“Joseph, what a surprise.”
I turned around and we shook hands.
“Is everything all right? I owe you a couple of phone calls. I’m sorry, it’s been one of those weeks.”
He was dressed, without a tie, in a still-crisp white business shirt and in the pleated trousers of his suit. He led me to his study, all wood panels, leather chairs, plaques of his achievements and donations, telecommunications equipment in neat formations on the mahogany desk, and on the wall another painting depicting the dismemberment of a large furry mammal somewhere in Europe. He pushed a panel in the wall to reveal a well-stocked mirrored bar. As he poured us both a drink, I looked at him and tried to calm myself. We mostly spoke over the phone. His hair had more silver-gray in it than I remembered but it was, as usual, perfectly shaped above his collar at the back of his neck, and around his ears. He looked as though he never sweated, never shouted, and had never met anyone resembling my mother or father. Even the lowliest of his employees would have had greater continuity of income, would have experienced greater certainty in their day-to-day lives, than my parents. His father had been on the board of banks with branches my father had held up, unsuccessfully.
These were not helpful thoughts to have at a time like this. I was about to make my pitch for the Health National issue, and thoughts about my origins and about the precariousness of my standing both in the firm and in that room, those sorts of thoughts, are audible in a man’s voice. I had to think of the money, the commission, the houses, the cars. Thinking of the money had always worked for me before. What did that guy say? “Picture success.” I bought the book but didn’t read it. It was something Anna had said. But the title works. I’ll give him that much. Nothing Anna can say about that. I was trying to think of the money when Donald Sheere turned around with a drink in each hand, one for each of us. I tried to meet him halfway but somehow our hands missed. One of us was a little uncoordinated.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, but when you hear me out I think you’d agree that it’s pretty important.”
“That wasn’t your son, was it, Joe?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That is awful. Is he all right?” “Yes, he’s fine, thanks.”
“And . . . er . . . your wife—Hannah, is it?”
“Anna. She’s fine.”
“That must have been terrible for you. The paper said they’ve caught the guy?”
“Yes. This isn’t—”
“Terrible business.”
“Yes, but that’s not why I had to see you.”
“No?” He seemed to stiffen.
“No, I need to talk to you about an investment opportunity that is potentially a huge winner.”
“ ‘Potentially?’ ”
“I think it’s excellent. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have been stalking you like this.”
He laughed, just a little, but he laughed. Here was the crack in the door, and through it I could see the money. When he asked me what all this was about, I cleared my mouth with my ration of his single malt and I started to sell the concept of managed care and what Sid Graeme’s Health National was going to do with it. I was off and running. This is what I did. This is what had gotten me to where I was. It had gotten me into the man’s study for a private audience after hours, and with a show of confidence, careful breathing, eyes on the prize, and the sweet love of Jesus, there was no telling where it would get me.
Managed care, I began, refers to a health-care system that is based on a commercial contractual relationship between the health-care insurers and the health-care providers, the private hospitals and doctors. I explained its commercial attractiveness—how, by allowing control of available services, it reduces costs sufficiently to transform the provision of health care into a profitable industry. He was still listening. I continued.
The attraction for the patients is that the insurer pays all the bills directly to the health-care providers. It replaces the traditional fee-for-service system in which the doctors and private hospitals bill the patient directly and then the patient seeks to recover some or all the costs from the insurer.
When I felt that he had understood managed care, at least as well as I did, I turned to Sid Graeme’s Health National and his confidential intelligence concerning the government’s proposed managed-care legislation. The government wanted to introduce legislation to make managed care legal in private hospitals. The opposition, ideologically opposed to managed care, was expected to block the legislation in the Senate. But Sid Graeme had a reliable contact in the opposition who told him, in confidence, that despite party policy, there was actually majority support in the opposition party room for the proposed legislation. Knowing this before anyone else in the industry, Sid Graeme wanted Health National to acquire as many private hospitals as possible. Private hospitals had been struggling up till now but the introduction of managed care would make them hugely profitable.
“How does he want to fund his acquisition of private hospitals?” he asked.
“Through a share issue by Health National.”
“And Graeme wants me to subscribe, and quickly, before the news gets out that the opposition is going to pass the legislation and the price of private hospitals shoots up, right?”
“Exactly.”
Sheere refilled both our glasses before speaking. He was clearly thinking about it. He had gotten it in one. He hadn’t thrown me out. Even if he said no, I hadn’t made a fool of myself. I suddenly realized how utterly exhausted I felt. The bulk of the pitch was over, but this was the dangerous part. This was the time in a sale when you desperately want to relax. I could have fallen asleep. But he was going to ask me questions, the answers to which would determine whether or not he was in. I had to be word perfect with the answers. Donald Sheere wasn’t some radio caller who had really wanted gardening advice but had missed the gardening segment and so had popped a question to the local investment guru.
“So managed care is really a scheme which takes the ultimate control of patients’ health care from the patients and doctors and puts it into the hands of their health-care insurers?”
