had soon waned. I was trying too hard and we both knew it. After four days we came back to town where Red could do what he’d wanted to do all along. Hang around outside the nearest skateboard shop with his dopey friend Tarquin Curnow.
This time around, I’d made no special arrangements, except to check that Tarquin would be in town. Tark was an utter dill, gawky and buck-toothed with year-round bronchitis and a tendency to play up when his mother wasn’t looking. But his company took the awkwardness off Red’s visits and for that I was grateful. Splashing a last handful of water over my face, I doused my fag, slung my jacket over my shoulder and hied myself hence to the cultural coalface.
The Arts Ministry was across an elevated walkover that connected the rear of the National Gallery to the Ballet Centre, home of the national silly dance company. A gaggle of ballet-school students were clustered around the doorway, anorexic girls with their hair in chignons, lithe boys with flawless skin, none of them older than twenty, all of them smoking. Fifteen years of mandatory package warnings, a total ban on television advertising, a Quit campaign, and the fittest, brightest, most privileged young people in the country were tugging away like racetrack touts. If I hadn’t just put one out, I’d have been tempted to join them.
‘I was just sooo embarrassed,’ I heard one of the boys say as I passed. The others all giggled. Scratch the bit about brightest. On the top level, the lift opened directly into the Arts Ministry foyer, an expanse of parquetry with beige walls and rows of little track-lit pictures. The receptionist was fielding a phone inquiry. ‘What’s it in conjunction to?’ she was saying. Off to the side was a glass door marked ‘Minister’. I pushed it open and went in.
On the other side of a glass partition, two men faced each other across a small conference table.
The one I recognised was Ken Sproule, senior adviser to the man Angelo Agnelli was replacing, Gil Methven. Ken’s boss punched in a heavier weight division than Angelo and had come out of Cabinet that day holding Police and Emergency Services, one of the big ticket ministries. That made Ken Sproule one of the big boys, too. He was a tough cookie with more suspicion than imagination, an indispensable quality in any major player’s personal fixer. And for all the factional differences between our respective masters, he had yet to do me serious personal injury. Which, in our party, is tantamount to bosom friendship.
Spotting my arrival, he beckoned me inside. ‘Ah! The changing of the guard,’ he rasped. He wore a short- sleeved business shirt and a no-nonsense polyester tie. He gestured grandly towards the other man. ‘Phillip Veale, meet Murray Whelan, aide de camp of the infamous Angelo Agnelli.’
Phillip Veale stood up and surveyed me with benevolent curiosity. Where Ken Sproule was fidgety and thrusting, Veale was suave and reticent. He was somewhere in his fifties, smooth-skinned, silver-haired, pink with the exertion of carrying just a tad too much good living. A man without angles or apparent malice who wore his two-toned business shirt, French cuffs and matching tie with all the assurance of a mandarin’s robe. Which well he ought, since Phillip Veale had been Director of the Arts for as long as anyone could remember. Ministers came and went, but Phillip Veale abideth forever. We shook hands, his skin soft but his grip firm.
‘I’m looking forward to working with the new minister,’ he said, managing in some intangible way to impart the impression that the change could only be an improvement.
‘And Angelo is keen to get started,’ I reciprocated. ‘Would Monday morning be convenient for a briefing?’
‘Perfectly,’ Veale said, not entirely able to conceal the humour in his eyes. ‘Shall we say nine?’
This exchange of niceties brought Ken Sproule’s dial out in a big smirk. I was the sheepdog type of ministerial assistant, there to keep the departmental flunkeys all trotting along in more or less the same direction. Ken was primarily a backroom mathematician, one of those blokes who can’t see a head without wanting to sink his boot into it.
‘And perhaps while I’m here,’ I suggested. ‘We can go over the minister’s diary.’
‘Of course,’ said Veale, backing out the door. ‘It’s been a pleasure working with you, Ken.’ For sure.
‘I think you’ve won a heart,’ said Sproule as the door closed.
