The Big Ask (2 page)

Government interference in the internal affairs of a union was the dish Angelo Agnelli had in mind. A little stirring of the industrial pot. But the success of the recipe would depend on whether Donny could stand the heat of the kitchen.

He turned to look, but I clamped my hand on his forearm. ‘Farrell told me he was here to deal with some sort of irritation,' I warned.

‘That'd be us.' Donny looked pleased. ‘Word must've got back that the natives are restless.'

‘And Farrell's not alone. He's got a bunch of roughnecks with him, lurking around the Stuhl Holdings depot.'

‘Told you they consider us a threat,' said Donny. ‘I'd better warn the others to expect trouble. We can't ask anybody to vote for us if we can't hold our ground, so we should put on a bit of a show.' He checked his watch. ‘It's 4.40 now. We'll rustle up a campaign rally in the parking lot in thirty minutes, show the flag before the place closes for the day.'

‘I can't stay that long,' I said. ‘Something's come up. You remember Red, lives in Sydney with his mother, Wendy?'

‘Never understood what you saw in that woman,' nodded Donny.

‘One of the eternal mysteries,' I agreed. ‘The thing is, Red's done a bunk. Disappeared. I'm on a flight at eight. Thirteen years old. I've got to tell you, mate, I'm worried sick.'

‘Ah, jeeze,' said Donny. ‘Thirteen, eh? Last time I saw the little tacker he couldn't have been more than five or six. Anything I can do?'

‘You can tell me where I can ring a cab,' I said. ‘I need to get home, change my clothes, pack a bag.'

‘Forget the cab,' he said. ‘Stick around. The rally won't take long and then I'll run you home. Drive you to the airport, too, if you want. It'll be faster that way, I guarantee. You can't leave before you've had the chance to see us in action.' Donny glanced across the cafe and grinned. ‘Hello, here's Heather.'

Heather was Donny's sister-in-law and the partner in his trucking business. Once upon a very short time, I was a frog that she'd kissed. She was, I feared, still on a quest for my inner prince. And she was steaming towards us, weaving through the tables, denim skirt swirling at mid-calf, a chunky little Dolly Parton. Heads turned, tracking her progress.

‘Uh-oh,' I said.

Heather joined us at the counter and signalled for a coffee. ‘Well, well,' she said, a devious smile dimpling her cheeks. ‘Look who's here.'

‘What an unexpected surprise,' I said.

‘I'm here to talk to clients,' she explained. ‘Try to hustle up some jobs. Times are tough and this union crap isn't going to make life any easier.' She nodded at the leaflet in my hand. ‘You should know better than to encourage him.'

Donny climbed off his stool and surrendered it to Heather with a sarcastic bow. ‘Leave the boy alone,' he said. ‘Can't you see he's been in the wars. Here five minutes and some dickhead tries to rearrange his face.'

‘You're kidding?' Heather registered the swelling on my forehead and her tone softened. ‘You're not kidding, are you? You look like shit.'

‘She's a real charmer, isn't she?' said Donny. ‘See you in the parking area in half an hour, Murray. Tough customer like you might be handy, push comes to shove.'

I nodded. Another thirty minutes weren't going to make much difference, one way or another. Donny took his campaign leaflets and his impregnable confidence and vanished into the vegetal world of the market.

‘So,' demanded Heather. ‘What happened to you?'

It was too humiliating to recount. I stared down into my coffee, brown sludge, lukewarm and oversweetened. ‘Long story,' I muttered.

‘It always is.' She shook her head, no stranger to the infinite foolishness of the male species. ‘And I thought you were a nice boy.'

‘You should know better than that,' I said, absently probing the tender spot.

She dug in her bag and found a pack of aspirin. I washed down a couple of tablets and rubbed my eyes. ‘Sorry,' I yawned. ‘I haven't been to bed yet.'

‘C'mon, then.' She took my elbow and stood me up. ‘If you're going to stay, we might as well do something about your war wound.'

She had the burger flipper put some ice in a plastic bag, then she led me back through the market, greeting and being greeted. Across the shed, I saw Donny's mate Roscoe in animated conversation with a forklift driver, pressing a handbill on him. A man in a football beanie and leather apron came out of a vendor's stall and rousted him away. Above the stall was a sign with the proprietor's name. It was one I recognised from newspaper stories about pre-dawn slayings in suburban driveways. Incidents attributed to a well-known Italian self-help association.

