gives us the “government in partnership with private enterprise to promote culture” line.’
Agnelli’s mental gears went into overdrive. ‘Corporate donors? Who exactly?’
I shrugged. ‘Dunno, yet. They’ll probably be at this brunch, though. Maybe you could take the opportunity to put the hard word on them for a contribution to the party.’
He didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Good idea.’ He straightened his tie and concentrated on assuming his most commanding demeanour.
Fine, I thought. Have it your own way, pal. Just don’t come crying to me when you get into strife, expecting me to clean up the mess.
Max Karlin’s corporate headquarters was a backstreet Cinderella, one of a hundred work-worn industrial facades tucked away in a factory precinct abutting the Queen Victoria market on the north-western edge of the central business district. We might have missed it completely if not for the logo of Max’s chain of shoe stores, Karlcraft, above the entrance and the expensive wheels parked bumper to bumper at the kerb outside. From here Karlin had built his retail empire. From here he now oversaw his ultimate creation, a vast hub of shops and offices that would one day be the Karlcraft Centre.
Max, looking like an admiral in his navy blazer, materialised on the pavement as the Fairlane drew up. I made the introductions. Glancing at me only long enough to look askance at my mangled ear, Karlin swept Agnelli inside.
The external shabbiness of Karlcraft House belied the maxim about flaunting it. Max had it, all right, but he kept it discreetly out of sight, waiting until the moment you stepped through the door to clobber you with it. Everything about the building’s interior was calculated to obliterate any distinction between substance and style. Here was a lush world of working wealth where good taste was a capital asset.
‘Darling,’ I heard. ‘Smooch, smooch,’ as the rest of the already assembled guests mingled in the foyer. Women with tennis tans and pre-stressed hair milled about, drinks in hand, chatting with men in oversized shirts buttoned to the neck and tasselled moccasins with no socks. Pouty waitresses, meanwhile, lurked in doorways with trays of glasses, like cigarette girls at the Stork Club refusing to be impressed by anyone less than F. Scott Fitzgerald. Nobody could keep their eyes off the walls.
They couldn’t help it. Neither could I. Max Karlin had filled his company offices with paintings whose authorship and authority were unmistakable, even to a yob like me. Definitive works by the who’s who of modern Australian art hung everywhere. Each picture seemed so perfectly to exemplify the style of its creator that I almost had to stop myself saying the names out loud. Here a Tucker, there a Boyd, a Dobell, a Perceval. A pair of Nolans faced each other across the lobby. Halfway up the stairs on either side were a Whiteley and a Smart.
I ran out of names long before Max ran out of pictures, but by then I had the message, loud and clear. When it came to aesthetic judgement, there were no flies on Max Karlin. And anyone with the dough to lavish on ornaments of this calibre had to be worth an absolute mint.
As the big boys advanced up the stairs ahead of me, there was a polite cough at my shoulder and I turned to find myself facing Phillip Veale. His eyes flickered over my suppurating ear with a droll twinkle. ‘Body art?’ he said. ‘It’s all the rage, I hear.’ In the interest of weekend informality, he’d shed the French cuffs for a pastel-yellow polo top with a crocodile on the tit. ‘But not as enduring as this kind.’ He tilted a glass of kir royale at the nearest wall. ‘Impressive, aren’t they? It’s not every day that Max opens his collection to the public. And only in the worthiest of causes. Today it’s the CMA acquisition fund. The donation is a hundred dollars a head.’
I blanched and nearly tripped over the bottom stair.
‘You and I needn’t worry,’ he smiled, dryly. ‘The help get in for free. As for the rest’-he indicated the beau monde around us-‘they’re only too happy to pay. It makes them feel special.’ Offices led off the foyer, their doors open to display well-hung interiors. Veale cocked his head towards the nearest. ‘A quiet word in your Vincent-like, s’il vous plait.’
The office held Perry White’s desk, cleared for the occasion but for four phones and two computer terminals. Apart from the desk and a big caramel landscape by someone whose name hovered on the tip of my tongue, we had the room to ourselves. ‘This dreadful moat business,’ Veale clucked. ‘The minister’s heard, I take it.’
‘Had the press on the phone at dawn.’
‘They have his home number?’ Veale was aghast.
