`Not fussed,' Davey said. `Where?'
`The Ritz.'
`City swelters in summer scorcher!' Col scoffed. He turned the page of the newspaper.
This city wouldn't know its hot from its hot cross buns, he said to himself. A couple of Februarys in Kalgoorlie would teach Victorians a thing or two about `sweltering'. You didn't hear West Australians whinging about heatwaves until the mercury got above forty for at least five days in a row. Melbourne was cool by comparison. In more ways than one.
He poured another coffee from the stainless steel cafetière.
Col Jones was dog-tired and antsy. The strain of the past week was making its presence felt in every sinew of his hulking frame.
The view from his apartment on the seventeenth floor was dominated by the kindergarten colours and jungle-gym architecture of Docklands Stadium, against a mutating backdrop of the Western face of the old city. He longed to kick off his shoes and stretch out on the king-size bed, but Col was expecting an important call.
Yeah, Melbourne was cool, he repeated to himself. Cold, more like it. A city with tickets on itself. An attitude dating back to settlement and a squattocracy they had the nerve to boast about. Not in the circles Col moved in, of course, where money was the only cachet. Those other wankers could be as elitist and up themselves as they liked, with their opera and their ballet and their dreary old buildings. In Col's book, power and the buck got off at the same tram stop.
Despite all of that, though, he enjoyed his visits east. Even this one had started out well. Until the shit had hit the fan.
Every time the driver dropped him off at Waterfront City, Col congratulated himself on his happy knack of being able to see into the real estate future with a gimlet eye. His strike rate was awesome, even if he did say so himself.
Twenty-five years ago, when East Perth was still a slum, who was it that had the nous to tilt up snazzy-looking apartment blocks in streets infamous hitherto only for their vast array of knocking shops?
`No-one will want to live there!' his wife, June, had lisped in protest. `You're not squandering Daddy's money on such a silly idea!'
He could talk her round in those days. She'd do anything for a soft word and a sweet caress, and Col knew it. He only had to tell her how beautiful she was, when it was as plain as the hooked nose on her pock-marked face that, to the world at large, she was the lantern-jawed, buck-toothed opposite.
Young Colin Jones was a charmer back then, lean and mean, with a twinkle in his blue eyes that could charm the knickers off a nun. Fresh out of tech, with his engineering degree tucked under one muscly arm, Col had been an instant hit with `Daddy' from the moment he showed up at Klondike Constructions Pty Ltd. Within five short years he'd blitzed his way up the ladder to senior management. Within six, the lad from Kellerberrin was already on speaking terms with his future wife's nipples. The first to show any interest in anything below her eyebrows, Col wasted no time staking a legal claim. It was the first and only time he sensed that her old man had caught a vague whiff of rodent.
Newlywed Col was managing director when, unseasonably early, the old man kicked the bucket and June inherited the pile. Within a year, and with more cajoling than even he imagined himself capable of, his adoring wife relinquished complete control of the purse strings and left him free, at last, to dispense with lip service to the old man and activate his self-serving, rapacious, architectural vision for the city of Perth without a backward glance towards heritage or taste. He never let her down, he told himself, and he never ripped her off. On the contrary. With an almost unseemly haste he fathered four children so exquisite he sometimes wondered if they had been swapped at the hospital. And if the nappy bucket wasn't enough to keep her busy, Mr and Mrs Jones were patrons of the arts, community leaders, host and hostess of myriad, sparkling, charity causes.
By the late eighties Col Jones had pumped Klondike up to a point where its sale price was worth letting go. He moved on to bigger projects: supermarkets, shopping centres, sporting arenas — both nationally and internationally.
He was, in every sense of the word, a magnate. And a chick-magnet, to boot.
And didn't they flock and flutter? Pretty young things on the make flapped their gauzy wings against his ruddy cheeks, and still he kept up his end of the marital bargain.
He and June hadn't had sex since the America's Cup gentrified Fremantle, and hadn't shared a bedroom since Keating bounced Hawke. Later, when all the kids had grown up and flown the coop, his wife might turn around and ask "What happened? Where'd everybody go?" But not now. Not when it mattered. Not when Col had found Inga.
Inga the adorable, Inga the delicious, Inga the woman of his wildest dreams who did things for and to him he'd never even had the imagination to fantasize about. Inga's long, long legs and flawless skin. Inga's enormous, cushiony breasts. Her arse? He could write a book about the curve, the declivity between the cheeks. He pictured it arching towards him, begging for possession. Where was she now, his Inga, at nine thirty on a Saturday night? They usually dined at eight.
A billboard proclaiming `This Is The Show' had stood proudly over the doorway of the original Ritz Hotel in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, during the sixties and seventies. The gaudy, hot-pink acronym T-I-T-S rhymed with the hotel's name and distinguished the venue from any of its distant haughty relations in London or New York.
There was no billboard above the door to the Ritz Hotel in Windsor. The old strip joint in St Kilda was as classy as the original Windsor Castle compared to this joint, thought Davey, as they parked outside the dimly lit corner pub.
Two massive Islanders bursting out of single-breasted suits, hands folded over their dicks or fiddling with their ear piece wires, studiously looked the other way when he and Archie approached. They could scent pig a mile off.
A Lynx and Air-O-Zone charged atmosphere enveloped the two policemen as they entered and squelched their way across the sticky carpet to the bar. Davey was so hungry he could have eaten the crutch out of a low-flying duck. There were bowls of complimentary beer nuts on offer, but he knew better than to touch them without the reassurance of a recent tetanus shot. They ordered two Parma and Pot specials then parked themselves in a booth at the back of the room, in order to clock the trade.
Saturday night. Rush hour. Punters came and went. Some hung around the bar, getting off on the vibe or ogling the merchandise. Others made the deal and walked out with the goods.
Warm welcomes turned to frost when Davey, on Archie's insistence, approached the bar and started flashing Inga's photo around. Like so many clams at a clambake the women wouldn't even articulate the words `nup' or `dunno'. It was as if he had just announced he had bird flu as, one by one, they recoiled from his presence.
All except one.
She looked about eighteen, Davey thought, and in need of a good meal. Her thick white hair was short and spiky with a long fringe. Heavy black eye make up, cerise lips and a tongue stud. Her black fingernails were square-cut and featured tiny white skulls. Davey noticed these last details because her hands were shaking as they held Inga's photograph.
`Her—' she began, but she was cut off by the arrival of another woman who pushed between them.
`Ga-ree!' she yelled at the barman. `Voddie!'
The woman looked down at the photo and up at Davey and asked, `You after a redhead, love? Is Pixie in tonight Ree?'
The skinny blonde dropped the photo back on the bar.
`Haven't seen her,' she said.
`The woman in the photo?' Davey asked.
`No, lover, she means Pixie,' rasped the new arrival, speaking slowly as if to a child.
`You ever seen this woman before?' Davey asked her, proffering the photo.
`Ohhh,' she replied wearily, batting heavy lashes at him, not looking at the photo. `It's like that, is it?'
She shook her head and reached for