‘It's a world of its own,' said Heather. ‘They'll have Donny for breakfast.'

‘I'm sure he can look after himself.'

‘Yeah?' she said.

A fine drizzle alighted on our shoulders as we stepped out into the parking area. Trucks and vans of every size, age and make crowded the asphalt. Motorised trolleys darted between them, ferrying all the roots and leaves it takes to feed three million hungry mouths. An ethereal light leaked down upon the scene from the distant pinnacles of towering stanchions, casting murky shadows between the parked rigs.

The Maitland truck was slotted between a big refrigerator rig and an old Bedford with the word ‘Foodbank' stencilled on the tailgate. ‘Strange name,' I said.

‘A charity,' explained Heather. ‘They collect perishable foodstuffs, then distribute them to worthy causes.'

I'd be the one perishing if I didn't get out of the cold.

Heather opened the cabin door. ‘Up you get,' she instructed, indicating the narrow sleeping ledge behind the bench seat. ‘Make yourself comfortable.'

Compliant to orders, I shucked off my shoes and clambered up. Heather, kneeling on the passenger seat, covered me with a blanket and pressed a cube of ice gently to my brow. ‘Poor baby,' she cooed. ‘Does that feel better?'

Much better. I closed my eyes and sighed.

‘You know what you need, Murray?' murmured Heather. ‘A bit of tender loving care, that's what.'

She spoke a simple truth. ‘Hmmm,' I agreed.

A kind of blank exhaustion settled over me, a state of suspended animation. Time must have passed, but I had no sense of its progress. Then the truck swayed slightly and the door swung shut. I heard the click of the lock and opened my eyes. Heather's face filled my field of vision, her eyes brimming with compassion.

Nope. It was something else. She leaned closer and touched her lips to mine.

It was so long since I'd felt a woman's kiss that I couldn't summon the power to resist. The kiss lengthened, widened, deepened. Heather's mouth was infinitely inviting, wordlessly eloquent, irresistibly persuasive. I felt myself succumbing.

‘Yummy,' she breathed.

Her hand slid under the blanket and tugged at my sweater. Shivers ran down my spine and a low moan escaped from somewhere deep within my chest. Goosebumps rose as her cool fingers found my skin.

‘No,' I protested, perhaps less than insistent.

‘Sssh.' Heather's tongue traced a wet path across my cheek and explored my ear. ‘Don't say anything.'

Then she was up on the ledge beside me, backing me deeper into the narrow space. She pinned me against the curtained rear window, her thigh flung across mine. Her hands were busy between us, probing, unbuttoning, delving.

Pop, pop, pop went the stud-buttons of her quilted vest. Pop, pop went her shirt front. She pushed my jumper up around my neck and the lace of her bra scraped across my exposed chest. Another furtive groan escaped my lips.

‘You like that,' she whispered. ‘Don't you?'

The evidence was in hand, the
corpus
was in
delicti
. More kisses devoured my face, fed by every feeble move I made to elude them. My willpower was melting in the heat of our mingled breaths. To prevent Heather tumbling, halfundressed, backwards into the driver's seat, I put an arm around her. Jesus, I thought, I'm in big trouble here.

‘Just like old times,' she said, hiking up her skirt.

We writhed together on the narrow ledge. It was like trying to have it off in a horizontal phone booth. And there was nothing long-distance about the call that Heather was placing.

‘Heather.' I used my most forceful tone. ‘This is not a good idea.'

Heather was not of the same opinion. She unfastened her bra and smothered my objections. I tried to turn away, honest I did. It was useless. My resistance was wilting. It was the only thing that was.

‘Relax,' she purred, her hair falling around my ears, her abundance stoppering my mouth. ‘I'm not going to do a
Fatal Attraction
on you.'

I didn't want to give her the wrong impression about my true feelings. But those breasts, Christ Almighty. A man would have to be made of stone. Part of me felt like it already was.

A veil of condensation had formed on the truck's windows, hiding us from the world outside. I pressed my palm against the glass and smeared the cool moisture across my face. Heather's face was elsewhere and not at all cold.

‘Please,' I moaned. Through the hole in the condensation, I glimpsed the corporate slogan on the rear bumper of a Stuhl Holdings truck. ‘Bob Stuhl Is Big.' Mine was too.

