Rubdown (4 page)

‘No.’

Curtis dropped the butt and flattened it with a Dunlop Volley.

He crossed his arms, trying for tough guy, but ending up with whiny kid brother. ‘Hey, you owe me from when I helped you last year. You swore you’d pose for Premium in a lesbian shoot with your friend.’

I’d lied. ‘Yeah, well, you got Chloe.’

‘But I’d promised my editor the two of you. Look, all I’m asking for is a little information from time to time. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. I’m telling you, I’ve got my finger on the pulse in this town.’ He handed me his card. I really didn’t want to get involved with Curtis Malone, mostly because of his overuse of clichés, but Tony always told me I needed to expand my sources and even a hack like him could prove useful.

Not wanting Curtis to contact the office I gave him an old stripping card with my mobile number. There I was in a spangled red bikini.
From mild to wild, for all your adult entertainment needs.

A thought occurred to me. ‘If you need money, Chloe’s looking for a driver.’

He nodded and checked out the card. ‘You know, I could still organise that lesbo shoot.’

‘Save it,’ I said.

I felt better the next morning. Going to the funeral had been a good call, despite the fight and the crappy song. Afterwards I’d spent a quiet afternoon at home watching Elvis and Anne Margaret in
Viva Las Vegas , then whipped up a healthy chicken stirfry and drank only three glasses of wine. Finally, an alcohol free day.

I jogged up to the gym and did half an hour on the treadie and spent the rest of the time lifting free weights and working on my abs. All the while I was thinking positive thoughts like ‘death is there to make us appreciate life’ and ‘Tony will have a big job for me next week so I won’t need to pay rent with the credit card’.

After the gym I popped into the solarium. It was a bad habit left over from my stripping days, but I figured I’d spent adolescence pasty, white and grumpy so I still had a couple of years of brownness up my sleeve. The worst thing about sunbeds, apart from the skin cancer, was the way those warm UV rays caressed your skin and you imagined yourself lying on some tropical beach with a gorgeous tattooed guitar player rubbing Reef Tan into your inner thighs. One with an incredibly hot body and large cock, who also happened to be amazingly skilled with both his fingers and his tongue…

I was still thinking about sex as I walked down Glenhuntly Road towards home. It had been four months since I’d got laid. A gorgeous tattooed guitar player so good at sex he’d ruined me for other men by the time he left town. Masturbation just wasn’t cutting it anymore, but I refused to get depressed, not today with the sun shining and the temperature a balmy seventeen degrees.

Instead I wondered if it was possible to harness that pent-up sexual energy and somehow use it for good instead of evil.

Back home I lit Nag Champa incense, put The Jackson Five on the stereo and danced around cleaning up and watering herbs on the balcony. I loved my flat. It was a one bedroom on the first floor of a brick block and had off-white walls and tacky carpet.

The furnishings in the combined lounge/dining were testament to my complete lack of personal style. An overstuffed maroon forties couch was teamed with an Ikea wall unit and a bookshelf made of bricks and boards. Posters of country bands and Russ Meyer films adorned the walls. My teen dreams of minimalist white interiors had been shot to hell.

Best thing about the place was the wall sized mirror on the built-in wardrobe opposite my bed. Thinking about it gave me another surge of sexual energy that I decided to channel into a vigorous vacuuming session. As I struggled to disentangle the Hoover from the hall closet my mobile rang. It was Hannah, the unlikely brothel owner.

‘I’ve got some work for you.’

‘Serious?’

She gave me an address in Malvern. ‘Meet me in an hour.’

The house was off Tooronga Road, a neat wooden cottage painted duck-egg blue and hidden behind a high white picket fence. I let myself in the gate and walked through a garden of native shrubs, climbed the steps and rang the bell.

Hannah answered wearing a flowing Indian skirt and no shoes, long curls hanging loose. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said softly and hugged me. Hippies. We’d only met the day before.

‘Why are we whispering?’ I murmured.

She pointed to the closed doors on either side of the hallway.

‘Got two massages going on.’

‘This is your new brothel?’

‘Relaxation centre, hon.’

The lounge room had been done up like the waiting room at an upmarket naturopath. New couches with fuzzy throw rugs, an Indian wall hanging and a side table full of
National Geographic and Simply Living magazines. The sweet smell of ylang ylang drifted up from an oil burner and Bose speakers piped soft music, the sort of ambient chill-out CD favoured by clubbers coming down off E.