I wasn’t too sure that was the best way of putting it. “Well, ultimately, I guess you could say that.”
He sipped his drink before speaking, and I sipped mine.
“What’s the profit margin of the hospitals Sid Graeme already owns?”
“Well, he owns two of them. One has a margin of five percent and the other nine.” Mitch had told me this, and I’d remembered it because sometimes I am really good at my job. People are always relieved when you can quote figures. Even bad figures can help them to trust you.
“Five and nine!” Sheere continued. “No wonder they’re struggling.”
“No private hospitals do much better than that at the moment. Most of them do worse.”
“Yes, I read about that one in the Latrobe Valley.”
“But that’s why they’d go for a song.”
“Yes, that makes sense.”
“But when managed care comes in, he’ll triple nine percent.”
Sheere thought for a moment before speaking. “I suppose he wants an answer as soon as possible.”
“That’s right.”
“Who’s his contact, Joe?”
“In the opposition?”
“Yes. I’d need to be very sure about this if I’m to move quickly.”
“Would you want to meet him?”
“I think that would be best, don’t you?”
“No question. That’s wise.”
“Who is it?”
I didn’t know who it was. Mitch hadn’t told me that. I didn’t know if he knew. Sid Graeme hadn’t deigned to tell me, and I had not thought to ask. Would this sink everything? Put a spin on the truth. “Sid hasn’t told me, but he said he’d tell you if you’re interested in going into this.”
“He said that, did he?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t.
“He might be a
cowboy, but he’s smart. I’ll give him that.”
Thank you, Donald. I wanted to sleep more than anything in the world. I would have given all his money to be able to lie down with my feet under the bleeding seventeenth-century European mammal and my head under his desk.
“Tell Graeme I want a meeting with his contact as soon as possible.”
“Sure.”
“Gorman is happy to underwrite this?”
“Yep. Absolutely,” I told him. The words came out of me like projectile vomit. It was not a matter of thinking about it. We both heard me say it at the same time. He had thought to ask me the question, but no thought went into the answer. I had no idea how Gorman felt about this. We had not spoken about it. Nor had Mitch spoken about Gorman since Mitch had first broached the Sid Graeme matter with me. Had I just lied to Donald Sheere? I didn’t know yet.
“What proportion of the private-hospital market does Graeme anticipate he can own?”
“Between fifty and sixty percent.” Thank Mitch again.
“Joe, if Graeme’s contact is reliable and Gorman is willing to underwrite it, you can tell Sid Graeme I’m in.”
I was getting there. I was almost there. It was contingent on two things, both of which I had, more or less, lied about. First, Gorman and the firm’s risk committee had to agree to underwrite the share issue. Second, Sid Graeme had to agree to divulge to Sheere the identity of his contact, who then had to agree to a meeting with Sheere as soon as possible.
My cell phone rang again. This time I turned it off without first checking the identity of the caller. I was not yet out of the door and I wasn’t taking any calls. Donald Sheere was thanking me for bringing the matter to his attention and apologizing for not having gotten back to me sooner. In addition to my exhaustion I had started to experience terrible pains in my lower abdomen. I could hear this inner turmoil and was certain that Sheere could as well. Worse than this, I was worried I was going to lose control. It occurred to me to ask him where the toilet was, but that seemed a bit crass. As I struggled to remain continent and coherent, I jettisoned completely the idea of unburdening myself in Donald Sheere’s home. The way I was feeling, even a fleeting moment alone on one of his thrones was bound to linger longer in his consciousness than my mini-tutorial on managed care. And who was to say it would be fleeting? But the contractions were becoming more frequent. I had to get out of there.
“Oh, Joe, I’m so sorry about your dinner party.”
“No, that’s fine.”
“Have your girl call my office and we’ll reschedule. I’m afraid I hadn’t expected to need to be in Zurich.”
Surely he wasn’t serious. In my parlous condition, for a moment I took his expression “your girl” to mean Anna, and the thought of her response to being described that way almost made me lose it all in a convulsive voidance over the white marble. But then, as yet another spasm subsided somewhere below my navel, I realized that he meant my secretary. He would not have known that I did not have a secretary, just a telephone and a screen in a workstation that was fixed yet moveable. Laughing Boy Laffenden knew all about it. I had started to sweat before we shook hands.
17. The quiet, winding streets of Toorak with their great walls and cast-iron gates guarding manicured gardens and mansions by turns Tudor, Spanish, Georgian, Victorian, art deco, and space-age are the enemy of a wayfaring interloper with a dire intestinal need. By the time I had parked my car and dashed into a cubicle at the back of a bistro on Toorak Road, I could not fairly be held responsible for anything I did. But a moment or two after my muscles relaxed and the beads of sweat on my forehead had begun to cool me, I slumped forward with my pants around my ankles and gave thanks for all that I was about to receive.
