Dead and Kicking (22 page)

‘I think you might mean tentacles, Lothar,’ I said. ‘The things on an octopus.’

‘Tentacles? Really? Bugger, that means I’ll have to redo all the menus.’

I stared at him and he took a card from his trouser pocket.

Forceps or rubber gloves not being available, I had no option but to take the card with my bare hand, holding it gingerly by one corner. It appeared that Lothar L. Ludovik was now the general manager of Bluey’s Backyard BBQ Restaurant, where steak and seafood were a speciality and incredible franchising opportunities were apparently now available. The fine print on the card said the owners, Bluey Operating Systems NL, were a subsidiary of Fischer Aquaculture Industries.

‘There’s actually no Bluey, Mr Murdoch,’ Lothar said, ‘that’s what we in the biz call a marketing strategy. Darwin’s the first branch, but in five years we plan to be open all over the place.’

‘Bringing char-grilled marinated octopus testicles to the world is a lofty ambition, Lothar, and it takes balls.’

‘Gee, thanks, Mr Murdoch, but I can’t take all the credit. Here comes the real brains behind the operation.’

I’d seen Fischer sitting in first class on the flight up from Sydney and I’d spotted him approaching us out of the corner of my eye.

‘Mr Murdoch,’ Lothar said, ‘this is Mr Detlef Fischer of Bluey Operating Systems. Mr Fischer is my CEO.’

Lothar and Fischer were a match made in heaven, if heaven was having a very off day.

‘We’ve already met,’ I said.

Fischer was carrying one of those expensive Italian leather overnight bags so popular with the disgustingly rich and the wives of airline baggage handlers. He put his bag down and smiled that million-watt smile again as I shook his hand. The handshake gave me a perfect excuse to drop Lothar’s business card.

‘I see you’re going in for vertical integration with the fish farming, Detlef – hatch ’em, grow ’em, grill’em, sell ’em.’

‘It’s the way of the future,’ Fischer said. ‘You should stop by the restaurant while you’re in Darwin, Mr Murdoch, as my guest. Trust me, our seafood is truly excellent and Lothar will take good care of you.’

‘Lothar here has tried to take care of me on a number of occasions,’ I said, ‘and it always ends in tears.’

Lothar smiled uncomfortably and looked down at his feet.

Fischer put one hand on his shoulder. ‘Now that seems rather unfair, Mr Murdoch. Mr Ludovik has turned over a new leaf. He has become a vital part of our management team.’

‘Do you actually know what CEO stands for, Lothar?’ I asked.

He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times.

‘Wanna take a crack at spelling it? No? Thought not.’

I looked at Fischer and shook my head. ‘Good luck with your plans for world restaurant domination.’

We all left by the same exit, heading towards the car park. I found my dinky Corolla rental and spotted Lothar stuffing Fischer’s gear into a bright red fully restored two-door 1970s Alfa Romeo Montreal. Bastard.

I’d just turned the key in the ignition when everything went red and a heavy throbbing filled my ears. The shiny red Alfa was parked right across the front of my car.

Fischer wound down his window. ‘Why don’t you let me drive you into town, Mr Murdoch. Lothar can drop the rental at your hotel.’

‘Why the hell not?’ I said. Alfa had built less than four thousand of these babies so the offer of a ride in one was too good to pass up. Plus, the trip would give me a chance to find out exactly how much Detlef knew about his new fishy friends, and with any luck discover the location of the fish farm. The Northern Territory is twice the size of Texas and I didn’t have time to go wandering around with a fishing rod and a bucket of bait, hoping to stumble over a pond full of feral fish.

The Montreal’s interior was leather, the steering wheel was on the wrong side and Fischer laughed when I reached over my right shoulder for the seatbelt.

‘No seatbelts in this baby, Mr Murdoch. No airbags, no pissy unleaded petrol. Just a race-tuned 2.6-litre V8. Cost me sixty grand to get her back into this condition. I’ve always kept her in Darwin because we had no highway speed limits, until recently. Stupid bastards.’

The ‘stupid bastards’ were the politicians who had decided to scrap the progressive ‘go as fast as you like, get as drunk as you like and kill yourselves in record numbers’ policy so precious to freedom-loving Territorians. Now they were limited to 130 kph on four major highways and 110 kph on the rest of the open roads. All they had to do now was persuade the locals that a red traffic light actually meant STOP and democracy was all done and dusted up north.

