The Big Ask

PRAISE FOR
THE BIG ASK

‘It's a rollicking good read of sex, political intrigue and
murder.'
Sunday Mail

‘The great joy of Maloney is that he seems effortlessly to
marry tightly constructed crime stories to great satirical
vision…there's no doubting the brilliance of the writing'
Ian Rankin,
Age

‘Another triumph for Maloney, who is one of our best
and most consistently original crime writers. Highly
recommended.'
Canberra Times

‘
The Big Ask
is full of laugh-out-loud humour as well
as jaw-dropping accuracy in describing Australian
political life.'
marie claire

‘There is only one Australian crime writer on my list this
year—Shane Maloney. His satires on Australian political life
are always hilarious.'
Examiner

‘Melbourne has found a fresh spokesman—Shane Maloney…
Visitors could use
The Big Ask
as a Melbourne street directory.'
West Australian

PRAISE FOR SHANE MALONEY AND MURRAY WHELAN

‘Maloney is top shelf.'
Australian

‘I look forward to the next Murray Whelan book with the
same anticipation of pleasure that I feel for the new Carl
Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard.'
Sydney Morning Herald

‘Whelan's wry social commentaries, ironic observations and
many failed attempts at getting the girl make him one of
Australian crime-fiction's most attractive characters, and
Maloney one of the genre's most gifted writers.'
Who Weekly

‘To the list that contains Charles Willeford's Florida Keys, Jim
Thompson's West Texas, Pete Dexter's Philadelphia, James
Crumley's Montana and Carl Hiaasen's Miami, you can add
Shane Maloney's Melbourne. Maloney has created a fictional
city that contains the best of the real and the not quite real.'
Herald Sun

‘Maloney is a literary writer who…takes characters that are
stereotypes (the public servant, the minister, the arty type) and
depicts them with subtlety and originality and compassionate
humour. He also writes a ripping yarn.'
Eureka Street

Maloney is a born writer…For the first time, in the vicinity
of Australian crime-writing, we hear the true national
voice of comic futility, a literary voice which is rich,
ridiculous and tawdry, which can set itself up with a
soaring rhetoric and slide on the banana skin of its
own piss-elegance…Maloney is terrific.'
Age

‘A writer who seems to have been sitting on a thousand
observations now unleashed.'
Sunday Age

‘The pure pleasure of Maloney's book lies in being plunged
so thoroughly into the complicated byways of Australian
politics…a fast-paced, fresh, unerringly funny book…Murray
is a great creation, one that takes the wisecracking wise guy
into a whole new realm.'
Houston Chronicle

‘Maloney has a quirky eye for descriptive details that lend
frequent humor to a fascinating and adventurous plot.
Highly recommended.'
Library Journal

THE BIG ASK

Shane Maloney's novels
include
Stiff
,
The Brush-Off
,
Nice Try
and
Something Fishy
.

SHANE
MALONEY
the big ask

A MURRAY WHELAN THRILLER

The paper used in this book is manufactured only
from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William St
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
Copyright © Shane Maloney 2000

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published 2000, reprinted 2000, 2001
This edition published 2003, reprinted 2004, 2007, 2008

Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong Weng-ho
Typeset in Baskerville MT by Midland Typesetters

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Maloney, Shane.
The big ask.

ISBN 978 1 877008 52 8.

1. Whelan, Murray (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2.
Political consultants – Fiction. 3. Melbourne (Vic.) – Fiction.
4. Australia – Fiction. I. Title.
A823.3

This project was assisted by the City of Melbourne

The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Clarisse Ghirardelli
Writers Centre

This book is dedicated to Christine, Wally and May.

I have no choice—they know where I live.

The author of this book, its setting and its
characters are entirely fictitious. There is
no such place as Melbourne. The Australian
Labor Party exists only in the imagination
of its members.

The smart money was home in bed.

It was 4.30 a.m., a Monday morning at the arse-end of winter, and I should have been there too, clocking up a few hours sleep before the eight o'clock flight to Sydney. My son Red was somewhere in Sin City, missing and possibly in danger.

Instead, I was sitting in a greasy spoon cafe at the Melbourne Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market, nursing a bruised forehead, drinking over-brewed coffee and talking to a truck driver named Donny Maitland about his campaign to unseat the leadership of the United Haulage Workers.

