IT CAME BY WAY of the human web. The great thing about living in a smallish city is that everything and everyone are connected – if you dig a bit. I remembered that my accountant, Garth Wilmot, had kept an office in Klintoff House until they put the rent up and told him he had to have gold-plated toilet-roll holders. Poor old Garth had retired to a less plush suite on the railway side where the rent was much better, though the security screens had cost him a fortune.
Klintoff House was one of the few high-rises along the western suburbs beach strip. Somehow the owners of the building had snuck their plans through council when no one was looking. These days you couldn’t build anything over three storeys that hadn’t been vetted by every blue rinser, white-shirt, and Louis Vuitton-toting kindy mum in the district. They wanted ambience on their morning jog along the beach, not Gold Coast. I suppose money in plain brown envelopes solved many a problem!
I searched on the building name and came up with Klintoff ’s table of residents, which included three law firms, two accountants, one judge, a cardiologist and an import– export business front office. I didn’t figure Delgado to be old enough for a judge or anal enough for an accountant. Cardiologist seemed unlikely too. That left lawyer or import– export manager. Lawyer would be my pick.
This time, my search picked on a Pietro Delgado, a solicitor who’d represented some dubious cases for known criminals. I began to get a bad feeling, so I rang Garth.
‘Hi Tara.’
I didn’t need my newly acquired paralanguage prowess to know he sounded tired and peeved. Garth and I had dated for a while – well before he went bald and got a designer-beer belly. He’d wanted to marry me until he found out that I had no ability whatsoever to keep to a budget. His love seemed to go stone cold as he realised just how fiscally challenged I was. Meanwhile, I realised that I couldn’t bear to spend the rest of my life toting up how much I’d saved by using supermarket petrol vouchers.
Our break-up was amicable enough for us to remain friends, but niggly enough that we could only handle each other in small doses. I relied on him for ‘sensible advice’. And occasionally, he called me when he needed a hot date for the Accountants Annual Ball or a financier’s dinner.
‘Bad day?’ I commiserated.
‘Some bastard broke in here last night, took my DVD player and all my reams of A4 paper. Why the fuck would someone want A4 paper?’
‘Umm . . . beats me. What about your new screens? Didn’t they work?’
He sighed. ‘Cleaner left the front door unlocked.’
I laughed. I shouldn’t have but Garth had that sort of bad luck all the time. Maybe he’d been born under a ladder.
‘I might have known you’d be sympathetic,’ he said dryly. ‘What do you want?’
I cut straight to it. Like Bok, Garth and I didn’t need to beat around the bush. ‘Did you ever come across a solicitor named Pietro or Peter Delgado when you were in the Klintoff building?’
‘Pete Delgado! You don’t want to be dating him, T.’
‘I’m not dating him, stupid,’ I snapped. I didn’t need Garth being protective. Hell, I weighed five kilos more than him and could run his pants off.
‘Then why are you asking?’
‘Never mind that. Tell me what you know.’
‘He works for Positoni & Kizzick.’
I knew that should mean something to me but it didn’t. ‘Eh?’
‘They handle all the Johnny Vogue cases.’
‘Oh.’ My stomach flipped. Johnny Vogue was our wee city’s supremo crime lord. His real name was John Viaspa, but in our fair nation we don’t handle formal or complete names too well.
‘Don’t you read the papers?’ he asked.
‘Only the sport.’
‘Well I’m telling you, T. Stay clear of that one. He’s a slime ball, and I’ve heard his wife is as dangerous as a cut snake. Listen, I’ve got to go. Cops are here about the break-in. Take Care.’ Then he gave a chuckle.
‘What?’
‘I’m looking out the window and guess who one of the boys-in-blue is? Whitey. I’ll give him your regards.’
‘Ugh!’ I said and hung up.
