Read Online Something Fishy by Shane Maloney - Free Book Online Page B

pieces of paper. Price lists, invoices, booking sheets, postcards, staff rosters, suppliers’ phone numbers, fish identification charts, health department notices, a calendar with a scene of Mt Vesuvius. The horizontal surfaces were cluttered with ring-binders, ledgers, clipboards and phone books.
    Tony was sitting at a desk that was pushed against the wall just inside the door, signing some documents. He finished with a flourish, looked up and gave me a broad smile. ‘Hey,’ he said, spreading his palms in greeting. ‘Murray, my man, I was just gunna come up.’
    â€˜Sorry to disturb,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t leave without saying thanks. A friend in need and all that.’
    Tony was a stocky, slightly paunchy Neapolitan with a van dyke beard and sleek black hair brushed back from a high receding brow. He wore a charcoal-grey polo shirt under a pale-lemon, crumpled-linen sports jacket, the cuffs pushed back to his hairy forearms, Miami Vice style. Give him a tunic and laurel crown, stick a bunch of grapes in one hand and a Pan pipe in the other, and he wouldn’t have looked out of place amid his trattoria satyrs.
    â€˜Hey guys,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Meet Murray Whelan, our local MP. Labor, unfortunately, so knowing him ain’t worth shit.’
    I put my head around the door and found two other men in the room, one leaning against the filing cabinet, the other sunk in a worn-out armchair. They were observing Tony with amusement, like he was a novelty act, the genial wise guy. This, I imagined, was exactly the effect he was trying for.
    The bloke at the filing cabinet was small and neat, well into his fifties. Thick-rimmed spectacles. Brown suit, bland tie. The total package suggested a clerical occupation. Accountancy or somesuch. ‘This is Phil…’ said Tony.
    I nodded hello around the door and Phil nodded back. His eyes sideways behind his glasses, goldfish in a bowl.
    â€˜â€¦and Jake Martyn.’
    Tony delivered the name with the hint of a flourish. It was one I’d heard before. A name name.
    Martyn was a culinary trend-setter, the proprietor of Gusto, a fashionable restaurant in seaside Lorne. A frequent mention in the epicure pages, he was the pioneer of the dernier cri in fine dining, a style eponymously called ‘ con gusto ’. Out with those finicky morsels of yesteryear, the smidgin of scallop on a wasabi wafer, the flutter of quail over an inference of artichokes. In with the hearty mouthful, the port-glazed porterhouse on a shitload of mashed spuds, the pan-seared swordfish with a bottle of beer and a burp.
    An embodiment of the pleasures of the table, he was a barrel-chested, generous-gutted man in his early forties with a round, cheerful face, robust shoulder-length hair the colour of old oyster shells and an air of easy affability. He was wearing a just-folks sweater and scuffed hiking boots, as though making it plain he had no time for fussbudget fiddlers with sea-urchin roe.
    He came up out of his seat a fraction of an inch, gave me a brief spray of charm and dropped back. ‘G’day.’
    His charm was the kind you can see coming but don’t resent. Through it I sensed that he recognised my name. I was that guy whose girlfriend got killed and sometimes, when people met me for the first time, they didn’t quite know how to respond to that fact. Whether to say something or not. Martyn went for not, which was the way I preferred it.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Tony. ‘Here it is, at last.’
    The waitress with the flirty laugh appeared beside me in the doorway, a liqueur bottle in one hand, three snifters in the other.
    â€˜I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘Thanks again, Tony.’
    â€˜We’re finished here,’ he said, slipping the signed form and some other papers into a manilla envelope and handing it to the accountant type. ‘Stick around. Have a drink with us. VSOP.’
    The waitress