The Brush-Off

PRAISE FOR
THE BRUSH-OFF
WINNER OF THE NED KELLY PRIZE FOR CRIME FICTION

‘Murray Whelan, hero of
Stiff
, is back. Maloney is top shelf.'
Australian

‘Maloney is a literary writer who some will feel is wasting his time in the detective business. He takes characters that are stereotypes (the public servant, the minister, the arty type) and depicts them with subtlety and originality and compassionate humour. He also writes a ripping yarn.'
Eureka Street

‘Maloney…is one of the few authors to successfully integrate humour, political satire and social observation into the Australian crime novel. His first novel,
Stiff
, was good but
The Brush-Off
is even better…Highly recommended.'
Canberra Times

‘The funniest meanstreets-style writing on offer these days…Don't miss this one.'
Sunday Age

‘Entertaining…smart and sassy.'
Adelaide Advertiser

‘The Brush-Off
brilliantly mixes the comic and the tragic: this amusing thriller has you laughing at the moments where a gasp may be more appropriate.'
Rolling Stone

‘Fresh and funny.'
Times-Picayune
(New Orleans)

‘The Brush-Off
is a beaut of a book, and Shane Maloney a name to remember.' John Leslie

‘With its deft combination of mystery and humor, [
The Brush-Off
] most resembles something Donald E. Westlake might have written. But that doesn't mean it's derivative:
Maloney is a fresh talent.'
Booklist

‘Maloney has a quirky eye for descriptive details that lend frequent humor to a fascinating and adventurous plot. Highly recommended.'
Library Journal

‘Murray's tongue-in-cheek narrative and the author's delight in satirizing the down-under art scene keep us fully engaged.'
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle

PRAISE FOR SHANE MALONEY AND MURRAY WHELAN

‘Murray is a great creation, one that takes the wisecracking wise guy into a whole new realm.'
Houston Chronicle

‘Maloney is a born writer…For the first time, in the vicinity of Australian crime-writing, we hear the true national voice of comic futility, a literary voice which is rich, ridiculous and tawdry, which can set itself up with a soaring rhetoric and slide on the banana skin of its own piss-elegance…Maloney is terrific.'
Age

‘Maloney pokes fun at almost everything, revelling in words that showcase ludicrous events and behaviour.'
Library Journal

‘One of the genre's most gifted writers.'
Who Weekly

‘To the list that contains Charles Willeford's Florida Keys, Jim Thompson's West Texas, Pete Dexter's Philadelphia, James Crumley's Montana and Carl Hiaasen's Miami, you can add Shane Maloney's Melbourne. Maloney has created a fictional city that contains the best of the real and the not quite real.'
Herald Sun

‘We want more from Maloney.'
Courier Mail

THE BRUSH-OFF

Shane Maloney's novels
include
Stiff
,
Nice Try
,
The Big Ask
and
Something Fishy
.

SHANE

MALONEY

the brush-off

A MURRAY WHELAN THRILLER

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
www.textpublishing.com.au

Copyright © Shane Maloney 1996

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published 1996, reprinted 1996, 1998 (twice), 1999, 2000 (twice)
Reprinted 2001 in a compendium edition,
The Murray Whelan Trilogy
This edition published 2003, 2006

Printed and bound by Griffin Press
Designed by Chong Weng-ho
Typeset in 12.5/16.5 Baskerville MT by Midland Typesetters

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Maloney, Shane.
The brush-off.

ISBN 1 877008 50 8.

1. Whelan, Murray (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2. Political consultants – Australia – Fiction. 3. Artists – Australia – Fiction. 4. Australia – Fiction. I. Title.
A823.3

All the characters in this novel are fictional. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is unintentional.

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of Arts Victoria in the writing of this book.

This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

The lines quoted from ‘Rocky Racoon' by Lennon/McCartney are copyright © 1968 Northern Songs under licence to MCA Music Limited for Australia and New Zealand, Music Sales Pty Ltd.

The lines quoted from ‘El Paso', words and music by Marty Robbins © copyright Acuff Rose. Administered in Australia and New Zealand by Music Sales Pty Ltd.

For Wally and May,
for their forbearance
and their grandparents

‘I can't think of a single Russian novel in which one
of the characters goes into a picture gallery.'
W. S
OMERSET
M
AUGHAM

The two cops were virtually invisible. Only the bobbing white domes of their helmets, floating like ghostly globes through the thick summer night, and the muted clip-clop of their horses gave warning of their approach. She hadn't mentioned the mounted patrol when we came over the fence.