Greg Whiteman’s sister and I had gone to school together. I met Greg – Whitey – when I was fifteen, and harboured a huge secret crush on him until I was seventeen. When we finally went out on a date, I discovered he was vain, stupid and the worst kind of lecher. Right after he’d bought my first drink he’d leaned in close. ‘Tara,’ he’d said. ‘You wanna go back to my place for a root?’
My latent western suburbs sensibilities were so offended that I washed his face with my vodka cooler. I stopped short of kneeing him in the nuts because you never know when you might need to know a cop, but these days the sight of him brought bile to my mouth.
Unfortunately, Whitey seemed to like my hostile treatment. He badgered me endlessly after that. I ignored his calls until they eventually tapered off when he got married to a girl from my school.
Garth knew the story. He also knew Whitey and his sister. Good old Garth. Never one not to rub something in.
I stared at the wall above my bed, my thoughts flittering about. So Peter Delgado was a bad boy’s lawyer. I wondered if that was as dangerous and mob-ish as it sounded. I mean this was downtown Perth, Ors-trail-ee-ya, not Soho, or Washington DC. Surely organised crime in my fair city meant a few cartons of ecstasy tablets, the odd shipment of hashish and a backroom amphetamines lab, maybe even some horse-race fixing. (Perth’s New Year’s Day racing carnival was always a big event, for me anyway – lost my shoes on more than one occasion after an afternoon in the Moët tent). How bad could it be?
I could just hear Smitty’s answer to that question. Could anyone be more gullible than you, T? Remember the time you thought a girl in your aerobics class kept running to the loo because she had giardia when she was actually bulimic?
Prickles of indecision ran tag across my skin. Garth had sounded serious enough, and despite what I’d said to him, I had seen Johnny Vogue in the paper. Often. Perth’s crime lord ‘owned’ the nightclub stretch of the city. ‘Little Perth’ was full of pimps, dance clubs, kebab shops and sex studios. And Johnny Vogue ran the lot.
I hadn’t been up to Little Perth since scoring a bout of oyster poisoning from Hot Cockles.
To meet Delgado, or not to meet?
I checked the clock: half an hour till my appointment with Mr Honey and I hadn’t even showered. I slapped the blinds shut and stripped off. Grabbing a towel from somewhere on the couch, I tumbled in and out of the shower. Then I dashed back to my bedroom and squeezed into my best black pants and a gauzy, silk-sleeved top that hid my biceps. I shoed-up in high heels but immediately kicked them off in favour of flats – just in case I had to run away from Mr Honey or Peter Delgado.
Shoving my phone and a key card in a mini sling purse, I drew on some eyeliner.
Hair out or in?
In, I decided. Don’t want to look unkempt. Or worse, sexy. That got me sniggering out loud as I jumped into Mona and sped in the direction of Latte Ole.
The sniggering almost kept the worries at bay. What if I couldn’t find Mr Honey? What did someone like Delgado want? What if . . . ?
Impulsiveness had always got me into trouble. Would I ever learn?
Tara, when will you ever learn that your impulsiveness always gets you into trouble?
Did I mention that my Joanna implant was also an echo machine? You’d think by twenty-six years of age I’d have shrugged off some of my parental programming, but when you have no job, no long-term partner, and you’re living in your parents’ garage . . . well . . .
Aunty Lavilla had nailed it. ‘Tara,’ she’d said to me recently over a bottle of pinot grigio and some sweet chilli philly, ‘I love you to death but you are the most curious creature. So adolescent one moment, and so switched on and mature the next. Couth and refined in one breath; positively raucous in another. It’s like two people inhabit that scone of yours.’
From anyone else I would have been mortally offended, violently offended even, but Liv was one of my favourite people in the world. She dripped expensive jewellery, loved the odd chemically induced, mind-altering experience, and supported some of her more extravagant habits by selling her artwork to large corporations for a shit-load of money. Who’d have thought Joanna could have a sister who was so improper and creative and out there?
Thank God for Liv and her penthouse!