The Fix (20 page)

The Governor saved Ben until the end. By then I had pulled my head out of the clouds and back into the room. The warrant was read, briefly recounting the details of the siege, but more the when and where than the specifics of what had happened.

Ben got up from his chair and stood stiffly in front of the Governor. He seemed not to expect it when she spoke to him while placing the star on his chest, but he mumbled some kind of answer. She shook his hand, still talking to him, and then let him go back to his seat. Applause broke out. He was the picture of a selfdeprecating hero. He sat facing forward as the clapping went on behind him, and the Governor smiled at him again to let him know he was okay.

I pushed through the crowd to get to him first on the way out. The TV crews would close in all too quickly. I told Frank and Max to stick with me, but I lost them. I got to Ben at the same time as Ten News.

‘We spoke last week,' I said to the reporter, before she had a chance to talk to him. ‘Josh Lang. I'm responsible for that piece of paper you're carrying.' She had my media release in her hand.

‘Oh, great, Josh,' she said. ‘Courtney Smith. Where can we go to get a few words from Ben? Preferably somewhere without a brass band.'

I found us a spot under a hoop pine some distance away, and that was the start of it. For the next half-hour, while a military band played in a striped marquee across the lawn and sandwiches of a polite size were served, I marshalled the reporters and the cameras around Ben and Frank. I had Ben's medal box and warrant in my hand as one camera after another framed him with the trees behind him and the star on his chest lit up by the late morning sun.

I listened to him, I listened to Frank, I listened for the messages we had talked about – the bite-sized pieces that TV needed or that would work on radio news.

‘It was a split-second thing, I guess,' Ben said to one of them. ‘Time was running out, and it was then or never.' He was on the money. There was tension in every muscle and it was clear to me that he was hating the interview, but they wouldn't see that.

‘He's doing Afternoons with you,' I said to the radio reporter who was next in the queue. ‘Do you still want him now for news?'

‘It was a terrible risk he took,' Frank was saying, next
to me. ‘He certainly saved my life, and maybe dozens more.'

Over in the marquee, the band was playing Click Go the Shears and the Governor was still shaking hands, still listening to the stories of the brave but not conspicuously courageous.

‘And how do you feel about the death of Rob Mueller?' I heard the final TV reporter say to Ben, just as I thought my job at Government House was done.

Ben looked around until he saw me. The reporter had her microphone angled his way, waiting, just below the shot. I took a step closer. I could stop it if I had to.

‘I feel very bad about that,' he said, unrehearsed. ‘It wasn't what any of us wanted. I wish . . . we'd all come out of there alive.' He blinked, and put his hands up to shade his eyes from the sun. I believed him, this time completely.

‘Thank you,' the reporter said. ‘That'll do us.' She shook his hand. The cameraman stepped back, but the reporter stayed with Ben. ‘You did an amazing thing,' she said, still holding his hand. ‘I don't know how you did it.'

He looked uncomfortable, as if it was another question to answer just as he'd been told it was over. I stepped in and thanked the reporter, and said I might take Ben for something to eat.

I led the way towards the marquee and I told him to go for canapés, as many as he could get his hands on, since we had more interviews to do around town before he had any chance of a meal.

‘Hey, that was really something,' Max said, his mouth half-full of white bread and cress. Some food had strayed
beyond the marquee, and he hadn't missed it. ‘Watching you bring all the media through, keeping them happy. A lot of them wanted to talk to him, didn't they?'

‘That'd be all the phone calls Josh has been making, Max,' Ben said, as a platter of mini quiche came his way. He gave me his medal box and warrant certificate again so that he could take two. ‘Mate, I couldn't have handled that without you, you know that.'

* * *

BEN TUCKED THE
HEAVY STAR
into his jacket pocket as we left Government House. It had been pinned just above the pocket by the Governor's ADC when she had come to take back the decoration hook after the ceremony.

‘It was way out of line,' I said, about the reporter asking Ben how he felt about the death of Rob Mueller. ‘It's not the question you ask someone in your position.'

‘It's okay.' He sounded calm and, for the first time, looked it too. ‘I thought I did okay with it. After the grilling you've been giving me the past few days, I was ready for just about anything.'

