The Bear Pit (17 page)

They were sitting out on the front porch of the villa, between two of the Doric pillars. It was a ritual once-a-week meeting, except in inclement weather; Kelzo didn't invite the local elements to call on him, but he liked to be seen; a family man at home with his friends. Down in the driveway Kelzo's teenage son was washing the family Lexus 400. Mrs. Kelzo, a pleasant-looking woman but a wraith in the public gaze, was back in the house doing a woman's work, whatever it was. Peter Kelzo was not as chauvinistic as Euripides, but he believed the playwright had a point in putting women in their place. The world would be a better place if the Greeks still ran it.

Out in the street a waste disposal truck went by, homeward bound. Its driver tooted the horn. Kelzo had once read that the major waste disposal companies in the United States were owned by the Mafia and he had decided that if anyone knew where a profit was, it was the Mafia. He had bought two waste disposal companies and money rolled in as the garbage rolled out. The four men clinging to the back of the truck turned their heads right and saluted Kelzo, like tank captains saluting their commander. They were Maoris and hated their dago boss, but he paid their wages and turned a blind eye to their sorting the waste before it got to the dump. He thought of himself as a philanthropist, a good Greek word, but there were few who agreed with him.

“That's two wrong guys who've been done, Joe—”

“I had nothing to do with The Dutchman copping it.”

“I'm not saying you did, Joe. That was lucky—collateral damage?” He looked at Gandolfo.

“Yeah, in that case, yeah. But how do we know the hit was meant for Jack Aldwych?”

“We don't. Maybe it
was
meant for The Dutchman. In which case, who hired the hitman?”

The three of them sat there, faces as stony as the two statues hailing them. George Gandolfo's was the stoniest of the three. He had worked for Pete, excuse me, Peter Kelzo for fifteen years, first as a clerk in his building business, then as his general handyman in everything but mostly politics. Yet he had
still
not learned the
secret
Peter Kelzo, the one buried deep inside the
bonhomie
of the public man. Gandolfo had, by accident, discovered several secrets that Kelzo had never revealed and he had learned that his boss was much more ruthless than he had believed. He wondered now if Kelzo knew more about the hitman than he showed.

Then Joe St. Louis, a man who had no secrets but wasn't lovable because of that, said, “I could go and visit a few guys down the Trades Congress or at the unions. That guy Balmoral might know a thing or two. We done him a favour, like.”

“We done him nothing of the sort,” said Kelzo, wondering why these two dickheads were his closest associates. But knowing why: George Gandolfo could count in his head quicker than a calculator and Joe St. Louis was the best stand-over man in the business. “All we done is stirred up Mother Vanderberg and she's gunna be twice as tough to deal with. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. That's an old Greek saying.”

Neither of them contradicted him; they had little knowledge of literature and took no notice of a woman's fury or her scorn. “We done nothing to her,” said St. Louis.

“Of course we did, dickhead!” He was losing his patience, on which he had a frayed rein at the best of times. “Joe, we let her know we're not gunna let her run Boolagong. We let her know we were gunna put our own man up for pre-selection.”

“Who?” said George Gandolfo: this was another of Peter's fucking secrets.

“Garry Fairbanks.”

“Garry—? That dummy?” Gandolfo knew a dickhead when he saw one. “He couldn't count the runners in a three-horse race.”

“He does what he's told.”

“Pete—Peter, you ever listened to him? He says he's a lateral thinker, he doesn't know what it means.”

“What does it mean?” asked St. Louis.

“His brain is wider than it's deep. He'll be a dead loss, Pete. Peter.”

“
He's our man,” said Kelzo stubbornly. “I've arranged it. I'll do his thinking for him. Laterally, right side up, arse up, whatever.”

“I hear the cops've got a suspect,” said St. Louis. “I could go looking for him.”

“And do what?” said Kelzo.

“I dunno. Talk to him, ask him who paid him, like. Do him over.” He had a simple approach to truth.

