Fishing for Stars (16 page)

Anna sighed. ‘I try not to cheat and not to lie, which I find is almost impossible in the world of business. But I’ve also discovered it’s futile to feel guilty. He technically steals from me and I claw back what I can. Now I own most of the immediate area – nineteen lots.’

‘But, darling, why haven’t you talked about any of this?’

Anna gave a tiny sigh and said quietly, ‘Nicholas, you were never interested in my property developments, remember?’

What could I say to that? After a moment’s silence I asked, ‘But surely somebody was bound to notice you buying up on such a scale? Stan McVitty for a start. Property sales are pretty public affairs; they all have to be registered with the Titles Office.’

Anna smiled. I know she sometimes finds me a bit backward, but she tries to conceal her impatience. ‘Each of the buildings is owned separately by a two-dollar shelf company via nominees owned by my umbrella company registered in Port Vila.’

‘Anna, you didn’t tell me that,’ I said, surprised.

‘Didn’t I? Never mind, now you know. Perhaps the islands will never prove a good investment, but there are distinct advantages to this one being a tax haven.’ Anna took a sip from her gin and tonic, her eyes shining and a grin forming at the corners of her mouth. ‘The total area I own at the top of Collins Street forms one of two possible sites for what is to be known as Nauru House.’

Despite myself I lifted my glass in a toast and said, ‘Well done!’ Then quickly added, ‘Hey, wait on. What if the Nauru government chooses the other site?’

Anna grinned. ‘Here comes the real fun.’ She looked at me and put down her glass. ‘Nick, I think I’ll change to champagne. Can you ask the hostess? Perhaps some blinis to go with it?’

I had no idea what blinis were. The air hostess brought a bottle of French champagne, poured it and apologised that they didn’t have any blinis. A plate of smoked salmon appeared instead.

‘Pity,’ Anna remarked. ‘I love those tiny pancakes with smoked salmon.’

So now I knew, small pancakes. ‘What’s the real fun?’ I asked after the hostie had departed.

‘Fun?’

‘You said, “Here comes the real fun”.’

‘Oh, why yes . . .’ Anna took a breath. ‘
Well!
Stan McVitty has formed what he calls a secret consortium to buy the properties he doesn’t know I own. In fact, the only building he owns in the immediate area is Madam Butterfly. You know that’s how he originally got his fifty-one per cent share in Madam Butterfly. I tried to rent the building when I first arrived and he offered to fit it out and turn it into a high-class establishment. We agreed I’d pay him rent by cheque each month and he’d take fifty-one per cent of the profits as well, but in cash, of course.’

‘Didn’t you move from the original building in Spring Street shortly after I met you in Australia?’

‘Yes, it became too small, so he bought our present place in Little Collins Street.’

‘
He
bought it alone? Why not be partners in the building as well?’

‘He wouldn’t hear of it.’ Anna shrugged philosophically, then as an aside, added, ‘I have since learned that in life, real estate always beats know-how. In the long run bricks are more permanent than tricks,’ she added cleverly. ‘I should be grateful. He taught me that.’

‘Stan’s secret consortium,’ I reminded her, anxious to get back to the development site.

‘Yes . . . well, quite obviously, the Nauru government can obtain a loan from any major bank backed by their phosphate assets to buy the real estate they need to erect the building, so there’s no need for a consortium to buy it. McVitty, Swan & Allison are responsible for overseeing the sale so they can’t be seen to be double-dipping. It would amount to what the law calls a secret commission, to say nothing of the legal ethics regarding conflict of interest. You can’t be seen to be making a profit by exploiting confidential information from your own client.’

‘Which is what Stan McVitty hopes to do. Isn’t he taking a tremendous risk?’

Anna nodded. ‘Yes. If he is discovered it would destroy him, as well as his brother in Canberra.’

I had a sudden thought. ‘Hang on, what’s to stop you doing the same thing? You can’t be accused of insider trading.’

