‘Good afternoon, Mr Cavanagh.’
‘Hi, Julie,’ Damien said. This was the only perk he saw in his visits. He eyed the young woman with appreciation as she entered the lift and pressed her floor. She worked in marketing or something, and, more importantly to Damien, she looked tidy in a trim grey skirt suit and heels. His friend Simon had said she was looking good lately, and she was. She was part of the local scene; she’d been to the house to party a few times.
‘Have you been working out?’ he commented with an intentionally salacious grin. He watched her for a reaction.
Julie shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. ‘Oh, not really, but thank you.’ She stood in awkward silence as the elevator ascended, her left hand scrunched up as she absentmindedly touched the band of her engagement ring with her thumb.
An engagement meant nothing. Damien should know—he had been engaged for the past six months to Carolyn, a pretty but boring young woman of whom his parents approved. The engagement had not even slightly dampened his nocturnal activities; if anything, he pursued his extracurricular games with more relish, the illicit thrill heightened.
‘I’m getting out here,’ Julie said on the ninth floor. ‘It’s good to see you, Damien. Take care.’
Damien let his eyes linger over her form as she left. She’d been quite raunchy at one time, he reflected. He wondered fleetingly whether he could get her to sleep with him again.
You are Damien Cavanagh. Of course you can.
The party she’d attended at the house a couple of years earlier had involved a lot of cocaine and a hot tub full of people enjoying one another. He distinctly remembered that Julie was one of the girls he and Simon had had a threesome with. She’d liked it at the time, and from her awkward behaviour in the elevator, she remembered it too.
Soon the doors slid back to the fourteenth floor. Damien Cavanagh frowned.
Grimacing at the disdainful familiarity of his father’s office reception, he shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and stepped out.
‘Good afternoon, Mr Cavanagh,’ came a greeting from one of the inconsequential staff.
‘Good to see you, Mr Cavanagh.’
‘G’day, Mr Cavanagh. Can I get you anything?’
Oh shut up
, he wanted to say.
Sycophants, all of you.
Damien sauntered darkly past the reception area and the staff who sang out their greetings to him like their scripted phone greetings.
Cavanagh Incorporated, how may I help you?
He’d hoped some of them would have left work already, but alas, they were still there, slaving away on a Friday afternoon and offering their pathetic greetings. He made his way down a hallway bedecked with sporting memorabilia: a cricket bat signed by fast bowler Brett Lee; a Sydney Swans football jersey signed by the first Grand Final-winning team in seventy-two years. He walked past his father’s receptionist Joy, who stood graciously to say hello, and without knocking entered through the open door of his father’s spacious office. Hands still in his pockets, he crossed the room without a word and sat in the chair opposite the vast mahogany working desk of his father,
the
Jack Cavanagh, anticipating his usual lecture about being more productive, more responsible, more befitting the mantle his father was so eager to bestow upon him. As soon as his bottom hit the chair he slid his weight to the edge, slouching casually, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. He played with the frayed edge of one of the rips in his jeans.
His dad was on a phone call.
‘I have to go. My son is here,’ Jack told whoever was on the line. ‘Yeah, I will. Say hello to Helen and the kids for me…Yes, we had a
lovely time…Yes, we’ll do that. Okay, mate, speak to you soon.’ Jack hung up.
‘Hello, Father,’ Damien said to him, not bothering to make eye contact. He looked out the window, already bored in anticipation of their discussion. These mundane ‘talks’ always began with some cliché like ‘With privilege comes responsibility, son’, and the retelling of the now-famous story of Jack Cavanagh: how he had built the Cavanagh family empire from the ground up, the son of a mere janitor; how he had bought the very building where Grandfather Cavanagh had toiled away his years to scrape together enough money to send his only son, Jack, to a good school; and how Jack had always done his best to not let his father down, to not ever take for granted how hard he had worked, how hard it was to get to the top, and what a responsibility it was to be there. And then he would tell Damien to get his act together, be more responsible, take more interest in the family company.
