Silence for a while. The sounds of the city didn’t reach the room.
‘I’ll give you a mobile number,’ he said. ‘It’s not in my name. I’ve borrowed it.’ He took out a notebook, flipped through it, wrote down a number on a desk pad, tore off the page and gave it to me. ‘I feel as if I’ve entered the underworld myself.’
I stood up. ‘Can I get a transcript of the proceedings?’
The judge stood up too, went to a wooden filing cabinet and found a yellow folder, gave it to me. He walked me to the door. We shook hands.
‘We could get lucky,’ I said. ‘Chin up.’
He smiled. ‘Thanks, mate. Thanks for everything.’
‘Don’t say thanks till you’ve seen Wootton’s bill.’
The thin man was waiting outside to escort me to the side entrance. On the way to Fitzroy, stuck in Little Lonsdale, I picked up the cheap eats guide, flicked through to the index.
There it was, on the first page I scanned.
27
La Contessa, assetnoC aL in reverse, was a narrow place in Bridge Road, Richmond, that looked as if it had been there longer than those on either side in what was now a smart strip.
Although it was cold and too early for the after-work crowd, the half-dozen tables outside were taken. Inside, there were only a few customers. I found a seat near the kitchen. The man operating the coffee machine was not of the new generation of cafe people; he had the pained expression of someone too long standing to perform a repetitive task: the assembly-line worker’s look.
A young man, possibly the son, came out of the kitchen. He was wearing the apron in the picture, a long black apron with La Contessa printed on it. I asked for a short black. When it came, I had the picture out, facing him.
‘That’s probably you,’ I said, tapping on the reflected apron.
He was intrigued, had a good look. ‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘Who’s that?’ I said, my finger on the fleshy man.
‘Alan Bergh,’ he said, suspicion starting. ‘What’s this, what’s this about?’
‘I’m a lawyer.’
This statement often has the effect of briefly paralysing the brain of the hearer.
‘Right.’ Uncertain. ‘What do you-’
‘I’d like to get in touch with Alan.’
‘Yeah, well, he’s away.’
‘Away from where?’
‘Where? His office.’
‘Where’s that?’
He indicated with a thumb. ‘Vietcong supermarket. Upstairs.’
He’d learned that from his father. The war in Indochina was not over. The battle for the hearts and minds of the invaders had still to be won.
I didn’t pursue the matter. The waiter left, went outside.
The coffee was terrible, sour, third-rate beans, old, probably black market.
‘Come again,’ said the father, giving me my change.
‘Can’t wait to.’
I walked in the direction indicated by the son’s thumb. Halfway down the block was a business that satisfied his description. Beyond it, a heavyweight door with a mail slot carried the
names of two businesses on the first floor: VICACHIN BUSINESS AGENCY and CORESECURE.
The door was locked. I pressed the buzzer on the wall.
‘Yes,’ said a woman’s voice, hissing through holes in a slim stainless-steel box beside the door.
‘Client of Coresecure,’ I said. ‘Here to see Alan.’
‘Mr Bergh not here,’ said the voice, staccato.
‘When’s he coming back?’
‘Don’t know.’
I accepted that, wrote down Vicachin’s phone number. Coresecure didn’t have one on the door. Then I went home, a slow journey in failing light in the company of irritable people.
Coresecure wasn’t in the White Pages. Nor was it in the Yellow Pages in any category I could think of. I packed up for the day, not a great deal to pack, and drove around to Lester’s Vietnamese takeaway in St Georges Road.
Lester was alone in the shop, in the kitchen. When the door made its noise, he looked up and saw me in his strategically placed mirror.
‘Early, Jack,’ he barked. ‘How many?’
‘I need a favour,’ I said.
‘Ask.’
I asked. He nodded, took the piece of paper and went back to the kitchen, held a long, rapid-fire conversation in Vietnamese on the phone.
He came back and returned my slip of paper. ‘They talk to you,’ he said. ‘You can go there tomorrow.’
28
I drove home in drizzle, tail-lights turning the puddles to blood, listening to Linda on the radio taking calls on Victorians’ gambling habits. The daylight was gone before I found my mooring beneath the trees.
Upstairs, I put on the kitchen radio to hear a man say:… accept that the state’s now on a gambling revenue drip and raise the tax till the bastards scream.
Linda: You’re saying gambling’s a fact of life, so get the most public benefit out of it?
Caller: Exactly. And this Cannon Ridge casino, the Cundall casino, slug it. Playground for the rich, double the bloody gambling tax.
Linda: Thank you, Nathan of Glen Iris. Now there’s a challenging point of view, even if the logic may be slightly fuzzy. What’s your view, Leanne of Frankston?
Leanne: Linda. I’m a compulsive gambler, I’ve had treatment…
Enough. She would ring or she wouldn’t. It was probably better if she didn’t. We could meet from time to time as friends. Old friends. We’d made a good start at that.
Had she rubbed her left leg against my right? Not a rub, but a linger. A touch and then a linger.
How old did you have to be before this kind of rubbish stopped?
I got a fire going, bugger cleaning the grate. Everything was dirty in my life, why worry about a pile of soft, clean ashes?
Now, a drink. I looked in the cupboard. Campari and soda, Linda’s end-of-day drink, the bottles not touched since Linda. I poured a stiff one, settled on the couch to think. The phone rang.
‘No doubt,’ said Drew, ‘I find you poring over your footy memorabilia, sniffing old Fitzroy socks, marvelling at the size of your antecedents’ jockstraps, lovingly preserved.’
‘Large in their day but dwarfed by those to come,’ I said. ‘I gather you’ve found a form of happiness with some unfortunate.’
Tell me that it is not Rosa, please.
He sighed. ‘To find joy and to share it, that is life’s purpose. You probably have no idea who said that.’
‘No. Let me have a stab. You.’
‘Spot on. Anyway, you can’t dwarf a jockstrap.’
‘The courts will decide what you can and cannot do with a jockstrap. Who?’
‘A corporate lawyer. International experience. Top-tier firm, I might add. With a personal trainer.’
I gave silent thanks. ‘Trains her to do what? Find 48 billable hours in the day? Render the simple incomprehensible? Conspire with the other side to shake their clients down?’
I could imagine the pained Drew look.
‘Slander your fellow servants of the law if you will,’ he said. ‘This delightful creature has been slumbering, awaiting the kiss of an awakener.’
‘Slumbering? Form?’
‘Unraced.’
‘Age?’
‘I’m not filling in an application here.’
‘I’ll put it to you again.’
‘The thirties. Thirty-five, six. Thereabouts, I suppose.’
‘That’s quite a slumber. How did this happen?’
‘Her secretary was in a bit of strife. Vanessa came along to give the poor woman moral support. You’ll have noticed the effect a commanding physical presence, razor-sharp intellect, and professional brilliance can have on women.’
‘I have. How’d you get Vanessa to notice you?’
‘I can feel waves of jealousy passing through this instrument.’
‘I hope you’re talking about the phone. You got the secretary off?’
Drew sighed. ‘Actually, no. Could’ve been worse though.’
‘Moving away from your erotic fantasies,’ I said, ‘as a man of affairs, does the name Alan Bergh mean anything?’
‘It does.’
‘Tell me.’