‘Go to the top of the class, Nicholas. But there’s one catch. Stan McVitty owns the Madam Butterfly building.
And
that just happens to sit in the heart, almost in the dead centre, of the development site.’

‘Damn! What will you do?’

Anna giggled. ‘He may call it a secret consortium, but that’s a euphemism for greed. Stan wants to keep all the profit for himself.’

‘Why are you grinning?’ I asked, somewhat bemused.

‘He wants me to front for him, be his straw man.’

‘Good God!’

‘He told me after almost twenty years in partnership he knows he can trust me. But what he’s really saying, or believes, is that he’s always got the heroin thing, and the fact that I am the madam of a house of ill repute, to keep me in line.’

‘But you’ve got his partnership with you to throw right back at him. Imagine what such exposure would do to his sanctimonious public image. It would ruin him!’

Anna looked at me somewhat scornfully. ‘Nicholas, you really are a babe in the woods. He’d simply say he rented the building to Madam Butterfly without knowing how it was being used. The rent was the only thing that wasn’t cash. He’s a bastard, but he’s not a fool.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. I can hear him saying it,
sotto voce
, on Sir Bloody Irving’s “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon” radio program. Probably have Bob Menzies following, saying what a sterling chap he is, pillar of the establishment.’

Anna laughed. ‘It’s the Melbourne Club. They stick together.’

‘Okay, if he isn’t going to offer to share the profit he hopes to make, what’s he offering?’

‘Well, thank God he didn’t!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘I would have been hard put to explain that I didn’t want to make what would otherwise amount to an enormous killing.’

It was getting complicated.

‘Greed, it can be a friend.’

‘Anna, what sort of money is involved? I mean, what did you pay for the properties in the first instance?’ I then realised that I might be prying into her private business, something I’d never done. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t wish to, darling.’

Anna laughed. ‘How much? It’s not always about money. Mostly sweat, sometimes blood and occasionally tears. Every property was paid for with endless lengths of bondage rope and a great number of carefully tied knots. I’d work on a client for two hours and when he was both exhausted and satisfied, I’d say to myself, “Well, that paid for half a kitchen or possibly the outside toilet.” In dollar terms? I’ve paid around half a million dollars in our new decimal currency for the nineteen lots I own at present. Not too bad. I’ve been lucky – nobody wants property at this end of the city. We are not the only brothel on the block, even though Melbourne sees itself as a choosy and refined city.’

‘The brothels, they still going?’

Anna shrugged. ‘I don’t own them, it’s rent.’

‘And now, what’s the whole shebang worth as a development site?’ I knew I was prying, but Anna didn’t seem concerned.

‘How long is a piece of string? If a high-rise developer comes along, possibly more than ten times what I originally paid.’

‘
Phew!
Nice work. And now one
has
come along – Nauru House!’ I paused. ‘Hang on, how are you going to overcome the little matter of the Nauru government choosing your site, and further, the problem of the Madam Butterfly building?’

‘By accepting Stan’s offer to be his straw man.’

‘But you already said that didn’t make sense.’

‘No, I said a partnership sharing the potential profits didn’t make sense. Stan has agreed to pay brokerage fees of five per cent for the use of my name on the contract. And, because the assistant police commissioner retires from the police force this year, in addition he’s offered me a forty-nine per cent share of a new Madam Butterfly to be established elsewhere in Melbourne. “A nice tidy little package, Anna,” is how he put it to me.’

‘Oh, Anna, you wouldn’t. Please say no to continuing in the business.’

‘Don’t be impatient, Nicholas. As it turns out, a relocated Madam Butterfly won’t be possible.’

‘But by agreeing to the deal, you now
only
get five per cent when you own all the properties but one. That’s bloody crazy.’