You are a director of this company, must I remind you? Stop being seen with a different girl every week. Stop having those outrageous parties, and be more cautious for the benefit of the Cavanagh family public image. Be kinder to your mother.
Don’t you know how much we care for you?
Damien had studied at Wharton. He’d proposed to his fiancée, Carolyn, just as his parents had wanted. What more could they possibly want of him?
Jack was looking at Damien hard, staring into the side of his head, and Damien could feel it. When he finally spoke to Damien, he was more grave than usual, and impatient. He did not start with any of the usual clichés, or the
It’s time for us to have a father–son chat
bullshit.
‘Damien,’ Jack said, then paused. ‘We need to talk about something serious. We have to be very open here. This is for you and I to discuss
openly
right now.’ He got up from behind his desk and walked across the room to close his office door. When he returned to his desk, he sat in his creaking leather chair and leaned forwards. His voice was lower than usual. ‘Son, a man threatened me today. I need to know what is going on,’ he said tersely.
Damien looked back from the window, genuinely surprised. This was not the usual discussion. ‘What…what do you mean?’
‘A man contacted me today and told me that he has a videotape of you caught in the act of doing something I would be very unhappy about, something with serious consequences for you, for us, for the company. Can you think of what that might be?’
Damien felt the blood drain from his face. So this was why his father had insisted so strongly that he come to see him immediately.
The girl from the party. Oh no…
He withdrew his hands from his pockets and sat on them, feeling suddenly like a small boy. He
tried not to appear panicked as his mind raced over the possible proof that may exist of his activities, how things might look. There was a lot that he kept from his father.
But Simon would have told me if there was a serious problem
, he thought.
Simon would know. Simon had said it would be taken care of. He said he’d make it go away.
He wanted to call Simon right away to find out what was going on.
‘Dad,’ Damien said, motioning to get up. ‘I need to make a quick phone call—’
‘
No
you don’t.’ The tone in his father’s booming voice made Damien sit right back down in the chair.
‘I just need to call Simon,’ he said weakly.
‘You are
not
calling that man. Now level with me, son. What happened? What is this all about?’
Damien felt anxious and claustrophobic. He wanted so badly to call Simon, but his father motioned him to put the BlackBerry down. He turned it off and put it in his pocket, feeling lost without it, and lost without the counsel of his friend.
‘It wasn’t a bluff, was it,’ his father stated more than asked. Damien could see that he was angry and very concerned. ‘What have you done? What is this video?’
‘No, Dad. Well, I…’
What if he knows? What if it’s a real threat? What if…?
Damien crumpled. The hollow confidence he wore like armour leaked out of him at the first sign of his father’s outrage, leaving him vulnerable and afraid. He wished Simon was there; Simon always seemed to know what to do. Damien balled himself up in the chair, picking at his hands nervously. It was as if he was twelve again and he had crashed Dad’s Mercedes into the gate down the drive. He’d messed up. He thought of that girl thrashing around on the bed, and growing still and cold, and his stomach began twisting in knots. It had been a horrible sight. He had never seen anyone die before, not even Grandpa when he went. It had been awful. He hadn’t liked it at all.
But Simon told me it would be okay. He told me he would have everything under control. He said it would be fine!
‘Whatever you do, don’t lie to me, son,’ Jack said. ‘Just tell me exactly what happened. I need to know the truth. I need to know what we are up against.’
Damien felt flustered, his careful cool shattered. He unsuccessfully urged himself to stay calm. It was humiliating for his father to see him like this. He would have to think hard about what to say. If he said the wrong thing it would only make things worse.
‘Dad, I just want you to know that it isn’t what you think…’ he started, not even sure what his father thought ‘it’ was. ‘It’s just…’
Jack sat in place, patient but uncharacteristically grim, leaning forwards on his massive mahogany desk on both elbows, waiting for Damien to explain.
Damien’s mouth only opened and closed with the beginnings of possible responses. Nothing complete came out. He didn’t know which lie he should tell.
‘Have you been doing drugs, son?’
‘Well, yeah, but…’ Damien admitted, ashamed.
But what? But that isn’t the worst of it?
