The Ambulance Chaser Page 9

  ‘I’m sure it is.’

  ‘I guess as a director of the company I should have paid more attention to what he was doing. But it was a family company, a family business – my dad’s business. I thought he knew what he was doing. There didn’t seem any need to interfere or ask questions. I didn’t think he was doing much more than selling up-market vitamins.’

  ‘Surely this was taken into account by . . . I mean, with the directors’ duties charges brought against you.’

  I hadn’t mentioned those charges. She really had done her homework. ‘No. It wasn’t,’ I said. ‘When people nearly die, and you’re a director of the company that made them sick, and you’re also a lawyer . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  ‘Of course, according to your thesis, I’d be in jail now if I was female.’

  ‘Without doubt,’ she said. ‘Doing hard time.’

  ‘Anyway, when the debts kept piling up, I hit this stuff pretty hard too,’ I said, shaking the foamy remnants at the bottom of my glass, ‘and one night, I’m driving home, there’s a power pole coming towards me, and I’m so drunk I’m thinking, that’s odd, why’s it doing that? And . . . you can guess the rest.’

  ‘I don’t have to. I read that too.’

  ‘I’m not going to end up as part of your thesis, am I?’

  ‘You’re safe for now,’ Gabrielle said smiling, ‘although I’m beginning to strongly consider your father. If you want to pitch me your entire story, though, I’ll consider you as a footnote at least.’

  ‘I specialise in footnotes. Me and a few other bankrupts are making a great footnote for the history of the New South Wales Bar Association.’

  ‘Tell me an edited version and I’ll see whether you’re an end-of-chapter footnote or an end-of-book.’

  ‘In the space of twelve months I got sued by a bank for, I think, $3,707,005, all of which was my father’s debt, which, you won’t be surprised to learn, I couldn’t pay. Then I was sued by a few sick plaintiffs, then prosecuted for breaches of directors’ duties by the Securities Commission, then the tax office was up me, I couldn’t pay my own mortgage, my overdraft spiralled up like Sputnik, the DUI didn’t matter much because my car got repossessed, then work went to shit, I was pissed most of the time, then the Bar Association Professional Conduct Committee came knocking on my door, and I was . . . well . . . I was out. Out of the club and out of a job. Bankrupt and no longer a lawyer, just like that,’ I said, snapping my fingers.

  At first it seemed to happen more gradually than this. There was a phone call from my father. I may be in a bit of strife were his exact words. Shit, that was Saddam’s pillow talk for an understatement. Then the earth moved just a fraction, somewhere beneath and in front, and the wave came rolling towards me under the darkest of clouds.

  ‘Wow,’ Gabrielle said, ‘maybe you’re not quite what I’m looking for.’

  I smiled, confident she was referring only to her thesis. ‘It gets better. I mean, I agree it looked bad . . . but the best media story was that in the middle of the bankruptcy petition against me by the bank and the tax office, I went overseas with my ex.’

  ‘I think I read that article too,’ Gabrielle admitted.

  ‘You’re obsessed with me, right? I’m all you think about.’

  ‘Absolutely. What happened next?’

  ‘“Tax Dodging Lawyer’s Lavish European Jaunt” – I think that was how one paper put it.’

  Gabrielle smiled. ‘This is definitely the story I read.’

  ‘They then did a bullshit story about the tax office allegedly trying to serve me with a legal notice at a hotel in Monaco. We didn’t even go to Monaco. St Tropez, I admit, but not Monaco. “The Five-Star Bankrupt”, they called me later. The trip had been planned for ten months. My ex paid for the entire miserable thing. I was running away, not living it up. Believe me, I didn’t have a good time.’

  Gabrielle didn’t look entirely convinced. ‘I think I can understand the journalists’ perspective, Chris,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well . . . fuck their perspective.’

  ‘And there was no chance of refinancing?’

  I laughed. ‘For that amount of money? Not a chance. I was fairly highly geared to begin with. It took me a week to cut up all my credit cards.’

  ‘Why did you give him a guarantee?’

