‘Only the important things. How is it that you miss nothing?’
‘Nice little drop this,’ Drew said, examining the label. ‘Barone Ricasoli. A red baron. I miss nothing because I’m a citizen of the world, playing a full part in civic life. You, on the other hand, allow the affairs of the public sphere to pass you by while you master pigeonhole joints.’
‘Dovetail. Tricky things.’
The main course arrived: dark meat falling off the bone, pool of glistening dark sauce, sweet potato with flecks of something, baby green beans, crunchy.
We didn’t talk for a while. Finally, Drew said, ‘Jesus, how can I get Donelly to owe me money, lots of money? Are these bits of apricot?’
‘Stick around, make yourself known, your turn will come. Sooner or later, he’ll be up for pinning a kitchenhand to the wall with a knife.’
The bottle was low. I signalled to the swimmer for another. ‘So Tony Rinaldi knows about TransQuik?’
‘Oh yes. More than he should, I reckon. I had a few glasses with Anthony one night, his wife went off with a librarian from Camberwell library. Female librarian. That hurt the boy. Bloody Eltham artist is one thing, big dick notwithstanding. At least he had a dick.’
We went back to savouring the shanks. The new bottle arrived. I waived the approval ritual, went directly to Go.
‘A bitter man, Tony Rinaldi,’ said Drew. ‘First the wife’s knee-trembling in the library stacks, then he gets shafted in the DPP’s office. He reckons the DPP’s a silent partner in this new place, The Dining Room. Top of Collins Street. Know it?’
I shook my head. I’d been too dazed by encountering Linda’s perfume to notice much when I was last at the top of Collins Street.
‘Like eating at the Melbourne Club, I gather. Only with decent food and Jewish members. Victorian grandeur, my client Simeon Haldane, Melbourne Grammar and Cambridge, tells me. That’s Simon with an e stuck in. You went to Grammar, you’d probably know Simeon. About your vintage. Same dissolute appearance.’
‘Charged with what?’
‘Usual. Male minors, all orifices, possessing a range of educative pictorial stuff. Bit of light caning.’
‘Sounds like an ordinary day at boarding school.’
‘Simeon sat two tables away from the Premier at lunch at The Dining Room last week. The leader eats there all the time, takes the visiting money for dinner. Stuff themselves on prime Victorian meat. That’s all Simeon wanted to do really.’
We breasted the tape together, put the implements down on plates naked save the bones.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Simeon doesn’t stand out in my mind. Could be any one of fifty people from school. Why did Rinaldi get the boot from the DPP?’
Drew was looking at his empty plate in sorrow. ‘Not clear to me. Something to do with the Levesque gang. Tony was moving the flamethrower freely at that point, the wife, the librarian, the DPP, all blazing. Also, it was bottle three.’
I poured. ‘Want to go to the footy on Saturday?’
‘The footy? What, just pick a game? Any old footy?’
‘Saints and Geelong.’
‘Christ, what a pair. So, we’d be going for nobody, just like to see a game? Any old shitty game? That’s it?’
‘No. We’re going for the Saints.’
Drew emptied his glass of Barone Ricasoli’s 1986 Chianti Classico. ‘We? You and the Prince?’ Incredulous tone, loud. People looked at us.
‘Well, not the Prince as a whole.’
Drew glanced around, a what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at glance. ‘The old buggers? You and the old buggers?’ Even louder, more incredulous.
‘Yes. Drew, steady, the other customers think we’re about to have a fight.’
He sighed, looked around again, apportioned the rest of the Ricasoli. ‘This is, well-you hear some strange things. I’ll be fucked.’
I couldn’t think of the right thing to say.
Drew sighed a few more times. ‘Jesus, Jack, are you all off your fucking heads? The Brisbane bloody Lions at least represent a bit of the old Roys. So they train in Brisbane. What the fuck does that matter? Everybody plays all over the place. Footy in fucking Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, wall-to-wall cankerous Poms at every game. Where the hell did Fitzroy end up training? Not in Fitzroy. Some players never came near Fitzroy except to front up to the faithful to raise a few bucks. Footy players are just mercenaries, can’t you grasp that? They’re not like your old man, his old man, however fucking many bloody Irish played for the Roys. These are just contract players. And that’s been going on a long time. Didn’t stop the team being Fitzroy, did it? Did it?’
‘So Saturday’s pretty much taken up then?’ I said.
‘Hang on. All we have to do is pretend that the Roys aren’t having many home games this season. When they play in Melbourne, they’re home. In Brisbane and Sydney and Adelaide and fucking Perth, they’re away. That’s not hard is it? Fewer home games. Get a grip on that and we’ve still got the Roys.’
A large woman at the next table said loudly, ‘Like bloody hell. Never heard such bullshit before.’
‘Settle down,’ said her companion. ‘You shouldn’t listen to other people’s conversations.’
‘Well, he’s got a point,’ said one of the four youngish men at the table on the other side.
‘Point?’ said another of the men. ‘Are you out of your…’
‘Drew, this may be an opportune moment to leave. I can’t charge breakages incurred during an all-in brawl against Donelly’s bill.’
We went to the pub down the street for the cleansing ale, took taxis home. I was in bed trying to focus on the men and their father’s novel when the phone rang. It was Drew, serious.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘got home, poured a last little one, bit in a bottle going to waste, thought I’d give Tony Rinaldi a ring since he’d come to mind. Cheer him up, take his mind off librarians. Well, I remembered some of those company names, y’know? Your bloke.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I said to Tony, what’s the name Klostermann Gardier mean to you? Know what he says?’
‘No.’
‘He says, he’s had a few sherbets himself, he says, Where’d you hear that? That’s a name gets people killed.’
14
I rang Drew from Taub’s and caught him on his way out to court.
‘Four bloody appearances today,’ he said. ‘In this condition, how can I get justice for the victims of a system designed to punish the poor?’
‘Four of those?’ I said. ‘And not a single dead-set guilty and remorseless criminal arsehole? Tony Rinaldi. Will he talk to me about that stuff?’
Drew sighed. ‘Ask him. I think I told him last night that I’d mentioned to you that he had an interest in the people in question.’ Pause. ‘I think I told him. Well, I must have.’
I said, ‘Thank you. Go the Saints. Goodbye.’
Go the Saints. I’d said it. The first time. It felt like coming out.
Tony Rinaldi now had chambers in William Street. The secretary said he was in conference. I left my mobile number. Today we had to measure up for a library.
Charlie devoted the trip to Kooyong to explaining to me why no-one could be a joiner of any consequence without undergoing what sounded like a fifty-year apprenticeship starting at age four and supervised by the Marquis de Sade.
‘So it’s twenty-five years just sweeping up the shavings,’ I said as we arrived at the address. ‘I can imagine the