Jack shook his head. ‘I knew it. We spoke about that. You have to be careful, son. You are not like everyone else. You have to be above them. You have more to lose.’ He paused. ‘Tell me the rest.’
He seemed to know more. How much did he know?
Jack took a deep, disappointed breath. ‘You know, son, we are close to sealing this tender for the transport contract. It will be one of the biggest deals made in this country. This is important. I am out there trying to make history for us while you piss away everything I’ve made over a lifetime of work with your…your parties…your fun? I can’t let you do that. A scandal now could ruin all we’ve done. We have to have higher standards, son. We have to keep our noses clean. Always.’
Damien thought about the drugs that had been lying around at the party. Could anyone
actually prove that they had been his or that he knew they were there? But of course that wouldn’t be the worst of it. If there really was a video with his recognisable face…There was the girl…the stupid girl. Lee had been a witness, too.
‘Well, speak to me!’ Jack’s fist slammed on the desk, rattling his son. He didn’t often raise his voice to Damien, but now he was positively exploding. ‘Speak to me now!’
‘At the party there was some stuff,’ Damien blurted. He opened his mouth to continue but stopped. Grim recognition spread across his father’s face, as if he had already feared that his son’s parties had got out of control. The Cavanagh household was a huge sprawling home, a show house. Damien’s parents went to their more modest Palm Beach house on the weekends, and sometimes during the week—as they had done on Wednesday—and it was then that there were the parties. Jack knew very little about what happened in the family home when he was away, and that was how Damien had hoped it would stay.
‘A few things were happening…just a bit of fun. Simon caught some girl taping stuff, that’s all, but he said he would take care of it.’
Damien worried that things had been screwed up. Was this the same video taken by the girl Simon had told him about? What about that girl? What had Simon done to shut her
up? He didn’t know. Simon had said it would all be fine, it would all be taken care of. But what if this was the video? What if it wasn’t a bluff? He wasn’t even sure what was on it. How much was on tape?
Jack picked up the phone and dialled. In a few moments he said into the phone, ‘Yes, I will need you…Five more minutes?…Good.’ He hung up.
‘Who was that?’ Damien asked, bewildered.
‘That was Bob.’
‘Bob?
The American
?’ Damien asked. He swallowed nervously.
Everyone in the family and in the inner sanctum of the company knew about ‘The American’, though few had exchanged words with him or even laid eyes on him. Damien had met him on two occasions and still knew little about the man except that he had at one point been the head of FBI headquarters in California, and since retiring had started his own small security services company in the private sector. Six years previously, when Cavanagh Incorporated had been threatened by the kidnapping of a top-level executive in the Middle East, Jack had brought The American on board, and he had been a distant but constant presence since. No one except Jack seemed to know exactly what The American did, but there had been no serious security problems since his tenure had begun.
‘Hey,’ Jack said to his son to get his attention—Damien had been staring out the window. ‘Simon said he would “take care of it”? Tell me what specifically, and how exactly did Simon take care of it? Tell me, son,’ he urged.
But Damien wasn’t sure how to answer. He knew very little about the specifics, and he hadn’t wanted to know, either. Simon had said it was best that way—best that he didn’t know. He’d said he needed $15 000 to make the problem go away. He’d needed more than that after, another thirty-five, but that should have been it. He said it wouldn’t be a problem. Simon had said that everything would be fine.
‘Why now?’ Jack was clearly upset. ‘Why now, son? Do you recognise the importance of the transport contract? Do you? And you choose now—just as we are on the verge of winning the tender, just months before you are due to be married—to take part in something so…something so
sordid
?’
‘Father, I know, but…’
‘No. I don’t think you do know.’ Jack shook his head with disappointment. ‘An underaged girl? Why?’
Damien was stunned. How did his dad know about his proclivity for young girls?
‘This man who threatened me is someone your friend Simon Aston got involved, isn’t he?’
Damien shrugged sheepishly. ‘I don’t know. It sounds like it. I mean, he could be.’ He wanted to
sink right into the chair and disappear, like he had never even existed. Oh, how he would have loved to be somewhere else—anywhere but in his father’s office.