Theft (8 page)

"Yes, I understand that, Michael. Five years ago, you might have got thirty-five thousand dollars for this."

"No."

"There's no point in lying, Michael. I know what you used to sell for. The thing is now, you're in free fall. Isn't that so?"

I shrugged.

"I'll give you five," he said suddenly.

"Oh, Jesus," said Ewbank, and walked over to inspect the concrete pigsties, whacking at them with a length of irrigation pipe. "Jesus," he cried, "Joseph and Mary."

"No tax," said Amberstreet and I saw his eyes all glistening. "All cash." Ewbank, meanwhile, was pissing himself with laughter, shoving heaps of black shag into his fat pipe. His younger colleague's face, by contrast, was creased like tissue paper protecting the bright stones of his eyes.

I won't say I wasn't seriously tempted.

Ewbank had wandered back, puffing on his pipe. He had an extraordinary way of doing this, making his big black eyebrows shoot up every time he took a puff, the result being that he looked to be in a state of active astonishment.

"I couldn't give it all at once. I'd pay you over a year."

If it had been a lump sum, I might have said yes, but it was not enough to save me so I turned him down. Even now I don't know if what happened next was connected to my refusal, but I don't think so. It was more as if we'd had a little pleasant break and now we must return to work.

Amberstreet frowned and nodded. "I understand," he said. He then turned to his partner: "You got the tape, Raymond?"

Ewbank withdrew from his pocket a dirty-looking handkerchief and then a very snazzy little tape measure of a type I had never seen before, as if he might be a surgeon with instruments designed in Tokyo for a task so specialised it had no English name. My balls tightened at the sight of it.

"Measure the addition," Amberstreet said, an ugly word for the rectangle which bore the single word "GOD" with all its gooseturd grey and phthalo green smudged and shifted in the battle with the resistant "O".

I watched Ewbank measure it, like you watch your own car crash happen. "Thirty by twenty and one-half inches," he announced.

Amberstreet gave me a cherubic little smirk.

"Oh, Michael!" he said to me, taking in his belt one more notch. I suddenly understood he was a scary little shit.

"What?"

"Thirty by twenty and a half," he said. "Oh, Michael!" "What?"

"Not familiar?" "No."

"The same dimensions as Mr. Boylan's Leibovitz." I thought, What is this? Kabala? Numerology?

"Michael, I thought you were a clever man. We know the exact dimensions. They're in the catalogue raisonne."

"What would it matter if it was the same dimensions?"

"It would matter," said Amberstreet, "because as you know Mr. Boylan's home was burgled and a work by Jacques Leibovitz was stolen." "Bullshit. When?"

Hearing this Ewbank gave a mighty big suck in of his pipe so his eyebrows disappeared into his hair.

"Oh." Amberstreet smiled incredulously "You didn't know!" "Don't be so bloody sarcastic. How could I know?"

"Like you know John Lennon's dead," said Ewbank.

"You could try any newspaper," suggested Amberstreet. "You could turn on the radio."

"John Lennon's not dead you dick."

"Don't change the subject, Michael. We're here to investigate a burglary."

It was only then, as we stood staring down at my painting, that I realised something very serious was going on.

"Someone pinched his Leibovitz?"

"Three weeks ago, Michael. You are the only one who knew it was there."

"He never showed it to me. Ask him," I said, but I was seeing the hateful look on Dozy's face as he passed me in the fog.

"But you knew he had it. You knew he was going away, down to Sydney for the night."

"He's always going down to Sydney. You really think I'm stupid enough to glue a two-million-dollar painting to my canvas and then cover it with paint? Is that your point? It's very easy to see you're not a bloody artist."

"We're not saying you've got it under there. We're saying we need to remove the work for X-raying and IR spectography."

"You bugger. You just want to nick my fucking canvas." "Calm down, pal," said Ewbank. "You'll get a proper receipt. You can write the description yourself."

"When would I get it back?"

The older man's eyebrows shot up alarmingly. "That would depend," said Amberstreet.

"On what?"

"If we have to keep it for the trial."