‘I agree, it would be crazy, insane. But I wouldn’t work like that. My only reason for agreeing is to have the Madam Butterfly building included. That guarantees that McVitty, Swan & Allison will nominate the site I own for the Nauru House development. If I went in alone and tried to buy the building from Stan he’d make me pay a ridiculous price for it, or out of sheer spite he’d simply nominate the alternative site.’ Anna spread her hands. ‘No Madam Butterfly building, no deal – simple as that. Stan McVitty holds the key but he doesn’t know it.’ She took a sip of champagne. ‘But there’s another way.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ll agree to be his straw man and set up a company in my name, buy the nineteen lots I already own in the name of the new company for exactly what I paid for it, not a cent more except for the legal fees and stamp duties. This is going to take a period of at least a year. So every month or so, one or another of my properties will appear as sold to the new holding company, including the premises Madam Butterfly occupies, which will naturally be the first to be sold at Stan’s insistence.’

I frowned. ‘Anna, I don’t get it.’

Anna ignored me. ‘Then, I’ll sell the whole parcel to the Nauruans for roughly ten times as much.’

‘And only get five per cent of the value? That’s bullshit, you said so yourself.’

‘Shush, Nicholas, listen. I keep
all
the money. Around four and a half million dollars. All I give Stan McVitty is the $500 000 he gave me to buy my own properties for the new company plus the money the new company paid for the Madam Butterfly building. He hasn’t lost a cent. I’ve even allowed his money to earn bank interest, which is what we agreed. He has his entire original investment back, plus the money he made on the Madam Butterfly building. A nice safe little profit on the money invested. Or as I will put it to him, “A nice tidy little package, Stan”.’

‘Holy Moly! And there’s no contract between the two of you? That right?’

‘Right. Not a single scrap of paper to interfere.’

‘Anna, he’s a lawyer, a smart one according to you. Is he going to buy this?’

‘Buy what? It’s his suggestion, not mine. He made me a loan at current bank interest. I have a piece of paper, a loan agreement, to prove it. It’s the only documentation in the entire project between us. He demanded it in case something unforeseen went wrong.’

I chuckled, not sure I approved. ‘And something unforeseen did happen?’

‘Darling, as W.C. Fields once said, you can’t cheat an honest man.’

‘Do you think he’ll kick up a fuss when all this comes out in the wash?’

‘Nicholas, the operation has been going for a year. I’m supposedly frantically buying up the properties I already own and the investment company in my name is duly registered and already has ten lots in its portfolio.’

‘Anna, the McVittys are Melbourne establishment! Aren’t you afraid of what he might do? These people, they stick together, you know. Besides, you mentioned the heroin and the madam thing.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Of course you can’t be too careful, but as I told you once before, it’s who you know, and I feel sure that the VIP list I’ve roped in over twenty years with never a whisper of impropriety is enough goodwill – that will go further than any influence he may have. A quiet word here and there, an exposure in the
Herald
or
The
Age
and the attempted scam will be all over town.’

‘Nice work, darling.’

Anna was more than a little elated and I realised that she’d told no one up to now, that letting off steam in the plane to Japan with a glass or two of good champagne was exhilarating. ‘The arrogance of males never ceases to surprise me,’ she went on. ‘Stan McVitty is so smug he hasn’t even taken into consideration his personal reputation. Besides, there’s Peter McVitty in Canberra. I’m told he’s a candidate for a safe seat in a coming by-election, that they want him to be the new Minister for External Affairs. He certainly isn’t going to allow a family scandal of such proportions. Can you imagine, the scion of one of Melbourne’s most respected families and a principal in a leading law firm being implicated? What’s more, there’s the implied nepotism Peter showed towards the family law firm appointed to broker the building of Nauru House. Then the inside knowledge of the deal his brother attempted to exploit. It all adds up to a huge mess.’

I grinned. ‘Even the law wins. Stan McVitty would most certainly have to retire from his law practice, the Nauru government business would leave the firm, removing a source of future profit, both honest and suspect.’ I shrugged. ‘Anna, what can I say, you seem to have worked it all out, but you’re getting in awfully deep.’