  Only Robert Oppenheimer had spent more time contemplating a single question into the darkest hours of the night. ‘I gave the bank the guarantee, not him,’ I said. ‘He lost everything, the stupid bastard. To be fair, he got scammed himself. He did a deal with some shonks to market these products through his business, invested heavily. He had five practices and was in debt up to his ears. Why did I guarantee the debt? Well, he asked me to, and he wouldn’t have got the loans he needed to expand otherwise, and I was a director of the family company, and . . . and I guess we’re both stupid bastards.’

  Gabrielle shook her head. ‘Why did the bank bother bankrupting you? Why not just sell the businesses and the properties and leave it at that? God I hate them. Sorry,’ she added, ‘but I come from a long line of bank haters.’

  ‘I had a legal practice,’ I said. ‘If I was also a single mum with a club foot and diabetes they’d still have come after me.’

  ‘There was no one else to help you? A relative – your mother?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a pause in the conversation as we watched people playing pokies and pool. ‘He was struck off too,’ I said.

  ‘Your father? As a pharmacist?’

  I nodded. ‘The powers that be get narky with you if you start poisoning your customers.’ I drained the last drop of my beer before putting the glass down on the table. ‘Like father, like son.’

  ‘So,’ Gabrielle said slowly after another pause, ‘how long will you be bankrupt for?’

  ‘Three years. Unless I win Lotto.’

  Gabrielle shook her head. ‘Dear, oh dear, Chris,’ she said, getting up. ‘I guess that means it’s my buy.’

  The status of bankruptcy does not act as a magnet for women. Sure, it’s worked a few times, but those guys still drove Rolls Royces. I hadn’t been able to work out how this particular trick was stage-managed in this country.

  Banca rotta, that’s what I was. Something to do with broken benches. Not being able to pay your debts used to be a crime. You could be forced into slavery for years. That was the Old Testament way. In the mother country, if fraud was also involved, then it was the gallows. Later, the British introduced a more humane system for bankrupts. Australia.

  I had no car, no house, and I lived in a bachelor flat. I didn’t even have a CD collection, just a few sad old strays that I’d managed to salvage from the wreckage as my fiscal and professional world went under. By day I worked for an insurance company. A large slice of my income was diverted to a trustee. At night I watched ABC and SBS. Any channel without a quiz or reality show telling me how easy it is to make money or become a major celebrity. Instead of a minor notoriety. After TV it was Dylan or Sinatra. I no longer had the strength to read. If I was really depressed I might put on Dusty Springfield. It wasn’t a happy situation.

  I was not a good catch. If I’d been a fish, most women would have thrown me back, or at best, used me as bait. With Gabrielle Shepherd, though, for some reason I thought I had half a chance. Even disbarred and bankrupt, with her I still had vestiges of credibility. There were my ten years as a volunteer lawyer for the poor on Thursday nights. There were the two anti-globalisation and three peace marches I could tell her about to add to my pitch. I kept a couple of Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader books by my bedside. Just in case. I’d left The Female Eunuch and my strategically tattered copy of The Second Sex for my small bookcase. Also in my bedroom, as it turned out. I’m like a scout. If there’s a chance for sex with a socialist-feminist, ‘be prepared’ is my motto.

  ‘So, what’s your plan now, Chris?’ Gabrielle said when she returned from the bar. ‘I ta
ke it you’re not going to stay with this insurance company forever?’ My optimism took a battering at the how long do you plan being a concentration camp guard? tone of her question. I’d have preferred a question concerning my thoughts on the alarming power of corporations and our resultant loss of democracy. The appalling concentration of media ownership. Virtually any right-wing conspiracy. Fortunately, I had a perfect answer prepared.

  ‘I just need to get back on my feet money-wise,’ I said.

  ‘You told me that before. When you do?’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ I said. ‘Some of the people that got sick . . . they were off work for a while, in hospital, in pain. Like I said, our insurer refused to indemnify us, and our secured creditors took all our assets.’

  ‘You’re paying them?’

  ‘Slowly,’ I said. ‘Very slowly. I did a deal with the trustee, who did a deal with the tax office and the bank. Part of my income goes to the customers that got sick. It’s a token amount really, but . . . I needed to take any job I could get even to do that.’