“Why would you wanna do him over?” asked Gandolfo. “He done us a favour.”

Kelzo shook his head at the problems these two gave him. “George, he could be looking to do us next.”

Gandolfo said nothing; then Joe St. Louis said, “We got another problem. Then Channel 15 mob, we gotta do something about them.”

“It's that girl who's been nosing around,” said Gandolfo. “She's getting to be a real pain in the arse. Something I found out—she's that cop, Malone's daughter.”

“Then we can't touch her,” said Kelzo.

“Why not?” said Joe St. Louis.

VI

Balmoral had wanted to take Camilla Feng to the Golden Gate. It was expensive as Chinese restaurants went, but was bargain basement compared to some of the other establishments around town.

“Why?” she had asked.

“Well—” He was a ladies' man, but he was still working his way through the infinite variety of them. “Well, I just thought you liked Chinese food. You know, national dishes . . .”

“You notice I'm Chinese, but I don't dress Chinese? No cheongsam? I do like Chinese food, but I also like French and Italian and Vietnamese.”

“Not Australian?” His smile could be quite charming.

“Some of the best chefs in the world are Australian, but they don't
cook
Australian. I'd like to
go
to Ampersand.” She saw his smile stiffen and she added, without her own inner smile that tickled her, “I'll go Dutch.”

“No, no.” She heard the catch in his throat, like a missed key on a cash register. “I'll book. The Ampersand it is.”

So here they were at Ampersand, a hundred and eighty dollars for two, plus drinks. Bargain basement compared to London, Paris and New York, but Balmoral had never had to pick up the check in those exotic places. Delegations these days do not worry about expense and he had been on two delegations overseas. Taxpayers never knew what they were paying for.

“What does ampersand mean?” she asked, though she knew. Feigning ignorance is a form of flattery, especially in male company.

“It's that curly piece, the symbol that stands for
and
.” If he had not known, he would have looked it up before coming here. He would not have been fazed by the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Book of Han Fei in the original script. He was looking at the menu, running his eyes down the prices as if reading some dreaded writing on a wall. His pocket could be fazed, Camilla thought: he's mean. “What would you like?”

She was a swift reader of menus as well as men: “I'll have the jelly of lobster and the rack of lamb.”

She turned to look out at Cockle Bay, a revived name dredged up from the waters of Darling Harbour. Her father, dead from a killer's bullet, one of the victims of the jinx on Olympic Tower, had told her of his arrival here in this back inlet on a rusty freighter from Shanghai. Drugs and gold had been smuggled in here as ships docked at the wharves, now gone. Though she did not know it, Jack Aldwych had been a gold smuggler and Con Malone had fought pickets and police on those wharves. Now both sides of the inlet were devoted to pleasure and entertainment: convention centres, tourist shops, an aquarium, restaurants and cafes. History was sunk beneath the murky waters.

She looked back at him. “Are you interested in history, Jerry?”

“Political history, yes. The other sort?” He shrugged. “The future is more interesting than the
past.”

“How can you know?” She was leading him on. “Is that because you're ambitious?”

“Yes. There's no point in being ambitious about the past, is there? It's contradictory.”

A waiter poured some wine for them, took their orders and went away. He was different, she noted, from Chinese waiters, who always gave the impression of doing you a favour by serving you.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Are you ambitious?”

“Yes,” she admitted without hesitation. “I want to be rich and accepted.”

“Not as Chinese but as yourself?” She nodded and he went on, “You and I would make a good pair, Camilla.”

She had not expected him to come on so soon; maybe he wanted to get out of here before dessert and coffee. She was still smiling inwardly at him. “In what way?”

“Would there be a better-looking couple, ever, in The Lodge in Canberra?”

Migod, he's unbelievable
! “You're going to be Prime Minister?”

“Eventually.” He took a sip of wine, smiled at his own conceit. “You think I'm swollen-headed, right? I may be, but modesty never got you anywhere in this country. The voters like you to be up-front.”