With everything that had been happening, I had not noticed two unanswered calls on my cell phone in addition to the call from my mother. When I listened to the messages I found that one was from Anna telling me my mother had called and please, wherever the hell I was, could I call her because she sounded distressed. No surprises there. The other call was from the police. They wanted me to call them.
At first I assumed the police were calling to check out my version of something Simon Heywood had told them in an attempt to diminish the enormity of what he had done. I didn’t know and could not imagine what I could tell them that Anna couldn’t tell them, but then it struck me, suddenly, that their inquiry might not be related to this at all. I looked at my free hand, the one not holding the phone to my ear. It was my father’s hand. Perhaps the photographer was going to press charges for assault. It had been a little over a week and I had heard nothing, but there was no statute of limitations. He could have been hospitalized until now.
When I thought about it I could still feel him underneath me on the stone paving beside the pool. The truth is, I had liked hitting him. I could still get myself worked up just thinking about him trying to take photos of Sam. So why shouldn’t he want to press charges? Would I press charges in his circumstances? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it wasn’t even up to him. Perhaps his employer, the newspaper, wanted to boost sales with an exclusive twist on the latest victim of Anna’s serial child stealer. That would explain the delay between that Saturday and these calls from the police. He had been off work trying to recover from the beating I had given him, and it was only after he got back that his editorial colleagues had become aware of the extent of his injuries and decided that there was a story in it, and an even better one if the police were involved. Editorial colleagues or not, the police were involved.
There was no question that I had hit the man mercilessly. I had lost control. But he was trespassing. He was trying to get a shot of my son’s distress. Someone was trying to make a profit out of it. My son had just been taken. So I hit him. But I hit him for much longer than any normal man possessing reasonable self-control would have. What was there to plead other than guilty?
Can I plead evolution? If aggression advantages survival, then perhaps the aggression which I inherited from my father and which I visited on the photographer that day was determined by evolution. That is how I might have tried to explain my assault on the photographer to Sam had he not been crying hysterically, had he not been convulsing in Anna’s arms. Of course, had he been older still he might have considered that evolution can never be a defense against anything.
My father always said and acted as though he had no choice, as though we had no choice. For people like us, circumstance had to be grabbed by the throat. We had to make our own luck. He sure made his luck and I suppose I always believed that he made our luck just as he had made Roger, hastily and on a slow burn to catastrophe. But perhaps I am too hard on him. Perhaps things were different then. Now it is possible for a person like me to transcend his origins legally. I was invited into Donald Sheere’s house. I did not have to break in. I am a stockbroker.
The police would like to talk to me.
There was no need to imagine how my mother must have sounded when she spoke to Anna. It was all there on the message she had left me. She was sounding like that more and more. Either that or I was noticing it more. I thought it was her. I know it now.
“Joseph, Joe? What phone is this? Is that you? Am I recording now? I can’t take him, Joe. Not now. I’m too old. I can’t do it. Are you there?”
Then it went dead. When I called her back it was as though no time had elapsed between her call and mine, as though she had continued the conversation between the calls.
“I can’t keep him, Joe.”
“Mum, what are you talking about?”
“I know you won’t take him, but, Joe—”
“Mum, take a deep breath. Let it out slowly and then tell me what you want to talk about.”
“I heard it on the talk show.”
“Heard what?”
“Most of them say it’s a good thing and the expert did but I—”
“What did you hear on the talk show?” How do you keep her away from the radio? “Is this about Sam?” I asked
her.
“Not Sam—Roger.”
“What did you hear on the talk show about Roger?”
“They say it’s a good thing, calling it re . . . reintegration, but I—”
“ ‘Reintegration’?”
“They’ll close down the cottages and he’ll have to live with me, Joe, but I—”
“Mum, what are you talking about? They’re not going to close down the cottages.”
“That’s what they were talking about on the show, and they said it was a good thing because then people like Roger can get reintegrated. But, Joe, you know Roger . . .”
“Mum, take it easy. They’re not going to close down the cottages and—”
“Why not? How do you know?”
“Because . . . because they’re not. It’s run by the government. They wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because there would be an uproar. People wouldn’t like it. And even if they did, which they never would, but if they ever did, he wouldn’t have to live with you.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have him. You said Sam was scared of him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes you did.”
“No, Mum, I said the place, the cottages, would be a bit scary for Sam while he’s still little.”
“Sarah wouldn’t have him either, Joe. You know that and even if she would, she’s interstate and I wouldn’t want him so far away. I’d never see him like I never see Sarah.” She stopped at Sarah. It hurt her too much even to mention Megan, and no one had heard from Denise since around the time we lost our first son. Talk radio was bringing it all back home to my mother over her tea and sandwiches.
“Mum, it’s not going to happen, but even if it did I’d see to it that he’d have a nice place to stay. He’d be all right.”
“Oh, Joe, he can’t be out there. He can’t be on his own. Who’s going to wash his clothes? Who’s going to get the dinner? He can’t have a knife. He can’t be with gas or fire. It’s too late for all that and I can’t . . . I’m too old, Joe.”