end.’
The rain got heavier and I had to concentrate on my driving, but I’d attended to what he’d said closely enough. He said it well, putting on a pretty good American accent for the key jargon words. I had the distinct feeling that he’d gone through the spiel a few times before, but he was so passionate about it that the diatribe still had a fresh feel.
My response was pretty lame. ‘Well, that’s capitalism,’ I said.
‘No. It’s a new kind of capitalism with a different psychology to it.’
I pulled up at another set of lights and glanced across at him. He’d taken off his tie and was rolling it up and unrolling it. ‘How’s that?’
‘I’ll tell you a story. A little while ago Stefan hired this young guy fresh out of uni. He’d done some brilliant thing for his honours project. All to do with interest rate projections and the effects on a whole range of businesses. Very smart stuff.’
‘Sounds like your kind of boy.’
‘Yeah. I suppose so. Anyway, Stefan put him on a short-term contract for, like, five grand a week. It was more money than he’d ever seen in his life in week one.’
‘I wouldn’t be far behind him on that.’
‘Okay. So he’s given this thing to work on and it’s a pile of shit. I mean, I’m slipping a bit behind the fast boys and I know it, and I can’t catch up until I’ve got through this rough patch-I mean with your help, Cliff.’
We were moving again and I was so glad to get a bit of speed up and get out of second gear that I almost missed the false note. Almost. Pleading and chumminess weren’t quite Charlie’s style. ‘Right,’ I said.
‘It was nothing! Going nowhere. But Stefan kept encouraging him and he kept slogging away until he hit a brick wall. Well, by now he’s got more money in the bank than he’s ever dreamed of and he’s what, twenty-two? He likes girls and cars and he likes the grog. He starts to run off the rails, a couple of crashes where he’s close to the. 05 limit but he just scrapes through and then one when he doesn’t and he gets a conviction and a hefty fine and a suspension. I mean, I went into a kind of slide like that myself and I know what it’s like. I could see the signs in him-late in to work, red eyes, twitching… shit!’
He became aware of what he was doing with his tie. He crumpled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘I’m still a bit of a mess. I know it. Phillip, that was his name, Phillip Dare, he didn’t know what had hit him. His work went to shit; the grog, the cars, the fines and the girls took the money and his contract with us ran out. Last I heard he was working as a programmer in Brisbane for something to do with horseracing.’
We were approaching the Lane Cove bridge at last. ‘What’s your point, Charlie?’
‘The point? I challenged Stefan at a meeting when Phillip left and said what a balls-up it’d been. He laughed at me and said it was a triumph. A triumph! You see, we had a sort of a rival at that time, Backup. com. Bit of a maverick mob like us and in the same field, sort of. Stefan got wind of their offer to Phillip and gazumped them. Then he just threw him away like a lolly wrapper. We got on and Backup’s just struggling along now and it was Stefan’s coup, get it? Fuck poor Phil.’
The Falcon’s windscreen wipers-I’d spend some of Marriott’s money on them-battled against the rain. He was sitting in an almost unnaturally still manner and, over the noise of the wipers, I heard him slow his rather wheezy breathing and achieve a silence that matched the stillness. It was creepy.
‘What’re you doing, Charlie?’
‘Practising.’
‘Practising what?’
He held the attitude for a moment and then let go. ‘I’m a birdwatcher. Go ahead and laugh.’
‘I won’t laugh. Watchings better than killing. I’m glad to hear you do something other than tap keys and look at screens.’
‘You think I’m weird, don’t you?’
We were moving slowly but that was okay with me because I wasn’t sure exactly how to get to his street, which was off Buffalo Road. ‘We’re back to where we started, I said. ‘We’re all weird.’
‘We’re getting along all right now though, aren’t we?’
‘Sure. Can you turn into your street from here, or is it blocked off? Don’t know this neck of the woods.’
‘You can turn. Rog used to say I lived in the very heart of suburbia.’
‘Where’s Rog now?’
‘Melbourne.’
‘Maybe you should go down there and try to get him back onside. That’d be one in the eye for Stefan.’
‘I never thought of that.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘I guess. But you’d have to come, too. Do you like Melbourne, Cliff?’
‘It’s improving.’
‘Turn left here.’
We turned and I could see what Rog had been getting at-this was nature-strip, front-garden, double- garage, two-income country.
‘Here we are,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ll unlock the gate and you can drive in. There’s room to turn inside.’
It was slack of me but I let him do it. He was out of the car before the realisation of my sloppiness hit me. I was about to speak when I saw a headlight come on and heard an engine start. Adrenalin-fuelled instinct took over and I jumped out, ran around the front of the car and hit Marriott with a diving tackle that collapsed him like a burst balloon.
The two shots the motorcyclist fired missed him. All I got were impressions of the shape of the bike and the man. Both big, the bike blue or perhaps green under the yellow street light, the rider broad-shouldered, erect carriage.
The bike roared off down the street and we lay locked together like lovers on the grass with the rain falling on us.
Charlie had crashed into the bougainvillea that wound around his front fence. He was bleeding on the face and hands and his skin had a sickly pale tinge under the yellow light.
‘You see?’ he moaned. ‘What did I tell you?’
We disentangled and I picked myself up. I was unhurt but my trousers, shirt and jacket were a mess. Charlie’s expenses were mounting. Dry-cleaning these days costs a bomb. ‘Just remember to tell them in the office that your uncle played prop for Country versus City,’ I said.
I ushered a very shaken and bleeding Charles Marriott inside his house. He had state-of-the-art security magic beams, alarms and connections to one of the leading security outfits. Inside he was about as safe as a man can get.
The house was unremarkable otherwise, apart from his workroom, which had computer power to rival NASA’s. Confirming what he’d said, there was a bookcase full of books on ornithology. Apart from computer manuals, there wasn’t much else to read in the house.
Charlie cleaned himself up in the bathroom and produced his firepower, a single-shot. 22 rifle.
‘I have to admit it’s just a deterrent,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any bullets.’
‘Just as well. Are you okay now?’
‘Yes.’
He looked it, and that puzzled me a little because most people find being shot at a traumatic experience. I did. But it takes people different ways and maybe he had stronger nerves than most, despite his erratic history. Or perhaps because of it. He was a strange one. I was surprised that he mentioned Steve going under the train just the once.
I said, ‘You’re snug as a bug here, Charlie. I’ll push off and collect you in the morning. What time?’
‘Seven.’
‘Jesus!’
‘When you’re at the cutting edge you have to start early, Cliff.’
‘Okay. And we’ll be a bit more careful about coming and going in the future.’
I drove home in the rain with a few things about Marriott bothering me. He hadn’t thanked me for saving him from getting shot, but maybe in the modern world you don’t dispense gratitude when you’re paying. He was subject to mood swings and there was an instability about him that was troubling, but what did I know? Computer
