It was stop-start for kilometres and not made any easier by heavy rain. Charlie was in a mood to talk, especially when I asked him what was so wrong about selling out to a multinational.
He was still a bit drunk. ‘You know what they do?’ he said. ‘When they take over something down here? Get that? Down here! That’s what they always say.’
I sighed as I pulled up at least a hundred metres short of a set of lights. ‘No idea. Tell me.’
‘Jesus, I remember what Steve said. That bloody awful red of yours must’ve triggered it. He said something like, “They’re such literal-minded bastards they’re up and we’re down and that’s the way they like it.” He was right.’
Sitting there behind the wheel, and not entirely unaffected by the wine myself, I had a rare lateral thinking moment. ‘I suppose it depends where you are in the universe. If you’re far enough away and subject to other forces… say, the rings of Saturn have got you by the gravitational balls, the northern and southern hemispheres of planet Earth don’t amount to a hill of beans.’
Charles Marriott laughed as if I was Woody Allen on wheels. ‘D’you read much science fiction, Cliff?’
‘Never.’
‘Really? Well, what you’ve just said is the sort of thing Steve would’ve said. He read a lot. Not like Mark, who reads trash. Steve read all that thoughtful stuff-Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick… why’ve they all got middle initials?’
I made it through the lights on the amber, just. ‘Dunno.’
‘Yeah, well. When the Americans take over a dot com here or anywhere else they get all enthusiastic about its potential and possibilities and they set up all kinds of well-funded research and development projects and we mere mortals get excited and start working our arses off and coming up with brilliant ideas. I’ve seen it time and again. Know what happens in the end?’
‘The corporate suits rip them off, the locals get nothing.’
‘Sorry, but you’re naive, Cliff. It’s worse than that. Say we were taken over by BigDick. com based in Palo Alto. They’d send some hotshot out here and fire half the staff as a beginning and then get all enthused about some project or other, get the remaining people to work twenty-five hours a day on it and then just drop it, lose interest. Or there’d be some change at board level and the strategic focus or some such shit would change and so little Oz project X would get the flick. Happens all the time. Morale goes through the floor. They send out another swinging dick and he fires a few more people and recommends the operation be moved to Malaysia. The 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.