The Montreal’s engine started with a low rumble I could feel right down to my socks. Fischer hit the gas and I got that classic V8 rear wheel-drive kick in the pants as we surged forward.

‘Nice,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ve done okay for a boy who started off peeling potatoes in his old man’s chip shop at fifteen.’

Now that wasn’t what I’d read in the dossier Jimmy Yip had given me in Hong Kong. Rather than this heart-warming rags to riches tale, it’d been more a riches to riches story. One of those ‘I started with nothing but a measly twenty million dollar inheritance and with hard work managed to turn it into some serious money’.

For a German, Fischer drove like an Italian. He kept his seat way back, arms outstretched, hands never straying far from the lower half of the steering wheel.

The Montreal’s interior was cutting edge in the seventies but it now looked kind of quaint. Still oozed classic Italian design, though. There was a parcel shelf in front of me, and because I’m the inquisitive type I leaned forward and popped open the concealed glove compartment beneath it. A quick glance told me that Fischer might drive Italian, but held true to his German ancestry in the optional extras department. The pistol was a Walther P22 semi-automatic. Ten rounds of .22 ammo in a compact package.

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘just like a real gun, only smaller.’

Fischer leaned across and closed the glove compartment. ‘I’ve got a licence. Just keep it for a bit of target practice when I get bored and to wave at dickheads who annoy me.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ I said.

Lead is lead and ten rounds of dinky .22 long-rifle ammo at close range will put a serious crimp in your life expectancy – just ask any Mafia hit man.

‘So what made you decide to expand from importing and wholesaling into the fish-farming business?’ I asked.

‘The whole thing was Playford’s idea. He was willing to take a back seat and bankroll it and give me all the glory, so I thought why not? Jezebel seemed to think it was a great idea – I met her through Peng – and he reckoned the product couldn’t miss if we used her profile for marketing.’

‘Peng got you and Jezebel involved?’

He nodded. ‘Playford dragged me along to a charity dinner in Melbourne a while back and introduced us. We got on like a house on fire.’

Fuelled no doubt by the warm glow of a fifty-grand charitable donation and that romantic dinner for two in her penthouse apartment.

‘That was good of him,’ I said.

‘He was just returning a favour. He owes me big-time.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Playford and I went to school together at Fairbrothers.’

‘I heard.’

‘Playford looked up to me at school, still does. I was his protector.’

‘Protecting him from what?’

‘There are a lot of racist people at a place like Fairbrothers, and a porky little Chink can have a hard time even if his old man is richer than God. Old Peng used to send me money from Honkers. He wanted me to hang out with Playford, make sure he wasn’t lonely. Not much of a socialiser our Playford, even back then. You know I tried to get the bastard his first root when he turned fifteen, but I’m pretty sure he’s a bit light on in the tackle department. Never cracked it with any of the chicks I lined up for him. And let me tell you, I had to call in quite a few favours. Playford’s no prize, even with all that money.’

‘And people say romance is dead.’

‘Jezebel was right – you really are a cynical bastard, Murdoch.’

I actually preferred to think of myself as post-cynical but in a hard, cruel world full of nasty pricks it wasn’t all that easy.

‘So how’s your fish-farming caper working out so far? I wouldn’t mind taking a look at your facilities. Maybe do a WorldPix photo story on the project. We could syndicate it worldwide – great publicity.’

Fischer shook his head. ‘Sorry, strictly off limits I’m afraid. Quarantine regulations and all that crap. Playford insists on keeping the location secret until we are sure the first batch has fully acclimatised. We don’t want anything leaking out until we’re ready to hit the market.’

‘No problems so far?’

‘Nothing to speak of. We had a few initial glitches, but everything seems fine now. Playford flew some of his people in to keep things under control. The trick apparently is a regular feeding schedule. These babies can get a bit boisterous, shall we say, around mealtimes. Funny thing is, I always thought sterilising animals tended to make them a bit less rambunctious.’

It was starting to look like Fischer was totally clueless about the whole operation.

‘Have any problems with them turning on each other?’ I asked. ‘I’ve heard that can happen when vicious predators hang out together.’