Dawn was still two hours away and a frigid wind was sweeping off Port Phillip Bay, one of those bone-chilling breezes that descend on Melbourne in late winter and make us wonder why we bother to live here. Vendors were standing in front of their stalls, stamping their feet and rubbing their hands together. Beyond them, past rampaging forklifts and crates of vegetables, the tower blocks of the central city were etched against the sky above the railway switching yards, dark on dark.

Donny had just arrived, five hours from Nar Nar Goon with a load of spuds. He breezed through the door in a gust of arctic air, a craggy, cleft-chinned, stout-featured bloke in a woollen pea-jacket. One of those men, you knew if he was ever hit, wouldn't fall down. Not that I could imagine anyone trying it on. Donny wasn't that type. His body was a fact, not an assertion. Something he lugged around to do the work.

He spotted me straight up, plonked his frame onto the stool beside me and laid a hefty hand on my shoulder. A flush of good cheer rose across his cheekbones like old sunburn, almost managing to conceal the fatigue in his amiable brown eyes. He must have been shagged, a night behind the wheel, but he wore it well. Donny was a stayer, all right. More than once over the years, he'd drunk me under the table while the women came and went, talking of Michelangelo. Or Solzhenitsyn. Or Sinatra.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Murray,' he declared. ‘I stopped to help some bloke who'd lost his load on the South Gippsland Highway. Hope the bastard votes for me.'

‘It'll take more than random acts of kindness to win control of the Haulers,' I said.

Donny jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Don't worry, comrade. The rest of the crew are on the case, spreading the word among the cabbages. And the kings, too, if they find any. For the time has come, as the walrus said.'

I glanced through the glass wall of the eatery and caught sight of one of Donny's running mates, a scarecrow of a bloke called Roscoe, as he disappeared into the hurly-burly of the market, distributing handbills. Donny extracted a sheaf of flyers from his pea-jacket and thrust one into my hand. ‘Vote UHW Reform Ticket,' it was headed. ‘Fight for a Union that Fights for Its Members.'

As I read, Donny squinted at my forehead. ‘Where'd you get the bump? You look like you've gone three rounds with a revolving door.'

I touched my hairline and winced. ‘Must be this all-male environment.'

‘You've been brawling, haven't you?' Donny tilted his chin up and stared at me with astonishment. ‘In the twenty years we've known each other, I've never once heard of you swinging a punch.'

‘The other bloke swung first and swung harder,' I said morosely. ‘Name of Darren Stuhl.'

‘Bob Stuhl's son?' Donny puffed his cheeks and exhaled. ‘Runs the Stuhl Holdings depot down here for his old man. Did he realise he was taking a poke at a senior adviser to the Minister for Transport?'

‘This was personal, not professional,' I said. ‘We had a run-in a couple of nights ago. I never expected to see him again. Then, five minutes after I arrive here at the market, he turns up and decides to go for a repeat performance.'

Donny grinned and shook his head. ‘You're a wild man, Murray Whelan. What's Angelo Agnelli going to say when he finds out his trusty lieutenant has been trading punches with the heir to the biggest private trucking company in the country?'

‘What the boss doesn't know won't hurt him.' My gaze extended over Donny's shoulder, out to where a dark-haired man in a grey leather jacket was leaning against a crate of oranges. He had a face like a cop in a French movie and his thousand-yard stare was turned in our direction. ‘And right now we've got a more pressing problem than some bad-tempered rich kid,' I said. ‘You know a Haulers' organiser by the name of Frank Farrell?'

Donny looked at me over the rim of his cardboard cup. ‘I do indeed,' he said. ‘He's an all-purpose goon. Ex-shearer, ex-army. Works both sides of the street. A head-kicker for the union who does freelance favours for Bob Stuhl.'

‘Well, he's spotted us,' I said. ‘And right now he's putting two and two together and concluding that you and I didn't just happen to bump into each other. Come office hours, he'll be on his mobile phone reporting to Hauler headquarters that a member of the minister's staff was cooking something up with a rank-and-file activist in the market cafe. And I don't mean toasted sandwiches.'