‘It’s in the book,’ I told him. Angelo’s idea of democratic accessibility. ‘He told them to piss off.’
‘Quite properly so,’ said Veale. ‘All press enquiries are to be handled by the Acting Director of the National Gallery. Not that he’ll have anything to tell them, apart from confirming that it was gallery staff who found the body. You, of course, know that already.’
In other words I was not the only one who had spent the morning appraising myself of the facts. ‘The dead man was a client of the ministry, I understand,’ I said.
Veale’s eyebrows went up. Evidently not all the facts were yet in his possession. ‘Really?’
‘Got a little grant in the last funding round. Two thousand.’
A departmental director could hardly be expected to be aware of every teensy-weensy item of expenditure. But he knew how to draw an inference. ‘Ahh,’ he exhaled.
‘And he was living at the old YMCA. One of our facilities, isn’t it?’
‘Temporarily. Pending demolition. The rooms are made available to certain worthy causes and individuals. But nobody lives there.’ The sheer squalor of the idea seemed to appal him.
‘At any rate, this Taylor had a studio there,’ I said. ‘It’d be interesting to know if he had any other connection with the ministry.’ This was unlikely, but I was far enough ahead of Veale to have him on the defensive. A good place for a departmental head, however efficient and congenial, to be. ‘Indeed,’ Veale hastened to agree.
Come Monday morning, deputy directors would scuttle. In the meantime, Veale’s prompt attention to the sensitivities of the issue should not go unrecognised. ‘I don’t believe you’ve met Angelo yet,’ I said, leading him back into the foyer.
‘Plenty of time for that on Monday.’ He made a self-deprecatory gesture that suggested he would not be entirely upset to be found minding the shop on his day off. We went up the stairs to the mezzanine.
Agnelli and Karlin were getting on famously, a couple of well-rounded high-achievers basking in the cloudless skies of each other’s company. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of a painting while Karlin laid on a monologue. Agnelli jiggled with pleasure at his every bon mot. Ange’s hands, I was relieved to see, were firmly in his own pockets. Beside Agnelli, very close, stood Fiona Lambert. And at Karlin’s right hand, with the look of a successful matchmaker at an engagement party, stood Lloyd Eastlake.
Veale and I went into a holding pattern, waiting for a suitable break in Karlin’s soliloquy. ‘This Szabo purchase,’ I said to him, passing the time. ‘Inheriting such a large grant allocation, sight unseen, may tend to make Angelo a little uncomfortable. If he could meet one or two of the corporate participants in the project, I’m sure it would reassure him immensely.’ Not chatting. Pimping. In the hope of catching Agnelli in flagrante. Madness, I told myself, sheer insanity. Stop it.
‘It looks as though he’s beaten us to it.’ Veale nodded towards the official entourage. ‘Obelisk Trust, contributor, if memory serves me right, of $150,000. Various other donors gave smaller amounts. Fifty thousand here, twenty there.’ He dropped his voice, confidentially. ‘Clients of Obelisk, I daresay, keeping in good with their line of credit.’
I’d heard of Obelisk Trust-vaguely-and felt it somewhat remiss of me not to know more. It was some kind of financial institution, that much I knew, part of the freewheeling money market that had erupted onto the scene since deregulation and the floating of the dollar. Merchant banks, brokerage arbitrageurs, futures dealers, entrepreneurial wheeler-dealers-the media was giddy with them. You couldn’t turn on the television without some egg-headed pundit leaning earnestly into the camera and whispering about the FT-100 or the ninety-day bond rate. It was all so hard to keep up with. Fluctuations in share prices and currency exchange rates were reported with greater frequency than the weather outlook. Reading the paper was like trying to watch a sport without knowing the rules.
Veale responded to my blank look. ‘Lloyd Eastlake,’ he said. ‘Obelisk Trust’s executive director.’
Wheels within wheels. Hats upon hats. ‘Handy,’ I said. And precariously close to conflict of interest.
Veale’s voice took on a slightly miffed tone. ‘As far as the Centre for Modern Art and the Visual Arts Advisory Panel are concerned, all procedural guidelines have been rigorously observed.’ No funny business on any committees in Phillip Veale’s jurisdiction. Not on paper, at least. ‘As to the Obelisk Trust, I have no reason to assume other than that Lloyd Eastlake conducts himself with the utmost probity.’
