‘Been doing a bit of research, Flicky old boy. Knowledge is power, and all that guff. Know what I mean? Amazing what you can find out these days with modern technology, like that internet thingy. Fascinating what you can dig up if you have a hunch about somebody. Like I have a hunch about you. You see, I had a dream. A dream of a car that would take me away from our complicated world to a purer place. Get my drift?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘A Kombi, Flick. Slept in her last night, actually, down by the Botanic Gardens. Haven’t slept that good in years. Better than your little Snooze-away Downs here. Anyway, I had plenty of time to think, there in the back of the van. And the most extraordinary dots started joining together. As if by magic. A few phone calls later, Flicky my lad, and I was starting to see a richer picture. An evil picture. A picture of an unscrupulous developer who arrived out of nowhere and started buying up half of a booming little tropical city. A man who, once upon a time, in a European forest far, far away, did some pretty naughty things, then changed his name. No, not just his name, but his entire life. Indeed, his actual face. It’s almost a German version of My Fair Lady, the way this fellow, this grub from the streets of Bremen, this Paul Smith, or should I say, Herr Paul Schmidt, had such a chameleonic ascent. How he went from cashier in a sex shop to low-level drug dealing to creatively laundering international drug funds into legitimate projects on behalf of the big boys.’
Flick murdered his cigarette. He snorted the last drag out his nose, sat back, folded his arms and stared at me.
‘But that wasn’t enough for Paul from Bremen,’ I went on. ‘Once he was reborn he had a “big idea”. The old light bulb above the head. The glühbirne atop der kopf. Pauly had a vision. Not an entirely original one, I’ll admit. But what if Pauly from Bremen greased the right palms, feathered the correct nests, targeted the right pouffes to plump up, and got insider knowledge of a booming city’s future plans, and what if lucky Pauly just happened to own property that not only doubled, tripled, but increased in value tenfold when grand infrastructure projects just happened to synchronise with his investments. Can you believe that Pauly Smith, they’d all say? A genius. Then, what if he replicated that uncanny talent across the country? Well, Pauly would be a very sought-after man, wouldn’t he? And he’d also be very rich.’
Flick coughed. He smiled. He lit another cigarette. ‘Your one minute is up.’
‘I’m not finished,’ I said. Through the smoke, I could see a giant eagle finely etched into the glass behind his desk. ‘Our Pauly, though, should have remembered his roots in bland Bremen with its brass pig statue downtown. Did you ever rub its nose for luck when you were a little thief living on the streets? Bet you did. You see, Paul, cities on the make don’t lose their small-town endearments. You should have done your research. Brisbane is a place that has known corruption. Has lived it. It’s in the soil. It’s also a place, despite its explosive growth and grand vision, which has gossip and tittle-tattle as its bedrock. People here still talk over the back fence. That’s what I like about it. And that was your big mistake. Did you honestly think you could bribe your way through government without anybody noticing? Cosmopolitanism in one town, Paul, can be seen as ignorance and idiocy in another. Not everything translates. If the premier uses the wrong cutlery in a fine dining restaurant here, it’s news the next day. Am I getting through to you, Paul? Small inside the big. A place and its people still connected to the earth.
‘You thought the little boutique winery on the side, the gestures to some cultural depth, could blind people to your common heritage? And your little Kombi chop shop? The scumbags you hang out with there? Still a common thief, hey, Paul? You don’t understand much about Kombi people either, I’m afraid. They’re bonded. Blood brothers and sisters. They talk, find things out, share, for the common good. The way it used to be — looking out for each other. I know some things about you that even you don’t know, my friend. All reported to me by Kombi spies. You thought you’d come to a place like this and bluff your way through? This is Brisbane, man. Once a grub, always a grub. And in a town like this, there are three primary ways that secrets move around. In the bedroom. Over the back fence. And over a meal. Has mankind ever been any different? But someone found you out, didn’t they?’
‘Is that a question?’
‘The last time I checked my primary school grammar book, yes, it was.’
‘Why don’t I have you shown out.’ He pressed a buzzer on his desk. Can you believe that? The villain with a red emergency button on his desk? This guy had seen too many movies.
Doors behind me opened.
‘You like technology, Paul? Computers? Laptops? Digital voice recorders?’
‘Get him out!’ Herr Flick/Schmidt shouted to some approaching goons. I didn’t need to turn around to see their shiny European suits and passé ponytails. When had I stumbled on to the set of Die Hard?
‘Sometimes,’ I said, gripping Zim’s briefcase before being reefed out of the chair, ‘just a pencil and a little square of paper can do all the damage. The might of the pen, Paul. The might of the pen.’
In a struggle with the German henchmen from central casting, I accidentally managed to knock over the model of Snoozeville, and shattered glass and little fragments of roofs and trees and shopping malls and train stations spilled across the shiny office floor. They got under our feet, these broken pieces of domestic bliss, and down we all went, giving me enough time to pull out my cheap pawnshop .38. Before I knew it the darned thing had gone off by itself, exploding a huge window that looked out over the hills of Mount Coot-tha.
And as the gorillas threw me, still clutching Zim’s bag, out of the building from the twenty-first floor, the briefcase latch opened and hundreds of my late friend’s lovingly inscribed index cards fluttered about me. It was a throw of confetti from Zim himself. And, I thought, the last thing I would see in my life.
~ * ~
10
When my broken left leg had finally healed, Peg and I decided we’d make that trip to Tasmania after all. So we packed up the Kombi, waved goodbye to the family, pulled out of our driveway to much fanfare from the neighbours and turned right onto the Pacific Highway.
‘How’s this?’ I said to Peg, barely containing my exhilaration. This was what it was all about. The freedom of the open road. The limitless possibilities. The great human desire for locomotion. I was as giddy as a schoolboy.
‘How long will it take to get there?’ Peg said, filing her nails. We’d been driving for four minutes.
She could not deflate me. I had almost died at the hands of Herr Johann Flick. It’s not every day you go abseiling from a Brisbane high-rise, without a parachute, kite, bungee rope or cocktail umbrella, and live to tell the tale.
Of course, I’d made the papers again. Thus our hurried trip to the Apple Isle. I had become an embarrassment to Peg. It was something I hadn’t counted on being for another twenty years, as a permanently dribbling, nappy-wearing, chair-bound, ga-ga old fruit who thought that ‘the war’ was still raging. The Vietnam War, that is.