‘Look out,' I whispered. ‘Here comes the cavalry.'

‘Ssshhh.' Salina clapped her hand over my mouth, trembling with the effort of stifling her own laughter. ‘Get down.'

I got down. On my knees in the leaf litter, nuzzling the pom-pom fringe of her mu-mu. It was the mu-mu that first drew my eye to Salina Fleet. The mu-mu with its palm-tree motif. Then the apricot lipstick. And the terry-towel beach bag with hula-hoop handles. So playful among all those business shirts and bow ties. ‘Rode one when I was ten,' I mumbled.

The pub was closed, the crowd from the art exhibition dispersed. And there we were, in possession of two stolen wine glasses and a filched bottle of chardonnay, hidden in a thicket of shrubbery inside the locked gates of the Botanic Gardens. This, I already suspected, was a decision I might come to regret. For now, however, I was game for anything. Ten or twelve drinks and I'm anyone's.

‘Rode a what?' Sal whispered.

‘Rhododendron,' I repeated. ‘
Rhododendron oreotrophes
.' It was written on a little plaque hammered into the ground beside my foot. I said it out loud, just to see if I could.

‘Ssshhhh!' Again her hand closed over my face. ‘You'll get us arrested, Murray.' Beneath the press of her palm, I opened my mouth. My tongue tasted her skin. The horses passed, so close we could have reached out and stroked their flanks. I stroked Salina's instead.

‘Quick.' She grabbed my hand and dashed across the path, a wood sprite disappearing into a tunnel of undergrowth where the overhanging branches were too low for any horse to follow. Her legs flashed white, darting ahead.

Playing hide and seek in the Botanic Gardens was not where I'd imagined our acquaintance might lead when Salina and I were introduced at the Ministry for the Arts earlier that evening. I was the new minister's political adviser. She was the visual arts editor of
Veneer
magazine. The two of us should probably have been discussing post-modernist aesthetic theory and its impact on social policy. I fixed my eyes on her bare legs, took a deep breath and plunged into the darkness.

‘You like it?' Sal whirled, showing her secret place. A fern gully. Dark, moist, prehistoric. Round and round she spun, noiseless, abandoned, crazy, even drunker than me. She grabbed my hand again and took off, leading me on at breakneck speed. The path forked and twisted, becoming a maze. She let go, disappeared. The night was tropical, full of sounds, water running, the hypnotic thrum of a million cicadas, bird calls, a high-pitched squeaking like a gate swinging on its hinges in a breeze. I plunged on, running headlong downhill, the momentum irresistible.

A grove of bamboo reared up, the canes as thick as my arm, a kung fu forest. She lay there on a bed of leaves, waiting. I threw myself on my back beside her, and she rolled onto me, straddling my thighs. She could scarcely have been unaware of the effect this produced. ‘
Pinus radiata
,' I said. ‘
Grevillea robusta
.'

We did not kiss. It would have seemed soppy. My hands glided up her ribs, thumbs extended to trace her anatomy through the fabric of her dress. Belly, sternum, ribs. Nipples as hard as Chinese algebra. Her neck arched, her mouth hung open. Dirty dancing in deep dark dingly dell. Above, high above, the sky was a pale blur, immeasurably distant, framed by branches festooned with hundreds of brown paper bags that rustled gently in the still night air.

My shirt was open. Her dress was runched up around her waist. Fingers tugged at my belt—hers or mine I couldn't tell, didn't care. ‘Where is it?' she gasped. ‘Where is it?'

‘In your hand. It's in your hand.'

‘Not that, stupid. A condom.'

If she didn't stop doing what she was doing with her hand, I wouldn't need a condom. I didn't have one. What sort of boy did she think I was?

Warm liquid trickled out of the sky and splashed the ground beside us. Rainforest soma, warm and dank. Salina arched her neck again, staring up to where the paper bags shifted and shuffled, fluttering from branch to branch, chattering among themselves, a hundred squeaky gates.

‘Bats!' she shrieked.

Hundreds of them. Fruit bats, flying foxes, roosting high in the tops of spindly Moreton Bay figs. She leaped to her feet and we ran, she convulsed with the giggles, me stuffing myself back in my pants.

We exploded out of the fern forest into a circle of lawn. The night sky, drenched with humidity, shone like a sudden spotlight after the jungle depths. We rolled together on the grass, kissing now, all the imminence of the previous moment gone, the compact implicit, a slow build-up ahead of us. Sweet, sweet, sweet. I came up for air. ‘You think any of these are rubber trees?'