She knew nothing of the past political history of the nation; she had heard her father speak of Ben Chifley, a modest man, but she couldn't remember whether he had been PM or Premier. He was a dim figure from another age, when maybe modesty had been an admired attribute. Jerry Balmoral was right: salesmanship was the order of today.

“Are you proposing to me, Jerry?”

Again the charming smile: she could see it on television screens in the future, women falling on their backs at the sight of it. “We could consider it.”

“Like one considers a mortgage?” she said with her own smile. “Ask me when you're PM.”

The waiter brought their first course and she dug her fork into the jellied lobster. He had ordered the savarin of blue swimmer crab, which, she had noted with her quick eye, was more expensive
than
her own order. Maybe, she decided, he had become reckless, in for a penny, in for a pound. Or perhaps he thought it was what Prime Ministers would order.

“But where do you start?” she asked.

“I've started.” He was enjoying the crab; or enjoying himself. “I'm aiming to get the pre- selection for the Premier's old seat, Boolagong.”

“If you get it, what then?”

“Two terms, then I'll run for a Federal seat. I'll have established myself by then, be a minister in the second term.”

She wanted to shake her head at his certainty of himself; but she was not here to play superior. “If you win Boolagong or whatever it's called, will you have any influence? Because it was Mr. Vanderberg's seat?”

“Of course.”

She was still finding it hard to believe his self-assurance. “Would you use it?”

“Yes. That's what politicians are for, to use their influence. What can I do for you?” Again the smile, round a piece of blue-eyed crab.

“You don't think Boolagong is—what do they call it?—a danger zone? That someone doesn't want a Labor member?”

He looked at her shrewdly. “You know something about politics? I thought—”

She hurried to cover her mistake: “Only what I've read in the newspapers, seen on TV. You won't be afraid to step in there?”

“Not at all.”

She wasn't sure whether it was bravado or confidence. “You won't have any opposition?”

“None that can't be handled.”

She changed tack: “If you get the pre-selection, will it cost much to run a campaign?”

“You want to contribute?”

She hesitated, then said, “We—I might.”

“
We?” He hadn't missed her slip.

She was proving to be less competent than she had expected; he was not yet in politics but he was already a politician. “I meant our family company.”

“No.” The smile this time was less charming. “You meant Olympic Tower.”

She waited while the waiter took away their plates; she was glad of the interruption, gave him a smile like a tip. When he was gone, she said, “What makes you think Olympic Tower would want to give you money?”

“You gave it to Hans Vanderberg.”

“How do you know?”

“Let's just say I know. Is that why you came to dinner with me?”

She dodged that one. “Who else knows?”

“Besides me, those on my side? Nobody. I don't think anyone in the Boolagong branch knows, outside of Mrs. Vanderberg and Barry Rix. What were you buying from The Dutchman?”

She took her time, waited while the waiter came back to pour more wine.

“Your main course will be here soon.” He was a young man who obviously enjoyed serving good-looking women who smiled at him. “We never rush our guests.”

“We like to take our time,” said Balmoral, winking at Camilla. “Don't we?”

He was a mixture of gaucheness and smoothness. But he was not alone: she had met scores of men like him.

When the waiter had gone away again she said, “I don't think you will ever take your time.”

“Oh, you're wrong there, Camilla. You'd be surprised at how patient I can be to get what I want. What was it you wanted from Hans Vanderberg?”

She was still re-gathering herself, though outwardly she looked at ease. “You would have to talk to my partners about that.”

“Will I have to take all of them to dinner, too?” But he said it without malice.

“They are never dinner partners,” she said and realized for the first time that it was true.

“
Do
you
know what they want?”

“Yes.” She looked at him across the table, all at once regaining her composure; sure of herself but surer of her partners. This PM-aspirant opposite her would be no match for Jack Aldwych and Madame Tzu. “But I didn't come to talk business.”

“Why did you come?”

“You intrigue me. I've never met anyone at the bottom of the political ladder, someone who hasn't yet got his foot on the bottom rung.”