  ‘What about long-term goals?’

  ‘I can’t work as a lawyer at the moment. Once my bankruptcy is discharged I hope I can get a practising certificate again. I mean, I’m not a violent criminal. I don’t know, my sights are set a bit differently now. I’d like to work in legal aid, or a legal centre . . . something like that.’

  ‘Your sights are set lower then,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘Besides, I was an ambulance chaser. Is there anything lower than that?’

  She smiled. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m at RSLC for at least eighteen months,’ she said. ‘It’s going to take me that long to finish my thesis. After that, I’m looking seriously at the legal affairs section of UNHCR in Geneva.’ It was one or two too many letters for me, but it sounded noble. ‘I have a friend who’s working for the commission at the moment, and they’re pretty active about recruiting qualified women, especially in the thirty to fifty age bracket because they want you to have some experience to bring to them. I’m about to slip into that category, and they’re starting a project next year, or the year after, on women refugees from countries where we are most oppressed by religious or ancient laws, which fits in with some of the research I’ve been doing.’

  I had eighteen months to rid the world of sexism and end the oppression of women or she was off to Switzerland. ‘I’m at a bit of a crossroads at the moment,’ she continued, ‘halfway through a long thesis is a difficult point, and my partner and I broke up recently, which hasn’t made things any easier.’

  Now that sounds better, I thought. Almost anything coming out of a mouth like Gabrielle Shepherd’s can sound like music, but my partner and I broke up recently was a beautiful sentence, sung by the highest angel in heaven. Shakespearean, Joycean, any decent -ean. I floated upwards on every note.

  ‘Was this very recently or . . . I don’t want to pry.’ I wanted to pry. I wanted to hear that she felt she was well rid of this tax-paying loser and ready to move on to give the most eligible bankrupt in town a try.

  ‘A month,’ she said. ‘She’s with Médecins Sans Frontières. She has been for years, and a chance finally came up for her to get a field posting. She had to take it.’

  Did she say she?

  ‘Usually postings are six to twelve months, but she’s taking a two-year position in Mauritania setting up a relatively new clinic.’

  She definitely said she. Did I say I had half a chance?

  ‘Where’s Mauritania?’ I asked. I was in a daze now. I knew perfectly well it was in South America.

  ‘It’s on the west coast. It borders with Mali, Senegal, Western Sahara and Algeria. Not exactly somewhere I can easily drop into to visit.’

  I meant Africa. And how many countries can you border? ‘That’s a big commitment,’ I said. ‘For her, I mean.’ I emphasised her, just in case there was any chance at all that I was mishearing.

  ‘Yeah. The pay’s about a thousand dollars a month plus basic living expenses. She’s totally committed, though. She’s just finished surgical training, and they really need surgeons over there. Who knows? We’ve talked it through. It’s not impossible for us to get back together, although it might be even harder if I go to Geneva about the same time she leaves Nouakchott.’

  Don’t ask me about Nouakchott. Obviously it’s in Mauritania somewhere, with Saddam’s plutonium. I didn’t care where the hell it was. I just wanted to know why no one had told me about Gabrielle Shepherd. I wanted to know why no one had told me that my opposition for her affections was her Ellen DeGeneres – Female Dr Carter from ER lover, who was off to the poorest country I’d never heard of to save every man and child and steal the hearts of the women too.

  Gabrielle stayed for two more beers while I had another four. That made it seven for me. Seven beers is the point at which I am capable of seeing the irony in a situation while still being able to walk a straight line (almost) or sit on a barstool without falling off. I then deteriorate rapidly, but Gabrielle prevented that by grabbing a cab for us and dropping me back home.

  Gabrielle Shepherd was attractive, intelligent, left-wing, feminist, and she seemed kind. These are several of the things I look for in a woman. Gay isn’t in my top ten, though. For friendship, gay is fine. So is bi, transgender, cross-dresser, hermaphrodite and neutral. Metrosexual is another story. But gay was not what I had in mind for what I had in mind.

  Gay left me all alone.

  Alone, but for my Ralph Nader and Germaine Greer books on my cheap bedside table.