‘I didn't get you ready for that. You did well.'

‘Hey, go for the truth. That's what you said.' He kicked a stone off the path, and it left a mark on the toe of his shiny black shoe. ‘I do feel bad that he died. It's a tragedy. He had a family.' Two taxis drove by, carrying guests away from Government House. ‘I want them to run what I said. I hope they do. Do you think they will?'

‘Yeah, I do. She knew she had something, that reporter. If Miriam Mueller sees it, or hears about it, I think it'll mean something to her.'

Our next interview was across town at 4BC. We listened to music all the way there. Ben didn't say much. We parked out the front, and I checked that he was ready and told him it was time to show the star again. He lifted it out and placed it on the outside of his pocket, running his hand over the ribbon as if it needed smoothing.

The producer met us at the door and said, ‘So that's what it looks like.' She asked if she could touch it and she weighed the silver star in her hand and said, ‘It's solid, isn't it?'

Two other staff members were walking in with their lunch and stopped to admire it as well. It was like an Olympian turning up with a medal, but the backstory here wasn't victory.

‘What did you do?' one of them said. There was an eagerness about the way it came out. She was looking for good news.

‘There was a siege,' Ben told her. ‘A guy with a gun.' He wanted the story out of his life. He didn't want to be recounting it in doorways.

‘Don't wear him out, girls,' the producer said. ‘I want him on air with this.'

She led us inside and took Ben into the studio. I watched him through the glass, getting settled in the seat, picking the headphones up and then putting them back on the desk. The producer rearranged the microphone so that the height was right and showed him the cough button.

She came back out into the foyer as the weather report ended and the presenter said, ‘We've now got a very special guest with us . . .'

It was live and I thought it would be close to seven minutes, not the sound bite Ben was used to giving. I hoped he was ready. He started well. The producer asked me if we were doing the rounds, and I told her we were being selective.

‘I think it's a story people will want to hear,' I said, still watching Ben through the glass. ‘But he's not a rock star with a new record doing thirty interviews a day. It's a tough story, and I only want to take him through it a few times.'

I could hear the interviewer saying, ‘I don't know about that. I don't know that you can say anyone else would have done it if they'd been in your position. It took some courage. I think I would have been hiding under the desk.'

It was a hero interview, and it was going just the way I had wanted it to.

‘Well, we were in the gents at the time,' Ben said, leaning back from the microphone, his voice falling away. ‘So . . . No desk.' The interviewer signalled for him to get a little closer, and he nodded. ‘That's just where we ended up. And then he was going to shoot Frank . . .'

‘How did it feel? Tell us about that moment. That moment when you knew you had to act.'

‘I don't know,' Ben said after a pause. ‘I know that doesn't sound right, but it happened so quickly. I saw the gun come up. I saw that he was about to fire. I had to knock the gun away. But it didn't work out like that. I had some momentum and it carried us to the wall,
and the gun went off. I think that was it, but it all took maybe a second.'

‘And in that second, lives were saved. Would you have known you had it in you, to be the hero in a situation like that?'

‘No,' Ben said. ‘I'm still not sure I do. It's just what happened, I guess.'

He sounded like the perfect honest hero.

* * *

‘YOU'RE AN HOUR
from beach time.'

We were pulling away from the kerb outside 96five, another solid interview behind us.

‘Yay.' Ben sounded weary, all talked out after four radio stations. ‘Do we have any more when we get there, or is that it for the day?'

He pushed his seat back and adjusted his sunglasses. His jacket was now on the back seat, with his medal tucked into the pocket again. The box and warrant had ended up on the floor, near his feet.

‘That's it. Nothing this evening. Next one's Wednesday, so you're on holiday until then. That'll be Who Weekly. Interview and photoshoot. You in the suit with the medal. You playing mini-golf with friends. Things like that.'

He lifted the sunglasses up, as if he needed to see me properly. ‘Oh really?' he said. ‘Who are the friends? I have friends? You've booked some friends for this?'

