As it turns out, the fourth estate has nothing better to do these days than to boast like weekend fishermen. And Brian was there, his arms outstretched, declaring that he had landed the exclusive story of the biggest scandal in Australia ’s history. He had no trouble linking at least eighteen of the millionaires to the Fleshpot- each a bartender or an accountant or a bouncer or a dishwasher, all running around on camera with their hands over their faces, the physical gesture that’s as good as a confession. Yet the story that developed later that night was not what I had expected, mainly because when I confronted Eddie with his crime, he hadn’t told me the true nature of his plot. The report was not, as I had anticipated, about Eddie’s friends receiving the benefits that belonged in the pockets of ordinary Australians. I knew it was more complicated and dangerous than that when I finally answered the phone and the journalist on the other end asked the out-of-the-blue question “Just what is your relationship with Tim Lung?”
Who?
Here’s what I found out. The two nightclubs formerly managed by Eddie and for a short time by myself were owned by a Thai businessman named Tim Lung. So far, out of the 640 millionaires made, 18 had at one time or another been employees of this Tim Lung. Eddie had worked for him for many years and obviously was still working for him. The money Eddie had loaned me to build my labyrinth had in reality come directly from Tim Lung. This man whom I had never heard of had, unbeknownst to me, financed my house. He had given me a job as manager of his club. There was nothing I could say. I was tied to him. Or rather, for some unknown reason, he was tied to me. The evidence was circumstantial yet incriminating. Was that all? No, that wasn’t all. It was enough to hang me, but it wasn’t all.
Further investigations brought to light that Tim Lung had owned a small fleet of fishing trawlers seized by French authorities for trafficking guns and ammunition from France to North Africa. This meant the work I had done some twenty years earlier, in Paris, loading and unloading crates on the banks of the Seine, was done for this same fucking guy. Tim Lung- he had been responsible for the underworld battle that led to Astrid’s death all those years ago! My head was spinning. I kept replaying the revelations over in my head. Tim Lung: I had worked for him in France, he had given me a job in Australia, he had financed my house and had finally called in the favor by ripping off the millionaires scheme. Was that what he’d wanted all along? How could that be possible? And how was anyone to believe the unbelievable fact that I had never heard of him? And how could I never have heard of him? A man whom I had been tied to almost all my adult life? This shadowy Thai businessman turned out to be one of the key figures in my life, and this was the first I was hearing of him. Incredible!
I went online to do a search and found a couple of grainy photos and a link to an old interview on a Thai-language corporate website. He was a tall, thin man in his late fifties. He had a gentle smile. There was nothing about his features to suggest criminality. His eyes weren’t even set too close together or too far apart. I turned off the computer, having learned nothing, and not long after the police raided our offices and all the computers were taken. They went on to dig up people I’d known and purposefully forgotten; people I’d worked with in short-lived minimum-wage jobs, inmates at the mental hospital, even prostitutes came out of the woodwork to throw in their two cents. Everyone was on the warpath that led to me.
It was the white-collar crime of the century. I was cooked! I was the personification of everything hated in this country- another fat cat milking decent, hardworking, ordinary Australians of their wages. I was officially a scumbag. A bag of scum! A shitheel. A heel of shit! I was all these things, and more. To my surprise, I was identified racially. A Jew! Even though I had never had any contact with the Jewish community, any more than I’d had with the Amish, the newspapers referred to “Jewish businessman Martin Dean.” And for the first time I was accurately called “half brother” of Terry Dean. That’s it. That’s how I knew I was done for; they were distancing my crimes from those of my iconic brother. They wouldn’t stand for me taking Terry’s legacy down with me.
A lifetime of my fearing people was finally validated- people proved themselves to be absolutely frightening. The whole country was in a whirlwind of hate, a hatred so intense and all-encompassing, you couldn’t imagine any of them were still able to kiss their loved ones at night. This was the instant I felt my destiny- to be an object of loathing- arrive and also the moment I realized there was something to this business of negative energy after all. I felt the waves of detestation profoundly, in my guts. Honestly, you wonder how they ever sneaked the abolishment of the death penalty past a mob like that. I was not unaccustomed to witnessing my countrymen’s hatred focused like death rays over the years: I remember the minister whose wife had paid for designer sunglasses with taxpayers’ money, and that practically was the end of the minister’s career. His son’s phone bill! Or the MP who was forced to deny claims that she tried to get into the Royal Easter Show for free. The people were upset that she didn’t pay her twelve dollars. Twelve lousy dollars! Imagine what they’d do to me!
Of course the appalled faces of my political opponents barely concealed their delight; they adored anything that allowed them to look indignant on behalf of the electorate. It was effortless the way they ground me to dust. They were spared the trouble of having to cook up a scandal to fry me. All they had to do was express shock and act swiftly, to appear to be the one with his foot on my neck. They were all lining up to denounce me, their voices dipped in sewage, pushing each other out of the way to take credit for my downfall.
Oscar was powerless to stop all this, assuming he even wanted to. Reynold had taken over the matter. Anouk tried to reason with her father-in-law and asked him to help me, but Reynold was resolute. “It’s too late now,” he said. “You can’t stop a tidal wave of hatred once it’s reached the shore.” He was right. There was no point making a foolish protestation of innocence. I knew how it worked. I was already sliced and diced in everyone’s mind, so what was I still doing here? You could see it in their eyes- they were astonished that I was still breathing. What a nerve! I considered appealing to the charitable parts of themselves. I even toyed with the idea of telling them I had cancer, but I dropped it. I’d assaulted their pockets, and nothing would soften them to my case. They could learn that my skin was being peeled away by a blind cook who had mistaken me for a giant potato, and they would cheer. Cheer! It seems that in our society Christianity has made permanent inroads in the eye-for-an-eye department but has made little progress on the practical application of forgiveness.
The biggest irony about this whole thing was that the chemotherapy sessions were over and were successful. So just when I had my life back again, it became unlivable. The Buddhists are right. Guilty men are not sentenced to death, they are sentenced to life.
Sadly, Jasper too was the hapless recipient of a severe hammering. I’m ashamed to say he finally had to pay for the sins of the father. He began receiving messages like “Please tell your father that I am going to kill him!” Poor bastard! He became a death-threat messenger service. And don’t think my wife got off any easier. Poor Caroline! Poor babe in the woods! She foolishly agreed to interviews, thinking she could set the record straight. She didn’t understand that they had her role clearly defined and would not stand for it to be corrected or amended. By pitting ourselves against the battler, we had lost our talent to be Australians, and thus our right to a fair go was forfeited. They savaged her. My one actual lie was uncovered and it became public knowledge that Caroline and I had grown up together. Thus her being made a millionaire made her look as guilty as I was. She was left weeping on national television. My love! Women spat on her in the street. Saliva! Actual saliva! And sometimes the saliva wasn’t even white but the dirty dark-green of long-term smokers. Caroline was not prepared for this; at least I’d had a childhood of persecution to prepare me, many mouthfuls of bitter experience to line my stomach. I started out as a figure of contempt and that’s how I ended up- hard to be too upset about it.