The Big Ask Read Online Free

we’d just left.
    A dark shape lay there on the ground. Whatever it was, we’d made a mess of it. Rolled over it with the rear trailer wheels, burst it open and smeared its contents across the asphalt.
    â€˜We’ve run over something,’ I told Heather. ‘Sack of tomatoes, by the look of it. Donny’s getting an earful from some Italian bloke.’
    â€˜Damn,’ she said. ‘It’ll be pay up, or spend all day arguing the toss.’
    Not what I wanted to hear. And now more of them were arriving. The United Nations General Assembly, plenary session. Donny was down on one knee, assessing the damage. Slap, slap, slap went the windscreen wipers, escalating my impatience, now at the jiggling, buttock-clenching stage. ‘I’m going to leg it, try to get a taxi,’ I told Heather. ‘I’ve got a plane to catch. Donny will explain.’
    She eyed me sceptically. ‘Is it just me, or are you like this with all women?’
    I hoisted my jacket over my head, took a parting glance at the damaged-goods conference and trotted towards the gate, shoes slipping on the rain-greasy asphalt. I felt bad about running out on Donny, but not bad enough to stay behind and risk missing my flight.
    If I’d looked back, even for a moment, I might have seen what was looming. I might have seen the great tidal wave of shit that was about to break over me. Just one backward glance and Donny might still be alive. And I wouldn’t be languishing in the place where I am now.

It was all Angelo Agnelli’s fault, of course.
    If it wasn’t for Angelo, I would never have been at the market in the first place. I wouldn’t have been trying to play funny buggers with the most powerful and dangerous union in the state. I most certainly wouldn’t have found myself trying to second-guess a man like Frank Farrell.
    The Honourable Angelo Agnelli, member of the Legislative Council, was the Minister for Transport in the sovereign state of Victoria. And it all began in his office on the previous Friday evening. His Parliament House office, to be precise, in the majestic old legislature atop the gentle rise at the eastern edge of Melbourne’s central business district.
    As government leader in the Upper House, Ange was entitled to one of the building’s more imposing bureaux. Its antique desk, french-polished bookcases, overstuffed chairs, velvet curtains, flock wallpaper and moulded cornices dated from the time when our city was a shining colonial jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown. His office, in short, looked a cross between Lord Palmerston’s study and a Wild West bordello.
    It was August 1991 and even Blind Freddy could see that his enjoyment of these facilities was nearing its conclusion. After a decade in office, Labor had lost the plot. It was common wisdom that our defeat at the next state election was inevitable. But the election was still a year away. In the meantime, the sorry business of government went on.
    There were three of us, men in suits. Agnelli was standing behind his desk, his waistcoat unbuttoned. Pushing fifty, he was no longer the boy wonder and his once-beaming dial had turned into a doughy ball in which his wary eyes were set like raisins in a slab of stale fruitcake.
    Out on the floor of the chamber, Angelo did his best to project an image of senatorial gravitas, grey of temple, thick of waist, measured of speech and glad of hand. In the privacy of his office, during the parliamentary dinner recess, he dispensed with any such pretence. He held a tightly rolled newspaper in his fist and was smacking it against his thigh as he spoke.
    â€˜As if I don’t have enough on my plate, thwap , what with Treasury screwing me to the floor over the budget estimates,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got a thwap bushfire to fight. What am I paying you for, Nev, thwap ? If it isn’t to keep this sort of crap, thwap , out of the papers?’
    Neville Lowry