‘Well, I'll be one of them.' Years before I would have been one of them as a matter of course. I had
thought nothing of it when I'd planned it. I had seen the photoshoot as a straight role-play then, and not a mean joke at the expense of the past, or a hint at a fresh start. I didn't know which way he would take it, if he would see either of those in it. ‘Maybe I should have asked if there were people you could call. I'm sure you've got plenty within range of the Gold Coast. But it's not a friend showcase, not really.' It was a photo, an image, a fake that I was setting out to craft. And I was doing that because it was easier than the real thing, because it gave me more control. I realised I didn't care about the truth of the photo, just that they ran the piece with the story the way I wanted it. ‘They only need a couple of people. So, it's you, me and . . . we might be joined by someone.'

‘
Might
be joined by someone?' He had picked up the scent.

‘Okay, will be. And the someone is Hayley. Who you might know better as Jett. She'll be coming tomorrow. I happened to book a place with three rooms, so . . .'

He laughed. ‘Because it's all about the three rooms, right? Don't want a room to go to waste, do we, so we'd better give it to the nearest hot law-student stripper? How long have you been keeping this to yourself? I thought you didn't have her number. When did you line her up?'

‘I caught up with her on Saturday night.'

‘And just invited her to the coast? We might have to give you one of these.'

He picked up his medal box, took out the miniature and tried to pin it on my shirt. I fought him off with one hand. The car swerved but stayed in the lane.

‘Traffic, please. I have to focus. On driving.' The passenger in the car to our right stared at me as they passed, assessing me to see if I was some kind of hazard. ‘It took practically no bravery at all. I met her when she finished work and we went to Ric's. You should see what it's like out the back of the club. It's really . . . normal. And then there's Ross, the boss, who's hilarious. He's this jolly fat guy who keeps a gun in his desk drawer.'

It felt like a mistake to mention Ross's gun to Ben, even as I said it. It was a secret I wasn't supposed to know. But it was as if we were friends again and I had stories to tell, and a girl to invite to the coast. I wasn't the loser who had left years ago, who had had his spirit broken by one bad act.

‘You're serious? The boss keeps a gun in his drawer?' He was still working through it. ‘That's crazy. Why would he do that? Has he been watching The Sopranos too much?'

‘It's from the bad old days apparently. A handgun and a box of ammo. And they had this new stripper. Her name was Eugenia but her stripper name was Vixen.'

‘Vixen. Is there some book of stripper names? You've been blogging your fingers raw since Saturday, haven't you?'

There had been a time, years before, when we had gone to the coast on weekends in my old car, and this trip felt remarkably like that, but with suits and a Star of Courage. I think we both wanted things not to have changed at all, no bust-up, no gap lasting years, no siege. We were talking as if history could be deleted rather than merely rewritten.

‘Forty percent of them are students,' I said. ‘The strippers. One of them was even reading Proust on a break.'

‘I bet stripping pays better than flipping burgers,' he said. He had never flipped burgers. ‘If it's forty percent now, there must have been at least a few in our day. Who would it have been?'

We made a list.

‘You could have been a contender,' I said, figuring the list could do with some gender-balancing. ‘They like the boys hairless, in the clubs that specialise in the boy thing.'

‘I won't even ask how you know that. Maybe I'll add it to my options, if the law thing goes belly-up. I could probably walk to work.'

We passed Yatala, and the huge pie sign to the right of the highway.

‘The canapés aren't holding me,' he said, one hand on his stomach. ‘I think you got to eat more of them than I did. I could eat that sign.'

‘Well, you were busier than me.' We were driving at a hundred and ten. In twenty minutes he could eat actual food.

‘And I was more nauseated.'

‘Less nauseated now?'

‘Yes. It feels like it's nearly done. The big bit's done.' It was news time on the radio, and he muted it during the play-in. ‘No news,' he said. ‘I want to have a holiday from news. Hey, how about that time we stopped here for pies? We left uni one Friday in the middle of the day and made it this far before we had to eat. You ate a whole family-sized steak-and-kidney
before you remembered you didn't eat organs, and I had to drive after that. We had to have the window down in case the thought of all that kidney got too much for you.'