The Tax Inspector

Memphis – a shy boy, who maybe never played but in his bedroom, with the mirror. Sam Phillips must have seen his sexy lips, but the thing that struck him was how inferior Elvis felt, how markedly inferior. He said this in an interview on more than one occasion.

Benny had already phoned her once today to say he was going to ‘hurt’ her, and she knew he had a temper which you can only describe as violent, but she knew him with his little arms tight around her neck at three in the morning, and when she complimented him he blushed and lowered his eyes because he knew she meant it and would never lie to him.

It was only when Mort heard his son’s name that he actually realized Benny had come up the stairs behind him.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

Cathy looked at Mort and wondered now if he even saw the similarity.

Benny raised his eyebrows at his father and shrugged apologetically. He put out his hand as if to take his sleeve or his hand, but the sleeves on Mort’s overall were cut off and there was nothing to hold on to except a hand he would not take. Cathy would have taken his hand, but it was not offered her.

Benny had been in trouble with almost everything, lying, cheating, truancy, shop-lifting, selling bottled petrol for inhalation, trying to buy Camira parts from the little crooks who hung about in Franklin Mall; but now he just looked very young and frightened of being laughed at. He walked lightly on his feet, holding his back straight. You could hear his new shoes squeaking as he crossed the room to the yellow vinyl armchair which had once belonged to Cacka. When he sat and crossed his long legs, he revealed socks as long as a clergyman’s – no skin showed. Benny folded his clean hands in his lap and looked directly at his father, blushing.

Mort’s colour was also high and his lips had a loose embarrassed look. He shook his head and shut his eyes.

‘Ignore your father,’ Cathy said. ‘You look wonderful, better than your uncle Jack.’

‘Thanks Cath,’ Mort said. He leaned against the window-sill opposite her and stared critically at the stupid ping-pong table. It was not properly joined in the middle. It was marked with stains from their ‘Social Ambitions’ – ring marks from glasses and bottles, sticky circles of Benedictine stuck with dust.

‘You singing tonight?’ he asked. ‘You got a jig-jig?’

‘Very funny,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

Mort shook his head as if in disappointment at this hostility. He looked down at his boots a moment as if he was considering a riposte, but then he looked up, spoke in what was, for him, in the circumstances, a calm voice: ‘Why does this Tax Inspector have her office in Mum’s apartment?’

‘You come up here to ask about that?’ Cathy crossed her arms below her breasts and shook her head.

‘Mort …’ Howie said.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Cathy said.

‘Tough,’ said Mort.

‘The auditor needs a desk,’ Howie said, ‘that’s all. She could have taken any vacant desk. She could have had your office.’

‘You wouldn’t want me near a Tax Inspector,’ Mort said. ‘You couldn’t trust me not to give the game away.’

Cathy looked into his eyes and he held hers. He was her brother in a way that Jack had never been. She and Mort were the ones who had sung opera together, killed chooks, sold cars, but now she had no idea what he thought about anything.

‘There is no game,’ Cathy said.

‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘You wouldn’t, but you’d better find out. If I was you I’d be finding out what makes this business tick pretty damn fast.’

‘You going to try and run away again, Cathy?’ Mort grinned. ‘Did you get another letter from The Gold Chain Troubadour?’

There was silence which was broken by the sound of Benedictine being poured into Cathy’s tumbler. Benny crossed his legs and laid his left palm softly on the back of the right hand.

‘Look,’ Mort said. ‘What I came up here to say was that I’ve had a talk to Mum.’

Cathy poured herself some extra Benedictine, but then she didn’t drink it.

‘I talked with Mum and we both decided that if you want to sell the back paddock to cover us with any back taxes, we’ll vote in favour. That’s why I’m here, to tell you that.’

‘Do you remember,’ Howie said, smiling sideways at Cathy, ‘that we wrote your mother in as head salesman?’

‘Sure.’

‘And we claimed tax deductions for what we said we paid her?’

‘Sure, I remember that. We had Jack’s smart-arse accountant. You all got excited about how you were going to keep the trade-ins off the books. But do you remember what I said then?’

‘Tell me.’

‘I said that I didn’t want to do business like Jack. I said we’ve gone off the rails. We shouldn’t be playing tricks with tax. We should be running the business by its original principles …’

‘Mort,’ Howie said. ‘I’m trying to explain that if this audit goes through we are going to need twenty back paddocks to pay the bill.’

‘And I’m trying to tell you, Mr Rock ’n’ Roll,’ said Mort, suddenly shouting and jabbing his finger at Howie, ‘that this business will run itself just fine if we stop listening to crooks and stick to Cacka’s philosophy.’

It was very quiet. Then there was a squeaking noise. The ping-pong table started to move in front of Benny’s nose. It pushed towards him, then withdrew. It was Cathy pushing with her big thighs. She had a bright little smile on her face.

‘Philosophy?’ she said. Her mouth was small in her big face and she had two hot spots on her pale cheeks. ‘What sort of philosophy would that be, Mort? Like Socrates? Like Mussolini? What sort of philosophy did you have in mind exactly?’

Mort said: ‘He was one of the greats.’ Benny looked down at the floor. He thought: don’t, please don’t.

‘Mort,’ Cathy said. ‘Say he was a creep. Admit it. It’s not your fault.’

‘He was human, but he was one of the greats.’

‘Look at us,’ Cathy said. There was a bang as she slammed her glass down on the table. Benedictine spilled. (Howie went to the kitchen to get a Wettex. Benny despised him for doing it.) ‘Look at us,’ Cathy said, watching Howie wipe the table. ‘We don’t know how to be happy. Look out of the window. We’re car dealers. That’s all we do. You cannot be a great car dealer.’

‘You can be a great boot-maker,’ Mort said.

Benny agreed. He took a facelette of Aloe-Vera and wiped the back of his hands. He thought: I will be a great car dealer.

Cathy took the Wettex from Howie and folded it and placed it on the table. Howie picked it up and took it out to the kitchen.

‘You want to talk about great,’ Cathy said. ‘Elvis was great.’

Mort laughed.

‘Hank Williams was great, but Christ, Morty, even if you could be a great car dealer, you could not be great and bankrupt at the same time.’

‘Spend some time with the books, Mort. I’d be happy to take you through them.’

‘Listen,’ Mort said. ‘I don’t like this business. I don’t think you like it either, but we’re stuck with it. If we want to save our arse, we should go back to Cacka’s principles.’

‘And what principles were you thinking of?’ Howie asked.

‘You remember Catchprice Motors, Cathy?’ Mort asked his sister. ‘We didn’t wind our speedos back. We paid our taxes. We told the truth.’

‘Why do you mime the words of the hymns in church?’ Howie asked.

Mort looked at him, his mouth loose.

‘I just meant to ask you,’ Howie said. ‘I wondered why you won’t sing out loud. Barry Peterson asked me why someone with such a good voice wouldn’t sing out loud. I wondered if this had something to do with Cacka’s