Not quite what I’d expected. If you believed the papers, illegal brothels were syringe littered dumps with stained mattresses and fourteen year old hookers rutting without condoms.

‘So what’s the job?’

‘It’s not me wants to hire you, but a client of mine. He’s waiting out the back.’

I raised my eyebrows and followed her through a country style kitchen onto a wooden deck.

A squat old man in a brown suit struggled up from a canvas director’s chair. He didn’t look a day under eighty, but had a scalp full of thick silver hair slicked back from his forehead. I tried not to reflect on the ridiculousness of hanging around illegal brothels scabbing jobs off somebody’s granddad, smiled graciously and held out my hand.

‘Simone, this is Vincent Pirelli. Vincent, Simone Kirsch.’

Close up he smelled of pine needles and Brylcreem.

We sat down and Vincent picked his hat off the wrought iron table and fiddled with the brim. The back yard was small and paved. Grevilleas with cylindrical red flower heads lined the fence and bottle green towels hanging from a retractable clothes line, rippled in the breeze. Hannah offered me a coffee but I shook my head. I’d had a plunger full before the gym. Anymore and I might’ve busted a valve.

‘So, Vincent. How can I help you?’

He cleared his throat and spoke with a thick Italian accent.

‘I want you to find out who killed my Tammy.’

‘Tamara’s death was a suicide. If you think it wasn’t you should go to the police.’

‘No police.’

Hannah reached across the table and rubbed Vincent’s gnarled brown hand. ‘His wife passed away five years ago, but he has children and grandchildren. He doesn’t want any scandal.’

‘That may be so, but I’m an inquiry agent, not a homicide detective. I don’t wear a trenchcoat, carry a gun or solve murders.

Sorry.’

‘But you have.’ Hannah pulled a folded A4 sheet from her skirt pocket and smoothed it out on the table. ‘I got this off the internet.’

It was a
Herald Sun
piece about Chloe’s kidnapping and Frank Parisi’s murder. Mostly bullshit since the real truth hadn’t come out in the press.

‘That was different, nothing to do with my usual inquiry work.’

‘I have information.’ Vincent pronounced each syllable separately and shuffled his chair forward, fixing me with a watery, red rimmed stare. ‘I see Tammy for two year. First at Good Time, then Hannah’s. I am lonely after my wife passed and I don’t want to go to brothel like most men. No point, I have operation on my…’

He waved toward his crotch.

‘Prostate,’ Hannah offered.

‘Now, nothing come out. I see Tammy for little bit of kiss, little bit of cuddle. Mostly talk.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I tried to keep my face pleasant. An image of Vincent’s ancient penis had just popped into my head.

‘Tammy was good girl, but she have many troubles. Family troubles. Troubles with Neville Annis from Good Times. She owe money to Craig Annis.’

‘Who?’

‘Deals in the drugs. Sell for his uncle Neville. I know Neville from many years ago. He is smart man, but he very bad man.’

Neville hadn’t struck me as particularly smart or bad when I’d met him. ‘Hang on, why would Neville kill her? If she owed him and his nephew money surely it would be better to keep her alive and working so she could pay it off.’

‘Tammy know things he doing.’

‘What things?’

Vincent shrugged, ‘I no know for sure.’

And he never would. Hannah read the look on my face and leaned in. I crossed my arms so she couldn’t rub my hand.

‘Vincent loved Tammy. They had a real connection. He just thinks the police were too quick to label her death a suicide and he’d like to hire you for two weeks to look into it. If you find anything you can take it to the police without mentioning his name. If you don’t, he’ll be satisfied knowing he did what he could.

I get a good vibe from you. You’re not the type to rip off an old man.’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘He’s prepared to pay you four thousand dollars. Cash.’

They studied my face. Large amounts of money have always excited me but I played it cool.

‘I can’t legally investigate a murder.’

‘But you can follow people around and ask questions. Surely there’s some way to phrase it in the contract so you’re not breaking the law?’

Surely there was. ‘I’ll have to talk to my boss, Tony.’

Vincent shook his head so vigorously a slice of silver hair came loose.