Further across the parking area, Donny was climbing onto a stack of pallets, his pea-jacket buttoned to the neck. He raised a bullhorn and the muffled sound of his voice swept across the bitumen, echoing off the sides of the sheds. I could just make out Roscoe, standing beside the pallets as if on sentry duty. A small, tentative cluster of onlookers began to form.

‘The rally,' I said. ‘Donny'll notice if I'm not there. Heather, please stop.'

She did, raising her eyes and fixing me with a wicked smile. Then, suddenly, she tried to pull my sweater off. ‘Skin,' she demanded. ‘I want more skin.'

Her recklessness was exhilarating. Her knees were planted on either side of my chest, blanketing my nether regions in the tented folds of her skirt. She reached down and began to tinker with my front-end alignment.

‘Um,' I said, not meaning a word of it. According to Saint Augustine, a standing prick has no conscience. Neither, for that matter, does a reclining one.

Donny's voice rose and fell and his arm pumped the air. More figures materialised in the pre-dawn gloom, converging on the pallets. Among them I recognised Frank Farrell, the Haulers' enforcer, his fist raised. Heather, meanwhile, was engaged in a complex docking manoeuvre. ‘Murray,' she said sternly. ‘It takes two, you know.'

An overcoated figure broke from the fringe of the crowd and vaulted up beside Donny. ‘Something's happening,' I reported.

It certainly was. Heather bore down, mission accomplished. A rare pleasure suffused my loins. I closed my eyes and surrendered. At that moment, Donny's oration ceased.

With Heather's clutch fully engaged, I strained to see through the smeared glass. The man who'd jumped up beside Donny was reaching into his coat. He pulled something out and pressed it to Donny's temple. The crowd began to scatter. A confused tangle of bodies contested the rostrum. A sharp crack rang in my ears.

And again. And again.

In her amorous enthusiasm, Heather was pounding the top of my head against the wall of the cabin. Interesting cure for a headache. Unless she stopped, I'd have a cerebral haemorrhage. I squirmed out from underneath her and tumbled down onto the seat.

‘What's wrong?' she pleaded. ‘I thought you liked me.'

I fumbled on the floor for my shoes, levering my camshaft back into my pants. ‘I do,' I said. ‘I'm just not ready for a relationship.'

‘A relationship?' She started tucking her upholstery back into place.

My shoes were under the seat, along with a hefty shifting spanner. ‘It's a bit sudden, that's all,' I said. Laces dangling, spanner in hand, I hit the bitumen.

‘A relationship?' Heather repeated plaintively. ‘I'd settle for a bit of slap and tickle.'

The air was thick with exhaust fumes, the smell of burnt rubber and decaying vegetable matter. Everywhere, trucks were in motion, great wheeled walls of steel and chrome, pumping a grimy haze into the air, their towering bullbars advancing before them.

I picked my way through the obstacle course of vehicles, some moving, some stationary. By the time I reached the stack of pallets, the crowd had vanished. It was like it had never been there, as if I'd imagined everything. The only evidence that anything had happened was a broken megaphone. It lay in a shallow puddle, its handle shattered, batteries strewn across the ground.

I climbed the pallets and scanned the scene. The drizzle was thickening into a solid rain. The parking area was rapidly emptying. Here and there, hunched pedestrians flitted through the semi-darkness. I headed for the floodlit shelter of the main shed and loped into the market. Stalls were closing up. Loads of produce were being shunted into coolrooms. Nothing for me there. Breathless, wondering what was going on, I sprinted back towards the truck.

Head down against the rain, dashing past the Foodbank truck, I slammed head-on into Frank Farrell.

He dropped his mobile phone and it skittered across the wet asphalt. As he bobbed down to snatch it up, the hard man ran his hard eyes over the spanner in my hand. ‘Been tightening somebody's nuts?'

I ignored him, kept going and found Donny with one foot on his driver-side step, beginning to climb aboard. He was wild-eyed, hyper-energised, rain streaming down his face. ‘Did you see the crowd? Twenty-five, thirty, that's good for here,' he babbled. ‘When Farrell and his hoons realised we were prepared to stick up for ourselves, they put their tails between their legs and took off.'

‘Was that Darren Stuhl?' I interrupted. ‘Was that a gun he was waving around?'