Fischer smiled. ‘If you are referring to my partnership with Playford, I shouldn’t worry too much. Porky little bastard knows exactly how much I did for him at school and, as I said, he looks up to me, sort of like an older brother.’

I guessed the staff at Fairbrothers paid as much attention to teaching their students about irony as they did ethics. And I wondered if Fischer knew what had happened to Playford’s last older brother.

Bluey’s Backyard BBQ was inside one of those massive warehouse structures that usually house hardware stores retailing every tool known to man, or evangelical mega-churches selling DIY stairways to heaven and touting access to divine intervention for the physically ailing or the temporarily cash-strapped: ‘All Prayers Now 20% Off – This Sunday Only!’

A seventeen-year-old in Dunlop Volley tennis shoes, very short shorts and a tiny bikini top greeted me at the entrance. She was holding a couple of large laminated menus.

‘G’day, mate,’ she said. ‘Bloody great you could make it to Bluey’s, where the steaks are awesome, the fish are jumping fresh and the beers are on ice.’

She said it with the unhappy awkwardness common to Aussies forced to act like perky Yanks by a corporate management structure aping some American ideal of a restaurant formula for success. It was almost like being arrested in the US. I expected her to follow up the greeting with, ‘You do not have to order anything but anything you do order will be deep-fried to within an inch of its life. If you cannot afford to order anything we have a poor person’s special on page seven – also deep-fried and served with extra grease.’

‘I’ve got an appointment with Lothar,’ I said, ‘and believe me …’ I bent down to look at her name tag, which put my eyes directly in line with her boobs, ‘… Kylie, I think I’m just as embarrassed to be here as you are.’

Kylie walked over to a podium and spoke into a microphone. ‘Lothar to the front gate, please,’ boomed out from loudspeakers and echoed around the vast hall. ‘Youse have a visitor.’

A joint like Bluey’s wasn’t high up on my desired culinary experiences list, and there were a hell of a lot better spots to dine in Darwin, but Lothar had a couple of things I needed. The first was as much information as I could dig out of him on the location and current state of the barrana project. The second was a little bit of protection for when I went sniffing around said project.

While I waited for Lothar, the full horror of the enterprise became apparent as I looked around the place. Scattered throughout the hall were intersecting sections of your classic Aussie timber-paling backyard fence. At the point where the fences met was a Hills hoist hung with T-shirts, shorts and baseball caps emblazoned with the Bluey’s logo, the items being for sale to the restaurant’s happy diners. Each of the intersecting fences created four separate dining areas, which were furnished with green plastic grass, an aluminium combo picnic table and seat set, and a gigantic stainless-steel barbecue with gas bottle attached.

The place was packed, even this early in the evening. Above me I could hear the rumble of a ventilation system working overtime to clear the air of smoke and the smell of overcooked beef. The sound system was fighting back with a weird audio mix of didgeridoos, kookaburras, two-stroke lawnmowers and leaf blowers. If you threw in a wading pool full of screaming sunburned kids, a drunken brawl, someone chucking in the oleanders and a boofy bloke having a quick knee-trembler behind the back shed with his best mate’s wife, this could all start to look terrifyingly real.

I watched as a young Japanese couple were led to a nearby dining area by Kylie and seated at one of the uncomfortable picnic tables. They had a brief discussion and then pointed to an item on the menu. Kylie keyed something into a small PDA and walked away. Moments later, a pimply teenage boy in board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt walked up pushing an old Victa motor mower. The mower had a steel rack welded to the top and the rack held two eskies. The boy put one esky near the barbecue and set the other one down by the table.

He took two cans of Fourex from the esky by the table and plonked them in front of the guests. The beer was followed by several plastic bowls covered with cling wrap – salads, no doubt. The boy then walked back to the barbecue and fired her up. The second esky contained two giant steaks and half a lobster that he held up to show to the young couple. The Japanese girl clapped her hands excitedly. The waiter tossed the steaks and seafood onto the barely warm grill plate with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for his task.

‘All set for dinner, Mr Murdoch?’

I turned around. Lothar was wearing board shorts and the same Hawaiian shirt as the waiters, evidently the corporate uniform. On the young waiters it just looked daggy. On Lothar, the ensemble went places you didn’t want to think about, but the word paedophile came to mind.