I really did not know what was going on. A certain part of me thought the fucks were robbing me. Another part of me was thinking I was in very serious shit. I don't know which was the better or the worse, and in the end, after I had spent three hours making a crate, a time they used to photograph my pry bar and my other tools, and after I had personally helped them load it in their wagon, they showed me the huge press file on the Leibovitz theft. I read the front-page headlines by the light of their headlights, still clueless about John Lennon, but relieved to understand that I, at least, was not being robbed.

10

Of course the pipsqueak Michael Boone was ignorant of anything that did not personally benefit him, and on the subject of the wombat he incorrectly used the expression MUDDLEHEADED which might be the title of a book but is wrong because the wombat is a clever fellow who can, God bless him, do a barrel-roll-with- twist inside his tunnel, scratch his ears, flatten himself like dough under a rolling pin and I knew this because I had SEEN IT WITH MY OWN EYES. Of course I never told my brother and he had no idea what plans I had made in preparation for the visit by police, although the moment I snapped Evan Guthrie's metacarpal I expected BYAR-BYAR-BYAR blue light flashing THE WRATH OF THE LAW and then I would not be able to rely on Butcher Bones to save me. Many a time he had threatened to have me put under MANAGED CARE where they would remove the tartar from my teeth.

The coppers were SLOW AS A WET WEEK and thus provided good opportunity to widen one long branch of wombat tunnel.

The first time I entered that maze was the day after I buried the puppy and I took my mattock and torch and the lid of a fourgallon drum of molasses to act as a shield, but I never had trouble with the wombats, quickly learning to make a friendly grunting noise on approach. The smallest I named FELLOW, bless him. He would sometimes sniff my hair but not on the day the police finally visited when I lay inside the entrance with my boots at the mouth, my nose pointing down into the dark, no bad smells, just earth and roots and when I had to fart I was very sorry. After I had FORTY WINKS I emerged to discover the sky black and mixed with ultramarine and the camphor laurel in silhouette and a great yellow spill of light from the shed where I saw Butcher Bones busy with a saw and trestle, cutting pine planks.

Bless me, I thought, they are making me a coffin.

The Butcher was a great one for blame, nothing better to get his eyes flicking left to right. It was his SPECIALITY DE MAISON, to always know exactly who was at fault. When the police at last departed and I revealed my presence, I was staggered that the finger was not pointed at me.

"That bitch, that fucking bitch!" he cried, and I was pleased indeed, not being a female. Soon I understood he was referring to Marlene, an admirer of The Magic Pudding. He had been so HOT FOR HER but now he explained to me she was BEHIND ALL THIS and suddenly she was pretty much a MASTER CRIMINAL. I knew from experience there was no better proof of innocence than to be blamed by Butcher Bones and this time, like every other, he would soon, with no apology, change his tune with a DO-SI-DO. In any case I was not the GUILTY PARTY and I was most relieved I would not be singing songs in my lonely cell but I was worried they would take an innocent woman in my place. What could I say? My brother's neat little girl ears were filled with wax and he roared me up for getting my new shirt dirty and then he telephoned Dozy Boylan to boast that he had solved the CASE.

Dozy replied, If you ever call me again I'll come and put a bullet in your arse.

After this the Butcher sat at the table and was quiet a long while.

Then he began to stare up at the rafters and I was concerned he had gone mad so I asked him would he like a cup of tea. No reply, but I made it anyway. Four spoons of sugar, as he liked it.

No thank-yous offered--who expected them?--but he cupped his sap-stained hands around the chipped old mug which our poor mother had once held IN THE MORNING CONSIDER THAT YOU MAY NOT LIVE TILL EVENING, poor old Mum, God bless her. The back of my neck had gone VOLCANIC and I asked him, What will we do now, Butcher? If he had raved and ranted and abused me I would have felt in SAFE HANDS but instead he gave me what is known as a WAN SMILE and it was clear all the puff had gone out of him and he left me alone then, crawling into his bed without undressing. What would I do? I was forbidden to touch the light switches or other electrical appliances so my bedroom was bright all night as if I was a battery hen and I dreamed it was summer in the Marsh, me and the pony somehow lost up on Lerderderg Street then captured by the Catholics--what a bloody nightmare. I woke next morning to hear a great howl and I rushed out in my pyjamas to see what NEW MISADVENTURE had befallen Butcher Bones. I found him still dressed as the night before, and in his hand he had the drill, its shaft dripping with his evil bloody alizarin crimson.