Hannah said, ‘Tony Torcasio’s a friend of the family. Vincent only wants to deal with you. You just subcontract for the A1

Agency, right? There’s nothing to stop you taking on a case on your own.’

‘No, but Neville and Craig sound like pretty heavy dudes. I’m a female working alone, so don’t expect me to jump in undercover or anything.’

‘Of course not,’ Hannah said. ‘Just a little quiet digging around is all he wants.’

A small brown bird sucked nectar from a grevillea flower.

Vincent pulled a chunky yellow envelope from his jacket pocket and pressed it into my hand. ‘Four thousand. For two week. You find nothing, no matter. At least we try. I am old man. I miss her.

I try to help when she alive, now, also, when she dead.’ His rheumy eyes filled with tears and under the sharp Nordic scent of his aftershave I picked up a musty smell, like the beginnings of decay.

At home I spread the four grand on my chipped timber dining table. I’d never had so much dosh in my hot little hands. Stripping money, although good at times, had tended to come in dribs and drabs and was pretty much spent before I’d earned it.

Part of me felt bad accepting Vincent’s money when it was obvious he was grieving and couldn’t accept that his favourite massage girl had taken her own life. The other part, who had already spent the money on a computer, digital camera and deposit for a less conspicuous car, worked hard to justify the decision.

Vincent
wanted
to give me the money. He had to feel like he’d done
everything for Tamara. Was I going to stand in the way of what was possibly an old man’s dying wish? Hell no.

I poured myself a glass of Colombard chardonnay from the two litre cask, took it onto the balcony with a cigarette and scribbled down notes about the way I’d approach the case. I’d already arranged to meet Hannah in a couple of days. She was going to talk to her girls and see if they knew what was going on with Tammy. One in particular, Lauren, had partied with her a lot.

Usually you’d talk to the family, but I didn’t think they’d know much about Tamara’s recent life. Besides, rich folks never liked you poking around in their business and since Emery was a big shot lawyer I felt certain he could sue me thirty different ways before morning tea. I would contact Lulu, the trannie, and do a search on Neville and Craig using the internet and newspaper archives at the State Library.

I finished the wine and planted my cigarette butt in a potted palm. The sky was purple. It was mid-April and getting dark earlier now. Pretty soon the deciduous trees lining Broadway would be skeletal and my electricity bills huge.

You know, what I really needed to kickstart this case was the sort of background check only a cop could do.

I knew a cop. I used my mobile to call Alex Christakos.

‘Simone, great to hear from you. How long’s it been?’

I’d forgotten his smooth, deep voice. ‘Months. How’s the shoulder?’

He’d been shot last December. It had kind of been my fault.

‘Not bad. Still going to physio. Been back at work for a while but desk duties shit me up the wall.’

In the background bottles clinked and conversation echoed off wooden surfaces. ‘I need some information.’

Alex groaned. ‘You know I can’t do that. Fuck’s sake. I’m ESD.’

Ethical Standards.

‘How about a drink then?’ I wasn’t going to give up that easily.

‘Sure, me and the others are at the Waterside. Corner of Flinders and King. Come along, it’ll be good to see you.’

Good to see you. It was nice to be wanted. Gave me a buzz.

The Waterside was an old pub beneath the Flinders Street over-pass, nestled between Top of the Town brothel and the strip clubs on King. I couldn’t imagine what Alex was doing there. Sure, his department was just down the road in the World Trade Centre complex, but he was the sort of guy who felt at home in expensive restaurants and trendy bars. The one time I’d set foot in the Waterside the grime and pissy smell had conjured up a hundred years of drunken sailors carousing with assorted cutthroats and blowsy syphilitic whores.

Not anymore. I pushed through the door into a slick modern bar, top shelf booze gleaming under downlights. The floor was polished wood and the walls were painted matt in colours the designer probably called Mocha and Suede. Well dressed office workers lounged on low couches and red leather banquettes, drinking cocktails and boutique beers. I spotted the Ds at a cluster of high tables with chrome bar stools, over by a big screen TV showing a football replay. My heart sank when I noticed a rabbitty blonde officer named Suzy McCullers. She was still going out with Alex.

Didn’t mean I couldn’t flirt, I’d just have to tone it down a peg to avoid a bitchfight. I was good at flirting. Saw it as a sport, like tennis or netball. Got the heart rate up and was mostly good for your health.