good laugh at.’

‘I like the laugh part.’

‘You know this fellow Terry Digby – Lord Digby – who just paid $23 million for the de Kooning? He’s in Sydney, and there’s a dinner. It’s Corky Missenden – she’s good at this sort of thing. There’ll be money and art, mostly, but the Attorney General will be there so that might be amusing. In any case, the food should be very good and we could leave early if you were bored – you’d be a perfect excuse for me to leave.’

‘What would I wear?’ she said.

He persuaded her she could wear exactly what she wore the night before, that it would be perfect. He said it because he figured that was who she was, but also because he was not going to lose her because she had nothing suitable to wear, and when they arrived out at Rose Bay, it made Corky Missenden raise a questioning eyebrow in his direction.

He had too much on his mind to be offended by Corky’s eyebrow. He had seen that she was setting up her dinner party with two tables in two rooms, and, as he and Maria passed through the house, even as he pointed out the less embarrassing choices in Corky’s erratic art collection, Jack’s mind was racing, thinking what he could offer Corky, what he could trade her, how he could make her have Maria Takis sit at his table. He had Maria drink champagne. He looked at the harbour and pointed out a school of leather-jackets swimming up against the sea wall, but he had none of the lightness of heart his creased-up eyes and loose curly hair suggested – he knew that he would be sent, in a moment, to be charming to the Attorney General and Maria would be bumped into the second room with the rich and reactionary George Grissenden and the snobbish Betty Finch. He had fucked up. It was the wrong way for her to see his life.