I sat down, leaned back in my chair and took in the surroundings. The office was an airy, glass-walled space, a definite step up from the vinyl and laminate world of Ethnic Affairs. A row of floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto the Arts Centre tower and overlooked a rooftop garden at the rear of the gallery, a rectangle of lawn upon which sat an enormous white ball, as though God were about to tee off. The furniture was pale and waxy, crafted from some rare and expensive timber, soon to be extinct. Sproule followed my gaze out into the fiery afternoon light. ‘Not bad, eh?’ he said. ‘For the booby prize.’
‘I’ll think of you, Ken,’ I said. ‘Arm-wrestling the Police Association while I sit here contemplating the finer things of life.’
Sproule went over to the minister’s desk and cleared a drawer into his briefcase. ‘A word to the wise, Murray. Those wogs you’ve been duchessing at Ethnic Affairs have got nothing on the culture vultures. Tear the flesh right off your bones, they will.’ Ken had climbed into the ring with some hard-nosed bastards over the years, and he spoke with genuine awe.
‘Going soft?’ I said.
Sproule gave me a pitying look. ‘The first thing you should know about this job, pal, is that in this town the arts are a minefield. Everything from the pitch of the philharmonic to the influence of landscape painting on the national psyche is a matter of public debate. We’ve got more experimental film-makers, dramaturges and string quartets than you can poke a conductor’s baton at. And every last one of them has a direct line to the media. You’ve never seen so much colour and movement in all your life. Tell you, pal, it’s more than a can of worms, it’s a nest of vipers.’
The purpose of this sob story, I took it, was to deflect any blame that might arise from unfinished business left by the departing team. ‘In other words,’ I deduced. ‘A time bomb is about to blow up in Agnelli’s face.’
Sproule was innocence itself. ‘Keep your wits about you, that’s all I’m saying. Within a week you’ll be Mr Popularity, up to your arse in invitations to opening nights and gala exhibitions. The glitterati will be lining up to wine and dine you so they can piss in your pocket about how much public money their pet project deserves.’
So what was new? Fending off lobbyists was a ministerial adviser’s bread and butter. Sproule had finished his packing. I shook his hand, formally accepting the helm. ‘Good luck with the coppers,’ I said. ‘See you round.’
‘Not if I see you first.’
The instant that Sproule was gone, Veale reappeared with a folio-sized leather-bound diary and a well-stuffed manilla folder. We ran through the ministerial appointments for the next week, a predictable round of flag-showings and gladhandings. Nothing so pressing that Trish couldn’t take care of it when she arrived with Agnelli on Monday morning. Only one engagement was listed for the weekend. Karlin. 11.30 Saturday.
‘A small brunch,’ explained Veale. ‘To mark the acquisition of a rather significant painting by the Centre for Modern Art. The former minister agreed to say a few words of blessing. Given the changed circumstances, Max Karlin will doubtless understand that the new minister is unable to attend.’
‘Max Karlin?’
‘He’s hosting the occasion.’ Veale didn’t have to tell me who Max Karlin was. His name was in the paper every five minutes. A millionaire shoe salesman who had lately expanded out of footwear into property development. The half-completed Karlcraft Centre I’d passed on the way was his baby, a multi-storey retail and office complex rising on the site of his original downtown shop. ‘Karlin’s been collecting Australian modernist painting for more than twenty-five years. It’s one of his pictures the CMA is buying.’
It suddenly occurred to me that this little luncheonette might serve a useful function. The conversation I’d overheard in Agnelli’s office had been replaying itself in the back of my mind, still ringing alarm bells. If Agnelli had indeed decided to re-invent himself as a bag man, Max Karlin would strike him as an obvious mark. Hard experience had taught me that Agnelli did not respond well to direct disagreement. But if I got the two of them together and kept a close eye on what ensued, I might be able to confirm how serious Agnelli was about his new sideline. And once I was clear on that point, I might stand some chance of putting an end to any such foolishness. If Agnelli had a high enough opinion of my abilities to keep me on the payroll, the least I could do was curb his more suicidal impulses.
‘Angelo is very interested in the visual arts,’ I said. ‘I’ll let him know about Mr Karlin’s invitation. Just in case.’
Veale was inscrutably professional. ‘Very good,’ he said, closing the diary and handing me the manilla folder. It contained an avalanche of snow so deep it would take me weeks to dig myself free. Organisational charts,