  Eleven

  The facts, the issues, the law. The litigators’ mantra.

  The death of Simon Broun was a fact. So was the drowning of the Dobsons. The street killing of Greg Stewart. The suicide case Gibbs had mentioned. There was at least one too many dead people here for my liking. Fact. Too many dead people about to get money.

  There were three Melbourne law firms on South Pacific’s panel. I reached the one I wanted on my second call. I was doing an audit of sorts, I told the ‘relationship’ partner at Sutton Murphy & Jones. Some preliminary research prior to the tender South Pacific would be calling for the provision of legal services later that year. I was seeking information on random files. I had been asked to look at a professional negligence matter in which the plaintiff had committed suicide. A matter called . . . where’s my file gone . . . ?

  ‘Oh, Fadwell,’ the partner said. ‘Phil Smart handled that claim.’

  ‘Yes, Fadwell,’ I said. ‘Can you put me through to Phil, then?’

  There was a pause. ‘I can,’ the partner said hesitantly. ‘What do you want to ask about, though? That file’s closed.’

  Good question. There was nothing I could really ask that South Pacific wouldn’t already know. We had a file somewhere, it was just that I didn’t have it.

  ‘Just a few general things – more to analyse our internal procedures than to check up on you. My brief is to assess how we handled the claim before we sent it to you. To get your views – confidentially, of course – as to whether you think we should have done things differently before we referred it out.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Fine. I’ll put you through to Phil, then. Just a minute.’

  ‘Before you do,’ I said quickly, ‘do you mainly deal with Ang De Luca?’

  ‘Well, Angelo is our prime liaison point within your organisation, as National Head of Claims. I’m not quite sure what –’

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’ I asked. ‘My orders come from management. Who also asked me to chase some of these things up a lot more promptly than I have.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you didn’t talk to Angelo about what I’m doing and when I’m doing it.’ There was no point in having De Luca ask me why I was ringing Melbourne solicitors about closed files. For the same reason, I’d gone to the lawyers rather than the Melbourne claims t
eam.

  ‘Certainly. I mean, if Angelo asks me directly . . .’

  ‘Sure, but if he doesn’t . . .’

  ‘Then it’s between you, me and Phil.’

  ‘Great. Thanks.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ll just see if Phil’s in.’

  He was. Terry Fadwell, he told me, had taken early retirement. When he did, his superannuation added up to a very tidy sum. His wife, Meg Fadwell, retired at the same time. With her own savings and retirement fund, and what her parents had left her when they died, she and Terry had more than a nest egg.

  ‘You know Melbourne at all?’ Smart asked me. The Fadwells lived in Brighton. Their home had grown considerably in value by the time of their retirement, and was entirely paid off. That’s when Terry Fadwell made the mistake of being talked into becoming entrepreneurial with his investments.

  He had used the same financial advisers for more than a decade. They had livened up his super fund, taken care of disability insurance, life insurance – the whole package. They had helped him dip his toes into the sharemarket from time to time, just for fun. To see how the game worked. Then, as Terry was retiring, a clever young man from Equity Challenge presented him with an array of options. They could leave all their money in a cash management account if they wanted to. Was there a need to be so cautious, though? No sense in being totally risk averse, was there? They could invest in some more shares. What would their living expenses be? They might both live until ninety, so even a large sum needed to be properly managed. Did they plan to travel much? All of this was considered.

  ‘Your insured was put in charge of most of the money,’ Smart told me. ‘It came to him quickly, and went out just as quickly.’ He ran through the myriad investments. The Fadwells’ money had gone into a telecommunications company that slithered quickly into liquidation. Some Internet start-up companies that turned from supernovas to black holes in the usual silent, blinding flashes of light. There were investments in blue-sky mining companies that managed to find only rock. It seems that David, from the South-Pacific-insured Equity Challenge, was irresistibly drawn to invest in companies that went bust, or whose share price quartered, or worse, within days of his investment. Poor Terry Fadwell. Geographically he may have been in Brighton, Melbourne, but risk-wise his investment strategy suddenly became very High Rollers Room, Las Vegas, Nevada, before landing somewhere west of Shit Creek.