What is it, Butch?

Can't you see? The bastards have turned off the power.

My first thought was that this was a punishment from the STATE ELECTRICITY COMMISSION because we left the lights on all night long but after the power had been off for three weeks, and we had been carrying water from the river and digging holes to do our business in, we learned that the citizens of Bellingen had ordered disconnection as if we were hostagetakers who must be driven from our hole. On top of this came an EVICTION ORDER and a DEMOLITION NOTICE because Jean-Paul's house was built too close to the river. Of course the council had approved the building years before so it must have walked closer to the bank than previously. In any case, it was all a PACK OF LIES and after we were finally driven out, the house must have walked back to its approved position on the site.

As for Jean-Paul himself, as Butcher said, he should be condemned by Ryde Council on account of his arse being built too close to the public footpath and on our long flight back to Sydney, a full eight-hour drive, he was filled with sarcastic comments of this sort about the BOURGEOIS ART COLLECTOR but I enjoyed the drive. He took us up to Dorrigo, God bless him, and then into the high country of Armidale where the summers are dry and the paddocks were gold and the windows of the ute rolled down and the seat belts flapping--slap, slap, slap-- against the door frames. The old ute had no air-conditioning just a DUCT opened by a foot-long lever which caused the release of long-trapped dust. Lord what perfumes--honey and gum blossoms and rubber hoses. We were Boones, big men, packed in tight, arse by arse, our heads bumping the ceiling on the potholes. My brother was a tense and fearsome driver but he refused to travel at less than ninety miles an hour, below which speed the bent propeller shaft set up a terrible vibration. He drove like his father did before him, with his elbows wide, his chest pushed forward, his angry eyes glaring straight ahead. So we sped like demons hour after hour through the gold and blue as if we were SIR ARTHUR BLOODY STREETON or FREDERICK McCUBBIN both painters Butcher loved even while he sneered at them.

I farted and cried, Fire's on! If you know the Streeton painting you get the joke.

Entering the outskirts of Sydney, we were skint, the last of the fertiliser money being spent on petrol. At Epping Road we abandoned the Pacific Highway, that long familiar winding road once used by black fellows, and then tooled down to Lane Cove and East Ryde. We were both watching the petrol gauge and very quiet and thoughtful as we reentered the old familiar country of DIVORCE and PATRONAGE both of these being situated in the exact same street. God help us. Before the Gladesville Bridge we turned onto Victoria Road and then right into Monash Road and as we entered Orchard Court we were already in contravention of

a court order that neither of us were permitted to be within five miles of THE MARITAL HOME. My balls were shrivelled.

What would happen to us now? My brother made that old familiar right-hand turn, past the marital madness, and straight onto Jean-Paul's lawn. Then Butcher Bones opened the glove box and removed a hammer, bless me, what had he become?

11

Being as familiar with that cul-de-sac as with my own pyjamas, I ploughed into Jean-Paul's perfect lawn with one hundred per cent understanding, i. e. I knew I could rely on the neighbours to call my patron before I turned the engine off.

I'd already had a whole life in Orchard Court where I had been not only a celebrity, but a famous lovesick fool. It was here I brought my bride. I built a bloody tower where she could meditate--believe it!--and an amazing tree house of the type a boy might dream about but never see in waking life--three platforms, two ladders, all lodged inside the branches of a lovely old jacaranda whose gorgeous purple petals, fallen two months before, were now rotting like heartache across the slate-grey roof. I had been a different man in those days, so naive that lawyers and police could later decide my own paintings were marital assets, i. e. not my property. The canvases were there now, a whole life's work, which the court had "deemed"--as the saying is--that the plaintiff could do with as she wished.

There had been no room in the ute for anything but paint and canvas and it was not by accident that the great alizarin crimson masterpiece was sitting on the top of the load. I removed the tonneau cover and attacked its crate with the claw hammer, and as the stainless-steel screws screeched like murder victims, I could already hear the telephone screaming in Jean-Paul's pool house.

I used Hugh's earlobe to persuade him from the ute and he took several swings at me before the penny dropped--restraining order or no, it was in his interests to roll out this canvas across our patron's lawn.